When Boo and I started to date (which only occurred once he got his driver’s license and could twist his mother’s car keys out of her hand) I remember marveling at how different our lives really were.
I grew up in the city. I thought nothing of being able to walk a few blocks in any direction and being able to buy a slushee or a chocolate bar.
Houses were meant to be only a few feet apart. That’s what fences were for. So you could peer through them and see what your neighbour was up to and pray you wouldn’t find the fat dude who lived next door sprawled out on a beach towel, naked as the day he was born soaking up the sunshine.
To me, life was about sidewalks and parks and bicycle rides into the river valley. If I was bored I’d hop a bus to the nearest mall and go see a movie or troll the food court looking for some cute boys to make goo goo eyes over.
Boo, on the other hand, lived not far from where we live now. His nearest neighbour was a few kilometers away and the only fat dude sunbathing close to him was the bull out in the south pasture.
While I peered into the neighbour’s window every time I did dishes, Boo saw fields and cows and nature every time he looked through a plate of glass. Buying a chocolate bar had to be a well planned excursion, not something he could do on a whim.
The city I grew up in.
Boo saw more deer on a daily basis than he did people.
At first it was a novelty to me, this foreign way of life, mixed with a bit of culture shock. I had a hard time understanding that if one wants pizza while living out in the country they either have to resign themselves to cold, chewy cheese pulled from the softened cardboard box that was soaked from grease after sitting in a box on the long car ride home. That, or one had to make it themselves.
I didn’t even know pizza could be made from scratch.
When Boo and I got knocked up unexpectedly started our family, I was living in an apartment in the city while working to save money for university. Boo was living on the family farm, working his cattle and farming for his uncle. We had to make a decision where we would raise our fledgling family.
City or country?
Since Boo’s head just about popped off and exploded into a million pieces every time he had to come into the city and fight for a parking spot, it was transparent I would need to pack up and move out to the where the cows and the deer play.
It didn’t take me long to adjust to my new found way of life. I hit a few rough patches at first.
(Read: I was like a crack addict jonesing for a fix. Just substitute the crack for a Big Mac.)
Yes, there was the night I forgot to close the screen door and a bat came swooping into our living room. I may have abandoned my two month old child in her bassinet as grabbed the cordless phone and ran screaming out of my house. I may have yelled at Boo (who was down the road at the neigbours house,) that I was being attacked by blood sucking ghouls.
I may have sat inside the barn on top of a hay bale, curled into a ball while my husband and Cowboy laughed their arses off and chased the bat out of my house, while making jokes about how I tossed my daughter to the wolves bats to save my own sorry arse.
What can I say? I panicked.
I have since learned bats are friendly disease riddled creatures who are just looking for a few mosquitos to eat and aren’t really interested in sucking my blood until I am nothing but a lifeless shell, withered and dried up.
I no longer blink an eye when my husband runs for his shotgun to shoot coyotes. Or beaver. Or anything else that seems to move out here.
I no longer think it’s strange that most trucks have gun racks mounted somewhere on them.
I no longer wonder why my husband insists I carry a chainsaw in the back of my car, after having had to use it more times than I can count to remove a tree that has fallen on a back road so my car can pass.
Nothing says fun like blowing up beaver dams to make sure the cattle have access to water. Where else would I be able to play with dynamite?
The view from my front deck on a foggy morning.
I love the country. I love the solitude and peace. I love the sound of the trees swaying to the music of the wind or the birds whistling near my window.
I love the friendly community and how everybody knows everybody. It’s a gossip loving girl’s dream come true.
I really love the country hair and fashion sensibilities displayed by man and woman alike. What can I say? I always feel so fashion forward. So pretty.
I have never regretted the decision to raise my children out in the wilds of Alberta. (Mainly because I can’t imagine being able to yell at them to get their naked arses out of the swimming pool and into the house while standing on my city stoop. It just wouldn’t have the same ring to it.)
Country living has brought a sense of peace into my life, a peace much needed after the passing of my son. I have the solitude I crave and the close knit community I need.
It also has G-Spot Welders and the odd hillbilly to amuse myself with.
Life is good out here in rural Alberta.
And it just keeps getting better.
As demonstrated when I ran into town the other day to pick up my kids from school. I found this truck parked outside the local liquor store. (I may have stopped there on the way to the school to buy some evening fortification. Maybe.)
Snapped with my cell phone.
How I love living out in the country.
Gotta love these country boys. They really know how to make a girl smile.
39 Comments
Well, we are in the country but not that far in the country! I don’t think I could live city. Only in the country can you yell at your kids or husband and not have the neighbors call the police. I loved the pics, it is beautiful country up there.
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*snicker*
i’m a city girl, myself. but i can see the appeal.
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And it’s nice to take a leak off your back porch without offending any neighbors.
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One of my wishes before I die: Live in the country. I think rural Alberta is the best!
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Gotta love the odd hillbilly, always amusing! I’m definitely a city girl, but I can’t resist visiting family out in the country every now and then. As long as I can leave again haha.
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Country Boys rock!
‘Stroke Her Inside’ Oh my holy hells bells.
Fabulous post darlin’.
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Gotta love the signage in the country. My latest favourite is “Wright Farms - Custom Mobile Slaughtering” at our chick suppliers. I feel sorry for the vegetarians out here.
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I guess I live in “country light” compared to you, but when I first moved to our house, I literally felt like I was leaving civilization. Sure, it’s suburbia, but for someone who used to live in the core of a major city, it’s an adjustment.
My favourite signage is one I saw on a pickup outside Houston: American by birth. Texan by the grace of God.
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Hmmmm….. we too live in the country. Instead of highrises we have snowcapped Rockies. Hubby grew up in suburban Washington DC and it never quite fit. He loves this rural CANADIAN rocky mountain lifestyle.
It would just be nice not to have to drive an hour to the nearest Starbucks/McDonalds/Boston Pizza/Arby’s/etc.
Oh… and hubby makes GRRRREAT pizza- bbq!
Echo the guy whizzing off his deck- not me!- my boys… I’ll never get anything to grow there….
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My husband is from a farming community, and my sister lives in the Kootenays. I’ve often wondered if I could give up Starbucks and the big smoke, and get the eff out of dodge. You make me think I could.
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Travis Erwin recommended your site and I’m glad he did.
The wilds of Alberta sounds like home for me. Although born and raised in Edmonton, I’ve lived a variety of places including the UK, and once my life in the corporate rat race is gone I’m coming home to the country.
Bumper stickers I remember, from an old boy friend who taught at the Lacombe High School, drove a red 3/4 ton Ford: “Preserve the old west, ball a cowboy” with a nice silhouette of a cowboy riding off into the sunset. He had to remove it from his truck before school restarted in September that year.
While in Alberta I lived on a farm with my horses and dogs, and drove a pickup with a gun rack in the back window, a Remington .30-6…very nice statement piece. Good for varmits, deer and trespassers.
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I WISH I had your view from my front porch. It is too many levels of wrong how people are crammed in around where I live.
And thanks for the reminder too, I need to pick up a bottle of evening fortification myself (a.k.a bottle of marital happiness).
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Haha, you should take a look at the view from my room… Just a big wall and when I stand very close to my window I can see the sky. But hey, my room is cheap and big, what more does a student want?
I just wanted to let you know I’m reading your blog and liking it.
Greetings from the Netherlands
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Boos lucky I didn’t meet you first. I used to live on an ISLAND! With rednecks! A redneck island!
How could you have resisted?
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Oh how I wish the pizza guy would deliver to us. But NOOOOO we are too far away.
Oh and we had a snake in our house today. So I got your bat beat. LOL
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I love your blog! I always get a kick out of it. We are city rednecks, love the country, hunting, shooting, fishing, wildlife, all of it! Our backyard view is of a creek, boys love it…….need more fortification…..
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hey sweetheart you really should ask Boo about the time his dad got the beaver that kept daming up the creek and how country bumkin we were with it . Or the time his city dwelling cousins lit the hay patches on fire in the back 40 pastures good old country times
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Dropped by from Travis’ place…love your layout! I too grew up in the country, but not in the DEEP country.
In the winter we had to put our boots out in the school hallway ’cause most of them smelled like some flavor of manure.
Nice writing!
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This post and Manager Mom’s post on the “Kum & Go” company seriously need to hook up.
http://managermom.blogspot.com/2008/06/and-winner-of-company-with-smuttiest.html
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I LOVE the truck pic!
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I suppose stroking her inside is much comfier than outside. Less rocks and prickles, y’know?
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Travis steered me in this direction, so here I am. I also grew up in the city–the burbs to be exact. We now live on 22 + acres with 2 kids and assorted animals. I can go outside in my whatevers—with or without my coffee—and no one knows or cares.
I love the smells in the barn, and the wide and uneven floor boards of this old house.
I can’t imagine living anywhere else.
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That bat story would have sooo been me, if that thing had flown into my house - baby, what baby - get me the f**k outta here.
Anyhow, I had no idea they sold mullet by the pound and what the hell is losted? Gotta loooove the country baby.
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LMAO. That was a good one. Reminds me of the Dodge saying…when everything else goes quiet you can still hear a Dodge Cummin in the night…haha. I like my country home too. I just wish I could get my guys to pee in the toilet instead of off the deck…
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I live in neither the country or the city. I live in the vast wilderness of what’s known as “The Boonies”.
We have a Starbucks.
BUT everyone here bucks wood for extra cash, owns a million fishing poles and votes voraciously.
It’s the country without the quiet.
It’s the city without the muggings.
It’s the Boonies.
I highly recommend it………if you don’t need good healthcare.
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here from trav’s…that truck reminds me of east texas. it’s all good…
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Travis sent me.
This is hysterical!!! Love your post on groceries too. What a fun blog!
We just sold our city house and are getting ready to go country. I’ve always been a country music fan, so I know I’m going to love it!
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But if you live out in the country, shouldnt you be able to stroke her anywhere? Inside or outside?
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My wife is a country gal, when she was dragged to rural Oklahoma by her new hubby, she wound up on a 40 acre small farm. Then he died, leaving her with no income, and a mountain of bills. She became a self taught chicken/hog/cattle rancher. When she met me, she reminded me every so often that she knew how to turn bulls into steer, and she had the tools. Me being the city slicker, well, i had envisions of a deadly device, LOL.
Yeah, she would go outside ever so often at night and shoot off a few deer slugs from her shotgun, just to keep the neighbors thinking she was nucking futz.
When we married, some 12 years after she was living single in the wilds, she had to seel off most of her arsenal, shotguns, rifles, handguns, bows, and boxes of knives. Now she just has a few, and she is very good with all of em.
But, she will take back outside EVERY insect she finds inside (except skeeters), will tend to every bird, animal and whatever she finds hurt, and feeds them all daily.
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I used to think our property was pretty countrified, but now I don’t know. It’s the lack of fresh mullet that’s making me wonder.
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We live in a ridiculously small town, which is pretty much like living in the country. I had to shoo rabbits off my front step with a BROOM this morning. I may as well buy a cow.
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We’re kind of rural too - certainly not as rural as you are, but…outskirts rural. One afternoon I snapped a great picture of a sign hanging on a wire fence that read, written in shaky black paint, GIRLFRIEND WANTED, followed by a phone number.
So naturally, I called and asked the young male who answered if he was looking for a girlfriend.
He enthusiastically answered that yes, he was!
*snort*
I love the country too.
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Just moved back out in the country last year and I know what you mean. There is a lot to be said for leaving your doors unlocked and not worrying about what you wear to the mailbox. Nakey swimming has its merits too.
I think sometimes you are the Pioneer Woman’s equivalent to Canada.
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Still swooning at the city pic with the northern lights. Have never seen them, but would loooove to.
Would also like to see you wield a chainsaw.
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i am dying to live in the country. i think it sounds awesome! in a big fish, small pond way. i don’t know if that makes sense…
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Who needs bats to suck you into a lifeless shell? we’ve got kids!
(Or I bet the guy with that truck’d do it if you asked real nice.)
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I married me a country boy too but we reside in the city. You can’t take the country out of the boy AT ALL. You can put him into hand-tailored suits, you can send him to a gay hairdresser (he will really protest at first but after all he’s the gay who SET YOU GUYS UP IN THE FIRST PLACE so he’s bound to it) but he will roll around town in a ridiculously big truck. It’s just bound to happen.
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I found your site on faves.com bookmarking site.. I like it ..gave it a fave for you..ill be checking back later
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found your site on del.icio.us today and really liked it.. i bookmarked it and will be back to check it out some more later ..
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