We did it. The second phase is complete. My oldest son’s family, minus one, came to town. We all gathered for more food and beverages, told stories, played games, exchanged gifts, again. It was a sweet time. Full of beginnings and endings. Two us on the high end of the age spectrum have lost spouses, and two of us on the young end are heading into deepening relationships. There’s even a new baby in the mix, with youngsters to tell the tale. Now we enter that time when we wrap things up before crashing into the next year.

I have a mug, my mug, at my daughter’s home. It’s a nice hefty, bulbous mug, black with a deep red interior and a dark red UH on the front for my alma mater, the University of Houston. Whenever I’m in the house, I use it to drink my coffee. I got it for Christmas one year as an official encouragement to come visit any time I want, to let me know I’m always welcome. Sweet gesture.

DC. The eternal city. For me. Mainly it’s the buildings. The mall. The monuments. The Capital. The White House. I’ve come here since childhood when we lived in Bethesda. I was stationed at Quantico in 68. I walked the mall during the Poor People’s March. Flying in yesterday, I could see the Washington Monument out the window. I was moved again. It’s a place of history, and I love history.

‍ ‍

This is a small thing. Tiny. But. I am once again carrying a handkerchief. There are a variety of reasons why it’s handy, and I probably don’t really need to enumerate them. Suffice it to say, I carried one for the longest time as a young man, then got out of the habit. I don’t know when, and I don’t know why. But I am back. The biggest gain, in my book, is that I will no longer open the washer to find shredded tissue.

Woke up to the sound of a barking fox this morning. I have no idea what that’s all about. Who is calling whom, and why? I suppose I could do some naturalist research and find out, but that will be a later investigation. For the moment, and this little story, I just like hearing the sound and knowing that foxes are about. They seem more elegant than raccoons, and I have both.

Videos of people feeding foxes and making pets of raccoons are pretty popular, but I like my wildlife wild and timid of humans. I think it’s best for both of us. It’s why, when I hunted deer, I never used a feeder. We went into the woods and looked for them. We hunted. Shooting deer at a feeder is simply killing, and nothing to brag about really. And I still don’t know why it’s illegal to bait dove, but you can bait deer. Who sat down and thought that up?

And none of this is really Christmas sort of talk, although a company I once worked for had an annual father-son hunt at their lease in Brackettville during Christmas vacation time. My youngest son and I had lots of memorable visits. The camp house was in Fort Clark Springs. We never shot anything, but we were surrounded by a flock of wild turkey’s once, we helped a racoon escape a dry water tank, we walked into a herd of javelinas, and we had a lot of nice walks in the woods and around the fort. I’d say those were worthwhile trips. And both of us still like taking walks in the woods.

I surrendered to my impulses yesterday. I bought the presents whose purchase I second guessed. I may be late in life but at some point, I figured I needed to start trusting my instincts. Because buying Christmas presents isn’t a mind reading exercise, it’s a small celebration of the act of thinking of someone. Of course, it helps to know if they’re allergic to peanuts or don’t like perfume. But after that it seems to me the world ought to be your oyster.

As I stood on the porch this morning after feeding the cats, I counted six planes in the air. Blinking lights against the dark sky moving with purpose against the backdrop of stars and planets. There’s likely a waypoint somewhere close. All the planes seemed to be streaming up from the south then making turns just to my east to find their final destinations.

I went to the recital of a friend’s granddaughter last night. It wasn’t planned, and part of a longer story, but that’s alright. The family has played a key role in my life since the death of my wife and the grandchildren know me as Mister John. We get along well. And getting to see one of them play at a recital reminded me of how much I missed my little grand-kids in Virginia and their recitals. So, it was a fun thing to do.

A lesson in commerce. My daughter and I spent several months discussing, designing, and creating a series of mugs for me to sell in our online store at Gatewood Press. The goal was to create something with the potential to sell not only to the fans I have for this blog, but to a broader base. To that end we even advertised on social media. I used the approach in 2021 when I published my last book, with good results. The results this time? We sold two mugs.

It is rather comforting for this old man to be back in the universe of Microsoft. Writing in word and calculating in Excel. The addition of the company’s AI tool has rounded out the package. I was late to the company’s initial offerings, but like the virus in Pluribus, eventually they assimilated the competing word processing and spreadsheet offerings in the early days of computing and became universal in the business world of my youth. I learned to love and use its tools. We were peaceful and happy.

Spent my evening yesterday with people making music. An open mic, welcome to all comers, and they came. The evening is hosted by a friend which is what gave me my initial boost of courage several months back. I’m not real sure why I needed it. Sixty years ago, when I first picked up the guitar, I had a trio and we’d play for anyone at the drop of a hat. I guess as the years wore on, I learned how much I didn’t know, and that began to give me pause. These days, in the twilight of my life, my nerves twitch when I play for strangers.

Two years ago, in November, I hiked to the top of Gudalupe Peak, the tallest mountain in Texas. I got up the next day and did a seven-mile hike. Five months later, I had an abdominal aortic aneurysm repaired. I shut down. I haven’t been on a monumental hike since. Lots of short ones, but nothing like that one year of the South Rim and the Peak. Mostly, I’ve chalked it up to letting my body heal and age, but I hardly ever think of those seven stents anymore. So, that excuse is long gone. I think it’s time to strap on the boots and backpack and get moving.

I’ve worn the letters c, d, l, and k off my computer keyboard. You would think e would have been the first to go since it’s the most used letter in the English language. But I’m betting the demise of d, l, and k has something to do with the fact that my fingers rest on them as I type. J and F are protected by little protrusions that identify them as index finger keys, anchor points for the hands of a typist. C is most likely the victim of ctrl-c. The copy shortcut.

Television, once central to my life, is no longer. I go days sometimes without turning on the television. I think it started when I cut the cable cord. Streaming is slightly more complicated. You have to remember what service has what show. And you can binge them, so with one good evening you can consume an entire season. And if you miss a show’s weekly appearance, you can catch up, which means the tune-in imperative is gone.

It’s raining and everything is oddly green given that it’s December. But we’ve yet to have a freeze. So, rain and cool weather have the grass excited and growing. A reverse version of spring. And no cold is on the horizon either. So, I’ll probably need to mow at some point, although that’s just for cosmetic reasons and I have no HOA or neighbors tut-tutting over my unkempt grass. So, I might let it go for a while longer.

AI wins again. I had a batch of Word Files. I wanted a field inserted into the header of each document. I knew it could be done because five years ago I paid someone to write me a VBA macro to do a similar task. This time I simply asked ChatGPT for help. Quick as a wink I had a program. We gave it a few tweaks and just like that 300 files had a field inserted into a header on each document. It saved me time and money.

Once upon a time I considered myself a well-read man, a reader of the great books. But that feeling has long since dissipated. I’m unable to quote passages from favorite poems or phrases from favorite books. I can’t site references from memory. The words I’ve read from the books and poems I’ve read are scattered in my memory like so many leaves from winter trees. The titles are there, the authors are there, and even some of the characters are there as well. But nothing feels coherent.

There’s a character in Star Trek that’s irresistible, The Borg. Resistance, as they’ll tell you, is futile. The Star Trek heroes obviously resist but lots of cultures don’t. I think the internet is our Borg, and judging by how many people use it, I’d say resistance is futile. Although, perhaps in retrospect its technology in general that captured us. But that’s for another day. Right now, for me, it’s the internet, because someone in China is still perusing my site every day.

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.

It is nothing for me to wake at night and instantly recall some moment in my life that needs re-litigating. Sometimes, they’re events close at hand, other times they’re decades in the past. The other night I found myself in the early 80s, at my second job out of college. I have no idea why I decided to relive those days, but there I was, wide awake, going over all the things I did or didn’t do and regretting some of them.