Downsizing Dilemmas

There was a time when I looked lovingly on my stuff. My collections, my furniture, electronics and my books. Now I see a lot of the stuff like an anchor. The book I'm reading, the cup I'm drinking out of, the clothes I'm wearing. They seem valuable. But the miles and piles of 'stuff' seem to be weighing me down. I want to reduce it all. I want to get stuff stored on hard drives. I want to winnow down the collections and the souvenirs. Sift through the books for the gems worth their weight. Give useful things I'm not using to people who can.

I like capturing shop windows as art and never printing the results on photo paper, just saving them as bits in the computer.

In this shop window shot, I like how my husband's shape is part of a portrait capturing striped motifs from the merchandise and a reflection of a vent in the apartments across the way.

Financial Advice

Who am I to give financial advice? Nobody. I don't have a designation with a C in front of it like CPA or a Certified Financial Planner. Still, I have advice. Everybody does.

First there is my basic philosophy. It has a three-letter code like all those certifications. Only it begins with D. It is DDE. This is the DDE financial philosophy. Debt-free. Diversified. Enjoyable. You will be SO much better off if you pay off your debts, don't put all your eggs in one basket and make sure that you enjoy what you are spending your money on. (As far as possible. This doesn't mean you shouldn't pay your taxes or your utility bill.)

There are all kinds of caveats and corollaries to my advice. Things like budgeting and investing and creating options for your life. But that's the basic tenet. Maybe others have done better than I with fewer opportunities. But I've muddled through with this philosophy.

And what, you may reasonably ask, does a picture of a flamingo dressed up as Patsy Kline have to do with this philosophy? Maybe nothing. Maybe something. Patsy decorated our table at the Red, Hot and Soul benefit on Saturday night for the Zach Scott Theater here in Austin. The donation to the theater was wrapped in the enjoyment of the Keepin' Austin Weird decorations. I like spending money on charity and also have an abiding belief in decorated flamingos. (And naked ones, too.) Hey and you should have seen the Brokeback Mountain flamingos!

Waiting for....

I hate it when I start feeling that if I can just get this one thing over with then life will be good. Or, actually, multiple things. I know that is stupid. You have to find your joy in the moment. There is always something to get over with.

The fact is that I feel good. And today the only obligations I have are to do things for my immediate family unit and myself. Oh, I may have to fill out paperwork for my dad's day surgery tomorrow. But that's about it. Dad said on the phone this morning. "You get a day off from me. You can work out." In fact, I plan to play tennis and work out. I plan to get our bed linens washed and catch up some of the personal financial stuff that my bookkeeper and friend would do. If she hadn't died. Her memorial service (Saturday) is one of the things I feel I need to get over with. Those celebrations of a life are really a good way to move on. And I'm hoping my dad's day surgery helps him get back to feeling better and not going to the doctor or imaging center several times a week.

Even yesterday, when I spent five hours taking Dad to a doctor and to the imaging center for MRIs and getting him some lunch, I did manage to start work on the financial stuff. And to have a short workout. And to read and watch mindless TV. There was pleasure in my workout, my books and newspapers, in getting some of the stuff figured out.

No, there's no reason to be waiting for Godot or anyone else. Just live. That's how people make it. Like my parents after the war, broke I imagine, and with a child (my sister) you can't see in this picture. They just lived. Tried to make money, get by, love and laugh. My dad couldn't have dreamed he'd be living alone in a house twice as big as he needs, feeling weak and tired but still able to take care of himself, his children well past middle age and his wife gone for several years.

Too Sad to Blog?

I always bounce back and I'm sure I will this time. But here's an Austin Second Street shop window photo that I think is cool. Be back soon. Or visit www.viswoman.com.

I Stand Corrected, Jeanne-Claude!

Jeanne-Claude and Christo did a great presentation last night, but the highlight was when they answered questions from the audience. Jeanne-Claude said anybody could do anything if they worked hard enough. The hard part was figuring out what one wanted to do.

At one point Jeanne-Claude said something like this...that there was an article in Sunday's paper and there were beautiful words but it talked about 'volunteers' passing out fabric samples and that was wrong...they pay everyone. Immediately I thought, "Damn. I bet I used the word volunteer here ."And this morning I looked it up and I did. I know better. I know they pay everyone involved. Still...it all seems so much like a labor of love that the people do seem to be volunteers. Indeed, they don't seem to have a needs test (Ann Richards helped with The Gates for Central Park) and a lot of people do it because they want to. Still, I was devastated that I made such a mistake. I could go to the book signing today and apologize in person. But I'm thinking that surely someone else in town made this mistake. The Chronicle comes out on Thursday and is dated Friday. It's just a hippie rag after all. Albeit one that has started one of the biggest music festivals in the world. I don't remember anything in the Sunday Statesman and I couldn't find anything online. So I'm either thrilled (Jeanne-Claude read something I wrote) or humiliated (I wrote something that was wrong and I know better and worse yet Jeanne-Claude herself read it). Or I'm flattering myself and she didn't read what I wrote at all.

Ah, the price of fame! J-C and Christo get misunderstood. They don't just wrap things. No new wrapping projects have been started since the seventies. (Although it took over twenty years to complete the Reichstag wrapping project.) They don't accept sponsorships or 'raise' money. They just sell Christo's original drawings. They don't have volunteers. They pay everyone. They never do the same thing twice nor do they start with anyone else's ideas.

I'm glad I'm not famous. And with my AADD I'm unlikely to become so! And those Chronicles will go to recycling and the WEB content will fade. You don't think Jeanne-Claude will remember my name, do you? Yikes! Nah. It couldn't have been my little blurb that she read.

Tilting at Windmills

I occasionally have some big idea. Usually about some creative endeavor that I'm going to undertake. But most of my ideas die early. The idea of them entertains me and then I move on, daunted by the difficulty of following through and getting distracted by the next new thing.

Tonight I am going to hear Christo and Jeanne-Claude talk about their proposed Over the River Project for the Arkansas River, State of Colorado and, of course, those people are amazing examples of focus and tenacity as well as creative geniuses.

I'm as unfocused as they are focused. That's why everything I do needs to be completed in a half hour or less. Maybe I was meant to be a blogger!

I always imagine these two of NY's finest are saying:
"I never thought they'd really do this!"

"Me either. Geez."

Should I BLOG?

I'm thinking of starting to muse and show photos here instead of just on my site Visible Woman. It does seem to be an easy way to go.

I started an account here so that I could comment on someone else's blogger account. (My Beloved Monster and Me is the one.)

I often try something out because someone else does. I walked across the street a couple of Saturdays ago when my neighbors were having a garage sale. The man of the house somehow started raving about Picassa, the google software for organizing pictures. So, of course, I ended up downloading it and messing about with the results of scanning my drives for pictures. I have a hobby of sorts taking pictures of shop windows. The most interesting things in the pictures aren't always the things on display. I like the idea of the reflections on reflections, the photographer as blob with hair sticking up like a cartoon character. When displayed online, of course, another potential for reflection (pun intended) arises with the LCD or CRT.

Maybe I should start posting from this collection here.

And I Just Wanted to Comment

Yeah, I was just going to comment about Rob's Monster and Me Blog but it seems I have to be sucked into bloggerdom to do that.

But here's a picture I took at the Modern Art Museum of Ft. Worth.