OHMYGODWEFINALLYMOVEDSHITDAMN

So, yeah. We're here. 

In the country.

FUCKINGFINALLYALREADY.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

The bees are here. With a view.

Jada's here. On the horrible carpet. Because she's the only one that likes horrible carpet.

All of our shit is here.

Our hilarious contractor is here pre-filling our new fridge with pink-bowed beer for Bubba.

Jada's new buddies are here

Sure as shit the turkeys are here

I've even cooked a few dinners after stripping clean (except for one. I left one tomato. On each plant. Because I'm a lady.) my vegetable plants. 

I needed help lifting this.

All people use roofing material as a patio coffee table. ALL PEOPLE SHUTTUP.

Weird kitchen with ugly tile countertops and the fabulous fabulous view.

Our Realtor is a hero, awesome and hilarious.

Too bad Jada doesn't love him AT ALL.

What more do you need for move day than (clockwise from bottom left) Fruity Pebbles, Rice Krispies and caramel, cinnamon, dark chocolate old fashioned, bacon maple chocolate, apple fritter, Oreo caramel, dark cherry cordial, sprinkles, strawberry Pocky, glazed old fashioned and salted caramel dark chocolate Rice Krispies donuts? WHAT MORE I ASK?

OK, that also.

Especially after this farewell from San Jose.

Figures.

Jada was the only one that loved the horrible grass.

So, we're here. We're in the country. We're unpacking and adjusting and meeting the neighbors and marveling at how the movers knew exactly how we wanted our furniture arranged. 

Perfect.

We've built a new stairway and deck.

Put on two new roofs. 

Cuddled our painter's dog

Found some good breakfast spots

Hunted turkeys

Hunted turkeys

 and stargazed (while taking shitty pictures with the phone).

And next weekend is my birthday and do you know what I'm doing for my first birthday in our country house?

I'M SETTING UP MY CRAFT ROOM MUTHER FUCKERS.

Yeah. We're going to be just fine "Way out there so far away from everything! What are you going to do?".

Hey, I might even write a meaningful blog post one day. 

MIGHT. 

Good to see you guys, by the way. You look hotter from here anyway. 

Mr. Fischoeder gets a cleaning lady

Probably I haven't told you that I got a fish.

Please enjoy the fish's ironic backdrop because we know he does.

Not that I haven't caught fish - I've definitely told you about that - but that I have an actual fish living in my house. In a bowl. A fish bowl.

Like a pet fish would.

And like any pet fish, his name is obviously Mr. Fischoeder.

Because we love Bob's Burgers and when you love that show and then you get a fish, what the hell else are you going to call it? Ravioli?

No, that was for my pre-Bob's Burgers fish. Now, though, there is only one name - Mr. Fischoeder. Because it sounds like Fish Odor and that's amusing.

Every time I feed the fish or stare drunkenly at him in his big bowl (now anyway, he used to live in a tiny glass vase and before that in the ill-fated and useless AquaFarm), I laugh.

"Hehe - Hi, Mr. Fischoeder. You look lovely today, Mr. Fischoeder. You have no odor, Mr Fischoeder. Come face cuddle me, Mr. Fischoeder."

And so on. Because I'm a child that's also really easily amused.

Do those exist? I may be the first.

Anyway, so I have this fish with the amusing name and the pretty fluttery fins and also a semi-sordid history with pet fish.

Like, during my undergrad I basically rented some fish to swim around in a fish tank in my apartment and keep me company while I lay hungover on the floor with my hair stuck to the carpet with barf.

And also to entertain the maintenance guy who came around every so often to unclog my kitchen drain that was definitely not full of aquarium gravel.

Oh no. Never ever.

Once I graduated, I promptly returned to the aquarium store from which I purchased this little school of tetra and gave them back. They took them, quarantined them, and then started what I can only imagine was a mildly lucrative fish rental program for strange undergrads that have no time or the sobriety level for normal pets, but can't be left alone while they muddle through their hangovers.

I imagine. I don't know. That's what I would have done if I were an aquarium store owner.

Then about eight years later, when I was working on a new product at Google and it finally came out of beta, my cheeky sunuvabitch of a coworker got us all beta fish in little bowls with little gravels and ha ha he he ha.

My beta fish was blue and cheerful and I named him Ravioli because obviously.

He swam around in that bowl for almost a year and a half until one day I came in and he was not so much a fish, but a cloudy mass vaguely resembling a fish. It was a wee bit grody, but I gave him a proper burial and sent him to the great fish bowl in the sky toilet.

Farewell, Ravioli. You were a regal and trustworthy friend. Or something.

Then I quit that job and my life in high-tech to be a farmer. But instead of being a traditional farmer, I became a hydroponic farmer and got to also grow food the aquaponic way, and that is with fish.

About 400 koi, to be not exact at all.

And also a few sneaky hider catfish that swim along all dark and sneaky at the bottom of the dark tank so that you don't know they're there until you drain the tank and OH WHOOPSY who's that on the floor? Sorry, buddy.

But I was mostly really good to those fish. I made sure their feeders were full, clarifier was emptied regularly, airstones were pumping away and all that fun stuff that aquaponic growers do to keep their fertilizer machines working away happily. I even answered questions from snide bullshit hippies who gave me beef about how I was exploiting another creature for my own gain.

"You seem like fun!"

Asses.

Anyway, then I got the AquaFarm. I'll spare you the stupid details, but basically after running the aquaponic lettuce crop for a while and then having 18 people tell me that I should get one of the AquaFarm things "just to try it out and see if it works even though you keep rolling your eyes like that", I got one and it didn't work just like I knew it wouldn't.

Or something like that.

Basically, yes, it grows microgreens. Hooray. I don't need a $70 over-engineered fish tank to grow a few handfuls of microgreens. I have a jar for that. I think it cost me around $1 a bunch of years ago when I got a flat of them for $8 so that I could can some jam or something.

The other stuff it was supposed to do, like grow basil and lettuce, were, um...false. Even from starts I brought home from the greenhouse that had been growing fine in my work aquaponics system, they just sat and sat and then eventually keeled over and died in the thing. Because it doesn't have any light and Mr. Fischoeder, the resident fertilizer machine, could only poop so much.

Mostly though, it was the light.

Anyway, whatever. The AquaFarm got disassembled and put away in the shame corner of the garage for a future Goodwill outing and Mr. Fischoeder got downsized to an abandoned flower vase with a few bits of gravel but with a prominent spot on the bar.

He socialized a lot back then because we did. He got a lot of attention swimming round and round in his wee bowl because it was so damn small he couldn't do much more than go round and round.

Poor guy. He was probably sea sick. If a fish can be such a thing. Which I'm sure they can't.

Anyway, Bubba was horrified at the guy's living conditions, so eventually I upgraded him to a big boy bowl - a proper actual Fish Bowl. And to fancy it up further, I poured a good portion of my sea glass collection in the bottom because I felt guilty about his former living conditions and was afraid he was going to file an HR claim against me with management.

HOSTILE WORK ENVIRONMENT! Maybe we should have named him Archer?

But, here's the thing with a fish bowl that doesn't have a filter or plants filtering it - it gets dirty and needs cleaning. Which, no thank you.

I mean, I did it, because of my extreme and ongoing guilt and also because I don't like dirty things, but I was not a fan.

So, to get to the point of this random ass post, today while I was at the aquarium store getting some random ass shit for work, I had a random ass encounter with a very nice woman who was essentially buying a cleaning lady for her fish tank.

See, here I was standing in front of the glass case and a wall full of pumps and filters and handle jugs of Anti-Ich juice with my back to a billion aquariums humming away full of fish with my thermometers and humidity sensors and I look over to see what the lady next to me is getting and all she has is a plastic bag with a green ball in it.

"Uh. Whatcha got, there?" (Because I'm friendly sometimes.)

"I don't know, but it's cute!" (Because other people are sometimes adorable older gals making impulse purchases.)

"Hell yeah it is! What does it do?" (Because I always swear.)

"Um...entertain me?" (Because this is who I want to grow up to be.)

"It's a moss ball, ladies, and it doesn't do much more than look pretty and clean your fish's water." (Because aquarium store owners can only listen to so much nonsense before they have to interject and ruin our fun.)

"Ooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhh." In unison, of course, because this woman is a kindred spirit.

"I want one." (Because I'm greedy)

"YAY! Isn't it funny what entertains us?" (Because she's adorable.)

"Indeed it is. Do you think I could pet it?" (Because I'm retarded.)

So, yeah, while I was out getting stuff for work, I bought my fish a cleaning lady.

Tell me, Moss Ball, do you do windows?

He's stoked.

Nothing really to do with garlic scapes.

Obviously garlic scapes are the answer to all of life's woes.

I'm going to do that annoying thing where I put up pictures that basically have nothing to do with the post's context whatsoever except that they were also used to distract me from the issues at hand, so I'm hoping they do the same for you.

Forget your worries and look at this crazy ass garlic.

Because who has time to stress out about an interview tomorrow, a big plant sale this weekend, setting up a new hydroponic crop next week, a different in-person interview next week, finals in two weeks, graduation in three weeks and having to murder at least two people to get registered for a fall biology class when the garlic is scaping?

Look into my eyes and tell me what your fucking problem is.

At least that's my reasoning anyway.

I tried to convince Bubba that garlic scapes were the answer to life's mysteries last night when I proposed that I make a frittata with them, but then he activated his gag reflex and shunned eggs forever because he's even wussier than I am about eggs and so instead we had garlic scape pesto which was fine but WHOA HOLY is it hot.

Always surprises me how hot garlic can be. And how dragon-like my breath can become. Rowr.

So, yeah - got a lot happening in the next few weeks and all of my coping mechanisms are in full effect. AKA - we restocked the bar over the weekend, I spent a lot of time in the garden cleaning up the meadow so that it'd look less like a homeless encampment, I'm cooking some new shit and we are cracking out all of the old classic movie sagas.

This is how I cope. Don't you judge me.

Just eat this, watch the TeeVee and try not to fucking freak out for a second.

We watched Alien (the first one with Sigourney's hair) and then Prometheus (gorgeous and plotless) on Saturday and when Bubba saw the healing power of old sci-fi on my Crazy, he did something that he absolutely-never-except-this-one-time does:

He bought DVDs.

Because *this series* is only available on iTunes otherwise and we...um...don't *do* iTunes in this house and because he knew it was the best way to keep me from completely losing it and because he loves me (or fears me?) he bought the complete Star Wars saga on Blu-ray.

And for that - you don't have to eat eggs.

You see why I love this man, right?

You should love him, too. Otherwise all of your lives might be at risk.

Hey! Also look at what the garden's doing. That's a good distraction, too.

Rocky Top Mix is happening.

Artichokes and onions are, like, MAKE DINNER FOR THE NEIGHBORS and shit.

The Red Baron onions are officially always going to grow in my garden yay.

The bees are working.

I'm picking bouquets when I get stressed, so, you know, every 5-10 minutes. I'm running out of jars.

The poppy field is also working.

The cucumbers basically suck.

The lettuce and alyssum are growing together just as I tell other people to do.

I have so many limes on this one wee tree that I'm concerned for its safety.

There are so many grapes on the vines that I'm concerned for the fence's integrity.

Oh yeah - AND THE TOMATOES HAVE SET FLOWERS.

I hope you are as distracted as I am. Go have a good day, you. And quit freaking the fuck out, already. You're scaring people.

More PING, less sense-making

Since the random fashion by which I've been attending to this blog is being received fairly well, I'm going to keep rolling with it since the time has not yet come when I can form a coherent post on a single subject.

Deep breath.

Random thing #1: Skiing is fucking happening

You may not be aware of the dire lack of snow in Lake Tahoe and California in general but let me assure that it is indeed DIRE AS FUCK.

Not even close in the DIRE AS FUCK department

Like, we have had our season passes since, like, June and we haven't skied a single day. We haven't even been tempted to go ski a single day because we like our bodies and ski equipment in its mostly functional condition and throwing our bodies and equipment down any ski run in Tahoe right now would render all of our warranties and well-being completely null.

We'd die, is what I'm saying. And fuck our gear up to the point of replacement. Which is, no.

So, since we can't ski here, we're going to the only place of reliable snowfall with mountains in this great country of ours and that is Montana.

Glorious, snowy, cold, We're Actually Having A Proper Winter, Montana.

We're leaving our absurd busy schedules, life complications, unanswered emails and untended responsibilities to drive for two days so that we can experience the activity known as skiing and snowboarding on actual naturally fallen snow.

Skiing is fucking happening and I am at the point that I don't care that we have to drive almost to Canada for it.

Random thing #2: I'm going back to the podiatrist and I'm bringing my aluminum bat
If only I had an aluminum bat.

I've been telling Bubba for 14 years that my preferred weapon of self-protection is an aluminum bat, even though I have the world's shittiest eye-hand coordination, and yet still I have not received one for any gift giving occasion.

Which is too bad because I feel like that may be the only way to keep the podiatrist from mishandling my feet when I show up tomorrow to be fitted for my orthopedic I'm Old As Fuck insoles.

As in, he grabs my feet haphazardly and PING I knock his block off.

NO! You do not just grab a person's feet when you know them to have bone spurs and arthritis. NO! PING AGAIN FOR GOOD MEASURE.

So we'll see how that goes.

Until then, they're staying swaddled in down and CRAZY.

Random thing #3: It's go time. Like, for reals.
Remember how almost 2 years ago I was all, Hey! I quit my job and am getting a horticulture degree!?

Yeah, you remember.

Well, the last semester of that degree begins in less than two weeks and the graduation date is only a scant 4 1/2 months away which is, handily, the same time that I'll need to be starting a job in this new field and WHOA the flying time is a bit freaky.

So, I've written up cover letters and customized resumes for a handpicked number of places I'd like to work and now I'm just sitting on them like some kind of nervous hen, waiting for them to hatch into viable jobs without my having to actually send them out into the real world where they may receive nothing but rejection, or worse, no response at all.

That's right, folks, I've done the research to find places I want to work, sourced respectable references, written up cover letters, customized resumes and I'm sitting here not sending them out because WHAT IF NOTHING HAPPENS.

Do you like the self-fulfilling prophecy I've created? It's a goodie.

I imagine I'll freak out about this a lot while we're driving for two days each way to Montana, where I won't be able to do a damn thing about it from the passenger seat of the truck, and then come home and, before unpacking a single thing or even letting the dog out of the truck, will send all the resumes out in a rage of WHAT IS MY FUCKING PROBLEM SOMETIMES.

Yes. That ought to do it.

Random thing #4: I know I owe you guys an explanation about the not-being-a-farmer thing, but I'm not there yet. Soon? 
Yeah, soon.

Meanwhile, enjoy this perfect basil plant that I grew.

Your last randomness for 2013

Remember random blogging-by-bullet-points? Yes, that's this.

The semester is over and I killed it, but almost not.
Three classes plus work experience, which was just me getting credit for working in the greenhouse which you know that I love, resulted in three As and a P because I guess you can't get true letter grades for working.

Whatevs.

And since the semester was moving by so smoothly and my grades were nice and solidly in the A range, I did that naughty cheater thing of calculating what I needed to get on my final exams in order to hold on to my As.

I was tired of studying, friends, that is the truth.

As my newly polished math skills showed, I really only needed to get a 56% on one exam and, like a 60-something on another to hold my As.

Fine. I shall slack completely off, not finish the reading and take the approach I took during my undergrad times which was to ride into the final on a wave of "If I don't know it by now, I'm not going to know it." and just see how it goes.

Except that I totally still studied because I've become a total A-loving nerd and couldn't face the idea of What If I Don't Get an A on the Final?

And then, even with all the studying and not slacking off, I managed a 74% on a final exam that I should have aced if only I'd been studying the right content.

ASS.

A is for ass. At least with that final. Except that I didn't get an A on that final. I got a C. And let's not go into what that might stand for because the point is that I still got an A in that class even though I'm ashamed of myself for that hideous C that I wouldn't have even known about if my professor didn't post all of his grades online.

Which got me wondering how many final exams I've not aced but have still led to getting As in the class and then the anxiety started to take over and WHATEVER THEY'RE ALL As AT THE END OF THE DAY AND WHO'S READY TO DRINK?

Me.

That was a long bullet. Sorry.

I started to look the gift horse in the mouth and then decided to shut my yapper.
So, I got this nice little scholarship at the final hour and it's paying for my final semester of classes and I'm stoked.

Free money is a nice thing. Not having to pay for classes is a nice thing. Getting a refund to my credit card from the college is a nice thing.

Going back to the scholarship awarding committee to tell them that their organization's name is improperly punctuated is not a nice thing.

The irony is that it's an organization for writers and the name of the organization itself is, in my opinion, improperly punctuated. Like, it needs an apostrophe and you know how I feel about apostrophes.

But I decided not to include that with my scholarship application and I've decided not to include that with the thank you letter that I will be sending for the award and so, yeah, now I just have blue balls of the brain with regard to the unrequited finger-wagging over the missing apostrophe.

Probably also that last sentence made very little sense.

Weeeeeeee! Randomness.

My feet are Old As Fuck forever plus bonus Weird As Fuck diagnosis
So after my initial Old As Fuck diagnosis of my Crossfit-inspired foot pain and the x-rays that proved that I had extra Old As Fuck bone growth causing extra Old As Fuck foot pain, I decided to be a grown up and accept the referral to the podiatrist to see if he could do something about this Old As Fuckness.

Plus, also to confirm that I didn't have gout. Which I don't. Hooray for that.

What I do have, apparently, is Weird As Fuckness.

See, I made an appointment to see the podiatrist at 9am. So, Bubba and I traveled up to the doctor together via train because we were going to the city to go bowling afterward and that is the most Old As Fuck sounding day of events I've ever constructed.

Starting over.

I had an appointment to see the doctor at 9am, so I showed up at 8:45 to fill out the paperwork they were sure was going to take 15 minutes to complete prior to my appointment, and at 9am I was sitting in the doctor's exam room with my shoes off waiting for his excellency to bestow his footly wisdom upon me.

When he actually walked into the room at 9:01am I'm sure I looked surprised because I expect that all doctors are going to be late because in my experience they mostly have been.

What I did not expect was to have the doctor register my existence with surprise and then go on to tell me that he expected ME to be late because "All 35 year old women are late to appointments."

Um, not THIS 35 year old woman, thankyouverymuch and why are you saying that I'm 35 years old because obviously I'm still 23 which is my perma-age and I'll thank you to remember that next time, Dr. FIX MY FUCKING FEET.

I think he saw the offense on my face because of the fact that I'm punctual as fuck - like, I take time management seriously and do not accept tardiness in myself or others - and also who are these 35 year old whores just wasting everyone else's time by showing up to shit late all the time and ruining my good reputation?

Bubba assumed he was talking about 35 year old women who are mothers and trying to wrastle children into minivans against their will and such, but whatever. My mom was a 35 year old mother at one point and that gal IS NEVER LATE.

I love her for that. And other things, too, but I love her a lot for her punctuality. It's an admirable trait. Enough about my lovably punctual mother though, this is about my Weird As Fuckness.

So, I was weird for the punctuality. Fine.

Then the doc proceeded to tell me that there wasn't much I could do about my "minor" foot pain since the bone spurs weren't "too bad yet, so just wait until the pain's really bad and then come back for surgery or maybe we can make you some orthopedic insoles for your shoes that are really expensive or you could customize some Super Feet or whatever quit your bitching while I tug haphazardly at your toes and feet while you recoil in fear and horror."

Or whatever. That's basically what he said. And did. The haphazard tugging was truly terrifying.

And when I pressed him on what the recovery time was like for the surgery, since I'm not super wild about this whole "wait until the pain's really bad and then come back for surgery" thing, he said that it's only a few days off your feet and then a month and a half in a boot, but don't worry because you'll still be able to drive when the boot's on your left foot.

Except that I drive a stick shift.

Which is apparently Weird as Fuck.

As in he looked up from the wrastling of my feet he was so terrifyingly doing to eyeball me with surprise and then say, "Oh. One of the remaining few. Hmmm..."

Then he made a comment about how long my jeans were (I've been meaning to have them hemmed, but they were tucked into boots for the day so I didn't think I'd be taking lip off of anyone for it), gave my feet a few final horrifying tugs and left me with zero resolution other than that I was now Old, Weird and destined to be old and weird. As fuck.

Oh, and also I have arthritis in my feet and that doesn't get better, only worse, so look forward to that you old, weird, punctual, stick-shift driving freak.

So glad I went to the doctor.

I slipped on my too-long jeans while we were bowling and so had to have three glasses of champs to feel better.