Eventually my eyes will stop watering.

I really thought I'd have more glamorous shit to report from our New Life In The Country, as it's been called, but who the hell knows why I thought there would be glamour in the country.

Mostly we just have skunks.

Hey buddy! NO THANK YOU.

OH MY GOD THE MOTHER FUCKING SKUNKS.

Remember how I got so over our old house projects before that I never wanted to hear the word, "kitchen", again? Or garage. Or bathroom. Or porch. Or fireplace. Or bar.

Because of the all-consumingness of those projects? Because we were spending all of our waking hours discussing the ins and outs and details and plans for those projects? Those projects that were going to result in a remodeled kitchen, a garage with electricity, a bathroom without a time machine shower,  a not-collapsing porch, a push button fireplace and an effing BAR?

OH TO BE SAYING, "BAR", OVER AND OVER RIGHT NOW INSTEAD OF, "SKUNKS".

And then to get a fabulous new BAR instead of...just not skunk smell.

Yeah. So, we're there with the skunks.

These sick bastards went to absolute town on our house one week before we moved in.

Sprayed the garage. Sprayed the guest house. Sprayed the deck.

Our eyes are watering, but still - COCKTAILS ON THE DECK. MUST HAVE IT. NEED THOSE ONION GOGGLES. Also, please enjoy our ski fencing while the deck railing is finished. 

I'll just say that moving day was fragrant. Eye-wateringly so.

Yay.

So yeah - all the glamorous fun projects like tearing out miles of heinous carpet, redoing a tragically tiled kitchen, setting up a media room or staking out my new garden has taken an abrupt backseat.

Because WHY DOES IT STILL SMELL SO BAD?

See...glamour. It's my life.

Thankfully, we now have A Skunk Guy.

We have traps set and they're baited with hard boiled eggs (I almost vomit a lot) and they're sitting out waiting to catch us the grand prize of a funking skunk.

That will probably spray again when The Skunk Guy comes to take him away.

Hooray.

At least we got the garbage disposal fixed on the home buyer's warranty!

Oh, not glamorous either.

Ceiling fan spins now?

OK, also boring.

New propane tank!

Snore, I know.

But the stairs! We had the hilarious contractor built us some awesome stairs! And they're pretty!

You'll have to do.

And he had his painter do the painting part and OH MY GOD LOOK A THE PAINTER GUY'S DOG:

I'm sure you realize that I cuddle raped the absolute pants off of this dog.

And then we've had some good looking sunsets.

Nicely done, Country.

And twilight turkey hunting.

And Jada's kinda in heaven.

Plus, we're managing.

Beer is why country dog walks are superior to suburban dog walks.

So fuck the glamour.

We have skunks, sunsets, stairs, turkeys, a happy dog and beer.

I ate my body weight in pretzels. And parsley, basil, dill, radishes, lettuce, cabbage, chives and arugula.

So, I went to Germany to look at some farms.

And look I did. A LOT.

My eyeballs are tired from all the lettuce looking.

And cute displays of herb looking.

If you don't look at this and squeal then I just don't understand you.

I mean, who DOESN'T want to look at and sample a half dozen types of dill?

Or talk to plant breeders about the latest in hedgerow design?

Or watch the corn wave around in the breeze?

This girl does, that's for sure.

Plus parsley. I tasted a lot of parsleys. Parslies? Whatever you know what I mean.

And eat pretzels.

So many pretzels. I ate them all.

And see the latest basil varieties.

I smelled, tasted and cuddled all of these basils. IT'S MY JOB OK.

And I work VERY hard.

I had to pinch this basil's cheeks because come on. CUTEST.

And, bless the friggen Germans - the straight lines and organization. Best ever.

Probably I will have to make this at home.

And eat pretzels.

Breakfast, lunch and dinner pretzels. Plus pastries. Plus YAY.

And see way more arugula than necessary.

Yeah. I don't grow arugula, but apparently a LOT of people do. There was much talk about it. 

And eat pretzels.

Which gave me a chance to eat more pretzels. 

And drink beer.

And mushrooms and carpaccio.

And look at squash towers.

"WOW! The Germans are so efficient that they've figured out how to grow squash vertically!" - The hilarious Bubba

For work.

Lamborghini tractors. Because Germans do not fuck around with farming.

My greenhouse manager and I - working VERY HARD.

Market research. At the market. VERY WORKY.

The shoppers in the store didn't really know what to make of a dozen growers poking around the living herbs section taking pictures and smelling and modeling with all the plants.

This was very cool - a package of herbs for a specific type of herb sauce that they make all over Germany ("green sauce"). We all marveled at it in the store. 

And then BECAUSE WE WERE WORKING VERY HARD, we went to the growers who produce this special "Green sauce" herb package to see how they do it.

And check out how the Europeans pack out their herbs. 

SO COOL - Cut bunched dill shipped in watered pallets.

Hehe - cute chives

And the very first chance I had, there was currywurst. 

Don't you call it hot dogs.

So yeah, Germany. Farms. Vegetables. Herbs. Beers. Pretzels. Clean boots. Cool people.

ENJOYABLE.

Now...Hawaii.

See y'all in a week or so. When I will be "not even that tan".

Best thing I've ever heard.

So, the craft room's up. 

And apparently open for business.

But I can hardly be mad since Bubba, the owner of these fine shorts that sorely need ass-mending, also turned this nightmare...

Into this...

MAKE THE BULLSHIT GO AWAY. THAT IS MY WISH.

And since he is awesome and even though it's not even my birthday month anymore, away they went. To I do not care where.

But speaking of birthdays, I had one. In the country this time.

And I approve.

We actually use our dining room here. It's very grown up feeling when I'm making happy faces with my bacon which happened right after I took this photo.

So, if you ignore the WT neon ski fence placeholding for the forthcoming railing our hilarious contractor is building, you can maybe enjoy the future awesomeness of our patio table under this beautiful oak that will have twinkle lights or mini lanterns hanging from it. But you have to ignore the WT neon ski fence first. Good luck with that.

Our neighbors have chickens. 

Lots and lots of fluffy pants having chickens that do not yet know how much they like being cuddled. BUT THEY WILL KNOW.

Jada had her way with our neighbors' dogs' toys during our first visit to their house. Because she is a lady.

This is not our view. It's our neighbors' view. But it's a goodie and we will enjoy very much sitting on that lovely deck getting drunk for many weekends to come.

Also, these neighbors are British and they own a fryer and they make fucking "chips". YES. PLEASE. And then they do things like say, "Have a chip buttie!" And then I say,  "And just what the fuck is a chip buttie?" and they go, "Well, it's just this thing we Brits do where we butter some soft french bread and stick 'chips' in the middle and that's that." And I say, "YES. PLEASE."

And while we're on the subject of our hilarious and awesome neighbors who totally accept my foul mouth AND have chickens - here's the first container of eggs they gave us when we moved in. Except for the wee one there, which we were told was the first egg their chickens laid back in the day and "Look at how small it is compared to the eggs they lay now!" And while we held the eggs (CAREFULLY) and admired the difference, hilarious neighbor goes, "The chicken that laid that big egg there - she's got a cunt like a bucket." Yep. We're home.

Plus, Jada never wants to leave their deck, so there's that.

And did I mention that they make homemade fries all the time? Like, cut fresh from real potatoes and deep fried in an actual fryer? I FUCKING LOVE THESE PEOPLE.

Also, I love cooking actual meals again and eating them on actual dishes in our dining room that we're totally using in this house because why not? Also because it's the only place we have furniture on that floor, so it's either eat at the table or eat on the floor and I think I've covered how wretched the carpet is, so no.

And in case you don't know what a giant birthday cupcake looks like, here you go. My hairdresser is an hour and a half away now, but you know my ass is going up there regardless because this is what happens on my birthday at my hairdresser's.  

This is down the hill from our house and I'm sure there's a Jeff Foxworthy joke for this, but I refuse to make it. 

Much champagne was had in the name of my birthday. Plus chips. Always chips.

And ripping out of spaghetti mess cables wadded up not at all neatly by my side of the bed. EW. AWAY WITH BULLSHIT.

And face pinching. 

So that was my birthday, in a shell.

And now I'm going to go look at some farms in Germany for a week.

Even cleaned up my work boots for the trip because I can't be visiting their German farms in dirty boots covered in American filth now can I? No. Because I'm a lady. And also I refuse to pack dirty boots into a bag with my clothes. Ew.