Good morning,

The knack of coordinating websites and social media continues to elude me.  This morning I saw two comments on one of my YouTube videos asking if they could purchase my book.  Cross-plugging!  I replied to the comment with a link to my online shop.  But did I mention this blog??  No, I did not!  I easily could have but the thought never entered my inadequately-caffeinated mind.  I did get a nice chuckle from the forehead-slapping moment.  

As I poured another cup of coffee, I contemplated the natural separation of the chunks of activity which comprise my life.  I work four days a week in the office of a California attorney.  Once in a while, though rarely, I might share a meal in her home or give her niece, who works one day a week there, a ride to the store.  Otherwise, our lives do not intersect.  I live in a community of like-minded folks in the sense that we all choose nontraditional dwellings — be they tiny houses, RVs, trailers, or even the occasional converted bus.  From time to time, we gather in the community room for a potluck.   Someone might organize a picnic in the meadow which we all attend, or a movie night behind one of their homes.  But otherwise, we live distinctly separate lives.

One of my neighbors stops by now and then to talk about our summer market or some other small business.  She and her husband live in an RV on the east side of the park.  When she visits my end of the place, she often pulls her dock cart, filled with craft supplies, plants, or veggies that she’s harvested from our garden.  She moves in the close quarters of my home, studying the trinkets on my shelves and the art on my walls.  Every time I come here, I see something new, she recently remarked. 

Her comment highlighted the history with which I surround myself.  Art from the public space that I had in Kansas City adorns most vertical surfaces.  My mother-in-law’s secretary displays the frosted glasses from my sister, china that belonged to my mother, and other delicate objects that I sometimes use but mostly simple treasure.  I write while sitting at the pull-out desk.  I need only raise my eyes to remember days sitting by my dying mother, pouring cold water from that pitcher.  I recall my erstwhile stepson’s delight when he presented me with the lovely tiles from his trip overseas.  My heart still swells with the joy of trips to “junk shops” with my mother,  where we found many of the pretty soup bowls of which these long years later, only two remain.

The nest into which I have settled here might be as much a barrier as a safe-haven.  I rarely invite anyone into my little domain.  I tell myself that no one would come.  I speculate that the need to duck to enter my sitting room repels visitors.  Perhaps I fear rejection.  Perhaps I avoid invasion.  Yet I fuss over the placement of furniture and the discomfort of my little settee.  I realize that my compartmentalized existence both sustains and stifles me.  I yearn for friends to dine at my small table or on my funny little deck; yet I can count on one hand the invitations that I have extended in the five years of my tenure in this place.

I recently made a post on Facebook about the folks who do not read my blog entries whom I expected did so, a discovery that shocked me.  One keen observer asked, “Is it me or did you just complain about people not reading your blog about not complaining?”  Her astute observation evoked genuine laughter.  Complaining about not complaining!  Sort of like complaining about no one visiting when my door stays firmly shut against their faces. 

I send my words into the abyss on cold virtual paper, with lofty, smug dreams of their success.  Yet my physical voice stays silent; my arms remain crossed against my chest; my lips  purse into a thin bleak line.  One could defend my closed existence by pointing to the many times that I have cowered under an unsuccessful venture into the realm of friendship or romance.  Yet thousands keep plugging away at life, grinning, observing that with all this excrement, surely a pony lurks beneath the muck.  How can I do any less?  Can I honestly bemoan a lack of return without continuing my investment?  I think not.  So here I sit, inviting you to explore My Tiny Life, and warning you:  It isn’t always pretty.

It’s the nineteenth day of the one-hundred and tenth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

Top row, left to right: Photo by Samantha Bessent; two paintings by AJ Hoyt. Bottom row: Photo by Demi Stewart; painting by Candie Fisher; photo by Samantha Bessent; painting by AJ Hoyt; painting by Nicole Thibodeau.

Thank you for reading my blog.  If you have not yet purchased my book and wish to do so, February will be a good month as it’s the first month in my new campaign to raise money for worthy causes.  A percentage of all sales for the rest of 2023 will be donated to nonprofits, with a different charity chosen each month. 

Check out my website to learn about this month’s cause. 

If you have purchased my book, please consider visiting my shop and leaving a review. 

Thank you. 

Apparently my new pillow comes from the Dream Factory, because my nights now dance with weird images and strange omens.  In the last four days, I’ve dreamed that I had a rat infestation, that I had to decide whether to go on life support, and that a much-loved neighbor moved far away without telling anyone.  Oddly enough, the pillow has actually eased the sharp pains in my neck, so that’s something, anyway.

A plethora of niggling chores await me today.  As I sat over scrambled eggs, listening to the sad sound of hunters aiming for my beloved snow geese, I contemplated the little piles of half-completed tasks.  A stack of cards needs organizing.  The lower cabinet bulges with disarray.  The sides of the refrigerator ooze with the grime of a spilled bottle of dressing.  Clothes still hang on the ladder bar from last week’s washing of undryables.  Stuff like that.  Saturday stuff.

I went to town yesterday.  In these parts, “town” means different places depending on your directional proclivity.  Folks who live in Rio Vista tell me that when they go “out of town”, they mean Fairfield.  For me, east of the Sacramento River, Lodi seems more logical for any shopping or services not available in our immediate environs.  To Lodi, then; and a sweep of stores, from which I returned with cleaning supplies, a week’s worth of bottled drinking water, and a belly ache.

This last came courtesy of Black Bear Diner on Kettelman.  I know better than to lunch at such venues.  In fact, I can’t even order lunch; the only vegetarian offering centers on a pre-made “veggie” burger of a brand that I find wholly inedible.  But my stomach growled as I stood at the UPS counter debating the comparative shipment options.  I felt my blood sugar drop and my agitation rise.  I needed food.   I paused by the Panera’s but could see a line stretching to the door.  I told myself that I could park close and order breakfast at the Black Bear.  Both true.  But oh, the chemical taste of the potatoes!  I left them on the plate and struggled back to my car, content with the decently scrambled eggs and half of the dry biscuit.  

The drive from Lodi charms me every time.  Row after row of grape vines span either side of Highway 12.  The trees that I figure must be pears have begun to bud.  Flocks of migrating birds rise from the fields and cut across the afternoon sky in their graceful formations.  The rivers stretch for miles in winding curves.  I take Brannan Island Road past the marinas and notice that work has resumed at Rancho, ravaged by fire in October 2021 and apparently with new, well-heeled owners trying to rehabilitate the scarred section.  I nod my head and hope for the best before continuing on the curving levee road.  Just as I reach my park, I see a ship start to ease around the bend, headed for Stockton from the Bay.  Delta life; nothing finer.  I turn into our entrance still smiling from the pleasant journey home.

Now another day stretches before me. I’m on my third cup of coffee; two mugs to the good and filled with possibly deceptive energy.  The benefits of living tiny shout themselves today.  I could deep-clean the entire place by noon.  A crystalline sky rises above me, glimpsed through the transom.  The front porch and my little deck need sweeping.  Weeds have overtaken the small empty space between the tree and my parking spot.  I could happily tend to the repotting of succulents and pulling volunteer grass from the awakening gardenia.  Any nagging worry recedes to the background, forgotten in the staggering, unbridled bliss of another day when I was awake to see the dawn.

It’s the eighteenth day of the one-hundred and tenth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

Sunrise over Park Delta Bay, January 2023.

Thank you for reading my blog.  If you have not yet purchased my book and wish to do so, February will be a good month as it’s the first month in my new campaign to raise money for worthy causes.  A percentage of all sales for the rest of 2023 will be donated to nonprofits, with a different charity chosen each month. 

Check out my website to learn about this month’s cause. 

If you have purchased my book, please consider visiting my shop and leaving a review. 

Thank you. 

A tumble this afternoon in my little work cubby brought flashbacks of spectacular spills in times past.

Alan White might remember gazing down at me as I lay stunned on a Westport sidewalk, his arm still linked through mine, after he abruptly stopped to look over his shoulder into a shop window.  His innocent query, “Oh, you don’t have reverse?” still reverberates.  A few years later, I collapsed on a sidewalk outside of a country club in Mississippi.  The senior partner in the firm at which I was an associate hurried over to my prone form, gasping, calling my name.  A colleague strolled with considerable more aplomb, remarking, “Slow down, John.  She’s fine.  Falling is her second job.”  As I struggled to my feet, I corrected him, “Actually, it’s my first; and lawyering has become a distant third after being Patrick’s mom.”  They brushed the dust from my suit and, each taking an arm, we sashayed into our client’s cocktail party.

Two of my most famous falls came at my high school and college graduations, for both of which (it must be said) I tripped on my gown walking across the stage.  After I received my law degree, my mother hugged me while remarking that she almost didn’t recognize me, until I slipped on the stairs en route back to my seat.  “I told your father, Look!  That’s our baby girl!”  

Still, the falls concern me more these days.  Old bones grow brittle.  My knack of twisting to avoid serious injury persists, and I can hoist myself horizontal from most levels.  But I know the statistics.  I expect that one of these days, I will lie on the ground and lament a shattered hip.  The closest that I’ve come was a fluke strike against a dresser edge that broke a clavicle three years ago.  For fractures due to disability-related falls, I count only three:  That clavicle; my hand in 2013; and a chipped elbow which really doesn’t count, as I was pushing my then-husband in a manual wheelchair over gravel at the time.  My luck has held so far; or perhaps my guardian angel has been deft.  I feel the soft flutter of her wings as she angles to cushion my landing.

Tonight my muscles shudder more than usual.  Morning will tell if I pulled anything that could ruin my weekend.  Thankfully, my Northwestern mug flipped off the table amid a spray of pens and highlighters but survived.  With a few adjustments to my work area, I resumed my afternoon responsibilities.  One day, I’m sure, this old Mugwump will get her come-uppance and exit on a stretcher with something badly broken.  But not today.  A few extra aches; a few extra pains; and another story that will grow funnier with time.  Mugwump down!

It’s the fifteenth day of the one-hundred and tenth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

Thank you for reading my blog.  If you have not yet purchased my book and wish to do so, February will be a good month as it’s the first month in my new campaign to raise money for worthy causes.  A percentage of all sales for the rest of 2023 will be donated to nonprofits, with a different charity chosen each month. 

Check out my website to learn about this month’s cause. 

If you have purchased my book, please consider visiting my shop and leaving a review. 

Thank you. 

I have an uneasy alliance with my current environment.  If you had asked me seven years ago if I would feel at home in a rural climate, I would have scoffed.  I did that once; and often have remarked that I lived in Arkansas for longer than most people serve in Missouri on a class C felony.  With time off for good behavior, I spent the last bit of my sentence in the semi-urban environment of Fayetteville, which made the experience tolerable.  Bright lights, big(gish) city.

Yet here I dwell, venturing onto highways only now and again.  Mostly I see the levee roads which flank the curves of the San Joaquin.  Mornings find me on my porch, straining to discern the strange noises of unfamiliar birds.  Pots of succulents thrive in the temperate air.  I sit outside eight or nine months of the year, happily not shoveling snow or spreading salt for ice.

I like the cool of late February, when the rains have passed but the geese have not yet left.  I slow my car to snap a photo now and then, wondering what field will next give them berth.  I growl at the hunters.  When the distant din of an approaching flock grows louder over head, I rush to the clearing and stand with upturned face, not moving until the whole group of them fades from sight and hearing.

From time to time, I cross the  Bay Bridge and join the stream of cars on one of the interstates on the peninsula.   When my business in the city concludes, I find a cafe and sit with a more intricate meal than I would make for myself.  My head tilts as I strain to eavesdrop on the nearby chatter.  The conversations swell around me.  Passing cars slow for bicycles and the servers skirt around strollers.  No one speaks to me, but it’s easy to feel like part of the hubbub.  

Often I spend the night.  I try to avoid traveling in the direction of rush hour; and overnight lodging gives me time to drive the north way home.  I mingle with the tourists in the headleads, angling for a perfect shot of the Golden Gate bridge and the boats headed to sea.  A moment comes when it’s time to leave.  I ease my car back to the Delta, and surrender to its soft surroundings.  

Tonight I stood under a star-lit sky for just a few moments.  The low-slung moon had not yet made its arc to the west.  Wispy clouds drifted across the heavens. Coyotes raised their jagged howls in the stand of trees to the north.  The lure of city life has never eased its grip on my soul, where I split sixty years between my native St. Louis and my adopted Kansas City.  But the sweet scent of a Delta spring might melt my urban edge before too long.  Today I put the 2024 sticker on my license plate, peeling away four years before it.  I seem to have moved to the country.  Whether I will thrive here remains to be seen.

It’s the twelfth day of the one-hundred and tenth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

From The North , by Sara Teasdale

The northern woods are delicately sweet,
The lake is folded softly by the shore,
But I am restless for the subway’s roar,
The thunder and the hurrying of feet.
I try to sleep, but still my eyelids beat
Against the image of the tower that bore
Me high aloft, as if through heaven’s door
I watched the world from God’s unshaken seat.
I would go back and breathe with quickened sense
The tunnel’s strong hot breath of powdered steel;
But at the ferries I should leave the tense
Dark air behind, and I should mount and be
One among many who are thrilled to feel
The first keen sea-breath from the open sea.

Thank you for reading my blog.  If you have not yet purchased my book and wish to do so, February will be a good month as it’s the first month in my new campaign to raise money for worthy causes.  A percentage of all sales for the rest of 2023 will be donated to nonprofits, with a different charity chosen each month. 

Check out my website to learn about this month’s cause. 

If you have purchased my book, please consider visiting my shop and leaving a review. 

Thank you. 

I moved to California for the ocean, the weather, and medical treatment at Stanford.  The trees surprised me.

My affinity for trees began in childhood.  Our house had two trees in the front yard and one at the end of the sidewalk that bisected the back yard.  I spent hours pressing bits of bark into the tree nearest our street, the one my brothers called a puzzle tree.  The young tree behind the house broke my wild rides down the driveway on my bicycle. I clung to its slender trunk with shaking arms as the bike flew forward and crashed on the neighbor’s driveway.  

A high school Religion teacher took us to a park and had us crane our necks to look into the wide expanse of the leafy tree tops.  He called it “tree therapy”.  I needed that.  Years later, I walked among the trees that graced the top of a mountain where my husband owned land.  We could not see the sun.  Cool air stirred the overhead branches.  Needles and leaves fluttered to the ground and clung to my curls.  My soul danced on the breezes, leaping to heights that I could never attain; bringing the wind back with it to nestle in my troubled heart and soothe my worried mind.

When I bought the house in which I raised my son, I pictured him climbing the tree at the end of the driveway and having picnics under the cedar on the little block of land adjacent to the garage.  But before we moved into the place, carpenter ants had claimed one.  A few years later, huge cracks developed in the hundred-year-old stone wall.  The beautiful cedar had to go.   The umbrella maple in the front yard continued to shelter the house, until the ice storm that cracked its trunk and sent half of it crashing onto our porch.  The tree still stood, but would  forever be scarred.  I watched a neighbor’s chain saw render its fallen crown useless for anything but craft projects and winter bonfires.

In my early California days, I roamed the mountains adjacent to the coast, stopping for lunch whenever I could find a sheltered layby.  The redwoods rose into a steely winter sky or the shimmering blues of summer and spring.  I would lean against a bench or the fender of my car and stare into the sweep of their branches.  The stillness caressed me.  Sometimes I slept; and the trees stood guard.  No harm ever came to me.

Today I leaned against my vehicle here at home, to talk to my sister on the phone.  Groceries waited in the back.  I lifted my face to the sun.   Tension lost its grip on my shoulders as my eyes followed the graceful lines of the trees rising above the houses and trailers in the park where I live.  My cares receded.  Even when our call had ended, I stood still on that spot of beauty for a long moment.  Tree therapy, indeed. 

It’s the tenth day of the one-hundred and tenth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

Thank you for reading my blog.  If you have not yet purchased my book and wish to do so, February will be a good month as it’s the first month in my new campaign to raise money for worthy causes.  A percentage of all sales for the rest of 2023 will be donated to nonprofits, with a different charity chosen each month. 

Check out my website to learn about this month’s cause. 

If you have purchased my book, please consider visiting my shop and leaving a review. 

Thank you. 

Yesterday, bound for home, I spied a glow on the horizon.  I pulled my car onto private property, a sloping drive rising across Jackson Slough and bordering an orchard.  I have been ousted from just that spot in years past, but no one came this night.  Without my little Canon at hand, my cell phone had to suffice.  I snapped photo after photo with no certainty of what I would later see.

At home, over a small dinner, I scrolled through the gallery.  I uploaded any promising shots to Google photo and thence to my computer.  I had no plan to alter the images other than occasionally changing the tilt.  I watched again as the sun slipped down behind the distant turbines, brought closer to my eyes with the help of the zoom lens.  Over and over the day ended.  I felt the tension ease from my shoulders.  The slight tingle along my left shoulder which signals an impending shingles outbreak subsided.  The setting sun invited me to rest with her.

Night gathered around my tiny house as I enjoyed my private viewing of the evening’s splendor.  The morning might bring more strife.  In fact, I could well sleep so badly that even coffee wouldn’t shake the lingering grime of anguish from my heavy eyes.  Frustrations might lurk in the thickness of the early fog.  But in that moment, I could lose myself in the blaze of the sun as it hovered on the earth’s distant rim.  I could trace the stark lines of the windmills against the sweep of amber spanning the cloudless  sky.   Who could grow weary of such beauty?

Eventually I lowered the lid of my laptop.  I readied myself for sleep.  As I climbed the stair to my little loft bedroom, I strained to hear the night sounds of the Delta.  A pigeon softly cooed as it settled.  Coyotes yipped with  frantic indignation deep in the brush surrounding our meadow.  The big owl in my neighbor’s tree gave a throaty hoot as it spread its broad wings and moved through the towering oaks. 

Night wrapped itself like a shroud around my house.  As the moon rose, I fell into a dreamless sleep.  I did not wake until after daybreak.  By the time my eyes opened, the sun had returned in her gentler form, easing her pale rays through the parted curtains, sweetly whispering, it’s time to rise.

It’s the eighth day of the one-hundred and tenth month of my year without complaining.  Life continues.

I have grown to dislike February, though a person with a sense of irony might try to suggest that February has actually been kind to me.

On 09 February 1982, a crazed self-identified Persian immigrant recklessly driving a VW sent my small body flying three stories skyward, triggering a nine-week hospital stay and a slight fracture in my law school career.

In late February 1991, I miscarried what turned out to be one of two twins (the other thankfully arriving at 34 weeks gestation in July of that year and now, at 31, on a trajectory to happiness in the windy city}.

Late in the morning of 14 February 1997, a pragmatic, blunt pulmonologist joined a haggard, care-worn neurologist in predicting that I had six months to live.

Shortly before Valentine’s Day in 2014, my third husband decamped for greener, more successful, and decidedly Republican pastures.

So here I am, a determined advocate of Looking on the Bright Side, straining to find the beauty in this February, here, now. 

A short squall cleansed the air today, leaving a crystalline sky overhead.  Though I did not get a photograph of the recent full moon, I watched her progress and got a stunning shot of her half-moon glory a couple of weeks ago.  I’ve tarried on the levee roads this weekend, watching hawks, swans, and my beloved egrets skim across the sky and the standing water in the flooded fields. 

Come to think of it:  I woke this morning.  I have food on my plate, heat flowing from the vent, and only a tolerable pain level, at least this evening.

As I ease into the waning hours of my three-day weekend, I glance around my tiny house.  I’ve spent most of the last few days cleaning cupboards and sorting the accumulated debris of a long rainy January.  Though a few chores remain unticked on my list, most have been done and dusted.  A full refrigerator offers healthy eating for three square meals through the workweek.  I actually have two invitations to social events at week’s end.  The month holds promise.  Twilight gathers around my tiny house, nestled here in a plush, fertile meadow in the California Delta. I’ll take a few Naprosyn, drink a glass of Icelandic water, and end the day lost in the pages of a Maigret installment that I might have read years ago but happily seem to have forgotten.  

It’s the fifth day of the one-hundred and tenth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

February Twilight
by
Sara Teasdale

I stood beside a hill
Smooth with new-laid snow,
A single star looked out
From the cold evening glow.

There was no other creature
That saw what I could see—
I stood and watched the evening star
As long as it watched me.

I do not often drive two hours to sit in a pew and mourn someone whom I barely knew.  Today was such a day.

I drove first to Concord, a town to which I do not believe I had ever previously been.  There, I scored a worthy and welcome road mate, Spike Schau, erstwhile sailor, avid Harley rider, and one-time neighbor to me and the decedent whom we planned to honor.  My route to Spike’s home had been somewhat disjoint, due to some weird setting in my phone’s GPS that strives to avoid highways when possible.

With Spike as editorial navigator to the cheeky GPS lady, we made our way in turn to Modesto.  Spike slipped from the car before the engine quieted to stroll over to Candice, daughter of John, standing in the parking lot looking strong and somber in turns.  As she gathered each of us to her, we murmured what we could.  I never know what to say.  I remember my mother’s funeral, when people repeatedly told me at least she’s out of pain now.  Really?  But what about my pain, I wanted to scream.  I imagined Candice felt the same, deep inside, so I kept my mouth shut and just patted her shoulder.

As we sat in the airy room, we heard comforting words from a chaplain, the playing of taps, and tributes by John’s brother, sister, son-in-law, and a lovely girl from the facility where he spent his last days.  I watched the slideshow and thought about John Adrian as I knew him in my five years of living on ground he relentlessly tended.

I will always think of him in wrap-around sunglasses, with strong tattooed arms and a ballcap turned backward.  He would travel the gravel road in his golf cart or ease through the meadow on a tractor.  I’d holler his name and he’d raise a hand, though he would never turn his face in my direction.  Sometimes he’d dart the corner of his mouth upward, in something like a smile.  He’d focus on his destination.  He’d pause to let me pass, bob his head in a brief, courteous nod, and then continue.  

Once in a while, I’d come home to find that my lot had been weed-eaten or my flowers watered.  I’d dart around the house and look east, towards the back of John’s rig.  I’d see that golf cart headed home, and know that John had been by.  The next time our paths crossed, I’d try to thank him but he’d shrug and raise whatever he held — a cup, or  a can, or a rake — in a brief salute.

Occasionally, a backflow in the sewer line would bring John to my row of a Sunday morning.  With my composting toilet, I could not be the culprit, so I got a pass from his good-natured grumbling about working on his day off.  I’d stand on my porch to watch him toil.  He’d provide me with a running commentary about whatever struck his fancy.  He had strong opinions and did not mind sharing them.  While the sun shone; and the breeze lifted the bright green leaves; John Adrian would opine on the problems of the world, the country, and the plumbing. 

John and I did not see eye to eye on politics.  He’d call out to me as he passed, “Oh, Corinne, I got you that Trump sticker for your car; put it on for you, too!”  I’d grin and answer, “Thanks, John!”  If he came upon me standing by the office where his daughter worked, he’d go one better, making a point of connecting some societal malady with whatever Democrat could most easily be blamed, usually the California governor.  He’d groan about it loud and long, then laugh and say, “You know I’m just kiddin’ you, right?”    He’d chuckle and add, “But not really.”  And we would smile at each other.  I’d say, “I love you too, John.”  He’d raise his shoulders and his eyebrows and then get on his golf cart and away he’d go.

John Patrick Adrian had strong arms, a determined spirit, and a heart with unlimited room for his children, his grandchildren, and his life.  I did not know him long, or well.  But I had only to see him with his daughters and their children to know the quality of him.  I need only see the gleam in his eyes when he looked at them; the husk of his voice when he talked of them; the tightness in his brow when he worried about them.  To know John, I can look into the faces of those who loved him.  He lives there.  His light, and his love, will linger in his family’s gaze long after the end of this difficult day when they stood in a Modesto funeral home and strained to make sense of his death.

It’s the third day of the one-hundred and tenth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.