Straddling Two Worlds

This is what I looked at while drinking my coffee on Sunday morning. Lovely, isn't it? This is the view from my kitchen door. This is what I get to look at every morning, starting next week. (The ducks are decoys, by the way - we're trying to lure in some real ones. We've seen them in the area, and we'd like them to stay.) If I walk past the pond to the right, there are some happy sunflowers to greet me. Mornings in the country belong to the birds, just as evenings belong to the cows. The frogs, of course, work the night shift. These prominent headliners are supported by an endless cast of bit players and extras - dragonflies, spiders, mice, rabbits, coyotes, snakes...and countless others we'll never see. I can spend my whole day hearing nothing at all except the windmill and the sounds of animals. I could go for days or weeks without seeing another person. I can see stars at night.

This is how I've been spending my weekends. So it has already become quite a shock to my system to spend my week in the smoggy, noisy, hot, traffic-congested city. We're already finding that the minute we hit "town", we want to turn around and go back. It amazes me how quickly we've settled into country life, and how other-worldly it already feels to pull into the parking garage of my office building. I walk through the marbled lobby of my building feeling as though I'm living a double life. Feeling as though I have a secret. The house that I've shared with my husband for seven years no longer feels like home to either of us. I'm anxious to get the rest of our things into the house this weekend, so we don't have to live the "two home" life anymore. We've given ourselves over fully to the new one.