Promises and Plans

I like to think that I am one to keep my promises. Even those that I make to myself. I decided a few weeks ago that I should do Holidailies. And here I am on this blog. (Which hasn't been updated since the end of that last Holidailies.) I thought I might kick off writing a few days before the writing and posting to the portal began. But, no.

I have been suffering great swaths of procrastination. I will tell myself that I will get organized, do some writing, do some cleaning as soon as I (pick one)

• take a nap
• read and discard the pile of newspapers that's built up around my chair
• take a walk
• make some travel and social arrangements
• go out somewhere to eat or listen to music or visit a museum

I make lists. On scraps of paper. And neatly organized on my computer. But. I don't get to everything on them. The key things get done: banking, bill paying, organizing the calendar. Then it's back to the list above.

Fortunately, I have taken care of Christmas. I sent money to my close relatives in Colorado. Crass, but done. My husband and I decided that we would each get a little bedside lamp we saw at the MOMA design store when we were in New York. He wanted a sport coat and picked a perfect one on sale for Black Friday at his favorite store. We are each getting a paper calendar. He already got a three month up one that helps organize his column writing. I'll get a French page-a-day at the local independent bookstore. (As I tear the sheets off, I'll scribble 'to do' lists on the back!) I may get him a surprise. I may get one. Christmas, done and dusted. I have, in the past, bought gifts (actual wrapped and delivered things) for SO many people. Not any longer. Feels good.

Also, while procrastinating about a lot on many fronts, I have, fortunately maybe, organized three of four trips we will take in 2020 as far as planes and hotels. I still have to review all that, put the confirmations in folders and put all the details on the family calendar.

I'm better at getting things done when I make myself a specific promise. Like writing something here every day. And then there are deadlines. Like all the tax deadlines that are looming now that December 1 is here. Time really gets away from me!

Ephemeral and Colorful

This morning I was doing my best impression of sleeping in. Which due to tennis some mornings and other duties, like being at the courthouse yesterday, is surprisingly hard for this retired girl to achieve. But FFP woke me to see the contrail tracing up the sky by the Frost Bank. It was pretty dramatic. Fleeting. But dramatic. Dawn and dusk are like that: colorful and dramatic. Just like the drama at the beginnings and endings of everything.

Sometimes I wish things would be static for just a moment. Just hold up and let me catch up. I could get through the newspapers and the bills and the duties if more didn't show up each day. But every bit of life is a fleeting moment, a picture you can never take again. Whenever you stand over a dying person or try to help someone who has just been through surgery or just smile or frown at a stranger on the street? That is that moment and it is complete even as it flees across time like the contrail. It fades but it is that dot on the time line and it's irretrievable.

Knowing how ephemeral life is can give us a calm respect for how time towers over us. Or it can weigh us down as we try to do everything at once as we pursue a static place that doesn't exist. I'm trying to grab the calm this morning. To find some peace with the reality of life. To revel in the fact that this moment and its discomforts are soon gone. That things change and that's the good part.

My Point of View

Looking for inspiration this morning I looked at Holidailies prompts and one was 'five years ago.' I didn't get too inspired about old journals from 2004 so I went to 2005 and was paging through December when I came across this:

I realized that I had a conversation snippet with my dad that he's repeated several times lately. After he said he wouldn't go to water aerobics, he said, "You go get some exercise and stay in shape. You have to outlive me so you can look after me."

"Yeah, after you're gone you don't care."

"Ha. No."

Is that just a conversation thing he sticks in or is he really worried something will happen to me?

That Christmas four years ago I was just worried about Dad not being lonely. He could take care of himself mostly. He drove. He had problems I'm sure but he dealt with them without a lot of oversight from me. Things are different now. I'm four years older. I haven't taken care of myself that well and show no enthusiasm for doing so. My dad and I are somewhat at odds over things in this new era where he needs a strong, available caregiver and I don't feel strong and I resent being available. The last four years have been very unkind to Dad and they haven't treated me all that well either! It will be interesting to see how I feel on the day after Christmas, 2010. Perhaps Holidailies will return and I'll remember to check in with my feelings then.

[Photo is me reflected in the window of the sales center for the W condos, with part of the model building.]

Another Day

FFP actually took this a few days ago. But, yeah, every day the sun comes up and you figure your schedule out and bumble through. It's Sunday and the temperature out is pleasant according to my computer. So it would have been a nice day for a leisurely walk. But my actual plan is to walk to a restaurant on Congress (El Chile) for a press party and ASA fundraiser. It's a short walk (about ten blocks). We'll return to the condo after that. I should probably exercise or do some chores at that point, but, if I feel like the twenty block (round trip) walk hasn't necessitated another shower, I won't do those things but, rather, probably sit around and read the Sunday papers.

We'll dress up a bit and go this afternoon to a graveside service at three. After that we'll come back, change and go take my dad on a outing to a friend's house for a (belated) birthday dinner. We have good news on the Dad front: he felt strong enough to maneuver his walker down his sidewalk to the curb to get his mail and papers. After five weeks and six iron infusions, maybe he is less anemic.

That pretty well shapes our day. Looking at the calendar for next week...I have morning things four days (incl. Saturday) and social things every night except Thursday (when FFP has a board meeting). All the events are fun except for a finance meeting at the country club and I've no complaints about being busy having fun. But I hope to find time to do some cleaning and to reorganize the kitchen. We bought a toaster oven we'd like to keep on the counter and our beloved coffee maker is back from the repair depot and the counter is just too cluttered. I think I need to find a place to put away some liquor bottles and stuff like that. The cabinets have been poorly organized since we moved in. There should be plenty of time during the days for this work. Yes, but...will I do it!? Will I find other more fun things to do? Some of the time, probably. I also need to get serious about some gym work.

Well...I wrote the above before we had our walk and some food at the party. I eschewed the alcohol (of course, it's too early) but I still feel the need for newspapers, another coffee and maybe letting the eyes drift downward.

Best Laid Plans

I was supposed to play tennis, but the organizers couldn't get up a game. I thought I'd work out before my walk/lunch date at noon then. But I got distracted by a project of FFP's and interested in finishing redoing a friend's WEB site. Then I thought I might do a workout after lunch (and walk). But then it seemed too easy to sit in front of my computer and finish the test version of the site and enter some receipts into my budget. Time ticked away. And I hadn't worked the NY Times crossword or done some accounting chores I needed to do. And I hadn't worked out. And I hadn't gotten a shower.

While we were having lunch, my companion indicated that normally he would go for a workout in the afternoon but that the pot pie lunch he was having might mean he'd have to go to a movie. (Being retired is having some cool choices, I admit it.) He also asked me how the writing was going. I said it was going along in my head, that my fictional characters went right along doing stuff in my head if not on paper (or pixels). I also told him that since I'd developed a sense of humor about not writing it made the idea of writing easier. Not that I'd done much.

So time ticks away. And many things are undone. But, it's time to take a shower and work that puzzle. And go out to dinner.

Take Your Time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not Daily

Happy Day of the Dead (Dia de Los Meurtos). I didn't do a Visible Woman entry yesterday. I'm intentionally (or unintentionally, hard to say), not being a daily blogger here. Last year I signed up for National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) and tried to post every day in November. I'm not doing that this year. I'm keeping up with Austin Daily Photo. I may return to The Journal of Unintended Consequences but the material for that has been overwhelming lately. So many possible topics, so little time. Last year I also signed up for Holidailies, a wonderful portal run by my friends Jette and Chip. Somehow I don't think they will be doing it this year. If they did, though, I might sign up. Otherwise not daily. Not me, not so much. (If you write a blog I read daily, please keep it up. I like to find you every day. If you write a blog I read when you post, keep posting.)

I ran a better picture than this one on Austin Daily Photo today. It makes me laugh. Me and the devil skeleton. As one.

The days are slipping away. And I'm not keeping up. Not in the blogosphere. Not with my chores. Not with my reading. Not with my personal journal where I keep losing entire days. Certainly not with my Unwritten Works.

There is that extra hour they gave me this morning. But, I've wasted it, of course.

Reflecting on Wasted Time

I find lots of ways to waste time. Yesterday I blogged (yeah, maybe that's a time waster, you think?) Yesterday I outlined the ways I thought I might use (or waste) my hours. I went on that walk I mentioned. It was long and fun. I stopped for a taco and coffee. I wrote the following as the umpteenth potential first sentences of one of my most ambitious unwritten novels (Pogonip) while sitting in front of a fancy convenience store on Barton Springs consuming same.

Pogonip slid out of his seat and flipped open the overhead, grabbing his overcoat and removing a soft-sided briefcase and a day pack and easily hefting them on one shoulder. He wasn't particularly eager to join the jostling crowd in the aisle or even to escape the plane, but the tall, slim woman in the window seat was halfway up, gripping the headrest in front of her, bent uncomfortably in a curve defined by the compartment above her. He edged into the crowd to give her room to slip out and stand nervously beside him, fishing in a shapeless cloth bag she'd had under the seat.

I was actually quite satisfied with this, but it didn't inspire me to continue. Instead I started thinking 'Why fiction? Is it because I know so little that is fact?"

Well, I did take the walk. I did stop for coffee and snack. I never worked out. Instead I went to the storage unit and fished around for some office supplies for FFP, got an AC filter for a friend, emptied the trash can I'd provided for the storage area (which others had filled with discarded things), walked to the Office Supply store nearby with FFP to get the supplies he needed (which, of course, I couldn't find in the storage unit), checked some financial things and read the papers (worked crosswords), showered, went to a political talk at the Headliners Club, drank Manhattans, ate, watched a CSI: New York.

Pogonip will have to wait to walk down the concourse. The woman sitting next to him will have to wait to fumble two cell phones out of that bag. Her place in his novel will pend revelation until another day. When he's walking down the concourse, he will see three newspaper dispensing boxes. Each paper (Austin, Dallas, Houston) will have a different photo from a terrorist attack. He may smell the Iron Works barbecue and hear Marcia Ball music over the loud speakers. Or not. The newspaper box thing relies on something that happened to me. I walked down that concourse and saw those boxes displaying different views of an airline crash. I wish I could remember when that happened. Maybe I should wait to write the novel until I have typed up all my old journals and hope that I wrote something down about it?

And so it goes. It's really no wonder that I can't really write a novel or much of anything else. Today I have wasted most of the day. I spent a lot of it at my club. First I played tennis. Then I ate, did a few exercises, sat through a long meeting where I didn't feel I contributed anything. And now? I'm blogging!

[Picture reflects the photographer in the reflecting balls embedded in the wall at Chuy's on Barton Springs.]

The March of Time

I was in a fog on my sixtieth birthday and, honestly, while I always sort of adjust my age to be plus two more years to catch up to FFP, I'm not used to him being 62 and eligible for a social security check. While the young people have zoomed by me in so many ways (technically, culturally, etc.), I feel so comfortable with them, but then it is weird to find out their parents are younger than we are.

When you live to be as old as my dad, time has really swept you away. This morning he said "people say things are better now, but I don't know." I point out that they also say things are worse than whenever (or ever) and they weren't alive in their time of nostalgia or they weren't paying attention and they really have no idea. He agreed. He is halfway through a book I bought him. He mentioned to me one day that he read a book in high school that was about a trip around the world a guy took in the early twentieth century. He remembered accurately the name of the book (A Vagabond Journey Around the World: a Narrative of Personal Experience) and I figured it was one I found by Harry A Franck. I found a clean copy online (though published in 1910 it had a pretty good dust jacket) and it was in the mail to me in a few days. He said he remembered a few things from the first reading. He seemed to be enjoying reliving the wanderlust (never completely satisfied) the book engendered. He doesn't feel up to going to Dallas now. It's hard to believe he's rereading a book he read in high school that was published six years before he was born.

If you aren't careful, time will be the ruler of you. It's our most precious commodity and I guess it's our most-squandered one, too. (With the possible exception of crude oil.) Although I always wonder if people are 'wasting' time if they are really doing exactly as they please.

I am starting to feel old. While I feel great most of the time, I do have my aches and pains. My knee (strained in an almost fall during the move) still twinges now and then and I feel like I need my neoprene wrap to play tennis. Even with it I find playing two days in a row a little hard on it. I feel strong when we walk here and there and feel we've started to walk faster now. When I get up in the morning, I feel like an old woman, shuffling on creaky legs. Then I seem to work into a younger state on my pins after I've been up a while. Occasionally I feel a little dizzy in the morning, a combination of an assault on my equilibrium by allergies and a low blood pressure on rising, I think. This morning it came back when I got to the tennis center and part way through trying to play some California doubles I had to stop and get some coffee and let it pass.

Is sixty old? Actuarial information indicates that I'm supposed to live until 2027 when I'll be 79 years old. That sounds old until I realize that my dad and in-laws have cruised well beyond that. My mother died a little shy of 81 and her parents lived about that long, too. (I think her father actually lived to be 84, but he died long before her mother who was twenty-one years his junior.)

So no. I'm not old. And yet I am. I took my dad to IHOP the other day. We both ordered a senior breakfast. The young (not yet 21?) waitress demanded my driver's license. She seemed unclear on how old I needed to be, but learning I was sixty seemed old enough for anything.

I can't decide whether to feel old or young. Whether to feel betrayed by my body or grateful for how well it works. I know one thing: I feel guilty that I have accomplished so little in sixty years. There is still time, I suppose. But I do feel old. When I'm not feeling young.

Time Don't Matter to Me

I was listening to some song a moment ago while I meticulously checked accounts and balances to displace from seventeen other things. Until the computer decided that it was having trouble streaming a song. Anyway, there was a song about being a thousand miles from nowhere where time don't "matter to me." Dwight Yoakum's "A Thousand Miles from Nowhere" if you really want to know. I'm so not in that place. I'm in the displacing place. But it's a place of clock watching and calendar checking. A place where the minutes and hours count but I can't seem to make them count.

I took a picture of this sign somewhere on South Congress. Maybe on the side of Guero's. Do you think that the ravages of time have made this sign less convincing. Yeah.

Time is slipping away. I should be getting my files organized and figuring out how to make this move. But I'm displacing until it's time to do something else that will keep me from what I should be doing. I just keep consulting the 'to do' list and deciding to do something from it that is either easy or fun. Tomorrow it's May. I have to get productive. One minute I'm counting the minutes (it took me 10 minutes to do the crossword in the paper) and the next I'm wasting time blogging. I actually record the time it takes me to do things sometimes. I actually allocate time to a task sometimes ("I'll work on this for an hour..."). But for all that I'm stumbling through my days as if I were a thousand miles away.

I Always Wanted To...

FFP had always wanted to go to the Café Carlyle and see Bobby Short. Then we got to do it. I couldn't say what year at the moment. Bobby is dead now and after the recent remodel his portrait is in the little hallway between Café Carlyle and Bemelmans Bar. I posed FFP with the portrait on our trip last month.

Everyone has lists of things they want to do. I feel like I've gotten to do most of the things that I wanted to do in my life. I say that I have this dream to go to all the Grand Slam Tennis Tournaments. [Ed. Note: You did go for one day to Wimbledon.] I say I have a dream to follow the Danube to the Black Sea (on one or more trips). Truthfully, though, while I do want to travel to a lot of places and can't wait until my obligations make that more possible, I'm pretty happy with my life here in Austin. I'd like to beat back some of this downsizing and moving stuff so that we can live the dream of just walking out the door of our building to a cab and not worrying about a house. This assumes we can hire people to look after the parents, too, if needed.

Naturally, some of our dreams are under-financed, too. But truthfully it is mostly about time and obligations at this point. I'm not saying I have the money for all my dream vacations. Because I don't. I think I'd like to reach the point where money was the thing holding me back. And at some time before my infirmities are in charge.

That is the race we run, isn't it? With money, time, obligations and health. And no one is immune. I read in the paper that Roger Federer had battled mono in recent months. Hmm...maybe my chance to see him win a Grand Slam in person is past!

Meanwhile, someone seems to have stolen an hour in the night.

Restraints

A lot of people, I'll bet, look forward to retirement as a time of freedom. I know I had images of doing lots of traveling without worrying about 'vacation days,' of reading and writing in coffee shops, of learning new things unhampered by the need to spend time learning things at work that I'd often soon find were useless (including the organization chart and how to navigate it). I envisioned myself totally in control of my finances and with all my stuff organized so it would be useful to me. I thought I'd be more useful to society in general and those around me than when I was committed to the 9-5. I saw myself doing exercise programs, playing tennis and playing Bridge. I saw myself well-informed, reading lots of books and three newspapers a day.

Life creates restraints, however, and working for a living is just one of them. Your health and the health of the people you are responsible for curtails what you might do. Once you commit to some activity, too, whether it's tennis or a commitment to yourself to do so many sit-ups a week, that's time you can't commit to something else. You have to budget every hour you spend. Looking at your investments? Then you aren't writing. Or reading. Or getting your house in order. Want to take a vacation? Still you have to plan it around your other commitments. Yeah, we have planned to take five days out of town in 2008. How can it be that we are missing two charity events we probably should have participated in and also having to get someone to take my dad for medical stuff. Five days. Geez.

And we aren't the people we used to be. We retired early but we are still too old to take up mountain climbing. Too old in fact to learn too many new tricks. But, one day, I hope you find me budgeting a morning a week to sit in a downtown coffee shop near my new home and drink coffee and read and write and watch the people go by.

Things Change

This photo is almost four years old. The shop is Tesoros Trading on Congress. I think the store is still there although they've also opened on South Congress and this store will go away when a hotel gets built on the two hundred block of Congress. Everything would be different today in the reflection anyway. Not to mention that the small girl shopping inside would have grown up. Change is the way it is. But we are so resistant to it.

It seems I have to face change more and more every day with our parents aging and our own downsizing and organizing.

Touching all this stuff, usually multiple times, before it is given away, filed away, shredded or tossed is both burdensome and joyous. We find ourselves reveling in certain memories, marveling at people we once knew. We shake our heads at opportunities and money lost and at the accomplishments we managed to eke out of circumstance. I'm going to enjoy this process when it's finished, enjoy living with a smaller number of select things. I'm sure of it. But the process is painful sometimes.

Today some relatives are visiting my dad. Reminders of the passing of time will abound.

What Year is It?

It's that time of year when we find ourselves writing the date wrong. Yes, my goodness, we say it's 2008. John who writes on of my favorite blogs, Journal of a Writing Man, surprised himself by not fumbling the ball on this for 2008. I have found it to be the same for me. Of course, I use a bookkeeping program that keeps the date and now I use this blogging tool which quietly remembers it's a new year. Still, faced with a check to write, I did put 2008. So for some reason I'm not as confused as usual. Which is always good because I tend toward confusion and to avoid the inevitable entropy I struggle mightily, putting all appointments on a calendar, writing reminders on sticky notes placed on my monitor and noting things in a notebook.

Time does pass though and without some effort things fall into disarray. A once-new house loses paint and then the roof starts to wear through and stuff accumulates on the porch. And no this isn't our house before we started downsizing! No, in fact you can't find this house in the condition shown. This picture was taken in 2001. This house had a face lift with siding and a roof. And it's for sale. I didn't see the work done but it seemed to happen so quickly that my dog-walking friend and I theorize that they just covered what you see here.

Today I took my car to get maintenance and an inspection sticker. I asked the service writer to get it inspected. He looked down at the windshield and did a double take.

"Oh. I guess it is 2008."

"Yes."

We chatted amiably about the relentless passing of time. He then informed me that, normally, they recommend doing a bunch o' work and replacing belts, the water pump and such like after seven years. My turn to realize I've been driving this car a little over seven years. I drive so few miles that I swithered a bit about doing the work or waiting and so did my young friend the service writer who was waking up to the fact that it was 2008. In the end I decided to get the service. I feel sure it would be a couple of years before I'd pay the price for my penny-pinching but if I'm going to keep driving a seven-year-old car with a banged up bumper then it might as well be reliable. Our cars tend to get replaced after ten years, but I'm not so sure I will replace this one as I plan to drive less and less as time goes on.

And, if I replace this car after ten years it will be 2010 or 2011 before I do that. Doesn't that sound strange??

The Ravages of Time

Well, that's that...2007. Gone. Time changes everything. This is the last of the 'required' Holidailies entries. I suspect the 'every day without fail' Visible Woman will drift away again. Today I'm showing a photo of a shelf in an artist's studio I took in May 2004. As opposed to fireworks or champagne bubbles. I didn't take pictures like that last night because we slipped out of the party circuit at a reasonable hour to sit and watch Dick Clark's special. Uh, yeah, the ravages of time. I guess I hadn't been paying attention to Dick. When did he have that stroke? Anyway, he's fighting back. That's all we can ask of people in the battle you can't win. Life. The battle you can't win. Ha. I'm in a good mood on this first day of 2008, huh?

I always feel bad about time slipping away on the first day of the year. See here from last year.

Well, let's see, I'm not making resolutions. And I'm not doing anything to get a jump start on the year. Maybe I could reprise something I wrote before. Yeah, how about this...I made resolutions for other people a couple of years ago. Yeah, January 2006. I refused to resolve then and preceded to resolve for those near and far from me the following:

• Whatever your political affiliation is, do not act like your party is good and the other is evil. All politicians are evil. In direct proportion to their power. With exceptions of course. But they cross party boundaries. Think independently about people and politics. It would do the country a world of good. It would do the world a country of good. Whatever.
• Don't expect me to jump when you are ready to do something. I'm happy to make plans with people and I reply to social invitations, commit to them and attend if death or serious events don't detain me. Mr. Morris complained about people failing to RSVP and to attend to invitations. I know this isn't going to change. I deal with it with statistical analysis (large events) and frequent reminders (small events). But don't expect me to be on a string for your last minute activities. Sure, call and let's do something. But don't be surprised if I'm not in the mood.
• Take fifty percent of the responsibility for keeping up our friendship (if, you know, we have one...otherwise ignore this or apply it to your own friends). I'm happy to be the instigator some of the time. But if it's always me writing, calling, planning and always you hedging, equivocating, waiting for a better offer then one day I'll get tired. There are exceptions, of course. Some of you I will keep seeing even though I know I'll always be making the call. You know who you are. (Only I don't think any of them read this!) [Ed. Note: Some of the people reading this are the best at holding up half or more of the relationship. You know who you are. Thanks.]
  
• If you read my journal, remember a few things about this means of communication. Don't be smug because you know all this stuff about me. (I wrote it for the whole world after all. Duh.) Don't corner me at a party and act like you are a brilliant researcher who uncovered things about me on the WEB. If you want to talk about something in the journal, admit that you read it in the journal. Don't act like we had a conversation about it. I'm forgetful and it makes me crazy. And if you are my friend and are reading this, remember that you may be getting all you want of me but I may not know what's going on with you. It's a one way street. We aren't really keeping up with each other. And it's kind of spooky in a way. I know all about it because I read journals that others write. I know some of them personally. But I know that I feel way closer to them than I have any real right to feel whether I've met them or not.

Yeah. That still feels good. Not an accomplishment exactly. Just some recycled words. I am feeling a bit of a failure today, but it will pass. And I am inordinately happy with a few things. Like the fact that my health seems good and, unlike last year, my dad's health, while not great, is good enough that I don't have to go over there and take care of him today. And FFP was cleaning out his sock drawer and he didn't want a couple of pairs of socks that I kept and wore the last two days and they are very cool. Being inordinately happy is what it's all about. Maybe that should be my resolution: be happy without reason! Not that we don't have many, many things to be thankful for. Really we just have to embrace the things that are good.

Spiraling into the Rabbit Hole

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Less and Less of More and More

I took this picture in 2005 but I can't figure out where. Not that it matters. Isn't it amazing how recognizable the person behind the camera is in these pictures?

Today we lost our digital camera. And found it again. We both initially thought it was in FFP's car but we overlooked the first time. This sort of inspired me to have a look at a couple of old ones we have around. One has batteries that are probably refusing to take a charge and some other problems. Another is our second digital camera. What year we bought it I can't say. It runs on AAs and, according to the box, can "capture dazzling detail with over a million pixels." Our first digital camera didn't have an LCD. So this one was a real advance. The funny thing is that this one still works. You have to connect it to the computer with a serial cable and it's about the size of a big, plastic double thick sandwich. I don't know what to do with these. Clearly if we had really lost the 5 mega pixel one we use all the time now we would have replaced it and not tried to use one of these. My -2 camera (the one I had before I had the one that I mentioned above that doesn't work) was identical to one my niece has because I bought it for her. She'd lost the battery charger so I gave her the camera and whole kit and some Compact Flash cards for good measure for her to make use of if she could.

I am considering offering the two old cameras to people in my local Freecycle community. I suppose tinkerers could make some use of them. I'm betting someone would take them and try.

I complain to everyone I talk to about the downsizing dilemma. (Not just to you, dear readers.)

The other day someone said: "Yeah. And you have to touch everything. Decide what to do with it."

Isn't it the truth? When we cleaned out the garage, I came across a good-sized box of old bills and receipts and tax returns and stuff. You feel like you can't just toss it in the garbage. Some of it you feel like you should shred. I've been working my way through it shredding old checks and credit card things even though the bank accounts, card numbers and about everything but the name and address and signature are defunct. This stuff is truly old. As in over twenty years old. Yikes.

I have made another pass through the technical books, too, and have decided I can live without all but a handful. Now to find someone who might want them rather than discarding them. They are a little too specialized for the thrift store. I've found that Half Price will refuse to pay money for anything over a few years old in the technical line in spite of the fact that some are truly classics. The buyers just don't get it. I tried a few friends. I even got one of them to take some of them. That was before I started offering some that I was initially tempted to keep. Whether this makes them good books, I can't say.

So it goes. FFP and I have made a few more trips to the thrift store. Some days I'm hopeful. We have a year, allegedly, before we have to close on our much smaller space. Years can fly by, though. As my dad says: "The years go quickly but the days drag on." I went to his house today to take back some chairs I'd borrowed. He said he hadn't done much today. "I ate, of course. And I read the paper and finished a book."