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The new book is almost ready. It’s a chronological collection of blog posts that tell the story of my mother’s chaotic last years under the influence of dementia, Alzheimer’s, paranoia, schizophrenia, delusions, and hallucinations. Real-time dispatches from the front, as it were, between 2008 and 2012. This should be a hoot and a half. The Helen Chronicles: When Your Mother Falls Apart, will be available from Amazon Kindle and Apple iBooks first. Those of you who like the way books smell will have to wait a little longer, but we’ll do it.

The reasons for this project are multifarious. I had the material sitting in a private database. It bugged me. For that matter, her ashes are still somewhere in the storage unit awaiting burial in Maryland. One of these is easier than the other. I need to have some product out there, too, of course. But mainly it’s just time. They’re all dead, the whole skanking lot of them, and it’s a glorious new day!

Right now I’m doing final editing and working on the cover. I’m told these are both things one should never do oneself. That figures, since I really want to. I’ve also read that I’m supposed to make myself a brand and be consistent. That figures, since I’d hate it, he says, like this Leo ain’t got three planets in Virgo and the patience of a saint.

But The Helen Chronicles is on the way. Some of you may find things there you recognize and know you’re not alone. The rest will be appalled but read it to the end, the way you slow down on the highway when you see a bunch of flashing lights. Either way you’ll read it, and here we stumble on the truth.

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Phooey. Looks like I’ll have to get more wood this season, after all. And here it’s been so warm until that snow forty-eight hours ago, I thought I could skate by. There’s hardly any actual firewood in this shot or anywhere else, either. The rounds that look like chopping blocks aren’t piñon, but logs that were lying around and got sawed up by a friend of mine who was cleaning up the neighbors’ yard. It’s something unsplittable and vile like elm or cottonwood. As you can see, my splitting maul is temporarily stuck. In keeping with the relaxed vigil of spring, the thing can stay there for a while.

In any event, I have to have a wood stove. They work. I see people selling homes that don’t have wood heat and I think they’re crazy. Just a few years ago, Taos had its natural gas cut off for a week when the temperature dropped to 26 below. No gas for radiant heating systems except propane. Oh, the humanity! There were people freezing in their fancy houses huddled under blankets with electric heaters. We couldn’t take a bath or cook easily on my little camp stove, but we never felt the cold. Just look around, the mountains are covered with trees!

I mean, come on…

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Not really, of course, just typical April carrying-on at this latitude and 7,000 feet. But this does feel weird, because we’ve had months of above normal temperatures and hardly any precipitation at all. Day after day of big, bright sun. I’ve been hiking in my shorts for weeks!

The sky is generally the most dramatic part of the landscape here when there are clouds. Looking at this, it occurs to me that I’m really missing out by not producing panoramas. Damn place is such a drug. April in el Norte, not so much. And I’ve seen it snowing on the hummingbirds in May.

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This is a Eurasion collared dove resting in late afternoon sunlight. You can read about them here. I like having doves around. By the way, it snowed today, between two and three inches worth. That’s why the out-of-focus background is so light in color. It’s going down to 18 °F tonight. Springtime in the mountains, doncha know.

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