They're not mine so just calm the hell down.

OK, before you get all I KNEW YOU WERE GOING TO GET CHICKENS YAY!, let me tell you that these are not my chickens. 

I'm not getting chickens.

I can't eat that many eggs/Bubba would leave me/Jada would eat the chickens/Rocket would stage a coup/I have nowhere to put them/etc.

That said, could you just DIE at the pantaloons on my neighbor's hen, Bitsy, right there?

Bam.

I mean, honestly, girlfriend just flaunts those poofy buns at every opportunity. She's quite the chicken whore.

She's the real inspiration for all those YouTube videos.

So, yeah, I don't know what that makes me, since the first thing I do when I let them out of the coop for their afternoon of mad patio shitting, is chase Bitsy around until she cows and I can scoop her up for YAY! CHICKEN CUDDLE TIME! which I daresay she does not enjoy the way I do.

The only reason she's not smiling is because chicken beaks don't do that. THE ONLY REASON.

Meanwhile, check out this FAT pad that was handbuilt by my super handy neighbors.

Why yes, that IS a nesting box annex off the side there, below their private viewing window.

Also, an antique clock so that they know, you know, when to start hassling the neighbors and shooting out eggs.

See, a few weeks ago, my neighbors went back to NY for a week and emailed me to see if I wanted to pretend I was a chicken farmer for a week.

OBVIOUSLY I DID.

And obviously it was way fun. Just walk down to their house, collect eggs, let the girls out for the afternoon and then, later, lure them back into the coop with whatever treats I had lurking in my crisper or the garden.

L-R: Poppy and Carmella. They're very busy. And they can lay waste to a LOT of old kale.

Petunia being fancy with her ultra contrasty feathers. She was more of a fan of the blossom end rot tomatoes. Because *that* is fancy for chickens.

Bitsy strutting her poofy pants.

LOOK AT MY PANTS THEY ARE AWESOME.

The blue egg is Bitsy's because her fanciness does not end with the pantaloons. SHOW OFF.

And now we have a boat load of eggs, as do our other neighbors and my Pilates instructor, so I've proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that even though I LOVE the chickens, I can NOT have the chickens so it's a damn good thing everyone else around here has chickens so that I don't have to, like, make promises about baking a cake every day to justify to Bubba why I'm putting chickens behind his garage.

Which, does that sound weird to you? Yeah, same here.

I'M NOT GETTING CHICKENS.

Phew. Sorry, just thought I'd be clear.

I'm That Guy again

Remember when I used to run races?

Yeah, me too.

Remember when I used to bitch about people who ran races with their friends while jabbering about nothing while they gasped for breath between pointless chatter and annoyed the ever loving fuck out of me?

Yeah, me too.

Any guesses as to what I did last weekend?

If you guessed, "Ran a race with a friend while talking incessantly and probably annoying the ever loving fuck out of other people." you'd be right. And also, a little judgey, don't you think?

It's OK, I was judging myself. For being a hypocrite and also for being a damned observant genius because I will tell you that's the easiest 6.2 miles I've ever run. 

You see, friends, these chatty fuckers are really on to something. I mean, yes, the race course was flat and the weather was oh so accommodating (overcast and 54 degrees? YES PLEASE.) and I wasn't going for a PR of any kind to the point where I didn't even wear my Garmin and my friend is of the conversationalist type, so I'm still considering this a unique scenario for me, but WOW. 

Easiest 10K in my history of running 10Ks.

Also, there was this at one point in the race

Yep. That's Brian Wilson.
From  http://www.facebook.com/giantrace/photos

And the race ended at AT&T Park - on the field.

So, you know, I got to fulfill one of my life's dreams - to run onto the field at my favorite team's park without being arrested or forcibly removed.

"The Field" was a plastic barrier over the actual field so we didn't completely eff the place up.

Though I don't have any proof that I actually ran on the field because, unlike almost every single other person there, I did not have my phone around for photo taking and they didn't get my finish line photo.

Which, lame.

I will say that this race, The Giant Race, was one of the best managed races I've ever run. Especially given that there were, like, 10,000+ runners and the streets of San Francisco to contend with, but as it turns out, the race photography sort of left a little to be desired. 

I mean, I slapped Lou Seal's hand (flipper?) when crossing the finish line! That's photo worthy! But no, instead there are a bunch of photos of me being bloated and my mouth being contorted into not flattering angles because of my extreme chatting.

So the one up there is the closest I got to me+Lou Seal+finish line. At least I'm smiling instead of blabbing. 

I have learned my lesson about that anyway.

And also about wearing orange tops. See, I love orange. It's my color in the sense that it's my favorite and I'm drawn to it. However, it does not make for the most flattering photos, so I will probably go back to black tops until such time as I have the six pack that I imagine myself having as I fold my top up under my sports bra and go rocketing down the hill like a wild animal.

I really do imagine that I have abs the whole way and that having my shirt tucked up into Fort Knockers is the most natural thing in the world. Until such time as I hear other people on the trail and I rip that thing down as fast as you can say, "bowl full of jelly".

Ah, delightful.

Anyway, I ran a race on the road while talking endlessly to my friend and it was so enjoyable that I'll probably do it again in my pursuit of becoming 100% that guy that I totally hate.

I'm so contradictory sometimes.

Our powers of delusion at work again

Did you know that we hate ourselves over here in Finny and Bubba Land?

Because we do.

Otherwise how can you explain why two people who have been through many annoying household construction projects after which saying that we'd NEVER DO ANY CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS AGAIN EVER are now in the midst of the biggest pain in the ass construction project ever?

HOW CAN YOU?

I can not explain it, yet here we are.

And HEY FUN there's a hole in the floor and the cleaning lady refuses to clean the toilet during construction.

We are, in our sub-1,000 square foot 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom house, completely remodeling our bathroom.

Let me allow the significant parts of that sentence sink in for you in case you didn't fully embrace the potential for madness on the first read...

...1 BATHROOM HOUSE...COMPLETELY REMODELING OUR BATHROOM.

Yes. We have (or should I say had) one single solitary mostly awful bathroom in our tiny ass house that we'd been staring at with loathing YOU'RE NOT LONG FOR THIS WORLD eyes since we moved in back in 2005.

This is when it was brand new. Even then - HIDEOUS. Also, nice staging, losers.

Staring at the stupid time capsule shower with its too-shallow shelves that nothing fit on, rickety plastic sliding  door made of warped "privacy" plastic, ugly white tile countertops on the off-the-shelf shabby chic vanity from the clearance aisle of Home Depot, vinyl floors with faux Travertine tile pattern...blech.

I like how the seller tried to tell us that this shower was "Of the era" for our 1918-built house. RIGHT. Like they knew how to time travel in 1918.

For seven years we've looked at, bathed in and HATED TO OUR VERY CORES this single solitary bathroom in our tiny house.

Until we couldn't take it anymore.

We'd beaten around the bush long enough. We'd done the other distasteful but not ridiculously awful projects and let ourselves feel accomplished for having done those and let ourselves off the hook on the inevitable bathroom project that we just.could.not.face.

Because it was going to be such an impenetrable pain in the ass.

Then, well then, about a year's time passed after remodeling the breakfast nook into a bar which gave us enough time to block out the relatively mild pain and misery of that project, plus lots of space between us and our previously more painful and miserable other projects (Hi, kitchen, garage, front porch, fireplace, fence and back patio - you all were SUPER annoying), so that we could approach the bathroom remodel in our 1 bathroom house with some modicum of delusion.

See, for a project like this, one does not need patience, understanding or even an impressively stocked bar (though, that did help WHILE IT WAS STILL ACCESSIBLE BEHIND ALL THE CONSTRUCTION DEBRIS). No, one needs delusion.

Delusion that tells you that, "It won't be that bad.", "It won't take *that* long.", "We've endured worse.", "We can always just get a kiddie pool for the yard and shower out there with the hose and won't that be fun." and also that "This bathroom is so awful that it will be worth it."

Honestly, people, now that we're going on our sixth week without a fully functioning bathroom in our house, that old bathroom is, in my fading memory, looking less hideous and unacceptable than it did when we started out.

Oh wait, no. Still awful. HATE YOU TILE COUNTERTOP.

Because back then I remember what it was like to be able to take a shower without first rolling up a change of clothes with a clean towel and hiking across the street to our neighbor's house hoping that I wasn't going to interrupt a peaceful time in their day with my incessant showering.

I remember what it was like to not have to restock the bathroom with TP every five minutes because the contractor seemed to find it the best tool for dealing with construction spills and touch ups and whatever else he does in there which I do not want to know about.

That morning the TP was brand new. WHAT HAPPENS IN ONE DAY?

I remember what it was like to not have people traipsing in and out of our house, over the paper runway taped to my wood floors, making a holy fucking mess out of every other part of my house and yard in the name of improving the smallest room in my house.

I remember these things NOW, yet somehow the All Powerful Delusion of Bathroom Hating allowed me to forget them at the crucial moment when Bubba and I decided that we'd redo the bathroom.

Just like that we were all, "You know, it's really time we redid the bathroom."

And then neither of us argued, which is very unlike us.

Because if there's something that we both hate more than that old bathroom it's having people up in our grill in the house making a mess.

We're not good with it. Our house is small, cleaning sucks and we really like to shower regularly.

Anyway, that said, we're in the throes of it all right now.

The project seem so innocent when we were picking out finishes.

And then they unearthed the largest vent pipe in creation.

And ANOTHER pipe that's totally not connected. 

And Ice Cream Sandwich plaster and lathe.

And who doesn't love waterproofing that takes a solid week to install and dry?

I love that, when I took this photo a few weeks ago, I thought this was bad. It was BEFORE the tile saw moved in permanently. 

I'll ask you to forgive me for taking pictures with my phone. 

The real "After" photos will be much better. Promise.

With any luck we'll have a working shower in our house in a few weeks and then maybe by the rapture we'll have the project done and the contractors far away where they can't rinse out their paint cans on my salvia plants or use all of the TP in mankind.

OH THAT WILL BE INCREDIBLE.

I learned a thing. After being stupid 100 times.

So, I wrote this post back before the days when BIGHUGETHINGNEWS was out breathing everyone's air, and am only just sharing it with you now.

Because I apparently really like to tell you when I've done something stupid for which you will likely judge me harshly.

I can really be not bright. 

Enjoy...

Ever done something a hundred times and then, on the 101st time realized that you'd had it wrong the whole time and not for, like, a really complicated reason but rather a super simple one that makes you feel like a total ass?

Like, say, turning the oven to "BR" and then inserting food into said oven with the intention of BRowning it rather than BRoiling? On the 101st time realizing that OHMYGOD BR means Broil and not Brown? 

No?

I've certainly never done that 100 times in case that's what you're thinking. That is a totally random example that I just thought up in my mind which came from nowhere and certainly not from personal experience.

Anyway, you ever done anything like that? Because I have. 

Today, in fact.

See, I went out to the garden to drink my tea this morning. 

Which went fine until I realized that the garden was a fucking shitshow and needed my attention STAT. 

With everything that's gone on lately what with the BIGHUGETHINGNEWS and all, a few things have been neglected including, ironically, the garden, and suddenly I couldn't neglect it any longer and still withstand the shockwaves of irony.

So, I decided to fix it. 

I watered some things, I reset the garden irrigation, I pruned a few things, I picked some peppers and basil and kumquats, I fertilized a tomato plant and I mowed what's left of our lawn after my whole SUCK LESS campaign.

It was in the mowing of the lawn wherein I had my HOLY SHIT I'M SLOW IN THE BRAINS moment and subsequently learned a thing.

A thing dawned on me.

Any guesses on what that thing was?

I won't wait, I'll just tell you.

Well, after a little lead up. It is my way after all.

 See, we have this gas mower which works like most other infuriating yard machines:

Hello, asshole mower.

1. It is first forcibly extracted from the garage
2. Then, in the harsh light of day, you take stock of all of its pull starts and priming bulbs and levers and clutch this and brake that and put fuel in here and what have yous
3. Then you reach waaaaaaaaay back into the dusty archives of your brains to try piece together the process by which this specific machine comes alive to do its proprietary job
4. Then you pull all of its starts and prime all of its bulbs and move around all of its leavers and grab the clutch and hit the brake and pour fuel into any open hole and your own shoes in all the possible configurations until such time as the machine comes magically to life 
5. Then you complete the single job with the proprietary machine, being careful not to let it die mid-job because you don't have 25 minutes to repeat all of those configurations again before happening upon the magical one that makes the machine do its job
6. Then you survey the job this magical infuriating machine has done, decide it's good enough, do a half assed job at cleaning up and shove it back into the garage at which time blocking many other magic machines and infuriating yard and garage implements that will obviously need to be extracted and used for their proprietary purposes within the hour
7. You go on with your life forgetting everything you just learned so that you can revisit the fun in a few weeks' time

Sound familiar? I'm just going to pretend that it does because I find solace in solidarity. 

Well, anyway, today I had apparently stared at the lawn mower in just the right way with just enough brain-power enhancing caffeine and adrenaline (I had just gotten home from working out and also tearing through my garden righting the irony and all) pumping through my brains to realize that the answer for HOW DO I START THIS PIECE OF SHIT without going through the many lever moving and pull starting configurations had been there all along.

Right there on the damn start lever with a little cute icon that looks just like the pull start and OH MY GOD WHY DID I NOT REALIZE THIS BEFORE?

Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh. Right.

This means START POSITION. 

Like, when you want the machine to start, you point the lever toward the THIS LOOKS LIKE A PULL START icon and then you PULL THE PULL START and holy hell it totally roars to life.

Why.

Why oh why did I think that a lawnmower was such a complicated and advanced machine that required the fluent speaking of its special lawnmower language to coax it into action? 

Did I think that lawnmowers were made with the target audience of Silicon Valley's highest trained computer science engineers who learn how to speak Lawnmower while pursuing their doctorate at one of the IITs?

And that these huge-brained individuals were the only ones in all of humanity who'd know how to make sense of this grass clipping machine's complicated inner workings?

Because that's just retarded.

Lawnmowers are made for suburban normals like yours truly who have some kind of grass and want to cut it so that the dog won't be lost in its overgrowth.

Oh save me from the horrors of tall grass. I skeered.

Normal people with normal educations or sometimes normal people with no education and also freaks with questionable education, a dark past, inexplicable scars, a tattoo of words written in an unrecognizable alphabet in their bathing suit area and a criminal record. 

You know - just your average everyday person who might cut some grass.

And the common language that all those normal people PLUS the huge-brained folks that emerge from the IITs have in common is HEY I KNOW WHAT THAT PICTURE LOOKS LIKE-ease.

Except that I, apparently, had forgotten how to speak HEY I KNOW WHAT THAT PICTURE LOOKS LIKE until today, but now I remember.

Like how having a couple shots of tequila in Mexico TOTALLY improves your Spanish, I had a couple shots of caffeine and yardwork when suddenly BAM! I spoke Lawnmower again.

Lawnmower: To start this machine, point the lever to the picture of the pull start and then pull the pull start. Done.

Why I thought it was: To start this machine, point the lever toward the rabbit, then the turtle, then the weird propeller looking thing while holding the clutch and the brake and pouring gas into the tank and yanking on the pull start is 100% beyond me.

These are not the magic wands of the lawnmower world. I know this now.

There aren't any pictures that say to do that. 

Yet that's what I was doing.

Because I have to do something stupid 100 times to learn a very simple thing: How to speak Lawnmower.  AKA - HEY I KNOW WHAT THAT PICTURE LOOKS LIKE.

Wow. Feeling smart. 

500 new pets

As I said at some point, though I'll admit I don't know exactly when, I was drafting up posts during the BIGHUGETHINGNEWS IS COMING in between period, and now that the secret's out, I can share these posts.

Even if they seem all weird because I wrote them, like, weeks ago. 

Anyway, remember when I said I have 500 new pets? I do. 

Here you go...

So, have you already guessed that I have a box of worms making poo outside of my home office window?

NO?

Who are you people anyway?

Kidding. I totally love you guys.

Meanwhile, that was my way of telling you that my 500 new pets are worms. Red Crawlers from what I understand.

They are in a plastic tote drilled with breathing holes sitting atop a few excess pavers from our forever-ago-now backyard landscaping project getting started on the business of eating my kitchen scraps and pooping them out.

I have an actual shit box in my backyard now because we've gone Full WT around here, folks.

Even more fun will be when I get to make poo tea and then spray it all over my property.

RIGHT?

Sounds like some sort of sick porn fetish, but I swear to you (I was so tempted to say "shit you not" right there, but you don't come here for cliched bullshit so I will just give you uncreative bullshit instead. See how I could have said "wormshit" instead of "bullshit" right there? Again - saving you from cliches. I know it - I'm amazing and generous.) it's just a 1/2 pound of worms squirming around in compost and kitchen scraps shitting up the joint so that I can, later on, mix their shit with water, strain it into a garden sprayer and just go merrily spraying it about on all of my plants and especially my vegetables so that they can grow big and strong and disease-free just a-makin' my food.

That's right - poo > food > food > poo > repeat.

If Bubba were here, he'd totally call that a shit sandwich even though "shit sandwich" is usually used to describe a hopeless situation and, in this case, it's not hopeless at all. Unless you consider it to be hopelessly fraught with cliched shit jokes peril, in which case...Oh, yeah it probably is. I'll have to be careful about that one.

Oh, and if you missed that gentle similarity to beekeeping back in there, go back and look harder and then come back to me down here and we can be all, "Oh my god, when did you start buying pets by the pound?"

Are you with me on this one yet? Let me help you out since I know this post has gotten weird and off track and poo-smeared: I bought the bees in 3 pound increments which amounted to 10,000 bees. And then I bought worms in 1/2 pound increments which amounted to 500 worms.

I now, it would seem, buy my pets in bulk and by the pound. It's very Big Box sounding, but I assure you it's not Big Box-ish in any other way. I mean, I didn't have to get a membership card or a giant Rolls Any Which Way cart to procure these fine beasts or anything.

And now, as though I'm living my childhood fantasies one at a time, I have a box of worms outside my kitchen door into which I may peek at any time of the day.

Didn't I have the weirdest childhood fantasies? I swear that I also had normal ones that involved certain members of New Kids on the Block dancing nude in my living room. And also Joe Montana. But never at the same time I'M NOT A FREAK.

So, to conclude this post which is sure to get me some raised eyebrows in the SPAM and porn traffic departments, I now keep stinging insects and slimy creepy crawlers, set up seasonal grow ops in my kitchen, shout biblical commandments, do The Science, let things ferment and mold in my kitchen, brew tea from poo and happily receive dirt as a gift all in the name of growing organic vegetables.

I've officially hit What-The-Fuck-O'clock on the ole life timer.

BIGHUGETHINGNEWS

For a second I was all, “I wonder if it’s even going to seem like BIG HUGE THING NEWS anymore after all of this hype and waiting around and not helpful tweets like this one.”, but then I realized that, No Way.

It’s totally still BIG HUGE THING NEWS.

To me.

And since this blog is all about me and that’s what you guys have been reading about for the last seven years (still wows me, that number), I think you’ll still see it as BIG HUGE THING NEWS, too.

Because the BIG HUGE THING NEWS is all about me and my life and also Bubba and our life and how I’m apparently doing my damndest to change it all.

I’m throwing a curveball, friends, a big fat life curveball and I’m hoping for the best while also knowing that there’s a very real Worst out there that could take over these best intentions of mine and set me back on my ass, OUR asses, like nothin’.

To give you an idea of the big fatness of this life curveball I’m throwing (and let’s not forget for a minute that I have zero eye/hand coordination and that throwing’s not my game to begin with), I already had (and have) a pretty sweet life.

One that didn’t, from an outsider’s perspective, probably need a big fat curveball thrown right at it. No, I imagine that most people looking at my life would have been like, “Hey, that’s pretty sweet. Great job, amazing husband, cute dog, evil cat, fun times galore, much drinking and misbehavior. Good going, weird girl.”

Not, “Ugh, what are you doing with your life, weird girl? Get your shit together. Throw a curveball. Change everything you’re doing because WOW you’re really fucking shit up.”

Which is what I’ve always thought was the premise for changing one’s life - the act of majorly fucking it up for a long time and needing a big fat curveball of change to shove everything back onto the rails.

But my life was great - IS great - and yet still, I’m shoving and curveballing and basically, if looked at on paper, fixing what’s not broken.

Except on the inside, I knew it was broken.

I was, in my early 30s, still living the life that I designed for myself when I was a teenager. Which, if you think about it, is what a lot of people do because that’s what we’re sort of guided along to do, right?

We go through school, all the while being prepped for the idea of college and trying to do things to get into the college that will serve us best in the long run. Which means deciding what we Want To Be.

When we’re, like, 12 years old.

So, shit that’s important and shiny and fun when you’re 12 is what you end up basing these decisions on.

And when I was 12 and impressionable and watched MTV (at my friend’s houses, we never had cable) and went to the mall and did whatever, the shiny interesting shit was what was on TV and blasting out at me from billboards and the radio (terrestrial, since there wasn’t satellite radio then - savages) and Cosmo and what not.

Which is to say - advertising.

I really absorbed a lot of advertising. And not the messages, necessarily - like I was running from one parent or store to another going, “I MUST HAVE THIS THING.” - but the concept of it and its power.

I saw that advertising did, despite folks’ intentions, influence people. It spoke to people. It got into their heads and got them moving. Albeit in some of the most tragic and ill-advised directions, but it got people doing shit.

And not for nothing, the stuff was sorta glamorous and shiny and cool and rad and all of those teenagery things, too.

I wanted to be a part of that. When I was 12.

So, I set out on a crash course to become part of that world. I took special classes in high school for graphic design, I went to junior college courses during high school to get ahead, I chose my college based on where I could major in Advertising and Marketing rather than just “Communications”, I steered myself right back to San Francisco’s Financial District as soon as I graduated so that I could work in one of the ad agencies I’d been ogling since my youthful days of traveling to Giants games with my mom, I then worked many long hours in various ad agencies and, when the age of internet advertising came along, I went full force into that world. Then I worked at the hub of internet advertising for nine years all up to my ears in it.

It was fun, thrilling, sucky, stressful, interesting, boring, exciting, depressing, awesome, lame and every other emotion in between. I cheered, I cried, I swore LOTS, I met some cool people and some shitty people and I changed.

Over the time I was living this self designed life of my 12 year old mind, I totally changed.

I mean, truly, I was probably working on this change my whole life, but didn’t really pay attention to it until I was sitting in a meeting in a conference room on The First Day of Spring and couldn’t stop thinking, “I should be outside.”

“I should be outside and my manicured hand that I’m now looking at typing away furiously on this keyboard should be balls deep in my garden knocking down the cover crop that’s rapidly going to beans so that it will have time to break down enough to feed my summer vegetable plants when I put them in the ground in a few weeks and...”

I’m in there with my laptop open, trying to contribute to a day long brainstorm session about online advertising operation strategies with my four inch heels jammed into the low pile carpet while routinely bashing my knees on the sunuvabitching table brace as I swiveled back and forth from looking at the overhead projector to my teammates to the laptop and, eventually to the window so that I could let my little inside voice get a word in edgewise for a little moment.

That was a few years ago.

I was still fully up to my eyes in internet advertising, the world of online technology and all the things that come in that burrito.

And it had started to feel not right.

I started to feel like maybe one day I was going to have to change burritos. I’d been an al pastor for most of my life and maybe I wanted to try being a bean and cheese for a while. Or a carne asada with pico de gallo. Or, maybe what if I was something completely different like a brandywine caprese salad with buffalo mozzarella and lettuce leaf basil...

What if that?

And then the little inside voice started to get not so little and then, eventually, not so inside.

I’ll spare you the intense, mind-numbing, extremely boring-for-people-who-are-not-me rehashing of the very self-reflecty and soul-searchy years that took place during my wind up - from the time when the little inside voice got too loud to ignore and when it became an outside voice making choices and throwing life curveballs and I’ll just cut to those curveballs...

BIG HUGE THING #1
Five months ago I enrolled in college (never thought I'd say that again) to get a horticulture degree in Organic Agriculture and Crop Production.

That's right. I'm going to be a farmer.

BIG HUGE THING #2
At the same time, I started building a business model for the kitchen garden coaching company that I’m about to launch.

BIG HUGE THING #3
And almost two months ago, I quit my job. My very great and lovely job at the very great and lovely company for which I’d worked for nine years.

And then came the pitch: Walking out the doors of the Great and Lovely job and into a life of uncertainty and excitement and passion and dirt and closed toe shoes and let me teach you how to test your soil and can your tomatoes and sow a cover crop and then WHAT THE FUCK HAVE I DONE.

Except, the WHAT THE FUCK HAVE I DONE part has not yet occurred. I imagine that’s on the horizon somewhere.

For now, I’m just basking in the glory of the pitch on its way to the batter.  The curveball is an unpredictable pitch that can throw off a batter something fierce and, in the case of my curveball hero, it breaks late and wears a disguise until it crosses the plate, so you never really know what you’re getting until it’s too late.

Also, I do not know when this became a baseball analogy, but since I do like baseball and I expect you not to argue with me while I’m pouring out my BIGHUGETHINGNEWS soul to you, I’m going to keep rolling with it.

So, quiet you baseball haters. I don’t understand you anyway.

The point is that Bubba and I - and let us not gloss over, meanwhile, the amazing, heart-swelling, superhuman husband strength that this man possesses which is pushing this whole life curveball over the plate that I will cover in many future posts - are changing it up.

(Now that I think about it, I should have used the changeup as my pitching analogy of choice, but I think that the world understands a changeup even less than a curveball, so I’m going to give myself a pass here, so nevermind this.)

We’ve both changed jobs, I’ve started school and a business and we’ve set our futures on a completely different trajectory than it was when we first got together a dozen years ago. We still want to end up in the same place, but our road to get there just now looks a lot different.

And he has finally gotten his true deep-down wish - I am forced to wear proper shoes. 

I will wear proper shoes. BUT ONLY FOR THE FARM TOUCHING. And only under protest.

You just can’t wear flip-flops while working on a farm. Which I was told in no uncertain terms during our first outing to the department's farm for my organic ag lab in my Reefs.

The next week I showed up in my Van’s, worn Atlas gloves and ballcap and promptly shoved my arm shoulder deep into a pile of compost.

I was home.

And now you all get to watch as I take a swing at this life curveball. Enjoy.

999

Raincheck!

Super Secret Guest Poster is extremely, terrifyingly, exhaustingly busy and needs a break.

So, because I'm such a nice wife...er...friend...I'm giving this SUPER SECRET and mysterious person a raincheck on post 999.

So keep an eye out for this post in the somewhat near future, perhaps when it starts raining because that's the soonest we're likely to see this person emerge from their Nose To The Grindstone position for any length of time.

Post 1,000 in 3, 2, 1...