Above: Adi eats blueberries.

It’s finally raining again in Goshen, Indiana. The backyard was so dry that even a colorblind man could see that the grass lacked green. This means that when my chickens, Tick Tock and Tim Tam, scratch around they quickly uproot and displace the fragile grass. Not only that, they poop all over the place. So basically, they’ve replaced our grass with poop. It’s actually not that bad. We have this doodad that is mounted on the wall and water actually comes out of it (we’re high class, folks). We use that contraption to keep the yard alive. It is nice when water comes out of the sky though because when it does I don’t have to pay Goshen Water & Sewer to use it.

In the Bible, Goshen was the land flowing with milk and honey and was spared from the plagues of Egypt. Today, Goshen hasn’t been spared but has actually been cursed with squirrels and flies – probably God’s judgement because our mayor has a man bun. I bought several fly traps at Tractor Supply. Each trap can hold and kill 20,000 flies. Now granted, flies are pretty small (unless you live in Goshen) but 20,000 – that’s a lot of flies! I replaced the fly trap 3 times in less than a week! I suppose I could pray for a plague of frogs which might help the fly problem. Of course, it’s been so hot around here that frogs would explode from the heat and exploded amphibians are useless.

We do not have TV. It has more to do with my moral objections to spending money than it does to the content of TV. We do have Hulu, however. Hulu is a phone app and a website where you can watch specific TV shows several days after they air on TV. It costs maybe $12 a month. I say this is well worth the price. In fact, it’s a bargain! Sure, it has the sneaky tendency to turn me into a lethargic vegetable without any attention span but it also provides many, many cooking shows for my wife to watch. This is the main benefit to a Hulu subscription.

When we got married, Janice made sure that I knew she wasn’t any good at cooking or baking.

“Honey,” she would say, “I’m terrible at baking but I tried something new. Here, try this.”

She would set a mocha almond truffle stuffed with freshly picked raspberries and garnished with organic dark chocolate drizzle and then dusted with confectioners sugar. “I carved each flake of sugar myself using a magnifying glass and tweezers,” she would say. “It’s just something I quickly threw together.”

Almost three years and twenty pounds later, I’m proof that she underestimated her talents. However, talent will only take you so far, right? Instruction is a great tool to refine and supercharge your talents. This is what Hulu does to my wife. She loves cooking shows.

I used to mock her cooking shows. The judges are all snobby elitists who pick at overpriced dinners and inevitably complain about something insignificant. They are the most persnickety whiners I’ve ever seen. It’s the only profession where complaining makes you seem more qualified. I want to slap every one of them and throw them into a grass covered hut in Haiti for a few weeks and feed them nothing but monkey brains and beetles. Maybe their perspective would change. Being a bachelor for four or five years gave me almost the same perspective and so I’m not a hard man to please. But even I appreciate when my wife learns new tricks of the trade. It seems like every other day Janice is setting something exotic and edible in front of me. “Here try this.” I reach for the fork, mouth watering. “Wait!” She dashes to the kitchen and comes running back with some mint leaves. “I forgot the garnish! It helps offset the acidity of the flimflang whatchamacallit I infused in the broth.”

I turn my nose up in the air and tweak one eyebrow in a disdaining manner. Maybe she’ll thrive with some constructive criticism. “OK, I appreciate the look of the garnish but the mint leaves are three centimeters too large and I’m afraid they overwhelm the acidity of the flimflang whatchamacallit.” I nibble a bite and put the fork down. “Yea, it’s not quite the way I like it. I like the flavor of the flimflang whatchamacallits to salsa dance on my tongue before diminishing to that nutty aftertaste. Your flimflang whatchamacallit is dancing but it’s more of a polka dance, and that’s just not my style. Thank you, Chef.”

No, I never actually say that. Janice violently disdains chewing noises and so usually I gently place food on my tongue, close my mouth slowly, and try to chew as discreetly as possible.

We used to have a full size bed. Due to Janice’s new found skills at cooking and baking and because Adi takes up about five cubic feet of space when she sleeps (and somehow she always ends up sleeping in our bed) we needed more surface area to sleep on. It’s hard to sleep when your arm is hanging off the side of the bed and stuffed into your bed stand while your feet are draped through the ceiling fan blades. So we bought a queen size mattress the other day on Amazon for like $180 with free two day shipping. Now, you may be screaming disdain at your computer or mobile device. “You rotten cheapskate! Don’t get such a junk mattress!” Or maybe you’re more of a quiet disdain type of person who’s just simmering with contempt for us lowly folks. Or maybe you’re pretty normal and fall somewhere in between. Reviews on Amazon don’t lie and this mattress actually had hundreds of great reviews so I figured, why not? We had got a free queen size bed from our friends and a free split queen size boxspring from our other friends so I was willing to gamble $180 if it meant I didn’t have use the empty space in my bed stand drawer for my arm. So far it hasn’t started on fire or filled the house with toxic fumes.

Speaking of Adi sleeping, she’s been awful lately. Three days ago was the first time in three months (not joking) that I slept for more than three consecutive hours. She takes so long to put to sleep and never sleeps through the night. We’re trying to ween her (although I tried suggesting to Janice that our grocery bill would be lower if we wouldn’t wean her until she’s maybe ten or twelve) and so I usually go rock her when she wakes up. If Janice rocks her she just wants to nurse. We tried some liquid herbal calcium supplements from some quack doctor health food store. The theory is that the calcium helps produce melatonin which is the chemical that makes you feel sleepy. I have to say, despite my reservations about the quack doctor health food store, she’s been sleeping dramatically better.

I’ve been getting back into photography (I did it as a job for eight years). Here’s a picture I took of Adi finding toys in her treasure chest…

Janice also bought a ten pound case of blueberries so we threw together a photo with those as well…

I sell photos online to make some extra pennies on the side. I’ve recently renewed my efforts to get more photos online (and therefore get more money in the bank).

That’s about all I can think of for now. Adi is screaming right now and my wife is running out of verses to “If You’re Happy and You Know It” so I should go.

With Gratitude,

Josh