This is the thousandth post on my blog. I was going to post something appropriately melodramatic, but I'm far more interested in getting some sleep so that I can run a lot of errands tomorrow. So perhaps you'll get a melodramatic post tomorrow instead -- aren't you excited?
I had quite a lovely day in the heartland. I woke up lateish, read up on the news, and then had lunch with my mother (leftovers -- I had a turkey sandwich w/pepperjack, which is great because no one else in the family will steal my pepperjack cheese, as well as my mom's famous baked beans, which are even better left over). After lunch, I laid out in the yard for almost two hours. I'm still pale by most standards, but this is the tannest I have been since high school, which is exciting in an I-know-this-causes-cancer kind of way. My dad and my brother were moving dirt around in the yard with a backhoe and a skid loader respectively, but since we have several acres of yard, this was not a problem; I just took my blanket and went to the far northwest corner of the yard, between the fruit trees and the road. Being in a swimsuit thirty feet from the road might have offended old-fashioned notions of feminine propriety, but in the two hours I was out there, only one person drove by -- we truly live in the middle of nowhere. We also got a delivery from the UPS guy, who asked when I'm leaving and expressed dismay when he found out I'm leaving next week because he claims that my steady stream of Amazon deliveries has kept him employed. Ha.
So laying out in the yard was v. peaceful, and it's going to suck to go back to the endless drone of noise in the cities. That's not to say we have no excitement here -- for example, I got to watch one of our half-feral cats chasing a pheasant through the back yard. And one of our cute little kittens crawled up into the engine of the car that Michael and I shared in high school, almost strangled itself, and started crying for help, which resulted in my dad and Michael dismantling part of the car to get it out. Then they had to use the lawnmower to tow the car away from the house so the kittens would stop crawling into the engine. It was while I was watching them tow a car with a lawnmower, and while I drove my car through the yard to get around the big pile of gravel that had just been delivered in the driveway that I briefly thought that we might be uncomfortably close to white trash. I dismissed this concern by taking extra time with my eye makeup, putting on my kickin' Bulgari sunglasses, and going into town to socialize with people my own age (gasp).
The people in question were Dave and Heather, whom I worked with at the convenience store oh so many years ago; they're actually four years older than I am, but we hung out quite a bit during those days. Heather has three kids and couldn't find a babysitter for the youngest one, so we brought her along to dinner with us. We'd intended to go to a restaurant in Chariton (half an hour north of us), but it was closed, as most restaurants here are on Mondays, so we ended up at Pizza Hut. It was great to see both of them again; I was shockingly remiss and hadn't called Dave in the months that I've been back because I was feeling incredibly antisocial, but it was great to catch up, and I said we'd have to go to the bar when I'm back for Christmas.
Now I should really go to bed -- I have tons of stuff to do before I leave Iowa. A week from now, I'll be somewhere in Wyoming!
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