Thumb.

What's the saying? Stick out like a sore thumb? Something like that?

Yeah. That's how I've been feeling in my real world life - esp. at work - more and more. I feel like there is NOTHING here that is really me - nothing here that I do at work that is authentic (and actually work related. The online stuff doesn't count.)

I don't talk to my coworkers, I don't talk to my boss, I come to work, I eat lunch alone, I do the little bit of work that I have to do, and I go home - where my real life begins.

I started with this - that little black area in the bottom corner is the garden bed from last year - the one with the transplanted strawberries, and the one lovely sprig of quince.  

Then I built these.

And then, two days, 600 pounds of compost and peat moss, some REALLY messed up cuticles, 20 something bags of seeds, a couple of feet of yarn, and about 40 pounds of sweat later -  I ended up with this...

The screens are protecting the once AGAIN transplanted strawberries from the sun, as I wanted to move the old bed and resize it. I was suprised to find, as I moved the berries, that I had *thinks* seven? plants that survived from last year - I thought it was just one or two plants that had spread a lot.

I'm doing square foot gardening, and I'm growing a SHITEload of stuff.

This is my life.

My home.

My loves -

That stuff up there - that's what really matters to me. And more and more, it's getting harder and harder to pull myself away, to go to a job that I hate with people that I'm getting closer to downright despising, to earn the money that's still (but much less than before) needed to keep that stuff up there going. In fact if it wasn't for that stuff up there, I would have been out of here a long time ago.

I'm not bitter or anything, I'm just achingly homesick.

And I've only been away from home for 4 hours.

ETA: And I'm about to go back! Good Friday, INDEED!