No rain. No growing grass. No weeds. No mowing. Normally, this time of the year, I’m busy pulling stuff from gardens and mowing, but we seemed to have reached a sort of stasis.

The big day approaches. Cataract surgery. It’s coming on Thursday. My right eye. I admit I’m nervous. I mean I have two eyes. Lose one and I’m fifty percent down.

Watched the lunar eclipse last night. Shared the experience with a friend via text and my son who came out on the porch just as the eclipse hit totality. It’s nice having people in your life with whom you can share the beauty of an eclipse.

I do believe this is the first time in my long life I’ve ever driven 1,700 miles in two days with one day of rest in between. What an experience.

Spent most of the day yesterday piddling around the yard. Put up some stray yard tools, picked up miscellaneous bits of trash. Put out the re-cycling.

It’s a cool morning in the Hill Country with still air full of birdsong. It should heat up later today. Fixed a toilet yesterday.

Our juvenile trees are enjoying the wet spring. They’ve done a good job of growing up, but now branches are pushing away from the main trunk.

We celebrated the birthday of my youngest son and middle child yesterday. I gave him a set of swivel sockets and custom seat covers, then we grilled steaks and ate that with Parmesan encrusted green beans courtesy of HEB, and fresh cucumbers.

Life it’s mundane self. This morning, in the dark, I fed the cats, rolled the trash can to the curb, and walked around looking at the trees.

I had a dream last night. It featured my wife. It was a short. She showed up at an event of an indeterminate nature. I asked how in the world she got there, since I thought she was in a memory care facility.

I started down a path this morning with my writing, but about a paragraph in I stopped and turned around. I deleted those words, and even shut off the computer.

I had a thrill this morning. I’m on the road. Woke up as I usually do at 5:30. Jumped out of bed, turned on the light, and opened my computer bag. No laptop.

There was a second big storm yesterday. This one brought hail and rain. My son and I pulled our vehicles under the carport and watched the ice fall.

A terrific storm banged and rattled the house last night. There was thunder, there was lightning, there was wind. There was very little rain.

I mowed yesterday. Mostly from force of habit. No rain means no grass to speak of, only the little weedy plants and they’re not that tall.

I got a call yesterday. It was Matt from Strait Music. A guitar I wanted to check out had arrived. I’d forgotten all about it. Because the interest in the guitar was expressed in September of 2020.

I’m going to talk about the pattern I’ve seen as I dealt with my wife’s death in August 2020 and how it came about. This isn’t a road map. This is my journey.

Life is full of patterns that are self-similar across different scales.

A day of running and jumping is in the books. The granddaughter finished ninth in the long jump, her 4X100 team finished 11th and missed the finals, but her 4X400 finished third and will run again today.

Walked outside this morning to clouds and a little drizzle. But it’s only a hint of rain, nature’s way of flirting. We’ll see what comes of it.