And More Change

Up until four days ago, I had absolutely no interest whatsoever in living out in the country. None. Zilch. Nada. I never wanted to have to commute to work (who would let the dogs out at lunch?) and I never wanted to have to drive 20 minutes when I forgot just one thing at the store. I like living in town because it's much easier to get involved in community activities and much easier to stay involved in the lives of our friends. There wasn't much about country living that appealed to me except for the idea of taking beautiful pictures of the sunrise and sunset on the open horizon.

But that was last week. This week a lot of changes have taken place in our life. First of all, Chad and I have been contemplating a major change with regard to my employment situation. After 3+ years of dealing with back pain (pain that's the worst when sitting) and trying everything under the sun to get some relief, we've been talking the last couple of weeks about me only working part time. We came to the realization that this might be the only way to improve my quality of life after meeting with a neurosurgeon last week who basically said he couldn't help me. It's certainly not ideal since I really like my job, but at this point we've sort of run out of options.

As we pondered this possible change in circumstances, it honestly didn't dawn on me that working part time would make living in the country a lot more feasible. I mean, if I was only gone 4-5 hours a day, I wouldn't feel obligated to go home and let the dogs out at all. That's really been my major hangup all this time--all this time that Chad would have loved to live outside of town!

Thinking about potential part-time employment wasn't actually what started me thinking about country living though. It was a completely separate event on Tuesday that led me to dream about the house in the country we looked at today. An event that needs a blog post all to itself tomorrow!