Hoiday Cards 2007

No, this didn't appear on a card that I received. Although the bendie guys might appear on a card I send one day. Here some of them enjoy the offerings of the liquor cart.

I sent about 200 cards, I think. Only a couple were returned with bad addresses. I keep a pretty tight data base. I received, as of Christmas Eve, according to my data base, 98 holiday greetings. Twenty-one were (primarily) from businesses or charities. Seven included those mass mailing letters. Cleverest awards for those go to a guy I used to work with and to my niece who wrote from the POV of her one-year-old child. I like the letters. Keep 'em coming. Twenty-nine people wrote a personal note beyond the usual signature and 'happy holidays' or something. Thirty-five had photos of children, the whole family or some subset. I didn't count how many included pets but I think there were four or more dogs. Ten asserted religious themes enough to get that box ticked in the data base. And two were well into the 'peace' message. I think you see the trend. There are more people who send you pictures of themselves (or children or pets) than there are who assert religion or write a personal note or even a mass-mailing letter.

The dominant decorations seemed to be snow, holly, poinsettias. Innocuous and unoffensive. (Which is not to say that I'm offended by religious imagery or Santa Claus myths or any of the rest. I'm not. Bring on the manger, the elves. Fine with me.) My favorite card came from a business (but one run by a dear friend). It was a little fold-out three-dimensional wagon decorated with a wreath and the greeting to insert in it.

Not one card qualified as handmade. (We don't give handmade points for printing a letter on the computer or getting a photo card made.)

I enjoyed the ritual this year as much as in years past. It's better than gifts, lights, decorations and maybe even parties. Just a brief, once-a-year, howdy. A wave of the hand but still a connection.

Have Your Self A Merry Little Christmas

We went to a tamale feed (actually they had all kinds of Tex-Mex including chili and inexplicably, coconut shrimp) and drinks party some folks gave at Santa Rita Cantina since they are sort of between houses. This is a peek in a tiny home furnishing store in the same shopping center, 26 Doors. After Christmas, life-size Santas and elaborate nutcrackers can be yours to store for next year---at a discount.

My title today is a song. Of course, you say. But what movie is it from and who sang it? That's my trivia question for today in honor of Jette, one of our hosts for Holidailies. Jette is, of course, a movie expert and published critic.

We plan to take our parents quite early to Threadgill's for a feed. Then back here to open gifts. Which reminds me: must turn the heat up a bit in the 'opening gifts' room.

From the song mentioned, a song twinged with sadness because of the circumstances of the movie, "Through the years we will all be together, if the fates allow." We don't know what 2008 will bring, but celebrate with your loved ones who are close by today and "make the yuletide gay."

No Nightmares, Maybe Just a Bad Dream or Two

I have been downsizing while not saying too much about it. And that brought me to a dilemma mentioned here. I decided that I could keep the Christmas-themed bendable figures. The others, unless they were very old or special, had to be gotten rid of somehow. FFP had decided to let go of a box of National Lampoons and a couple of boxes of research material for something he was interested in at one time. This necessitated getting into the under the stairs storage area and going through stuff. I needed to do something to acknowledge Christmas since a friend was coming by to honor the jigsaw puzzle tradition and our parents would hopefully visit for the opening of gifts. I pulled almost everything out from the under the stairs storage. Including the Christmas stuff which includes these three Jack Skellington figures shown in the pictue. (Reminder to self: I need to rent that movie. "Nightmare Before Christmas" that is.) I put out most of the Christmas decor I have in our media room. It does look oddly festive although there are no lights nor candles.

I actually sent FFP to the thrift store with sacks and sacks of bendables. Including some MOC (mint on card). They took his Lampoons, too. (A friend took the research material.) He made two trips and, on the second, said that there were Toy Story bendies out for sale from the first trip. I also pulled out a few figures for my nephews in Colorado and a bunch for the toy box at my dad's. A lot of them were new with tags and all. I have already used those to create a stocking for my dad's little neighbor (who is four) when he wanted to give him something. I understand that my dad gave it to him just before he was off with his parents on a trip to Grandma's. I got a stocking out of the heavily marked-down goods at the grocery, added some candy and put in bendies of dogs and other animals.

The result was many cubic feet of 'stuff' that are no longer in the house. Yes, I still have a couple of cubic feet of Christmas decorations that I plan to store in the condo storage unit. I have another box of my favorites and some really old figures that I haven't given up. But a lot of stuff is gone. Or at my dad's and queued up to be gone. I also found a few boxes of what we call 'parts is parts.' Old wires, cables, computer accessories (mice, speakers) and such. I Freecycled (through a local Yahoo group) a couple of cubic feet of stuff.

So I've shed a few things and I've decorated this house. Maybe for the last time since we are hoping to sell next year. I don't really have any nightmares before Christmas but I had a few disturbing dreams last night about India (as a result of watching "The Namesake" on DVD last night). (Reminder to self: read the book after you find it. Oh, there it is on top of the filing cabinet waiting to be cataloged. Just as I thought.) In the bright light of day, I'm having a few bad feelings, too. I spoke to my dad this morning and he was breathless from retrieving his newspaper. He said that his amaryllis plant had to be propped up because the blossoms made it top-heavy and he made this sound like a big effort. When I offered to pick him up for our Christmas outing tomorrow, he said that he would come over here "if he felt like doing it at all." Dad is putting off going to some doctors until after the holiday. I'm letting him because I think that there is little they can do. He's already been to the doctor about one problem and this confirmed my feelings. He has been repeatedly treated for the other problem, always with mixed results and interim suffering. Ah, well, 2008 might be a year of sitting in waiting rooms or waiting on my dad if things like trips to the curb for the paper get too overwhelming. I don't expect nightmares, I'm an optimist. But I'm having a bad day dream or two.

That Was Then

The year is 1962. My sister was graduating from High School. My mom was receiving her Master's Degree in Education from Austin College in Sherman. She is holding two bound copies of her thesis about the effect of ability grouping on elementary children's test scores. We were kids. (I was fourteen or fifteen.) Still we helped type drafts of that tome. Because, after all, this was a couple of decades before personal computers.

Mom was proud to get that degree. It allowed her to keep teaching in her school system. Yes, teachers with five years experience had to have an advanced degree for those low-paying jobs! I have never understood the sacrifices teachers made then. Or now.

Notice that the wall is pretty bare. It was in my sister's room. She had that lamp and a little shelf with some tiny things on it. It looks like she has quite a few books, but I think that shelf had a lot of the books the family owned. My sister did have a little record player and some '45s and albums. Our life was simple. That record player, a black and white TV in another room and the simple camera that took this picture was the extent of our technology. I think my mother was driving a 1958 Oldsmobile then. It was pink and black and something to see.

Before I get lost in nostalgia...I promise to come back to Christmas 2007 tomorrow.

A New Tradition

This is my mom. The picture was taken, according to a date written on the back by, I'm guessing, my sister in December 1978. My mom is obviously finishing off a homemade Christmas decoration. Hmmm. Well, I have put out my collection of (mostly) bendable posable Christmas toys and a few things like that in one room of our house and put all the cards sent in another. But handmade stuff? Not me.

Last night FFP and I decided to make a new tradition for the Friday before Christmas. We decided while others were doing last minute shopping or going to parties that we would first have some house-smoked salmon and a glass of wine at Houston's and then go to the Alamo Village and eat and drink even more while watching a just-released movie.

OK, maybe it's just this one year but it seems like a good idea, movies being released on Friday and all.

The movie? "Charlie Wilson's War." I had some jalapeño poppers and a Guinness and some French Fries FFP left on something he ordered. The movie was a delight, I thought. Ignoring the political implications it was just a bunch o' fun. At the expense of Texans? Yeah, maybe, but I thought Julia and Tom (and others in the cast) represented a certain type of Texan in a somewhat accurate way without either elevating their flaws to good qualities or making complete caricatures of them. If that makes sense. It's entertaining folks. Go home later and wonder about Afghanistan and Iraq and the fall of Communism and who to blame for what later. The movie should pique your curiosity anyway.

Nothing Taboo Today

I'm going to talk about whatever I want to today, particularly the briefly banished subjects of holiday spirit and downsizing. Because I make the rules after all. I also have a rule that the picture doesn't have to have too much to do with the words! But I'll reach for a tie-in.

I went through an album of pictures, mostly ones rescued from aging cheap albums my mother had kept, that I have in those inert plastic sheets in a sturdy storage case. Eventually I hope to sort through all the photos, getting some scanned in, some discarded (hmmm...what landscape is this?) and consolidating them as much as possible. This is tedious at best, but is an ongoing thing that I have worked on at least. This is the type of downsizing that is most tedious. Really personal things are hard to deal with. In other downsizing news, we have gotten pickups of several loads of 'stuff' and taken two car loads to the thrift store.

This particular picture was actually taken on a holiday. Thanksgiving 1967. And yes I have on shorts. Because we are in Florida. That is my aunt, Dad's youngest sister next to me. She was still in the Navy then, stationed in Pensacola. I am not yet twenty which means she is in her late thirties. My dad and mom are there. Mom is writing a letter to my sister. I know this because I wrote on the back of the picture. Dad looks tired. Maybe he did most of the driving to get us to Pensacola.

I loved holidays at this age. And I adored this aunt who was in the Navy and had adventures (or so I thought) when I was a kid. She was married at this point, but for less than two years, to a Marine.

What is so odd to me about this trip is that I remember almost nothing about it and have had to be reminded that I was ever there. I know I would have been excited to spend Thanksgiving with my aunt. I think two of my dad's other sisters went along. Those two aunts (one younger than my dad, one older) never married and I adored them because they doted on me and all the other nieces and nephews. I loved being with them. This picture was taken with my Polaroid camera. But I don't know who took it.

This trip is in a mist for some reason. A trip I took to Pensacola in the summer of '66 is vivid. I got to fly for the first time. My friend and I drove my aunt's car around while she was at work on the base.

I wish I remembered more about this time. I guess we had a turkey dinner. Why can't I find more pictures? [Ed. Note: You might find more pictures from this trip if you weren't blogging all the time.]

What about those other banished topics? I'm reserving the right to talk about teeth at a later time. But my holiday spirit has probably been raised as far as it's going to get. I opened a few boxes of decor and put them around our big room. I found the video fireplace with the Christmas music. And a good friend is going to come over for coffee or tea tomorrow and we are going to work for a little while on a jigsaw puzzle. My friend wants to capture that sort of Christmas feeling. It reminds me of my mother. Sadly, my friend has the same cancer my mother did. Happily she's in remission but she has many health problems from the treatment. My mother loved to stare at jigsaw pieces and sip a cup of black coffee. While wearing a Christmas sweater or something, of course. (And hey...look at the blouse in this picture. I told you she liked bright colors!)

Reaching for the Past

I was looking through some old pictures, looking for things to inspire writing this blog for my daily Holidailies experience. I'm looking for something that doesn't touch on the current forbidden topics.

Pictures from my childhood are strange to me. I don't really seem to fathom the child I was. There are only children in this one, but when there are adults in the picture I can't get over how young they are. I'll say "My aunt is over twenty years younger than I am now when this picture was taken." Or "My Dad and Mom are younger in this picture than I am now." I also sometimes linger on one person, thinking "they are dead."

The settings for all these old pictures are generally familiar yet strange especially those before college because when I graduated from high school we pretty much abandoned all the old spots for a set of new ones. (With a few exceptions I may talk about one day.)

The setting of today's picture is strange, too, but in a different way. My sister and I are with my mom and dad's good friends' boys, standing on a picnic table on Mt. Bonnell. I swear the table is still there. There would be more tall buildings poking up behind us than there were in 1955, but I could go to this spot when driving from my club to my house. It's very disconcerting to see my tiny self there. I don't remember much about the trip to Austin. There are pictures of us on Mt. Bonnell and at the Capitol. At the Capitol I have an even more stupid-looking dress if that is possible. One thing I do know: I would have preferred the jeans and T-Shirt look on the boys. (I remember pining to wear jeans my whole life.) And I remember being jealous of the boys' toys. Maybe it wasn't this trip but on one trip I was so jealous because the younger boy had a fort that had this plastic log wall and all these toy frontier soldiers and it took up an entire card table.

And, yes, I know who the boys are and they both still live in Austin I think.

Get Your Cheer Gear On!

I was blown away that this entry about my mom was given a 'best of' by the Holidailies Reader's Panel. This picture was taken in 2000 around Christmas, obviously. Mom had her hair done and was wearing some seasonal earrings (click on the pic...those are snowmen, people!) and a sweatshirt with a cool Santa and some holiday socks you can't see. In a year she would look wan and drawn and, before the Christmas of 2002, she would be dead from compications of Multiple Myeloma. I have no doubt that the cancer was at work here but she was still holding up. Cheerful. Delighted with Christmas. My parents had moved the spring before to Austin. She's in my kitchen but we didn't cook there that holiday. (I only know this by looking back almost seven years in some ill-kempt archives.) Mom had made some food at her house the night before and we'd opened presents. On Christmas Day, when this was taken, we'd gone to the in-laws. I e-mailed this picture to relatives elsewhere as a Christmas greeting from Austin. Christmases fly by, with me motherless. I was a kid that needed mothering, I think. And I got a heavy dose from a beloved grandmother, my mom, my older sister and some aunts. My own life is racing to the end and if I still had my mother she'd probably be frailer than my dad. This morning he has added to his back pain a complaint about leg cramps. And yet he was cooking himself breakfast when I called.

I'll Never Be

Today's writing prompt from Holidailies is "Things I once thought I'd do that I now know I'll never ever do." I offered the prompt back when the portal kicked off so I thought I'd tackle this topic today. I've talked in this space about the delusions I had about retirement, but today I'm going to reach back to the kid you see above, washing dishes on one of our camping trips when I was in my teens. (And no we weren't having TV dinners. We were probably using and reusing those aluminum pans the TV dinners came in pre-microwave.)

So what did that kid dream about? What things never came true? What other dreams did she develop in her twenties that had no real chance of being realized?

I thought I would run my own business empire. I thought I'd become so rich that I'd have a retirement home for all my aging relatives. (I would, of course, not get old.) I'd also be so rich that I'd be a philanthropist of major dimensions and change lives on a daily basis. House the homeless. Feed, clothe and rehab them, too. Support the arts in major ways. I thought I would invent great things. And write novels, self-help books, screenplays and short stories. Most of my dreams were like that. Creating works of art and creating amazing businesses and being wildly successful and then using the money as a force for good that could only be conceived by my brilliant mind. I would have multiple houses. I would have my own gym (stocked with fluffy towels and brand new gym wear for guests in the locker rooms). I would have my own tennis court at this huge house and multiple 'suites' for friends. I'd have lots of help so I didn't cook, clean or worry about the garden or the maintenance. I'd have condos in other cities like New York and Paris. (Although dreaming of Paris was a little beyond the kid in this picture. As was, even, a tennis court!) I'd take trips with entourages of friends, though, that's what I thought. The kid in the picture took trips to campgrounds, sometimes with entourages of cousins and aunts and uncles as well as the parents. (That's my dad in the background.) We looked like we were homeless Okies during the depression, probably. Truly we probably couldn't afford to vacation anywhere else.

Did I really dream about stuff like that while doing chores at a campsite because we couldn't afford a hotel room? Yes. I did. And I continued to dream like that well past the point that I should have known better. As I wind up my sixth decade, though, I know better. Yeah, I do.

I often dreamed of businesses that I'd run. The closest I got to a business of my own was helping FFP with his ad agency which he ran for years. I labored working for the man while he created something of his own. I was too shy, too dreamy, too many things to start my own business. I dreamed, too, of businesses that were unlikely to bring those riches! Bookstores, concierge services, bars.

I dreamed of travel, but it took me until the early seventies to refine the dream to include anything as exotic as Europe. Before that when I studied history and languages and such it seemed impossibly removed. But once I'd quit my first job after college and taken off (at twenty-four) to tramp around Europe with a Eurail Pass I pretty much dreamed of going everywhere and seeing every single important thing. I now know that I'll never go on difficult journeys---no climbing big mountains or going to really dangerous places or to any country where women are chattel.

I could just see me writing all these published works when I was a kid. I thought I was such a talent. Of course, presented with a blank page things evaporated quickly. I actually finished a few short stories, essays and letters to the editor. I never could stay with a project that promised to be the size of a book. I now realize that I'm just blogging. I'm over it.

I pretty much know the extent of my realized and potential riches. They will never cover the major largess and philanthropy I dreamed about. Oddly, even though I sometimes thought I'd find the wherewithal somehow to do those big things I was, at the same time, shocked at what I did manage by working many years and getting a bit lucky, too. I no longer want large sprawling homes with guest quarters and entertainment or multiple homes. Because I know that I can't afford the staff and don't want to be bothered even supervising maintenance. I don't have a cook but, honestly, between eating out and prepared foods from the likes of Whole Foods and Central Market, don't I sort of have my cooking done? I don't have a tennis court, but I can afford a club that has many, some hard and some clay, and I can play and someone else can take care of the property. I didn't build a retirement home for my aging relatives but I did get a house for my dad and my mom to live in here and while Dad is paying his expenses and doesn't have all the help I dreamed about, he has enough for now especially when I pitch in.

You will never see me going off to Iran or climbing Mt. Everest or buying a giant home so you can visit me. I'm pretty sure I won't invent the next big thing or see a pile of books I wrote at Book People. But, I have seen some of France, Germany, England, Scotland, Ireland, Spain, Luxembourg, Belgium, The Netherlands, Russia, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Israel, South Africa and Australia. I've managed to give some money to help some groups in ways that were meaningful, to me at least.

Maybe that kid's big imagination helped in some way to realize some smaller dreams. Some dreams that are, after all, just enough.

Remembering Mom

You know the topics I'm avoiding? Yeah, those. Well, it's hard to stay true to that because those things have really been occupying my bandwidth and my thoughts. It will even be hard to write about my mother without touching on those topics. But I'll try by going back to a time when everyone was younger, we had lots less stuff and plenty of excitement about Christmas.

I found this picture on my computer. I scanned it at least four years ago because it was in files I transported from desktop computer minus one. I'm guessing 1960's, early. Definitely in the back yard of the house in Sherman. The house we all left in the summer of 1966. By 1966, my sister was already married and I was off to college and this place we'd called home since '58 or so was sold and my parents moved to Mesquite where they would stay until 2000 when they moved to Austin.

Observations: (1) It doesn't usually snow this much in Texas, not even near the Oklahoma border, but we have assembled a credible snow man; (2) my mother looks young and beautiful to me (she was only early forties if not still thirties); (3) she is warmly dressed and the coat might be a few years old but she has an eye to fashion; (4) I have no idea where we got that scarf and hat for the snow man. I don't remember anything about the making of the snow man or the day but the picture makes me think about Mom.

In her later years, we tagged Mom as a hypochondriac. But you know that sad joke? Just because you are a hypochondriac doesn't mean you can't get sick? I'm not all that sure now that she inflated her troubles. She just had the bad luck to have confounding and frustrating illnesses that dealt her big blows without getting the solid diagnoses that garner sympathy from doctors and family and friends.

Actually, Mom soldiered on when she was young and healthy, largely ignoring how hard physically and emotionally her life really was. She cooked for us, got an education and taught school to help support us, labored around the house, drove us places, nursed us, made clothes for us, cleaned those clothes. And she made sure that we had fun times. She let us give parties. She decorated for holidays and found money for Santa and then surprises from her as we got older. We didn't have a lot of stuff. I have pictures from this era that amaze me because the walls of the house are so bare. We didn't have a lot of paintings or things to hang on the wall. Mom had grown up poor and started her marriage in a house with no electricity and a propane heater. She treasured things she managed to get and she loved that house which we bought new in the late fifties in a little subdivision in a small town. The small town was big to us because we came from a smaller town and we lived on a farm outside town at that.

My mother always made my young life better although she also made me do chores and enforced her rules. She cherished us. She loved having us at home and she would tolerate our friends much more than other parents.

Mom loved the holidays and there was never a question of decorating. We had ornaments collected over her life time. We put up an artificial or real tree, carefully got everything out of boxes and scattered those aluminum icicles around. We fought with lights that ran in series and whose cords were tangled from our inexpert packing the year before. When the tree was up, it collected brightly-wrapped surprises and we could hardly wait to see what was inside. As we got older we tried to have surprises for others, too. One year I bought my mom a punch bowl and cups. I'm sure I had the idea that it would serve my purposes, too, for the little parties she let me give. We loved to give each other obtuse clues about gifts. I told her that her gift was a fire extinguisher. I thought I was hilarious. The thing is, she always went along and laughed at my jokes.

Mom and her mother made homemade rolls and cinnamon rolls at holidays. They made this giblet gravy for the turkey that I crave to this day. As Mom grew older she sometimes simplified the recipes but she still tried to make great family meals. The house in Mesquite sometimes had several dozen people at Thanksgiving or Christmas. She juggled huge turkeys and vats of food and multiple pies, no problem.

Mom loved dressing for the holidays, as she got older, in silly Santa socks, Christmas-themed clothing and Santa jewelry. She loved bright clothes, all the more as she got older.

As Mom's health faded I became the one trying to take her places, buy her things, nurse her. It's easy to forget how vibrant and unflappable she was when this picture was taken and, also, before that on the farm. I remember sitting on the stairs to the basement watching my mother lift two gallon buckets of milk from the high window to her work table where she strained some for bottles and churned some for butter. She would give me a little half pint bottle, the milk still warm from the cow my dad had just milked. I'd sip it and watch her strong arms squeezing the water out of butter and making it into a neat block. My parents were all-powerful then. And they played their roles well. It's easy to forget that when they grow old and infirm. I need to remember my strong Dad, too, outside that basement window handling the farm chores before he went to his job as a hospital attendant. Life was such a struggle, but we were so protected. And Mom especially so embraced the things that excited us like holidays and birthdays and trips somewhere off that dirt road into the world.

Thanks, Mom. And great snow man!

My Bellwethers

Bellwether is such an interesting word. I think I always thought, hearing it, that it had something to do with weather. Maybe the bell part was the bell on a buoy or something else that rang wildly when the weather was changing. But no. Wether is a castrated male sheep. Such an animal might lead the flock. With a bell around its neck. Hence the secondary usage we have come to know: "a person or thing that shows the existence or direction of a trend."

The picture above is a reflection in the window of Lambert's touting Barbecue and Cold Beer and reflecting the new downtown AMLI construction. Lambert's shows a trend toward adaptive reuse among the new construction, one also reflected in the Ballet Austin building and the Long Center. My bellwether on the whether high rises will win over little two-story former stores with historic limestone walls will be whether, in fact, that strip of stores housing Las Manitas and such becomes a Marriott. My bellwether for when the boom in building skyscrapers was over in Austin (and in spite of those under construction I think it is over for this cycle) was the announcement of the Four Seasons project. The bellmen are still parking cars on the ground where it might be one day. Note that the W hotel complex has a fancy sales center but no sign of construction. (I do think it will get built in the nearer term but perhaps that is wishful thinking because I want a fancy hotel/condo complex near my new home, the 360 condos, with the Austin City Limits studio instead of a vacant lot.)

My bellwether for whether I will like movies, plays, music and lots of other things is whether FFP likes them. (Apologies for implying that there is anything like the original meaning for this word here!)

There are many people in my life who are reverse bellwethers. I have one friend who I know if she likes a piece of music then I will hate it. This is in spite of our very complementary feelings about food and wine. I have several friends who, if they would wear a piece of clothing, then you can be sure I would not. There are in fact lots of people that serve as reverse bellwethers for me. If they are buying, I should sell. If they are riding a trend, I should get off. This is very handy. One should be careful not to ignore people and media sources than can be uncanny guides if only reversed.

Well, that's me today, signing out, carefully avoiding the topics mentioned yesterday.

No More Until The Jury is In!

I was thinking that I'd quit blogging about certain topics until I had something more definitive to say. What are they? Downsizing, my Christmas spirit or lack thereof and my dental problems. Doesn't leave me much wiggle room does it? I'm involved in Holidailies and so I have to post every day. Or so I've pledged.

There were bright lights on Congress Avenue last night and I went to "The Nutcracker." Jury is still out on the effect on the Christmas spirit front.

Downsizing. Hrumph.

The less said about dental work the better. The jury is out and deliberating. There are jurors firmly in the various camps. (Guilty, innocent or hung jury.)

So, yeah, more tomorrow. But possibly not on these topics. I have in mind a few different topics. Like:

• My Bellwethers. (A chance to also talk about that interesting word.)
• Remembering Mom.
• Dead People's Money.
• Culture and Conversation
• Drugs, Diet and Denial

Don't those sound interesting? Well, maybe not. But still. No teeth, no holiday depression and no endless recounting of possessions.

The Future is Bright but Fuzzy

I couldn't hold the camera steady enough to improve the view from the third floor veranda at the old Austin house where the Heritage Society Christmas party was held last night. The fuzzy yet bright picture of some of the downtown skyline captures my mood about the future just now. And, yes, I was drinking. And taking 600Mg of Advil every 6-10 hours.

I don't know what's going to happen with my toothache and mouth burning. Right now I'm getting over the root canal. It hasn't been too bad. I go long minutes, hours even, without thinking about it. I finish up the root canal treatment next Wednesday. I'm not sure how much of my symptoms it will alleviate but the sore knot on the gum isn't as bad and the tooth's nerve was dying according to the endodontist. A bottle of heavy-duty painkiller sits in my drawer, bought cheap at the MedSavers but likely unneeded. Ditto a round of antibiotics. Both scripts were given 'just in case.' Just in case the Advil doesn't alleviate the post procedure 'discomfort'. Just in case the gum swells up. I haven't had any extreme pain or swelling. I had some discomfort and it is sore to actually chew on the temp over the root canal so I've avoided it as much as possible. (As instructed.) My symptoms (a cycle of mouth burning and a little refractory pain) have sort of returned but the achy feeling deep in that tooth is gone with the nerve. It isn't horrible and between the times it hurts it feels pretty good. And when it hurts it is irritating but not debiliatating. Maybe when the trauma of the procedure is over ("This discomfort is normal and usually subsides in a few days, but may take as long as 1-2 weeks.") everything will return to my normal happy mouth before the procedure in August. I remember never having to think about my mouth being comfortable but the memory is getting vague.

But enough of my complaining.

Things could be so much WORSE. My health otherwise seems fine. I attribute this more to avoiding doctors than seeing them. I should have done the same with the dentist perhaps and just opted for cleaning and X-rays and not removing old dental work and putting in new crowns.

While I am hopelessly 'behind' on the downsizing effort I did get some done this week. Stuff has been removed. And FFP is sending an e-mail to a friend in an effort to divest himself of a collection of Kennedy assassination books and periodicals. I must make a similar nod to the great ejection of stuff.

I still haven't decorated the house AT ALL, but I have a little table of gifts I've wrapped or received. I'm going to take pictures of other peoples' houses at parties and post those on Austin Daily Photo and thereby co-opt the spirit of others. I'm going to see Ballet Austin's "The Nutcracker" tonight and see if the snow on the stage can exorcise the dreary rain outside.

In other good news, some social events got canceled and we can spend more time to ourselves over the next couple of weeks.

No soundtrack, no moving pictures, just accessories

In the eighties, for a very short time, I had a cassette WalkMan and a few tapes and I thought "I'm making a soundtrack for my life!" Then the thing started bugging me wanting its batteries replaced all the time. I have listened to CDs and cassettes in my car, of course, but I am more likely to listen to the books or language tapes. Or hit the scan button on the radio and listen to rap/classical/talk/some Spanish talk/some static/some country/some rock never stopping so long as to tax my attention deficit disorder. I rarely listen to tunes while sitting at the computer or whatever. I don't have an iPod or an MP3 player. So, no, my life doesn't have a soundtrack.

But just for the sake of argument I fired up Rhapsody (we have an account because FFP likes to shuffle through music looking for stuff) while I wrote this. I had to install new software it had been so long since I started it. Of course, we only have one account so I don't usually use it since only one can sign on at a time. (And he hasn't really forgiven me for cutting a CD with a dozen versions of 'Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas' for a party. He hated it and then later became addicted to playing it in the car in the middle of the summer.)

So I wrote this with first "Turtle Blues" playing (sang by Janis Joplin on the "Cheap Thrills" album) and then various artists doing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." And I did come out of the Alamo the other night singing "Piece of my Heart" (same Janis album) after seeing "Romance and Cigarettes."

But...my life has no soundtrack and no moving pictures. I can't remember songs and lyrics very well. Although sometimes when I hear a song, it does take me back to another time. (Usually the '60's!) My life has accessories like bendy Santas and still pictures of those, mostly. This year, though, the bendy Santas are still under the stairs.

Think Globally, Eat, Um, From Everywhere

Last night I did NOT eat this. The picture captures an impromptu 'surf and turf' of lobster and lamb that a friend got at Jezebel one night in August. I didn't take my camera last night but we went to 34th Street. I thought of going downtown but 34th Street is closer and, this time of year, people crowd up going to what I call the Trial of Lights. It's actually the 'Trail of Lights.' Maybe they got rained on last night. Serves 'em right. Bad traffic-making is the trial.

Anyway, 34th Street is lovely and closer to the house. I did not have lobster, nor lamb. No. I had the most politically confusing meal ever. A half dozen raw oysters. Blue Points from Canada. And foie gras. It was either from California or New York, I think, the only current sources in the U.S. Actually I shared these two dishes with FFP. My entrée? A dish designed around a program called 'edible Austin.' It was bison stew with root vegetables. The meat and vegies came from within miles of the restaurant. The idea is for chefs to put on dishes that, you know, don't burn a lot of fossil fuel getting to the table.

Oh...and I had two glasses of wine. I think one was from California. And one from Italy.

And, hey, my yogurt comes from Austin, too. And I'm about to go have some before I go, gulp, get a root canal. So if you don't hear from me for a while, just think 'ouch!'

Diet and Exercise

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Makes a Holiday?

The soldier Nutcrackers wear iPods. The association of Nutcrackers with epaulets and Christmas is strong but how many people see the ballet ("The Nutcracker") or just see decorations like these (at the Austin Apple Store hence the iPods) and think 'Christmas.'

For a lot of years now, over a decade probably, we have mostly spent the Christmas holiday in Austin. Usually in the company of our parents who have been aging apace. My mom didn't make Christmas 2002 and so this six Christmases with just Dad and the in-laws. And I've got to say my mom loved Christmas. She'd wear Christmas socks, sweatshirt and earrings. All at once. She loved big family meals. The last Christmas she was alive she was pretty festive about it even though she was in the hospital, I think, right before Christmas Day. There are no little kids around here. The little kids in our immediate family are up in Colorado.

I usually decorate a little inside the house even if we aren't having a party. (It's a good thing we didn't plan a party. Our front yard and driveway is a war zone from the water works.)

This year I can't bring myself to decorate. The outside decorations are sold and the yard wouldn't accommodate at the moment. We never had a tree really but I would put out decor, light up a glass table, put presents on it. I have spread the cards that have arrived around in the front room but they don't really look much like Christmas. Most of them are pictures of families.

When I was a kid Christmas was about Baby Jesus, sure, but also about getting something you wanted and some surprises. We buy what we want these days and our wants are mostly unfulfilled by shopping anyway. When I was a kid, we loved decorating the tree with all these ornaments we used every year and then wrapping stuff for others to surprise them and examining and shaking the packages addressed to us. We can't surprise anyone any more. My dad gives money and FFP's parents, too. We do all their shopping of that sort anyway.

No amount of money or electronic gear can make my dad's back feel better or make me feel better about him staying in today and asking me to bring him stamps, money and his shirts from the laundry. We have parties to attend but they feel a little like burdens. Maybe that's my toothache talking (I mean all this festive ditch digging in my front yard and a possible root canal, too?), but I'm just saying.

We will pass the holiday without noticing much festivity, I guess. No one will get an iPod in this family. There will be a few bright greetings in the mail and we are going to a party at a neighbor's house that will be decorated to beat the band. They have a little miniature village that takes up most of a room, a Nutcracker collection although none wear iPods. Maybe along the way I'll don my gay apparel (my one red sweater or red blazer) and I'll feel all cheery and bright and it won't all seem as stupid as a nutcracker with an iPod. Maybe my annual pilgrimage to see "The Nutcracker" will actually spark a holiday feeling. Even if the weather outside is still unconvincingly winter I can watch the Snow Queen and think, yeah, Christmas!

Interlocking

They are sturdy, colorful, cute and fascinating. They pop together, interlocking with a satisfying snap. Since I'm in a twelve (or more) step program for recovering collectors, I will admit that I was tempted to collect LEGO Toys. When I realized I had money to waste, somehow I acquired LEGO sets and bricks. Oh, I had my excuses. I bought sets on sale at Target to 'give as gifts.' And mostly I gave them away. But some, no. I bought bulk bricks online to do a project for a Christmas party at work where we let the kids make ornaments from them. Someone gave me a pile that had belonged to her son. He had 'outgrown' them. I bought some trains and LEGO Christmas sets to decorate a tree at work. A few people started giving me gifts of interesting sets. Some I opened and put together. Others sat in their boxes in a closet, under the stairs in storage.

In 2005, I realized that a number of sets and piles of loose pieces were taking up lots of cubic feet of space and that I had no reason to hold them hostage. I'm not even very good at assembling LEGO stuff. Three-dimensional things are not my forté sadly. Meanwhile, my niece in Colorado was raising a house of boys. So I found as many of the sets and pieces as I could and sorted them into types or piled them up by age group. Before Christmas I shipped a bunch of them to her. Santa brought the boys special bags of LEGO that Christmas. Some sets were put aside for later gifts. I still had some sets that were too advanced for the kids so I stored those awaiting a trip to Colorado where they could wait for the boys to grow up.

I felt good about giving them away. My niece talked about all the joy they brought and she said that one night when she and her husband were searching this trove of LEGO to pick gifts and decide what to save for later that he said: "You aunt is so cool!" You don't get that much from the young people. Even if he was a thirty-something Dad.

In June my Dad and I were able to drive his van up to see the Colorado relatives. I piled in stuff to give them and included the remaining LEGO sets. There was an electric train, mint in box. With the oldest great nephew only seven, it was still too advanced for them. I'd hoped to get the sets to my niece to hide away. But we were weary when we arrived and wanted to unload the van and the boys needed entertaining so we let them help unload. The oldest convinced his mom that he could put together a small set on the spot with her help and then he talked to his dad on the cell and told him that he got it together and "it was for eight year olds!" He eyed the train wistfully. We told him it was for much later or needed assistance from his dad.

The next day we planned a dinner to celebrate a birthday and anniversary. Eight adults, two feisty boys and two infants. So we went to a noisy Buca di Beppo. We met there and my seven-year-old great nephew insisted on sitting by me. He said he had something to tell me. He had convinced his dad to put together the train and they'd spent most of the afternoon on it. He was so excited about it and drew a picture of it on the kid's menu with some stick figures beside it.

"Is that you and your dad?" I asked.

"No. It's me and you!" He said.

Of course, he's a kid and he couldn't stop talking also about running things over with the train, like mini-figs and other toys.

Now I guess I can't show up without a LEGO in hand. I don't get to see these kids this Christmas but there will be a LEGO under the tree for that boy. It would seem that once you have 10,000 bricks you could make anything and wouldn't need more sets. But the sets fascinate the kids because inside are all the parts you need and these great visual plans for making something shown on the box.

I love the idea of LEGO. But the reality of owning bricks is now limited to a couple of Christmas ornaments stuffed away with the other Christmas stuff I haven't gotten out this year. Little elves and Santas made from a few bricks. And I can always go to Colorado and visit the collection and know that when those little boys see me they think of interlocking bricks. There could be worse things.

The Less Said the Better

It's that time of year when we recap, review, reconsider and, most of all, write a holiday letter that sums up our year. Actually, we very rarely do that without tongue firmly inserted in cheek (something I've been doing a lot the last four months with some dental problems). Actually, we already sent our holiday cards and they have a decided lack of information...just a picture that might puzzle some people and a simple greeting.

For the sake of Holidailies and Jette's excellent writing prompt of the day ("Write your own version of those holiday newsletters that people send to friends and relatives at this time of year.") I'm going to pixel out here what we could have printed and sent.

We spent 2007 firmly entrenched in our role as the grown children of very elderly parents (three, average age 91.6) who miraculously live on their own but not without a bit of help. LB's dad sputtered along at the beginning of the year with an infection and complications from a surgical procedure but miraculously recovered, got back into the pool for water aerobics and back to driving himself and doing things for himself with minimal assistance. His back began bothering him again recently and compromising his mobility toward the end of the year, but he still manages a lot of his own errands. At 91, not bad. LB took him to West Texas and Colorado to visit relatives in his van. FFP's parents settled into a system whereby FFP shops for them and drives them to any appointments. With one good eye between the two of them, that good eye needed a cataract surgery this year. LB likes that she almost never has to shop unless her dad doesn't feel like it. As long as FFP is shopping for his parents....he might as well shop for this house, too.

Friends died. The dog died. Well, we 'put her down.' We never had a dog that just died. We are now, for the first time in twenty-some years, dogless.

We took a trip together, too. We just sort of randomly decided to go to Santa Fe and Scottsdale. Mostly to break in a new car and smugly listen to XM radio in the middle of nowhere.

Books. We got rid of hundreds, acquired an exceptionally small number (for us) and didn't get nearly as many read as we'd like. LB did attack James Joyce's Ulysses which never fails to elicit rolled eyes when she tells someone. She has read 550/933 of it as of this writing.

Weather. As I write this it is warm and humid outside. We had a 'big ice storm' (it's all relative in Austin) in January and all our households survived fine but the reflecting ball in the garden was destroyed by falling ice during the melt.

People asked us all year the same old question: "What do you do now that you are retired." We answered that we are now dilettantes. But, really, FFP wrote a weekly column and worked hard on the boards of two non-profits and on special projects for a couple more. LB rocked along avoiding much beyond tennis, workouts and Dad duty except for a few volunteer things at the country club.

We tried to downsize. We gave away furniture, books, knickknacks, clothes, kitchen things. We gave away fine wine. We tossed worn out clothes and shoes. We recycled magazines and papers we'd kept too long and shredded things that needed shredding long ago. We tossed VCR tapes, cassette tapes. I gave away old cameras, toys, stuff I'd saved to make found-object collages, literary journals. I transcribed paper journals to the computer to save them without taking up space.

LB rode a couple of Austin's Capital Metro's buses to meet friends. This had been a goal of hers. She has no idea why she set that goal. She also signed up to post a blog entry every day in November through NaBloPoMo and throughout the holidays in Holidailies. She probably sets these goals because they aren't too challenging and allow her to displace from, say, downsizing.

Everything in our front yard leaked this year. The water main, the sprinkler system and the water service to our house. Short of christening it Lake Preece-Ball we couldn't think of anything to do but badger the city and pay workmen hundreds and hundreds of dollars.

We went to many charity affairs or parties precipitating multiple fashion emergencies for LB. We gave a dinner for charity and had a reading of a play at our house. We did a 'white tie and ball gowns' party for the first time ever. People treated us. We treated them. We drank some fine wine from our own cellar and happily helped people winnow down their collections.

LB admitted she will never be a cook and we ate out more than ever.

We got serious about moving downtown by signing a contract on a condo in a downtown high rise that should be finished by the middle of next year. We saw a building open to house the Ballet Austin Butler Dance Education Center after working on the capital campaign for several years. This building is next to our condo.

We watched downtown Austin change in other ways. The Intel shell got more or less imploded. The 44-story building that will one day shelter our (tenth floor) condo rose and rose and topped. Other buildings changed the skyline and the Long Center neared completion.

LB continued to live up to the notation on her personal blog (The Visible Woman): "Pretending to write but really just blogging." She helped a friend start a screenplay project and she started two more blogs(The Journal of Unintended Consequences and Austin, Texas Daily Photo), but there are no manuscripts of novels or the self-help books she intends to write.

We didn't see a lot of movies in the regular theater runs this year but we saw a lot on DVD through Netflix and also saw a pile in Austin Film Festival and SXSW Film. We were volunteer screeners for AFF, too, and we watched 192 films. Most of them shorts, of course. Two involved men with relationships with dolls and were not pornographic. Neither film was Lars and the Real Girl. But the coincidence so freaked out LB that she refuses to see that one.

In general, we spent a lot of the year wearily answering questions about our future home in the condo, how we like retirement (and how we spend our time...see above), when we are going to sell the house (and what happens to the found object band in the backyard) and how we are doing at downsizing. Occasionally people would ask if we 'had any big trips planned.' And we'd have to say, no, not really. Now that our desire to sell a house after buying a condo has been made known and caused something called the subprime credit crisis and housing downturn, we are tired of being asked why we didn't sell earlier and how we plan to deal with that. It makes me sigh. It makes me boring. Let's just talk about something else.

Happy Holidays to You and Yours. Catch you next year for another boring recap. And I'm glad that your kids did well in (1) school; (2) scouts; (3) soccer and/or (4) whatever and that you had all those family vacations!

Shopping for Charity

No, I didn't buy a puffy jacket for a dog for charity. And this entry is not about the Holidailies Charity Project. That was yesterday. We don't have a dog anymore anyway. I shot this picture last night at The Domain (an upscale Austin shopping/eating/residential street plunked down beside Mopac). And I don't even exactly get why this was in the Victoria's Secret window.

We had been at the Ralph Lauren store. They gave us a lot of free food and booze and they gave 15% of the cash register receipts to the Long Center for the Performing Arts. FFP bought me a sweater that is the lightest cashmere I have ever seen. It was wildly expensive (to me) even though it was marked down and marked down again at the register for some reason, but, well, you know one of our favorite charities got a few bucks. And I needed a new black cashmere sweater. Very versatile. It's amazing how many meals, parties, hotel stays and how much stuff that we purchased over the years because someone had kicked it in for a charity auction. You feel a little less beneficent when some store is kicking in just a percentage or a restaurant is giving a percentage of the gate because, after all, they are still making a profit probably. Your expenditure is not equivalent with donation. With auctions, businesses and individuals give stuff to the charity and then you buy it and voilà the charity has cash. Still you could just turn the coin over to the charity.

I never feel bad about these exchanges for charity, really. The charity gets some money. I get stuff or meals or whatever and have some fun. I look around our house and see a handmade chair, a Christofle vase, another beautiful vase, a handmade coffee table, a modern round table and a number of other things that we bought at charity auctions. In my front yard there is an oak tree that has grown to be over twenty feet tall since we bought it in a twenty-gallon container from a charity auction and planted it. A charity tree.

Last Saturday we were invited to go to an event for free because a friend bought a fancy pants sponsor table. We felt compelled to bid on some massages, a couple of hotel stays and some restaurant coupons in the auction. We couldn't bid on stuff because we are downsizing.

It's a silly way to get money for charities in a way but the fêtes, galas, store parties, 'percentage goes to charity' restaurant days and silent and live auctions continue. Everyone knows it would probably be better to separate commerce and charity, that somehow more good might be done. But it is better than nothing, I suppose. Better than expecting people to open their wallets and get nothing in return. Caterers, liquor companies, businesses promote themselves and some charities scrape off a marketing dollar or two. No harm done? Probably not much.

The Book Signing

Charity is something that my husband (known as FFP here) and I consider carefully, giving our time and coin to things that we think can make the world a better place. Since today's writing prompt is "What are your ideas for the Holidailies Charity Project, and which organization would you choose?" I thought I'd talk about a group that has amazed me. Whether this group receives the benefit of the collective capability of the Holidailies group or not, I love talking about it.

And since writing prompts have received some ink (or pixels) in the Holidailies space, I'd like to talk about kids and writing and what for one girl was the 'mother of all prompts.'

The group I'm writing about is an Austin-based group whose purpose is to "teach children the language skills necessary to become the authors of their own lives." Wow, that sounds like something an inveterate blogger could get behind, huh?

Yes, if you have the time go to the Badgerdog Literary Publishing site and see what they do in detail. Basically, they take accredited writing instructors to at-risk kids in after school programs. The kids learn to write and to publish, creating a literary journal that has readings and signings. (They sell their first North American publishing rights to the group for copies of the journal.) I've got to say that going to a reading and seeing a little boy's family snapping pictures of him reading poetry that he wrote does my heart good. Seeing kids signing their pieces in Youth Voices in Ink (while having some cookies and lemonade like the little girl shown above) is an amazing thing.

But back to writing prompts. FFP (who is on the board of directors for this group) likes to tell a story he heard about a young lady who was having lots of difficulties in school. She wasn't succeeding at anything in the system. Placed in a Badgerdog after-school program she was given a writing prompt one day and she put pen to paper and didn't look up for a long, long time. That writing prompt was quite simple. It was: "My mother...." Writing is healing. Sometimes all we need is that prompt. We touch ourselves and we touch others.

I'm totally behind getting some of the scores of Holidailies contributors to contribute a small amount to do something for the community. I have contributed to groups who enhance their visible giving power by assembling a group of people to give one larger gift. I'm proud to have contributed to the Long Center for the Performing Arts here in Austin through such a group. It's a lot of fun to be a part of something that is bigger than what you could do alone. Chip mentioned literacy as a possible area of interest for a charity to choose. Reading is a great skill. Life-changing even. Writing? Definitely life-transforming. As many of us who 'only blog' know well.

I Lost My Purse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I Could Be Everywhere at Once

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

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

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

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

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

How I Simplified My Life

The title should be extended with "and how my life is still a bucket of chaos." This photo was taken outside a movie theater in Waterville, Maine in July 2005. (I know this because I organize the raw images I download from my camera by month. This simplifies my life. Of course, the fact that I almost never bother to properly label these images helps with the chaos part. I do try to give them better names when I edit them for the blogs.) The picture shows a large model of a building made from wine corks.

I think this will be a little ongoing theme for my blog during Holidailies. What has worked in making my life simpler. And evidence that entropy outruns my best efforts in the same realms.

It is a fertile area: this battle with simplicity and chaos. Simplicity is good for the soul. Chaos feeds the mind.

There is the matter of journals. I still use paper journals but I try to copy them to the computer and (even though I know better) consider that they are saved for posterity. This effort is Sisyphean to say the least. But I have actually discarded some little spiral bound notebooks and they are gone to the landfill instead of taking up space here.

Then there is the newspaper pile. I have developed a method for sorting through a pile of papers quickly. If it's a strictly business section I give the headlines a glance. Charts of stock prices and graphs are ignored. I get that online. If it's a Sports Section, I discard it immediately unless we are in the midst of a Grand Slam Tennis event when I might look at articles about tennis. But usually I get the Grand Slams online through a wonderful portal with draws and real time scores and more. I have more trouble discarding sections about Art and Leisure and Technology and Science. My best efforts at controlling piles of newsprint are simply inundated by two papers that come daily, one six days a week and a few weeklies. We won't even talk about magazines and especially the deluge of New Yorkers arriving fifty times a year. Let's just say that one in my bathroom is a 2005 issue.

And technology. I've greatly simplified my life by delaying technology acquisition. Because as much as that new (printer/computer/camera/phone/GPS receiver/scanner/external hard drive/DVD player/TV/video console/whatever) will enhance your life, it will also suck away your time testing and programming and hooking up and such. Even though it's fun to own your favorite music CD or movie on DVD, there is that matter of storage. So I resist buying technology and media. I will eventually succumb but hopefully less of my time is wasted in the interim. Sadly, I often buy technology for others, especially my nieces, and then find myself testing the item before I send it to them.

I want a simple existence where everything is useful and has its place and I want to live in a reasonable amount of space. But it has to be complicated enough to be interesting, too. In this vein I continue with downsizing and organizing and divesting. Knowing that it will never really happen.

And did I mention that I have a drawer full of wine corks in the kitchen? Hence the relevance of this photo. See I'm making sense here. Aren't I?

Stay In Touch!

Holiday cards are, in a way, just a part of the excess that took over our world sometime in the latter half of the 20th Century. But for me they are the very best part of that excess. FFP and I had some picture cards printed at Costco and last weekend I printed out mailing labels and stamped my return address on the envelopes, applied the labels and slipped a card in each envelope after writing something on the back even if it was just 'Happy Holidays!' On Monday I bought stamps showing trees, reindeer, snowmen and teddy bears as if knitted on sweaters. I waved off the religious stamp when the PO guy showed me and I don't remember what it was. Mary and Child maybe? Yes, that's it. A reproduction of a painting in the National Gallery. (The Internet is so powerful in elucidating memories.)

The pile shown here is from the collection I received last year. It is pretty thoroughly described here.

What do I like about this tradition? I think first and foremost I like being forced to go through my mailing list database and think about the people behind the entries. I keep the list on Microsoft Access. It is not the most friendly program around and every year I do hand-to-hand combat with the merge function to print labels. I believe the list began under some program called DB-III or something and then was kept in a Paradox database and migrated to Access some years ago. One column I've maintained for years is a Yes of No question labeled 'XMAS.' When I extract labels for the cards I query that. This year a sprawling list of contact info was narrowed to about 200 labels for the cards. Before I ran the query I sorted through the list. I had to do the sad duty of deleting people who died since last I cleaned the list. I noticed a few people whose addresses were wrong and such.

Now I'm waiting for the other side of this process. The receiving of cards has already begun, of course, but only in a trickle. One is really an invitation to a party down the street. The other four send greetings with their family picture, just as we did this year. (Although we will never top the family portrait seen here.) Each card will be appreciated and scrutinized on this end. My haven't the kids grown! Save the envelope and make sure the address is in the database. Oh, they sent their clever family letter again...have to read that. How delightful to hear from them and know they are OK.

Even if this is the only time I hear a thing from someone the whole year I feel like we are maintaining a friendship across time and circumstance and against whatever odds. There is no Christmas tree at our house. I haven't even gotten out my usual outlandish toy decorations. But I'm going to be putting the cards I receive on the mantle and shelves and enjoying them until a day in early January when I flip through them one last time and think about how we will all change in the new year.

[The other holiday tradition I relish is Holidailies and Chip and Jette have outdone themselves this year. They even corrected the mistake I made in communicating with their site that I mentioned below. Jette selected my writing prompt for today, too, so I thought I better use it!]

Holidailies is Fixed!

I learned a couple of things when I came home from breakfast at the Frisco Shop this morning. (Tennis was a wet out...it isn't raining but the courts are wet.)

One, I have to be careful in entering my entries into the Holidailies portal. I was so excited that it was up that I flubbed copying my link to the entry I was presenting into the portal. Cool as Chip's technology is, there is no recourse for correcting a entry once it's posted. I accidentally popped in the link to my last night's menu from the Four Seasons site! People are bound to find this puzzling! It was the last thing I'd copied and I failed to hit CTRL-C to copy the link to my entry. Anyway, I'm glad the portal is up and it is very cool and I'm sure I'll discover some great entries and journals.

Two, I learned that the reason the button was missing from The Visible Woman to link to Holidailies was that Blogger was probably ditching it for having a bad link associated with it while it was down. Who knew it would do that? Not me, certainly. The button is back. I did nothing to correct it.

Three, I discovered that a big 'traditional' Frisco shop breakfast is very sleepy-making. I stayed up late (about 1AM) and got up around seven-thirty. When tennis was a wash today due to wet courts even though the rain had stopped, FFP and I decided to go out for breakfast. The old Frisco shop near Burnet and Koenig has been there for over fifty years, but will soon move to a new location to make way for Walgreen's. We had the 'Number Two' which we customized with two eggs, bacon, hash browns, biscuits and strawberry jam. I had the eggs over easy. FFP scrambled. I had grapefruit juice and he had OJ. Coffee and more coffee. Still. So. Sleepy.

Good Cheer

I usually wear only black and gray. But I wore my red jacket last night and we took some friends to a wine dinner at Four Seasons new Trio restaurant. I had what would soar into a bad screaming toothache but I managed to smile in front of the tree for a quick picture when we were leaving. This was around 9:30. I put up with the pain until midnight and then took some Advil. The good news is that my toothache is getting localized enough that I'm hoping that the endodontist can figure out what to do. The other good news is that it an OTC painkiller helps a little and makes it bearable. The bad news is cost and pain and all that. But around the BP house we've taken to saying "yeah, but it isn't life-threatening!"

It's December. I can't believe that. And so Christmas is really here before we know it.

I got FFP to shoot this picture because my niece wanted to make Christmas tags with pictures of the givers and recipients so her little boys could easily sort the packages and see pictures of the relatives that sent gifts from far away.

I'm not in a particular festive mood but visiting with our friends was a delight and we had a great meal, paired with Lamborn Family Winery wines. It is amazing to get away with friends, to gossip and to talk about truly important and also really trivial things. This couple is so busy that we were more than delighted to find a night we could spend together so pleasantly. My toothache couldn't even spoil it. (The wine might have soothed it a little, too.) The monkfish and persimmon salad was to die for, too, and the beef sublime. (I save my beef moments for truly good stuff.)

Today is (or was to be) the beginning of another month of blogging, courtesy of Holidailies. I was puzzled this morning to see I'd lost the linking button for the site. Don't know when I lost that from the blog. Then I tried to go to Holidailies but all the sites related to my friends Jette and Chip seem to be down. Just a small glitch, I'm sure. I discovered that the host site for their many sites is also down.

Anyway, here I am, writing next to nothing about nothing every day. I hope you all have a day of good cheer. And nothing wrong that is life threatening.