This song has been running through my head this week.
Sorry if you don't like country music, I blame my Dad for this one! Billie Jo Spears, "Country Girl"...
I grew up in the Devon countryside, so country-living is not exactly a novelty. However, I do think I'm a city girl at heart. Or perhaps that's just because I'm a shopaholic?
Whatever, this posting will be an ideal opportunity to save money rather than spend it. Now that is a novelty!
Slowly I'm getting used to the idea that I will no longer have much, if any, opportunity to dress up or use my special handbags here. The only bag I carry every day now is the dog's poo bag... glamourous it is not.
Talking of the dog - she is in a particularly amourous mood today and I'm trying to write this while she's attempting to do unmentionable things to my leg. And god forbid I should get on the telephone; then it's open season (unintended pun...) for my poor legs! A Shiba Inu has extremely strong front legs and when she clamps on it is very painful indeed. When she's not doing "that", she's obsessively licking my shoes. They are now rather soggy.
I haven't even unpacked my jewellery yet. There seems little point when all I do is walk in the beautiful countryside, do a spot of birdwatching, pull up the countless oak seedlings in the garden and play ball with Kita out there. My Tokyo friends wouldn't recognise me!
The rest of my time is spent planning and writing a book.
As so many others do, I've been saying I'm going to write a book for years, but have never got around to it. This time however, I am determined to go through with it. To this end, I've actually put myself 'out there' and am in the process of creating a questionnaire for research purposes. So now people have expectations of me which gives me added impetus.
I still have "up days" and "down days". Today is an "up day". I woke to find requests in my inbox to write two guest articles about Japan. A guest article is one you don't get paid for, but never mind. It's all good writing practise.
In case you read my posts thinking "she can't be a writer, the writing's awful, her grammar's appalling" etc, well, I consider these blog posts to be my freefall writing sessions. It makes a change for me to write what I want to write with little concern for prescribed content and protocols.
As my mind is wandering back to Japan thanks to the article requests, I took a look at my Japanory blog. Judging by the people who are finding it through their searches, it appears that they are now looking for general information rather than just earthquake details. Perhaps they are looking to go on holiday there, which would be fantastic. So I may go back to Japanory and start bringing it up to date soon.
Yes, I do like to make my life as impossible as possible!
Added after first publishing this post... I've just had it confirmed precisely how isolated I am out here.
There's an office-owned house nearby that was going to be used as a meeting place for us trailing spouses. I think it was going to hold a library and so on too. I was really looking forward to this as all I'd have to do would be to walk down the garden and out the back gate in order to meet people. Unfortunately, all the other spouses have deemed it too far away to visit, so it won't be used now. What a shame. I shall have to find another way to meet people.
Some lyrics from the above song that have resonated:
"I said goodbye to city friends, department stores and bars
The lights of town are at my back, my heart is full of stars
And I'm gonna be a country girl again."