From Long Ago But Oh So Appropriate

I clipped this from my old, self-maintained blog. I used to have a little corner where I wrote a little free verse (as in no one would pay for it) reflecting on the day. In 2002 this appeared. It perfectly reflects how a feel over 17 years later. It never ends, does it? Although saving actual clippings is not something I do as much. Still, there is a clipping from The New York Times about museums in the south of France on my desk at this very moment.

I have been remiss about Holidailies. But that broken 'resolution' is not what is making me depressed today. It is just the general feeling, on the first day of a new year, that I wish I could roll back time and do lots of things differently. But the past doesn't work that way.

Today I made soup with some leftover stock from one of FFP's soup making forays. I hope it's good because it's part of dinner. We walked to the bookstore. (How lucky we are to be an easy walk from BookPeople, a large independent book store that has a sale every New Year's Day.) FFP started a book and put on some jazz. I bet he's asleep in his chair. (Nope, just checked, still reading.)

We had a nice NYE. We went to our favorite restaurant, sat at the bar and had dinner and a drink. Then we took a rideshare to a party. Left just after midnight and quickly got a rideshare home. Slept well.

The Tyranny and Joy of Stuff

Does it count if I *think* about blogging Holidaily? I started to write about 'stuff' and gifts and all that a few days ago. I decided to go back in the archives and read about, well, stuff from the past. This was fun but led to no new writing. This picture is of one section of a vitrine table in our living room. It has some old bendable toys in it. (Including a pipe cleaner version of me, created by a friend.) I collected bendables very actively for a while and decorated my office with them when I worked. Our Christmas decorations are, to a large extent, bendable Christmas figures. Santas, mostly, but also a few reindeer, snowmen, trees and such.

I've been working on my financial life. And that is boring. I have to prepare certain tax documents in January and have been running those numbers. I am preparing a new budget for the new year so that we can bust that budget by eating out too much, traveling too much, giving away too much and, of course, buying too many books.

We really don't want too much stuff. It mostly gets in the way. Of course, I do enjoy looking at all the little Santas and such this time of year and enjoying the pretty glassware and such all the time. But, of course, there is the dusting. You have to dust stuff.

That's all I've got. Tomorrow I'm going to talk about gifts. Gifts given. Gifts gotten. Successes. Maybe some failures.

Christmas and Other Musings

I feel sure I've posted this on some blog in the past. I'm determined to put up an entry today. I have been remiss. I just didn't have it in me. I had time, but I spent it otherwise.

I've been thinking about blogging, though, and thinking of tons of things to say when I do. I can't think of any of them now.

Man, I loved Christmas as a kid. I liked the presents, sure, although there were always some disappointments. I liked the fact that the family got together. I'd see cousins. Maybe my grandmother would make homemade rolls and cinnamon rolls. (Nobody did it better. Her giblet gravy was transcendental, too.) I like picking out gifts and surprising people, too. I liked the music. I liked decorating the tree.

This scene is from the house we lived in from 1958-1966. Not a long time, but important because it was most of my school years.

We have exactly two presents here now and our tree is tiny. (We each got the other person a surprise.)

Stuff is mostly in my way these days. I dug out my collection of (mostly) bendable posable Chrismas figures and put them around the apartment.  We put up the cards we receive on a screen in the kitchen. But there is none of that excitement like that tree above generated. We have gotten a few things and deemed them Christmas presents for each other that aren't surprises. He got a sport coat. I got a calendar. I'm going to get a portable charge bar (that allegedly won't overcharge one's gadgets)  to go beside my chair in the living room.

Oh, yeah, 'my chair.' I have this idea for a documentary where we interview people in their chairs. All us old folks have one, surrounded by our necessities: tissues, remotes, pens, etc. You've seen these in set dressing in movies. Anyway, it seemed like a good idea when I thought of it.

One thing I've been doing instead of blogging is looking at this site which I discovered from reading this post on Holidailies. So Holidailies is not a total loss for me in spite of my refusal to write anything coherent or enlightening.

The Mighty Consumer

This is a display of toys, late in the game, at the annual Settlement Home Garage Sale. I hear the consumer is powering 70% of the growth in the economy. And yet there are all these Amazon employees in warehouses and rideshare drivers. How in the world are they making enough to power our economy?

On the other hand, I hear the environment is being destroyed by our lust for cheap, disposable clothing. (More on that later.)

Things aren't really adding up for me these days.

Housecleaning

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

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

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

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

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

Gadget World

I read in an article the New York Times the other day that the age of gadgets, of people doing start-ups to make hardware stuff, is waning (as opposed to apps that work on the all-purpose gadgets we have). This picture is from three years ago. We went to a reception where you could try (and buy!) Google Glass gadgets. You can see that FFP is trying them out. I couldn't because they were for right-eyed people only. So, Google Glass? Not so much any longer.

I have bought so many gadgets, especially if you count cameras. There were calculators including one that did hexadecimal and octal and could be programmed. There were many cameras, different types of film and then digital. I bought many external drives, scanners, printers, special keyboards, mice and other input devices. I bought a little gadget that you could plug books into. (I specifically plugged in foreign language dictionaries and seem to remember one gadget that was, simply, a French translator.)  I avoided some standalone gadgets, though. I waited for cell phones to have GPS and didn't buy a Garmin. I never bought a portable DVD player (although I bought many VCRs and DVD players). I never bought a digital picture frame. At least not for myself. Way, way, back there I remember a special little calculator gadget for balancing your checkbook. I think I gave these as presents.I had a Palm Pilot, With that silly set of shorthand marks you made with your stylus to write.

I never bought a Go-Pro or a drone and think that ship has sailed. I think I bought portable game devices for the great nephews or my money did.

Now I'm going to go look for those language translator gadgets. How worthless is that when you could probably download slick stuff on your phone and tablet and computer and, of course, surf the WEB?

What's your funniest gadget story of the past or present ? Do you ever long for the days when we travelled with paper maps and a compass. (I have a couple of those, too. And not just the one on my iPhone.)

Pen Sets

Remember pen sets? A lot of us of a certain age received 'pen sets' for Christmas, birthdays and, especially, graduations. These days I don't whip out a Mont Blanc or gold Cross Pen and use it. I do use pens: to do my paper crosswords, to write in the paper registers of a couple of checkbooks and write a few checks. (I also keep those balances on the computer and I write fewer and fewer actual checks since a lot of bills are resolved on the computer and online.) But when I use a pen I grab what's at hand, a giveaway from a bank or something. This time of year I often send a little holiday greeting, at least to those who send me something. I'll carefully select a felt tip, maybe, in a festive red or green to do a little personal note and address the envelope.

The other morning I cleaned out a taboret drawer under my desk  (yeah, I have a taboret, look it up, definition 3). The drawer contained dozens of felt tips, sharpies, mechanical pencils, regular pencils, nice ballpoints with refills, some refills. A couple of dozen didn't write well enough and ended up in the trash. I left the nice gold Cross pen and other nice pens with refills in the drawer. I think I was looking for something to write those aforementioned cards. Anyway, as you can see I have dozens of writing implements. (That's after dumping dozens in the trash!) So, no pen sets, Santa.

Ten Thousand Things

How many things do you (and your family) own? I'm betting we own ten thousand things. Or more. It depends on how you count, though. I put out this (very small) fake tree decorated with tiny flamingos, ladybugs, ducks, pigs and statues of liberty. I put these decorations on a drinks cabinet so the bottles show some scale. There are also some tiny Lego Christmas trees, extra little teeny ornaments, and three full-size ornaments. Back to how many things do we own...I bet there are fifty in this picture, depending on how you count. And, when you do this inventory in your own life, do you count the half-empty bottles of liquor (and, for that matter, that almost empty bottle of ketchup everyone has in their frig)? Why is this a question? Because this sea of things that we own, use, dust and take responsibility for has an enormous influence on how we use our time, energy and money.And on how we feel about ourselves.

This topic always occurs to me at Christmas when a lot of people (not me) are out buying things for other people that they may or may not care about. As we head into this year's Holidailies, I will try to present thoughts on many things, but I will probably keep a little running commentary on the issue of stuff as well.

By the way, about twelve years ago, I made an ongoing list of stuff that I owned and the estimated count at the end of that experiment was 4905. I have ditched a number of things on that list. The great move downtown over eight years ago was responsible for a lot of that. I notice that the list included 'shiny new Sharper Image Scales.' We still have those in the condo. They still look pretty shiny and I bet I've replaced the battery two or three times.

Anyway, welcome to Holidailies and we'll just see where this goes. Meanwhile, think about making your own list.

Today is Enough

I confess. I've been dragging through this holiday season, collecting a few shop window reflections to cheer me up (spiky tree, spiky hair, I love it) but still feeling depressed.

I know the why. It's the root cause of any and all depressions I have. (I don't think my depression is clinical by the way. And not just because I'm a medical nihilist. So I probably should call it sadness or being down or blah.) When I slip into a mode of worrying about accomplishments and things and when I last dusted those things I find that I fall out of true appreciation of life and being centered in it. The more I revel in the taste of my food, the minutiae around me, the conversations I hear then the better I feel. The more I notice my steps and wonder that they are still strong for someone who is over 65 then the more the black cloak yields. The more I notice the bright crisp beautiful day then it seems less heinous that people are rushing about for piles of mindless presents. If I stop to read a paragraph in my books while I dust them and don't rush through other household things but stop and revel in my wonderful possessions in my little apartment and my ability to still climb the ladder and reach the high shelves, then chores seem to fall into their place not as awful duties but as wonderful privileges. Not everyone can climb that ladder.

To this point I read an article in The New York Times: "Abundance Without Attachment." I love two quotes in this article and I'll share them here in case you hate following links.

CHRISTMAS is at our throats again. - Noël Coward

Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and good will, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas. - Calvin Coolidge

The article asserts that we should be happy about abundance if we have it and share it but should also avoid attachment. It is the attachment to money and things that is our downfall. In case you still hate following links I'll outline the three-pronged approach to achieving this.

• First, collect experiences, not things.
• Second, steer clear of excessive usefulness.
• And finally, get to the center of the wheel.

First point is pretty obvious, I think. 

The second means doing things for their own sake rather than as a means to a reward. So we clean for the pleasure of the task. We drive to enjoy the road even though, yes, we are headed somewhere. We read and converse not to get information and use it for success but because reading and conversing are pleasure.

The third means moving from the ups and downs of life to the core thing that you think life is about. Many think this is religious faith. According to this article some churches have a 'wheel of life' decoration in a window with a king at the top, a pauper at the bottom and Jesus in the center. Have to look for that. My center is inhabiting the world in full acknowledgment the chaos and hate but with thankfulness that my basic needs are taken care of and that I have means beyond those needs to help others.  Living with the understanding that everything that swirls around me and irritates me (diseases, politics, bad drivers, heedless bikers, active shooters, terrorists, prejudice, psychosis) is just noise until the day comes that it is my day. If I merely try not to be the instrument of pain for someone else, I will be centered.  If I simply enjoy being in this moment, able to type if not 'write' something, then I have all the peace I want or expect.

That active shooter thing? One block away the morning after Thanksgiving was the closest I've come. There have been close calls while walking and driving. In my 20's a medical condition that could have killed me instead infected my appendix and led to surgery that short stopped it. I have stumbled where a fall would have been horrendous if not fatal. This is where we all exist. On a precipice between life and death, relative health and serious decline. The only way we can live happily is to find the center. 

My center is acknowledgment. Of the tightrope we are on and the fact that one day we all fall and we cannot build the kind of net that will protect us. Which means being cautious but resigned. And enjoying every little moment for itself.

Today is enough. And is, in fact, tremendous. 

Object Lessons...The Shelfie

I recently read on social media (which is where I first read of almost everything although I later flesh out many of the stories by reading long articles in actual print: magazines and newspapers) about 'shelfies.' Doing for your inanimate possessions what 'selfies' do for your visage. People artfully arrange their knick knacks, art work, etc. Then photograph them for social media.

I've done this for years, actually, sans the part about social media (although I often blogged pictures of shelves and stuff). See here.

The one above was taken a day or two ago. Every time I dust the shelves, there is an evolution of juxaposition of objects. You see cards I've stuck up there, glimpses of rewards we received, some small art work and some small things we've saved (a silver yoyo FFP gave his Dad, a harmonica he had as a kid).  Of course, books. A picture of us taken for a newspaper article.

Truth is I love looking at my shelves. They give me a warm feeling of memories and possibilites. The books reveal past and present interests. There are ones I've read and many I haven't but intend to read. The cards connecting me to people and events. The art work subject to constant reinterpretation.

I spend way too much time worrying about the physical things in my life and the disposition of them in the short and long term. Does writing about that fretting help or hurt? At least things look better than this:

Taken over six years ago before the move from the big house. I was trying to get organized. Ha.

A Surfeit of Umbrellas

The Visible Woman...owns...umbrellas.

These compact little lightweight (they are Tyvek or something) ones from REI got pulled out and used today when we went walking and it started to rain. Lucky I'd stashed them in the backpack. They are drying off in the spare bathroom which doubles as storage.

Near the front door is an umbrella stand we bought when we moved into this little condo apartment.

I spend a lot (too much in fact) of time thinking about things. Mostly things I already own that are impinging on my personal space. Which is easy to do in this relatively small apartment even though we've maximized the storage space.

Even when I lived in a 3000-square-foot house with a double garage and tons of storage I obsessed about these things. In my 2004 journal I randomly listed things I owned with some commentary. I must say that it is interesting to read this list and note things I gave away, things I no longer think I have but can't remember how I got rid of them and things that are still are part of my life. (Two warm throws described are in the living room of this apartment. And one was bought the same year on the same trip as my muffler.)

Today we went for a walk (to the bank, to the Driskill Hotel to look at their Christmas decorations, to the Farmer's Market) and I put my two little umbrellas (see above) in my backpack. Good thing. Rained pretty hard before we got back. I bought those at REI in the last couple of years. Great for travel. I put them in the carryon and they add almost no weight. 

We have a bunch of other umbrellas. In the stand by the door, there are two very nice compact ones given away by the Austonian Condos when they were marketing the place. There are about a half dozen other ones, relatively compact to very compact including a red one that my Aunt Mary gave me as a present. (I don't know when but she died over two decades ago. And she may have given it to me before I moved to Austin. Which was 38 years ago.) And there is a large, Italian-made one with a lovely fish handle. This is the season of gift-giving. I got this one as a gift and I love it! It was a birthday gift, though. It made me realize that, no matter how many umbrellas you have that a really nice one makes a great gift. 

I think both of us have a least one or two cheap, beat-up umbrellas in our cars.

And yet, somehow, I don't feel like I have too many umbrellas. In spite of the title I gave this entry.

We did have a Four Seasons umbrella. A large, nice one like they loan to their guests. We didn't steal it. FFP did them a PR favor and they gave it to him. Really. Anyway one day a friend visited the condo and it started raining. We loaned him the umbrella. He didn't return it, kept using it around town and, he said, 'accidentally' left it...at the Four Seasons. He either thought we stole it or he was just careless. How could he ask for it back!? Anyhow, we have plenty of umbrellas and it's a funny story. A funny story is worth its weight in gold.

So...one of the few (four) non-cash gifts I bought this year was...an umbrella! A very, very nice one for FFP. If he's reading this he knows one of the things in the gift bag for him. The other thing is something we (and he) always have multiples of around here.

Infinite Legos

FFP poses with the Lego Atlas in the Lego Store at Rockefeller Center (a recreation of this) 

The Visible Woman...owns.

I have a long-standing love affair with Lego. The bricks didn't arrive in the U.S. in my childhood unfortunately. I managed to accumulate a sizable number of them anyway as an adult once I had some money. Then I gave 99% of them away to my grand nephews. 

I could afford to buy any toy I want now. But when would I have time to play with them? I confess to wanting to construct elaborate Lego kits and to put together giant jigsaw puzzles and to play with various electronic devices. But I know now that I'll never have the time to do these things justice. Or maybe I'll never make the time.

Long ago I reached the point where I could afford more toys than I could play with. (And buy more books than I could read, etc.)

When we visited the NYC Lego store (see above) I bought a tiny Statue of Liberty kit. I put it together right away and put its picture on facebook. 

This is the story of too much of my life these days: plenty of money to buy things, too little bandwidth to enjoy them. It's a good problem to have, of course. It's not a problem at all really. But occasionally I long to want something and think about it for a long time and finally get it and then use it and use it and enjoy it. It makes making a Christmas list a chore for sure. I am playing tennis with a racket that is fifteen or twenty years old. I'm perfectly happy with it. A new one would be a nuisance. I am driving a 12-year-old Honda Civic. I'm perfectly happy with it. A new one would be a nuisance. I probably need some new clothes, but I keep thinking I'll lose ten pounds first.

Naturally I give away money to charities and relatives and friends. And we buy travel and meals and tickets. And not having scores of pounds of Legos or even the approximately 3000 books we had at the old house is a bit of a relief. I still have too much stuff, however, to give my possessions the proper attention.

Possessions...Buzz Lightyear

The Visible Woman...owns.

The thing about these possession entries is that it is so tempting to gather a picture. But that takes time. Maybe when I get back from New York. We are in New York and I had to queue these up because I don't have a proper computer or time to use it. Anyway....

Today's possession is a Buzz Lightyear. It is a special edition room guard (more on what that is below). Instead of his usual green and white he has a metallic blue suit and a chrome reflective helmet. I used to collect toys. I loved Toy Story. FFP got me this room guard as a Christmas present. A lot of my collections had to be trimmed or given away when we moved. I used to have a talking Woody for example but his talk box was kaput. I kept this foot-high object, however, and he sits on my desk by a Mac I just use for a few things, holding a remote for the Mac that I never use. The Bluetooth keyboard for that Mac sits in front of him like he might start his own blog any moment. But he's not really a robot. He's just a room guard.*

*A room guard is a gadget that detects motion and challenges the 'intruder' to push a combination of buttons or something to stop the thing talking. Somewhere in storage is Buzz's box and instructions. But he doesn't have any batteries installed so only his presence guards the room.

Possessions...the Scarf

The Visible Woman...owns.

It seems like I've been trying to divest myself of stuff for my whole life. When I graduated from high school, my parents moved not long after. I think my mother did some divesting for me while I traveled a few places that summer. The peripatetic life of a college kid and then a young person forced frequent relocation and with it reconsideration of what stuff went along. When I moved to Austin, I had moved all my possessions to my parents' house and garage and taken a trip to Europe. From there I moved them to a small one bedroom and had to buy a bit of furniture for it! I think I actually made a list detailing every single possession in each box for that move. Seriously?

We lived for 31 years in one house, but we remodeled and refitted multiple times. So we were constantly plowing through stuff to get out of the way of progress. Of course, when we had to get out of that house we found many things to deal with anyway. And over the last decade or so we have dealt with every single possession our two sets of parents owned at the end of their lives.

Still I'm obsessed with possessions and what I let stay around. I know everything is supposed to be used, consumed or give pleasure. Even living in 1200 square feet many objects don't qualify.

During Holidailies I'm going to do some entries about possessions and focus on a few things I own...some useful, some funny, some nostalgic. To speed things up I'm going to eschew pictures for a lot of them.

Today's possession, then...it's a scarf, a muffler if you will. It is plaid with grays and maroons a just a couple of yellow stripes running through it. I bought it somewhere in Europe, most probably Germany, in 1972. Somehow I've not misplaced it, ripped it or gotten to the point that I don't want to wear it. Every winter it gets some use. Everything should be like that. You should be able to buy something and keep it for four decades or so and use it frequently. (Well as frequently as one needs a muffler in the land of endless summer.) Of course, now I'll probably misplace it. Mufflers, like gloves, are so easily misplaced!

Of course, really, it's just stuff!

The Packing List Revelations

I'm getting ready to go on another trip. Not counting staycations (I think we did one of those, traveling about two miles and staying in a hotel for two nights) I have been on five trips this year and I'm heading out for another this week. Los Angeles, New Orleans (with a stop in Houston), Manhattan, the North Shore above Boston plus the Hamptons, Denver suburbs to visit family and now, this week, Portland, OR and environs. When I retired I thought it would be wonderful to travel without worrying about work. (In 2000, I went to Geneva, several places in Australia and Las Vegas for work in a short space of time. Probably made several other trips that year.)

I'm eager for this getaway to Oregon, a regular trip for us in August and one I look forward to all year long.

But another part of me is tired of pulling out the packing list and checking things off and organizing it all. Again.

The packing list.
At some point before that busy working 2000 year I decided to make a master packing list as a WORD document. The idea was that I'd copy it for each trip, edit it to eliminate things I wouldn't need for a trip, add special items and then check things off as I packed. As my life and the world evolved, of course, some things were added to or eliminated from the master list. The master list no longer calls out a PDA and spare stylus but does introduce the possibility of taking along a laptop, an iPod, an IPad and and iPhone or other cell. I've dropped off pantyhose and feminine sanitary supplies from the list. I no longer take a spare watch because, after all, doesn't every gadget tell time?

A few things are still on the list but get eliminated from the list almost every time: formal wear, robe (if the hotel doesn't have one, too bad), hair dryer (I try not to use one now and hotels usually have them). I almost never take our iPod either but sometimes it's a good thing to do.

A Downsizing Every Time
Most of us have too much stuff. But packing, particularly for a trip involving airlines, will focus one on what is really needed. If you can live on what's in that suitcase for a week or ten days, what do you really need?  I always sort of test myself out on whether I actually use everything I take. Of course, one gets a pass on emergency supplies. I always hope I don't need bandaids, Advil, stomach remedies, my tiny umbrella, spare credit cards and photo ID (kept separately from wallet), cough drops, stuff like that. But it's good to get home with almost all your under things and other clothing having been worn. If you took a book, you ought to have read it. My current dodge is to have reading material on the iPad and then to read one of the books FFP takes along. We always, always seem to visit a bookstore. And buy something. We buy papers along the way. We are never without something to read. But at home, of course, it's much worse with unread books, papers and magazines always threatening to topple from every surface.

If you have to carry it, you'll have less!

Always Take the Time-Tested
It's OK to take something new on a trip, I guess. (I'm bought a new carryon for this trip. And, yes, my packing list lists all the possible 'containers' that I might take.) But for clothes and shoes I like to take things I've comfortably worn at home. Walking shoes need to have at least fifty miles on them, preferably with some five mile stretches. Dress shoes need to have gone a few miles, too.

Money, Ticket, ID, Prescriptions
I don't take prescriptions. FFP does. The theory is that if you have money (and credit cards), your ID, tickets and prescription drugs that you can buy anything else. It's a reasonable theory, but FFP can't buy some things off the rack and it is tough for me to find clothes. Short sleeve shirts, polos, underwear, maybe shoes (but see above) could be replaced.

These days you'd be kind of lost without your smart phone. Or an iPad or something. Or both. But still, there are essentials and there are other things. We go on the plane wearing sturdy walkers, a decent shirt, nice jeans and a black blazer. Dress shoes are in the carryon (although FFP has come up with sturdy walkers that  also pass muster as dress shoes). I usually pack my dress shoes, a few under things and socks, a change of pants and shirt, prescription drugs, electronics and chargers, emergency stuff and tiny light umbrellas and lightweight anoraks in carry ons. We check one bag with more clothing, toiletries with liquids and sharps and such. I close the main compartment with a cable tie, cut off the end and place my trusty Swiss Army knife in the front pocket. If the inspectors (or thieves) open it, I'll know (unless they very carefully duplicate my cable tie color and trim). And if they steal the knife, I'll buy another. But I always have scissors, openers, etc. if my checked bag arrives.

Will You Remember What You Wore?
If the shoes hurt or you were cold or too warm, you might remember. If someone takes a photo of you, you might remember. I guess if you felt really out of place, then it might stick with you. But mostly if you were pretty comfortable, it's not what you remember about a trip. If someone takes a picture of me on a trip, I'm likely to be wearing...a black blazer!

A Trip to Regret
I am almost burned out from the traveling this year. The security lines, airline snafus, packing. But I have been trying for weeks to think of a trip I really regretted taking. Oh, there have been times I didn't mind leaving a place...to get home or go somewhere else. But later I never remember wishing I hadn't been there. I always saw something new, learned something new (sometimes about packing) or met some interesting person. So I'll keep on printing my list, packing and going.

Who Am I and Where Have I Been?

These days I'm waking up feeling lost in my own life. The six months from Sept. 10-March 10 were spent in a perfect storm of death and illness and paperwork and duties. It ended all right, really, for those of us who survived. Our dads did "live a long life" as people say, often adding that it was a "full" one. I'm not so sure about the latter. FFP survived two surgeries and a lot of tests to come up allegedly cancer-free and also avoid radiation and chemo. It seemed like there were enough 'have to do' things every day to reduce decision making to a minimum. What follows is an eclectic recap of that six months, the time since and my life in general. It will undoubtedly end up sounding like an extended whine from someone with a charmed life. Because it is. However, I feel that I can't move on as a writer without publishing this. Odd, huh? I don't really identify as a 'writer' anyway. I made up business cards when I retired that said "Pretending to Write but Really Just Blogging." The other day I took a red pen to some of these and scratched out Write and replaced it with Blog. And Scratched out Blogging and replaced it with Tweeting.

The events of that six months have gradually faded. I'm putting together the last pieces of my dad's estate that will let me finally more or less settle it although the CPA says I'll have to file a tax return for the estate for 2011 or something. I'll address this when the time comes and pay anything owed out of my own pocket just to get things cleaned up. We have tenants in the house we own that Dad lived in. His stuff has been sorted and dispersed. (There's a job with potent emotional and physical toll for the healthiest among us. The whole process might also be the subject of another piece at some point.)

FFP got his dad's will probated and and got his mother's new widowed life somewhat settled. I've managed to start using a new mail server. (This was necessary for a weird reason and harder than it sounds. I hate this type of change.) As these things fell away, we started thinking maybe we should get away from duties and do more social and charitable things.

During this six months we did some social events in spite of trips to Houston's MD Anderson Cancer Center including surgery there for FFP, another surgery for FFP in Austin and the deaths of our dads. We even saw a few films in the Austin Film Festival and managed to attend the event we helped chair to raise money for AFF's Young Filmmakers Program. But we also didn't sign up for a lot of things, canceled events and gave away expensive gala tickets we bought before we knew what was going to happen.

As things settled out we went a little overboard agreeing to events and buying tickets to things. One day, we decided that we should buy SXSW film badges. At the point we bought them the price had risen to $500. (If we'd purchased them in September, when we were facing the big cancer threat, they would have been $375. The walk-up rate was $550.)

On March 10 we attended the unofficial opening of the SXSW film festival, the Texas Film Hall of Fame party. Some friends had purchased a table and were kind enough to invite us, gratis. (This is not officially a part of SXSW and the $500 badge does you no good for this one.) I learned what Ted Nugent looks like and how he sounds doing the Star-Spangled banner. I was reminded of how much I enjoyed FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS and of the familial relationship between Sissy Spacek and Rip Torn. I really enjoyed hearing about and from John Hawkes who I only knew from his performance in WINTER'S BONE. All of the above received awards at the event. (Well, not WINTER'S BONE but, rather, John Hawkes.)

I looked forward to seeing some films, especially documentaries, and being able to walk to many venues and feel the throbbing vibe of the huge SXSW machine while still being able to retreat to our condo.

I usually play tennis three times a week. I played on Thursday, March 10th, and again on Saturday, the 19th, making sure my film festival didn't need to start until that afternoon. I'd missed a lot of tennis dates during the six months of 'the troubles' but at that point I'd been getting to it pretty regularly, weather permitting. One morning I cleaned house, several others were spent regrouping from the arduous film watching or sorting out bill paying and such.

But I spent a good deal of time from March 11-19, nine days, watching films programmed by SXSW film. I didn't attend any panels, spent probably 20 minutes walking through the trade show and attended a party hosted by Austin Film Festival. I watched eighteen movies. I watched a few Q&As. I waited in lines for many hours.

I'm going to summarize that experience here, in a moment. But I reached the end of the festival thinking "I'm watching movies created by someone else, about lives that aren't mine, curated by these SXSW folks."

I decided I needed to be creative myself. Or, at least, be picking my own input (newspapers, books, magazines, movies, images). Yeah, at least I need to be doing my own aggregation! We spend so much time looking at what someone else tells us is worthy of our attention. Yes, I'm going to get creative on my own terms. I'm going to write. I'm going to work on my photography project. I am going to call my 'work' (based on my photos of shop windows and other reflections): Multiply Appropriated Portraits and Landscapes. But more on that later. Perhaps much later.

The Sunday after SXSW was over I finally got around to reading The New York Times magazine for the prior Sunday (March 13). This article resonated with me, expressing a feeling of disconnection from creation that surely critics and aggregators must feel. Bill Keller, executive editor of the paper, was, of course, speaking from a very different perspective. The original reporting he oversees is being co-opted by aggregation. But so is my brain. I no longer give myself time to have an original thought. Not even about whose thoughts to let in.

Yes, it's time to stop and reflect. Reflection seems in order. Reflection on the last couple of weeks and the last six months and, indeed, what I laughingly call my life. Reflection of this sort is so long overdue that it took me over two weeks to write this entry which is now a rambling mess but which I think I'll post anyway. As I said: not publishing it seems to be holding me back from my usual writer's block on other things.

SXSW
As I mentioned above...we bought those film badges. I canceled three tennis dates to clear time to pursue movies and whatever else came our way. We live downtown and we didn't have to fight traffic for the most part. Not in our car anyway. I didn't start my car for over a week. FFP started his three times I think. Others weren't so lucky, haplessly belching fumes while in gridlock or waiting for buses that never came or came too full to take them. Bike riders dodged cars, threatened pedestrians and had trouble finding a proper bike rack. SXSW was too crowded and on the edge of out of control. (Sometimes going past the edge.) People stood in endless lines to get into stuff or to get free stuff. We stopped by and got a free Pepsi Max, no line. Otherwise, we only stood in line for movies or credentials for the fest. I always feel like I should 'review' what I see although I am a hopeless critic (except of my own life). But I do feel the need to wrap it up. So here goes.

We often got to the venues too early (we call this being pathologically punctual), rarely tried to see two movies in a row, even at the same theater, and, with our badges, got into every movie we set out to see and got good seats. Of course, we probably stood in line 16-18 hours. We read magazines or used our iPhones to pass the time for the most part. We talked to people in line, getting ideas of what to see, learning some stuff about Formula One Racing, and meeting some neat people such as Photographer Brian Gray and actress Aimee Thomas. Lines can be at once the most frustrating and the nicest, most serendipitous things about the festival. We also saw lots of people we already knew in lines, while standing in them and watching people go by and in the venues. We saw movies at seven different venues. (Rollins Theater at Long Center; the newly-renovated State Theater; Paramount Theater; the Convention Center Theater, branded Vimeo for this festival; Regal Arbor; the Alamo Ritz; and Alamo South Lamar). We only drove to the Arbor, walking to and fro all the other venues from our condo.

We ate lunch on the patio at Trio at the Four Seasons on the Thursday before the festival began. Most of the time during the festival we retreated into the lounge at Ruth's Chris steakhouse or ate sushi rolls from How Do You Roll or subs from Thundercloud or prepared food from Royal Blue Grocery. Oh, we had a cheese plate at Highball and a few bites and drinks in the theaters. We had snacks and drinks at Manuel's when we went to the Arbor. Restaurants were jam-packed. On the first day of the film fest (the 11th) we thought we'd go to Frank but it had a wait. We did get a table at Second. After that we eschewed the choices popular with SXers.

My festival was almost derailed by my guts. During the second movie of the first day, I had some slight stomach cramps, a sweaty hot clammy feeling. Left the theater a couple of times to go to the rest room. Washed face. Felt better. But that night I lost my lunch, as they say. And I was fragile for food and drink for a day or two.

But we did see two showings that first day: BEST of VIMEO SHORTS and PAGE ONE: INSIDE THE NEW YORK TIMES. Both were at the Convention Center at the Vimeo Theater as it was branded for the festival. This is the uncomfortable chair theater. After these two shows we learned to sit on the front row of the risers, the most comfort you can get in that venue.

Some of the shorts shown were animated. I particularly liked an animation of sand and snow. There was a helmet cam video from a bike race over a harrowing urban course that was pretty fantastic, too.

I loved PAGE ONE. I'm an avid reader of the NY Times although I don't do a good job of keeping up with who's who at the paper. (After seeing this movie, I decided to pay more attention to bylines.) David Carr is an interesting character and the story he was working on (the bankruptcy of the Tribune company) was relevant to the overall hand-wringing over new media, newspapers, reporting, etc. The film touched on lots of issues: plagiarism, declining advertising revenue, Wikileaks, rise of aggregation, pay walls. The blogger turned journalist, Brain Stelter, added a face to new trends. I wanted to go home and gently pat my stacks of newsprint. I missed a tiny bit of the movie and some of the Q&A to feeling ill. I regretted that.

I didn't know how the first Saturday of the festival was going to play out for me. I awoke feeling better after getting up almost hourly all night to drink sips of water to rehydrate. I managed to get down a little coffee, a little Gatorade and we queued up for SENNA. The eponymous F1 driver was an enormously successful driver and a hero in his native Brazil. He was killed in a race. I didn't know any of that before deciding to see the movie. I knew nothing about this form of auto racing. Or really any form of auto racing. The movie was a very human portrayal, done without using posthumous interviews with people who knew him but rather using archival footage of him and of people speaking about him. My fragile constitution survived the 'in car camera' racing footage, too.

We tried to get express tickets to get into EL BULLI so that we wouldn't have to queue so long. There weren't any left. The idea that you get a badge and then you queue up to get a pass to get in front of the badge line is not the best idea SXSW ever had. We decided that we'd queue for the movie anyway. We went to the Driskill and relaxed in the cool lobby for a bit after taking advantage of their bathrooms. It turned out we were first in line for badges without special tickets. So we got the aisle seat that I thought I needed given my fragile condition. After watching starred Spanish chef Ferran Adrià make wild, innovative dishes I retired to Ruth's Chris lounge to test my stomach on a plain baked potato with a little cheese and sparkling water. I liked the food shots and people in the movie but the sound track was very weird in places.

So Sunday (3/13/2011) comes along and I've been to four screenings and already feel a little tired. It feels like work. I know how lame and elitist that sounds. The hour lost to Daylight Savings wasn't really missed too much, at least not that day, possibly because I didn't drink Saturday night. We start our fest day at a brunch given by Austin Film Festival for AFF alumni who are local or in town for the SXSW. I eschew the tamales and have a little fruit and a pastry. I pass on alcohol, too, which I often do early in the day anyway. We walk to Whole Foods and buy a few things including a growler of Dogfish Head Midas Touch which, of course, I won't feel like drinking just yet. We only make one screening. We go to Morgan Spurlock's GREATEST MOVIE EVER SOLD. Morgan is there. It starts late. It is, well, as advertised: a big advertisement with a message that we are always being sold to, even in movies. We go to Ruth's Chris I think. At home I try some Midas Touch. Not too much, though.

On Monday we decide to get Express tickets for the movies we want to see. There are badges. Badges are seated first. They are all equal whether Gold, Film, Platinum or Interactive (for certain movies they are admitted). The festival issues VIP tickets for cast and crew and the like to trump these, though. Then they got the idea to issue special pieces of paper to trump other badges. Sigh. (And there are also film passes, would-be single ticket buyers and people who pre-purchase a single ticket but may not be admitted but are admitted before other single ticket holders. Neither volunteers nor film-goers quite master this before the fest is over.) We get in line before this line up opens. There are at least a hundred people in line. We do get these special tickets but we've wasted at least an hour of our time getting them. Since seating can occur thirty minutes or a bit more before a show we will still have to waste at least thirty minutes per show in a line. In these lines we will be given another paper ticket to prove we were in line. Later in the week they will ditch the film express tickets, thankfully. We won't queue for them again.

We saw SMALL BEAUTIFULLY MOVING PARTS in the newly-renovated State Theater. I liked it very much. Gave it four stars. The theater that is. But also the movie was pretty good. Quiet movie about family dysfunction, parenthood and the connected world of technology. Starring Anna Margaret Hollyman who has been in some shorts we've seen and also in one of the 'bumpers' for the festival. (Apparently that is what you call funny little pieces that precede the films.) Family dysfunction will be a thread running through most of the narrative features we see.

We rested up a bit and walked across the lake and up South Lamar to the Alamo South. We were extremely early and we had those extra special express tickets. So we went to Highball and had a drink (me: Guinness for $2; he: Coke for free as DD although we told the bartender we were walking) and a cheese plate. What a great Happy Hour with pints for $2! We loved, loved, loved A MATTER OF TASTE. Sometimes filmmakers get so lucky. They start filming someone when they are struggling a bit to get a film made and the subject is struggling in his endeavors. Time passes. Something happens to the person (two Michelin Stars!) and the film gets finished and has a nice dramatic arc. So the filmmaker, Sally Rowe, was lucky, but also very good at capturing this journey. The chef at the center of this piece, Paul Liebrandt, was at the screening. He was so nice. He seemed to know who he was and what he wanted. We want to eat at Corton when we go to New York. And, conveniently, we've just scheduled a trip to New York in June. We made the dark walk home and got ready for another day. I think I showed my age by already being weary but, of course, I had gotten a bug or some sort of upset on Friday.

On Tuesday we go to the Convention Center again to see SOMETHING VENTURED. We got those front row seats in the risers. I would have been more comfortable if a guy with about the girth of The Simpson's Comic Book Guy hadn't slipped (well more like plopped) into the seat next to me well after the movie started. This is a great film about the history of high-tech start-ups and venture capital. The dominance of men, then and now, still upsets me, though, even over eight years after my retirement and after some success at beating the odds. That one of the entrepreneurs, now a venture capitalist, was someone whose company I once worked for made it uncomfortable as well. Too close to what I laughingly call my life. Too close to 'what might have been' and missed opportunities. At some point, walking through the trade show, I will also have flashbacks of working trade shows, trying to convince customers that my stuff is what they should buy, not the stuff peddled in the next booth over.

And then...we started a car. Yep. We (well FFP) drove out to the Arboretum area, stopped by our house (where Dad used to live, which is our rent house now) and then grabbed a quick drink and snack at Manuel's and saw a SXSW movie at the Arbor. BEGINNERS really grabbed me. It was a highly personal story, you see. It involved the death of parents. While my dad didn't reveal that he was gay after my mother died (this was a plot point that moved this movie along), I felt such a resonance with the material that I found real tears going down my face. I was especially moved by a pile of garbage bags. Seriously. (See above re: cleaning out the Dad house.) Great movie about loss and love and how to really live. Reminded me of seeing my dad after he lost my mom when he tried to capture some happiness after several years of bumpy health problems for her and sitting with her for 100 days in the hospital. That Ewan McGregor and Christopher Plummer were in this project comes as no surprise after you see the piece and realize the power of the script. I understand this film (written and directed by Mike Mills) is highly personal and semi-autobiographical. The 'happy ending' for the son distracted a little from the piece but overall I was so impressed that, honestly, I wanted to see the character break out and embrace a relationship. It will be interesting to see if this guy can write another great script using either material he is also this close to or material that requires a little more reach of imagination.

On Wednesday (we are at 3/16/2011 at this point) we spent the morning taking care of our lives. I cleaned the bathroom and the bedroom and took care of bills and stuff. FFP took care of some of his mother's business. But in the afternoon we queued up at the convention center theater for a showing of BOB AND THE MONSTER which is a documentary about Bob Forrest and his rock career, addiction, recovery and attempt to help others recover. It was quite interesting on several levels: music, drugs, recovery and redemption.

In the evening, we went main stream. Jodie Foster's THE BEAVER was showing at the Paramount. She directs and stars opposite Mel Gibson. We were probably in line behind a hundred people with the line stretching far behind us, around the corner, out of sight. Jodie was there, but no Mel Gibson. Forrest was impressed with her legs when she introduced the movie. In my opinion the movie's premise was just a little too wacky to support a real portrayal of mental illness. By that I mean that people went along with the puppet much more than they would in the real world. Yes, the beaver was a puppet. I predict it won't do well in theaters. So...it probably will! I find my tastes don't track with the mainstream. After Jodie did the Q&A and sidestepped the Mel questions we went to Ruth's Chris. I had a Manhattan. Yeah, it didn't take me long to get back to drinking after my stomach upset.

When Thursday rolls around it is St. Patrick's Day. The combination of the holiday and its drunken celebration, the SXSW music being in full swing and film continuing make the streets and sidewalks of downtown both amazing and daunting. It is a day when we will somehow manage to watch three movies. We do this by only going to the Paramount and doing what I said above we never did: seeing two movies in a row at the same venue. But it was the Paramount which is a big venue. Started with APART. Some movies ask you suspend disbelief. Let's say they ask you to believe people can have shared delusions. OK. Accepted. Then they ask us to believe these delusions are really prescient. OK, I'll bite. Then they ask us to believe that the delusions caused the protagonists to act out in the delusions. OK, we've come this far together. But. Then this piece ask me to believe that another character, apparently sane but upset over the death of his son, could instantly figure out the psychosis and initiate a plan to help the pair escape the horror they've caused and get cured. He would do this by committing a crime and covering up another crime. Well, no. Didn't wash. Wrap it up some other way and I'd have enjoyed the diversion. This plot turn stuck in my craw. After I'd allowed them so much leeway. I'd say that the above paragraphs were spoilers but somehow they really are not. Oh well. We should probably stick with movies that are strictly about family dysfunction.

As I said, we managed to watch two movies in a row by immediately going out and queuing for LIVE AT PRESERVATION HALL: LOUISIANA FAIRYTALE. To our delight the Preservation Hall Jazz Band came marching around the corner and entertained for a bit in front of the theater before going inside. When we got in they were performing some bluesy numbers with mournful singing. During the movie, the parts where the jazz guys played or they talked about the history of Preservation Hall were great. But the collaboration with My Morning Jacket was mostly painful to me because their music is so monotonous and dumb in my humble opinion. When their lead singer fronted the jazz classic in the title, that wasn't horrible (not great either) and sometimes a jazz guy accompanying the muck couldn't stand it any longer and just started to improvise and that provided some relief. Now I'm sure My Morning Jacket is a hot new band. Or a venerable hot band. So sue me. If I'm going to be spoon-fed by SXSW, I'm going to still try to retain the ability to form an opinion about what I like.

We regrouped, caught a snack and drink at Ruth's Chris and queued for ATTENBERG. It was very artsy. It had everything required of an art film. For my taste I just couldn't bond with the characters due to the silly sequences and inside jokes. But it was good at being artsy. And...we had seen three movies. Yeah.

When Friday, March 18th, arrives we realize two things: SXSW Music is in full swing and we have been watching movies for a week. I start to feel like an SXSWimp. I know I'm clueless about a lot of the music. (See above: My Morning Jacket.) I know that I don't like excessive drinking, loud claptrap or places that are too crowded.

We see that they are playing the Grand Jury Narrative Award winner at the Rollins over at Long Center. We haven't been to the venue during this festival. And we've heard good things about the film, NATURAL SELECTION. So we walk across Lady Bird Lake and queue up. Only two people in line and one is a gal we queued with at the Arbor, Aimee the Actress, and we enjoy some conversation. The movie's premises are improbable, the arc for the characters unlikely and the movie is thoroughly and completely raucous but somehow it's enjoyable and beautifully crafted. There were interesting subtleties of settings and nuances that redeemed any criticism. Roger Ebert liked it, too, although to me...that means nothing. I make my own decisions. It is my last shot at free will. NATURAL SELECTION could be described as dysfunction of non-family, but it had family complications, too, and that segued nicely into the evening's movie. ANOTHER HAPPY DAY is one of those films that I can both relate to (it was full of family dancing, as I call it, and anyone has seen a bit of that in life) and also feel divorced from (the family place on the Chesapeake is far from my reality). But there was the interesting reunion of cousins, the consternation as old age decimated the powers of the older generation, etc. Those things I get. I like seeing the multiple generations of privilege flailing anyway. Ellen Burstyn and Ellen Barkin were great and Demi Moore camped it up. It's easy to hate Thomas Hayden Church so he was able to make you hate him and yet feel a little sorry for him.

It is the last day. The ninth day! Saturday, March 19th. We see two films to make an even 18. For which we paid $27 each by buying our badges. We saw two documentaries this last round. The well-crafted WHERE SOLDIERS COME FROM didn't just give one pause about our current wars and their effect on young people who sign up for National Guard units for a bit of money. It gave me pause about the millions of lost young people with no idea of vocation or goals. I suppose they've always been out there. In an era without a draft they are most of our non-comm soldiers. They are ill-prepared by training and ill-prepared emotionally to fight a battle against IEDs. This film gives an inside look at one group of kids and their families and friends and shows how they could end up in uniform thousands of miles away after taking up soldiering with no more thought than their winter sledding or graffiti project. The film is also very revealing concerning how these families pinned their hopes on Obama to end the obligations their enlistment entailed and how they were disappointed to find little changed. And there is a priceless bit of film of a PowerPoint presentation about Afghanistan given during an army orientation. That alone was worth the price of admission. The return of these kids with their possible unseen traumatic brain injuries and exacerbated lack of focus is painful to watch.

The finale, the finish, the 18th film, is a documentary about Willie Nelson, KING OF LUCK. Billy Bob Thornton directed and it is one awesome piece of music history. We walked out more in awe of Willie than ever. Which was the idea I think: to make a paean rather than a bio. The current footage is presented in black and white to match the archival stuff. Willie is definitely one of a kind and here we see him with a bunch of unique friends and family talking about him. Great as it was...we were so eager to slip through the crowds and be in our apartment that we didn't stay for the Q&A with Billy Bob. Facing down a river of people headed toward E. Sixth, we made our way home and collapsed. Of course, soon enough a long fireworks show boomed across the lake and we stepped out on the balcony to watch it. It lasted so long I was glad when it was over.

At the end of the day, we did see some pretty good films. Ten documentaries, seven narrative features and one short program. But it was draining and I'm not sure it was worth it, all in all, to see all those in such a short period and stand in line that much.

As I write this I've actually been to two movies since the end of the festival. One was a preview showing of WIN WIN (also shown in the festival although we didn't attend). It is an intriguing tale of right and wrong and the mushy area in between, families and what they will do to each other and, at the end, for each other. Also...how the concept of family stretches to sometimes admit strangers. The movie didn't try to tell us everything, taking advantage of ambiguity to make it a bit more real. Which is to say they intentionally left unanswered questions about guilt, innocence and what would happen when the characters left the frame as well as what their complete history might reveal. All you knew for sure was that some situations do have a WIN WIN outcome but maybe not where we expect to find it. I liked Bobby Cannavale being cast as the over-enthusiastic friend, too, which reminded me of STATION AGENT.

We also saw a documentary about the Rural Studio Architecture project (CITIZEN ARCHITECT: SAMUEL MOCKBEE AND THE SPIRIT OF THE RURAL STUDIO). We saw this sitting on the rooftop of Arthouse at Jones Center on a chilly night. It is a nice doc. I'd heard the film makers speak about it before and was glad to get to see it.

We've also been to some benefits, a wine club party, a ballet mixed rep. And we made a round trip to Houston to have a check-up for Forrest.

I'm exhausted now, describing the last couple of weeks. Nevertheless, I want to keep writing, to keep blogging and to reach back through the last six months and try to write some sense into it. I don't know if it will work. In fact, I guess, from experience, I know that it will work but only to a small degree.

The Six Months
You come home from a vacation. You dad has had a rough time of it, been to the emergency room a couple of times, had to sweat out an AC repair during a blazing hot August at the house where he's living, our house, which we are responsible for. We've ducked our responsibilities for a couple of weeks of driving across the great American West and visiting friends. We've left him in the care of repairmen and friends.

We are not home for long and he needs to go to the emergency room again. Instead of relying on friends I have to ditch a party and take him. The next week I take him to the doctor and we think he's doing pretty well. I take FFP to the eye doctor where he will have what turns out to be the last of many excisions of a growth on his eyelid that is not benign, as the ophthalmologist thought for two years, but a rare cancer. I only go because he will have an eye patch for a few hours so I go to drive him home. It is a day I spend in doctors' offices but things seem to be going OK. The doctor does a biopsy. He says, "I'm pretty sure it's not going to show anything." Or he says something like that. We don't worry. Not at all.

Until the afternoon of the next day. We are sitting around thinking about what to wear for a black tie event that we will go to in a few hours. And the doctor calls. He wants to send FFP to an oculoplastic surgeon on Monday. Because he has a very rare cancer. Sebaceous Cell Carcinoma. Before we go to our event we have time to make the appointment. A new doctor is working us in. As soon as possible. We have time to search the Internet. Yikes.

Monday we see the new doctor. He refers us to MD Anderson. We will see a doctor there, probably the leading expert in the country (if not the world) on this type of cancer. On Friday. Friday is a race through tests and more tests and doctor visits. MD Anderson is a massive, daunting place but we make it through with a little help from the staff. We are given an appointment to come back on Monday and get needle biopsies of a mass shown through ultrasound in his parotid gland and one in his thyroid. The word metastasis creeps into our vocabulary. But. We will just take this a step at a time. And worry, of course.

On the weekend that the MD Anderson visits on Friday and Monday (and the three hundred miles of driving) surround, my dad is celebrating his 94th birthday. Fortunately, his two sisters and one brother-in-law have driven down to visit. A friend has a little get together for him on Friday night which we miss. We go through the motions of visiting with the relatives on the weekend and trying to explain what we know about the medical issues.

Monday brings needle biopsies. The parotid probe hurts more. The thyroid one is done twice. The parotid one is identified as benign. An adenoma. The thyroid comes up with Hurthle cells. The problem with this tumor is that it is probably benign but it can be cancerous and metastasize and you can only tell by removing it. This type of tumor is also rare, apparently.

But we have to take care of other things first. The eyelid. The cancer must be removed along with a normal edge and the eyelid reconstructed and biopsies done for skip lesions. They want to do a sentinel node biopsy. A head and neck surgeon will do this using traces from radioactive isotopes injected during a test and again before surgery. Into his eyelid. Without anesthetic. Ouch. Hurts to think about and it wasn't me.

We get ourselves prepared for all this, get hotel reservations near MD Anderson. We have a couple of weeks to ponder it and we try to go on with our lives. I get a haircut. I take my dad to get a haircut on a Friday. It's been two weeks since FFP's diagnosis. Dad says he's feeling a little weak. He complains about his blood pressure monitor not working and I reseat the batteries and fool with it and get it going. He jokes with the barber and looks good with his fresh haircut.

On Saturday I call my dad, as I do every morning for the most part. He says he is 'feeling better.' I guess I wasn't aware of how bad he felt the day before. I don't see him or speak with him again that day. The next day when I call, he doesn't answer on the first try. I try again. The phone is off the hook. I hear something but he can't speak to me. I tell Forrest, "I think this is it." I think of calling the neighbors. But they aren't friendly about being roused so early. I get in the car and drive out there myself. He is in his bed. Struggling for breath, gurgling a bit. I call EMS. They are there in a very short time. They ask me if he has heart problems. They say he is in afib. "That's never happened before," I say. They ask when he was last normal. He seems to have put himself to bed for the night. Or, could it have been for a nap yesterday? Later I see his tablet in the dining room beside his blood pressure monitor. He has recorded his blood pressure the night before and written the time: 8PM. The blood pressure shown, however, was a little was a little low for someone with high blood pressure: 94-58. Was he already in afib?

He is transported to the emergency room. After a CT scan they see he's had a massive stroke. They struggle to get his blood gases up. His heart isn't beating correctly so his pulse races but he isn't getting enough oxygen in his blood. The doctor mentions 'hospice.' By 6PM I've had a visit from the hospice people. They talk about transporting him to a hospice facility. I look at him and realize that we might as well stay here. I've called everyone. My Colorado relatives start making plans to come this way. I don't leave his side for long. The next morning a friend stops by to sit with him while I go shower. A lot of people visit and then they are all gone and FFP joins me. We slip out for a meal and the food tastes so good. I feel bad that it tastes so good. There's my dad, unable to swallow, on hospice care across the street. We rush back to his side. Even though they've removed the oxygen all together, he holds on for a while. And then: he's gone. While we wait for a local funeral home to collect him and arrange for his body to be transported back to Dallas where his burial will be, we call people, e-mail people. I feel a huge weight on me. FFP's surgery is a week away.

My nieces arrive the next day: one by car and one by air and rental car. Each has a three-year-old in tow. They switch gears from trying to see their granddad one last time to helping me arrange a burial in Dallas. He has sisters there, nieces and nephews, friends. We get the funeral home to call us the next day and arrange everything. One niece's van won't start so they switch everything to the rent car and set out for Dallas to put him to rest. They call their parents (my sister and brother-in-law) and tell them to go straight to Dallas. They reserve hotel rooms, order a casket spray and flowers. The next day they bury their granddad and the niece with the rent car drives back with her son to catch a plane back to Denver from Austin. The other niece and my sister and brother-in-law stay over and come the next day to get the niece's van going. I feel bad I didn't make this service but we will have a memorial a few weeks later in Austin. We will try to delay it long enough after FFP's surgery that he can make it. We succeed in this.

We find out on the day before surgery that unless FFP is willing to get a parotidectomy to rid himself of the adenoma the surgeon won't do the sentinel node biopsy. He doesn't want to operate on the face twice and the adenoma may one day cause trouble and require removal. This makes the surgery kind of a bigger deal. Anyway, we spend almost a week at MD Anderson. Child's play considering what some people I know have been through. But tough enough to suit me.

It is day surgery. In that he's not really admitted to the hospital. Only...we are there from before 7AM one day until noon the next. I thought I'd drive back that day. But I haven't left the hospital either, have gotten little sleep. He's had six hours of surgery, a little bit of a rocky recovery, has a drain coming out of his neck, his eye is swollen shut, etc. Luckily, they were able to repair the eyelid without grafting tissue from the lower eyelid. So he might be able to see out of that eye when the swelling goes down. Needless to say, we spent another day and night in a hotel room, sleeping, managing his drain, doctoring his eye, eating room service and entertaining ourselves with TV and iPod tunes. On Saturday I manage to drive him home. We managed for a couple of days, his eye gradually opening, me taking care of the drain stitched in his neck. On Monday we got his GP to remove the drain. That was a great relief. Gradually he gets better. News gets better, too. The sentinel node biopsy showed no cancer. We start getting out and going a few places.

Before we know it the holiday season is on us. Forrest's dad has his 100th birthday right before Thanksgiving. There is a come and go party at their house. It exhausts me and seems to energize FFP's parents.

FFP has another surgery, here in Austin, to remove half his thyroid and have a look at that growth in it. It is benign. So he keeps half a thyroid. He recovers fast from this although he's still recovering from his eyelid and facial surgery, too.

We continue getting out to more stuff. We eat in a brand new restaurant and, the next night, go to the ballet. FFP gets violently ill later in the evening. Food poisoning we think. It sends him reeling, the doctor giving this drug and that and he finally ends up getting an IV to rehydrate and gradually feels himself again.

And we think maybe we've turned a corner. I'd gone to court. I'd cleaned and sorted and discarded and donated and organized and executrixed my way through my dad's affairs and leftover things. It wasn't done but everyday...closer.

A new year arrives. We actually have a pretty good New Year's Eve, wandering the building to various apartments for partying.

The first day of 2011, we stretch and yawn our way through the day and settle in for some nachos and TV.

And the phone rings. And thus begins the fall for FFP's dad. A literal fall getting up out of a chair. A broken hip. Pain. Breathing problems with painkillers. Nothing to do but try to pin it. Surgery a success but patient's blood pressure never stabilizes. The next week we are organizing another funeral and beginning another bit of estate management and trying to help his mother through it all. Between the death and the funeral we have to make a round trip to Houston and get a check up on the whole cancer thing.

I keep trying to hang on to things that are 'normal.' I manage to play some tennis. Go out with some friends. Go out with Forrest to a restaurant. To do chores and projects around the condo. The house which had been so great for Dad becomes a burden without him. Stuff seems to multiply. Each thing has to be dealt with. But, finally, we remove enough to get the floors steam-cleaned. And we find friends to lease from us.

And it's tax time and I spend time getting all the tax things underway. For us and my dad. FFP does his mom's. The CPA and I wade through the business stuff.

Then it seems like we've come out the other side. At this point that we start to play a little fast and loose. We think we can do things. Like get our money's worth out of a SXSW film badge, make it to some galas, go out with friends. I think I can really conquer the chores and stuff around the condo now that I'm not sorting detritus from the life of dad and mom and playing the companion role for the sick.

Of course, we over-commit. Of course, I start to feel nervous and distraught. I toy with solutions. Becoming a recluse watching old episodes of "Northern Exposure." Spending more 'analog' time. (Reading newspapers and books, writing in longhand, playing tennis.) Going through tasks meticulously from left to right, top to bottom, believing that you can conquer. Scheduling trips to look forward to. (We have only been out of town to drive back and forth to Houston for medical treatment for over six months.) Trying to write about what's happened. What's working? What isn't? Hard to say.

How'd I Get Here?
It's funny, isn't it? How your life is just one thing, another thing and then there you are, living with a man you've been married to almost 35 years owning a ten-year-old Honda Civic with an insult on every body panel, a condo, a tennis racket older than the car. Your health is good as far as you know. You are living an urban lifestyle. You feel you've done your duty these last six months, these last ten years, your whole life. You've been responsible. Paid for your mistakes. Paid your debts. Paid your taxes. Not stolen from anyone. And here you are. So I'm going to explore that further. I'll enter some more blog entries here, segueing from images and ideas into an always incomplete but exhaustive exposition on "who is the Visible Woman and why does she do that?" Or not. Maybe I won't write another thing in this space. After all, I've been working on this entry for over two weeks and I'm still not sure I'll publish it.

Objects of Desire

I don't really want an art object that is a crane woven from what? Paper? Vinyl? Glass? I don't know. I didn't go into the shop. I just stole the image of it, added my camera-obscured visage and put it here. But thousands of objects, arty and otherwise, are in my possession or control. Dealing with them, their value, their weight and their emotional freight consumes a lot of my time.

Even my images, like this one, weigh down the hard drive, obscure other pictures. The more you have the less you can concentrate and cherish one thing.

When we moved we let stuff go. And go. And go. Lots and lots of stuff. I love a lot of what's left. That painting there. That book. My coffee machine. Some of my clothes. New Italian furniture we acquired. Even now we have to stay on top of things because we kept so much (or acquired the perfect object for this space) that the condo is pretty full. When we add something it threatens us.

Since we moved we acquired two new art works. We had to eject another work to hang one of them. I think the rejected one ended up in our condo storage cage. We managed to work out a space for the other new one. At one time we had several hefty sculptures. And some life-sized ones in the yard. No more.

I rarely see things I desire these days. But I must confess that I take a peek at most of the catalogs that come in and stare at ads in newspapers and magazines. And sometimes a desire is created, but, more often I see a possible burden. And some resistance ensues. I wish I could impose the 'one in, one out' rule. You know where if you buy a new outfit or new shoes then something old has to go. Instead I wait until things are out of control and get rid of piles of things. Or I find places to tuck the goods and wait, as my dad and my mom did, for someone else to deal with it when I'm gone. Six years ago I created a (of course incomplete) list of objects I owned in my blog. It would be interesting to review it and see if I still have the stuff and if I can even remember what happened to it if not.

Stuff and Nonsense

There are big things in life: major illnesses, major events, momentous duties. There are things that cost a lot of money and things that, rightfully, take a lot of time. But mostly life is a drifting sea of puny ideas, passing moments, and meaningless flotsam and jetsam. I've always liked the concept of flotsam and jetsam. The former is the stuff left adrift after a shipwreck or, more generally, the stuff left adrift by our lives. Jetsam is stuff tossed at sea to lighten the load, to stay afloat or, generally, the things we eject from our lives. More intentional but just about the same at the end of the day.

Yesterday as I tried to bring a little order and less counter clutter to the kitchen I was sorting through bottles of liquor and liqueur. I decided to leave some whiskey, blended Scotch and vodka out at the ready and to stow away some things like tequila liqueur, some single malt Scotches and such. I wondered when we'd acquired some of this stuff and when, if ever, we or our guests would get around to sipping it. Last night when we got home from seeing an art film, I decided to have a drink or two. (Full disclosure: I had a beer at Roaring Fork before the show) I picked a single Malt that was out on a small bar cabinet we have in the dining area. The truth is that we usually drink outside the house and when we drink at home, my usual is wine (if FFP opens something), beer or a Manhattan (expertly mixed by FFP). Usually the lack of limes stops me from making a vodka tonic or gimlet I might otherwise mix. In any case, this ragged history of serving alcohol and drinking at home has left us with a number of artifacts. Some bottles are unopened and may never be. Yet, there is no beer and there was no chardonnay so FFP bought a bottle at Royal Blue last night.

When I was doing the kitchen puzzle, I found a coffee grinder. Funny, because, when our machine with the built-in grinder went to the shop, we went out and bought one because I swore we had divested of every one we owned in the move. Now the infamous and much-worshiped at this house, Capresso Jura Empressa E8, is back and seems to be functioning, grinding, tamping and brewing one precious cup of la crema coffee at a time. So the drip coffee maker and the new grinder and are tucked away in the cabinet. The old grinder? I put it in our storage cage. Why, I don't know. I suspect I'll never use it again. There was much incentive to toss things last spring and summer when we knew it just wouldn't all fit. Now, if there is a square inch in that storage cage or some cabinet, there is a foolish tendency to hang on to things.

It is all trivial, I understand that. Equally nonsensical is the way we spend our time. Last night I had my doubts about the art film we'd signed up to see: "Rape of the Sabine Women." But I must say, the lyrical choreography, the weird settings and strange score combined to make me happy and curious...that feeling I get when art stirs me. I'd been in a particularly low mood. It did pick me up. It made me want to study the telling of this tale in painting and myth and it made me want to think about the issues raised by the context of Eve Sussman's film (the '60's). (Most unlike her vision would be the Rubens painting I found on the National Gallery web site! Those '60's figures in bright, tight shift dresses looked very different than Rubens', um, rubenesque figures.)

Tonight we will go to an event. It involves a fashion show. Inexplicably I enjoy fashion shows. (Longtime readers know that I'm a living, breathing fashion emergency.) We chose the event over a meeting to plan another event. That event needs ticket sales and hype just now and we find the best way to generate that is to go to other events and find people who are interested in our other cause.

My entire life feels trivial. My regular Tuesday tennis date was rained out. Dad appeared self-sufficient during my morning welfare call. So I read the Science section of the NY Times while riding the recumbent bike for 55 minutes. I intended to lift some weights. But FFP made lunch (salad and tortellini) and I felt like sitting and reading. And so my days go...full of stuff and nonsense. I'm not thinking great thoughts, but rather I'm bothered and irritated then thrilled and enthralled by small things. Euphoria has been in short supply but it has been interesting inside my head anyway. As I type this, I'm listening to a play list on the iPod created from the Leonard Cohen song "Hallelujah" sung by k.d. lang. This is the only thing Apple calls Genius that is genius. It included Elvis, ABBA, Cream, Cheryl Crow and the Dixie Chicks, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Pink Floyd. Now there is music trivia in my head.

[A note on the photo: it is the side of a wine box that got stored in the move last year. From the looks of it, this one didn't have anything especially stellar in it. However, the photo with the box decoration and scribbling reflects my stuff and nonsense mood.]