This weekend, I made a quick stop on the relocation from my apartment in Cap Hill to Evan's house in Greenwood– by way of Colorado! While Evan and I get ready to spend the next three months in limbo (two moves and one international trip), my cat Miso will be residing at my parents' farm in Loveland and will catch up with us in Salt Lake. In truth, this last-minute trip to drop him off was a much needed opportunity to see my folks during a big transitional period. We hit all of the nostalgic highlights: a morning of clearing irrigation ditches with a weedwacker, Sonic lemonades, lunch with my best friend at THE local Thai restaurant, and sitting on the porch swing watching a rainstorm roll in over the foothills.

I was excited to hear about my mom's new position at a local auction service, which allows her to discover all sorts of objects in people's basements like phonographs, metal oil buckets carved like pumpkins, and old ceramic electrical insulators. Some highly valuable wares are displayed prominently on the farm: This menagerie is making the farm house feel even more like a Western museum and I hope it takes her a while to notice the little labels I've stuck to everything. The dog is next. I'm proud of her for trying something new and I'm happy that she's found work that somehow combines her knack for organization, passion for scouring the web, and the true joy of searching for treasure.

And it's not a trip home without some primo soul searching, life purpose, how-the-hell-have-you-been chats with my dad. There's no better place to understand the man than up to your calves in muck in the Campion ditch. Funny how much we used to dread these dirty and sweaty days. It's nice to reconnect with the seasonality of rural livin' and the satisfaction of some manual labor, but hey, that's easy for a Contracted One Day Ditch Worker to say.