30 MARCH 2022.  Dateline, the California Delta Loop.  Countdown, T-16.

Between now and 15 April 2022, here is what I have to accomplish:

Edit an article for next week’s Rio Vista Beacon.  Design ad for same.  Deadline, Friday, 01 April 2022 and it is not lost on me that the timing coincides with April Fool’s Day.

Work for a living for nine eight-hour days.

Have lab work done.

Get my vehicle’s belated smog test.

Drive to Modesto to retrieve a small settee which I purchased to replace the oversized French provincial loveseat which I sold.  Hand-off a cedar storage drawer to a friend while in Modesto, along with several bags of clothing to donate to her not-for-profit which works with a hundred homeless families in Modesto.

Drive back home and get the settee into the house.

Do laundry.

Make a supply list for the season opener Sunday Market of which I’m a volunteer manager, buy such supplies, and touch base with each of the twenty scheduled vendors.

Clean out the storage cubby on the back of my house to figure out why the bottom is falling out of it.

Coordinate the volunteers for the Sunday Market’s Spring Market.

Market the Market.

Rise at 7:00 a.m. on 10 April 2022 to set up and then host the Spring Market.  Coordinate breakdown and clean-up late that day after standing on my feet for ten hours.

Resume work-week.

Take down all of the art and decor in my entire house.

Pack all of the dishes in my entire house.

Take all of the mementos out of my mother-in-law’s antique secretary and pack them.

Stare at the antique secretary and try to figure out how to stash it to protect its gorgeous glass from breaking.  Implement the conceived solution.

Call my propane company and arrange for the relocation of a 100-gallon leased tank.

Call my satellite company and arrange for the relocation of a dish which I foolishly let them concrete into the ground smack-dab in front of my tiny house.

Gather all of my outside plants.

Pull up two sidewalks.

Unpost a porch.

Batten the hatches.

Tie down the sails.

Stand back and watch as the park guys take up the porch, deck, plant-stand, all of the extraneous stuff on the outside of my house, and the flag pole which broke in a Delta wind last December and now waves from my trailer hitch announcing “Peace” in twenty-five languages.

Shudder as they put air in tires which have been sinking into the Delta soil for fifty-two months.

Bite my lip as they hitch my house to a tractor and pull it forward into G-Row, and then hold my breath as they back it into the neighboring lot.

Then reverse all the unpacking, removing, shifting, sorting, and securing.  Unbatten the hatches.  Rehang the flag.  Repost the porch.  Re-settle the plants.  Stash the dishes, straighten the cupboards, and unwind the secretary from six yards of shrink-wrap.  Find an antique metal “7” to replace the “8” on my house.  Hang the angels back on the door.  Straighten the wreath. Thank the propane guys for reconnecting the tank, the satellite crew for resituating the dish, and the park staff for engineering the move.  Settle the new settee.  Then sit in my rocker on the newly secured deck and gaze at the sunset from Lot G-7, next door to G-8 which will soon be a pit where a new sewer line is to be laid.   

Four years and change in this spot has been good; but life begins anew with a fresh perspective on 15 April 2022, one click to the east.  

So that’s what’s up with me.   You?

It’s the thirtieth day of the ninety-ninth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

Angel’s Haven on 10 November 2017, the day it arrived at Park Delta Bay.  I’m standing next to my builder, Kevin Kitsmiller.  He and his wife Kim drove my tiny house from Missouri to California.