City Girl, Country Life and Cows that Moo in the night

They say that you learn something new every day. Whoever “they” are. Since moving out to what I fondly call the sticks, I have learned many things. Things like being without high speed internet won’t kill you, but it will make you extremely irritable and amazingly enough, much more productive with non-computer things. Imagine that!

Starbucks and Publix are no longer 5 minutes away, so stocking up on everything I need once a week is becoming a habit. I do get some funny looks when I ask if skinny vanilla lattes are available in gallon to-go jugs.

I’ve also learned that my driving habits have to change. I cannot  just barrel down the country roads as you are going home as you can in the city. The city has cops and red lights, the country has rabbits, coyotes and deer. And the occasional cow that gets out of  pasture and loves to stand motionless in the middle of the road much like a dog turd on the sidewalk. And unlike said dog turd, cows do not just squish and squirt under your tires, they tend to be immobile and stare at you mournfully as you honk, wave and do everything but threaten to turn them into filets if they don’t move out of your path. Then they slowly ramble to the other lane, mooing their displeasure as you go by.

It’s almost like they know you just had their cousin on the grill last night. 

And when there is a snowmageddon and an ice storm pending? You must stock up on generator gas, flashlights, sterno, canned goods and candles and make sure you have food that can be cooked on the grill. Oh, also, bread, milk and eggs. I assume this is for some sort of french toast emergency. This is all according to my mother and other relatives who live in Hickville near me. According to me it will involve only two words, Embassy Suites. They then reminded me that if the hills out of our lake compound ice over, I’m not going anywhere. This causes me to use more words, many which can’t be written here.

I have thus devised a plan to escape using one of my boats. If the fuel lines don’t freeze. And the battery isn’t dead. By the way, apparently on my lake the fish begin biting at the ass-crack of dawn. Even though my house is about 50 feet above our pier, sound travels a long way on the water, which means that the fisherman who begin talking at 5am, bless their hearts, WAKE ME UP. I often reciprocate by sending a large barking dog who hates boats down to give them morning greetings and wish them luck in their endeavors.

But I may have learned one of the most important lessons of country living a few nights ago, sitting by the fire at a friends house. It was a Sunday, which means NO ALCOHOL sales in. Coming from a state where there are drive-thru daiquiri stores, this lack of accessibility to alcohol came as quite a shock. I quickly learned that one should stock up on Saturday if one is planning to have a gathering on Sunday.

The invite to my friend’s was a last minute thing  but knowing my pals, I knew they would have plenty of their own to share and I was happy to go over, see my friends, meet some new people and have somewhere to hang out and visit. About five minutes after I got there and said hey to everyone, my friend the host asked if I would prefer beer or wine with a little smirk on his face.

He then offered a disclaimer.

Knowing my friend, this is never a good thing. Apparently, “someone”  forgot to restock the beer fridge (it was never determined whether it was him or his lovely wife) and my choices were Natural Light or Box o’Wine. My friend laughed when he was saying this because, like me, he knows that the real name for that beer is “Nasty Lite” and that Box O’Wine usually requires 3 days and a Box O’Aspirin/Antacid to get over. We laughed about it for a minute and he then offered a third option, his uncle’s infamous Chilton County home brew. For you city folks, this is also known as moonshine. Or, if you prefer, white lightning, kickapoo joy juice, bathtub gin, hillbilly pop and a plethora of different terms.

I weighed my options and then decided I would gently sip my jar of coconut flavored homemade hooch on the rocks, thus ensuring a good time with my friends old and new and a slow, manageable buzz. I didn’t want to get drunk in front of new people that I had just met. I usually save that for the second date.

I went back and got my car two days later and found my bra dangling from the rear view mirror.

Next time I’ll have Box O’Wine.