I have no cause to lapse into a pity party.  My sister-from-two-other-parents Lyne’t Gray would go wild if I let myself get crazy ruminating over what-ifs and what-fors.  A sheer expanse of vivid blue stretches high above my house, meeting its blue roof.  Outside the window in front of me, a speckled bird pecks for bugs on the pebbled surface of the California oak. What cause have I for being gloomy?  I live in paradise.

I’ve been awake since six, to be on standby for my friend Jeanne Foster who handled a hearing for me in Missouri.  I stood on the porch in my leopard print pajamas and filled my lungs with pure Delta air, dry, chilled, and clean.  I let the sunrise warm my face with its valiant rays.  I made a video about problems with the build of Angel’s Haven to post on YouTube for the many starry-eyed young folks who’ve toured the place lately, intent on “going tiny”.  I’m on my second load of laundry and it’s not even 9:30.

Yesterday I had two callback interviews for jobs in Fairfield.  I won’t jinx them by giving any details but I could do either of them and would enjoy each.  I’ve run into a lot of you’re-over-qualified flak, and a little quiet age-ism to boot.  But another Jeanne, Ms. Serra of Corpus Christi High School days, tells me that she changed jobs at 61.  I’m 18 months beyond that milestone but I’m taking her example to heart.  I know there’s a California niche waiting for me.  I will keep plugging.

Meanwhile, Kansas City sits lightly on  my mind.  I just returned a week ago, and will be back there in two weeks’ time for my penultimate work-related trip.  It’s getting increasingly difficult to swing those trips financially without an income, so the end will be a blessing for my slim pocketbook but a curse in the sense that ties will be attenuated and faces will grow dim in my memory.  Social media will provide what contact I have with the place which I called home for 37 years, if you don’t count the five that I spent in Arkansas quite by accident.

The weeping willow rises full and lush outside the window over my little make-shift art gallery. Two of my bigger art pieces have been boxed for shipping by Ross Taggart. I look forward to hanging them and giving the place a little more flavor of home.  Pat Reynolds sent a photo of the “Angel’s Haven” tile sign that she made for me.  I can’t wait to install it,, affixed to a piece of 100-year-old knotty pine from the Holmes house.

I miss my people.  But I’m happy here.  No complaints occur to me.  Another day closer to success with this mission.  I hope you’re listening, Mr. Above-Ground-Carrott.  The journey has proven challenging but I’m nearly there.

It’s the twenty-fourth day of the fifty-second month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

Georgia On My Mind, by Mr. Ray Charles

I’m sure that I should post something like “Kansas City”, but whenever I contemplate being homesick, the sentiment of Georgia On My Mind comes to me.

Either way, I’m thinking of that lovely small town which sits so sweetly by the muddy Mo, and missing my people there today.