on my birthday i vow, first of all, to not let anything bother me. i'll do the stuff i usually do, work, drive kids around, go shopping, whatever people want, but if they try to make me mad i won't get mad. i'll shrug and blow it off. it's not worth getting mad.

well a few things came by to test my patience, but by and large i passed. of all my kids i heard from about half, but then some are very busy and some are step-kids, or both. it's ok, i can handle it if they don't check in, maybe they'll be there on father's day. after all i'm a lot like elon that way, more than twelve, but somewhat dysfunctional. only in my case most of them aren't even biological.

i have a cousin who started in on me. her problem was that she is about to end it all. well that could set me back a little (see rule number one at the top), but i texted her down off the cliff. she like me has kids and grandkids, but they're cutting her out, not having anything to do with her, and that's killing her. i can understand that. but our conversation veered over to her book about my uncle which is really somewhat bizarre. my uncle himself, i dearly loved, a kind of interesting character who most of the time i knew him lived way out in the desert of nevada or utah. there's some reason he was on the lam, she likes to say, and what would i know? her book is about that. she wants to tell me about it but only in person.

but i'm resisting going down to new mexico; it's too hard, too far. just this month i've been enjoying this: seventy aprils i've seen, and the ten i saw down in texas and new mexico were drier than heck. at least up here, you have real live rain, and green grass, and all that. birds, for as long as they last, of course i guess they had a few too. but mostly they had sagebrush in april. a few clouds to tease you but not a drop of rain. so i'm not in a hurry to relive that.

then in the riding circus, i'm giving boys rides around town, but they miss the rides. i go wait, they're not there. you trying to make me mad? i refuse. it's not going to bother me. you can do the usual, you can make me wait a half an hour, i won't get mad.

the pope didn't make it, didn't survive the birthday. i am a kind of expert on april 21s, and know who else was born on that day; the big three are queen elizabeth, john muir and jim morrison. but there are a few others. a few people i know have april 21 birthdays.

we have just switched over from aries to taurus. from the pioneer to the settler. from early spring to full-on spring with the hot just around the corner. i'm ok with it. i'm happy here, and wouldn't want to change anything except maybe the freeloaders.