It was a dark and stormy night. A porch chair blew into the yard. The wind made unholy noises. The house creaked and moaned. It was a disconcerting evening since the house is clad in stone and has always felt sound and sturdy. I longed for a wind gauge, but I’ve long since given up on electronic weather stations. And this all happened in advance of the red and yellow on the radar that said, here comes the rain. In the end, I trusted the construction of the house, and found sleep. And when I woke, there was rain, and the house still stood.

I went to get a document notarized the other day and met a woman who knew my great-grandmother. Making polite conversation she asked where I lived. When I told her she started talking about Ms. Cammack and Ms. Pruett who used to live there. She knew them because her folks ran the grocery store just down the street in town, and that’s where they shopped. It’s the first time since I moved to my dad’s hometown to ever meet someone who knew his grandmother. Surreal.

Commerce. The bane of all artists. The pit in which they must slog. How to do what you love and make a living. It’s a conundrum. Early in my life, I took my love of words into the world of in-house publications in the oilfield, traveled through the world of book publishing, and eventually ended up editing drilling and completion manuals. It wasn’t Dickens, but it raised three kids and gave my family a good life. Early on, I tried my hand at science fiction on the side and did some magazine freelancing, but eventually they slid away.

Wow. I just had a moment. Prepared my coffee. Hit brew. Stood looking out the window. Realized there was no cup. Whoops! Inexplicable madness? Nope. Distracted. I realized I’d made an error setting up a product in my storefront, and each cup ordered was costing me money. Not a ton, but enough. I’m not looking to become an oligarch with these mugs, I just want to publish a book. I’ve been busy this morning making corrections.

I’m in an odd spot. I write this blog almost every day. And it’s free. And I feel like I know almost all of my readers, and I consider them to be my friends. This happened because the first posts were basically Facebook posts. Then Facebook decided to add a blog type feature, and I started using it. Then they cancelled it, and I moved to an independent website, GatewoodPress.com, set up a business page on Facebook, and voila, the blog continued to appear on Facebook. I did this to facilitate the publication of my book in 2021, The Caregiver’s Tales: The Long Goodbye, about my wife’s dementia.

The stage lights have dimmed. The building is empty. The show is over. My tour is done. It was fun. It started in Austin and ended in New Braunfels. Two stops. Two stages. Two days. There were no trucks, no crew, no dancers. It was just me and my guitar and my kit bag. I sang my songs to mostly appreciative audiences. It should be noted there were other people on the bill at every stop, so I wasn’t ever close to headlining. Still, there I was. On tour.

Well, the big couch is gone. Off to a place of charitable giving where I hope a family will find a place for it. It was made by Bassett so I think there are a lot of years left in it. Meanwhile, my front room looks airy and open as planned. Next up will be the old entertainment center. It’s sort of sectional, which means the top, housing the TV, can come off. The TV will go on the wall. The bottom will continue holding my electronics and the top will get the turntable and pictures.

The brush pile is gone, hauled away in a big sixteen foot trailer with four sides. A lone man with a skid-steer did the job. He also hauled away some old pallets, the skeletal remains of mulch pits from the days when we gardened in that area. And he also took the old landscape cloth I dug up last week in the front yard. Then he tidied up the grounds before leaving. It’s nice to have that area cleaned. Now I have to figure out a plan for going forward because brush is inevitable and I know more will come.

I lost a shovel last month which seems a hard thing to do until you lose the shovel and it’s lost and impossible to find. I have no idea what went into the losing of the shovel. We had it. Then we didn’t. I looked everywhere. High and low. It was nowhere to be found. I was perplexed. In the past I would have blamed the kids, and even though my son uses my tools he usually knows where he’s put them. In the case of the shovel, he had no idea where it had gone.

Yesterday was a day where all the tumblers fell into place, and I unlocked a little joy. I found a letter I needed in my junk email. The city approved my replat. I scheduled my new HVAC service. I found a guy to remove my brush pile, which is taller than me and has more than brush in it, and looked scary to burn. And I watched a group of starlings bathe in my bird bath. To top it all off I went to bed at 9:15 last night and didn’t wake up until 5:30 this morning, which counts as a full night of sleep in my book.

Our dining room table has been in the family for more than 45 years. We bought it for our second home at an unfinished furniture store, a good young couple project with more time than money. It’s oak, round, with two leaves and six chairs. Just right for a family of five with lots of aunts, uncles, and friends close at hand. The chairs are scarred by dogs, kids, loads of family dinners, and countless holiday gatherings. It has lived in four homes.

It’s April Fools day, but I don’t feel like a joke, or making a joke, or having a joke played on me. Nothing really seems funny anymore. My body aches, my spirit aches, and a random sort of meanness feels afoot. I’d like to be happy. On most days I am. Especially now with everything in bloom. I noticed yesterday that the Eve’s Necklace is turning pink with flowers, and it has become a big tree, so there will be lots of them. And there are flowers on the Marie Pavia rose. And my body aches from work, and that’s a good thing.

Adventures in doctoring. I showed up in a timely fashion on Monday for the scan to check my aneurysm repair only to be told that the machine was down and I’d need to reschedule. So, I did. For the next morning. Early. Once again I showed up in a timely manner and once again was told I needed to reschedule. They found me a slot close to noon at another facility just down the road. I went and got it done. My rescheduled physician’s appointment, which was to follow the first scan, is this afternoon, by phone.

Woke up to the sound of thunder and rain on the windows last night as a big thunderstorm rolled through the Houston area. I’m in town for the first of what I hope are many annual checkups on my repaired abdominal aortic aneurysm. I’m staying with my oldest son, the same son who came up last week to my place to chunk on guitars, and we did it again last night just for a bit before bed. He helped me work out some kinks in one of my songs.

There was fire, with smoke and ash in the sky yesterday. The plume of smoke hovered over us all day as the fire grew from 400 acres to 8,000 while the wind blew hard with its load of west texas sand. Then at dusk, as though someone had turned a switch the wind dropped and the cool air came. This morning it’s 42 and the fire is 92 percent contained. We could still use the rain, but the cool nights are a blessing.

The front room this morning is a maze of cables, amps, pedals, and instruments. Music is being made. We’re missing the daughter and her bass, but the boys are back with keyboards and guitars. Someone starts a riff , or dad starts singing, and off we go. Covers, originals. It matters not. What’s the key? Boom. There’s a downbeat. We’re off.

Spent a great deal of time outside yesterday, and I believe I’m paying the coughing price this morning. The winds were up and so was the dust but I drove the ball well and we couldn’t quit our first round of golf this year for a little wind and dust. So, we plodded on and now my nose is stuffy and I’ve got a bit of a cough, plus I’m sore again, but I’ve decided that is simply the price of living past my best-used-by date, the other is attributed to the dust.

You can tell you’re getting old when you wake up sore and the only thing you did the previous day was take a long walk. I guess I need to take more long walks, although I thought I was doing fairly well in that regard. Afterall I just spent a week hiking various trails in Big Bend, and I almost always chose walking over driving in camp. Perhaps I overdid it, because there’s a line in a song I like, Old Folks Boogie, about my mind making promises my body can’t keep and I do tend to think I’m young and act like it, although looking in a mirror will draw me up short.

I caught a break yesterday, another in a long string of caught breaks that pretty much define my life. This time it was small, dental, but it was still a break that went my way. I had a cavity on a tooth with a crown. It could have required another crown, or a root canal, or even an implant. But all it required was for me to keep my mouth open while the dentist and his assistant worked. When they finished the cavity was filled and I was on my way. I’ll need a new crown at some point, but not today. And just like that I went from a big cost to a little cost.

Goodness. It’s cold outside. A nice reminder that February is still winter and even in Texas that means a chill air. Of course, as the temperature dropped yesterday, and I went to the store in a hoodie and a jacket, I still saw men and boys in shorts. And I’m still not sure how that’s comfortable and why men do it. It used to be that only boys wore short pants and men wore long. Now, short pants are ubiquitous, a symbol of freedom, I suppose. But in cold weather it’s a sartorial choice that makes me wonder.