It’s one of those months; the book publishing business thrives and so does the care of those clients associated with it, which has sopped up all of my writing time and energy these last few weeks. I also have to attend to the Worlds’ Tallest ADHD child – a sometime employer who is the absolute epitome of the old-style Texan gentleman, whose word is his bond but cannot remember how to download an email attachment and save it to the proper file in his computer to save his life and believe me, I have gone over and over this with him … Anyway, he has some good ranch property deals in the offing. Over the years he has been a good employer; sometimes I have worked for him on spec when he had had a dry spell in the ranch real estate business, and sometimes when he was flush with cash from a multi-million-dollar ranch sale and I was skint, he advanced me a salary so that I had to cash for immediate expenses and work it off over time. Ofttimes in the last decade or so, I have despaired of his facility for tap-dancing along the tight-rope-line between financial insolvency and economic sufficiency … but being at the age he is, I have to conclude that he must like it and be accustomed to living that way … and anyway, he has a multitude of old friends prepared to indulge him in this. Including a long-time on and off girlfriend who I wish would marry him … but as I said … on and off. He’d share his last crust with a friend, and I am in the friend zone, having zilch interest in ranch real estate, aside from an acre or two of it of my own.

Anyway – Blondie and I have our own interests and issues this year; that of making an appearance at the local gypsy markets, either for my books, or for my books and her origami art combined. These events take a considerable amount of energy. Even if it is just my couple of tubs-o-books plus the items to display them and facilitate sales, it still involves packing the car and a long or perhaps a short drive. We have one more market appearance to go – In Boerne this weekend. The last weekend was in Goliad, which was OK, as it was a free (aside from the gas for the Montero) venue, thanks to the sweet lady who has run it forever and ever. Alas, the event before that – for which I had paid a table fee for two days – I barely broke even, making only less than about half what I have in previous years at the same venue. This coming weekend is the last of our Christmas market events for this year; a two-day extravaganza on Boerne’s Town Square. Alas, rain is forecast for Saturday.
The book publishing business toddles on – I am juggling four different book projects for four different clients, three of them being repeat clients, so as soon as we are done with the gypsy marketing, I’ll be working full-out on the fourth project, and angling for another high-profile book publication.

Complicating all of this is another family crisis: Mom took a horrifically bad fall last week, bad enough to do permanent damage to her spine and resulting in paralysis. She was alone in the house at the time, and it took almost a day for neighbors to become worried. The damage is bad enough that the best outlook is confinement to a wheelchair in an assisted-living residence. Remaining in the house is out of the question. We had all been worried about this ever since Dad died, but Mom wouldn’t consider leaving the place until now. Mom came to grips with all this almost at once: the house will be sold, funds from the sale put into a trust, et cetera. Pip and Sander are scouting out the right sort of place in Pasadena, or close by. Blondie is going out to California in January to help as she can, just as I went out for a month after Dad died. So that’s how it all stands at this moment. I likely won’t write very much more about this in depth: Mom is a pretty private person, and did not like it at all when I did what she considered over-sharing.