I was initially a bit apprehensive about moving back to the country.  I loved visiting my grandparents’ farm when I was a kid, but when I lived in the country with my first husband, it just wasn’t what I expected.  I was happy to move back to town, where I lived but a few blocks from the major entertainments (library, theater, bowling alley).  I liked walking places and stopping to chat with people along the way.

But as time wore on, I did less and less of that.  So when Seymour pitched a move to the country after five years being miserable in town, I grudgingly decided to give it another shot.  He assured me many times over that this time would be different, and boy, has it!

While most of the negatives of late have been due to Mother Nature (thanks a lot for all the water you dumped in my basement), there have been some notable positives as well:

• The peace and quiet.
Let’s face it, life in the country is just more peaceful.  There are no neighbors out mowing their lawn at some ungodly hour of the morning or having parties in their driveways that last late into the night.  There are no kids tromping through the yard on their way home from school.  There are no yappy little neighbor dogs who start barking every time I open the fridge in my own kitchen.

At least, I hope there aren’t.  I haven’t heard any yet. 😀

• The lock on the bathroom door.
Sure, the bathroom doors in our old house had locks.  But they were old locks that were difficult to turn, and we never got around to replacing them.  The hook-and-eye lock on the bathroom in our new house is so much simpler.  I don’t feel like I’m going to break a finger(nail) every time I go to use it.

• Having an office I can lock the kids out of.
Before we put our old house up for sale, Seymour and I shared an office.  At first, our desks were across the room from each other so we could share the floor mat we’d bought to keep our desk chairs from sinking into the carpet.  But after a while, we got tired of sharing – it made the room feel tiny and it just didn’t work out well.  We rearranged things a bit, which improved traffic flow through the room, but sharing an office remained far from ideal.  Each of us wanted our own space, and we wanted that space to be one the kids weren’t traipsing through all the time.

Our new house features an extra-long living room that, once upon a time, was actually two rooms.  The people we bought the house from took out the dividing wall some time ago, and we plan to put it back in so that Seymour can have his own office space.  I get the enclosed front porch for my office, which is in desperate need of a remodel.  The floor is still sloped (presumably from when it was originally installed and before it was enclosed), the windows are horribly inefficient, the door doesn’t fit properly in the frame, and it’s not climate-controlled.  Once we fix all of those things and get a proper outside door in place, I can turn the doorknob around so that the locking mechanism is on the office side of the door instead of the dining room side.  Then Thumper can’t turn the lock and waltz into my office any time he feels like it, like he does now.  He also won’t be able to lock me in my office, like he did the other night. 😉

• The view.
Sure, there’s a highway running right alongside the house.  And sure, there are unsightly power lines all over the place.  And yes, the blinking lights on the nighttime horizon from the wind farm down the road are irritating as all get-out.  But!  If you wander out into the back corner of our yard, where it gets the darkest, and spread out a blanket in the grass, there’s not a lovelier sight in the whole county than the stars that shine above our little bit of heaven.

Except for possibly the view from the edge of our grove:

• The yard.
We have a yard!  And it’s huge!  At least, it’s huge by comparison.  Our old yard was not so much a yard as a tiny little strip of grass on either side of our house.  It’s wonderful to have a place to put a swingset for the kids.  And they have trees to climb!  Bubbles is completely enamored with climbing trees.  As a former tree climber myself, I’m ecstatic that my kids now have this opportunity.

I’m sure if I sit down to think about it some more, I can come up with a dozen other things I like about living on the farm, but for right now, I think I’ll leave it at this.  After all, it’s time to go try out another new favorite of mine: sleep! 😀

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