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I strapped on a new set of strings and went to the open mic last night at the Villa at Gruene, hosted by my young friend Bo Brumble. It was a coolish evening, but the heaters were running and I had cup of black coffee to warm me up and help me focus. I played my three songs, then sat to visit with Bo and listen to the other musicians. It was a pleasant night with good company all around.

I had a full day yesterday. Got a good result from a doctor. Changed the oil in my new-to-me car. Bought a few groceries. Edited a few videos. Watched a package I sent to my son in Cypress go all the way to New Orleans as it made its way to him. Seems rather roundabout, but I cannot pretend I understand the mysteries of postal shipping. Nor do I understand most of life’s mysteries.

It’s interesting to see what people watch. I’ve been posting short video reels recently on Facebook, to help build my audience prior to the spring release of my new book. The reel shot behind the scenes of Mount Rushmore has been watched for more than seven hours. That’s a fifteen second reel. I guess it’s something not many people have seen. Not viral but interesting. And Gatewood Press has gained followers.

I was poking around in the attic and made a discovery. I found our coffee cup collection. Thirty cups in which I can read a short story of my life. There are cups from cities, states, countries, and places we visited. There are cups from my working life. Some of them even had desiccated bodies of scorpions in them because that’s what happens when you live in the country, in Texas.

There’s a cold wind blowing this morning. A front came through yesterday. There was no rain, however, which is a bit of a disappointment, but at least it now feels like January. There’s no telling how long it will last. I suppose I should pay more attention to the weather, but I think if something significant was on the way news of it would bubble up in my social media stream. Although, there’s a lot to be said for paying attention to the weather, especially in winter.

When I started this writing adventure, it was mostly me looking at the world around my feet and commenting on it. A slow casual walk through life. Turns out there is lots to see in the ordinary. Then the elephant arrived: my wife’s dementia. I tried writing around it, but it was too big to ignore as was my grief in the aftermath of her death in 2020. Even now, six years on it seems as fresh as yesterday.

I finally succumbed. I bought a paper calendar. It now hangs on the wall in my kitchen over my weekly whiteboard. I thought the latter would be enough to help me keep up, but I was wrong. I needed an easy way to see the month at-a-glance, the big picture. The role of the phone will be to send me reminders, and record dates on the fly.

On January second, I wrote about getting tangled up in the Meta/Facebook advertising tools. Basically, it was a note to myself that I needed to back up and make sure I had a better understanding of how the system worked. If ignorance is no excuse of the law, it’s really no excuse in business. But yesterday, I did a cursory check of my bank account and realized I was getting refunds from Meta. Here’s a quick thank you to whomever pulled that trigger. I feel less of a dunce.

I replay conversations in my head. Parse them right down to the phrase and single words. I’m looking for things I might have said or not said, things that might have given offense or not expressed my feelings appropriately. I’m also going over what other parties said, trying to make sure I heard what I thought I heard, because sometimes I hear what I want to hear.

Last night I found myself working until 11 p.m. quite by accident. I have immersed myself in the nuances of Facebook advertising, and it is a thrill ride I can tell you. Plus, my account was hacked and someone else was in the woodshed, which has really made things interesting, and I am still untangling that knot. But I think we’re getting there, and I’m keeping good notes, which was what I was doing until 11 last night.

Well, well. I made it into the new year. I even ventured out to attend a party. There was food, drink, and good company. I was home by eleven. I saw fireworks as I drove, and they popped and boomed as I lay in bed. Others now have the official job of welcoming the new year in person. Personally, I know it’s coming no matter what I do, and sure enough here we are.

The writer me, is too tired to write, and doesn’t much feel like it, this morning. The editor me, however, says get busy son, we pay writers to write and don’t much care how you feel about it. I guess I’m glad I have an editor me, although I don’t really know why. No one is actually paying me to do this, yet I persist. I guess I hope something good will come of it. Maybe it’s just about me, and the good that will come of it is me persisting.

Home again, home again. I’m back from Virginia. My second Christmas away, in the warm embrace of my daughter’s family. My oldest son and his family also were there. As well as my sister-in-law and her family. This is the second year in which I passed on putting up Christmas decorations at my own home, which was a nice break from what was beginning to feel an obligatory ritual.

I suppose it’s inevitable, but every once in a while, I feel as though I’ve passed my “best used by” date which means it’s off to the trash heap for me. And it’s hard to argue with that because I do look and feel overripe, blotchy, and saggy. On the other hand, it’s the normal state of affairs for people my age, and most of my friends are either in the same boat or on the way to getting there whether they know it or not.

2026. The country will be 250 years old. I’ll be eighty if I make it to July. The bicentennial was a fun time. I’m not sure what the semi quincentennial will be like. The name doesn’t really roll off the tongue. I suspect though that Fourth of July fireworks will be epic no matter what and I’ll probably be happy with whatever my little town cooks up. Heck, I may even go to the parade.

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.

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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.