Country Mouse/City Mouse

Last October we moved from our 12 acres in Cat Spring, TX back to Katy, TX. We lived in Katy from 1986 to 1990 and then started moving farther and farther west. It's been 34 years since we lived in town.

There are big differences between living in the country and living in town. No surprise there. I knew it would be a transition and I knew Katy would be different from when we last lived here.

We've now been in Katy for nine months and at least in part, the differences are interesting.

It gets dark at night in the country. It does not get dark, even in the dark of night here in town. There are so many street lights and porch lights not to mention the pool lights which for some reason need to be on all night long that we are ordering black out shades for our bedroom. I can't tell when the moon is full by looking out the window. There is so much light that moonlight just doesn't seem to matter.

We had cold water from our well out in the country. Here in town the water is OK but it never gets cold. Not having a well of our own means when the power goes out we can still flush the toilets. That's a huge plus. If the power outage is wide spread and lasts a long time, we still may need to add more water to our toilets but not for short power outages.

I knew we would hear road noise here in town and I was right. There is always someone moving about on the roads. What surprised me is that it doesn't bother me at all. For some reason it is easy for me to tune out. Plus our house seems to have good sound insulation.

Likewise, I knew it would always be busier on the roads here and that doesn't seem to bother me either. The fact that there is lots of traffic when I'm trying to get to my favorite coffee spot isn't an issue at all. The fact that there are 40 people in front of me in line when I get there does bother me. Greatly.

One of the reasons we moved back into town was to be closer to everything - grocery stores, doctors, etc. We are closer and I love it! I don't have to add 40 minutes of driving in each direction when I go to town. I'm already here!

I also wanted to be able to order pizza. It's not that I wanted to eat pizza every night but it's been 34 years since we lived someplace where we could get food delivered. It's funny but now that we're here, we hardly ever order to go. We do go out to eat more often but we never think to order a pizza since it's not something we have been able to do for a very long time.

For the first time since 1990, Peggy is only a few minutes from me. That's refreshing! We have even figured out that we can share some equipment since moving it back and forth is so easy.

Downsizing from our country property to our current house was a huge deal. We filled up a very large dumpster and sent masses of things home with our kids before we moved. We got to know the people at Goodwill on a first name basis. Our wonderful cleaner took loads of stuff to share with her Hispanic community. It was hard to part with all that stuff but not nearly as emotional as I thought it would be. I have always found it easy to clean out my closets - this was just an order of magnitude bigger.

Peggy and I made some changes in Sky Loom Weavers business. We stopped carrying hand dyed commercial yarn and we've eliminated open hours although you can still make an appointment if you need something. We sold three floor looms, all of which I had used and loved. We redistributed our show infrastructures so that some of it lives at Peggy's now. We downsized from nearly 1000 square feet of space in my old studio to about 130 square feet in my new house. I love the new space. Yes, it's much smaller but it's also cozy and I feel very comfortable here.

It's been a great move. Yes, I miss the animals but I don't miss worrying about them when it gets very cold or very hot or when a hurricane is coming. I loved being a country mouse but I'm happy being a city mouse now.