Absence...

...makes the heart grow fonder.

So obviously you're all tickled pink that I'm back. Or at least mildly pleased. Or maybe just relieved that I didn't fall off a cliff or something. Or perhaps this post really does very little for you, in which I want to welcome you to my world.

You see, we just came back from a week in Ohio, visiting our newly relocated in-laws, and while I expected to be thrilled to be back in Georgia, I wasn't.
OK.
So I'm lying. I didn't expect to be thrilled, but I at least expected some sort of "Oh goody, we're home" experience. But if we discount the relief I experienced at getting out of the car after fourteen hours, and chalk up the joy at sleeping in my own bed to our awesome new mattress, I experienced no such thing at all. In fact, I would have happily stayed in Ohio had the opportunity presented itself.

And why, you ask? After all, Ohio is not exactly the birthplace of excitement either. It's freezing in the winter, only mildly warm in the summer, awash in black flies and people in baseball caps, and has the strictest cops this side of the Mississippi.

And although all this is true, I think I may have found the Mayberry I wrote about on Tuesday (and if you haven't read that post, shame on you!). Several Mayberry's, possibly. In fact, I would go as far as to postulate that every town in the area we visited was a Mayberry. For instance, the town we stayed in did not only sport a main street right out of the 1950s, complete with planters filled with petunias hanging off each wrought-iron lamppost and a variety locally owned stores, it also lacked any kind of chain store or restaurant, had a busy ballfield just off the main street, and several biking trails running along the river that meandered happily along the town's edge. And every single town we visited looked like that. It was amazing. There were no mega-Mount-Zion-the-Redeemer-Lives-Sanctified-Holy churches, no stripmalls, no endless car dealerships, and everything was nestled in between softly rolling hills, where Amish houses dotted the landscape, their washing flapping on clotheslines, and their buggies reminding you that life does not have to zoom by in order to be enjoyable.

On the downside, there were also no air force bases around. The closest one was three hours away, and I have the feeling that that part of Ohio might just be as little like Mayberry as the town where we live now.

Perhaps the only solution is to join the Amish community and live life the simple way. In one of the many Mayberry's in Ohio.

Maybe.