Collecting My Thoughts and Other Things

I considered posting yesterday. All day I thought about the things I might write about: cleaning, collections, pastimes, taxes, summing up the greeting card 'season,' etc. Also, my boycott of football.

I didn't do any cleaning yesterday. But I did on Thursday, I even moved the furniture to get the vacuum behind and around and under things. So the 'living room' area of the main room got cleaned pretty thoroughly. I'd actually started on it the day before.

When we moved in, we had a heavy coffee table I couldn't move. We gave it away and I have those trestle tables. I have an area rug I can move. I've got sliders on all the furniture like that heavy hide-a-bed couch. I have to move the couch to get to all the shelves above it. See below. There are vestiges of former collections on those shelves. Book and barware.

Gosh...I've had so many collections. The globes for a while. (All but the smallest were given away.) The Bendable Posable figures. Many remain in my possession, but some are gone. Old toys. Many gone, a few remain.

I was thinking of pastimes because I played tennis yesterday. The Saturday game consists of all ladies somewhat older than I am. One is so distracted that she never knows the score and seems angry when I tell her what it is. One I have the following conversation with repeatedly: "Thirty-love." "What?" "Thirty-love?" "What's the score?" She also moves only one or two steps on any given point. It's a bit frustrating. The third is my regular partner for my Tuesday and Thursday games as well and, while she's the oldest at 85, she moves a little and is engaged in the game and score. Still, these other ladies play and I play with them although it is more or less frustrating depending on the day. Some of the ladies I play with also have other pastimes. Mah-jong and Bridge, for example. Really. I can't believe I even know people who play these games. Many also participate in debutante balls for children. Seriously.

My major pastimes are tennis, reading and television. Yesterday, we watched a little (very little) inane NYE coverage. FFP watched football. I checked the score occasionally to see how much longer, but mostly I read and worked puzzles. (Puzzles are my major pastime and literally it passes too much time and becomes a time waster.) I'm boycotting football for a ton of reasons. Not that I was contributing much but my eyeballs to it before.

We did get a holiday card yesterday and I suspect we'll get more next week. I may respond to this one or not. It has to stop somewhere. I'd never gotten one from this person before. They are an employee at one of the charities we give to, but it's a personal card. I'm probably going to take the lot of them down from display today. Another year of winter holiday.

I also thought about my taxes yesterday. I organized the spreadsheet for the mortgages we own to get that to the CPA for preparation of 1096/1098 forms for the government and mortagees.

Today is the last of Holidailies. I only missed two days, I think. Will I continue blogging here. Well, maybe. It's been kind of fun and cathartic.

The Chair: A Documentary

I had this idea a few years ago. It will remain one of my many unrealized notions. I have offered it to others and you, dear reader, are free to purloin it, too.

It would be a documentary film. It would be called "Chair." One would interview people of a certain age or those who are disabled and must spend time in a small space with things within reach.

The interviews would be cut up and interspersed with others as the participants explored similar things nearby. Imagine me, in the red chair to the left, and my husband (the long-suffering FFP) in the yellow chair at the right.

Yes, I read a lot of newspapers in my chair. I will leave the days' papers on the dining table to my right until the evening although I'll often bring them to my chair, get the lap board down there between the couch and chair and work a puzzle. The ones I haven't read pile up on the little rolling end table to my right. I also have my water or coffee there a lot of times. Or, in the evening, maybe a Manhattan mixed by FFP. As I read them I toss them on the couch. We don't have a lot of company so we use the couch arms and couch for piling things up to have them nearby. Our lap blankets are there in the winter. (They go inside the rolling end table in the warm weather.) When the pile of papers on the couch gets voluminous I take it to the bin we use to recycle paper. On the arm of the couch, I usually keep a paper notebook, various pens, an iPad. There is a Flash connector charger plugged in behind the couch and I can easily reach the plug. I usually put my iPhone here when I'm in the chair. Shoes come off when I go into the chair so there are sometimes one or two pairs on the floor. When this picture was taken, there were a book and a magazine on the couch arm. I think FFP offered these as ones I should read. We have a universal remote for the entertainment center across the room. It is usually by one of our chairs. I often keep a box of Kleenex between the couch and the chair as well as a trash can.

Imagine FFP in his chair. Quite a selection of books queued up or in progress. Magazines, too. He has a lamp, a lapboard, Kleenex, and will often have a cup of tea or coffee.

We really don't spend all our days ensconced in our chairs And the people in the movie who spend more time in their 'nests' will have even more things, won't they?. Prescription drugs, for example. A land line phone.

And it all tells a story, but, admittedly, not a very interesting one!

Bargaining With Myself

I snapped this picture in Old West Austin last month. The youth in the sculpture seems contemplative or, maybe, just sleepy.

I spend a lot of time inside my head. I think 'what should I do next?' and 'if I accomplish some task, what could I then do that's fun?' and 'how long am I going to sit here thinking instead of doing?'

Up this morning fairly early. It's Monday and the puzzles are generally easier and fun. It was chilly in the apartment. The thermostat said 70 degrees in the dining room and a thermometer in the bathroom said 71. It is freezing outside, though, and we have yet to turn on the heat. We watch our giant TV and it and the amp and satellite box and the computers in the office give off enough heat to keep the cold at bay. But the TV is off so I turn it on. (The temperature at the thermostat rises three degrees in the next few hours.) I am comfy in my sweatpants, long-sleeved Tshirt, and socks. I make coffee, copy the NY Times puzzle so my husband (FFP) can work it and settle into my chair to work the Ken-Ken and Crosswords and read anything that looks interesting in the Arts Section.  FFP points out an interesting article in the front page section of the Times about a gala in Houston in 1989 with John Connally, Trump and Nixon in attendance. So I read that and the whole front page section while eating some toast with butter, cheese and jelly; and a banana. The TV rattles on with stock indices and pundits talking about lower taxes, banks profiting from higher interest, etc.

I am trying to talk myself into cleaning. I need to post something for Holidailies, but what to write about? I read a few sections of older newspapers. I finally decide I will dust some shelves. Just half the shelves surrounding the bed I tell myself. I do get started on this. I hear FFP dusting and cleaning in the living room. Embarrassed by the small amount I've bargained with myself to do, I dust all the shelves in the bedroom and vacuum as well.

My reward for this small bit of cleaning? (Although in fairness I have to climb up and down the ladder to do it what with the 10-foot ceilings and the shelves or so crammed with books and art and artifacts and pictures that it is not trivial.) My reward is that I get to write this entry and have a snack and read some more papers.Meanwhile, I may be bargaining with myself to do some more cleaning or go across the hall to the gym.

Housecleaning

It's hard to clean our place. One reason is all the books and stuff on all the shelves. I love looking at the arrangements of things and having the books around. But every once in a while you have to knock the dust off. And then, of course, clean the floors and baseboards. How do dust bunnies get born and grow? And then there are the sinks, the microwave, the refrigerator and the dreaded shower scrubbing. We used to hire a service to do some things at our 'big house.' With a tiny apartment (1200 sq feet or so) we figured we could handle these tasks ourselves. Plus we are retired and figured it would be inconvenient to get out of the way of a maid who would want to come at a certain time. Indeed, it's hard to find someone who will actually dust books.

So we do the housekeeping ourselves. But it gets out of hand sometimes.

I try to trick myself into doing a little bit at a time. I've used a random number generator to pick a task. I've started at one end of the apartment and tried to work my way through in an orderly fashion.

And, truthfully, I kind of enjoy dusting the shelves and handling my little artworks and artifacts and my books.

And I can always stop and read or write this blog and put the cleaning and straightening off for another day.

Techno Muddle

The Visible Woman...swithers.

For those following along...remember how I was thinking of submitting a ten-year-old blog entry to the Guardian project? I thought I had found a suitable one that was ten years old today. But I found a broken link and I wanted to add a period. I tried to update the entry. I still own the blog space but the location is kind of convoluted. Anyway...I went down that rabbit hole for a while. I finally gave up awash in domain names, registrars, redirections, file hierarchies, HTML and mystery. Then I kept going back to it. I finally got a link that worked, marveled at my urge to edit old stuff and looked at the clock to see the time wasted. Argh.

I was going to write about that old entry in detail today here. Maybe. Or write about the urge I had back then to record everything. Now I haven't actually entered it. Oh, did I mention that the other day I was looking at the Guardian thing and had to ask my husband what the A/S/L box meant. (He looked it up on the Internet.) Age/Sex/Location. Really? When did that become a thing?

Anyhow. Swithering. (This is a word that is not a proper English word perhaps but which my friend Mags used, may she rest in peace, and I love it.)

I also swithered over my Christmas cards. I decided to send a few more to people I hadn't received one from . Every day I seem to get a surprise one that I didn't expect and I send one to those peeps. I tried to keep track of who I received one from and who I sent one to. I'm sure I got confused at some point. But it would appear that I've sent 115 or so and received 32 or so. More if you count some electronic missives. So that's that. I have a few left and if I get some more from people who didn't receive one I can write 'Happy Holidays' on one and send them out. I didn't mention Christmas or any other specific thing on the printed card. (I really should just say Here's to 2014 on the card.)

I am also swithering about updating a friend's WEB site. I swore I was going to learn more about Dreamweaver and CSS and this and that and completely revamp his site so it wasn't such a mess. But I won't. I'll try to piece together this latest round of changes and get smarter later.

I'm also swithering about needing to clean the house and straighten up things around here. FFP thinks he got sick from ingesting dust because he vacuumed and dusted last Saturday. I usually do this stuff when he's out of the condo and I'm here. There aren't enough of these times or I get lazy so it does get out of hand.

Anyway...there is lots of time. I just need to use it wisely. Right? Stop typing and get on with it!

Wasted Days and Wasted Nights

It is not that I never accomplish anything. Slowly, slowly I get things done.

When we aren't out of town I make a little progress managing our financial life every day. I'll pay a bill, record stuff on spreadsheets and Quickbooks, balance with the banks, verify credit card bills.

I move stuff around. I almost never leave a room without picking up shoes, a cup, a glass, something that belongs somewhere else.

And I clean. Why just the other day I cleaned off the stove top. We keep our main pots and pans there and we don't cook much. The lids get dusty or spotted with stuff from the one burner we use. I cleaned everything thoroughly including the stove top itself with the special cleaner. For a bonus I scrubbed out the microwave, cleaned the door and washed the gclass turn table. This took longer than it should.

Today I almost cleaned the master bath. I did everything but use glass cleaner on the shower enclosure and rinse out the tub we never use. (Like the stove top it gets dusty!) This took longer than it should.

I move forward but my pace is just slow. Also I have to claim as accomplishments taking a walk or meeting up with friends.

I even seem to read more slowly than ever, not getting through the papers until late in the day and slowly plowing through my books.

Ah, well. Tomorrow I'm going to accomplish one cleaning task while FFP goes for a massage. And I'm going to 'waste' time reading or working puzzles or taking a walk or going to the gym. After all, I'm retired.

Take Your Time

Take the time to look around. Take the time to enjoy your leisure. Even if you are using the 'free' time to clean your house and fret over your finances and update your calendar and organize stuff. You have the time, enjoy it. Go down the by-ways and alleys. This one is between the Austin Club and the buildings west of it. (I usually show the prettier, intentional picture on Austin Daily Photo. Not that I didn't take this one intentionally. Just not with a pretty motive. At least it's not a reflection. I'm sort of tired of them. You?)

Take the time to blog. Yeah, I was cleaning house but right in the middle of a task I started blogging and drinking coffee. I'd gotten distracted by some sirens. I went out on the balcony to hear them better. I'm listening to my new iPod on the sound system playing a play list it made up from our CD collection. You pick a song and it picks ones to go with it. Who knew? It's pretty clever really. But not genius. Which is what they call it. And what they call the people who work in the Apple Store. Hmm, yeah. But I digress.

When I retired, I had all this time, but I fretted over spending it. I obsessed more about allocating my time than I did when I worked. I obsessed more about time than money. Not that I obsess about money a lot. I don't.

When we started getting ready to move there were all these important things to do. Or so I thought. I squeezed leisure around sorting and packing and tossing and planning the moving and the condo redo and fixing the house to sell and on and on. Now there are days, like today, when only a few things are pressing. When I have scads of time to clean, to catch up some of my projects, to work out. Maybe even time to think.

I want to take some of the time to get the condo clean. I'm my own maid. Did I mention that? How many times? Anyway, FFP is a big help. He takes out the recycling and takes things to the dumpster and does laundry. Does most of the shopping. Arranges the flowers. I once thought that I'd be rich if I had fresh flowers around most of the time. So, yeah, I'm a richie! (Points for knowing what movie has that line.)

I want to clean today because a friend is coming by tonight to see the place for the first time. I want it to look pretty good. First impressions. I think this friend should sell her house and go back to condo living. Not that she could sell right now, but anyway. Once she had a condo. She had major damage in the Northridge earthquake of '94. Structurally it stood but lots of damage to the interior. She wasn't inside. But I digress again.

I think I'll go back to cleaning. My mood is improving, I think. It's been bleak. It needs to rise to a point in the next fifteen minutes that is high enough to keep going when the stock market opens. If you know what I mean.

So, take your time. Go find the feather duster. Get things clean. Workout. Write. Read. File. But take it easy. Take your time.

Few Guarantees

I had a few minutes before going off to the club to play tennis. I put up this photo which reflects me in a window of Day of the Dead figures, this one colorfully dressed with an elaborate cigarette holder. Cigarettes or no, we all die, I thought. I started this entry, before going to tennis, but I didn't like where it was going and didn't finish it. I went off to play tennis after receiving a call that, because of some earlier rain, we were on a clay court.

We were on and off the clay courts. It kept trying to rain. Once, when it stopped, we moved to a drier one. Another shower and we gave up. I decided not to go to the gym. Instead I went to the Lamme's candy store. They weren't open yet. But they had a sign that the candy I wanted to buy (because my uncle asked me to send him some to give as gifts) would go on sale the 20th. I made a phone call to see if they could wait that long. They need it by Thanksgiving. That should work. I went in the camera store. I looked at some point and shoot cameras (smaller, more zoom than my current ones) and talked to the guy about SLRs. I didn't buy anything. Just can't bring myself to spend money right now on gadgets. Not when I lose thousands of dollars a day on stocks and mutual funds!

I took my car in for maintenance yesterday. I don't drive much but time goes by, things age. Th car is nearly eight years old. I decided to replace some bushings to stop noises. I spent a lot of time in the waiting room of the dealer or in the desolate neighborhood nearby. (I used to live not far from here. But this area is a little more desolate than that because it's mostly commercial except for a high school.) I watched people who were waiting for cars. A very pregnant woman with a tattoo. A very obese woman with a large cross around her neck, reading a book that seemed like a romance title. She had another book at the ready should she finish that. There was a lawyer counseling someone over the phone while pounding away on his laptop. (They have nice waiting areas, with Wi-Fi in one and cable in another. I walked to Half Price Books. I bought some used books on tape for my father-in-law. I saw an interesting book about Paul Bowles with facsimiles of journals and pictures for $5 that in more acquisitive times I would have purchased. I went to a cheap Mexican place for some cheese enchiladas.

I always try to give my cars a chance to not break down on the road by getting them checked and serviced. But you never know really. Once we had a water hose rupture on our Accord (the -1 Accord, not the one we have now) days after a maintenance check.

Before I left for tennis today, I was just about to say to FFP that my plan for the day was to clean the house. But you hate to make promises. Life has no guarantees. I said nothing.

There is only one thing that is sure and inevitable. And it isn't taxes. However, you just don't know when the end comes, for you or anyone else. And there's the mystery. This morning when I started this entry I thought I'd had something to say about death somewhere in blog- or journal-land and sure I enough I found this.

I'm home now and thinking about that cleaning. Maybe I'll do it. No guarantees.

Life has very few guarantees, you know.

I'm Losing My Head

This is a reflection in one of the shops at Bridges Condos on South Lamar. If this mannequin had a head it would be spinning from the reflections and refractions.

Today I cleaned. I am my own maid. I'm showing our place off to people the next couple of days and wanted it to look good. I'll freshen up the bathrooms and kitchen again tomorrow but I dusted, vacuumed, etc. It is easier to keep 1200 or so square feet. Still, I don't have a maid so it's all on me. (Well, and FFP. He does lots of chores.)

Maybe it's having to dust everything, but I have this feeling that I need less before I get more. I told myself that other than the 'necessary' new (to fit space and style) furniture, AV and computers for this place that I'd cool it on other new possessions until we got settled. I confess that FFP bought a new tuxedo shirt and I bought an after five tank and jacket and belt. But pending are a GPS, new pocket digital camera, SLR digital camera, multi-media projector, small laptop, iPod, new cell phone. I've got to buy some new tennis shoes, however. I had to switch back to shoes minus one when I noticed I was about to go through a toe. But I need to get rid of some stuff beforeI go into new gadget mode. Some interesting things are happening to gadgets on some of these fronts, too. (Which I am, of course, too lazy to research.)

I never did go to the gym today. I meant to do it. But instead I cleaned, I worked the crossword, I read other people's journals, I assessed the downward spiral of my assets. Then I had to shower up to have drinks with a friend. The day just sifted through my hands. And, no, I didn't write anything. Except a bit in my journal. And this blog.