I start a new job today. That’s a sentence I’ve waited more than seven months to write! Since I was unexpectedly laid off during an overwhelming downsizing in early December, this has been the hardest stretch of my life. I’ve been unemployed before, but never in a market this unforgiving- and never while navigating so many personal hardships all at once.

Tractor pulls are about as American as things get. Antique farm vehicles battle to drag a weighted sled down a track, and victory goes to the machine that pulls it the farthest! The competitions are especially popular across the Midwest and South, but I’ve never actually attended one. Still, I recently found myself participating in a smaller version when I used an ATV to drag an eighty-year-old tractor out of what I’d long assumed would be its final resting place.

Not that long ago, “feeding the cat” meant pouring little pebbles into a bowl and walking away. Disco and Zulu handled the rest themselves. Lately, though, I’ve found myself kneeling on the floor and squeezing pâté for Disco from a tiny plastic tube. I’m not sure how I feel about it.

I lived with my dad in Elkhart during my sophomore year of high school and spent chunks of several summers there. Somewhere along the way, we discovered that we had a serious weakness for Mexican food. First, it was El Toro- a true hole-in-the-wall with tacos de lengua marked by an upside-down lawnmower sign. Next was La Esperanza: it was the best food I’d ever eaten, and I finally made it back two decades later.