{god's country}

In my last entry I made a reference to "God's Country" which is my mom's pet name for how far I live from the city and more importantly her house. Actually, on a good day, it's only 65 minutes to her house. However, when we hit traffic, it's a completely different story. At the beginning of our relationship, George (a.k.a. My hunka, hunka burning love) and I made that trip quite often as we were desperately infatuated with each other. As our relationship got more serious it became apparent we would have to choose:

A) A house in Melrose Park within a 10 minute radius of both my mom & sister. This option would have satisfied me, the city dwelling, downtown clubbing, manicure every week girl, except for the unfortunate fact that my ex was also located within that radius.

B) A house in the country, actually George already had a house in the country, pretty convenient huh? Of course this option satisfied him being the lemonade drinking, country music listening, tractor loving guy that he is.

OR

C) we find a house in a central location. Knowing I could probably manipulate finding a house in a more urban area outside of that 10 minute radius that encompassed my mom, sister and ex I was very keen on this idea.

The choice was obvious to George as he had an established house and I had given mine up. I have no idea why the choice didn't seem as obvious to me!!! After many, many, many hours of discussion and tears on my part, we decided we would "try" his house. I stress "try" because his country house was actually a country cottage with two lovely bedrooms, a kitchen a bathroom and a living room! Yep, that's it! Not exactly the best set-up for a family of six! But we gave it a whirl and here we are almost seven years later permanent "country" residents. (I'll discuss the trauma that accompanied this transition in another post.) We've gone from the two bedroom country cottage to the remodeled three bedroom country cottage to the ugliest, oldest house in Johnsburg to our final resting place....George's version of my Gone With the Wind dream; built with his own hands here in "God's country".

So this is my traffic....

I know it's a bad picture, but I took it while driving!

The spots are actually from my dirty windshield!

I ran out of wiper fluid.

This is my view....

out of the bedroom window

and my front porch.

These are our pets.

I'm telling you, people who knew me before would never have imagined this is really who I was!!

One of the many organic egg layers!

The pygmy goats--Bentley & MiniCooper. See what happens when you don't have malls nearby!

The bane of my early morning existence!! I've actually named him Chicken Soup!

Juniper Rose & Oliver George

(Another funny story for a later blog.)

Now folks, (see I even use folks in sentences what HAS happened to ME???) the vision of my dream home consisted of porches and swooping willow trees and neighbors. Yes....I think in my vision I had neighbors AND a mall. But as I adjust to my new street lights (the stars) and my new neighbors...oh wait nothing to adjust to there! Simply stated, I love it here and wouldn't want to be anywhere else! Thank goodness for God's Country!