How We're Rollin'

I got to see my grandson yesterday for the first time in weeks!

Elannah, Sophia, Little Gary, and I went to visit Sian and Tyler yesterday. We used the excuse that we needed to pick up a keyboard that Sian no longer needs (and that Elannah wanted), but it was really about seeing Tyler. We all needed a Tyler fix.

I would show you pictures, but I was way too busy playing with Tyler to take any. He will randomly yell, "M, N, O, P!" because that's his favorite sequence of the alphabet, though he isn't quite two years old yet. He had us all in stitches, and he loved being the center of attention. We got our Tyler fix, and life was good.

With gas prices so low, I wish we could take longer road trips right now. Obviously, that's still a tricky proposition with the Pandemic Panic and all--and Husband and I are still working, even if it's at home, and even if I'm not being asked to do much to earn my pay at the moment. For several reasons, it's not the right time to be gallivanting off to parts yet unexplored. Missed opportunities...

Speaking of earning my pay, however, I got to substitute as the driver on a school lunch delivery today. I picked up a number of lunches--along with two lunch ladies, Candy and Kaylynn--from the local junior high, and we headed out to one of the far-flung small rural towns that is in our school district. I parked the bus at the tiny town hall, and the three of us had a friendly conversation while waiting for people to come and pick up lunches for their kids.

I cannot over exaggerate to you how beautiful it was out there. The town is sprawled along the valley floor between mountain ranges, but you could miss it if you didn't know it was there. There is nothing taller than a two-story house, and there are a limited number of roads, some of them dirt, leading through the main part of town and then out to ranches and farms.

The temperature today was perfect: sunny and warm, but not too warm. There were no traffic noises at all, unless you strained your ears for the very occasional car going down the distant highway. All I could hear was the sound of chirping birds and the light, refreshing wind in the trees.

Bucolic. Peaceful. Lovely. Serene. I bet you can see all the stars at night.

Candy lives in this town, so Kaylynn and I asked her what it was like to live there and how much land costs. I did some looking when I got home, and it varies between dirt cheap ($200K for five acres) to more expensive for a customized, high-end three-bedroom house on ten acres, though that listing is still under $700K. It's still cheaper than most places out in the Mountain West.

The town has no commercial entities. You have to drive all the way into my burg to shop or get gas, so you'd have to plan ahead for your needs; but the amazing view and the country quiet would make up for all of that.

All of the firefighters are volunteers, but Candy says that if there's a fire, most of the town's people also show up and help however they can.

I recently stumbled upon a magical building method called barndominiums (or barndos, for short), and my imagination got fired up thinking about buying some land and building a steel-frame barn-turned-spacious home. Oh, I have such dreams!

Here's one of my favorites because I really like how the owner planned out the space and the materials she used:



I won't bore you right now with my ideas about how I would configure the space, but the options are pretty endless when you have such wide spans without the need for supporting columns or walls.

Anyway, when we got back from our lunch deliveries and I dropped Kaylynn back at the school, the head lunch lady begged me to take all the extra lunches from all the lunch routes--about thirty lunches total--plus two crates of leftover milk cartons. If I didn't take them, the lunch ladies would be forced to disassemble all of the lunches and put all the components into separate places (some being refrigerated or frozen), and some of the items would go bad before the next lunch delivery on Monday. That would be tragic. I happily took all of the lunches off their hands and distributed most of them and the milk around to neighborhood families with kids. We kept five of the lunches, but I have way too much milk in my fridge now. We are not heavy milk drinkers. I will need to give away more milk.

Husband and Joseph have been helping my FIL build a new wooden deck to extend the concrete patio in his backyard. The new deck covers the patch of lawn that just can't seem to keep grass growing (I'm sure the dogs don't help). They have all learned a lot of new skills, and they've all become a little sunburnt, but they've done a great job.

This is how we're rolling.