I drive into the farm – the clouds are starting to set in over what has been a brilliantly blue summer. I’m singing along to my Broadway musical spotify playlist because I have fantastic taste. I pull around past the first crop of trees to see my husband holding a shotgun. He’d spotted the woodchuck that lurks in the outcropping of stone bravely venturing into the open space in front of the woodbark. In a normal world, this would be an opportunity to stay away and continue to coexist peacefully by ignoring each other. In northern Michigan, your father-in-law keeps a shotgun in the truck. Husband goes on the prowl. The woodchuck wisens up and disappears. We never found the woodchuck. There is now permanently a shotgun in our office. This is my new normal.