30 Day Challenge – Day 29 – How 'Bout Them Apples

Day 29 – The night the lights went out in Petersburg

There was a power outage in New Salem tonight. It occurred approximately 30 minutes after I put away a couple hundred dollars of groceries, because that is just the way our luck goes these days. I was amazingly calm. Maybe all this fresh air has affected my stress level – I should test my BP and find out. Instead of freaking out, we spent an hour on the front porch; rode bikes through the village; and basically just enjoyed the silence.

The deer who visited me a couple mornings ago was in our backyard and said hello (she didn’t actually speak, but if she could she would have said hi). Weezer got a good long walk and is now passed out on the bed. It was a lovely couple of hours of complete silence – well, Arden wasn’t silent but everything else was. It was truly lovely.

Thankfully the power came back on about 2 hours after it went off, so no groceries were lost in the process, but I have to say I would have been ok if they had been lost, because the peacefulness of complete silence is something worth way more than groceries.

I know I joke a lot about the culture shock I am experiencing moving to the woods, but honestly, this is an amazing place to live. If you had asked me 10 years ago if I would be ok living in the woods, I would have said – “Have you lost your ever-loving mind??”. But today, this seems like the exact place we are supposed to be. I told T tonight that every day this place feels more like home – he agreed. It isn’t perfect, but it is home and it is beautiful and we are blessed.

I may set up a Go Fund Me site for some snake boots – but other than that, I’m cool with living with nature. I have really good bug spray, a husband who kills snakes and central air conditioning – so I am good.

On a side note, we had a chimney sweep come out today to check out our fire place – I wasn’t here because I had to work – but I was hoping for Dick Van Dyke (aka Burt from Mary Poppins) but it was the son of a family I knew from my adolescence. He saw my picture in the house and asked T if I was a Hohimer! How funny is that?!? The world is way smaller than we even know – the chimney sweep knew my dad – hilarious!

Only 1 day left of this project. Not sure what the final day will hold but I am pledging to post 2 times a week after we are done – maybe more, but no less. This has been fun! Thank you for reading along with my mind’s wandering.

See ya tomorrow!