Two Different Worlds

Every time I travel to my parent’s house I am amazed at the differences in which we live. I had to help out my sister by watching her kids while she is basking in the luxury of a cruise. This involved spending the night at my mom’s house (who has been watching them since Monday) and assisting with the kids on Friday.

After having dinner at the house with Kev and the fam, I go ahead and pack for the night. Once I have all my stuff ready I sit down for what will be my last experience with high-speed internet for the next 12+ hours. I check and respond to some emails, finish up some billing stuff for the company and browse around before shutting down and heading out.

As I am driving over to my mom’s house, which usually takes 35-40 mins, I make a couple of phone calls on the cellular. There are no cell phone towers within 15 miles of her house which means I have about 15 mins of chatting time. How is it possible that I can be so close to civilization (the Burg’s), but yet sooooo far away?

I get closer to my mom’s house and the flurries we experienced over in B’burg had accumulated to like a 1/2 –inch of snow and very slippery spots with ice. The first thing I am feeling is that the kids will have a delay for school and I will be stuck in the archaic world without the comfort of text messaging and high-speed internet.

I awoke early this morning to get the oldest girl, Alazay, in the shower. Seconds after getting her in the shower, the dreaded words filled the airwaves of Q99….”Giles County – 2 hour delay”. UGH!! So instead of being able to be “kid-free” by 9 am, this means the earliest I can head over the mountain to work is 11 am. UGH!!

I bite the bullet and continue getting the kids ready for school. Alazay is on the bus by 9:30 and I load up the other 3 (Jordan, Shayda & Kaylonie) to head out to Pearisburg. I suppose I would have felt better if I had my morning dose of emails, however, I was not about to use a poor dial-up connection. I just keep thinking that once I get Jordan to Kev’s parent’s house, and drop off Shayda and Kaylonie at pre-school life will be better.

My thoughts of how 18th century my mom’s “neighborhood” is further confirmed as I am heading out the country road and slow down so that I do not run into the Amish horse-drawn carriage that is in front of me. Yup, that’s right, sub-zero weather, and the Amish are ridin’ around. Crazy. I suppose they have stuff to tend to despite the weather.

Anyhoo, I was quite relieved to get back into town limits at which point I turned on my cell phone to welcome a flood of text messages that I had missed. Ah! Cellphone-sweet-cellphone. I just can’t get over the fact that within a 30 minute radius of a forward-thinking, high tech community such as Blacksburg, that I have to deal with dial-up, the lack of cell phone towers and horse-drawn carriages. They are definitely two very different worlds.

PS – this blog was written at Kev’s parent’s house. They do have high-speed internet (cable, I think) and if you stand in the right place you can get a signal on the cellphone. This is the bridge that connects the two worlds. ;-)