I labored yesterday on Labor Day. It seemed fitting. A friend came over and we did a makeover. We dismantled an artifact of my previous life and made it into something new. It was an entertainment center, perfectly designed to house CDs, DVDs, and VHS tapes with a big space for the TV to sit. It was a well constructed, heavy-duty piece of furniture. But it came in parts, so I removed some of them. The top half to be exact.

Labor Day. It used to mean the end of summer for me, with school right around the corner. But today school starts in August. Thankfully, I’m too old for school. And the dress code used to change as well. No more white shoes. Or straw hats. Does anyone pay attention to that anymore? I doubt it. Not in a day and age when people wear blue jeans to church, and shorts everywhere. And I can’t remember when I saw a pair of white shoes on an adult male.

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.

I have a kitchen trash bin given to the family by my mother-in-law. It’s made of wood and at one point was a handsome piece of furniture, which is an odd thing to say about a trash bin. Most people have their kitchen trash bin hidden behind a door in a cabinet. Not us. Ours sits right out in public in all its wooden splendor. Unfortunately, waste, including food, generates moisture so the inside of the lid looks the worse for wear as does the top where it’s been touched by a generation of hands.

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.

I think I’m going to allow that the world might have passed me by. Not real sure I’ll miss it. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t miss me. But it’s not uncomfortable being in a backwater, or being a backwater. I can float around and sample the goods as I see fit. But as a demographic, the only folks who care about me are doctors. Basically, I think I’ve seen, read, and heard too much, and understand that most of what’s supposedly “new” is only new to people who don’t know anything.

I love to see mothers and children in a bookstore, gathered, laughing, talking. My favorite store favors them. On almost any day I chose to visit there will be children, with mothers, mostly, but sometimes fathers. There are toys and games. The children play at the feet of mothers who stand, talking with one another. It makes the store feel like a living space, and sometimes I stay to drink a bit of coffee and eat a roll, and maybe to start a book I just bought.

Well, I slept all night, except for one tiny wake up. But it only means I was really tired from not sleeping the night before. And the experts are in agreement that you can’t catch up on sleep. So, I’m not really sure what to do except plod on. And that seems to be a recurring theme in my life, and life in general. Plod on. But since I’m now a slow-moving, sloth-like creature it means I get to look around, and that’s a good thing. It plays straight into my natural tendencies.

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 went to see Butch Hancock last night, and I almost hate to admit it, but it was my first time. Of course, there are lots of artists I haven’t seen in person. So, I’m not singling him out. I just wish I’d seen him when the songs were new. It was the same with Jimmie Dale Gilmore. I got to his music late, and I’ve never seen him in person, but when we still bought CDs, I bought a few. I mention Jimmie because I realized last night that Butch wrote one of the songs Jimmie performs that I really like, Just a Wave, Not the Water.

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.

I disappeared yesterday. I was with a group of people. They were talking about plans. And poof I was gone. Of course, although I might have felt invisible, I was probably still there in body, but nevertheless, I felt gone, disconnected. It’s not a new feeling for me, and I’m pretty sure, unlike Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five, I’m not actually traveling in time or anything. But the feeling of profound solitude and aloneness is real, even in a crowd.

Yesterday was the anniversary of the United States dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Tomorrow will be the anniversary of the second bomb falling on Nagasaki. Nearly a month later, September 2, Japan surrendered. It took close to a month for that decision to be made. In retrospect, given the ferocity of the violence of those two bombs, the surrender seems a long time coming. 

Yesterday I was driving 70 down a road north of Fredericksburg, and I wondered why I was driving 70 down a road north of Fredericksburg. It’s a road with pretty scenery, courtesy of the Llano uplift, and trying to see it while driving 70, even if it is the posted speed limit, is a great way to get yourself killed. I don’t know about other people, but I tend to drift when I start looking at things along the road. So, I slowed down.

I live in a town that’s on the way to everywhere. The Highland Lakes are to the north and the wine country to the west. Two major metros are close at hand: Austin to the east, and San Antonio to the south. Those metros are growing. Highway 290 on the west side of Austin is expanding, widening, and lengthening, as is Highway 281 on the north side of San Antone. They’re daggers pointed right at the heart of the Hill Country.

I love the internet in so many ways, but hate it at the same time for so many others. Chiefly, I moan the loss of human contact in the area of giving and receiving instructions. At the moment, I am wrestling with a website trying to fulfill their requirements for them to stop charging me sales tax on goods I’m buying from them to resell. It seems obvious. They’re a print on demand company and the orders are coming from my website.

Played a song yesterday for friends of longstanding at the celebration of their fiftieth wedding anniversary. There was a smallish crowd of close friends and family, so I got to play totally acoustic, sitting among the guests. As usual, I remember only the mistakes I made, but most everyone seemed happy with the result. So, I’m happy. And now I’m part of another good memory of dear friends, and that feels good, too.