A Small Percentage of Heart: D-Week 4: Being the Dog

Jen and I live a pretty duplicitous life. Let this weekend be an example. I'll start on Saturday. In the morning we worked on a farm weeding and planting, biking through the East Side passing abandoned houses and boarded up schools. We came home, showered, gussied ourselves up, and then headed to Grosse Ile to go sailing with family friends. This was my first time sailing. We were on the water for 3 hours, hitting a high speed of 7 knots (I think that's only moderately impressive?). It was so relaxing being on Lake Eerie with friends, no cares in the world. We headed back in and they took us out to dinner at the Yacht Club. Afterwards we went to see another friend's son play at a local restaurant on Grosse Ile where we met up with his family and their friends. We sang Hey Jude around the piano and drank our fill of red wine that was poured into our glasses for us by our enthusiastic host. They kept the party going after the show by going to their friend's house right on the Detroit River and drinking more wine on his private dock. It was like we were in the Great Gatsby where Jen and I played Nick surrounded by all these Gatsby characters keeping up their social lives by burning the candle at both ends. It's hard to imagine just a few hours prior we were sitting in the dirt getting sun burnt while we cleaned carrot beds.

Friday, Jen and I took off "work" (i.e. decided not to do anything which has no affect on anyone at all) and went to Ann Arbor where University of Michigan is located. Through Jen's family on Grosse Ile, we got connected with the registrar of the University, Paul, and got a tour of the campus and the city. It was a really beautiful, comfortable place, and reminded me a ton of Charlottesville - typical college town with lots of wealth and not so much diversity. Not my kind of place, but beautiful in its own right. Paul took us out to lunch at Cafe Felix. After he finished his afternoon meetings, we met him and his buddies (also middled-aged men) at a microbrew and drank and played fussball. All the while, Paul explained his youth antics and encouraged us to be reckless while we're young (clearly we are one step ahead of him), and always trust that the money will come eventually.

Paul also told us one of the most helpful and important anecdotes I've ever heard: the dog and the wolf. Dogs were once wolves, but they set themselves apart by being domesticated. Wolves are smarter - they can hunt, work in packs, survive winters, raise their young, protect the pack, and so on. But dogs have it better off - they have their meals given to them every day, they lay down on couches and chase squirrels in the back yard, they are adored and loved by everyone who sees them. So even though wolves are the more capable of the two, the dogs saw that being friendly to humans would work to their advantage and now they are living the life. I look at my life and see what our friendliness has achieved us - sailing, free lunches and dinners, wine freely flowing in our glasses. We have learned the art of being the dog.

Besides our bougie weekend, this week was pretty standard. I am really falling in love with Earthworks farm which is where I have decided to dedicate my Wed-Fri mornings and afternoons. The people are so earnest and I really want to learn how to farm, plus we sometimes get free veggies and they have their dollar menu on Thursdays where you can even use EBT, very valuable things when you're not making money for 3 whole months. Jen and I also started playing in an amateur soccer league on Sundays and that was hilarious, and we are making more friends with them. More friends = more better. I had a minor scare where I thought I ran out of money and would have to go back to NOLA early, but thankfully I found some more money and am going to get through the summer, I am hoping. Paul's lesson on money was very well timed apparently.

There is no telling why Blogger sometimes rotates pictures and sometimes doesn't, so I'm sorry for the 90deg inaccuracy...not my fault. Nothing ever is.