We’re on Sick Day #10 with at least one sick kid at home and there’s no end in sight.  I can’t wait for spring.  Everyone has taken a turn except for me, knock on wood.  Jack, the generous kid he is, has taken one for the team by hanging onto his fever for 7 days.  As much as I love spending time with him, the milk is a week past its expiration, the bread is moldy and we’re out of ice cream.  I need to get things done.  So, I threw in the towel and took him to the closest Urgent Care office to see if we could get our hands on something more potent than Motrin.

At the front desk I picked up a business card to add to the collection in my wallet.  You never know when you’ll be asked to jot down your doctor’s info on the spur of the moment.  As I was rooting around looking for a vacant slot in which to stick  it, I noticed the doctor’s name.  (Now keep in mind, even though this is somewhat closer to the big city, I still consider it Rural Idaho.)  His name was:

Dr. Rusty Dodge

No joke.  And he was the real deal.  Just what you would’ve expected.  We liked him.

Thanks for the antibiotics Dr. Dodge!

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In other news:

My second article came out today in our little tiny local paper.  Again, not yet online so I’m sharing it here:

I’m not a native Idahoan. I grew up in Michigan, New York, and along the Long Island Sound in a small town in Connecticut. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been camping. I’ve never shot a gun or driven a tractor or ridden a horse that hadn‘t been rented for a birthday party.

My husband isn’t from Idaho either. He grew up in Austria and Brazil. He went to high school in the same coastal town in Connecticut as me.  He’s more likely to have wrangled big snakes in Brazil than cows (You do wrangle cows, right?).

After getting married we lived in California for 10 years in suburban tract homes with small well-manicured yards. Our idea of a big yard at that time was when we upgraded from a quarter of an acre to a third . We owned a push mower and a few hand tools. We knew how to mow and blow and trim the rosemary bushes.

How things have changed.

The decision to move to Idaho was lengthy. We were looking for a slower lifestyle with a little more elbow room and a neighborhood full of kids. After a bit of house hunting, we made the decision to build and went in search of a lot. It didn’t take long before we found the kid-filled neighborhood.  Then the decision came down to two lots.  The small one with room enough for a trampoline, swing set, and garden.  Or the bigger one with room for all that plus a pasture for farm animals. Well, I guess the idea of owning our own pasture with honest-to-goodness livestock sounded exotic to us. We went with the big lot.

So…here we are. Suburbanites who’ve found ourselves smack dab in the middle of rural Idaho.

WHAT WERE WE THINKING?

Not a day goes by that something doesn’t happen or someone doesn’t say something that reminds me of just how out of our element we are here.

Take, for example, this conversation I had with our neighbor right after moving in.   I was in the midst of a flurry of boxes and paper, attempting to unpack our pots and pans when I realized I was missing a child. I cleared a pathway to the front door and set out in search of my son who I assumed was off playing with one of the many neighborhood children.

I knocked next door.

Me: Hi!  How are you?

Neighbor: Oh, hey there!  How’s the unpacking going?

Me: Oh, you know.  It seems like it’s never-ending.

Neighbor: So, are you planning on fencing that pasture of yours and getting some animals?

Me: Umm… Yeah, I think so. We don’t know much about animals though.  I think we’ll have to do a little research first.  You know.  Read some books.  Google “farm animals”. Find out what kind of livestock we can…wrangle…I guess.

Neighbor (trying not to look too puzzled by my choice of vocabulary): Well you can get llamas for pretty cheap. A buddy of mine bought 2 llamas at the auction awhile back. Fifteen bucks for both.

I hadn’t thought about llamas.  They’re pretty cute.  The kids might like them.  And as far as I knew, llamas didn’t require any wrangling.

Me: Oh yeah?

Neighbor: Yeah. He took them home and put ‘em in his pasture. One of them kept jumpin’ the fence though. So, they shot it.  And then they ate it.

Awkward silence…

Me (with eyes wide): Really?… Umm… You haven’t by chance seen a little blond boy about this tall?  Answers to the name of Erik…

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Happy Thursday!