The Country

So my immediate family and in-laws know about the house. As do some of our friends. And the responses have been great. Some have had a twist where you can tell people don't know much about the town we're moving to so they say what they've heard about it, stereotypes included. That's OK with me because as I learned with planning my wedding, everyone has a frigging opinion about something.

So it's no secret that we're moving to the 'burbs. Yes, yes we are. And right now we are in the city with trains and cars and students and noise and convenience. We can walk or ride the train and don't need a car, but we do and we like having one to take us when the train is packed with obnoxious students or Red Sox fans. I digress.

Now we will move to a suburb. Sure, we'll be farther away from some of our favorite bars and restaurants. We won't have the building maintenance guy around any old time we need him to pick our lock when we get locked out of our condo while doing laundry. In the basement. Oh, and laundry? I won't miss doing that whole coin-operated thing down five flights of stairs and up again.

I grew up in a suburb and it wasn't until my first job when most people lived in Boston and wondered how people could do it. Live in a suburb. Where is everything? What is there to do? And I never considered my upbringing in a suburb because we weren't that far from the city. My hometown has changed, and for the better, but it's still too familiar for me to return to it in a different part of my life: as an adult. I love to visit, and the church I went to growing up is forever in my heart because that's where we got married, but I need something new. But don't get me wrong, I will always cherish my roots there.

And Bub, he didn't grow up in a city either so when we put in our offer for this house and we said to each other: Wow, this could be it, we felt the shock.

This is going to be our new surburban life.

But it wasn't until I started to spread the news about our house when people said that they really liked the idea of living in the country.

The country?

To me country is cows, manure, fields, and farms. It's not a suburb so much as it's like, you know, the country.

There are no cows where we are moving, but wait, we heard that the dairy there has the greatest ice cream....

It has not fields but forests because the town is home to various trails and conservation lands...

But we haven't seen any farms or smelled manure, er, not yet at least. I smelled enough of that in my later years of college because the farms were literally down the road and it really was country there. It smelled the worst during the summer. Open up the windows for fresh...manure scent.

So how do I feel when people say "Oh, I'd love to live in the country"?

Well, I think there must be a new outfit I can buy to fit the part.