Just How Lonely Are Chickens Anyway?

We are having lovely weather for this long Labor Day weekend. However, as Michael announced yesterday evening while on a walk, "Summer is over. I just saw a bunch of leaves on the ground and I just saw one leaf actually falling. That is what triggered my memory of Fall." Triggered his memory of Fall? I don't know about that. I do know that I had seen the same tree and had told myself (and believed a little bit) that the tree was sick or dying. Anyway, it is nice weather currently and the boys and I decided yesterday that it would be nice to go to my mom's and spend the afternoon swimming, and maybe their cousins could come too. I texted Uncle Nick to find out if they were available and up for a swim. But Spencer - my young, sweet, cynical Spencer says to me in regard to his Uncle Nick, "I bet he won't respond. He never responds." However, Nick did respond (take that Spencer). Unfortunately though, Nick was in the middle of school supply shopping, which seems like an activity that should take 30 minutes, but has become a touch more complicated. I travelled to four different stores to get everything on the boys' lists and I had to spend $119.50. And that was just to get the standard supplies. I didn't get anything from either boy's "wish list," which is, near as I can tell, a list of additional supplies that you are not required to purchase, but which the teachers would like, and if you are really committed to your kids and their education, you will do your part and get at least one (just one, for goodness sake), but probably more than one, maybe everything on the wish list because the more you buy, the better equipped the classroom and the better the educational opportunities for the students (obviously). Ok, I admit that I am feeling a little guilty and a touch inadequate because I didn't buy anything on the "wish list." At any rate, Nick and his boys couldn't come swimming yesterday. And, after I exhausted the list of other possible attendees and told the boys that it looked like it would be just us, Spencer remarked forlornly "So we will be lonely chickens."