I'm surprised how into it my husband is. Usually, they're all my projects, and he's wonderfully supportive and willing to give manual labor whenever I ask. He doesn't enjoy gardening, but he enjoys the food, so whenever I ask him to work out there with me, he's there right away. When I get a contract for a mural, I bring him along as the grunt labor... "Here, paint this wall brown so I can turn it into a desert scene." When a friend suggested we get chickens for our earwig problem, he was all over it. I'm the one who has officially gone psycho over chickens, but he's the one who named the first five. And when we ordered the new chicks, he sat down with me and circled the ones he wanted out of the catalog, even pre-naming them Strip and Finger. He'll even cook himself way too much cracked wheat cereal, and leave the extra on the counter so it goes dry and crusty, and it's now chicken food. He's not out there holding them or anything, but he's a huge animal lover and really enjoys having them.
I keep dreaming about a big plot of land, but Russ and I both have bad credit from our previous marriages, plus his medical conditions are keeping him underemployed so we can get insurance. No house-buying for us. That's probably a good thing. When we got into this rented house, the neighborhood was still at premium rent. We came in anyway, because the house came along with rent's-worth in clients. (My landlady, also a massage therapist, retired and moved to Florida. It pays to network.) Life happened, and some of my clients had to drop out because of the economy. Now the houses on three sides of us are for rent, at much lower than we're paying now. So people ask why we don't move. Uh... because my landlady totally ROCKS and knows exactly what I'm doing to her property, and gives us a lot of privileges because she's a yogi who thrives on the concept of karma.
