Thanks Hannelore, Dancer and Poppie! "City Girl" is the only poem I've written specifically about this being my home in the larger sense. Then, California felt like a home almost as soon as I got here, as opposed to other places that just felt like way-stations.

Some of my CITY friends don't understand how someone like me could live in suburbia for 27 years, but there are both drawbacks and pluses to everywhere. I find friends wherever I go, but when I lived in small towns -- it was me and the three other outsiders. This neighborhood was built in 1976, so in that sense, everyone is "new" and I'm no more outsider than the next.
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