Country Living vs. City Living

Normally I wouldn’t be able to post anything in regards to “City Living”, but my brother and dear SIL gave me the opportunity to live in the city,  at their place of residence, in a house, on a paved street, in a neighborhood for a WEEK while they traveled to Colorado.  They also left me in charge of my two adorable nephews, Bear and Bug…(Check out my ‘Life With Nephews’ post here.)

There were more than a couple things that came to my attention right away being in the city:

1)  I got cell service 24-7!  That is serious business for me!  I live far enough into the country that I don’t have cell service at home.  When I hit the top of the mountain on my way into town, typically my phone BLOWS UP with text messages and voice mails!

I wasn’t even sure what to do with my phone.  When I am at home in the country, most of the time it stays in the car.  I don’t even bring it in the house. (Plus it is less likely to get lost that way.) Whilst in the city, just knowing that it could ring or buzz with a call or text at any given moment had me wondering where to put it, and checking it a ridiculously amount of times for no reason…I didn’t have a pocket to put it in, (which reminds me, I need to purchase sweat pants with pockets) nor did I want it too far away from me.  I did not however  need to worry about it too much due to the fact that all of my friends know that I normally don’t have cell phone service and hence my phone didn’t ring much at all…Bummer.

2)  I smelled funny.  Not funny like ‘hilarious’, ‘stinky’, or ‘different’…funny like ‘everything I brought with me smelled like I burn wood at my house’.  It has only been 3 years that I haven’t had to deal with a thermostat, but it is interesting how quickly you forget to regulate heat that way.  Remember these awesome USER FRIENDLY thermostats?

For us, regulating heat looks like this:  “Mom, I’m cold.” I start a fire in the stove…1 hour later, “Mom, I’m HOT!” I tell them to go outside until they get cold then come back in….Having a thermostat means constantly getting up when you are cold looking at it, with 74 degrees staring back at you and thinking, “It doesn’t FEEL like it’s 74 degrees in here.”  Having NO idea what button to push… Scared that you might blow up something because of the NASA like control system. (Not to dumb down NASA by any means).

It was also a little bit weird having all the rooms the same temperature at the same time!  That NEVER happens in my house.  In the winter, the living room is HADES and the bedrooms/kitchen are ICE.  In the summer, the living room is cool, the bedrooms/kitchen are HOT.

3)  Having cars drive by the house on a regular basis was about to put my dear daughter in the hospital!  LOL  It was very entertaining at the very least seeing her jump each time she heard a car go by for the first couple of days.  At our house, folks have to drive over a cattle guard before they get to the driveway.  With only my sister and parents past us on the gravel road, it is easy to know who is coming and going.  I’ve lived here long enough that I can pretty much tell who it is by how fast/slow they drive over the cattle guard.

Oh, and for those of you who have no idea what a cattle guard is, here ya go:

4)  There is none of this, “Bye Mom, see you in a couple of hours, we packed a lunch!”… If they say that at home, I’m like “Okay, do you have water and a first aid kit?”.  If they would have said that while we were ‘in the city’, I would have immediately had a heart attack!  LOL

And Finally….

5)  Having closer neighbors, but ones you aren’t close to.  Now, I realize that might not be the norm, and that a lot of you ARE close with your neighbors.  My neighbors are family, and they love me and would do anything to help me out…especially when something like this happens:

Dead battery….Car loaded with 4 kids VERY eager to see Grandma and Pa-paw…a SLEW of neighbors, and me having NO idea who to contact!  The people across the street had a nice big truck, so I figured that they might be able to help.

Notice how I managed to back up and block the street…yeah, that’s PERFECT!  The neighbors seemed less than enthused to help, but backed up the truck and allowed my battery to charge off of his for about 5 minutes before I could get it to turn over.  We were then off and running!

Idle chit chat with a neighbor that isn’t really MY neighbor well…let’s just say that it was awkward at the very least.

So there you have it…my take on Country Living vs. City Living.  I don’t know about you, but I think I will keep my country…