They’re stringing the lights in the trees at the courtyard of the headquarters of the Pedernales Electric Co-op.

Hint you might not be focused: A debit card arrives from a bank you don’t know. Slight panic. I’ve been hacked.

It’s a new day, but aren’t they all? Last week was sort of weepy for me.

I have a monkey. Actually, it’s an orangutan. And it’s ceramic. And it’s old.

My friend Jim Tobin passed away this past Sunday, October 3. He was a victim of ALS.

Today I start my push for the summit. Naw, just kidding. Today’s trip will be anything but heroic. I’m simply going home.

Once upon a time I bought an alarm for my front gate. I was monitoring the comings and goings of my late wife whose dementia made it dangerous for her to be out and about unattended.

Whatever I did to my poor old back muscles seems to have eased a bit. Yesterday, as I sat here and typed, I could barely sit here and type.

It took two days, but I finished boxing, alphabetizing, and labeling my CD collection.

Well, I’m home after five days of music, friendship, and fun in Marathon, Texas. It was all good.

Here’s another indicator of how well I feel. When something needs doing, I do it.

I’m pretty sure no one really understands how good I feel right now. My house is a holy mess, my wife died a year ago, but here I stand in all the debris feeling just as I did eleven years ago when we first moved in.

Gave two of my wife’s little bags to two little girls yesterday. Nick-knack bags with pink felt flowers and the like.

I was thinking about taking a break from writing about death and destruction as I deconstruct my wife’s closet, but it’s pretty much a constant and not really that much of a struggle.

Friends. Yesterday was seismic. As seven boxes of my wife’s clothes and shoes went out the door a new recliner crashed into the room. Continents drifted. Mountains rose. New oceans formed.

I did what I thought was going to be a hard job yesterday. I packed up my late wife’s clothing for the local Catholic charity in Fredericksburg. It was hard.

An unusually wet July and August have done wonders for the khaki weed harvest. Crop yields are way up.

Preamble: In 1975 we bought our first house. It was built by my father-in-law in a new subdivision he was developing in Pasadena. His house was right down the street and around the corner from ours.

Talk about old habits. On the anniversary of my wife’s death, I decided to remove my wedding band. It’s been well over a week, yet I find myself reaching down to absentmindedly fiddle with the ring.

I need thicker hide, tougher skin, something to absorb the blows. Every little thing these days feels like a personal affront. I realize as I get older that my skin gets thinner, but you’d expect better callouses on the emotional side.