My Big Pile of Shit

Pardon my French, but sometimes there's really only one word that works.... As many of you know, I am a displaced city boy living in the country.  I live there mostly because it's what my wife wanted to do, and well....it's what my wife wanted to do.  Since moving to the country, I've found that surprises are rarely surprising....that is to say that I'm surprised so much, that I barely remember what it feels like anymore.   That said, I had the opposite experience a month or so ago when, upon returning from coaching a track meet, I pulled into my drive way to see my father-in-law's truck sitting in the driveway with a rather large trailer hitched to it.  This was not unusual, as my in-laws are my wife's primary resource for amateur horticultural gear and knowledge.  What made this particular trailer different was that it was covered with a blue tarp.  Curious, and at that point suspecting that my father-in-law was using the tarp to prepare for a "big reveal" later, I approached the mystery cargo. It took about six second and one stiff breeze for me to figure out what was under the tarp... "So...." I said as I entered the house.  "The trailer is full of..." "Horse manure." replied my beloved bride, with enthusiasm befit a Ringling Brothers Ringmaster. "For the garden." I looked over at my in-laws, who were decidedly confused at my confusion. "You guys drove two hours on the highway with a pile of shit hitched to your truck?"  The tarp seemed immediately necessary.   It seemed like a perfectly reasonable question, but I was the one who was getting looked at as if he were a crazy person. After lunch, I proceeded to follow the aforementioned truck on foot to a shady spot behind our defunct swine barn.  My son, who was walking with me asked "What are we gonna do with all that horse poop?" "Ask your mother." The trailer went up, and, as it were, the shit went down.  As the largest member of our ragtag crew, I was handed a shovel assigned the enviable task of making sure that none of the shit was wasted.   File that one under tasks I never thought I'd be given. Truth be told, there was a fair amount of black dirt mixed in with the shit, and the smell was much more tolerable that I first imagined. When the work was done, I stood beside my wife and said: "You know, honey, when we first got married, I had a lot of aspirations for us, and one of the loftiest was for you and I to stand together next to our very own pile of horseshit." She took my hand and replied: "Me too." One of us was kidding. Sent from my iPad