Today is my anniversary and I'm picking peas!

Today, my husband and I, celebrate 5 years of wedded bliss. Despite my previous posts, he really is the most wonderful, generous, kind, sexy, and more often than not, goofy man alive. I don't mean goofy in a negative way either, but rather, in a "he makes me laugh" way. I love him (collective awwwww). Unfortunately, we are both out of work for the next two weeks until Rick starts his new job, and are therefore broke! So there will be no romantic dinners over candlelight and wine. Instead, we are going to my in-law's to work in the garden.

A little history of me and all things agricultural. I grew up rurally, the granddaughter of a former sharecropper (yes white people were sharecroppers too). Because of it, my grandmother kept a hog and she and my aunt would plant a HUGE garden every year. Most of the work I didn't mind, feeding the hog, repairing the pen, planting the garden and gathering the garden were ok. Although, once I did get a nasty bite on the ass by a hog (in front of a boy I had an enormous crush on no less) and had to get stitches and a tetanus shot, but that's a blog for another day. I hated, however, shelling peas. For those of you unfamiliar, or more urban, shelling peas is by far the most tedious thing one can do. It ranks right up there with watching grass grow and paint dry. As the youngest, each year at harvest time, I would be stuck with the crappiest jobs imaginable. You guessed it...shelling peas. I didn't have the 40 years experience my aunt and grandmother had, so of course I was slow. Both my grandmother and aunt found this offensive and would yell at me to go faster. My grandmother was a saint among women, but at harvest time she warped into an apron wearing, bun in the hair version of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman from Full Metal Jacket. Full Metal Redneck is the proposed title of my autobiography...just FYI.

Because of this experience, I swore an oath that if I ever made it to adulthood, I would never shell another pea. This puts me in sort of a dilemma today. You see today is the beginning of the pea harvest in our garden. Peas are one of the handful of vegetables my husband actually likes, and having that "Pull your weight" mentality pounded into me by my farming ancestors, I feel I have to do something. I'll probably end up putting up tomatoes and squash, but I would volunteer to clean the toilets if it got me out of shelling peas. We'll see how it goes.