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Surprisingly, there is more to making a compost heap than just tossing cucumber peels out the back door. (It’s taking a lot of energy to resist making hokey parallels and analogies to writing and/or life in general.) I have to decide such things as do I want to make this a “hot” heap or a “cool” heap. Well. Needless to say, more research is required.

The real surprising thing is how much I’m enjoying this project. I’m not exactly the Mother Earth type. I wear Birkenstocks only because they are comfortable. Seriously. I can’t imagine driving a Volkswagen van. I have never owned anything tie-dyed. (There are probably more hippie stereotypes that I’m missing, but those are the biggies. Oh! I’ve never smoked pot, either.) And I am not seeing this as an investment in this land, this specific plot of land that is my backyard, because certainly I won’t live here for the rest of my life and probably not even a few more years. Keeping garbage out of the landfills, enriching the yard a little bit, incrementally – are these enough to give me this peaceful satisfaction? I think it’s way more than that. The future is out there and it’s coming towards me, and I definitely am planning for it. But. Today is also here, and I don’t know how long today will last – and I have to live in it. For me, it’s the equivalent of putting all my clothes into a hotel dresser when I am on vacation: for this week, for this time, this is home.

Er. I think I accidentally made a hokey analogy.

Speaking of accidents, day one of the driving teenagers: 0 accidents, 0 speeding tickets. Aaron concedes that it is possible he drove all the way to his girlfriend’s house (about 2 miles?) with the emergency brake on.

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