It’s a cool windy day with a promise of rain. A good staying inside day. A cold front’s coming. Lows in the 30s, highs in the 40s. A Texas winter. We’re the place where blue northers come to die, victims of the second law of thermodynamics. Don’t bring your arctic air around here. You’ll be balmy in no time. It’s one reason why so many refugees from northern climes live here. The cold air might chase them, but it will surrender in the end.

I have a car and I am exhausted. Partly, there’s always the nagging suspicion I might have done the wrong thing. I suppose second guessing is just in my nature. Then there was the stress of simply buying the durn thing. It takes an emotional toll. Finally, there was the wrestling with insurance and dealing with the rent car that toted me around while I looked for a new vehicle. Lots of t’s to cross and i’s to dot.

I was sitting outside yesterday afternoon, in the shade of a deck roof with a big fan spinning. The air was soft with a hint of fall. Short days and cool nights have chased away the worst of the summer heat. There was music being made by a man of magic and we were all enthralled, having heard the songs many times before, but never tiring of the tunes.

We drove through Hunt and Ingram on our way home Sunday. The power of water was on full display. The cliffs were washed clean, and only the biggest trees remained standing beside the river. The works of man were ravaged, too.  Cars beaten flat sat beside the road. Houses emptied or swept away dotted the landscape. The slate was wiped clean and it was difficult to see what stood where.

There was a time when I dutifully squeegeed the water off the shower glass and walls. Then that time passed. I am now paying for my sins. For the last week I have stood, fully clothed, in my shower, working with vinegar, lemons, and elbow grease to remove the built up scale off the glass. It is, to say the least, tedious work. But I am emerging victorious. To a degree. There will be no perfection, but it will be better.

I think I have a neat and tidy life. Everything well ordered. Everything in its place. Then I clean a closet and mysteries unfold and worlds come unlocked. There’s a box full of small dolls my wife collected, featuring a geisha under glass that I bought in Tokyo. The Wilson family bible once again sees the light of day, a book most liked printed in the 30s, a compendium of births and deaths. A program for the first game ever played in the Astrodome in 1965 sits in its protective envelope.

The thing I most enjoy about the re-exploration of my classical music collection is the time it takes to listen to one work, and the attention that needs paying to do so. If I look away for even an instant, the music becomes elevator music and when I look back I have no idea how the music got to where it is or why the composer wanted me there. I’ve picked up the stylus and gone back more times than I can count this week.

From what I can see with the naked eye, the moon has company this morning in the eastern sky. Castor, Pollux and Jupiter are hanging close at hand, with Venus down below watching at a distance. Two stars, two planets. It’s a nice view from the end of the porch. Of course the water tower is there too, just above the tree line. It’s home to the radio that sends me my internet signal.

The recent rains and coolness have returned a little color to the land. Where once it was all about brown, the green is back. I had to mow for the first time in a month yesterday. Not an onerous chore because of my big riding mower, but dusty and noisy even though I wear ear protection. I even did a little weeding in the north garden, trying to free it of grass mostly so that the other little plants could grow next spring.

They peered inside my body to look at my prostate and found nothing of concern. Now we’re left to wonder what’s up with my slightly elevated PSA numbers, although it’s likely to be only my age, which is advanced. So, we’ll watch and test and I’ll get to know my urologist, just as I know my cardiologist, my ENT specialist, my vascular surgeon, my gastroenterologist, and my GP. A phalanx of well educated people doing their best to keep me alive.

I had a family weekend. Spent a lovely Friday evening with my wife’s cousin and his wife. We reminisced, talked about the future, and I played them a few songs. The next morning I headed slightly north for a nephews wedding, the son of my brother-in-law. There I caught up with my son and his wife. It was a good day, and I stayed long enough to let the party get started before turning the evening over to the young ones. I drove home Sunday morning.

I am adrift this morning in the music of Bach. The Brandenburg Concertos, 1, 3, and 4. I confess, however, I have no idea, without looking, when each one starts or ends. They play on my turntable, and at some point I will get up and flip the record over. It occurs to me that it might be time to take a deeper dive into the music, and really learn it. I’m retired. It’s too hot to work outside, and why not?

Talk about feel-good news. Taylor Swift is engaged. Judging by my social media feeds, the entire world is happy for her. Heck, I’m happy for her. And I think she’s happy for herself. Of course, I have no idea how she manages the life of a public figure. There are just so many instances when I’d rather not have people looking at me that I can’t imagine having people looking at me all of the time, and we look at Taylor all the time.

A year, any year, has always felt like it runs on a bell curve. Cool, short days start the year, long hot days fill the high middle, cool, short days end it. September was always the tipping point, the beginning of the downhill slide into December. It was time for football, hunting, and the holidays–Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. The four months of fall were action packed and sped by unbelievably fast.

The inevitability of life. Not sure what that means, but it popped into my head last night while I lay in bed. It seems like a good idea, too. An idea I should spend some time parsing. I think it has something to do with things I want compared to the things I actually get. And it’s not about shopping. In a small way, it also has something to do with acceptance, an acknowledgement of what’s real, and right now. Somewhere in there, of course, is striving, of working towards something.

I lost a day yesterday. When I got up in the morning, I thought it was Monday. I was surprised my doctor’s office was closed. I wondered why a music festival friends were attending had its closing day on a Sunday. I even texted another friend to ask if we were still on to meet and listen to music that night. He said, yes, but, and this is when I snapped back, he said today is Sunday, the show is Monday. It was a disconcerting moment, because I was truly in Monday mode.

We fried things last night. Fish and potatoes. Lovely. The fish was cod, cut into bits, dredged in mustard then cornmeal and panko. The potatoes were Idaho, sliced on a mandolin to paper thin sheets, soaked in ice and water, then dried and fried. My host had two fryers with clean oil for each. We started the meal with a heaping helping of cold shrimp dipped in an array of sauces. Lovely, again.

This is a short sleep story. I have figured out how, after waking at three or two, or one, to get back to sleep.  I lay down, roll over, say, begone to my ruminating thoughts, think of sleep, and there it comes. Hardly a great self-help manual, but that’s what I’ve got. Somehow, I have managed to find the stopcock that will open and dump everything from my brain except the need for sleep. Maybe it’s my years of training coming into play.

I’ll admit it. I’m happy for all the enthusiasm for Taylor Swift’s new album, The Life of a Showgirl. I’ll also admit that I’ve tried to dive into her music but came up short. I like Shake It Off and Electric Touch, but they’re really the only two songs I can name off the top of my head. I suppose it just makes me happy to see so many other people happy, especially when some of them are friends of mine. Maybe happiness is infectious.

A Painted Bunting came to visit yesterday. Out of pure serendipity, I happened to look out my window at just the right time. There he was, perched on the fence, leisurely eating seeds from the signalgrass that sprouted in the low ground by the south fence. He spent a fair amount of time there, too, and I watched as long as I could. Eventually, he hopped into the grapevines and disappeared.