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Chapter 7 One morning when I awakened, I patted Bob’s side of the bed. He wasn’t there. For a moment I was puzzled by his absence then I remembered. Bob and the kids were taking Grandmother Bartholic shopping today, and they were using Grandma’s car. I looked around the attic we had converted to use as our bedroom. I’d never really minded that we hadn’t been able to afford to fix up the peaked roof attic to be a bit more like a real bedroom. Even a bucket of paint would have accomplished wonders for the space. However, it had given us just a few feet more room and we had certainly needed that. Right t now T didn’t even think about what I could do to ma + 1" wad + make our “sleeping space” better as I usually did when I awakened. This morning, there was something else entirely -4 on my mind. “Today’s the day,” I said aloud into the quiet of the room. I felt a small ripple of fear because of my own boldness but I shook it off. Bob had already said that whatever I wanted to do would be okay with him, just so long as it didn’t interfere too much with his painting. I scooped up my “city” clothes and raced downstairs to our one bathroom. I was nearly 37 years old and I had had all the stay-at-home domesticity I could stand. And I still had that nagging feeling that I had a mission in life. Sometimes late at night I told Bob that I had a mission. I agreed with him that it sounded crazy since I couldn’t say what my mission was, but the need to do whatever it was that I was meant to do ate at me constantly. Art was the only thing that I knew anything about so whatever I was supposed to do must have something to do with art I told myself. And today was my day. Soon I was in Tulsa. 48 THE BARKING DOG