That yearly tradition of ours that's not me making fun of people's ugly decorations.

Now, I know it's nearing that time when I make fun of my neighbor's holiday decorations (and those of your neighbors, too - SEND ME YOUR PHOTOS), but this post is about that other yearly tradition I have that falls around the holidays -

The...uh...Taking Down Of Last Year's Cards and Starting My Card Holder Thingee Anew With The First Of The Year's Holiday Cards tradition.

OK, so I'm not good at making up handy titles for our annual traditions. It's a personal flaw probably. Or maybe just another reason why you all find me so pleasantly odd.

Who's to say?

Or care.

HA!

Wow, I'm punchy today.

Anyway, this yearly tradition kicked off today when I received This, Our Year's First Holiday Card.

BAM.

Strangely, this is the first holiday card we have received every single year, so it's actually becoming part of the tradition without knowing it.

DO YOU KNOW IT, CARD SENDING FRIENDS? You are part of the tradition. Weird, right?

I also find it amusing that this card is everything that my own holiday cards are not.

Specifically - covered with faces of children, emblazoned with the word "Christmas" and inclusive of a bible verse.

Never really sure what to do with that, the bible verse part.

I read all through the card, looking at the beautiful cute faces and shockingly fit and happy looking friends of mine who have miraculously birthed four children without gaining any weight or aging a single day and read through their little family update smiling and enjoying all the way and then...BAM...bible verse.

"Uh...OK."

*closes card*

Whatever though because I got to start my strangely-named holiday tradition over upon the receipt of this card so WOO! Be as religious as you want because I get to take down this architecturally unsound Card Holder Thingee before it kills again!

Yes, it has killed. I don't want to talk about it. Also, in an unrelated note, let us all remember Rocket during a moment of silence.

KIDDING! She's alive still.

But the Card Holder Thingee has been giving her an evil stare, so I'm just saying that I don't know what will happen after nightfall.

Geez - are you following any of this post? I'm not. I should just start over, but that would mean deleting all of that up there and I can't be bothered.

Let's forge ahead, shall we?

Onward to the part where I show you pictures of my day's triumph:

Before This, Our Year's First Holiday Card arrived:

I FEAR FOR MY SAFETY AND THE SAFETY OF OTHERS.

So lonely in there, this one clothespin. Also, someone should dust this house. FLORA.

After This, Our Year's First Holiday Card arrived and I had to close it before RELIGION got on me:

Some cards get to stay up year after year. Either they have hilarious pictures of Bubba eating sand as a kid or they have swears on them. 

No swears or sand-eating Bubbas? RECYCLE.

Hallelujah we have clothespins again. No clothesline, but that's not important. AT ALL.

So, yay. No one has to die from a tragic card falling disaster in our house this year.

But I make no promises for 2013.

Amen.

If you say so.

You ever have someone tell you that you should "Do something every day that scares you."?

Yeah - that's some crap.

Ever since I quit The Job and went back to school and started a first-of-its-kind-out-of-nowhere business and basically reinvented my life earlier this year, I've been awash in *somethings* that scare me and I'm here to tell you that this shit wears on a person.

Like, I want a day where I don't do or think about a single thing that scares me.

I want to wake up and think, "Ah, this day will be easy like Sunday morning. Literally zero things stress me out about this day. I am fully equipped to deal with whatever I encounter." Or something to that effect.

I just don't want to wake up and think, "AH! What the actual fuck do I think I'm doing?! FAILURE IS IMMINENT! I am going to bring shame upon myself as soon as I step out of bed. RISK RISK RISK FAIL FAIL FAIL! OK, relax - breathe - unclench your fists and jaw - close your eyelids enough to keep the whites from completely encircling your pupils - wipe the sweat from your upper lip - release Rocket's throat from your white-knuckled grip..."

It can be stress-y is what I'm trying to say, and sometimes like right now - as I'm staring down finals and term papers and my first event for my new business in which I will man my own booth and perform my own demos and have no one to blame but myself when I bring very public shame to my own doorstep - I want one of those easy days.

Where I know everything that's going to happen and how to handle it and I can be all, "No worries!" and what have you while I calmly go about my day without breaking into a panic sweat while debugging a new freak thing on my site or tackling a 20 question short answer quiz that turns into a 30 question essay exam that takes three hours or have to meet twenty new people who I just know are judging me and my showy red rain boots or or or...

But, that's not what happens when you're throwing life curve balls like a god damned out of control pitching machine jammed up with bent quarters.

So, yeah. When someone tells you that you should do something every day that scares you - punch them in the throat and thank them for helping you get over your fear of human contact.

Oh my god I bought so much pork

Hi friends. I have an admission to make.

I bought a LOT of pork.

Which, given my heritage is sort of amusing, but given our pastimes makes total sense.

If you just limit our pastimes to smoking meat and then eating it. Which we love to do!

Because, obviously.

So, yeah, we were about 3/4 of the way through our second split half of grassfed beef when Chestie started to feel lonely.

Empty inside if you will.

And then, handily, my local blogger buddy, IMQTPI, emailed me to see if I wanted in on a hog.

Like, do I want half of one.

DUH YES.

So we did some splitting up of logistics (she goes to the fair to bid on our hog, I go back out to Fair Land to pick it up from the butcher and deliver it) and now we are the rightful and proud owners of half a hog apiece.

Though I will also admit that our half is slightly less than half a hog already because, yes, we dug right into that tasty beast.

Nothing but First class pork for us, thank you.

We are not vegetarians around here. I forgot to warn you. Sorry, meat fearful people - this is a meatful post. Please come back another time when I'm talking gardenblahblahblah and your eyes will be safe from LOOK AT ALL MY PORK:

Why Spreckles, you look different somehow...

Sorry, that might have been scary. But still - you want to know where your food comes from - there you have it. In our house, it comes from Spreckles and YES PLEASE and also thanks, buddy.

Filled to the brim with tasty meats. And also tomatoes, hops and chicken stock BUT NOT ON THE PORK SIDE.

Perhaps more impressive is my anal retentive divider to keep the pork on ITS side and the beef on the other. It's very technological and advanced what with the box from somethingorother that I sliced in half and wedged in there, but nonetheless - it keeps the squabbling meats separate.

MOM! THE BEEF IS TOUCHING ME!

Can't have them mixing together, now can we? That would be wrong. And not kosher at all.

SARCASM, people. Sarcasm. No need to add your corrections to the comments because I'll just roll my eyes and call you retarded from my side of the computer.

Also, fun and anal retentive (yes, these things exist together in my world)(all the time) is my new Pork checklist that is taped to the inside of Chestie's lid above the Pork section of the freezer.

Yes, that DOES say 15 packs of pork chops - two to a package, thankyouvermuchandalsoBACON.

The Beef Checklist is a bit more worn, as you can plainly see.

Notice that the Beef side has its own checklist. ON ITS OWN SIDE.

That's right - we segregate the red meat from the (other, other) white meat. But we love them both the same, which is to say A LOT.

And we have already loved the pork A LOT since it arrived on Wednesday night, as I immediately made some of that hot Italian sausage into the most badass soup (recipe down there, just keep scrolling) and then I made the Burn The Fuck Out of My Left Hand pork chop recipe without WITHOUT burning anything at all.

No hands were irretrievably scorched in the making of this pork chop.

Que milagro.

Now, let me just say that I took some piss poor photos of this soup, so please do not judge me because all I wanted to do was eat the effing thing because by this time I was starved.

I wanted the pork inside of me.

Enjoy that one.

Badass Pork and Kale Soup

Recipe by moi

Ingredients

3 spicy Italian style pork sausages, cut into 1" slices

1 lb of kale, ribs removed and ribbon sliced

1 clove of garlic, minced

1 onion, chopped

1 leek, whites chopped (compost the rest)

6 fingerling potatoes or a normal sized potato equivalent, peeled and cut into big chunks

1 quart of chicken stock

Salt, pepper as you like

2 T Olive oil

To make

In a good sized stock pot, heat oil over medium heat until shimmering and add your onions, leeks and garlic.Saute until soft, about 2-3 minutes.

Add potatoes and stir to coat everything all nice like.

Add your chicken broth and a bit of salt and fresh ground pepper. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat, cover and simmer for 15 minutes or so, until the potatoes are super soft.

Heat a large skillet on medium high heat and add your sausage to brown it thoroughly on both sides. Keep this browning and cooking while you do all the soup stuff. Keep a friggen eye on it though - if it burns, I will spank the ever-loving crap out of you.

Turn the heat off and, with your stick/immersion blender, go to town blending that soup right in the pot. If you only have a blender for this, pour portions of the soup mix into your blender and puree until smooth. 

Also, I'm sorry you have to contend with that hateful task. It was the A#1 reason I wanted an immersion blender and BOY HOWDY do I love that thing and thank you, mom, for giving me your old one - best gift ever. Never again with the muther effing blender and shooting hot soup all over my kitchen.

Or whatever! I hear that happens. To other people.

Bring your newly pureed soup back to a low boil and throw all that frightful kale in there, stir it up and put the cover back on so the soup can simmer over low heat for about 10 minutes.

Check on your sausage, if you haven't been all along (SPANKING SONG), and make sure all pieces are nice and brown on both sides. 

After 10 minutes with the kale in the soup, turn the heat off on the soup, add the sausage and whatever pan spackle-y goodness exists in there (there should be some and it is THE MOST. Scrape that pan if you have to. It's worth it.) and stir it all into magic in your soup pot. 

Give it a minute to mingle and get to know one another and then AFTER COOLING IT A LITTLE BIT GEEZ taste the soup and add salt and pepper if it needs it.

It probably doesn't, but I shan't judge you since I'm a salt addict and can't be stopped. 

I'm puffy and defiant!

Whatever.

Now go enjoy your soup with some warm bread or a crisp salad or just whatever the hell else you feel like having. A dirty gin martini? Why, yes, I hear that's quite the accompaniment. 

Our Indoor Outhouse [UPDATED AGAIN. WITH PHOTOS. AND MORE MASTERMINDING.][UPDATED]

[UPDATED again. With photos. And more masterminding.]
[UPDATED with info about the mind boggling drawer with the outlet in it]

Before we even get started with this post in which I unveil the new bathroom OH HALLELUJAH PRAISE POPCORN WE ARE SAVED let us first turn back the hands of time (farther back than I should have to but whatever) to a time before the remodel so that we can adequately appreciate WHY we decided to undertake the horrible project that is remodeling the only bathroom in a house.

Yes.

One bathroom in house. Under construction. As in, nobody can use it for the duration of the remodeling.

Wretched cheap tile. Crap vinyl flooring. Rickety ass windows that rattle when the wind blows. HATE YOU ALL OF YOU.

Oh time capsule shower HOW I STILL HATE THEE with a teeth chattering rage.

There are so many things I could say here to try to convey to you how much we hated every little thing about this bathroom. Bubba and I hated different things with different intensities and for different reasons but the sum total of our emotions regarding this bathroom was LOATHE.

So, when we finally sacked up and decided we were going to quit pushing the bathroom remodel down our list of Shit This House Needs In Order To Be Livable and pull the trigger once and for all, we did.

We pulled the trigger all over this fucker.

Bye bye stupid wainscoting for which Bubba had a secret passionate hatred.

PEACE OUT every single other thing.

And hello Mystery Hole that shows up in every one of our projects. *Sigh*

Yeah, I don't know why we can't get through a single project in this house without uncovering a gaping hole disguised by no more than a thin layer of plaster (Hi, columns in our front porch!), a few layers of ancient linoleum (Hi, breakfast nook remodel!) or a single layer of vinyl (You know who you are, bathroom), but there you have it - our house has a lot of holes and not in a sexy way.

Thankfully, now, after three months (MONTHS. YES. Not three weeks like our contractor had predicted. Shocker.), all of the gaping holes are fixed, sealed, covered, painted, grouted, fixed some more and photographed for your viewing and my not showering at my neighbors' anymore enjoyment.

Which isn't to say that we didn't have a lovely time traipsing across the street with our towels tossed jauntily over our shoulders and our showerables tucked neatly into our shower caddies a la camp and college during sudden cloud bursts, etc. We did. Insomuch as two people can enjoy something like that. Thankfully we have The. Best. Neighbors. In. The. Fucking. World.

Period.

Best ever.

These people, these FINE fine people, cleared out their front bathroom and gave it to us for the duration. As in, come and go as you please (we already have keys to their house) to shower, use the loo, etc - for as long as you like.

Poor things didn't realize "as long as you like" was going to mean three months of crabby bitching about how come the shower valve needs ANOTHER part before it will work and why does the tile look like this at the corners and blahblahfrickenblah but that's what bringing over bottles of liquor for post-shower happy hour is for.

It's for bitching. Which we did. A lot. And now we are indebted to them forever amen.

But about that new bathroom...

It earned itself a new name.

Welcome to our Indoor Outhouse.

What with all the loo-going inside what appeared to be the confines of an outhouse, we couldn't resist knocking out the shit window that was in the door and replacing it with one that will ever-harken us back to the pre-remodel time.

We also considered getting "Shitter" etched onto the pane in old timey letters but thought that might affect resale values because people don't have a sense of humor anymore.

Or as Bubba calls it, "The Pissoir".

The floors are cork and I love them and the fact that they're never cold, clean easily, are green as hell and ARE NOT vinyl ever so much.

The towel bars are whatever but the fact that Bubba gets his very own for his gigantic man towel is very great. My dainty lady towel shares a bar with the hand towel which is whatever.

Our robe hooks share our attitude problem.

We got two different colored light fixtures because why the hell not.

And on the 107th day, the carpenter created The Vanity.  

Which has an outlet INSIDE the drawer so that everything goes away when you close it. Which I love. LOTS.

[UPDATE]

OK, so you guys were all, "What's up with the friggen drawer? How does the outlet work with the drawer pulling in and out? My mind is boggling!" and whatever. 

Well, here's the genius thing - our contractor worked with the carpenter who built the vanity to have an outlet box put on the back of that drawer and then they designed the vanity so that it'd have enough space behind the drawer for the box to nest. Then the contractor ran the electrical behind the vanity before it was installed and connected it to the box with flexible wiring and cover so that it would extend and contract as the drawer opened and closed.

Now I just have to get my act together and go find my blow dryer with the retractable cord so that I don't have a spaghetti mess in the damn drawer like you see above. 

Then it will be perfect.

Probably.

[UPDATED AGAIN. WITH PHOTOS. AND MORE MASTERMINDING.]

I get it. You want photos. I'm the same way. I need to see it to believe it. Perhaps I'm secretly from Missouri?

No. That doesn't seem right. 

Anyway, I took more photos for you, meanwhile finding a little something that my contractor needs to finish AND actually hunting down the final piece of the masterminding puzzle - the blow dryer with the retractable cord.

Witness ye, the masterminding:

Open neatly organized drawer.

Grab blow dryer and pull. Cord unravels. 

When finished the loathsome blow drying task, "*PRESS HERE TO RETRACT" and...

Ziiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip. Drawer returns to organized. No spaghetti mess of cords. Hooray.

Then, witness ye the (somewhat less) masterminding of the contractor:

It's waaaaaaaaaaaaay back there, so you can't see it behind the tower of towels, but...

That is the flexi-cable line wired into an electrical box on the back of the cabinet which is wired into the wall behind with enough slack so that the drawer can be opened to full capacity and the cable will stretch to allow it.

Now, yes, it would have been IDEAL to have that box behind the drawer itself, which was how it was designed, but there was a disconnect between the contractor and the carpenter as to where that hole needed to be drilled and so, it's not *right* behind the drawer so as to be invisible to those who go hunting needlessly behind stacks of rolled towels like so much bad houseguest.

So, I was willing to see past it.

However, I did NOT notice until I went to take these photos for you that the electrical box was not covered. Thank you, people and what would I do without you?

Anyway, this is a no-no in my book. So I will be asking the contractor to come back out with a cover for that box and I will refrain from asking him WHY IT IS THAT I HAVE TO BE SO SPECIFIC ABOUT SHIT THAT SHOULD BE A GIVEN even though that's been my thought a lot lately.

So, does the magic drawer make sense now? I love it so much.

And a sink bigger than our front yard.

Yet smaller than our MONSTER MEDICINE CABINET.

RAWR! Look at my mirrors even on the inside! RAWR!

And for fuck's sake - the shower, already.

We decided to use color, for once. In the form of the most beautiful recycled glass tile. Well, we like it anyway. Thanks FireClay!

Everywhere.

And obviously we need a bench from which to admire all of the color. Also, I got a squeegee for the glass because FUN.

And would you look at that - a window that DOES NOT RATTLE IN A LIGHT BREEZE. Amazing.

So, what do you think? Less shitty than before? Maybe even kinda nice?

I'll tell you what - I could give a crap at this point. I'm not showering at my neighbors' and the contractors are the hell out of my house, so I'm happy as long as we never do this again.

The never-er the better.

Meanwhile, Bubba - for whom the bathroom tolled - has a strange favorite feature of our new bathroom.

This man who hated that time capsule shower with the burning fury of a thousand whores' crotches does not love our new shower more than anything else.

He loves the loo.

Specifically, the loo seat which I purchased for $40 and installed in five minutes. Which is bringing him unexpected joy that, had I realized was going to produce so much happiness, I would have gotten a long time ago.

It's a whisper-close seat that, no matter how you try to slam it or, in our case, accidentally slam it in the middle of the night thus waking up the whole neighborhood and taking years off of your own life with the sudden ear-melting noise, will not slam.

It closes slowly. It closes quietly. It means that Bubba puts the seat down now because he likes to watch it not slam.

I think it's my favorite new thing in the new bathroom, too.

More evidence that I hate myself

A few weeks ago I decided that I was *over* doing Pilates because it wasn't that hard anymore.

Now, I certainly don't have the physique that might accompany such bold statements, but the fact remained that I wasn't getting up the next morning after a Pilates workout to hobble my way to the bathroom with peg legs and, for whatever stupid reason, that bothered me.

I should be more sore than this. It's not working anymore. Also, where is this damned "completely changed body" that I was promised three years ago when I started taking Pilates on the crazy ass machine they love to call The Reformer even though it apparently does no such thing?

Yeah, also I was bored. 

I mean - the classes were still enjoyable in a hey I get to wear comfy yoga pants and stretch a bit and chat a lot and then get on with my day like a normal person even if I decide not to shower right away because I'm not really sweating kinda way, but even that started to bug me.

Why am I not sweating after a 60 minute workout? Shouldn't I be sweating?

I decided that I should be sweating.

And that was when I let six month's worth of subtle suggesting make a home in my brains.

"You'd LOVE Crossfit!" I was told.

"Crossfit is SO something you'd do." I was told.

"I can't believe you don't already DO Crossfit - the music is even fucked up enough for you to like it." I was told.

So I gave in and, after a very encourage-y friend actually went to the website and found a local "box" (I guess this is their way of not calling it an abandoned warehouse) that's, like, a mile from my house and pointed my face at the online schedule and then the monthly fee which happened to be the same as Pilates except I can go as much as I want rather than once a week, I went to my first class.

And then I didn't walk right for a week.

Actually, that's not true. I'm still not walking right and that was over a week ago. 

And that is because I strutted into Crossfit on Day One with the attitude that no one new to Crossfit should have.

That being, "I'm already in good shape. This should be fun. I'm going to kill this."

And let me tell you that I most certainly did not kill Crossfit on Day One. 

No, instead I killed ME on Day One and, apparently for at least seven days following Day One.

People, I can hardly lower my rump onto the loo without pain seizing my upper quads and my hands shooting out to brace myself on the walls while I try to not scream out in pain. 

I couldn't even go for my run on Tuesday morning following my Monday Workout of Doom (they call the Workout of the Day a "WOD", but I think I know what it really stands for now) because of the whole I-Can't-Bend-At-The-Knee thing and my run on Thursday morning was done simply to prove to myself that I was still capable of bipedal motion.

It wasn't pretty, that's to be sure.

Meanwhile, the class itself (prior to the crippling leg muscle pain) was terribly enjoyable. 

There was running (which YAY! I can run! Maybe I won't suck at everything in this workout!) there was squatting FOREVER, there were free weights, there were decently cool other chicks and there was the promised fucked up music which I did like very much because HELLO I'm not sure what makes for better workout music than Five Finger Death Punch. 

Perhaps this is just me speaking from years of enduring remixes of Sheena Easton in Step aerobics or Beastie Boys in Bootcamp or whatever, but to walk into a gym playing music that I might have already been listening to on the drive over is, well, encouraging.

What was not encouraging was the moment I realized I'd forgotten my water bottle after leaving the gym and had to make the difficult decision to go back to retrieve it.

For a good solid minute I decided that I did not need that water bottle because there was probably no way for me to make my legs get out of the car and walk all 50 feet back to the location of said water bottle.

"They'll probably still have it next time I come to class because I'm sure no one really wants to take someone else's cootie-riddled water bottle, so they'll probably just set it aside and then next week I can pick it up when I've regained the use of the lower half of my body."

But then I felt like a total loser because it wasn't my water bottle (Hi Bubb! I borrowed your water bottle because all of mine are rolling around on Duchess's floor!) and only 60 minutes earlier I had shown up all Big Balls Finny ready to kill this workout and suddenly I was Noodle Legs Finny who wasn't even sure she could operate the clutch adequately to drive herself for the one mile home.

So I forced myself to go back for the water bottle, which may have been the hardest physical thing I've ever done,  and even attempted a slight jog which I abruptly aborted because my left leg wasn't responding as anticipated.

It had already seized up into an immovable hip-to-ankle log. 

I was curious as to whether I'd be able to drive.

But I got my water bottle, pretended to the coaches that I felt great by smiling and bidding them great days and then I got into the car without visible tears in my eyes.

Triumph! I killed that workout!

Or, no.

But, I did manage to make it home, although I will admit that despite consistently exceeding 3500 RPMs I did not change out of second gear because of the aforementioned immobility of my left leg, and one week later (today) I went back for round two.

During which time I also did not die. 

Nor did I kill the workout.

But I'm sticking with it because if I want to be sore after working out, this is the surest way I've seen to accomplish that.

Also, I clearly hate myself.

I'm playing Surface Tension with my life.

Alright. It's November 1 and my denial is no longer denial, it's just reality.

I'm not doing NaNoWriMo this year.

There. I said it. It's out on the internetting and there's nothing I can do about it. Officially I'm not writing 1,667 words a day for the month of November.

I'm not sweating words from my fingertips onto my poor MacBook's can't-quite-keep-up-with-my-typing-speed keyboard in the dark lonely hours of the night.

I'm not tethering myself inextricably to @NaNoWriMo's Twitter feed.

I'm not tearing out clumps of hair during breaks from @NaNoWordSprints.

I'm not probing the inner recesses of my ear canal with a tablespoon digging desperately for The Point To My Story.

I'm not crying.

I'm not accepting caffeine as my lord and savior.

I'm not doing premature spring wardrobe shopping, ordering holiday cards with overly elaborate designs, shaving cryptic messages into the cat's fur, custom blending toenail polish colors for the dog's pedicure, cooking my way through Cook's Illustrated's back catalog, taking up crossbow hunting, training for a marathon or rebuilding a 1967 VW Squareback's engine.

Well, to be clear, I'm not doing any of those things while procrastinating on my NaNoWriMo novel.

Though I may do them while procrastinating on the millions of other things that have clogged up my life to the point where I can't do NaNoWriMo because The End would be so visibly near if I were to heap that beast somehow on the tippy top of Mount HOLY SHIT HOW WILL I EVER GET ALL THIS STUFF DONE over here.

Yes, friends, I have successfully filled my life to the absolute brim.

I'm playing Surface Tension with my life.

The combination of going back to school, starting a business, winter gardening (winter garden blahblahblah coming soon), trying to get in some fall fishing, taking up fly tying (yep, hobby #1001 right there), taking up Crossfit (is that considered a hobby? I'm not counting it as one.), indulging in the Giants World Series victory  (this takes serious dedication, so do not roll your damn eyes at me) and project managing our forever-taking bathroom remodel has taken me to the very edge of the glass that is my life.

I'm afraid that if I were to add even a drop of NaNoWriMo to that glass, it would spill over onto the counter and I would lose it.

"It" being "My Sanity". And we know what a tenuous hold I have on that already.

So, I'm just not doing it.

It pains me and I hate not doing it because I love NaNoWriMo's sick torturous fun and I am on a three consecutive year roll of winning and I have two stories outlined in Scrivener (love you, Scrivy!) that I could totally blast 50,000 words at and everything, but no.

I musn't.

Instead, I am going to write on this blog.

And my business's blog.

And Examiner.

And Twitter. And Twitter.

And Facebook. And Facebook.

And write term papers.

And scholarship applications.

And midterms and finals that are supposed to be comprised of 20 short answer questions but really end up being 40-50 short to long answer questions because SOME professors like to make single questions into 10 sub-parts that each require their own short to long explanation so end up taking THREE MUTHER EFFING HOURS to complete.

All of that I'm going to do instead of NaNoWriMo.

I hope you understand.

Also, here's pictures from some of that shit I just said was doing all the Life Clogging.

Obviously we were dressed as Giants' Bat Girls for the Halloween Giants World Series Victory parade. OBVIOUSLY.

That's the Giants manager holding THE SECOND WORLD SERIES TROPHY THE GIANTS HAVE WON IN THREE YEARS.

You know that I will wear those wrist warmers even when I'm not being a Giants Bat Girl.

I tied this fly.

I fished this fly.

And despite the beauty and perfect conditions, I caught nothing.

Which is OK because I got to hang out with this sexy guy all day who bit my hat sometimes.

The winter garden is KICK ASS so far.

Ever wondered what juvenile buckwheat looks like? Wonder no more.

That guy is a cauliflower. He lives under that fabric. More to come on this.

I now have five fewer flies than this box was holding at the time of this photograph. THANKS JERK TROUT.

There's more than just cover crops in the garden this winter. BIG TIMES.

Ah, to have a fully functioning bathroom without paper covering the new flooring. That's the dream.

Oh right. And also to be able to shower in my own house.