When I tell you that I live in California you probably bring up visons of a beautiful sunny day, lounging by the ocean with my long blonde hair and beautiful bikini body.
What most people don't realize is that not everyone that lives in California lives on the beach or even close to the beach. Yes the sun is shining, a blazing heat most of the time that you can hardly escape from. We sleep with fans on every night in the summer. And not just one fan. We have the ceiling fan and 2 box fans in our bedroom. I have been known to go to sleep with a wet towel draped over my body only to wake up in the morning to have it completely dry.
And as for that bikini body, I have owned 2 bikini's in my life time. Both hit the Goodwill bag not long after I was out of highschool. We are all for full coverage here in Californ-I-A.
So I've told you all before that I live in the country right? We are about 12 miles from ANYTHING. (Thus the Mom Taxi for the teenager). I didn't always live in the country. When I lived with my parents we lived in another city not too far away but we were in a nice new housing developement full of tract homes, planned parks and a community pool.
Shortly before my husband I got married we found our little house for more than half of the price we were trying to pay rent for in the city. The whole idea of being able to afford a whole tube of toothpaste and not the trial size version was enough to get us moving into our little fixer upper.
When we first moved out here I quit my job. I wasn't making much over the minimum wage and it just seemed silly to commute for a few hours.
Enter long days of staying at home by myself, in the country, with no one to talk to.
So I'd sleep in (I never was the type to get up and get my husband "off to work").
The first time I heard a crop duster flying low over my house I seriously almost crapped my pants. I was laying there and heard this loud plane engine and my first instinct was to run outside. QUICK! Before I was killed by the plane. I ran outside in my little nightie and looked to the heavens to find out WTH was going on. That's when I saw it.
A crop duster.
So I looked around hoping no one saw me run outside scared to death I was dying and quickly walked inside the house. Where of course I could never fall back asleep.
Just when I THINK I've gotten used to the country life (it has been 15 years since we moved out here), I hear the low rumble of the crop duster coming. It's loud swoops back and forth over our house and all I can do is laugh at myself and that first time it scared me so much!
Life and Times of Julie
I am seriously cracking up over here. I live in the Mississippi Delta and crop dusters are as much a part of daily life as breakfast during this time of year.
ReplyDeleteTo this day they sneak up on me sometimes and I experience the sheer terror that you're talking about... when it sounds like a freight train is about to come through your roof!
I could totally relate to this. Thanks for the laugh.
I don't know how you cope being in the country. I live in a small city compared to what I grew up in, and even that gets a little pokey for me now and then but at least there are about 6 Starbucks within 5 minutes drive!
ReplyDeleteha, that would have knocked the wind out of me. I was 25 miles away from the center of the earthquake zone yesterday but I was driving into a carpark and felt nothing. My girlfriends were waiting at a park and they said they really felt it but it wasn't that bad.
ReplyDeleteI am one of those who live by the beach, but there is no laying out on it and there is no bikini wearing. Sometimes I secretly wish I could fit into one so I could feel young again but alas, that's not going to happen. Not with my junk food addiction anyway.