Now that I think of it, I changed more in 2021 than any previous year. Perhaps that’s the secret of my keeping so beautiful (just kidding.) I’ve changed what I eat, and I decided last year that I was sick of looking drab and rumpled.

I still look rumbled, but I now have new clothes – for the first time in decades – and I like them.

I like my black jacket, I love my red suspenders, and I love the flannel shirt and my pants that are not jeans. I also love the blue cap that keeps my head and ears warm in the winter. Zinnia seems to approve as well. Fate snuck around me and peered out at the world through my legs.

I can’t walk easily on mud and icy ground, so Maria has worked out a plan: she makes the dogs out into the woods, and I drove over to our favorite walking road, and she circles around and meets me coming up the road.

It takes 15 or 20 minutes to circle around and meet on the road in the middle. I am slowly but surely losing weight and am happy to be walking again.

I saw that Maria had her Iphone out, she’s been dying to capture my new look, and I’ve been ducking her because the new look doesn’t look all that new to me. But since I’ve been doing her portrait, this was the least I could do.

I think I look like a Russian factory foreman. But, hey, if you’re going to ask people to let you take their photo, you can be saying no all the time.