Many Mes

If you click on the kaleidoscopic image above and make it bigger you will see that there are many LBs surrounded by NY City cabs. This was part of a complicated display in the Saks Fifth Avenue window that had a mannequin with a panning camera, a  bunch of mirros and an old-fashioned looking TV screen constantly showing a changing image. When the camera panned by you it put a bunch of pieces of you on the screen.

I often feel like there are many LBs, many sides of me. There's the lazy one who has been fighting some weird cough and stuffy head since returning from NYC and is sitting here, after 11 A.M. in her bathrobe, drinking coffee. I've had no shower or breakfast, but I have watched CBS Sunday Morning, updated my other blog and tackled the puzzles in the NY Times magazine with mixed success. There's the dynamic one who will suddenly and inexplicably accomplish great feats in a single day. 

There's the shy me that's happy to stay home while FFP visits with a Bush daughter who is playing the Mother Ginger role at Ballet Austin today. (He is the board member who has 'wrangled' celebrities to play this role in the ballet's production for years. Made up as a buxom woman, the victim, er celebrity, is rolled out atop a giant skirt and children dancing as candy bon-bons emerge.) FFP has done the role himself. And he loved it.

There's the aggressive LB willing to yell at drivers who ignore pedestrians without regard for whether they might be armed.

There's the LB who figures she can conquer anything. That she won't be felled by any illness but will 'feel better in a few hours, and, if not, tomorrow for sure.' There's the LB who feels like she's sinking into old age when her skin bruises too easily or she gets up from bed or a chair and can't walk properly for a few steps. Then there's the LB who thinks she can sprint across the tennis court and chase down every ball even when she can't and the last point proved it.

There's the LB who thinks she can solve any problem. And the one who finds some tax forms and investment reports impossible to decipher in her remaining years.

There's the me who makes fun of typos in publications. And the one who has homophones like 'here' for 'hear' or 'there' for 'their' somehow flow from finger to keyboard.

Of course, there is the LB who is generous with charities and friends and is a big tipper and will buy an expensive bottle of wine in a restaurant. And the one who worries over every charge on the credit card and makes cash flow analyses to be sure that taxes, insurance and large obligations will have ready cash and that she can pay those credit cards on time, early even. There is the LB who is wildly liberal vis-a-vis human rights and the one that isn't so sure that the 'rich' can really provide enough tax revenue to run the country. There is the LB who considers herself rich beyond her wildest dreams and the LB who not only remembers being poor but feels poor around certain acquaintances.

There's the LB who wants to write stuff here and bare her conflicted soul. And the one who thinks, "Really? Whose business is this?"

There is the LB who thinks holiday cards are silly. And the one who is about to hand address some with personal notes inside and who is excited to get every one in the mail. (Well, maybe not the ones from brokers, real estate agents and other businesses.)

My job in life is to manage the many mes and to not let them trip over each other too much. I'm not real sure how I've done in that regard.