In Which My Husband Is Sweet Unto Me

(with clarification*)


A legend of us is that on one of our first dates, Noah and I were playing cards with some friends at a hipster coffee house in Lodo and at one point Noah looked at me and said "I like my coffee like I like my women: bitter and strong".  Now, folks were so afraid of me in those days that chairs pushed back from the table and the music screeched off and somebody may have broken a bottle over a bar for an impromptu shank, I don't know.

I am happy to have been upgraded to "sexy and strong".

This is some marketing material for Asheville Beer Week and Oskar Blues Tap Takeover at Walk with New Belgium. Anything look familiar?

Vesuvius Golden Ale has been aging in that chardonnay barrel for over a year. Without my knowledge. It's a specialty offering, so it won't be canned, just on tap in Asheville.When I texted Noah that I was surprised they let him name it that, he texted back "Bitch please. I do what I want."

I am pretty excited about this.

Now I have to go clean my house because my book club is coming over tonight to discuss my very own book. The one by me that I'm going to self-publish (but haven't yet)*. It's a big day here. Here's a hint about this book of mine: someone compared it to Tarantino (sorry, Elizabeth) and for themed snacks, I'm serving angel food cake. Angel food cake and Tarantino, what? Could there be a more perfect marriage?

Happy Monday.

Moving, Divorce, and Other Things That Take Two Hours

Mr. V asked me if I wanted to get ice cream for my birthday, but I said no because if there's one thing I hate more than your average theater-goer, it's people eating ice cream. If it is possible for an adult human to lick an ice cream cone without coming off as smug, I've never seen it. I take pride in the fact that I'm not superstitious, but I'm neurotic enough about ridiculous things to make up for it. When Mr. V eats bananas or crunchy food, I leave the room. If you think this is harsh, I ask you why do you want our marriage to fail? Heartless, really.

Here's a funny thing. When it shook down that we were going to be moving to a place fifteen-hundred miles away, I thought: maybe this will be the one time in our life when we'll get movers. You know, since OB is footing the bill. I didn't assume ,since my mother taught me that assumptions make the apocalypse occur. Well, Noah got the details of the offer and since no mention of movers was made, I forgot about it. No big deal. A week went by and I heard from a friend that the two other families who are moving with us are, in fact, expecting movers any day now. Immediately I texted this intel to Mr. V, but he didn't reply. He was righteously angry like I was, OR SO I ASSUMED. When I got home, I mentioned it again. "Harold and Donna are getting movers," I said pointedly. Mr. V's smile was sheepish bordering on panic. "I know," he said. "They offered to get us movers but I turned it down."

I brewed coffee. We're pretentious about our coffee so it took fifteen minutes. I poured a mug, stirred in cream, took a sip, and then spit it dramatically into the sink. "Very funny," I said after spectacular spray. (Mr.V was still there, he'd known what was coming)."When will the movers come?"

"Hahaha!" Mr V said stiffly. He didn't laugh, he actually spoke it. Ha ha ha. It's what he always does when he doesn't think I'm funny. I keep telling him this courtesy laugh is going to destroy our marriage. He just smiles and eats a banana."But seriously. We don't need movers. It takes two hours to move."

I drank coffee and spit it out again. Mr. V and I have moved so many times I have lost count. "We need to get you to the hospital," I said. "Clearly you are in shock. Otherwise you'd know good and well it takes two damn days to move. Not two damn hours."

"We can do it ourselves!" he said. "It's stupid to have movers when we can do it ourselves! It's a waste of money--"

"But Harold and Donna--and their kid gloves--"

"We're a profit-sharing company now, Brittany," said Mr. V, going all Pete Campbell on me. (Oh, he's gonna love that one.) "The cost of movers comes out of that. If I hire movers now, we'll all get a smaller bonus in March."

I tried to spit my coffee again, but honestly. His pragmatism just sucked all the heart right out of me. The one time in my life I could have had movers, I swear to god. Next time someone offers you  movers you damn well take them, I said, like Scarlet O'Hara with no makeup on. Turning down movers isn't a thing I can abide. I just hope someone at OB realizes that Mr.V is forgoing the assistance of brawny college guys on a cross-country move to save them money, I really do.

Later that day we got word our landlord needed to show the house again. Our lease is up in two weeks, they insist we leave, and they still haven't found a new tenant. Every other time, I've scrambled around cleaning the house, but now I cried giddily to Mr. V that I didn't give a damn anymore! The landlord insists on showing our house, let it be messy. "He's gotta understand," I said, doing a not bad Pete Campbell myself, "that not helping out a young family is bad karma."

"Damn straight!" said Mr. V, and dropped the spaghetti-sauce pot he was holding on to the floor with a dramatic flair I quite admired. The next morning I remembered I had my own karma to worry about and spent my birthday morning scrambling around the house hiding the underwear and tampons Mr. V and I had tossed out of our drawers in our "hell with 'em!" glee. When we returned to our house after the showing, I went into my bedroom and saw said tampons sitting in full view atop my dresser drawer. At least it wasn't the item I was once forced to tell Indy was a "pink cucumber that mommy's friends gave her for a big fat joke, I mean a regular joke, isn't it silly?"**

One of the best things that happened on my birthday was M from The M Half calling me "inimitable" on twitter. That is my second favorite thing I've ever been called, right behind "feminazi" in high school, which is damn near impossible to beat. (I can say this now after hundreds of dollars spent on self-help books.) In a flush of joy, I turned to Mr. V. We were sitting in the Mayan theater waiting for Moonrise Kingdom to start, drinking beer and wine, hipsters all around us crunching popcorn loudly. Apparently that is the hipster thing to do now, along with slurping soda for hours (it's gone, you bastards, or it wouldn't slurp) and honestly hipsters, I think we could do better. "I'm like Joss Whedon before The Avengers*," I told him, wine-flushed and happy. "My audience isn't big, but it's the best."

"What nonsense are you referring to this time?" he asked me. M called me inimitable, I told him, and Mr. V said, "What's that mean? Annoying?"

I laughed very hard and told him he loved me. Afterwards we drank mojitos and ate arepas and salmon rolls that were only so-so, but it didn't matter this time. This is how our marriage works. We reveled in that flush of each other, smug like bastards eating ice cream. It's true.

Mr. V's sister Lucy, Ayla--I thought it was Indy, too--(with a peanut can), Mr. V's sister Sophie, Mr. V's sister Mercy, me, and Suzy, the wife of Mr. V's brother at OB. Whew. I'm sharing this picture
here because of reasons.

*It's true that I swing wildly between sickening grandiosity and extreme self-loathing, but Mr. V wouldn't have me any other way. Or so I allow myself to believe.


**Still, neither of these moments count as the most awkward thing I have endured. That title goes to the time a satellite dish installer asked to use my bathroom, abandoned it twenty minutes later in an unfragrant state, and when I went back in I saw I'd left a pair of underwear on the floor. I'm pretty much shame-proof now.

Asheville Je T'aime

We were sitting in the Asheville Brewing Company when the doubts began to set in. A man with ear plugs and an easy friendliness had just served us a cast iron skillet balanced with samples of foamy beer and Mr. V was talking about possibilities but I couldn't hear a word he had to say. I was trying not to cry.

I had the Rockies on my mind. My people were prairie and mountain raised, pioneers moving ever westward and it's not a thing you soon forget. Your ancestral landscape gets into your blood and like it or not, in some ways you will always be the place you came from. Brevard was beautiful but it was a shock to my sensibilities and sitting in a bright, artsy city, I remembered where I was made. Craving one place and longing for the other, I never know where I might land.

We'd crossed the French Broad river, which I will never say without seeing a smoky-eyed woman pulling up her stockings, and made a right on a corner where The Thirsty Monk faced Jack In The Woods Public House. I might as well have been in Avalon or Paris. The Monk was a bright purple building, packed wall to wall on a string of similar tall facades, the streets loose brick that shifted beneath our feet and meandered around courtyards and bright alleyways, each one brimming with drinking, dining folk facing streetward, a la Parisienne. Plenty of bookstores, plenty of earthy chicks with scarves in their hair like me and legs that go a long time between shavings, also like me. (Sorry, my Californian sisters, but it's true). There were specialty stores for everything from pastries to wine to cured meats to dog biscuits, and this is exactly what I love about Edinburgh and Manhattan and all the great old cities. Asheville is known as the Paris of the south, and now I know why.

In Asheville it seems that the culture is the counter-culture, but no one's feeling smug about it like they are in Boulder. Perhaps because you get the sense that Asheville isn't a place where rich pseudo-hippies have settled because it's beautiful and has a Whole Foods, but a place where eclectic people, people normally on the fringe, have congregated and they ain't smug but so damn happy to have found each other in all this mess, and who woulda thunk but they've made a home.

Driving in to Asheville we'd spotted an old man waving a confederate flag from a bridge, but inside the city there was no such nonsense. The brewery was running over with young families. Mr. V was talking mortgages and I was craving babies, the surest sign of trouble I know. I shook myself back into the present and shifted towards sunny as we walked up Patton, past traveling musicians to Hayward and Battery Park Avenue, where I was reminded that there is history in the south, history involving names like Grant and Lee and Stonewall Jackson. After standing quietly taking in the view of the hills from the portico of St. Lawrence Basilica, my husband decided to take me out for a French dinner and we found Bouchon almost by accident. "This city should be a good place to get French," I said to Mr. V. "Asheville has a lot of French influence." Since this is my blog and we're into being honest here, I'll admit that this is one of those things I say more by instinct than by actual knowledge. But steering by instinct is what landed us here in the first place, so I went with it.

Bouchon was at the end of hill where we'd spotted a Japanese chef plucking herbs from his garden to use in whatever culinary mischief he was up to. We sat in the cobblestoned alley, filled with greenery and umbrellas and summer soiree lights. I ordered my first pate and my first Kir Royal and thought, if I can't have Paris yet, at least I have this. Mr. V ordered the canard a l'orange rubbed with cocoa nibs and I stuck to moules-frites. They tasted of the ocean and I sucked them down, happy as any sea star nestled in its proper bed.

We left Bouchon and were headed up the hill when the skies just broke right open, faster than a prairie thunderstorm. Look at that cute little cloud, I thought, and then suddenly the rain was too torrential to see in. We were standing just in front of a brewery, so having one more drink was the only thing to do. There was a deep covered patio, perfect for sipping and breathing in the scent of rain, the bright light on the art deco buildings just across the street, and smiling like we'd won the lottery. This is my favorite thing about traveling. You're just going along in your life and suddenly serendipity blesses you so certain you know there is good in all this limping, stuttering earth. I grinned wildy at Mr. V over a salty margarita and told him how I loved it when this happens. That's when it struck me that I've always said I want to live in a lively city and in the middle of nowhere, and that maybe in this part of North Carolina I could have both.

There are things I haven't told you: there is a Starbucks in Brevard, but it's inside a grocery store and while the local coffee spot makes a creamy, nutty latte, it has the ambiance of a Furr's in foreclosure. Mr. V says that when I saw his first paycheck from the brewery, I cried. I have no memory of this but I don't doubt it. What I know is that in the end, anywhere I go is going to become one more place I want to leave.

The next day it was time to head home. We traveled over four hours in the rain from Brevard back to Atlanta and when we got to the gate at 2:35, after running faster and farther than I have since college, our 2:40 departure had already left. We sat half the day in the Atlanta airport, so overstimulating I curled up on the floor with headphones in my ears and closed my eyes. I stayed that way until Mr. V brought me a frozen yogurt and it was time to board the plane and fly west, west over prarie, west toward home. We passed over a spectacular lightnight storm and watched great thunderheads light up rhythmically from the top side, clearer now than ever the way those clouds answer each other, a nebular call and response. Departure was at the tail-end of evening and a strip of electric blue sunset hung stubborn in the sky. We chased that last light of sun all the way home. We never did catch it.

To Your Left Are the Baptists. To Your Right Are the Baptists

This is part one of the trip Mr. V and I just took to see if we want to relocate to the other side of the country. Photo taken en route to Brevard, just inside North Carolina.


Taos, Santa Fe, Tucson, Sedona, Los Angeles, Huntington Beach, Billings, Bozeman, Big Sky, Missoula, Eugene, Jackson Hole, Durango, Manhattan, Paris, Barcelona, Brittany, and Fraserburgh, Scotland. These are all places I thought I might one day wake up and find myself living in.

North Carolina was never on that list, well and so.

You fly into Atlanta where the females are ornamental, every girl a cheerleader and every woman blonde with her hair teased like a farm boy in a Nevada bordello. Get out of the city and for three and half hours, you can just hear the banjos playing all the way through South Carolina to Brevard, NC, so rolling and remote is the countryside. Every exit promises food-gas-lodging but there are so many trees, you can't see them. I don't believe it, if we're being honest. I couldn't see a damn thing but forest and more forest, and I half think all those signs promising Wendy's and Exxon mobile were put there to reassure the tourists. Where I'm from, if someone does a jig three miles away you can see what shoes they're wearing and smell what's on for dinner. Growing up in Denver leaves you a strange hybrid daughter of the Rockies and the plains. One majestic and demanding father who hurts you just enough to keep you running toward him, and your flaxen-haired mother just spread wide open, head down in the grass and arms begging you to enjoy all that sky.

The road side attraction in Georgia are boiled peanuts, which the locals insist on calling "balled", but I know the truth. All the grocery stores are called things like "Save Mor Foods" and "Lots 4 Less", which to Mr. V and I might as well be "Crap For Dimes" and "Edible Chemicals for Sale". "Why can't we just have a Piggly Wiggly?" I asked Mr. V. We did see a Publix, but I can't help hearing it "Pube-lix", so as you can see, it's not much better.

After all the peanut and strawberry stands, you hit the Carolinas and you might as well have canoed down the Amazon. The forest is thick as jungle to my prairie-trained eyes, the trees so canopied they turn the light old fairy-green until it goes so dark you begin to wonder if the sun shines here at all, or if you have landed on some strange sunless planet where the light shines pine from the leaves themselves.

We pulled into town just in time for the White Squirrel festival, where they have vendors and live bluegrass and some poor body dressed up in a white squirrel outfit, wandering around and waving paws. There are six to eight thousand people living in Brevard, depending who you ask. They are friendly and welcoming, even if the Starbucks Barista was a pink fellow named RayRay and I almost called the whole thing off. There are Baptist churches left and right, Main Street runs about four blocks and two lights, but there's music and art galleries, wine stores and French cheeses, so what's a girl to do? Women who might as well be from Colorado, wearing dresses and sandals, peasant blouses and no makeup, have come for college and never left. The people have accents and I can't help it, I adapt them immediately, saying "thank yew" and drawing all my vowels out long from the throat. No one looks at me funny, I think they are fooled. I do have an ear for accents. People love it at parties, no seriously. THEY DO.

 Noah (who still prefers to be called Mr. V on the blog) and I arrived at the stage just in time to hear the mayor giving out awards to the winners of the White Squirrel boxcar derby, where boys and girls from six to sixteen, all functional in athletic shorts and t-shirts with hair and ponied and un-teased, were blushing and receiving their trophies. They mayor ribbed a mom for holding up the ceremony to take pictures, then said, "That's all right, she was my high school girlfriend. She knows it. Ask her where she was the night of her sixteenth birthday," and Mr.V and I laughed like we'd gone back in time to find Laura Ingalls and her farm boy husband, who were all modernized and twinkling-eyed about it.

We introduced ourselves to the mayor, who also runs the Ace hardware on Main by the cinema. This little town is very excited to have Oskar Blues coming in, and Dale's big focus is to help out the community and grow more jobs. So the mayor greeted us warmly, gave us his number and recommended good neighborhoods for house hunting. "There's no better place to raise your kids," he said, and even though we know it's his job, Mr.V and I were starry-eyed. After shaking hands and kissing babies, we were thirsty for some beer which is, let's face it, what we're here for. We drank a few absolutely first-rate beers at the Brevard Brewing Company, including an American lager that I want to take down some slow river and sip the whole way, then headed over to the Square Root for dinner. It was hopping. Chewy homemade blue corn tortillas and folks hanging out on the light-strung porch, where Mr. V and I observed a unique, bearded fellow in a fancy brown suit. He looked like Joaquin Phoneix in his crazy stage, only without the mad pretension and self-importance. After a wonderful meal of fish tacos and good old cheeseburgers, local grown Brussels sprouts on the sides and Dale's on tap, we wondered back out to the stage to find the man in the brown suit up on the stage, playing with his band, Chatham County line.

Well no wonder.

The next day we drank cups of hot coffee and cruised for houses. Everyone had babies and was strolling toward the swimming pool in this quiet green neighborhood set right into rolling hills with the woods creeping up into the yards, nature just waiting to take it all back. The word idyllic came to mind, but I am city-bred and was feeling a thump of something that might be called panic.

So we rolled out north to Asheville.

Tomorrow, Part Two: Asheville--It's Just Like Boulder, Only Awesome.

Choose Your Own Adventure

image credit: here

There is a temptation to make it sound more dramatic than it was, but here is the truth: three years ago, Mr. V and I went to lunch at the Cherry Cricket. When our bellies were full of cheeseburgers and pale ale, we walked around Cherry Creek on a copper-bright autumn afternoon and I told Mr. V to quit his job and take another, thus reducing our income by half.

I know.

It was a good time in our lives, our girls yummy and adorable at 3 and 5, our neighborhood in Denver full of parks and libraries and Starbucks, our grocery budget roomy. But despite our urban splendor and abundance of farmers market vegetables, Mr. V was miserable. He was in a corporate management job that he hated, where all day he took calls from people who were so upset no one else had been able to calm them down, and look, even if Mr. V managed that task, they never told him thank you. Feeling the strain his unhappiness placed on our family, I encouraged him to follow his dreams by. . . taking a class on brewing. Naturally! He'd been home brewing with a friend for years, and this level of spousal support was easy for me to manage. He took the course at night, while I was at my beloved bookstore job or sleeping. I patted myself on the back for being such a good wife and Mr. V learned ridiculous things about mash tuns and worts and all kinds of chemistry terms that I can't even begin to guess at.

I mean, honestly. Well done, me.

But hold your applause. To my stupid surprise, after the course Mr. V got an actual job offer at a brewery in Longmont that made one of our favorite beers: Dale's Pale Ale.

I have always been dreamy. I'd spent a lot of time watching Oprah and reading Martha Beck and telling my husband and myself that it was paramount we follow our dreams. This was easy to say at the time, as I had no idea what it actually meant. I thought of the whole process as rather like a wishing well: fast results, immediate worldly success. Mr. V supported my dreams by spending almost every Saturday and Sunday morning with the girls so I could go out and write for hours. Now Mr. V had an opportunity not to be a brewer, but to work on the canning and packaging line at a brewery he really loved. It was time for me to make good on all that talk.

He'd be earning a single digit amount an hour.

To make it work, we'd have to move out of the neighborhood I loved and move in with his mother and teenage sister and brother.

Thinking about it now, I still can't believe it, but we did it. On a chilly Halloween, we packed up our house, said goodbye to life as we knew it, and fell asleep that night, after trick-or-treating, in a bedroom that shared a wall with the room my mother-in-law had decided to share with my daughters.

If you are thinking, Cozy!, know that I am thinking about all the once placid pioneers who used to go mad over cabin-bound winters and murder each other, which should give you some idea as to how our winter went.

It was one of the most difficult times Mr. V and I had ever faced. Mr. V took the car to work and I spent long days alone with the girls in a home that wasn't my own, never certain when his mom would be in and out from her job or the teenagers would show up with crowds of loud friends and decide to turn up the amp on the electric guitar. There were seven of us in a four bedroom house and it was often untidy and crowded and maddening.

During the dire cold nights of that winter, the house, I kid you not, heated by a wood-burning stove to save money on bills, our faith began to waver. We considered moves to Arizona, Oregon, Montana, New Mexico. I gave up on the dream over and over again, called uncle, told the universe I'd had too much. "We followed the dream," I clearly remember saying to Mr. V one terrible night. "Now let's follow the money."

When we couldn't bear it another minute, a shot in the dark paid off and suddenly Mr. V expected a job offer from the great Brew Dog. I started researching immigration to the UK and we were ready to move to the northern-most tip of remote Scotland. I wanted this very badly. I imagined myself in wellies, walking a misty coastal landscape to a tiny general store to buy haggis and tea.

Just before Mr. V was set to leave for a two-week interview/informal training session, Oskar Blues offered him a promotion. We took it rather than moving to Scotland to earn just above minimum wage. We moved out of his mom's house and into a tiny house in Longmont that I was ashamed of. I didn't have anybody over for a year. In some ways, life was harder then than it had been at his mother's, because I expected things to be better by now. Limited intangible dreams to an arbitrary clock and got mad when they didn't arrive on time. Then one day, just in time for Christmas, Mr. V went to a company party expecting beer and little smokies and came back with a bonus and a raise.

Now I see that those things I thought I wanted--corporate securities, Mr. V in jackets and ties, a mortgage in Denver--never would have fit us well. Right now Mr. V works for a company I love, where employees skateboard around from the brewery to the "Anti-Corporate Office"; a company that lets me take the employee's free yoga classes, that gave away a car at Christmas to the company's longest standing employee. It was worth it, it was so worth it, all that time spent wandering in the dark to land here, in the sun.

Ships come in on their own damn time is all I know for sure.

My one regret is that we didn't get to move to any of the places we'd talked about moving to. I have an adventurous heart. Colorado is gorgeous, but I've lived here thirty-one years and I've always wanted to live somewhere else. It's a dream I'll never let go of. I want to see every last thing in this world.

A few weeks ago, we learned that Oskar Blues is expanding to Brevard, North Carolina.

Mr. V and I are flying out this weekend to have a look.

Hop Farm

Mr. V's work hosted a day at a farm. They planted hops, with which to brew some beer, and also there was something about the cows eating the hops before being served in the restaurant. Insert dumb joke about serving cows beer.

Here is evidence:





I love my cowgirls.


Indy and her little friend/haircut soulmate.






jam sesh.






photo from Oskar Blues


photo from Oskar Blues

Vesuvius Gets Toasted

Oh boy. Now are you expecting salacious revelations and catty remarks?

Listen, if we're going to talk about getting toasted, the truth is this: I wish I could but I can't anymore because it makes me feel so awful that I'm sure I've committed blasphemy and all seven of the deadly sins in the throes of it.

(Also that unfortunate crank call to the children's librarian.)(Who didn't think me inviting her to a private audience in MY night kitchen was very funny).

I wish I had gotten toasted more when I was young and capable of bouncing back. Seriously, the time for getting toasted is college, no matter what they teach you in your freshman Women's Christian Health class about saving Getting Toasted for marriage. (It is possible I dozed off that day). I regret not living it up more while I still could. Now I have a quarter glass of wine and pass out snoring on the couch. With a grumbly tummy in the morning.

Sorry, German ancestors. Though my ghostly stoic Swedes approve.

(Is this making any sense? I swear to god I am not toasted.)

Before it's too late, before you leave me--PLEASE DON'T LEAVE ME--here's the announcement: I am a muse.

A roasty, curvacious, full-of-spitfire-and-vim muse to the gods of revelry and beer. That's right: I am pleased to announce that on February 22nd, Oskar Blues is tapping Vesuvius Imperial Ale.

Here are the stats on this hot little number: Weighing in at 10% alcoholbyvolume (boy howdy but she packs a punch!) and served in a sweet little 10 ounce glassy, Vesuvius Imperial Ale is an Imperial Brown brewed with toasted marshmallows.

I like to believe she is the perfect balance of sweet and bitter*. Dash of spice. Also, the marshmallows were my idea.

Care to join us?



We are Vesuvius and We are more than a little pleased that the first beer named after Us is an Imperial.

*Inside joke to Mr.V. Next time we go to Paris, make it the real one and make it snappy. Kisses!

Post-Edit: Just so we're clear. Vesuvius Imperial Brown is a Pilot beer (finally I get a Pilot!) brewed by the small batch at Oskar Blues Brewery by mine own husband, Mr.V, who brews there professionally. It is exclusive to the tap room, which usually runs out of it on tapping night, and not for distribution. See you there!

Love / Money

May I be honest for a moment? I can't decide which is more important to me: Following your dreams, or making money.

Everyone out there is telling us to do what we love and the money will follow. But no one has instructions on how to carry on when 'what you love' turns out to be writing and brewing beer. If you want to make money, you know what you don't be? A writer or a brewer. It turns out that no money follows. At all. Unless you count free beer (I do, but only a little).These are probably two of the most unlucrative (nonlucrative?) careers out there. Because guess what? There is one J.K Rowling and one Adolph Coors and we are not them.

We made this move, this 'career-change' as I am fond of calling it because I imagine it makes me sound less insane, almost exactly a year ago. And while I wish I could sing to you ballads of our triumph and bravery now at the first annual, I knew all along that wouldn't be the case.

I'm not complaining. I went into this with both eyes open. We did this because we believe in dreams, we believe in risks, and we didn't want Mr.V to work for a few more years at a job he hated and then one day wake up and we own a house and two cars and are used to living in a level of comfort that we would have been much, much more hesitant to leave.

O magazine lands in my mailbox every month telling me to follow my north star, or my bliss, or my passions. And it's not just the big O telling me this--it's our entire culture. The Dream Machine. Heavy in the ether is the idea that if you are brave enough to do what you truly, truly love--happiness will follow.

I'm not saying that isn't true. It's still too soon to tell.

But there we were, my husband and I, walking to the car after our first 'date' in months. The date was going around to breweries where they feed us free beer because we bring it to them in return. And it hit me that I just don't know if it's worth it.

I really don't. I'm saying this to offer it up for your consideration. There is another side to all this. I believe you should follow your dreams but what if your dreams are careers that earn basically no money? Mr. V has traded in that awful soul-sucking job for one he enjoys. But it has been a huge, huge sacrifice and I'm not saying it isn't worth it. I'm just telling you, I don't know yet.

There are times I wonder if we should throw in the towel and go take the highest paying jobs we can find. Work up from there.

All of this may never, ever pay off.

But you see, it might. And so I just keep going.

I am Vesuvius, and I will trade you beer for sweaters.