Changes

I'm moving back home to California. Not I'm moving back to CA, I'm moving back Home to California. Home, home, home...sounds so good, feels so good, can't wait. I didn't even know how much I yearned for home.

But with that come big changes. I'm ending my 31 year marriage and endings are sad. Beginnings are scary too, and exciting.

Like a place to live. Wow, I get to have my own space for the first time since I had my own room in the barracks when I was in the Navy. How I loved that room. I rented a big floor sander and sanded the dark floors smooth, stained them a warm gold, painted the walls a pale green and hung lace curtains I found in a garage sale. In the evening the wind would ruffle the curtains and I would lay on my bed and listen to music, read and enjoy the perfect solitude.

Then the next thing you know I've met the man of my dreams and ever since then I've shared a sink and sometimes a closet and always a bed. It was fine, life was good, school, jobs, kids, pets, moved to a small town in Southeastern Minnesota and lived. Now my kids are enjoying lives of their own and I'm going to start a new life with my boys.

The search for the perfect place is on, aided by my darling baby sister. I hunt them up and she checks them out, which means she gets to tour the good, the bad and the ugly, along with the skunk smelly, the rat pooped, the rotten floored and the generally broken down and unlovely.

I've been dreaming of my place. It's not too big and not too small, enough room for me, my studio and a spare room for visitors. I'll have a nice deck or a porch and a yard big enough to play some serious frisbee with the boys and they are requesting squirrels to chase please. I'm going to make my own room a haven, hang colored fabric from the walls and put a really soft rug where I step out of bed each morning. And of course beds for my boys, Dandy's large red squishy bed with his own fleece blanket, Bode's blankets which he will drag all around the room and under the bed, along with a toy or two.

To be continued -