Old Country Road

It all happened so fast I wasn't quite prepared last night, but by 6 p.m. I found myself standing alone in my kitchen, with no husband or children and the sudden realization that it would be this way for the entire night and right then it seemed so quiet, and calm, and nice and I think my spine even tingled when it dawned on me that I actually had some alone time. My brain raced in a thousand different directions. The big question: what would I do with this spur of the moment free time?

What is "free time" anyway when you're a mom entrenched in the day to day mixed bag that is keeping a household running, keeping 3 kids fed, clothed, reasonably clean, engaged, learning, nurtured and loved and doing basically the same for a husband all while having this little "Walter Mitty-esque" side line that is a small business and it's offshoots (a.k.a. blog, new love of photography), not to mention somewhat of a real life that could be a PT career if I so chose?

Whatever it is, it certainly is different for each of us, which is one of the lovely things about life. We are all so different. I thought I'd really like my favorite little dinner, so I went and bought it. I thought I'd really love to have a little photo excursion, so I grabbed my camera. It was a beautiful night and while I was tempted to go toward civilization, I quickly turned my car the opposite direction and headed straight back out toward the countryside from which I came. You know, that place where the corn meets the beans.

And the roads seem to disappear into the fields.

Old barns and outbuildings dot the landscape,


and the trees sometimes cover the roads.

Now you might be thinking we live out in the "boonies" and I'm tempted to let you think that, it sounds so romantic and wild but the reality is we don't. We're really only 5 minutes from the huge upscale mall in town and only 20 minutes from the other huge, upscale mall in town, soon to be followed by more and more huge malls in town that are slowly, one by one, creeping their way out toward where we live. So we have the benefit of conveniences almost at our doorstep, but we can still just cross over one simple little county line and it looks like this:

and this,

and the sunsets can be seen without any trouble at all.