Because we live in the middle of nowhere, we have to drive our recycling out to the city. I try to keep it well-organized and neat, but sometimes we wind up with a half-dozen broken-down Amazon boxes on the front porch (another consequence of living in the middle of nowhere) or a split-open grocery bag full of junk mail in the dining room. Usually we have a few totes full at any given time. It isn’t too much of a hassle, but a lot of the teachers we know don’t prioritize recycling because it is an additional challenge to an already difficult lifestyle.

Carro is all loaded up for a trip to the big city!

On our way back from Memphis last night, the lights began to dim and the radio started cutting out (“girl I gotta see you tonight, ton — girl I gotta see you tonight”) every time Sean signaled to change lanes on the highway. We pulled off to investigate just in time; the battery died and we had to coast into a gas station. Fortunately we had cell service and were only a few miles from a shop where they can replace the alternator today. We were so close that the tow was free with AAA. It was the best case scenario, even though we are missing school today and had to crash on a friend’s couch: we could have easily been out of cell service and 30 miles from the nearest garage, not to mention being out of range of a AAA-aligned tow service. Car trouble in rural Arkansas is a mixed bag: if it’s just a flat or a jump, someone usually comes along with an air compressor, a set of jumper cables and a will to help out, but for more complex repairs it can be expensive to get towed and tough to find a mechanic who will work on a foreign car. It took us a month of looking this summer before we could find someone who’d work on a Nissan.