My wife and I have been traveling a lot lately. I drive 4 hours round trip every Thursday to check on real estate projects in Macon, GA, we recently made a trip to south GA to see family (10 hours round trip), and we were gone all last week on business.
We typically spend most of our lives on leather. Couch leather, office chair fake leather, and car/truck leather. We are either driving, sitting working, or sitting at home working and maybe watching a little tv/reading. Today was time for a break from the grind, travel, and air conditioning.
We own 72 acres of land (previously 73 acres; 72.904 actually, but due to a survey error it is now closer to 72). ANYWAY, we don’t live on this 72 acres, we just wish we did. We bought it last year when the opportunity arose and it was too good of a deal to pass up. We plan to build our “dream house” on it; right in the middle! When we bought the land I also bought a Bobcat (a T300, a BIG Bobcat) and have done some minor clearing to create an open area about an acre in size. There is an old logging road that enters at the front of the property and goes about 1/3 of the way back to this clearing. You pretty much have to have a 4×4 to get in there, especially if it has rained, which I have (I have an 08 F250 which I love by the way). So Christin and I will go out there when we have time and just sit there in some fold up chairs and enjoy nature and talk about what we would like to do out there on the land. We used a landscape architect to do some drawings of where the driveway should be and where the house and pool house, barn, etc should be based on the topography of the land, etc. Now we just have to decide that we like what he says we should do, and DO IT!
Anyway, today we went one step further than we ever have. Since we have been traveling so much and were just plain burned out with the standard routine so we decided to play hooky from Church and go to the land instead. We went to Home Depot and bought a 10×10 “gazebo”, which was just 4 poles with a roof. (which is all we were after, just something to keep us in the shade). We also bought a charcoal grill (we have a gas one at home but wanted something we could leave at the land) and filled the cooler with cokes and water. We went out there right after lunch and picked a spot that wasn’t too overgrown with weeds and setup our gazebo and fold out chairs. We chilled out with the dogs (hardly, it was almost 100 degrees) and enjoyed the land for a while. Then we spent a little time reading the word, praying, and we actually made a pretty lame attempt to sing a few worship songs! lol. Either I didn’t know the words or she didn’t know the words, and neither of us could carry a tune in a bucket. But I bet God at least enjoyed the effort. It was really nice.
Then we went down the road to the grocery story and got some sausage dogs, buns, and mustard and went back and fired up the ‘ol charcoal grill. Well, CHRISTIN fired up the ‘ol charcoal grill. She wouldn’t let me near it. At home she is the grill master, and hey, I am A-OK with that. At least my food comes out tasty when she cooks it! 😀
We sweat a few more gallons and plotted and schemed about what we wanted to do next at the land (fence, driveway, barn, etc). Our goal is to figure out where we want our first “permanent structure” so we can get power and water ran there. Then we can go to the bathroom indoors and have a place we can cool down with an A/C .. ahhh, those will be the days.
We have a storage trailer out there that we keep the 4 wheeler in and chairs and the grill, etc. So we loaded everything in there at about 7 and came home exhausted but happy. We took showers and comfortably settled back into the leather life. And the dogs literally passed out on the couch as soon as we walked in the door. It was a good day, and I look forward to next time. I really look forward to the day when we get some order to things and can actually throw a “party” out there. I think once we figure out where that first structure is going to be we will be but a short wait away.
Don’t forget to slow down and enjoy life. Put a swing on your porch, go to the park, walk around downtown. Anything to escape from leather world for a day.