Town Meets Country

My friend Carmel, a city girl, in fact a ballerina, just bought a modular and 2 acres of woods on a little lake in Franklin County about 15 minutes from my place. Has 3 bedrooms, 2 baths and a nice deck, but she hadn't been in the woodsy part yet, so we explored. "Is that poison ivy?" she asked. I said, "If it's Missouri, it's poison ivy." "Eeeew," said Carmel. Her new neighbor's pit bull was running loose and while Carmel is great with dogs and this one (named "Loco;" mine are named "Osama" and "Sluggo") seemed friendly, she saw it had mange and warned me not to encourage or pet it, because "Eeew." And the same neighbor has adopted some Canada geese and you know what kind of "Eeew" they leave behind. I wanted a photo of her standing on her new property, the shady, snaggy end of the lake opposite the dam. I said she needed a johnboat because we could fish and gig frogs there. And maybe there were water snakes. "Water snakes! Eeew!" she said.

I said, "Carmel, if you're going to live in the country, the very first thing to know is that you have to give up saying 'Eeeew'."