Can't Stop Collecting and Cataloging

In spite of the mad frenzy of divesting ourselves of things, we still have a plethora of media and entertainment options. As I type this FFP has piped standards from XM radio (off the DirecTV feed) into our office. I've been uploading a bunch of our CD collection (mostlly jazz and standards) to a fast Firewire disk in anticipation of possibly hooking it to the system or just having it easily available to search for tunes and play them on the iMac. I have several Netflix films waiting to watch. It's football season and there are a few new TV shows, too. Our social calendar is full of entertainment.

I've been trying to get back into keeping a private journal. Of course, I want to keep up with this blog and my other blogs. I've been cataloging and sorting the books we did keep in all this downsizing. (Besides an Access database I'm trying to catalog them on Library Thing.) What is it with this urge to organize, to catalog, to collect? The picture today is the cover of the book I'm reading which I scanned for Library Thing.

We walked to the university today and I snapped a bunch of pictures along the way. (Hmm...I need to organize pictures. Yeah, so it goes.) We also went to hear jazz and eat at Taste and to hear Hedda Lane at Rain. Input, enjoyment. Catalog, journalize. Repeat.

Ah, well. I think I'll sit down and try to work the Sunday Times magazine crossword.

Why Blogging is Perfect For Me

I noticed that Austin, Texas Daily Photo is about to catch up to this blog in number of posts. I don't want Visible Woman to become yet another LB abandoned project. There are so many. My collection of 'stuff' reveals many fits and starts of projects. (I have this habit of getting interested in something, buying the books and then not reading them. I start collections in haphazard, unstudied ways. I buy cooking gadgets but never cook.) My collection of online blogs and WEB sites reveal great unfinished ideas and my computer is littered with fits and starts of projects represented by folders and files. There are bits of novels and short stories, mounds of journals. You get the idea.

But. You do a blog entry. You insert a photo. You ramble. You hit 'Publish Post.' It isn't exactly an accomplishment but there it is. It adds up. Not to much perhaps. But it does accumulate in a somewhat organized way.

This photo, of a shop window of a store called AREA, reflecting me, distorted and subtracted, partly there and not, perfectly describes how I'm not always exactly present, how I'm flitting. I'm here, I'm not here. (The reflected building above is Austin City Hall.)

While trying to publish this post, I had a phone call, a visitor, helped the visitor remove some stuff from the premises, distracted myself by trying to look at some financial stuff and started reading an article in yesterday's NY Times. But I wrote it, and now I'll hit 'publish post.'

I Should Have Thought of That Before

The shop window is on North Loop at a joint called Room Service. I wish I'd thought to take reflection photos sooner in my life although I have been doing it for some years...since before digital cameras completely took over my photography.

There are lots of things I wish I'd thought to do sooner.

Since there is no escape from a Visible Woman blog entry without a mention of the 'd word' (downsizing) I wish I would have thought long ago about the consequences of storing everything I purchased in a smaller space than this one. When I moved to Austin, I had a mover bring a single mattress, box springs, an old dresser, some modular furniture, a bumper pool table, kitchen stuff and a few odds and ends. I stuffed my VW bug with other stuff. Before I married FFP I foolishly bought a couch and some bar stools. We crammed all our worldly combined goods into a house smaller than our new condo will be. It worked OK. It was a little tighter when FFP started his business in that house. When we moved to this house, we stretched to fill the rooms. The house was smaller then. Our answer to our accumulation seemed to be: add more house. But then we would redecorate the new areas. We got rid of lots of stuff, of course, during these upheavals. But then acquired even more.

I wish I would have thought sooner about carefully cataloging the things I did decide to keep. I'm working hard now to have all the ephemera and books I keep cataloged before we move. The flip side of this (another day's entry?) is the way I start organization like that full of good intentions and then fall away into a maelstrom of chaos and entropy. [Ed. Note: A facile excuse to use (or misuse) three words you like?] [LB: Facile? Who's talking?]

Anyway. I wish I'd thought sooner to more carefully label and date all the files and photos on my computer.

I was thinking this morning after we took a big load of stuff to the thrift store yesterday: it would have been interesting to photograph all the stuff we got rid of before giving it away or selling it. Too late. But it would have been interesting. By the way, in the last couple of days we have gotten rid of a coffee table (oak, handmade, bought at a charity auction), an old Sony cabinet TV we bought about thirty years ago that still worked, a VCR and a VHS player, several dozen books, and some glasses and knick knacks. (Actually the last of these are just queued up to go to the thrift store, but that counts.)

By the way, for those of you who look for The Visible Woman every day, I encourage you to use the RSS because I have to move some computer equipment and I have a busy social schedule for the next three days and my tech guy and I are going to be getting some new computer equipment going so...I may have to let go the circadian nature of this blog and use the time more, er, wisely.

The Flamingos

Actual (paraphrased) conversation from, I think, yesterday:

Himself: Should we just get rid of the flamingos?

Herself: Eventually, but not right now. It helps people find the house.

We were talking about our cheap plastic flamingos in front of our house. We do use them as a landmark when we want people to find the house. When it is for sale, though? No. They are out of here.

There will be no place in condo life for cheap plastic flamingos. Our high rise will have strict rules about what can be on the balconies for safety and aesthetics. Fine with me. Sadly I once had an extensive collection based on the pink birds.

It is much easier to hang on to digital photos. This one is from May 2006, our anniversary trip to Paris. I talked about this shop window before using a different shot.

I think I have five or ten cubic feet of actual prints of photos. I have discarded (or given to the art magnet school for collages) a lot of rejects and dups. But more reduction will be needed. Some I have in physical form that started out digital and some that started out as emulsion have been scanned. But mostly it was (1) develop film; (2) stick in boxes, drawers, albums; (3) sort later until nothing can really be located; (4) despair at the collection and what to do with it. I have tried to move most prints and slides to archival quality storage. Also a lot of my mom's collection. But some are still in boxes, envelopes and cheap albums. Sigh. Yeah, it's easier to keep thousands of digital prints. If, you know, you have backup!

Diet and Exercise

No I didn't eat the Migas in the foreground. Nope. I ate the Eggs Chorizo in the background! That was Sunday at Aranda's Taqueria #3, near our house. We had this day that was deliciously free of anything on the calendar although we had noted that Top Drawer Thrift store, also in our neighborhood, was having a tent sale with bands. But why go see them reselling all the junk we hauled out of this house? Would that be sad- or glad-making? So, really, no obligations.

As sometimes happens we took the 'no obligations' to heart and went off to eat a totally unhealthy, cheap breakfast answering 'yes' a couple of times when the waitress said 'mas café?' Yeah, big white endless mugs of black coffee. And reading some part of the Sunday papers. FFP was reading an article in the Statesman about Earl Campbell and I was reading the New York Times magazine which had its 'Year in Ideas' article.

It's so fun to do something like that, but then, belly full of that, can you really do anything? Can you really stay awake even with all that caffeine? Especially with really good football games to watch? (How about them Cowboys?) I'm not a football fan, really, but it can be entertaining while reading and dozing.

But I just checked in on the game now and then on a little 30-year-old TV in our kitchen. I wrapped the few presents that I'd purchased for the parental units and friends. In the process, I decided I'd clean out a closet that used to hold (before we owned the house) the hot water heater. We'd installed some metal shelves and for years called it the 'sports closet.' We kept bowling balls, tennis rackets, softball stuff and the like in there. The family is down to one sport (me playing tennis) and all my gear is in the tennis bag in the car. Gradually the closet became the 'gift closet.' We put things we might give as gifts, wrapping paper, gift sacks, bows, empty boxes, bubble wrap, party decor, empty sacks and costume things in there and I usually clean it out when I wrap the few Christmas presents we wrap ourselves.

So I wrapped the presents. I sat aside a few Christmas gift bags, tags, a little wrapping paper, some other occasion sacks and wrap and the bubble wrap and sorted out most everything else to give away. I actually found two gift-wrapped gifts (with cheaper tags on the bottom) that I had left over from last year and forgot. Some rubber chickens went in the thrift store pile, old calendars to the pile for the neighbor to give to kids in art class, empty boxes ditto. Books, picture frames and other things we'd saved for emergency gifts to the thrift store. I think I queued up nine or ten cubic feet of stuff to be outta here. I cleaned the shelves, swept the floor and put the few surviving things back in there. Not bad after a Mexican Breakfast!

The Cowboys won (I got the final score on that little TV in the kitchen while washing up some dishes) and I talked to a friend about her health issues and plans for the holidays and our plan to get together for a meal when another friend came to town.

At that point, it would have been easy to say: "You accomplished something!" and just settle in front of the TV and snooze. FFP had steamed squash and onions with dill and I had some with a little grated cheese along the way. You know, to round out eggs, chorizo, potatoes, beans and guacamole. I have a balanced diet!

But I didn't slide into my stylish red chair in the bedroom with the Times and another cuppa. No. I went to the gym. I read newspapers while peddling to nowhere on a recumbent bike for fifty minutes and then doing some weight work on my arms, chest, shoulders and back. I would have once considered this a stellar workout. But now it's an ordinary one for me. That's the vicious thing about exercise. The more you do, the more your body demands to offset the same unhealthy breakfast.

I went home and, of course, I finally slid into that chair. I ate something more. Maybe a couple of Clementines (the fruit component of the diet). Maybe some tofu dip and pita chips and a glass of Guinness. Maybe a little bit of cheese. Yeah, probably all of that.

Because that's the secret to life, eh? Diet and exercise.

I Lost My Purse

Not really. Nothing to lose. I gave up carrying a purse some years ago and, a few years later, gave away the last one which was a tan leather Coach bag with a simple profile. Now I make sure I have pockets for things like those shown in my office drawer photographed here. My shorts have pockets, my sweat pants have pockets. Dress pants? I wear either custom pants with front pockets or co-opt Men's wear. Jeans? Pockets. Blazers are a fixture in my wardrobe. A couple were searched out meticulously to find ones with an inside pocket and most were custom-made with two inside pockets and outside patch pockets. Traveling with important things like traveler's checks or passport? Let's just say it's on my person.

Not to say that I never carry a bag. I have a messenger bag, a brief case, a couple of backpacks including one designed for a laptop. I have ten zillion of those canvas bags you get free or for a couple of bucks in a store. If I want to carry books, papers or a laptop then yeah, a bag. But for wallet, keys and such? Nope. Pockets.

The other night we were at Austin's Saks store for a party. I wanted to take some photos of honorees and put my wine glass down on a shelf. There were purses on the shelf. They had lots of flaps and buckles (the current fashion apparently) and cost four figures. Yes, over a thousand dollars. Imagine how much the ones behind glass go for?

Whenever I hear about a woman who got out of her car to go meet her kid and got her purse stolen or about someone who lost wallet, etc. in a grab and run I wonder: is it that important to not look dowdy? Because obviously pockets are dowdy. Plus I admit I clip my old school phone to my belt and put my digital camera there occasionally. I look dowdy, lumpy and bumpy. But I keep up with wallet usually!

I did get pick pocketed in the Paris subway, though. The guy crowded me on the escalator and then reached in the outside pocket of my jacket to grab a wallet I had there. I hope he enjoyed the small amount of cash and the Metro tickets and the fake credit cards. Because, yeah, it was a 'dummy' wallet for the purpose of paying for and holding Metro tix.

Losing the purse simplified my life. No fashion accessories. Not so many lost things.

That drawer I've shown used to be chaos but I cleaned it out as part of the downsizing effort. I park my keys, cameras, wallet , phone, etc. there. I try to keep my wallet thin.

But like all these tales, there is a warning. The one thing I have trouble controlling are all the little notebooks and pens I carry around. They are everywhere and yet, when you are looking for one, nowhere to be found. Also, I have given up carrying a PDA (where would I put it!?) so while my phone has lots of numbers, I can't always tell people what's on my calendar when I'm away from the computer. This can be a good thing, though, because it gives you time to make excuses or double check with the spousal unit before committing.

Is my purse-less life simpler? Yeah. Is it still chaos here? You bet.

I Could Be Everywhere at Once

...if only I had the time! Time, space, motion, memory. I spent about thirty minutes searching for this picture, taken in 2001, yesterday. I am putting in my blog because it feels so valuable now that I searched and searched for it. (Remember how I said yesterday that my pictures never get properly labeled? This one was called 104-0454_IMG.JPG.) I gave it a better name but now it's in my blog, too, so I can refer to it. Now that we have our water main problem fixed, we have a leak in our own service. Since we have a cutoff in the house we have determined that it is between the meter and the house. The sprinkler guy asserts that he has fixed all his bits and stuff in the area, checked other stations and he has uncovered all his lines near the service. We have this suspicious wet area between two driveway surfaces, too.

So what is the significance of this picture? Well, when we built our pervious Eco-Crete driveway (which we were doing when this picture was shot) they broke a line in the water service to the house. We remembered it being in a certain place (see pink paint) but we couldn't for the life of us think why the pipe was there. To get to the garage and enter the house where the service enters the house it would have to make a hard turn to the north. Why would anyone do that? This is the original house on the lot.

Later in the evening I had a water detective Eureka moment. I remembered that there was a closet that used to house the hot water heater before it was moved to the garage. So, of course, the original angle of the line went under the house to that closet! Now, of course, another question is where does the thing turn? But I feel much better than I have any right to feel just because I figured that out. Hey, this house was built in 1951. We've lived here 30 years. There were things the people we bought it from didn't tell us. We have made all these discoveries and repaired things. We are trying to simplify our lives by selling this sprawling complicated property. But I'm going to tell the new owners everything I can think of about the place. With pictures. Seriously, you are supposed to do that according to some real estate things or the other. But after 30 years I'm still making discoveries. Or rediscoveries. Like the fact that the outlets in one room that is the original living room have one plug that is switched (by three different switches) and one that isn't.

So how have I simplified my life in this sprawling entry? Well, I've saved the picture, for what it's worth on the Internet so I can find it again. And, I might add, labeled it properly on my computer. And the seemingly slightly off topic title and subtitle record a phrase I wrote on a piece of scrap paper that I could otherwise discard as it has notes from me taking care of budget and financial stuff. But I didn't want to lose track of that phrase. It is so twisted. Because you can only be one place at a time no matter how long you have. There is a enormous missed opportunity if you are mortal.

All these little pieces of paper are chaos. They help me remember stuff and yet I have to carefully review them before I can stick them in recycling. I really need to keep all my 'to do' stuff in an electronic file. But I've given up on using a PDA. And my phone is old school and just phones. So when I'm not at the computer, I use scraps of paper.

Goals, To Dos, Resolutions

I'm all about goals. I make 'to do' lists. I am the queen of the New Year's Resolution and the random time of the year resolution as well. But I'm kind of fractured and all over the place in execution. As I say on the tennis court: "Good idea; poor execution."

I've been trying to get into better shape and stay that way. (I was trying to lose weight, too, but see here.) I made this pact to try to do 45+10+10 in the gym. That means a 45 minute aerobic thing like the stationary bike. (Actually not like the stationary bike but exactly that machine.) Then 10 sets of weight conditioning things. Then 10 minutes on some other aerobic thing (like the treadmill or rowing machine). Now I actually feel like I'm in pretty good shape and this goal is helping. But sometime I just go to the club, play tennis and come home without doing anything in the gym. Or I go to water aerobics and then a tennis workout and figure "that's it." It's not that these things aren't a little exercise. But they aren't my goals. Today after tennis, I ate a taco, drank a smoothie and then did over 45 minutes on the bike. While reading down the newspaper pile. Another goal. But after five or so sets of weight work I just gave it up. It's all about the striving after all.

The fractured picture was taken in the Guinness tourist attraction in Dublin in 2004. (One will find on the permanent 'to do' list: organize photos in the computer.)

Am I better off with unmet goals, broken resolutions and long lists of undone 'to dos' than if I just stumbled along through life as it came? Can't say. But I know myself. I'll keep making lists and making promises to myself. And hoping the half measures add up to something in the end.

Spiraling into the Rabbit Hole

Yesterday, Sunday, had a delicious free quality to it. We had a little social event in the evening and one that didn't elicit a fashion emergency at that. This was the first day in a few weeks where there weren't daytime commitments as well as evening ones. Don't get me wrong...it was all fun or self-improving stuff for the most part. Still I'd been busy. Here was a nice time to maybe catch up on the downsizing or get something tidied up around here. Or just relax and read. So how did I waste my time?

I decided to run virus and spyware scans on one computer and watched them run part of the time. I tried to work The New York Times magazine crossword on the computer and later tried to fill it in in the actual magazine. (No joy until today when I could unlock the key and get help. Clever puns in this one.)

At one point I thought I'd attack a pile of magazines that had survived other attempts to move them toward recycling. I managed to discard a few. In one I just had to read a piece before letting it go. Most of the ones I looked at got saved. A Harper's because of a piece by Jonathan Lethem about plagiarism that was completely plagiarized. (I later read this on the exercise bike but still saved it because I hadn't completely read his notes about where he extracted everything.) I saved a Summer Fiction edition of The New Yorker from 2004 even though I have it on DVD because you never know when it would be handy to take along to read. I saved another Harper's because of an article about Werner Herzog. I saved a June issue of The New York Times magazine not to work the puzzle (which looks quite hard) or to read the serialized novel (I haven't been able to get into any of these and this is chapter five of the last one they did). No, it was a bunch of articles about the rich getting richer and the poor...you know. I'm still trying to figure out which I am much less the whys and wherefores and politics of that economic idea. So...interesting and maybe I should read it.

Then there was The New Yorker issue (too new to be on DVD yet) which had a review of the Edith Piaf movie I missed at the theaters. I saved a Harper's because of an essay on the virtues of idleness. The irony was not lost on me.

I saved another issue of The New Yorker because of an article about the Queen Mary 2. The issue is on the DVD collection. But I'd really like to read it. If I ever get downsized and escape real estate hades, I'd like to go on that ship. I've been on the QE 2. But I digress.

Another issue of The New Yorker survived because of an article about neurosurgery and a Woody Allen casual. And another because of an article about mathematics. So sue me. I must confess that there is a 2005 issue in one of the bathrooms because of an article about Angela Merkel.

So the result of all that activity was that one pile had become two, reduced by three or four magazines that will make the recycling truck on Friday.

During my bout with the magazines, FFP arrived in my office with a 'home for sale' brochure from a house in the neighborhood. We spent a bit of time looking the place up in the database of the local tax collector and calculating a price per square foot.

I sorted through some current newspapers and tossed some ads in recycling. I glanced at Marilyn Vos Savant's column in Parade. She had an interesting puzzle. I didn't try to work it out but when I read the solution I thought it was amazing and wrote a small proof about why it worked. Seriously.

I managed to get to my gym for some exercise (mostly riding the recumbent bike while reading the Jonathan Lethem piece). I thought briefly about a trip to New York, too. Because in New York once, in the Village somewhere, we found a mystery book store while waiting for time for a jazz performance at the Vanguard. And I bought Motherless Brooklyn because it seemed interesting, I wanted to support the store and it was set in Brooklyn. I later bought Fortress of Solitude because I liked Lethem.

Yeah, those were the kinds of "accomplishments" and reveries I managed on this day of little obligation. Oh, and I put together a letter about my great nephew Jack's Flat Stanley's adventures in Austin and ordered and picked up prints of pictures of his (F. Stanley's) visit here and wrote on postcards and put the whole thing (along with Mr. F. Stanley with arms and legs folded) in a package to mail back to Jack's teacher.

I wanted to accomplish things in my retirement. I didn't anticipate how much my adult attention deficit disorder would affect idle times. And my greatest accomplishment seems to be becoming a dilettante. And learning to spell dilettante!

Bury the Hachet

A week or so ago I noticed a hatchet in the garage. Now we have done a pretty thorough-going cleaning of the garage and had it painted. My first thought was: "I don't think we will need a hatchet in the condo. My second thought was: "What have I ever needed a hatchet for even here?"

A couple of days ago a friend of mine who is beginning a series of three moves that will eventually land her in the same downtown high rise we'll be in, said "I found a hatchet and thought 'I'm not going to need that in the condo!'" What are the odds?

In the picture above you can see a few other things that survived the great cleaning sweep. Some booster cables, a huge pipe wrench, some sheet metal left from some recent repair job. I'm sure we will have to clean out the garage again before we sell the house next spring. But I don't think it will be as bad as it was before this round of cleaning.

Dreaming Some Place Else

When you are planning a move, a job change (or retirement) or a vacation, you visualize yourself somewhere else. You imagine what you'll do, the things you'll have around you, how each day will shape up.

Reality is always somewhat different. To say the least.

This photo was taken on a bit of the hike and bike trail in downtown Austin, looking east at some of the flock of cranes that are ubiquitous in the Austin skyline at the moment. For those keeping score at home the building in the foreground is the 360 which will one day be 44 stories and will contain our small home. The eighteen-story building next in line is the new AMLI rental units.

With hundreds of units actually being built at the moment in downtown Austin and others on the drawing board, there are lots of people visualizing a new lifestyle.

My own vision is having a lot less stuff. I'm a bit puzzled about how I'm ever going to accomplish this but I know that I just have to keep asking myself: Will I use it? Will it look good? Could I just get something like it later if needed? It seems like we've been getting rid of stuff at a good pace for years especially since we started remodeling the house. But we've acquired stuff, too. And maybe the getting outpaced the getting rid of. The pendulum has swung around here, but it's not going fast enough to suit me. I have to look at every little thing and ask myself "do I see it being useful and having a place in my new digs?"

We are thinking about a trip we are going to take soon. Going on a trip is like moving in a way. You take with you what you think you need for a short period instead of the rest of your life. One finds that a lot of things can be left at home and not missed when you pack up for a car or plane trip. Of course, you might eventually miss your souvenirs and book collection and miscellaneous gadgets. And, of course, the coffee machine. Other than the stuff I take on a trip (clothes, toiletries, camera, laptop) I guess the things I most want to keep are books and things with sentimental value. We faced the fact long ago that books took up a lot of space around here. The paring down of those continues but a kernel of the collection is going to surround us in that condo, I think. Making it a warm and welcoming place to sit and read. While drinking coffee. When I visualize myself elsewhere I'm always reading (or writing in my notebook) and sipping coffee. Or maybe enjoying a walk on a trail or sitting on a lawn. Many people say when confronted with our yard "you must spend a lot of time out here." It isn't true, though. I'd visualize that, too, if I were them. But what time I spend out there is usually doing something like chopping bamboo back that escapes from my neighbor's yard.

Can you tell that the downsizing is weighing me down again? I keep finding more stuff and it gets harder and harder to decide what to do with it. But meanwhile...let me pack for a trip and forget about it for a little while. Just taking along things I really might need.

Unexecuted Ideas

I love museums but I'm almost as fascinated by the other people as by the art and artifacts. Today I read in the Arts Section of The New York Times about a photographer Thomas Struth who took pictures of people in museums looking at art. And then inserted some of them in the Prada among the paintings for one show. Hey...I had that idea. Lots of times I get one of us in the picture, too. But sometimes strangers as here in MOMA in 2005.

I finished shredding a bunch of old financial stuff from the eighties and early nineties today. I always think I will keep stuff organized, discard it at just the right time and then it ends up jumbled together in a box. There was almost nothing we needed to save in the box but it needed sifting through to be sure of that. And some things needed to be shredded. Although many accounts were defunct and financial institutions had changed their names, etc. a depressing number of things had signatures, driver's license numbers and even Social Security Numbers.

I did find a report from an EEG I had 1990 after having an unexpected faint. They didn't find anything. I decided to save it, though. "The predominant waking activity is a well-organized admixture of 10-11 per second occipital alpha with some intermixed low to medium voltage fast." At least my brain waves were once well-organized.

Slowly stuff moves to the thrift store piles. Including some of the stuff that I saw receipts for in those credit card bills from the twenty years or so ago. And as I decide to keep books I wonder when I will have the time to sit down and enjoy reading them. I have been doing a better job of reading the papers that show up since our subscription to The Wall Street Journal lapsed. (FFP has renewed it now, I think.) As a consequence I have been reading a book I found and decided was a keeper. Memoirs by Tennessee Williams. Published in 1972 it is a stream of consciousness remembrance and diary of what was going on at the moment. I seem to have bought it at Powell's during a trip to Portland. Believe I'll keep it even after reading it. What a name dropper he is!

I suppose that maybe I'll look back on the downsizing of 2007-2008 as something that I did execute on, however slowly and painfully.

Barely Contained Chaos

I reached back to 2005 to find this shop window picture. Why I randomly stumbled across this on the computer, I don't know. (By the way, I recently discovered that the machine that is Google had magically made photo albums of this blog's photos and my other blog's photos.)

I am constantly trying to organize my life. My stuff. My computer. My files. My head. Get organized, I say. It doesn't happen. Lots of times I start with the little mess in front of my computer monitor (a 17 inch flat panel). Today I sifted through the pile and found:

- two receipts to be logged into my budget spreadsheet (done)
- a Prospectus for a mutual fund that arrived in the mail (dumped in recycling sack)
- an invitation for the dress rehearsal of the next presentation of Austin Lyric Opera (sent two e-mails trying to give it away as we have a conflict and also will see the actual production and that's enough)
- a sticky note reminding me to make a dinner reservation for dinner with an old friend (done)
- a sticky note with a phone number and some notes about a change to my country club's WEB site
- a shopping list for stuff for the event we hosted here Sunday (soda, still water, cocktail napkins, beer, limes, lemons)
- a note about some interest and dividends I'd noticed on my accounts online but not put in my QuickBooks versions of these accounts (done)
- a note about stuff to do for the event on Sunday
- a 'to do' and reminder list with about half the things checked off
- a piece of paper with numbers scribbled down where I was counting chairs for the event on Sunday (we had a play performed and needed chairs for all the guests)
- two business cards for people who came to the event on Sunday...I need to save the cards or info somewhere appropriate...maybe in my Access data base or my 'people' folder...leave on desk until I decide
- yet another scrap of paper with reminders of what to do at the last minute before Sunday's event
- menus from two recent dinners (one at our club where we entertained friends at a wine dinner featuring Australian wines such as a 2004 Massena 11th Hour Shiraz and one entitled 'A Cuban Night' bought at one charity's event and given to promote another charity and including food like grapefruit, snapper, and jicama ceviche and Spanish, Texas and Argentinian wines since, you know, Cuban wine is in short supply) which I consigned to the recycling bin concluding I'd never find them again if I wanted them
- A printout of an e-mail from the playwright whose play was presented here at Sunday night's event showing the guest list as he had figured it with my scribbles and checkoffs. (For the record: I believe four people who RSVPed yes failed to show up and one hopeful maybe did not as well. Three people who did not RSVP or not in time for this e-mail did show up. Which verifies my theory that the no shows generally about equal the surprise shows making the RSVP count more accurate than you might think.) Scribbled on the back of this printout was the food the caterer brought although I need not have done it because FFP went upstairs and printed it out from the e-mail. (The chef forgot to bring the menu cards.) The garlic crostini topped with hazelnut romesco and smoked shrimp were yummy, by the way.

But. I digress. My life is a digression.

Yeah, most of that stuff is now filed away or in the recycling sack that is always close at hand. But to write the last sentence of the previous paragraph I had to go look for an e-mail (because I couldn't read my scribbles on the menu thing) which took me on a digression through deleting e-mail and sent me to look at the WEB site of an actress we met recently and had drinks with the other day when I found an e-mail from FFP about it. (Margaret Turner's site is here.) The event on Sunday brought a lot of interesting people together to watch a play (and eat and drink a bit and talk to one another). People and their relationships to us are part of the chaos that boils around here. As witnessed when I contained that little pile of stuff in front of my monitor. Now...to clean up all the other areas of this office and get totally organized and get rid of some stuff. Yeah. Right.

Before I could finish editing this entry and post it someone dropped by to pick up chairs borrowed for the party. Then the mail came and the UPS guy came. I follow the edict of the organization specialists on mail and such. I immediately try to put the unwanted stuff in the recycling (our city recycles junk mail) and put everything else where it (more or less) belongs. That prospectus got saved from the recycling sack the first time because FFP said he might look at it. But as he left it here, I figured he wasn't really going to do it. Still chaos rules. But I think I'm getting closer and closer to, um, doing better.

So Many Things I Should be Doing

I am blogging when I should be shredding stuff, doing my taxes, cleaning out things.

This picture was taken in my back yard. Does that vine coming out of my neighbor's yard give anyone else pause?

Talked to a friend today about how, when you are cleaning things out, everything is even more messy because you pull stuff out of closets and sort it around on the floor and every available flat surface.

Today I needed to work on my taxes. But what I really did was everything else. I even put TxTags on our cars and took the dealer's license plates frames off of them because of this.

Whatever Works

Things are broken, confused, out of whack.

This used to be our blue reflecting ball. It still reflects (that's me in my black sweats reflected), but it's status as a ball was compromised by ice crashing out of trees during the ice storm. We should have thought to bring it in. We did that once when large hail threatened.

One of the toilets in our house had a breakdown I couldn't fix. The good news is that it didn't flood like the accident at my dad's house. But our toilet karma is bad of late. Dad's house (carpets, walls, etc.) is dry now, we hope. Lots of suction, giant fans and dehumidifiers later. The carpet was designed for a wheelchair user and, I think, had no pad. I have an insurance adjustor coming tomorrow to look at the furniture stains, etc. Then I have to get a plumber to look at the toilet that created the deluge. And our toilet.

That's life. It's so exciting.

Meanwhile I was planning a trip. I was putting printouts about reservations in this small notebook with transparent pages. It is a type of notebook that is great for organizing trips. The pages have lots of holes and the rings open and swing out to rearrange or add pages. They are light and easy to use. I also printed online TripTix from AAA for the driving portion of the trip. Some things work. Some things don't. I'm always trying to achieve victory with office supplies and trying different filing systems and filing supplies. A few work. Most don't. Mess ensues that is always needing reorg. We have achieved a system with our household budget that works and migrates all the paper through a process where it can be used to enter budget entries on the computer and then get stored so it can be located and, after a while, shredded. A few other filing ideas I've had over the years work well, too. When I get a birth, graduation or wedding invitation or announcement I stick it in a folder. Sorting through this folder, I can find answers to birthdays, anniversaries and even to questions like "who was x's first wife?" I usually don't look at the stuff again, but it's always there.

Some things in life work. But some days it seems, not much does. Especially toilets.

Unprepared

The mayor and TxDot and the city workers said we were 'prepared for the worst.' If fact, not even.

I can't believe it. The mail didn't get delivered yesterday. "Neither rain nor snow nor dark of night?" The papers did get delivered yesterday (except no Wall Street Journal) but today no papers.

It is teetering on thaw. Right at 31 degrees according to the TV. The street in front of my house looks fine. The ecocrete in the driveway in the picture lets air as well as water through to the lower level I guess and looks frozen. The icicles are icicle lights living up to their name. But just a few more degrees. And it will all be forgotten with only a few damaged plants and tree limbs and some runoff.

Apparently we 'ran out' of sanding material so they closed some flyovers and such. And the airport was supposed to "get some de-icer from Houston" but it didn't arrive. Lots of cancelled flights.

We officially can't deal. I've finished all the newspapers we actually received, finished my book. I even started shredding stuff and cleaning my office. OK, I didn't get too far with that. But it's something. I've been going through old clippings that are five or more years old and shredding receipts from the same era. Maybe it will thaw this afternoon. But until then...time to really get busy with the organizing and downsizing and such. Or maybe just get another cup of coffee and read?

I can't wait for the club to open and let me get to the gym. I've even resorted to doing sit-ups and stretches around the house. I'd take a walk but, oh well.

Fortunately the power has stayed on at our house and, more importantly, those of the parental units. And no one has run out of food.

Wonder what would happen if we had some really bad weather for a really long time? OK...warm up already. I'm doing something useful in the interim. Really. Because who needs grocery receipts from 2002?

So...Where Have I Been?

Well, I don't know. I missed a day. Probably fallout from writing about not writing anything but the journal or maybe it was just fatigue from putting away Christmas or worrying about my dad's health or the dog's.

I piled all the Christmas decor on the dining room table before putting it away in boxes.

I'm feeling pretty good about it all this morning. Why? Because my dad said he was going to try to walk to the bottom of the driveway and get his own paper and wasn't whining for me to come over there and (1) help him get well; or (2) clean something up or do an errand that he didn't feel like. I don't mind doing for him. But it breaks my heart when he needs it.

So Christmas is put away and really, even between spending time on Dad and such I've gotten some things checked off my checklist. I handed some business stuff over to the CPA, did the 941, wrestled some of our financial stuff into line. The problem with these things is that they just need to be done again and again, day after day, year after year. But I made some progress in cleaning up my office. It would be hard for anyone to tell this, however. I know, though. I have a swath of clean work area. Although this is partly because I have given up resurrecting the dead laptop which sat there and the new one hasn't arrived.

And what about those resolutions? The ones I'm recycling from a couple of years ago? Well, next on the list is 'Find an Appropriate Volunteer Activity.' Right now I'd say 'driving seniors to appointments and doing errands for them.' Only they are our parental units. But still. I do it, I have the time for it and I think I do it well. Whatever.

It's time to use my 'free time' since my dad is feeling pretty independent this morning by getting some exercise. My old resolutions weren't too specific about the exercise thing. I probably need to set some real concrete goals about aerobic exercise and weight-lifting. But first one has to go to the gym. So yeah.

A Blog a Day?

I blogged every day during Holidailies. Which proves and solves nothing I suppose.

I had a random thought at some point (probably while driving back and forth to my dad's which I've been doing a lot) that I should use the blog to both encourage me to organize and to record it. I've thought of this before, of course. I also said a few days ago that I was going to make and examine resolutions here in public. And back in July I said you were going to get to follow along while I cleaned up. Yeah, not going well.

I just looked at that old resolution list and it made me tired. Perhaps because I'd had all these cups of coffee (and no water), eaten mostly wrong foods and spend a couple of hours taking my dad to the doctor instead of exercising. Otherwise everything is going fine. Really.

I'm going to finish up the December budget for the family and organize my spreadsheets I use for the budget for the new month and year. That will give me a sense of getting something done.

And I did that, too. And more. But I always focus on what is not done yet. That's how I'm built. Most other people, too. I did make an appointment to get my car some maintenance and a new inspection sticker. And I started trying to tame the mess on my desk area. That's going slowly, however, because I decided that if I typed up hand-written notes in old notebooks then I could discard them. Time-consuming, but it would eliminate ever having to go through the notebooks again.

Today's picture? Some colorful houses in our neighborhood. We took a walk on New Year's Day and I snapped some new pictures. So now I have more digital images to organize. So it goes.

I Already Feel Behind

I always feel this way on New Year's Day. It's a holiday. What kind of a way is that to start a productive year?

Oh, it's not like I couldn't start on my resolutions. And it's not like I have a hangover. The bottles shown are the result of me starting (one more time) to look through photos on my computer with the idea of doing a purge and winnowing. I didn't consume any of these last night. They were actually consumed (by me and five friends) in the summer of 2000.

I did have two Manhattans, expertly mixed by my husband, to accompany a dinner of sushi (bought already made at Central Market), talipia, steamed vegetables and fruit and cheese for dessert. Yes, we stayed in. And while I don't have two drinks every night it's hardly an overindulgence in my book for a evening spent reading and watching TV coverage large groups of people gathering to mark a clock tick. No, there is no reason I shouldn't have been up, bright and early, accomplishing things. I wasn't, though. My dad called at 8:30 while I was making the bed. He wondered why I hadn't already made my welfare call of the morning.

So, here I am, a couple of cups of coffee and an hour later, some things taken care of on the computer, ready to start my New Year by picking up a few things for my dad and going over there to see what I can do. I have a long list scribbled on a pad in front of my computer of things that need accomplishing...for the year end, month end and just general needs. And I'm already behind.

Not Good at Posting

I've been really remiss at posting. I've been doing something else. What? Hard to say. Going through piles of books. Looking through pictures and slides. Other cleaning and straigtening tasks that are beginning to feel a lot like moving stuff around, like motion. Reviewing films for Austin Film Festival. Tennis. Water aerobics class with my dad. Then yesterday I had to take my dad to the hospital to visit a twenty-something friend who had a brain aneurysm rupture. Well, not to visit the kid, because he was in surgery and having procedures but to visit with the kid's parents. The dad is the son of a nurse friend of my dad's who is dead now and he has kept up with the family.

My dad has always been a compassionate sort. He called the hospital today and tracked his friends down to see how the son was doing. And he hates telephoning. I'm still finding pictures of him. This one was taken in 1945 or 1946 and I'm guessing he is comforting my sister because he has to go back to some army duty. My dad was lucky to be rejected for service until late in the war when, although he wasn't fit for duty, I think they decided to induct him and make him fit for duty. The war ended before that trajectory could get him in harm's way.

So, yeah, I'm busy in my own usual erratic way. So I'd better get on with it. I'm going on something called a 'gallery crawl' this afternoon. I'm going to hear some music tonight later on. I've already hit the tennis courts and done a few minutes on my favorite aerobic machine (the recumbent bike). I've eaten leftovers, showered leisurely. Life is good. I should appreciate it.