The Caregiver’s Tales
Tiny essays on life, nature, grief and other things that catch my fancy in the Texas Hill Country. Here’s how it all got started.
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Ageless Spirit
Spent the day yesterday helping friends provide music, sound, and food to a gathering of women at the Hotel Giles in Comfort, Texas.
Slim Pickin’s
I’m in the mood to say something pithy, but nothing pithy comes to mind. I’m facing one of those barren words deserts that occasionally plague writers.
Winter’s Coming
On a chill morning like today, I enjoy standing outside, feeling the air on my skin, drinking my coffee and looking at the gray clouds attempting to fill the sky. It gives me hope that winter might be on the way.
Book Smarts
As a writer, I’ve always thought, as Hemingway said, “A writer’s job is to tell the truth.” But the truth these days is harder and harder to find because more and more it seems mostly to lie in the eye of the beholder.
Happy Birthday
I am going to a friends 80th birthday party today. I’m in charge of the music. It’s a playlist he and I began putting together back in the 80s when the medium of choice was cassette tapes, and I was planning a Mardi Gras party.
Bird Update
All the old swallow nests are down. Seven. I spent more time on a tall ladder than my doctor would approve. But I was careful. And isn’t that what everyone says after they fall off a ladder.
Lights Down
Two lights fell out of the ceiling yesterday. I brought in the ladders and figured out why. The junction boxes failed. The plastic crumbled. I guess fifteen years of hanging around in my ceiling was just too much for them.
Growing Cold
Things are easing up. My sore hip and leg, tweaked during a week in the Black Hills and Badlands, are recovering. A massage on Monday and a visit to my doctor on Tuesday seem to have done the trick.
One More Thing
Things are changing. You might recall in 2023, after climbing to the top of Guadalupe peak and returning, I felt my life was entering a new period. I called it my Guadalupian Period, being as I’m a newborn fan of geology. And I was right.
The Art of Living
On my recent trip to South Dakota, I visited Wall Drugs and the Corn Palace. I expected kitsch. I got art and history. Nice surprises in both cases.
Dressing Up
My old roof is removed, and the new roof installed. There is still work to be done, but my house is dried in and safe from the elements.
The Way Out
Today, I get a new roof. Hail damaged my old one. The new one will be metal, as was the old. But a different style. Standing seam.
Wonky Gut Blues
On Wednesday of last week my intestinal system went on the fritz and became a water works.
The Process
Yesterday I was looking at my life in terms of continental drift which seems pretty appropriate. Over the millennia of earths existence land masses have risen and fallen and crashed into one another. As they do they raise mountains and give birth to new seas as the oceans of the world slosh about.