Slowing Down

One of the reasons I was looking forward to living so far out of the city was for the slower pace that country life brings. Of course, the first two weeks up here were a whirlwind of moving, finding and unpacking the necessities, and fixing up the old house.

But yesterday, finally, I experienced slow. We woke up, did our chores, and had school. There was no where to be going, so school was not rushed. We had quiet time (read: Mom's nap time) for the first time in two weeks, there was time for baking cookies together in the afternoon, unpacking a few boxes, and plenty of free time for Two Little Girls to enjoy playing dress-up and to parachute stuffed animals off the upstairs banister, plenty of time for building a fire and reading aloud a long chapter from a book after chores were finished.

I wasn't racing home to fix dinner, I wasn't rushing through housework or getting impatient when math took longer than it should. And I wasn't completely exhausted at the end of the day.

Life in the city is tiring. There's constantly something we have to do, or want to do, or feel like we ought to be doing. And everywhere we have to go sucks up a huge part of our day. Up here, it's different. There's nowhere to go - no errands, no shopping, no field trips. Granted, there is plenty that needs to be done, but it will still be there tomorrow. As long as the wood is chopped, the animals are fed, and the children are cared for reasonably well, I'm good.

It's comforting up here, this lack of rushing around and always going. Yesterday was the first time in... well, years, that I felt like 24 hours was just the right number of hours in one day.

Of course, that will all change when I have to spend an hour each way driving into the city when there are things we need. But for right now, I'm just going to appreciate the quiet, peaceful solitude that our new country life affords.