Who I am in 2022

 So here I am again, with my every few years effort to keep these blogs I started back in the 00s or 2010 or so updated. 

So much has changed. I really, really, should have been telling you all my experiences for the last eight months or probably more. Because nine months ago today, I was here. 

Jurupa Valley Beach, with Don and our friend Lydia on the second 

2021 Community Clean-Up Day. This was our last week in Jurupa Valley.

This is "Jurupa Valley Beach," a wide, sandy area along the Santa Ana River west of Downey Street in my former hometown. Don and our friend Lydia Ocasio had joined many others, especially employees and council members of the City of Jurupa Valley, in the second 2021 Community Clean-Up, which was in this "beach" park run by the city.  (We also participated in the first about 11 months ago.) But it was the very last walk Lydia and I did together, and the next-to-last walk for Jurupa Valley Motion, the Walking Club I founded in 2015.

Six days later, we left Jurupa Valley for good. The movers had already loaded up most of our stuff, but we took our two cats and too much other stuff in our Ford Focus and headed east. On May 3, we made it to Fort Worth Texas and on May 13 we moved into our new place in Richardson, Texas. 

Don and I enjoyed the Fort Worth Water Gardens in early May 2021 (our first week in Texas). 

Our first few months were wonderful. We enjoyed many nice restaurants, three concerts and we visited quite a few towns large and small around the Dallas Fort Worth Area. We took trips to Houston and San Antonio, although both of the big trips were for Don to sell records. We bought the new dresser and sofa we knew we had to replace. Don also decided we needed four additional new pieces of furniture. 

We also, due to severe negligence on the part of our movers, had to replace a damaged toaster oven and cat tower as well as several hundred dollars' worth of completely lost kitchen tools, and spend almost $300 to repair a tape deck they damaged. We also had to pay for about $500 in chiropractic treatment when I injured my shoulder trying to carry too many groceries in at one time, And, for several reasons, we ended up having to replace our Fusion with a slightly larger car, a Nissan Sentra. 

The last few months we've had to be more careful with our money. Due to our current rent being more than our old mortgage (and us not qualifying for a new mortgage) we pay more for shelter. We also make less. Don took a pay cut to take his most recent California job to Texas, but then got laid off from that. He then took another pay cut to work at a more enjoyable job with more hours, so he actually does come a little bit ahead.

His new job is with an estate sale company. Every Monday and Tuesday they go to a new house, and usually spend long hours (at least eight) setting that house up for an estate sale. Then Don will work at one or the other of those estate sales one or two of the three days they're held (Thursday, Friday and Saturday.) Last week they did give him two days of work on the sale days, but one at one of the sales that week and one at the other.

I go with Don. As has been the case for most of the time since 2010, we only have one car. Plus, with him needing to go to a new address every Monday and Tuesday, I know he appreciates me helping him figure it out, as we are still usually traveling on unfamiliar streets.

Me, a week before this blog post in an area of Frisco that looks slightly like the California city that sometimes is called Frisco. 

Today I am in Frisco. (Don is not, he is in a town we had never been to before called The Colony.) Between two or three other T and T Estate Sales here, two trips here so Don could buy records from a man who lives here and one trip here to the Frisco Best Buy to receive the above-mentioned toaster oven because the Plano Best Buy didn't have it) we have been to Frisco a few times now. In fact, I'm pretty sure an estate sale Don worked in November was right up the road from this Starbucks where I am today, although further north so I spent that day at a different Starbucks. 

Because that's what I do when he's working. The company won't hire two people from the same household so I don't have the option of working there. And I've really preferred to spend my time here so far working on novels 5, 6 and 7. 

I published 5 a few months after we got here, it's called A New Beginning. You can order it and my first four on Amazon.com. They're all part of a series I'm writing to honor my former high school mascot, Reddy Redskin, so it's called The Redskins. I don't care if that's not politically correct. It honors Reddy Redskin. Of course, I'm sure no traditional publisher would be interested in a series called The Redskins, so I am self- publishing it. And it's hard to sell very many copies that way. 

But anyway. I stay at Starbucks and write. I could work on Book 7 but I've recently been curious if I would have more success picking up my other occasional venture (besides blogging), which is freelance writing. I have been published in three national magazines over the past 20 years. 

One was for writing a story about the Samuel French Bookstore in Los Angeles. One for writing about how the home economics program taught in California schools is more about developing male and female leaders than its traditional role of developing homemakers. (In fact, in 2008 when I wrote and got that published, the California home economics program still used the acronym FHA-HERO it had since 1975, but it has since joined other states in calling that program Family, Career and Community Leaders.) And the most recent was about how the Salvation Army Team Emergency Network responds to earthquakes and other disasters throughout the country. 

I've so far sent one freelance letter out and received one basic rejection, a letter telling me I could write for them but they aren't currently paying writers. (So, I might as well concentrate on my novels, which at least have a chance of making me a little money.) Most of the others want online clips, and I have a hard time finding mine. In fact, I went searching through my blogs to find some. I'm having trouble finding my blogs even. 

So maybe I need to build up my blogs? Or at least one of them? Although I found another blog I've been hit and miss on and posted a similar post on just a few days ago, this is the one I had most recently updated prior to then. So, I think it will be this one where I tell you some things.