Trivial Things

Pet Peeves? Trivial things that bug you when people are fleeing bombs and scrounging for food in other parts of the world. Yep, I've got them. And I bet you do,, too. I try to laugh them off, though. I read my newspapers. A story about a starving teenager who died after eating poisonous roots in Venezuela or a Middle Easter family trying to assimilate in the U.S. after fleeing and spending years in a refugee camp, that's the perfect antidote to the trivial things that irritate me. Still, I think I'll write about them!

Let's start with fashion, given the photo. It's a reflection of me in loose-fitting jeans, a jacket, and cap.The shop is a fancy one on West Sixth Street called Julian Gold. Look at those shoes! Here is my attitude toward fashion: I try to dress neatly in uni-sex style. I want to be comfortable and not look too out of place. Not to say that I don't like fashion. Just on other people. I like a great variety of clothing on others, men and women. Although...

Let's talk about purchasing jeans that are already ripped. I'm OK with ripped jeans, but wear them out and let the denim slowly fill the lint trap in the laundry. Personalize them. This is a really popular thing right now, the ripped designer (and no doubt expensive) jean. (Unless it's already on its way out. I hate the keeping up part of fashion.) I do like runway shows, though. Great theater. Just don't asked me wear 99% of what's shown. :)

Yes, I put a sideways smiley face up there at the end of that paragraph. A colon followed by a close paren. I don't really like emoticons. Even less do I like emojis which are actual pictures. Use your words, people. Type out pizza or merde. Oh, maybe it overcomes language barriers, but, on my phone, they are mostly too small for my old eyes to make out. So, if you are really on a car trip driving through saguaros don't put a car and a cactus emoji. Just say you are driving to Marfa or something.

Oh, Marfa. Oh, all the places that hipsters go where I don't really see the point exactly. Especially Marfa. But also Santa Fe and Aspen a little bit. Sigh. I'd actually take being in downtown Austin over a lot of these places. Where I lived for eight and a half years.

And, yes, I love living downtown. But I'm tired of being asked over and over: "Do you like living downtown?," "Where do you buy your groceries?," and "Don't you hate the traffic." I've been here over eight years. If I hated it, I think I'd find a way to move. I buy my groceries at (1) the deli in the building; (2) Trader Joe's which is 100 yards away; (3) Whole Foods (which is 1/2 mile away); and (4) all the same places you buy them (Costco, big grocery stores) when I'm out in my car which, thank you very much, I don't have to do a lot SO the traffic doesn't bother me nearly as much as it does others! I don't ask other people "How do you like living here and having to drive downtown in the traffic to see just about any live show?" I don't ask them if they mind having to drive every single time they want groceries because they cannot walk to any place to even get a six pack. But I might start asking these questions. Maybe just on social media, though, and not at parties and such so as not to make a scene.

Ah, yes, social media. I love Twitter and Facebook. But I don't love the attitude and baiting. But, also, more trivially, I don't love memes (I don't really like the word either). Especially memes that are just a picture that is really words. A poster with words to be big on the social media and get attention. I despise those memes that say "I'm about to drop some of you who won't read this to the end, copy it to your feed, etc." Oh, please do! Drop me, that is. I love it when someone expresses their own thoughts, takes a picture of the kids and dogs (even the adults) or generally marvels at what is going on around them. I am moved when you mourn your relatives or pets. However...

We all know Carrie Fisher is dead. Genuine news outlets have reported it. The year 2016 did not take her or any of the other unfortunate celebrities who passed this year. Leave it to the Academy Awards and such for the tributes. Unless you have a 'me and Carrie' story. That would be interesting. (Although, yeah it was too bad. She was only 60. And I just saw that my own husband shared the story. So there you go. He did so to say what a great writer he thought she was as well as an actress. So, OK)

I'm sure I have other pet peeves, little things which don't matter but, in the moment, make me forget that I'm well-off, well-sheltered, well-fed and don't hurt anywhere at the moment. There is the way millennials cross the street oh-so-slowly when I'm waiting for them at a stop sign (even when they aren't buried in their phones). There's the way, when I'm the pedestrian, that cars occupy the crosswalk I'm using even though I'm trying to get out of it much faster than the average millennial. (Granted these behaviors aren't every millennial or every car, but still, irritating.)

But, I'm off to a movie. I'm walking there, not driving. I'm sure I have some pet peeves about movies or their audiences. But I'm oh so lucky and who am I to complain.

The Joy of the Season

This picture was taken of the window of a shop near us decorated with a 'joy to the world' theme. I like it. I used to collect old globes. Gave them all to charity when I downsized.

A few days ago I talked about letter writing and how I was writing personal notes to people who sent me cards rather than printing up a bunch of cards and mass mailing them perhaps with just a scribbled sentiment. As of yesterday I've already fallen a tiny bit behind. (I have five unanswered cards.) But I'm hopeful that I can keep this up. It is nice to stop and reflect on the folks that have taken the trouble to buy or design and print something, address it, stamp it and entrust it to snail mail.

I hope this activity is making me stop and appreciate the season a little bit. Because it's really about those human connections. Here's a picture of a young couple and their four kids, almost visibly growing as they are photographed. Here's these two guys in front of the Capitol with their dog, here's a Santa card with a nice personal paragraph inside. And so forth. We are making a connection with one another in all our sameness and differences. It's a reason to be happy, isn't it?

A Portrait of Myself

The Visible Woman...reflects.

Self portraits are odd things. Many artists (not that I consider myself one) have explored the image of themselves. I'm intrigued by what the kids call 'selfies.' I have been doing them for a long time, long before phone cameras made them so popular with kids. Before I had a digital camera even.

I also love collage and, at some point, I became intrigued with the collage-like look of shop window reflections especially with interesting shapes outside the window and interesting goods. Sometimes the windows contained mirrors or other reflective objects and this amplified the effect. I soon noticed the fun of having me, FFP or strangers reflected there, too. Sometimes it's the mere outline of my head that shows up, other times more of my features. Always something is a little obscure. Like life itself, oneself is an elusive concept, visually or in the abstract.

I Dreamed of Travel

The Visible Woman...travels.

When I retired (it's been over eleven years ago now) I thought I'd do a lot more traveling. At first FFP was still working, but my dad was up for some road trips to Dallas and Colorado to see relatives. I could slip in a trip with friends as a single. Which has its advantages in some ways. Beginning in 2004, FFP made time for more trips and made his first foray to France. We've only been back once since and only to Paris.

The parents and their aging needs made us wonder about trips to Europe for a while. We developed a habit of going to New York in June and then, the last three years, also in December. We began, at some point, to go to Portland, OR and a few other spots in the Northwest every August. In 2005 we drove to the Northeast and in 2010 we drove to the Northwest. In 2006 we drove to Santa Fe and Phoenix. We've made driving trips to New Orleans the last two springs. We made a trip to the north coast above Boston and the Hamptons in July 2012. I also squeezed in a trip that summer to see my relatives in Colorado. Last summer I had a trip to Maine to assist my aunt in taking my uncle's remains back to his home.

We downsized and moved to a simple downtown condo in 2008. That made it easier to leave town. As did not getting a new dog when our Chalow had to be put down in 2007.

My dad died in 2010 and FFP's parents both died in 2011. That might have freed us a little for travel. Of course, FFP had a health scare in 2010 and while that's behind us now we still visit Houston twice a year for a trip to MD Anderson.

Somehow we travel a lot and yet not enough. I hear friends talk about cruises and safaris and trips to Italy and trips to places like South America where I have never ever been. Some friends went to Berlin in October, a place I've been multiple times, most times meeting up with these friends. I was eager to show FFP Berlin. But I couldn't make it work.

We don't have any trips planned for 2014. We have some mentally penciled in. My passport expires in October so I think I'll renew it now and hope that I do get to go to some place outside the U.S. this year.

Follow the Rules!

Whoa! I was just looking at Holidailies and wait, wait...am I supposed to post 32 times??

I'm such a rule follower. I feel compelled to post with another 'stolen' shop window reflection image and tell you that I ate like a queen last night. (And drank like one, too.)

For NYE we got dressed up a little after eight, walked a few blocks, and went to a secluded romantic dining room. (Jezebel, tucked away inside the Bar Mirabeau on Sixth Street.) After eating and drinking some great adult beverages, we walked back to the apartment in the rain. Rain! We needed it. We had our umbrellas. Young people stood in lines to get in various venues, most without umbrellas. Safely home, we dosed through midnight and I was rudely awakened by someone setting off (illegally) fireworks nearby later.

Yesterday was a day of feeling closed in by life's circumstances. News of a cousin's husband's death reached me. The phone discussions with other relatives brought other tales of time catching up to all. I worked through some of the end of year and end of quarter and end of month duties including getting two forms with checks ready to mail to the IRS. I worked on other preparation for tax time as did Forrest. There is a feeling with me on New Year's Eve not of a new start the next day but of having run out of time in the year.

Today we stayed abed rather late. Although holidays are not that different than other days for us since we retired we sometimes adopt the attitude of the rest of the world and sleep in a bit and lounge around in our sweats until noon. (OK, we do this on workdays occasionally, too.) I ate so much last night I thought I'd never eat again but I did indeed, consuming a bowl of black-eyed peas and some cheese and crackers.

We watched part of the Rose Bowl Parade. I worked the NY Times puzzles. The crossword was in honor of the Emancipation Proclamation but also managed to include the word 'dementia' which struck me as funny because every time I complete a puzzle I'm doing a little brain dance to prove that I haven't succumbed to it.

We were invited to an open house last night which we didn't make because of some of the above phone calls and the dismal weather and the fact that we'd have to drive there (but could walk to dinner later). We were invited to one today, too, and we made this one, toting a bottle of wine for the party-giver.

It was an Open House and we were on the early end of it. We talked and got a got tour of the guy's place in another downtown condo building. We'd never been in these, and enjoyed another perspective. He had all kinds of food that he was pulling out: shrimp in cocktail sauce, sausage balls, cheese, ham, black-eyed pea salad and cornbread. A few more people came. When we finally left I'd had a tour of the art on the walls, we'd had a lot of linking discussions. I'd eaten too much and had a little wine. We walked to Book People which was crowded with people taking advantage of their big 20% off sale. But we didn't buy anything. Too many books at home that need reading. I'm still reading the one I got for Christmas and I'm still reading a book I bought in Sag Harbor in the summer. (I've been reading it by the bedside, a few pages at a time.) There are piles more I need to read.

So we are home getting ready for an evening in front of the TV. Drinking coffee. Watching DVDs instead of football. I haven't done anything real useful today. But. It's a holiday.

So, now...this is really the end of Holidailies, right? Bye for now.

Where's this Conversation Going?

The photo was taken in July. Shorts weather. Blackmail shop window, I think on South Congress. But that's not where I'm going today.

I had brunch with four girlfriends.

The conversation began while we were waiting for our table. I said to one friend: "Is that a new muffler?" She had a pretty scarf on, but she asserted that she'd had it a long time. She said, "You know you have stuff and sometimes you don't take it out of the box...."

I mentioned that I had a muffler I bought in Germany in 1972. It always amazed me that I'd never lost it. Then I said that I still had a lap blanket I bought on that trip...a souvenir from the already over Olympics in Munich. Another friend said I should find out if it was worth anything. This segued into researching values on eBay and the Internet and how "Antiques Roadshow" folks seemed so naive about what they had.

One friend told the story of a friend's family who found, after the patriarch died, a book by Winston Churchill that was signed. Which transported her to other stories about that family including a show at the Paramount where they had front row seats. Which led me to say I preferred row T there. And caused her to say what her niece, the opera singer, said about the best seats in a hall. Which led another friend to say that she had seen a performance of a choir in Paris that she knew said niece had sometimes performed with. And she was surprised that she was, indeed, there. Which led to a description of poor accommodations on that trip. A room that smelled of smoke. And a discussion of smoking regulation and anecdotes about same.

And we hadn't even sat down. Sitting down we covered more ground. Banks, online banking, driving on ice and snow, finding old letters.

Outside, as we were leaving, we recounted all the houses and apartments one gal has lived in, all in the Austin area. None of us, not even she, could quickly summarize.

And so it goes. A conversational flow.

This is the penultimate day of Holidailies. It's been fun, I suppose but I think I will welcome 2013 with a little more silence online. Or not. At least I met this simple challenge: type something here every day. And the conversation sort of flowed at times....

Hat For Every Head

I've been goofing off, reading in my easy chair and pretending to care about football, and in the back of my mind trying to think what to write in this space for the 29th day of Holidailies.

We got two holiday cards today. One from someone who is the child of college friends of mine who sends pictures of her husband and young child and who lives maybe five miles away. Another from a proud grandfather, mailed from Seattle where he's helping with his daughter's new twins, a continent away from his own home. I hadn't sent either a card. I will now, though, to complete the loop. (Besides I have a box full still unused.)

Earlier I was sifting through social media, thinking about people and their posts of children and snow and their comments about things received and places visited and new babies.

And I decided to say: any kind of communication works for me. Whatever the frequency or form. It's good to reach out.

I've had two Manhattans and I really have nothing else to say except keep writing and talking and blogging and tweeting, snapping pictures and sending missives far and wide. Emails, snail mails, blasts to all your 'friends.' Whatever. Just keep talking.

We have to keep up the chatter.

[Photo taken at a wonderful hat store, a venerable brand but new to Austin.]

Less is More

Now comes that time of the year, that last few days on the calendar, when people start to say "Well, that's over. Next year will be better."

And they start wrapping things up. Lists of best books, movies, moments, achievements, news stories, the departed.

And they start making resolutions.

Oh, I've done it.

But this year I have resolved that, if I resolve for 2013 at all, I'd make one and only one declaration. And one terse enough to tweet.

I've had lots of ideas.

• Try to say no more than is absolutely necessary for communication and conversation.

• Give yourself a break. Every single day.

• Write down what you eat, drink and do so you can figure out what works. But assume most things are coincidence.

• Embrace complexity.

• Learn one thing every day.

I've made long boring lists before. I've even made myself assess progress against them. But I just can't do it. Maybe I'll revisit those old efforts in the waning days of this Holidailies exercise. Just to fill the space and convince myself of past futility. Because, after all, I did resolve to write something for every day of this December. But a brief foray into that old stuff would "bore me terrifically" I'm afraid.

[Note on the picture: One more self-portrait as a vague shadow. There's a theme there somewhere. Taken at one of the household shops on North Lamar.]

Booked Solid, Dressed Comfortably

I don't have a little black dress. (The picture is a detail from the Blackmail shop window shown yesterday and that is a reflection of me with a short-sleeved polo less than a week ago, jacket tied around my waist.)

It's colder today, in the mid-forties. I'm played tennis. With old sweats and a Polartec jacket over my shorts and polo. Then I have a late lunch/walk/talk with a friend. (We do it about once a month.) We usually dress casually regardless of the lunch spot because we usually walk a bit, too. So jeans, jacket, hiking boots today.

Later FFP and I will walk over to see the enormous light display at Zilker Park. It's called the "Trail of Lights." We used to call it the "Trial of Lights" for the traffic it caused. But a guy who used to work for us and whom we love dearly worked on it and so we are more benevolent about it. So we will walk over there and see that. And then we'll walk to a restaurant and meet a friend for wine and dinner. I'll probably go with black jeans, a sweater, a blazer and hiking boots. Because we'll walk four miles at least to do all that. The restaurant is nice, but casual. Wink on Lamar.

Tomorrow (which some are touting as EOW) we have a party in the middle of the day at a downtown private club we belong to. That will require a nice pair of slacks and jacket and maybe some jewelry and dress shoes. But the place is less than a mile away and all my shoes are flats or loafers. In the evening we are driving to a bad Christmas sweater and karaoke party. I don't have a bad sweater but I have some silly Christmas pins I'll wear on my decades-old red blazer. I don't sing. FFP might. He will not drink. Because he's driving. The noon party has free Bloody Marys. I usually make an exception to my no drinking before five for this occasion. I don't know, though, I might not drink at the evening party.

But I digress from dress to drinking.

Saturday brings a party. I could walk there but the streets around there are dark and scary (for falling more than anything). FFP will drop me off. I'll wear a read sweater or blazer. Black slacks probably. FFP will do some duty at Ballet Austin's "Nutcracker" and return to the party.

Sunday we will loll around in sweats or take a walk in jeans. In the afternoon we will catch a musical act at the Armadillo and eat at a casual place nearby. Jeans, hiking boots, sweater?

Monday is Christmas Eve. We'll probably walk and then go to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse in the evening for dinner with four friends. I will dress up as in: nice slacks, nice blouse, jacket, dress shoes. Sweater or muffler if it's cold. Less than a mile to Ruth's Chris. We will walk.

Christmas Day will be lazy. Football? Walk. We will meet friends at a 24 hour diner (called 24) at 4PM for a Christmas dinner. Casual, I think. Black jeans, sweater.

Yep...I'm booked solid. But I haven't had a need for a little black dress. Oh we did our version of black tie last Saturday. I wore tuxedo pants, some great Cole Haan tuxedo flats and a top and jacket with a bit of sparkle bough at a Chico's sale.

And so it will go. Another holiday without a little black dress.

Exploring the Neighborhood

The wonderful Gail Chovan, designer and owner of the South Congress shop called Blackmail, does some fabulous windows. This Christmas it has a black tree and across the panes it says 'I see a green tree and I want it painted black...

I love shooting interesting shop windows reflecting the street scene and, of course, us in our walking garb.

One of the joys of walking SoCo are the wonderful shop windows and the variety of people there. You not only get a little validation for your odd feeling about the holiday from Blackmail's window but you can ponder who might like to receive a silver head for Christmas as you check the windows at Tesoros Trading.

And you can go inside Uncommon Objects and imagine who'd rather have a hand or two.

Yep it's definitely weird shopping. You can find some great stuff, though. I love going through the old postcards and photos and seeing toys I had as a kid fetching big prices at Uncommon Objects. (They say not to take pictures, but I do anyway. So sue me.)

I have this idea that I will carefully explore all the places within two miles of our house. That I'll explore the shops and restaurants and hotels and sidewalks and shortcuts and construction. That I'll visit the museums when they have new shows and catch performances at the theaters. And note the interesting houses and yards and yard art. There is too much to really keep up with, of course, within two miles of my house. Within walking distance. That amazes me.

Missed Deadline

Yes, I'm doing Holidailies. It's been almost forty-eight hours since I posted. Not exactly 'daily.' I thought about it yesterday. I edited this picture yesterday to use it. I thought about writing something last night. But I didn't. Is there a twelve step program for being a blogging laggard?

Of course, it doesn't matter. I can even achieve the badge of honor on Holidailies (the maximum number by your name) by squeezing in some entries that are not quite twenty-four hours apart. (Or that used to work on the old Holidailies.) And, really, the whole thing is an exercise. It's important to go through the motions in life but you can always cheat a little bit, huh?

When we were taking pictures of the holiday windows in NYC, I was surprised to see that this one still had someone touching up the icicles blocking the elegantly-dressed mannequin in the winter wonderland. But things don't always get done on time, do they? Some things are critical, some aren't. In my world, if I get to my agreed on appointments on time, there is always another day to do chores and such, it seems. If you are lucky. There are bills that need to be paid on time and holiday cards will look silly after the 15th of January I suppose. There are consequences. I've sent about twenty cards so far, I think. Trying to at least keep up with returning the favor on the ones I receive.

Certainly work posed many, many more deadlines. When I worked for a living. Over ten years ago.

But. My life is not devoid of deadlines. The most dreaded ones loom: tax deadlines. I hate taxes. I hate paying them, of course. But I also hate the mounds of paper and the incomprehensible forms (even though my CPA figures out what boxes things go in). Congress and the President are currently contemplating unknown changes that will doubtless not only complicate things further, but throw several monkey wrenches in how we planned to fund our retirement. It makes this old lady weary. I believe the uncertainty is, itself, affecting the economy. It certainly affects my spending and giving to charities and plans for the future. All the looming tax deadlines almost spoil the festive holiday feeling. (That and the winter allergy attacks from 'cedar fever' triggered by pollinating mountain juniper.)

But here's a Holidailies entry. There's that done.

Strangers Make the World Go Round

I've been sitting here hand-addressing holiday cards and, in many cases, writing a hand-written note to enclose with the 4x8 photo cards I ordered from Snapfish. Very old school communication with people that, for some reason, we know. I have decided to avoid pre-printed labels and even the return address stamp. Sure I may introduce errors but who gets hand-addressed communications these days? (Except those that are faked up with special fonts.)

But most of our world is propelled by relative strangers, by people who manufacture, package, drive, deliver, build, connect, repair, etc. And much of our entertainment comes from the people we don't know who walk through our world. As I mentioned on December 3, I enjoy watching people at home and when traveling who just happen by where I am.

In the picture above FFP chats with a woman who walked by the Berdorf Goodman window we were photographing it. I'd backed up for a picture and I caught, instead of the window in full, the two of them exchanging a pleasantry  I don't know what was said. If I'd spoken to her I might have said, "I love that coat!" But I did not. I'll will probably never know who she is and what her path through this world looks like.

I have for a long time been fascinated by the people in my travel photos who are total strangers. People who happen to be in the frame and then, most likely, are never encountered again. Their existence for me is tenuous and yet there they were in the same place in the space/time continuum.

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.

Secret Addiction

Lego. If there is one toy (or really an endless toy system) that can stir my childish heart then it is the one with all those almost indestructible plastic interlocking bricks. They didn't figure into my childhood because the company didn't really hit their stride in the construction toy market in the U.S. until the 1970's. I made do with Tinker Toys, Lincoln Logs and an Erector Set. Cousins of mine, eight and ten years younger, had an American-made knock-off called American Plastic bricks. They were not as sturdy or interesting.

When I traveled around Europe aimlessly in 1972 I went to lots of toy stores. There were some amazing construction toys but even then in Europe there were no giant Lego displays and the brand was not the dominant player it is today. On my recent trip to New York City I refrained from going inside toy stores although I shot some pictures of the windows of the Lego Store in Rockefeller Center like the one above. I have made FFP go into the Times Square Toys 'R Us before to see the giant buildings and figures made from Lego. But during the Christmas season I wouldn't do that.

I still have the urge to buy a Lego set and put it together occasionally. But I've successfully resisted it for years. Five years ago I wrote about the Lego collection I put together and then let go. I guess there are topics I keep returning to, huh? The silly ones.

The Best Gift

I just noticed that today's Holidailies writing prompt is 'What is the best thing you ever received for the holidays?' I had just edited the picture above with the intent of using it for a piece with the boring title 'Shopping.' This is one of the 'jewel' windows at Berdorf Goodman in New York City. For the holidays they have little doll-like mannequins offsetting the jeweled baubles. Personally I don't have or want much jewelry but isn't this a lovely picture? Yours truly is reflected with her handy digital camera. One of probably six or seven digital cameras I've owned. None were gifts.

But one of my best gifts was a camera. I was in my teens and I was dying for a Polaroid Land Camera 100 with chrome and leather trim. You could get one for probably $120 1960's dollars. A lot of money. (A little inflation calculator I found indicated that it would probably be equivalent to around $900 today.) You could also get one for a bazillion books of S&H green stamps. My mom let me have her stash and I continued getting hers at the grocery store and pasting them in books. My grandmother gave me hers. I had nowhere near enough. I had maybe a dozen books. The camera required 40 or 50. My mom talked me out of the stamps, reasoning that other nice gifts could be obtained. I was crushed that I wouldn't get the camera. It was way out of range for a present back then. But on Christmas morning there it was. I took probably thousands of pictures with it. My folks gifted me portrait and close-up lenses. I was always using babysitting money for film.. My nieces, born in '68 and '70 after I was out of high school, were endlessly photographed with this camera and the originals and copies of these are cherished possessions around the family. (We used to mail the originals to Polaroid. On the adhesive backing they provided was an order form. They'd reprint the photo in different sizes.) Here's my youngest niece, just sitting up in 1970.

Yes the camera was wonderful and quite a coup to get and, unlike so many other things, the pleasure lasted a long time. I took it to college. I had it at the ready for many family gatherings. I'd stand there, posing people and then deftly snapping out the developing print and guarding it until it was dry. There was much chemical waste. And those flashbulbs that popped and crackled and heated up, only avoiding exploding fragments because of a plastic-like film over the glass. I kept the camera long after it was functional for sentimental reasons. When I downsized I gave it away to a Freecycle contact who wrote later that he'd repaired the bellows and made it work again. Of course, film is problematic although there is a group that bought Polaroid's factory machines and was attempting to make it available again.

But if the camera was my favorite gift, I'm pretty sure the Christmas when I was nine years old was my best overall Christmas coup. I wanted an Erector set. And I got the best one imaginable. It had an electric motor and it was the Rocket Launcher set and it had a picture of a 1950's little boy operating the rocket launcher he'd built. I was a wily little girl and when I picked this Erector Set out of the Sears catalog, I also picked a gift that would be considered educational and unisex: a metal world globe with little Disney characters in costume. And, yes, when we returned to school and were asked to say what we gotten for Christmas that we really liked (how politically and socially incorrect that would be these days) I talked about my new globe. I still have the Erector set. The globe went to a charity when I graduated from high school I think. I kind of miss owning it and still look on eBay for one now and then.

These days I don't want for anything. I don't have a Christmas list and, hopefully, I won't get too many presents. When I want something, I usually just buy it. While we were in NYC we looked in many shop windows but only entered a few stores. Our only purchases were two books at our favorite Manhattan indie bookstore. But I still remember the excitement of not having something, of wanting it for a long time and then finally receiving something that really did, in the end, please me to own. That's tough to achieve, I think.

Home for the Holidailies

It's Day 5 of Hoidailies. I arrived back in Austin in the wee hours of this morning. But I managed to post four times while I was on a majorly decadent vacation in New York City. Will have to go back and see what those posts look like. The picture is a reflection of us in a Christmas display on Madison Avenue. We were headed to eat at one star Michelin meal restaurant The Modern.

It's nice to be home, of course. Disappointing that the maid won't be by to tidy up, but nice to have all your computers and tools and sartorial choices and stuff around. We stayed in a ridiculously expensive hotel. But no hotel will ever have the satellite system we have or the DVRs handy. Oh, sure there was a little TV imbedded in the bathroom mirror where you could watch CNN while you brushed your teeth. And the thread counts and mattress quality was over the moon. And the shower and tub beats ours big time. The maid would leave the TV on the smooth jazz station when she turned down the room, though. Ugh. And we love the la crema coffee the Nespresso machine made but we couldn't seem to get enough of the most robust pods to suit us. And when will they learn to bring us more hangers? (Although, to their credit they did detach from the rod! And they brought more when we asked.)

So...yeah, one day hotels will figure out how to make it just like home, only more so. Maybe. But I digress.

We are home for the holidays. FFP is very involved with Ballet Austin and its "Nutcracker" production this time of year. We've said yes to a few holiday parties. I will send some holiday cards. (And enjoy receiving some.) FFP and I will exchange presents. (He already got me one so I have to find something for him.) I don't think I'm going to do much decoration. Or serious celebration. Although the bendable, posable Santas and other Christmas figures may make an appearance if I feel like digging around in my storage cage. And we'll eat at some nice restaurants and wander through the hotels and see their decor.

I do look forward to some days when nothing is happening and I can sit down and read newspapers and books and take long walks around the neighborhood. We do plan to travel next year but we haven't made a single reservation. And, of course, my most hated time of the year looms after the holidays. Tax time.

Maybe I'll recount our NYC trip in the next few entries. It will bore you terrifically if you don't care for fine dining, jazz, museums, cabaret music, a Mamet play and strange NYC encounters.

Curating a Life

I am fascinated by those collections at places like Harry Ransom Center at UT where all the books, papers, manuscripts, ephemera and claptrap of a life is carefully handled (with white gloves), organized, indexed and stored in acid-free boxes and such. That's the treatment someone like Norman Mailer gets. I would call to your attention that the center has perserved the invitations and attendance list for his fiftieth birthday party. I myself have ephemera from my fiftieth birthday party. But I doubt it will ever be curated.

For most of us, if we don't curate our lives then no one will. On the other hand, who will actually care about it but us? Even if I had kids I don't think they would care. So what's the point? Does it matter that you can't remember where you were twenty years ago or what unpublished writings you were creating? Does it matter that many of your photos are unlabeled and the people and places in them unidentified. What has even been the point of keeping old photos and computer files of writing and digital photos and scans of tickets and souvenirs and thousands of emails? Indeed, I've made a great effort to keep the stuff even if I haven't done much to preserve it from harm. The computer files have been copied and preserved through so many hard drive failures and computer decommissions that I've lost track.

Still I have this desire to organize it and have decided to spend a little time on it each day. It will, of course, be another forgotten project after a while. Perhaps there will be little lists on the computer and notes on paper to commemorate the effort (and cry out to themselves be archived).

[Today's picture is a shop window self-portrait taken at Uncommon Objects in 2008.]

In My Head

[Thanks to Off the Wall, a cool SoCo shop for this reflection shot.]

I find things to worry about. From the ridiculous to the sublime. What is happening here? What just happened there? What if this happens? Or that? When will I die? What if I run out of money? What if the world ends, more or less?

Meanwhile though I sometimes find a way to enjoy reading (and typing if not writing). I whack a tennis ball for a winner and am thrilled. I take a walk, looking at houses and lawns, dogs and other walkers as well as litter and blades of grass. I think: it's great to be alive, observing this moving this way. And really: who cares what's next.

Still...I'm going to get that air bag recall in my car looked at this week, I swear.

Who Are You Again? And I?

[Photo at a Shop called Howl on South Lamar.]

When you reach the ripe old age of (insert mumbling dissembling here) you have met a lot of people. They have crossed your path in classes, at work, at play, at events, in your neighborhood, at clubs and bars. Some are family or close enough. Some are family of friends or people you met on trips or through random connections (e.g. social media). They are friends of friends or people you met a degree or two or more away from the initial friend.

If you are like me, you keep up with this crew in various ways. In your head, of course, in that compartment labeled 'people I know.' This mental database contains a lot of people who might actually know you and also the 'famous' (locally or otherwise) who have little chance of recalling who you might be. This jumbled mess is the reason that when I'm trying to remember a friend whose first name is, say, Robert, that a chef's last name or a movie star's might appear in what is my slow-moving train of thought.

My husband has two large Rolodex wheels crammed full of cards, many with business cards attached, others scribbled on. Many times he retrieves precious info from this gadget. Of course, I'm betting there are names and info for people he has completely forgotten, too.

My major contact list is in the form of a computer data base. Currently in a Microsoft Access file, it's been in at least two other computer data base forms (one was, I believe, managed by a data base program called, strangely, Paradox). This data base has been converted, updated and columns added over a long and tangled life. When I first designed the columns...I didn't include 'email' as a heading but resorted to typing them into 'comments' for a long while and I've never added a cell phone column, just putting the cell phone into comments when people had both and now, of course, just putting cell phone into the phone column now that many don't have a land line. When arranging big events, I added columns for 'adult count' and 'kid count' and 'hotel/air.' I added some columns along the way to aid selection for mail/merge like 'XMAS' and 'TEMP.' The thing is a hot mess but a very important data base to me and because I'm too lazy to convert it again, I've had to buy new versions of Access (or Office Professional) along the way.

Of course I have contact information collected in phones and e-mail programs, too. I had the same cell phone for a decade from Sprint. I once typed all the contacts in it into a word document. I saved this in an Evernote (a program that allows you to have notes to yourself in browsers and on gadgets). The iPhone conveniently offers to call the things that look like phone numbers. Gradually some of these are added to my iPhone contact list which is, however, pretty short because really who phones people any longer? And I'm not really into texting either.

Then there are people (and groups) that I 'follow' or have listed as 'friends' or 'professional contacts' or have placed in 'circles' on social media.

There is overlap in all these databases from the mental to the modern social media. I also confess to having found a few printed phone lists the other day from jobs I had which I've never thrown away because they help me remember who these co-workers actually were. Or their names anyway.

There are people in that mental data base who've never made it to any real contact list and who aren't on social media (or not connected with me there). I might say 'hi' to these folks, I might have even had dinner with them, worked closely with them on something or sat through meetings for some charity. But I couldn't come up with an address or phone number on a bet. (Although phone books and Internet searches might do it. And private clubs we belong to have directories.)

I added three columns to the computer data base the other day. One to try to summarize how I came to know the person at first point of contact and one to rate the likelihood of ever communicating with them again. Then a third to describe what the current relationship is. There were a number of people in there who, honestly, I don't have any idea who they are. I should have put a comment in when I added them. I know that a few were friends of my dad's mostly and that I added them to this database to invite people to his 90th birthday party a few years ago. I should probably just delete the names but couldn't bring myself to do it. Some I knew pretty well myself through him and I've had to weed out the ones who died. Every year during holidays or while selecting names for a party list, I delete the dead people. Sometimes you just wipe out the line. Sometimes you have to remove the name of one half of a couple. Just a few days ago I had word that someone died. I found that I didn't have a snail mail address for a sympathy card. This couple had moved around and even though I'd been to an event at one house they had I had zero points of contact in my head or elsewhere. Only the dead person in the couple was on social media. There has been lots of press about what happens to people's social media feeds when they die. I don't really find it morbid or weird or anything myself. What's the difference between that and a hand-written Christmas card list? We got a Christmas card in my in-laws mail for both of them during the holidays. He died in January and she died in November. Someone didn't get the word. Anyway, we found the address for our sympathy card (where this digression started) by e-mailing a friend who we knew was close to the surviving partner.

That's one reason I like being on people's Christmas card lists: you keep up with their addresses. When I receive holiday cards, thank-you notes or invitations, I always pull up my data base and double check the address, spelling of names, zip codes etc.

But...life goes on. People enter and exit. And they don't always exit by dying. Sometimes we just never see them again. Sometimes that's how we'd wish it, sometimes not. You just sort of never know, especially about casual friends and acquaintances.

I began this digression several weeks ago. Since then a friend who lived here in the high rise died. The enormous number of connections he had and we had with him came into sharp relief. And there's his record in my database, his number on my phone. Eliminating them is too fraught today. Another time. And when I attend a memorial for him that's coming up I'll look around and realize how his connections overlap with mine in unexpected ways and also wonder more than once "what's that person's name?" and "are they in my database?"

When I started writing this it wasn't about death. And really, it's still not. But as with everything else, death has a way of sneaking into every conversation and changing all the parameters.

Travel Looms

As soon as we get a piece of info about scheduling some medical tests we are going to assume that we can book some trips. Getaways. Fun. See new things. Revisit places we love. "New York and Portland [OR] are givens," said himself who is now a partner in pretty much all my travels.We'd considered taking a cruise some time, too. We'd even casually talked about doing one with another retired couple. We knew someone who was on the Costa Concordia (he and his companion got off unhurt). Gives you pause. I am a big believer in travel insurance and giving yourself a lot of options (taking spare glasses and your prescription; putting money, passports, credit cards in different places and one on your person if possible). But I don't think sinking ships or news of natural disasters or terrorists will keep us from traveling. We won't be going to the world's more dangerous places, of course.

We have even started blocking out some times and refusing to make plans for local events during those times.

I've always been a big fan of travel myself. When I traveled for business, I almost always found some time to do some sightseeing. When himself still worked his small business and wouldn't be gone for too long, we'd do long weekends and I'd go for longer trips with friends or meeting up with them and more or less going on my own. When I was a mere twenty-four years old I quit a perfectly good job and went to Europe armed with a Eurail Pass and a desire to see places that seemed impossibly far away during my impecunious childhood and college years. I've never regretted it.

So Bon Voyage to me. Multiple good trips. I hope. And even if something bad happens...well, if you don't survive...what a way to go. And if you do...what a story.