Old Habits Die Hard

LifeScapes, June 2025

To old friends, welcome. Glad to see you again!

To new friends, this is my personal blog, notes from the 31-acre corner of the Texas Hill Country where Bill and I have lived and worked for nearly 40 years. Once a month I try to catch everyone up on what’s going on here at MeadowKnoll, outdoors, indoors, and on the writing desk.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

It was Thursday, and before I could get back to the writing project, I was sorting the laundry. You know—colored clothes in one pile, Bill’s jeans and sweats and outdoor work clothes in another, white clothes in another. The hamper was full because I’d skipped the laundry the previous week, for some reason that seemed good at the time but apparently wasn’t memorable. I was on my way to the laundry room with the whites when Bill tossed his fatigue jacket to me.

“Oh, good,” he said. “Caught you just in time. Wash this, please.”

“Put it on the pile at the foot of the bed,” I said. “The jeans pile, not the one with the shirts on top. I’ll get to it later.”

There were a couple of my blouses in the shirts pile. The fatigue jacket is heavier and . . . well, dirtier. Bill wears it for outdoor work, splitting wood, crawling under the truck. So that’s what it smells like. Oil. Sweat. Cow barn. Engine exhaust.