That’s what I am. Well, not so much of a girl anymore, or so my body tells me, although I still feel like a kid most days. I live in the country. There’s a horse farm just up the road, a cattle farm at the end of the road, another cattle farm on the other end of the road. The guy next door has rabbits and goats. My 87 year old neighbor has chickens. Directly behind us, separated by a very large field, is another farm – I think they grow hay, not really sure, there’s a line of trees separating us and I don’t pay much attention till they cut the hay and the big machines make big noises and Maverick feels that he needs to protect me from them. We’re used to farm smells and farm noises. When people talk about rural America, I guess this is what they mean.

I’ve been hearing about “15 minute cities,” where you can walk to everything in 15 minutes and there’s no need to drive. It takes me 15 minutes to walk to my neighbor’s house. It’s 5 miles to town – where there’s a grocery store, some fast food places, an Italian restaurant, a Chinese restaurant (that isn’t very good) and a hardware store. There’s also a few medical places and a plethora of car dealers. I love this town, but if I want much variety, it’s off to one of the bigger cities for us. I’m not sure where these people who think a 15 minute city is a good idea live, but I invite them to come visit us anytime and see how the real world lives. And then stop telling me how I should live – go back and live in their cities if they like, but remember where their food comes from.

One of the farms about 1/2 mile over on the next road is for sale. The house on the property is a total wreck, there are 4 outbuildings that have also seen better days, and the property is crossed by the road – this is a road where the posted speed limit is 40 mph and if you go that slow, people will pass you on the corners. The owner is asking a pretty steep price – it’s 27 acres but the house would have to be torn down, or a whole ton of renovations done. It’s not worth the asking price, honestly. However. Apparently companies who are creating solar farms are really into buying up farm land and putting solar panels all over the land.

The neighbors are not in favor. Recently, a big company came to town, invited by a group of people who together own about 700 acres of land. They want to turn all of that into a solar farm. There was no ordinance for or against this, so they sat down with the board of supervisors and helped them write one. (Collusion much? Nah) After 7 months of bitter battles, the variance was passed to allow them to do this.

I am not opposed to solar by any means. I am opposed to turning farm land into solar farms, displacing the wild life and creating an eyesore when there are so many alternatives. Even our esteemed governor is pushing to put solar panels on the roofs of factories, or in parking lots, and not on agricultural properties.

So here we go again. The zoning board published a notice in the newspaper, which is technically all they have to do, but which no one sees. Social media strikes – it got posted that there was a meeting and a lot of people showed up. The company did a presentation – I’ve seen a lot of presentations and created more than a few and I can honestly say this was one of the worst I’ve ever seen. Then it was time for questions from the public. Here’s a hint. If you know that your project is controversial, that most people don’t want it to happen, come prepared with answers to any and all possible questions. I would say that 50% of the time, the answers were “I don’t know, I’m not sure.” And then there was little miss attorney, who was too special to stand up and speak into the mic so if she did answer questions, no one could really hear her.

Nothing was decided. There’s another meeting in two weeks. Hopefully they’ll have answers, because we have a lot more questions.

In other news, some moron brought a sick dog to daycare today and the day has gone straight to hell since I got a call saying come get Maverick now. We’re praying that exposure was limited to a minute and that everyone will be fine – and that daycare will be open tomorrow!

And then the software we use to do our taxes refused to co-operate. Thinking I’d at least get a reward for this cluster fuck of a day by getting a delivery from Amazon, I checked my orders – to see that my stuff would be delivered by USPS by 9 pm. Umm, my mail was delivered at 11 am. So I called Amazon and was assured that indeed, the package would be arriving tonight. I hung up, rechecked and watched the status change to “we’re sorry, your package was delayed and will now be arriving tomorrow.” A return call – because I don’t like being lied to – rewarded me with a $5 refund. Umm, yeah, thanks a lot.

One of my favorite books when I was a kid was Pollyanna. I’m really trying to find the good in all this happy horseshit today.