Wednesday, May 28, 2014

How rural (read: inconvenient) is your house? {Questions from the Combox}

I've been informed that it's been too many days since I've blogged and people are starting to imagine me cozied up on my babymoon with my sweet tiny.

No. Such. Luck.

Tomorrow is my 40 week due date so I'll be sure to post a photo of the frightening goddess-like belly for your shock and wonder enjoyment, but until then, I will answer one of the questions from Monday's combox because placenta brain.

From Acerbica: How rural is your house? Is it horrible to realize you have to run to the drugstore/grocery store? Or not so bad? 

When we first arrived from suburban SoCal almost four (!!!) years ago in the depths of the jungley green of July, we thought we were straight up entering Little House In the Big Woods-ville.  I mean look at all these FEET between these houses!  Probably if someone leaves their windows open, their neighbors won't even be able to see inside without actually walking down the street a bit!

But Michigan rural, especially in the lower half of the mitten, is different than rural in places like Montana.  There is a lot that could be considered rural, but good luck driving for more than a few minutes without passing another farmhouse.  If your car gets stuck in a snowdrift, for example, it's not like you're ever miles away from the nearest person.

To give you a better idea of our location, the closest gas station is 3.5 miles away.  The nearest pizza place, with a small convenience store next door, is 7 miles away.  The nearest grocery store (very nice, but not big) is 10 miles away, and that's in a sweet little town where our credit union and dentist and all that fun stuff is.  And once you get into the 12 mile and up range, you're in the proper city with the Wal-Marts and the Taco Bells and all the etceteras.


You know what?  If we didn't have the internet, it would be pretty dang inconvenient being out here sometimes.  But we DO have the internet, so Amazon prime is my very bestest friend.  Also, Tommy passes many eateries and retail establishments on his drive home from work, so he can always pick things up on the way.  We have decent cell service now that we've found the right provider and unlimited high-speed wireless internet in our house. 

You know what I miss most?  Food delivery.  No pizza delivery or Chinese food delivery or Jimmy Johns delivery.  Good for budget, sad for laziness.

All in all, the trade-offs are worth it.  When we ever consider moving closer to All The Things for any reason, we just can't manage to get excited about giving up what we've got up in here.  Now if we could find a place with a second bathroom and proper insulation on this same road?  Oh yeah, we'd be all OVER that ish.

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21 comments :

  1. We live in a similar sitch, just a ways north! Our little town is about 10 miles outside of our bigger town. And our "little" town has resturant and pizza delivery (it's an arm and a leg though, so Josh picks it up in town). Michigan rural is nice, lots of space but still people around! :)

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    1. I agree! I find it's the perfect combination of privacy without loneliness :)

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    2. Yay, thanks for answering my pregunta! This is all food for thought as we look for a place to move.

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  2. Do you read Amy's Finer Things? They just added a basement underneath their existing house. My mind is blown about how to do that, but wow, it turned out very well! I'm sure you could add insulation and more room to your existing house (eventually - I know about all the projects - same here!) if you love your location.

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  3. 10 miles from the nearest grocery store seems far away to me!! We're about to move several states away to a place like that (I think...maybe not quite that far)...so I guess we'll have to get used to driving longer distances!!!

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    1. It is really different. No just running to the store when you need an ingredient. Once weekly trips at the most means you definitely have to be organized!

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  4. You know what they say in real estate - location, location, location! You can always add a bathroom; recreate a perfect outside environment....no so much!

    (And having lived through multiple rooms worth of to-the-studs renovation, and now preparing for a move...I think I'd choose renovation again over moving, stress-wise!)

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  5. You gotta love rural living. We lived in the sticks in North Carolina, the closest town was 40 minutes away (one way). There were two restaurants: Pizza Hut, and the "fancy" restaurant was the The China Wok where we went for birthdays and anniversaries. Everybody was positively apoplectic when a Walmart came to town -- just a regular Walmart, not a Super Walmart. I might add, we moved from Tampa, Florida to this little tiny mill town. (forced move - job move)

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  6. I live "in town" in a tiny house 10 feet by 12 feet and a yard the size of a postage stamp. I love our urban farming experiments. My husband just planted 120 potato plants in 4 x 12 foot strip our back yard. We have friends with huge beehives a few streets over. I wish we could have chickens! That's about the only treat I'm giving up right now.

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  7. On second thought, I think our house is more like 20 feet by 24 feet. Still pretty petite!

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  8. Can you please hold on to that baby for a 6/2/14 birthday… I love all those even numbers.

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  9. I pictured you as more rural than that! I grew up on a farm 10 miles from town and while we had to be intentional about trips into town (no running to the store unplanned!) it never seemed like that far to me.

    I wonder if that's why I don't ever go to the store for just one thing now even though I live very close to many of them - it's just not something I see as an option. (Also, I've just pictured for the first time the magic that would have been Amazon prime existing when we lived on the farm and wow.)

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  10. Your house sounds downright suburban :) Actually, it sounds like that perfect sweet spot of privacy and freedom yet proximity to civilization and friends and stuff.

    We lived in West Virginia where we were 30 minutes from the nearest gas station and 1 hour from a Catholic Church and 1 hour from a proper grocery store (the tiny shop-n-save barely had fresh fruit and marked everything up 30%). It was a disaster...we lost power for 4 days once and had to drive 25 minutes just to get cell phone signal. So yeah, your house sounds very good :)

    If you're super bored and in the mood for answering random questions about your abode....I'm super curious about how you feel about your decision to buy the inexpensive fixer-upper house in a totally different locale four years after the fact? Was it worth it? You guys seem so content there. We often consider doing a similar thing and with some recent job issues for my husband scaling back and making drastic changes is much on our mind lately.

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  11. Pizza delivery always seemed to be our limit when looking for a house further out in "the country". We ended up picking a neighborhood because the house was a huge and cheap and we have 6 kids that are small and expensive- so "the country" dreams got put on hold. Irony though, I don't think I've had pizza delivered more than twice since we moved (4 years ago)! Now, running to pick a pizza up to save some $, different story all together! ;)

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  12. I grew up in a small town in MN (pop. 2000-ish) and while we weren't in the rural farmland part, but in the "town" part I definitely know what it is like to be miles away from restaurants and shopping. We were 10ish miles from towns with Perkins or McDonalds or Pizza Hut or WalMart, but we had gas stations and a grocery store and little family owned eateries.

    Now, I live in St Paul and if I wanted to I could walk at least to a bus that will take me anywhere I needed to be. I live in an anomaly neighborhood in that we cannot walk to grocery stores easily (probably 3ish miles), but we could bike there easily, and driving is like nothing. Thinking back to having to make longish trips to stores is a little unpleasant for me, but I am lucky to have the best of both worlds: A quite small-town like neighborhood accessible to stores and shops and school and work and Church. The only thing that would be better is owning instead of renting and having a yard big enough for my own veggie garden!

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  13. I grew up living at a lake in the coastal rainforest of BC, Canada. Too far from town to get delivery, but some enterprising First Nations run a great little store on the corner of their Reservation which deals with most cravings for munchies or items forgotten on a grocery run. Mum complains about her drive to work (15min), but it's faster than my commute times when living in big cities!

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  14. This has nothing to do with anything on your blog, but I'm leaving random comments on Catholic mom blogs I adore, because I'm so happy and have to share and I like to pretend y'all are my friends. Ahem. I didn't mean to say that last part out loud.
    Anyhow! After nearly three years of waiting, my husband's first marriage has been declared null, and I GET TO COME INTO THE CHURCH! I'm coming HOME!!
    Thank you for letting me share. Sorry for all the caps and exclamation points. Sort of.

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    1. Kira, that is wonderful news! Never be afraid to leave comments this wonderful on any and all posts. You made my day :)

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    2. That's so exciting, congratulations!

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  15. Wait a second, you have just one bathroom? Oh Dwija. Praying for a swift (but not too swift!) labor and delivery. Miss you!

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  16. I lived for many years in New England, and one of the things I loved about hiking in the White Mountains was that no matter how remote and out-in-the-wilderness it felt, you were never more than a few miles from civilization. Kinda like your rural location!

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