Girl, calm the hell down

The more serious things I do, the less seriously I can take any of it

Hi Friends!

Today is a little different post for me because it's my birthday. It's a big birthday. In fact - it ends with a "0". I'm having a bit of an existential crisis.

Apparently, I'm an actual adult now, even if I don't feel like it.

First, if you have any advice for me - please leave it in the comments. I need all the advice I can take to make it through the next decade. There's nothing like an adult birthday to remind me that I still have no idea what I'm doing.

One of the cool things about the internet on your birthday is that it will serve you memories from birthdays past. Ten years ago, at 30, I wrote a cringey, navel-gazing piece about the purpose of my life so far. Looking back at that post, it's odd to see how seriously I took everything. I wish I could tell that woman to loosen her grip. She was white-knuckling every single day.

Girl, calm the hell down.

In the last decade, I somehow managed to marry the guy I was dating, give birth to two sons, move to a small-acre urban farm, and live off what we produce here for an entire year. I've lost my father, a heartbreak from which I will never fully recover. I've changed more diapers, made more bottles, cried more, and challenged myself more than I thought possible. The more serious things I have done, the less seriously I take it all. There's absurdity around every corner, and it's beautiful.

Last week I went out to the hay shed to grab another bale for the goats and caught wind of that familiar scent. A skunk was close.

Photo by Bryan Padron on Unsplash

I hoped it had just stopped by and decided to move on. A skunk in the yard will not only eat the eggs in the chicken coop but also kill the smaller chickens and eat them. Keeping predators away protects my investment; I spent months hatching and growing those little chickens, so I'm not letting McStinkyFace eat them.

At the same time the skunk had moved in, Mark, my husband, threw his back out. Even after an appointment with a specialist, x-rays, and many massage and chiropractor appointments later, he's still limping around the house.

So, although Mark usually carries out the predator-mitigation duties on our little urban farm, we decided a division of labor was necessary this time. I set the traps with cans of wet cat food and tried to set them up to allow for a spray-free approach and waited.

Three days later, I awoke to a massive skunk in the trap. Mark and I had agreed that because of his back, I would set the traps, he would quickly and humanely dispatch the skunk, then he would limp back up to the house, and I would deal with the aftermath. Mark kept up his end of the deal while I took the kids to school.

On the way home from preschool, I stopped at Dunkin Donuts for the giant latte a day that starts with a skunk would require.

I came home to clean up, grateful not to have a curious preschooler and Kindergartner orbiting around the task. The chickens, though, were happily pecking around, seemingly oblivious to the smelly dead predator just a few feet away.

Despite the several times I've dealt with skunks in the past, this one was uniquely odious. I knew that skunks smelled distinctive and bad, but I didn't realize that in high concentrations, their spray can induce nausea in humans.

Almost as soon as I picked up the skunk, I turned into a Dunkin latte fire hydrant.

Then, to make matters worse, like a horrifying slow-motion movie, the chickens ran toward me to act as the clean-up crew. It was like a mini version of Jurassic Park, watching the dinosaurs running forth. I'm not too proud to admit that I cried a little bit.

When we think about urban farming, we often see pictures of a basket full of rainbow-colored eggs, fluffy chickens, plump veggies, and fresh cheese - we don't see all the blood, sweat, tears, and now vomit that goes into building it.

Life is ridiculous and amazing and not meant to be taken too seriously. Here's to another decade.