Weirdness.

They were so used to the conveniences and oddities of  city life. Starting over here in the country, lots of things that they took for granted changed. And likewise the way they lived, made a bit of a U-Turn too.

A few things she noticed right away.

"1. We have a 'gallon limit' on garbage. Once we surpass that limit, we get charged per bag.
"2. Anyone who drives by our home waves, whether or not they know us. And likewise, when we drive down our street it is customary to wave at anyone outside their house.
"3. People in the country don't typically appreciate a pit bull. Most people don't mind our black lab mix once they see her, but when our pit bull steps out, they step back. (she doesn't get to meet very many people here, but I think she keeps us safe.)
"4. We cannot get unlimited internet. We have surcomed to counting Gigabytes like they are going out of style.
"5. No unlimited internet means... NO NETFLIX. This is a big one. We are learning to adjust.
"6. Water?? We need to go get water, since the new house and gutter system is not set up. And do you know how much water costs?? $0.25/100 gallons! We fill up at the neighboring town's police department. They have a quarter machine for city water. And we bring it home.
"7. If you are at a store and you need assistance, you wait until they are done talking to their friends, who may or may not be workers at the store also. People seems to know everyone here. Being "on the clock" does not mean 'stop and help the customers' here, apparently.
"8. When you don't have running water, you don't really need more than a gallon of water to wash your whole body, including washing and rinsing your hair.
"9. People who talk about going to the country to get some quiet time, might not have ever been there before. Between the frogs, birds, crickets, squirrels and cicadas, there is no quiet here.
"10. There are more stars in the sky than I even knew possible."

Things were just slow there. And from a City Girl's point of view, inconvenient. No one seems to be in a hurry to get anywhere or do anything. But then again... isn't that why they are there too? It was just going to take some getting used to.

How Long Does It Take To Tie Up Loose Ends Already??

Some things she committed to before she moved...

Girl Scouts. She have been the leader of two troops since her 13 and 14 year old were 7 and 8. They eventually merged. She promised them this last year of Girl Scouts no matter what the moving plans turn out to be. Then they switched to once-a-month meetings to make it reasonable for her to keep my promise, and changed it to Mondays so she could keep her second commitment at the same time.

Jr Roller Derby. Her 14 year old was introduced two years ago to Roller Derby at a Girl Scout outing. She has been hooked since that day. And Cincinnati is her team. Once a month on a Monday (and an occasional Thursday or Saturday) they would travel back there for a practice so she could stay on the team. And that is the same day  of the Girl Scout meeting.

Keeping her 8 year old up with the relationship of her best friend. She knew this sounded petty. she knew people would say, 'Let her meet other kids from her own area.' And as true as all that was... Moving was such a upheaval of their lives already, she just wanted to make it a little easier if she could.

Things would get "normal" in time. But for now, just every now and then, she want her kids to get a moment of comfortable memories back into them.

You don't have water? What?

By the second week there was still no water. The cistern was in, but not hooked up. The septic was in also; it was not hooked up. They were to do the hook-up themselves. Plus also they needed to hook up electric for the pump. This her husband and she would do together also. One of the things she would tell people when they asked how things were going was that they didn't have water yet. So it was peeing in the woods, whore's baths, and Laundromats for them.

Their friends said, 'well it is like camping. You would do this on a vacation.' Her kids replied, 'yes, except we are not camping.'

There was more than just peeing in the woods to worry about, in the beginning. Like cleaning dishes, or brushing their teeth, cleaning their bodies, drinking. They found that the creek down the first hill and across the first trail they came to, which had some good running water due to the months of heavy snow, was good clean drinking water. So they began to haul water up the hill for everyday use by the gallon. She would fill up 8-10 gallons of water from the running creek a day and walk them to the bottom of the hill. Her older girls would carry them up the hill to the trailer, 2 gallons at a time. It was a big exhausting hill. That was their exercise for the day.

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Marley explaining about how fairies live, in the new fairy creek we just discovered.

Sometimes before they brought the water up they would stay at the bottom of the hill and walk the trails for fun. They began to learn the land. Their walks eventually turned into hikes. They would walk together and talk about girl stuff, discuss a world of "what if's" and "when I grow up's". They started most of their conversations with, "You know what I like?" or "You know what I hate?" or "You know what I wish?" and off they would go on one tangent or another, laughing at each other all the way. Digging into the woods to check on the wild peach trees and blackberries. Looking for daffodils or daisies which seemed to grow everywhere. They would  crawl to the side of the pond and watering holes to check out the status of the frog eggs and tadpoles.

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Baby froggie eggs. Yay! We have a ton of tadpoles with legs and tails that we have been following around all day. Life is real today.  

They began to do this when they worked too, clearing trails with rakes, digging for the garden, hauling good dirt from around the land. Talking, laughing, exploring all the way. It felt happy, even though they, from appearances, were missing so many things. It was a good time, even though it was usually hard work in the hot sun. Just she and her girls, carrying on.

She said, 'Some day when my girls have kids, and their kids think they have it so rough, my girls can laugh and tell them how we made them pee and poo in the woods for weeks while we made our home livable. How we brought their lives to such a state that even a trip to the library was big excitement. When we are long gone, they will have these memories to share with each other. They will laugh about it together. It will bring them closer.'

Whether the weather...

Moving here... this was the worst winter in this area for she can't even remember how long. It was coooooold. And it had snowed and snowed. Then it melted. Then it rained and froze over. And snowed on top of the froze-over ice.

So they had to be out by the end of February. The trailer movers couldn't even get to the land to set the temporary trailer for weeks. And she and Bret were trying to lay electric pipe down the big trench while sinking in 12 inch thick cold Kentucky mud and muck. The buyers of their house kindly gave them a couple more weeks to get their bearings. And still more snow. And more ice. And then it warmed up and the mud got worse. Then it froze up again. It just seemed like it would never end.

A few days after one snow, she and her husband tried to come by and drop a load of their belonging off in the barn. It was a two and a half hour drive from their St Bernard house to their new country life, so it was not short feat to get here. When they pulled into their street it was still a little snowy and a bit icy but nothing unmanageable. They drove the winding road until they hit the non county-maintained section, with woods to both sides. They couldn't get the van up the hill. It just slid and slid. Finally they backed up and turned around. Back to Cincinnati they went, with their tails between our legs.

What they learned... there will be days, here in their little patch of the woods, where they can't go anywhere even if they want to. They might get snowed in. They might be stuck. So as she looked out her window of her trailer that she finally moved in to, and she saw the snow coming down AGAIN, in the middle of March, she shook her head and was thankful for food, toilet paper, board games, and her family, all in the same spot.

In the beginning there was nothing...

When she moved from Chicago to Cincinnati about 19 years ago, she couldn't believe how small a city could be. Then a few years later, when she married Bret and he moved her to Hebron, KY, she remembered thinking, 'What do you mean, the IGA closes at 10pm?? What if it is 11 and you are hungry?' They eventually made their way back to Cincinnati, where they spent our last 8 years in a small Island of Cincinnati called St Bernard. And that takes us to today... the hills of KY, where they moved onto 115ish acres of land with nothing but their themselves, our dogs, and a small trailer.

Introductions later, but basically she had 5 kids. Two boys who were older and moved on their own still living in Cincinnati, and three girls ranging from 8-14 who have moved with her to the hills of KY to learn a new way of life. And her KY loving husband, who has been trying to get them back to KY anyway, since the day they had moved to Cincinnati.

They had just spent our first week there. And the pain that our kids (and herself maybe a little bit) were expecting, hadn't really seemed to come to fruition. Adjustments happened pretty quickly, and as she sat there getting ready to head back to Cincinnati with the kids to tie up some loose ends, she was a little surprised to look back on their last week and see how well we are all handling our new life.

For starters, they were without water, stove, heat or tv. Their internet usage is being monitored to see how many GB they used. Without cable they would have to pay per GB and since her husband would work at home now, he was the one who got to eat up most of the GB for now. So almost no internet for her and the girls.

How could they manage without all of this, you ask, but of course mostly how can they survive without internet!! A family whose kids were Facebooking and Vining and Netflixing and Googling 8-10 hours a day before this week. A family who peed in toilets and took long lavish bubble baths. A family who watched tv all day when they weren't on the computer, and fought over who was on Netflix because only two people could use it at a time. A husband and two of the kids who couldn't sleep without the tv playing. A mother who HATES being cold.

Stick around and find out.