Friday Five: ...And That's Why It's Good to Be Me

On the RevGalBlogPals blog today, Kathrynzj writes:

This Friday Five will post while I'm at the beach which for me is more than a vacation destination, it is a trip home. I have found it quite easy to wax nostalgic about the places I used to live (well, except for one) and have begun to wonder what it is I like about the place I'm living now? For instance I sure do love the beach, but this picture was taken about 30 minutes away from my house - not too shabby!



And so I ask you to please name five things you like about where you are living now... and as your bonus - 1 thing you don't like.

Excellent -- we were just talking about this very thing during one of our evening countryside excursions. And it fits nicely into this Sunday's lessons too, which  made me think about wanting what we have instead of having what we want.

Five things I like about where I'm living now:

1. Proximity to the countryside. We are literally five minutes away from some of the prettiest countryside in rural Michigan -- roads lined with tree tunnels dripping in wild grapevines, Amish farms and farmstands, winding brooks. It is a blessing to, most evenings during the light months, say, "Hey -- let's go for a ride."

2. Our yard. I love our spacious yard and the trees that circle it, providing a buffer between neighboring properties. Fellow Traveler and I both appreciate a certain amount of breathing room around our house, and we have it.  We also appreciate neighbors who are close enough to provide very basic community -- our backyard neighbor, for instance, an ex-big-city-cop, keeps an eye on our home if we're gone, and as regular readers here know we more or less shared a dog with our neighbors to the west -- but distant enough both physically and socially to not be up in all our business, and vice versa.

2. Our patio. We have a patio with a gazebo providing (give or take various layers of outerwear, of course) three seasons of enjoyment. It's a great place to drink one's morning coffee or work on some portable household chore. And we are slowly replanting around it, so next year it will be even nicer.

3. Stonework. Our house, which dates back to the 70's, features some pretty cut stonework with real, not prefab, stones. That reminds me of the fieldstone farmhouse of my childhood.

4. Proximity to basic necessities. Even though there are definite drawbacks to living on a busy county highway on the outskirts of a town, it's also nice to know that if we need a grocery item or a pizza or gasoline it's all about three blocks down. So even though we feel "out in the country" we also feel connected to civilization. Sort of.

5. Interior decorating. Our interior is still a work in progress -- our family activities this past year put a temporary halt to our plans to paint and to embark on a re-do of our bedroom -- but I love the melding of our two households, and the eclectic look of our rooms -- antiques and Michigan-themed artwork and funky collectibles.

One thing I do not like: We haven't had the time or energy to tackle renovating our main bathroom, which was originally decorated in a style I can only call WTF. Imagine a robin's-egg blue toilet; a cornflower blue tub-and-shower unit; a sink in the same shade but marbled; a kind of French provincial white vanity, all surrounded by tiles with a 70's-contemporary stylized flower print. When the robin's-egg toilet broke about a year ago and needed to be replaced, I cried -- with joy. I'm much more excited by repainting and decorating our bedroom; but I will not be sad when our bathroom also gets its eventual makeover.