Today as I sit here, I look out across the land where we just moved to. Lots of open space as the farmers haven’t gotten to it yet and I wonder, “why the heck is there snow? It is almost April. I shouldn’t be seeing any snow at all, this is ridiculous!”
We recently moved to a new location that is literally in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t even know it existed before the realtor showed it to us and I had a slight panic attack at the thought of moving here. But the fresh air got the better of me, along with the kind neighbors and the thought of having real food, not store bought food.
Oh, did I mention? Our neighbors to the east are Amish. They have 9 kids and she’s pregnant with the 10th! We have only been here for a couple of days, but they seem friendly. It’s strange seeing lots of little kids running through chasing chickens and driving horses.
Anyway, this morning my lovely little 6 year old decided to wake everyone up before the crack of dawn (like 4am) and so I was craving a cup of coffee.Being that our stuff isn’t even unpacked yet, I don’t have a clue where the coffee maker is amongst our hundreds of boxes. So I decided I would just get some crappy gas station coffee, because that would do.
So I get in the car and drive the 2.5 miles to the nearest gas station, hoping that there will, in fact, be some coffee there. As soon as I step out of the car, I look down and see that my shoes have just missed a large pile of horse poop and I think to myself, “Only in the country would you see horse poop at a gas station… why do they even go to the gas station? It’s not like horses use gas…” I walk inside of this dinky little gas station, where there’s a man sipping a drink on a barstool, and another behind the counter who is drifting in and out of sleep while standing.
I look around and ahh yes, a coffee machine to my left. It only has 2 flavors and they didn’t have any real coffee, but that was fine for me, it’s what I wanted anyway. I had to stand on my tip toes to see inside the cup as it was filling because it was up so high. I walk around this 20 sq ft gas station to see what else they had there. Apparently 2 bar stools, for their own makeshift mini-bar. They had a few snacks and drinks for the tired traveler who decided, for whatever reason, to stop there.
I go up to the counter and pull out my wallet, the guy behind the counter was standing there with his eyes closed, the other man sitting there just stared at me. A few seconds later he snapped himself awake, “That’ll be 89 cents.” all I had was a $20. I’m used to those $5.95 Starbucks drinks. He didn’t even punch it into the computer, just started pulling money out and handed it back to me. That’s when I looked down and saw that newspaper, “The Daily Dairy.” I was tempted to get it, but figured I would save that for next time.
I feel like I have stepped into another world and I’m sure next time I’ll be able to tell you those men’s names, since there can’t possibly be that many people in this country town. Maybe next time I’ll stop by the Market, or the “Junk Shop, full of people’s crap.” (yes, it really says that), or maybe my next update will be “I got chickens!”
Ah life, always exciting.
Until next time,
At Home with Cherise 