Cherokee Sage Woman

Folks, you gotta come to Tellico Plains. It's like Mayberry, RFD.. only miniaturized. Dan & I have driven thru 'downtown' several times but we have never seen a person on the streets. What's w/ that? We have seen empty police cars & a firetruck w/ 2 flat tires. This does not build confidence in the city-fathers. But at least we don't have Barney Fife running around w/ his single bullet, either.
Tellico sports 2 cafes, a bakery, a funny little bookstore (which has fewer books than I have in my house!), & a defunct Farmer's Coop. So to buy groceries/gas/convenience items, etc.. one must go to the outskirts of the town. To buy really good things, like the things that come from department stores, Lowes, Walmart (ha!), etc., one must travel from 1-4 towns 'out'. There is no wasted motion in this methodology. If you're going out of the driveway, you damned well better have purpose, & a list.
I've adopted the same manner of thinking in my home. Don't ask me why an aging, wt-gaining, couple of slow moving city folk, opted to seek out & buy (as their retirement home no less!) a 3 level log cabin. The stairs are even cut about 2" extra steep to give you that fun & games feeling of 'DearGodIamFallingDownTheStairs..I'mNotKidding!'
So all day long we are walking downstairs to the laundry facilities & also 'box-hell' where one can find absolutely everything you can't find on the other 2 stories.
Then we are walking upstairs to the computers & for Dan's biz, & to chase the cats off my sacred room/santuary feathers & fetishes, etc. Then we are walking to the middle story, but we've forgotten what it was we're there for, so we wander aimlessly up & down the staircases until we trip & fall & suddenly 'remember' right before everything goes dark..
Anyway.. I now am conserving my heartbeats (because we are only allotted so many).. & I place piles of things on the appropriate staircases, for when I might happen to be going 'up' or 'down'. Smart cookie, eh? However, I may end up buying a wineflask, just to get me thru all the stepping. (And to think, Cher made an exercise video of this nonsense)
Our happy home is located 9.1 mi up on the Cherahola. You gotta express it in just that term when you give directions to local businesses, because they watch the odometer, like it was a religious symbol. I think if we told them it was just 9 mi, they might plow that pick-up right into a rock wall. "Well, now dang it, she said it were just 9 mile!"
The house faces east/west.. so we watch the sun come over the treetops in the morning, & in the evening, the sun drops into the Smokies.. & there is nothing more grand. (The bed faces north/south, so as to keep our subtle energy fields in synch).
I am happy here.. Dan is happy here.. the cats are still weighing it in the balance, but the scales are tipping in TN's favor, I do believe.
And the hummingbirds love the feeders I put out for them. It's all give & take, isn't it?