Country Life

There are lots of reasons why I like living in the country. Too many to try to list. But one of our favorite country pastimes is joy riding down back roads we have and haven't visited before. Mostly, I like the thrill of the new roads looking for wonderful and strange things. Bryon likes looking for wildlife (he ran our truck into the ditch once while he was looking for turkeys and it had to be pulled out by a farmer's tractor).

Grace likes the rides too because Daddy shares his sunflower seeds with her and they both spit them out the window. Okay, Daddy spits his out the window, hers end up all over the car seat, seat and floor but she sure likes those seeds. We've gotten into the habit of stopping at Hannah's for ice cream cones to snack on during the ride. Those Ice Cream rides are the best on a hot summer evening. We've seen some awesome sunsets on the tops of those hills and we've seen some goofy stuff in the hollers.

One weekend while Grace was at Nana's, Bryon and I went on an Ice Cream Ride and passed an old farm place with a concrete cattle ramp for loading cows and sitting on top of that ramp, right in plain view, was a old yellow Tom cat. Not unusual sure but right next to it sat a raccoon. Now, it took a few seconds to figure out exactly what I was looking at but that was about the nuttiest thing I think I've seen. Okay, maybe not THE nuttiest but it was right up there. One day in Niangua walking down one of the streets I saw a goose and a dog walking side by side like they were best buddies. Now you don't see THAT everyday.

County life is pretty good as long as the electricity stays on. I'm a grid girl for sure. Of course sometimes we get too much electricity like today when I stopped by our tiny little post office for some stamps. I tried to buy a book of stamps but I hate those ugly "forever" stamps. I think they made them ugly on purpose so they wouldn't sell as many but could say, "See we tried to save you money". I asked for some pretty ones and the Post Mistress pulls out some cute heart stamps and says "I can sell these to you tomorrow, but I can't today." What? So I decided I'd just take the ugly ones since I was there. I whipped out my debit card and she says "Can't take a credit or debit today, there's our machine sitting down there on the floor. Lightening strike. Can't use it until tomorrow." Well, I still don't have stamps.

Another good thing about country life is there is always tomorrow...and maybe another Ice Cream Ride.