One of the things I have been thinking about lately is the name of this blog. I think Country Contemporary is still good to go here - I'm a contemporary person and I've been back living in the country, in a contemporary house, no less, for the better part of the year, so I think the title is a keeper. The tag line - "Life and Style from the Urban Home from a Country Girl at Heart" isn't so accurate any longer, though. I remain a country girl both at heart and, again now, in fact, but the urban home from which I originated the blog, and in which I actually "originated" in life from the age of about 4, is about to become someone else's urban home. That meant the tag line needed, like some of the features of that wonderful midcentury urban home, to be updated to reflect the reality of these modern times. So I changed it (the tag line, not the house, alas).
Here at Country Contemporary, the tag line is now "Life and Style from the Country Home of a Formerly Urban Girl." It's still accurate, but more accurate and current now. I've been back in the country since March and I was a bona fide urban girl, having been born and raised within city limits.
In fact, I lived in the city until about age 36, when I bought my first country home. I had been spending a lot of time in the country over the course of about eight preceding years. I had renewed my childhood passion for horses and riding that was interrupted in my teens for all the usual reasons that derail horse crazy adolescent girls - school work, extra-curricular activities, boys, etc. - and because we lived in the city, the likelihood that we'd be keeping a horse in the backyard wasn't high. I pleaded with my dad for that, but to no avail.
After an interruption of a few years, I resumed riding a bit during college, but, once again, the realities of life - working for a living and still residing in the city - interfered with the time I'd have to spend indulging in my long-held passion for equines or the ability to be near where horses needed to live.
Fortunately, in my late 20s, a dear friend gave me a gift of riding lessons at a wonderful facility in the country near where I now sit typing this and, essentially, it changed my life. More accurately, it returned me to my long-held passion and I took it from there. After about two years, I purchased my first horse with an income tax refund I received one spring. The rest, as they say, is history.
Eventually, as my career progressed and my fortunes (read: bank account) grew, I made the executive decision to move closer to my passion and farther from the office after about six initial years of horse ownership. I knew, after spending those intervening years learning the landscape and the culture of the community, that this was where I belonged....here in horse country. But for a period of about five years that reluctantly but necessarily brought me back to the city more recently, I lived, happily, here in the country for 15 years.
All the while, I kept my post office box in the country. I knew I didn't want to give it up even though I'd later moved to another country home several miles away. I've had that box for more than 20 years now and I've used it continuously for business and for less important mailings, like magazines and such, that I didn't need to receive instantly. I'd come out to the country - only about 30 miles from the urban home - periodically to retrieve the mail. The box kept me connected to the community, to my great friends of many years who are my real support system, and, most of all, to the horses. Now, since returning to live here earlier this year, I use that box as my primary address again.
