The Daily Strain

I signed up for something called NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) which is just a bunch of blogs trying to post every day in November. Now, we have been very religious in posting daily at Austin Daily Photo. But that is a different sort of animal. The Visible Woman is a spot for more introspection where a mere picture and a bit of explanation thereof won't do it. No. Here at TVW we have responsibilities to discuss the issues of our time: aging, art, collections, downsizing (especially downsizing), drinking, exercise, found objects, happiness, organizing, museums, music, retirement, shop windows, stuff, wine, words and more. But I'm going to flex my daily writing muscles here in preparation for the big flurry of words that November is sure to bring. (And who knows, December, too, maybe if my friend Jette offers a Holidailies site.)

Today I offer a picture taken six years ago in the very office where I now sit. The really funny thing about this picture? Most of the computer equipment you can see (and a number of other items) are no longer here. But. It looks just as messy today. Sigh. I use the excuse that I've emptied file cabinets, closets and drawers and am busy sorting through stuff. But, really, this isn't going quickly enough, is it?

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!

Film Stupid and Flat Stanley

I was going to try to update more regularly here. But events keep getting in my way. We are going to a bunch of Austin Film Festival events. Saturday we spent the entire day downtown from around nine in the morning until after ten. We saw four panels in the conference, watched "Born on the Fourth of July" and an Q&A with Oliver Stone afterward and saw a set of shorts in the palatial (NOT) Hideout Venue. (Shorts. Hideout. Necessary for any Austin Film experience.)

My great nephew sent me a Flat Stanley and we took him downtown with us. Above he visits the W Hotel and Condos sales office. He's considering getting a place. In the model.He has to go back to the boy's teacher. He lives in Colorado but he might make a second home here, reversing the trend of Texans living here and having second homes in Colorado to retreat to in the blazing hot Texas summer.

Anyway, I'm so film stupid that I'm ignorant of the work of icons like Oliver Stone and new phenoms like Jason Reitman. Not that I haven't seen their films. But still. Film Stupid. Oh, and who is this cultural flash Diablo Cody (aka Brook Busey-Hunt). I'm so out of it. Flat Stanley is more hip, I think, than I am. We saw Diablo's movie "Juno" last night. It is a teen movie. And I liked it. Amazing. It was funny and poignant and developed four major characters and two more minor ones in interesting and believable ways. Flat Stanley liked the movie, too. But all cameras were banned from the showing so I couldn't even get his picture outside the Paramount.

How on Earth?

Collections that are oh so cute and seemed like such good ideas at the time. Now which ones to say goodbye to and which ones to save. These remain, patiently awaiting my decision.

Swimming in the Past

My house is turned inside out, secrets exposed. As the spirit moves me I go through closets and boxes and drawers and the 'pencil cups' scattered around the house. The above closet has had a going through resulting in a lot of stuff being sent to the thrift store or thrown away and other things just pulled out for sorting. (The green and yellow paint is left over from the former owners. They sold us the house three decades ago I'm embarrassed to say.) The room that has this closet is rather a disaster of sorting and piling as is my office where the closets and drawers and shelves are becoming more empty and organized as the floor becomes littered with piles and boxes.

On my desk I have the small notebook where I'm scribbling current ideas, to do lists and expenses. But I also have notebooks from 1992 and 1996 open to the pages where I stopped transcribing contents I wanted to save. There is also a micro cassette recorder loaded up with a tape from 1989 that I've been listening to, seeing if I wanted to capture any of the contents. There is a large folder open on a chair with printed bulletin board messages and journals written on the computer and other paper correspondence. I've been reading a journal I wrote in Berlin in 1995 from the folder. On the floor is a pile of more or less current newspapers I haven't gotten around to reading, a pile of hanging file folders I've emptied of no longer relevant content, a pile of magazines (mostly New Yorkers) I haven't been able to give up and a pile of current information for my board duties at the country club.

The sorting in my office and the spare room (home of the above closet) is harder than, say, the kitchen. Things aren't merely things here but memories. It is interesting to see what clippings and printouts and photos survive the sorting. One moment I'm thinking what a full and interesting life I've had and the next feeling much has been wasted. I'm not one to dwell on the past or worry about the future but sitting here among my decades with a file in the drawer labeled 'condo ideas' it's hard to stay in the moment.

Saved by the Boa

No...that's not us last Saturday night. (It is us at some event in 1996 before we had the good sense to abandon big glasses.) I snapped a picture of FFP in that prior entry but I don't have any of the two of us from the party night before last. Which is a good thing I'm sure because I was in a long black velvet skirt, a black velvet top with a cowl collar and cap sleeves and had on a gold watch and a gold chain with a small diamond. In other words: boring! But. I was saved by a boa! Yes, read on.

The party was absolutely the best, most flawless party I have ever attended. I am glad I got myself up, didn't feign illness due to dowdiness and went.

It was a surprise 40th birthday party for a guy whose wife managed to surprise him with a white tie party. They have a lobbying firm and I understand that she told him it was a client's event then at the last minute said she'd have to meet him there and that he had to go with the mayor who managed the stalling tactics to let everyone else arrive first.

When we got there, the valets took our car right in front of the Bob Bullock Texas History Museum. There was a red carpet and four guys were blowing those long trumpets as if to announce each guest. Inside there were Vegas show girls handing out boas for the ladies and pocket squares with the birthday boy's monogram on them for the guys. That boa made me look less dowdy as we milled around and took in the scene. There were sushi chefs making rolls, a huge bar (we didn't wait in lines for drinks all evening), waiters handing out champagne in those old-fashioned squatly glasses that make you think of all those old Fred Astaire movies where people wore long dresses and white tie and danced like the pros they were. There was an ice table that was about eight feet long with shells carved in it full of shrimp. The whole table, legs and all was ice and the birthday boy's initials were frosted into it. We milled around talking to people who looked oh so elegant. The wife of birthday boy was in a gown with a black silk top and a skirt of white feathers. There was a cake about six feet high.

I think the guy was surprised. He looked a little stunned actually. But he managed to blow out a bunch of artsy candles arranged on the gigantic cake's tiers with his little daughter's help. Then a big band that included Tony Campise, Elias Haslanger and a pretty good singer struck up some of those old and lovely tunes for dancing. We had some of the sushi rolls, lovely prime rib on rolls, cheese and some of that shrimp cooling its heels on the giant ice table. We had drinks. We danced a bunch. There were tables and chairs around the dance floor as well as cushioned seats with tables for resting or putting a drink down.

We were having a great time and had already decided it was the best party ever when they announced...fireworks. While we stood near the door of the museum we were treated to a fireworks display launched from the parking lot across the way. It was amazing.

So, OK, this was the best and most fun party this country girl has ever attended. And my fashion fumbles were saved by a boa.

The Me That Filed Things in the '90's

Apparently I decided to turn over a new leaf some time in the '90's and took every piece of loose paper in the office and organized it all in folders neatly labeled with the label maker. Only problem was I lost the mojo pretty quickly. I had placed all the resultant folders in a drawer in a lateral file and forgotten that drawer. Except to occasionally toss something inside for 'filing later' or simply to hide it. The result was a lot of files whose contents could be tossed wholesale. A file for a DSL service that we not only no longer use but that went out of the business. A file of articles meant to help with an abandoned project. Maps and hand-written directions for places we'd just get an Internet map for today. Some of the unfiled stuff included magazines and unopened junk mail from 1994. I'm not kidding.

So, yeah, downsizing really resembled an archaeological dig today.

Fashion Emergency Part 3

It's very calming to help him with his studs and his tie and take his picture to deflect having to contemplate how dowdy I will look next to thirty-somethings in ball gowns. Ah, well. So it goes. I was going to get a haircut and try to do something radical with my hair but I waited until today to think about it and the barber had car trouble. I'm not kidding. Well, at least FFP looks like a diplomat.

Reuse, Recycle, Reduce

I haven't said a peep in this space in a week. Not that anyone has complained. We remain faithful over at Austin Daily Photo but that venue doesn't seem as demanding. The downsizing is getting weird. I'm trying to find homes for strange oddments. I believe we are tossing more stuff than we acquire. But it isn't going fast enough. One challenge is not to be wasteful and find good homes for some things. Today I saw a bike rack in front of Shoal Creek Saloon that had been made from old bike frames welded together. Oh so clever. Of course that joint has the ceiling decorated with old water skis.

Right now I have several cubic feet of knick knacks, collectibles and, let's face it, junk in my car that I hope to pass off to the Settlement Home Garage Sale. I have two cubic feet (the approximate volume of a paper box) of stuff that I'm going to store for my sister and her kids and grandkids to have.

Yesterday I was thinking what I might do with a set of twelve dinner and salad plates that I bought just for a certain party. (They were pretty cheap.) Then I opened a cabinet and realized I had another set I'd also gotten for a party. Also a dozen plates each. Also cheap. I'd just wanted something that looked right with the 'theme.' I'm sure I can find a home for both sets. Can't believe I'd forgotten even having one of them. Comes from having too much storage. In the condo we won't be able to seat twelve for dinner. I'm keeping an assortment of small salad/dessert/cocktail plates for entertaining.

I spent a bunch of time organizing old newspapers and other artifacts FFP and his parents have saved. The stuff that we want to keep I'm trying to preserve and store and catalog in a computer file saying what box they are in. It is all very tedious but I feel sure that I am making progress. Aren't I? Or will I be scrambling to do a bunch of this at the last minute?

Fashion Emergency Redux

This picture was taken in 2003. Where I'm not sure. I offer it to illustrate fashion emergency, part 2, of the nascent season. We have been invited to a party where the dress code is given as "white tie and ball gowns." Uh. OK. FFP has consulted with his sartorial gurus, spent less than a hundred bucks on the tie, has everything else to make it work. I told him that for a woman my age, I will do the best I can: long black skirt and top. People keep suggesting expensive stores and fashion gurus or the rack of (can there be anything bigger than six 6?) shop worn ball gowns at Last Call (the Neiman Marcus outlet store). I am, indeed, getting much too old to care. FFP is excited about the whole white tie thing, though. I'll get his picture. Maybe on his way out the door while I feign sniffles!

Letting Go of Stuff and People and Creatures

One thing I'm letting go of is always having a picture on these blog entries. It's enough that my Austin Daily Photo blog requires one. Go there is you just gotta get visual.

I've been cleaning out drawers in my office. Tossing things in the trash. Also, decided to organize all those little thing I do keep into a compartmentalized tackle box I had thought of trashing. Keychains, clips, pencil lead and erasers, velcro ties. Somehow this seems like an excellent idea because when we move to the condo rather than have those things you might need will be all organized in something instead of lurking in the ten drawers we will no longer have.

I'm letting go of Chalow, too. Every time we come home from being away we automatically start looking for her to let her out. When we get up each day, we once again notice that she isn't there.Today I was talking to a woman at the gym about moving to the condo and she asked if we had pets. I told her we put Chalow down and she started crying. I didn't mention my friend's death or that another friend had lost a son and another a husband. I had her in tears at the dog.

I'm letting go of my departed friend, Margaret, too. In writing her tribute I dug out a file labeled "Messages and Mid-Nineties Correspondence’." I've been reading that and I feel like my life is kind of unraveling backwards at the moment. I've also been shredding decades old carbons of checks. Memory lane.

I'm normally a forward-looking person. So I can normally let stuff go and look to tomorrow. I've got lots to let go of at the moment, I guess. So I'm a bit mired.

Goodbye, Friend

There weren't as many social opportunities online in 1995. But there were some. Like-minded people had been getting together in Usenet Groups for over a decade, bonding over similar technical and non-technical interests. I would scan a group called rec.travel.europe. The name meant it was a 'fun' or 'recreational' topic and not a technical one about the Internet itself or Usenet and such and about travel and, more specifically, in Europe. In July of 1995 I was giving advice on Berlin, where I'd just been, on the thread. Thanks to Google collecting archives I can still find the message I read in the summer of '95. The message was from a woman who'd traveled alone in Europe, something I'd done a bit of and something I might do again. FFP didn't travel too far then, because more than four or five days away from his one-man business didn't work well. I went places without him, for business and pleasure, or maybe had female traveling companions. So I thought it would be interesting to talk to someone else who traveled alone and was close to my age.

So I wrote a reply. Not to the thread but to the author: magie@iafrica.com. I didn't realize when I did that she wasn't living in the states. Just didn't notice the e-mail address, I guess. But she wrote back and said she lived in the Cape Province of South Africa and was a Scot who had emigrated to Canada in her teens, met a South African, moved there, raised two boys and divorced after over thirty years of marriage. And we began to exchange long e-mails about our travels. I had just made a trip to Berlin where Christo and Jeanne-Claude had wrapped the Reichstag. I probably sent her a journal from the trip. She managed to send me a journal from her '92 trip that inspired her Usenet posting. In November '95 she was off to Kuala Lumpar and gave me a detailed account of the trip. We began exchanging mundane details of our lives: friends, neighbors, outings, charities, work, family. She told me all about the Fish Hoek Surf Lifesaving Club where she volunteered training kids to become beach lifeguards and about her work with a handicapped workshop.

Margaret began to mail me postcards of the Cape with brief notes designed to entice me to come for a visit. At some point we decided that I would visit, in January/February 1997.

I went to Toronto on business in June '96. At some point Margaret had mentioned that her twin sister lived there. She insisted I contact her and meet her. And I did. After a meal and sharing some wine and a tour around where she worked, she said, "Margaret and I are nothing alike; but you two will get along well, too." Indeed, the non-identical twin sisters were very different, in appearance and personality, but both lovely, fun, warm women.

So, I traveled thousands of miles in January 1997 to arrive at the Cape Town airport and meet a woman I'd never met face-to-face. Three weeks later I had met so many of her friends that it just seemed right to have a 'going away' party to say goodbye. The above picture was taken at that party. (This trip deserves being blogged some day.)

In the spring/summer of 1997, Mags was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent surgery and treatment. But she mustered her strength and came to the U.S. in 1998, visiting Austin and other places with us and with other friends. (This elaborate travel itinerary deserves a blog of its own as well and maybe, one day, will get it.)

In 1999, a couple of my girlfriends and I went to London and Scotland. We met up with Mags and a friend of hers from the Cape in Edinburgh (they were attending the rugby world cup and visiting with Mags' relatives and friends in her hometown) and we met her younger brother and many friends of hers.

Mags would suffer a relapse of the cancer again in 2001, but would still manage a visit to her sister (now living in New York State) for the holidays. A friend and I flew to New York City on New Year's Day, 2002, to meet up with her and visit a few days with her on her way home.

In 2004, Mags' son was living in Dublin and she was planning a trip to Edinburgh with a side trip to visit him. She suggested I meet her there so we could be tourists while he was at work. Then he decided to move to Namibia. Undaunted, she rented an apartment at Trinity College and we still met there for a visit. One morning she woke with a swollen eye. We wouldn't know it for over a year but this was another tumor announcing itself.

In 2005, I once again flew to the Cape and visited Mags and other folks who felt like old and dear friends after meeting them in '97 and hearing about them for years in e-mail. Mags didn't feel well and when her eye became swollen again she asked me to take a picture of it and print it on her computer so she could take it to the doctor in case it had gone down when she visited him for an appointment that was scheduled after I would leave.

Finally the doctors decided a tumor was causing the eye swelling and gradually Mags became unsteady and had trouble seeing. She moved to a retirement home from her apartment but had her computer there and through March of this year was writing me with some of her usual wit and vigor. Then I had to rely on her son typing for her or reports from others. In one of the last messages she typed from the retirement home, in March, she said:

Yesterday afternoon I went with the singing group to Frail Care and then to the Alzheimer’s unit. They sing all the old songs like Hokey-Pokey. Some actually know the words while others clap their hands to the music, while others manage to sleep right through it. Fun though and I am sure they all enjoy it. I met up with an old friend, Joey Swanson, in the Alzheimer’s unit and she said “oh are you down here now?” Sometimes feel maybe I should be. Occasionally, I don’t know whether I am Arthur or Martha

You were neither Arthur nor Martha, my friend. You were a special one. Margaret, Maggie, Mags, whatever we called you, you were one of a kind. And you brought so many people together all over the world. Margaret's son, in reporting her death through her e-mail account said it best: "I miss her so much already." I will also miss all the friends I made through her because she stitched us together, communicating with us all and telling my tales to them and vice versa. I fear that I'll lose track of Babs, Gary, Jim, David, Rusty, Don, Dorothy, Dawn, Colleen, Sue, Brian, Buntu, two Andrews, Beatrice, Bryan, Patricia, Francois, Nick, Penny, Vaughn, Ralph, June, Ann, Paul, another Ann, Tom and many others. It was fun meeting all those folks and more. But Mags brought them to life with her e-mailed stories, too. And no one could do it like she did it.

Tennis and Stuff

I took up tennis after I got out of college. Before that my entire experience with the sport was a tennis racket my sister used in a college PE course and some discarded balls and a garage door. I'd wanted to take it as a PE course in college myself, but I never managed to get in and dispensed with college PE by taking gymnastics, field hockey, folk dancing and badminton. (PE was required back then. Do they still do that?) I hadn't every played any organized sport save a season of softball when I was eight or nine.

But after college, I was commuting to my job in Dallas with a co-worker from my old college town, Denton. I was taking a graduate course at night or on Saturday or something and living in a ramshackle apartment I'd shared with college friends but was now renting more or less by myself. My friend and co-worker was a good tennis player and showed me how to hit a forehand and a backhand. Using the practice wall at the college and that old racquet, I started playing.

Without ever having a lesson, I built up some simple skill and started hitting for fun with friends. When I moved to Dallas, I got serious playing with co-workers and with a retired guy I met in a bar. I bought another racquet, but it was a discount wooden model (wood was it then) and cost about five bucks. When I moved to Austin, I found a few people to play with and, at some point, organized a USTA team. I was so into tennis! I played, I bought clothes and equipment. People gave me tennis-themed knick-knacks. I coveted all things tennis. I bought my first color TV in 1977 because I noticed in a store that the ball in a tennis match showed up so much better in color.

I finally realized having a team was a lot of work to give other people an opportunity to play tennis. I just played in parks with friends. I had several long-term games where I'd meet a friend in the park at 6:30 or 7, play an hour or an hour and a half and go home, shower and go to work. Or I'd meet a friend early on a Sunday morning and play at the park and then maybe go to a joint for Mexican breakfast. I watched TV coverage intensely. When we got our first VCR, my big focus was recording tennis matches. (That's why I have all these as-yet-undiscarded VHS tapes of twenty-year-old McEnroe matches and such. Yes, they are deteriorated. But I'm still having trouble tossing them.) I used to have an elaborate Breakfast at Wimbledon party, complete with multiple TVs, pastry, coffee, champagne, strawberries and cream and tennis and Wimby-themed door prizes.

I finally decided that tennis was too complicated and made me buy too much stuff. Not to mention inspiring others to give me tennis-themed pens, posters, bookmarks, etc. I still buy new shoes now and then and have my tennis racket restrung or regripped. I have an oversize Wilson Hammer of composite something and it is about ten years old. I bought a backpack tennis bag I intend to keep for a long time. I have to buy balls, of course. If I find a case at Costco, I'll buy them and use them for a year since other people pop cans all the time in my games. I have three pairs of shorts I like to play tennis in and some polo shirts. I have to get a new cap now and then due to profuse sweating. My current favorite is grimy and rusting from a metal button in the crown. I bought some wonderful new socks the other day but only after I had discovered severe wear in the ones that were used over and over, for tennis and gym. These new high tech ones are reserved for tennis now.

In 2000, we joined a tennis club. I didn't immediately find a lot of games at the club and they restrict guests to two visits a month. But gradually I became a substitute for regular fun doubles games that had been going on for years and for teams organized by others. Now I play two or three times a week. I'd like to play more singles but so it goes. There is a singles championship coming up and maybe I'll sign up for that in the duffer division. (Actually they are ranked by USTA levels.)

I've greatly reduced the 'stuff' and bother surrounding my tennis passion, though. There are some towels, head bands and wrist bands in my bag and my spare glasses with the clip on sun glasses and a spare hat in case I forget one. I try to have a new can of balls at ready in case it's my turn. I give away the used balls mostly although I have some in the trunk in a ball hopper in case I'm inspired to practice my serve. Which I rarely am.

In going through my stuff I've found some tennis 'souvenirs' (other than those old tapes) and think maybe I'll offer them to the kids who run my club's tennis programs. Somewhere around here I have a Wilson T2000.

And the picture? (You still reading?) Well, it's a bendable posable figure of a tennis player. But, I think, maybe not one I own. Maybe it is one someone was selling on ebay. Then again, who knows? Because the boxes of bendable posable figures are still lurking under the stairs.

Tennis is still my passion. But I'm not so into the stuff of tennis anymore. Nor likely to organize a tennis event or give a tennis-themed party. Still, after I escape from the year of real estate heck, carefully timed for the year of world real estate crisis, I plan to try to make trips to each of the grand slam tennis tournaments (in London, Paris, Melbourne and New York). And, OK, maybe I'll bring back a little souvenir!

Complicating VS. Simplifying

Simplifying is what I'm all about just now. It's taken a sad turn, though, with the death of our 'last pet.' We knew we wouldn't get another pet when we lost her and we knew it was coming. In the past, we had 'overlap pets.' We initially got another dog for company for our first pound pup, Lucky. Lucky came to us in 1981, fully grown, probably a year or year-and-a-half old. That second dog was an Old English Sheep Dog. His name was Oscar. Some of our friends called him 'Damn Lucky.' Because he was adopted from the pound even though he was a pure bred dog. He wasn't 'show quality.' Anyway, Oscar just got eleven years of life and after his passing the younger Chalow was adopted from another family (they got her from the pound) and we found out she was born around the time of Oscar's death. Lucky got seventeen years (he always was Lucky!) and gave it up in 1997. Chalow carried the canine role around here admirably until last Monday. In this picture she basks in the morning sun while waiting for someone to come along at the front door. In the last few weeks, she was too deaf or weak to muster much response to the mailman and we were forced to listen for him or check on his arrival ourselves.

It will be simpler not owning a pet. But one spends the first five or six decades of one's life complicating things before we realize that simplifying is the order of the day. By then entropy is chasing us relentlessly. And we will never win. A full life, in some ways, is a complicated one, with other creatures to look after and trip over, with drawers and cabinets and closets full of things we've acquired, art we love on the walls, a place stamped with our personality. But after a while things press down on us and we have to look to more lightness.

Chalow Preece-Ball April 29, 1991 (est) -- September 10, 2007

Life is simple for dogs. Food, pats, elimination. Mommy and Daddy will decide when you need a bath, a dip, a visit to the vet. Have a nasty tumor? No insurance? Mom and Dad will pay for surgery and have it sent to A&M for evaluation. Liver failing? No matter. Special diet and expensive pills available. M&D will get for you. Sadly, we have to make a lot of decisions for our little furry creatures. We made the hardest one for Chalow yesterday. Her pendulous tumors weighed so much that her weight was unchanged in spite of a lack of muscle tissue around her bones. She was having trouble standing and walking and was incontinent more and more. She finally seemed miserable after putting on a brave face through many illnesses and troubles.

I'll miss walking her and taking pictures of her cute little face (before the gray nose and cloudy eyes) in different settings. We've had one or two dogs in the house for twenty-six years. People would ask about the dog going to the condo. I knew that she wouldn't last that long and it made me sad. But that's life. Chalow was sixteen years and four months old. She was born approximately the same time that we lost our Old English Sheepdog, Oscar. We always said she had his soul. It was a good, cuddly, loving soul. Hopefully, it's inhabiting a fluffy puppy at this moment.

So...How Did That Go?

I'm feeling less anxious about everything. And, in spite of the Wall Street Journal's assertions, Austin is still not so full of itself about designer dresses as you might think. The swells in this picture are having a fine time, though. That's us in the middle. My outfit is thrift store and hand-me-downs but some found it clever. (Most expensive item by far was the Cole Haan tuxedo pumps.) FFP consulted his fashion gurus and they said in sultry Austin a white dinner jacket on September 6th was fine. And the good news about not owning a bunch of designer dresses? I won't have to figure out what to do with them when I move to the condo. My dozen pairs of Levis are another matter.

Twinge of Regret

In late 2003 and early 2004, we put up with a remodeling contractor to build the perfect master bedroom suite. I took this picture shortly after we'd finished furnishing. I'm not sure it came out perfect (what ever does?) but I really love the room with its bed, sitting area, furnishings and the closet and bathroom. Am I getting a little twinge of regret at having to leave all this space and storage for a smaller place? Yeah. I think I'll get over it, though. We are going to buy a lot of new furnishings for the condo so it will both fit (space-wise) and fit in. One of my regrets is all the 'perfectly good' furniture we will give up along with, of course, some junky stuff left over from ages ago.

Fashion Emergency

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal had a front page story about high-end stores and brands infiltrating (for want of a better word) smaller markets. Date line? Austin, Texas. This has certainly happened in the Domain center. (See fancy shop window here.) Anyway, in this article they quoted some women I know about how they had all these new designer gowns for the upcoming black tie season. Um. OK. They say the season will start tomorrow night at a gala for Ballet Austin. Um. Yeah. I was just planning on flipping through my various excuses for finery, none from designers of note. And going to that event.

I really envy men. A couple of tuxes, some suspenders, ties, cummerbunds, tasteful black pumps, maybe a white dinner jacket. The tuxedo look for women pops up now and then. I embraced the simplicity. I got a real tux tailored for me. Paired it with tuxedo shirts or a silver shiny turtle neck. I even have a white dinner jacket. I think I got it at a secondhand store for twenty bucks. This party is so early in the season, that FFP plans to wear his dinner jacket.

I have worn gowns. But designer gowns. Nope. I got married in a dress I bought for $35.

So tomorrow night, among the designer gowns, I'm be the one in some dowdy black velvet pants and some top I find in the back of the closet. It said in this column that the reporters ask women now what they are wearing. In other words, who designed it. Something tells me, though, that they won't be asking me!

By the way, the photo was taken Monday of the window of the St. Vincent de Paul thrift store on South Congress. I love the way the mannequin has tossed aside those uncomfortable-looking red high heels and adopted a bored sprawl more suited to a pair of old jeans. You can see yours truly (in a polo and jeans) snapping the picture. Oh, and speaking of those heels. Did I mention that I have a pair of flat tuxedo pumps and, whatever outfit I have, that's what I'll be wearing to festively inaugurate Ballet Austin's new home tomorrow night?

Where's My Hat? Where's My Head?

This is a shot of some junk on offer a couple of years ago at, I believe, Uncommon Objects on South Congress.

Here are some thoughts I've been having lately: (1) Do I need all these hats? (2) How many copies of James Joyce's Ulysses do I need? (3) How many flashlights do we need in the condo?

We have about four dozen caps, I'll bet. And hats, too. Some are mine. I never wear hats any more. A cap on the tennis court until it gets too grubby and I switch to a newer one. Or buy one at the pro shop when I've forgotten one.

I'm reading a copy of Ulysses I bought in Dublin. But I think there are two more copies of it in the house.

The other night the power went out. I know we have a bunch of flashlights around here but it took me a few minutes to find the first one, then to find two more for FFP and the house guest. (Finding the second and third was made easier by the first! Isn't it frustrating how you try to flip on lights when the power is out?) We'll have a lot fewer rooms and spots to put things in the condo. That'll be a good thing, I think. Bet I'll still forget where I put the flashlights. Of course, with the house you always have the ace in the hole of stumbling out to the car and getting one. I've stocked the cars with the wind-up type which dispels the disappointment of finding one with dead batteries. In the condo, the car will be in the garage a couple of floors down.

Yeah. I'm sure it would be better to ponder world peace, the war in Iraq or why the Texas Longhorns could barely win over powerhouse Arkansas State. Still. Hats, books and flashlights. Much more tractable.

Yeah, I'm Here

Before the rain we walked to the coffee shop (Pacha) today and I took this picture of one of the Rosedale denizens idea of yart art. Our own junk left by the SUV load today. I would have snapped a picture but a lady representing the venerable Settlement Home garage sale came by and we loaded her up with what was, to be honest, a bunch of so-so stuff. It was stuff however. And it's gone. Oh, some of it was interesting. But still. Gone.

If you miss me when I fail to come over here, by the way, I've been pretty assiduous at Austin Daily Photo. Not as interesting, of course, as downsizing. Or is it?

Pretty slow day at the ranch today. Watching tennis from New York. (Nice weather there.) Watching it rain. Managed a trip to the gym for sweatification.

Possessed By Socks

They say your possessions possess you. If so, then I'm a good candidate for possession by socks. Today I went through lots of my clothes. I filled a bag for the trash, one for the thrift store. I found enough socks for a lifetime. These are still in the packaging. They were either gifts or purchases that I haven't gotten around to wearing even once. I found enough hiking socks for a hike across the country. Plenty of dressy socks. However, the other day I had to buy some short tennis socks because I was running out of ones without extreme wear.

But. I will not be buying any socks for a while! I also officially have all the shorts, T-Shirts, polos and jeans that I'll need for the next decade. I'm pretty well outfitted in the undie department, too. As long as I can stay my current fat size.

I have thought of other funny titles I probably won't use in this line. Like 'Gap the Woman' and 'The Woman who Thought Her Life was a Hat.' (I have enough caps to choke a horse but a lot of the favorite ones have seen too much sweat.)

I really must throw out more stuff. But some progress was made today.

And Lest You Think There is No Connection...

...in my reading material, I forgot to mention that the term quark comes from Finnegan's Wake. At least that is so according to Stephen Hawking and my online dictionary. I think I first encountered quark, my physics IQ not being so well-developed, as a soft cheese product in Europe.

Having caught up on my newspaper reading, by the way, I'm reduced to reading news that's no more than 24 hours old. This isn't the same as reading about the price of gas going up when it's really going down or reading about the Wimbledon final when the U.S. Open begins or drifting back to when people cared how The Sopranos ended. Reading old magazines and newspapers is really a trip. I am reading an article in an ancient (1989, I think) New Yorker in the bathroom. It's about the Oxford Dictionary dynasty.

Reading List Again

I might have mentioned that I was reading "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." I finished that. It is an interesting novel slipping in and out of narrative to discuss philosophy and the creation of character. I might have mentioned I was reading James Joyce's "Ulysses." That's not moving along too well. It's been displaced by trying to read my three daily and a couple of weekly newspapers. Trying to rectify that. I've been listening to "A Brief History of Time" in the car. The thing is we have all these books on cassette tapes and that media is being phased out. Just seems I should listen to a few of them before giving them away. I have passed "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" along which I finished a few weeks ago. I'm about a third of the way through "Ulysses." Maybe I'll finish by Christmas.

House Fluff

I've mentioned before the problem of cleaning out thirty years of accumulations of little 'house fluff.' The little pens, pencils, clips, keys, gadgets, tools and stuff that accumulates in drawers and old cups. This shot is of one of those little trays inside a drawer in my office that's designed to receive such stuff. I can see a manicure knife, a pen, a key (to my father's garage), a spare battery for our digital cameras, a gadget to read flash memory cards, pencil lead, tape for a label maker, some binder clips. What looks like matches is really a match-type box with a tiny pad of paper inside. This scene is repeated all over the house. In drawers in the upstairs office, in trays in the walk-in closet, in the kitchen. Some one is going to have to reduce the amount of this stuff if we are ever going to get out of this house without eighteen boxes of pens and paper clips. See here and here .

Bury the Hachet

A week or so ago I noticed a hatchet in the garage. Now we have done a pretty thorough-going cleaning of the garage and had it painted. My first thought was: "I don't think we will need a hatchet in the condo. My second thought was: "What have I ever needed a hatchet for even here?"

A couple of days ago a friend of mine who is beginning a series of three moves that will eventually land her in the same downtown high rise we'll be in, said "I found a hatchet and thought 'I'm not going to need that in the condo!'" What are the odds?

In the picture above you can see a few other things that survived the great cleaning sweep. Some booster cables, a huge pipe wrench, some sheet metal left from some recent repair job. I'm sure we will have to clean out the garage again before we sell the house next spring. But I don't think it will be as bad as it was before this round of cleaning.

Tear Down

One of our Realtors (a mother and daughter pair will represent us on the house sale next year) suggested that our house will probably be torn down. I can certainly see that happening. It was more, obvious, however that this house a few doors away would be demolished. Who knew Habitat for Humanity had a service to do this and at the same time salvage materials.

It's hard to think of our house as a tear down, but it's a good-sized lot and I guess I could see someone with enough resources gutting it or even taking it down. It certainly puts all the touch-up paint and cosmetic things in perspective, though.

Dark Mood

My life is going well as the summer winds down. We have a few social things going on but some free nights, too. We've finished with one volunteer duty. The parents are rocking along, the old frail dog is somewhat stable.

So why the dark mood? I'm just in one of those troughs where the downsizing effort seems daunting. And the financial markets are worrying. It's funny how we can be see-sawed by sub-prime loans when we are debt-free. (I just this moment saw a commercial for Countrywide Home Loans offering home loans, easy as pie. Aren't they bankrupt?)

So, dark thoughts are being banished. After I've sold those off to Wall Street types and exercised myself into a fog of good internally-produced drugs, I'm going to make some headway on getting rid of stuff and organizing stuff. (Did I mention that the Realtors was over here shaking their heads over the mess yesterday?)

Picture is compliments of Blackmail on South Congress. Black moods for sale. The little neon inside, visible if you click on the pic to blow it up, says 'Think Noir.'

It Lurks Under the Stairs

One of the spots that I need to get to in the downsizing effort is a little 'under the stairs' storage we have in our storage room. We built FFP an office above the storage room in back of the garage some years ago. The whole room is sort of storage (filing cabinets and shelves and flat files from the business, other stuff we store) but they made a door to access under the stairs for extra storage. Lurking in there are lots of things that need sorting. Among them are boxes of bendable, posable figures. I once collected them. Don't ask. When this picture was taken (2001), I had removed them from my office at work (yeah, I used to work) and stored them in a storage unit we had. The storage unit at the time had nothing else BUT these boxes. We'd rented it for my parents to migrate stuff to Austin they didn't want the movers handling and we had gotten all their stuff in a house. I'd put these boxes in the storage unit. But it seemed silly to keep the unit for some rubber toys with wires inside. So I moved them to that spot under the stairs. Since most of them have languished there except the Christmas-themed ones. I've trotted them out a few times for the holidays. I may have sorted and trimmed the contents, but I know that a few cubic feet of bendable, posable figures (yes, some Gumbys and Pokeys and lots of other themes) are under the stairs. Will I have the courage to attack this? Or, when I'm ready to move will I be tempted to put these in the tiny (43 square feet) storage unit at the condo?

Collections are sinister things, aren't they?

Please excuse my absence, I've been....

...celebrating a birthday for days on end. And cleaning out my pantry. And exercising. What? You say that given that meal, I need to exercise. Well, it was my buddy's food. And he couldn't eat it either and took half home. It was a lamb and lobster surf and turf. I got a piece of seared foie gras as the size of my palm. I ate it all. So much more appetizing than my pantry. Lumpy brown sugar, years-old rice (which was sealed in tupperware so probably could have been eaten, but not by me), questionable cans. And when did we corner the market on anchovies? Yeah, I'd rather eat out. We've tapped the wine collection in the almost week-long celebration, too. (An 80's Silver Oak, 1990 Phelps Insigna, stuff like that.) Yeah, I've been having a ball. But I've had to work out extra hard not to gain weight. So it's off to the country club with me. And then back to that pantry. We aren't going to collect food like that in the condo. Won't be room. And I can't say that I'll be sad.

Autographs

In all my sorting and slicing and dicing of souvenirs and archives, at least I haven't had to worry about an autograph collection. I never was into worrying famous people for their signatures. I have had to save a few letters and postcards which made me nostalgic for a real person vis-a-vis their handwriting as well as their words. The picture is of Billy Gibbons' signature on a giant decorated guitar that is currently on Congress Avenue.

And how's the downsizing going? Thanks for asking. Not badly, but it's making me blue, I think. I gave away seven or eight cubic feet of stuff, though, in the last week.

Tennis Nostalgia

Ever since I learned to play tennis, I've enjoyed watching it and reading about it. I learned to play a little in 1970. I don't play a lot better now, but I've played for most of the 37 years since.

In sorting old memorabilia, I found some ticket stubs for a tennis match from the (now defunct) World Championship of Tennis Tour. The Tour culminated each year in a final in Dallas. It never took on the importance of a grand slam, but it was right there in my home town before I moved to Austin. I had gone for a few years before this '76 event. If I'm not mistaken, my future husband went to Dallas from Austin to see part of this event with me. We would marry at the end of the month above. My memory is always a little vague on such things. I do remember seeing a match at WCT between a young (17?) Bjorn Borg and an aging Rod Laver (must have been forty).

Also, in, gulp, downsizing news...I have all these old VHS tapes that we recorded TV programs on. Some are pretty easy to toss. Say you recorded a "Northern Exposure" episode. It is or will be soon enough available on DVD. I already own a couple of seasons. No worries. A showing of the venerable movie "Casablanca" recorded off a TV airing? Already own the DVD.

But I found a VHS tape of the 1980 Wimbledon final. After 27 years the tape is still watchable although there are blackouts and static interruptions and obvious deterioration. I figured I'd watch a little of it, see how bad the quality was and toss it without a thought. I watched the whole thing. It is beyond fascinating for both the tennis and the culture. They play a tie-breaker in the fourth set that goes to 18-16 or something. They come to the net and, frankly, hammer out a better version of tennis for spectators than today's stars. And Borg's fiancée smokes nervously in the stands. Imagine seeing someone smoke in the stands today.

And what to do with this old video? Lots of tennis matches are available on DVD and the Wimbledon people used to sell this one. It is out of stock and, of course, it wouldn't be the U.S. version with all the old commercials either. Well, it occurs to me that I can't agonize over every thing this way or I'm never going to get through downsizing. Downsizing. Can't finish it. Can't quit talking about it.

Drowning in Memories

I said I wouldn't mention downsizing again. But it's hard to avoid. Some friend suggested that I scan some stuff and then discard it. Sounded like an excellent idea. Only. The discarding part is hard. Thirty-five-year-old ticket stubs. Gosh. Once you save them this long, it seems silly to part with them. Even if you scanned them. They won't take up much room in this box....

Oh, I'm finding stuff to part with all right. There's a box or two full of ephemera and souvenirs that are either going to an interested party or into the trash. If there was a little kid standing here right now, a little kid like I was fifty years ago, that little kid would get all kinds of foreign coins and stamps and stuff to cherish and 'collect' and play with. Only there is no such little kid here just now.

Another thought I've had for the last few weeks is how long it will take to go through all the pens, pencils, markers, clips and other stuff that we have in cups and drawers in every room. This stuff does accumulate. And since we have entirely too many rooms, some of it accumulates in every room.

Morbid Thoughts

Maybe it was Lady Bird's several day tribute with the funeral, fifty-mile cortege and the burial, all on TV. This shop window on South Congress (showing Day of the Dead folk art) seemed to illustrate my mindset. Anyway, I've been thinking about how we all end up. Even though we never know what the end will be. They say that but then you see people in nursing homes with Alzheimer's or in the hospice in the final stages of some fatal disease and you are pretty sure where they will end up. For some of us, we keep breathing for quite a while after our fate is sealed. For me, my body seems to be working. But the clock ticks. My dad seems obsessed now with his birthday. He told me a few days ago that he would be 91 in two months "if he made it." He doesn't have any new complaints and he is getting around and doing a few things. He's been coming to the club with me for water aerobics, climbing in and out of the deep end on the ladder. He's been trying to kill poison ivy at his house and he says he washed the filter on his AC unit. He shops, eats, reads, naps, visits with people, tells jokes. The mere numbers, though, seem to impress him now. Somehow this extra year over ninety more so than last year when we celebrated the 'significant birthday.' I think he does a pretty good job of living every day. I guess I do.

People who are struggling or who have already succumbed to the inevitable are on my mind just now. It happens.

Reading List

Picture of random books taken some time in the past somewhere in the house.

I am tired of talking about downsizing. That isn't all I do. Really. Right now I'm reading three books. Well, I'm reading two books and I'm listening to another one in my car. I go from riding the recumbent bicycle to nowhere and reading James Joyce's Ulysses to driving home in the car listening to an unabridged A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith on tape. At home I'm reading Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. OK. I'm reading that in the bathroom, I will confess. Too much information I'm afraid. Of course, I'm reading newspapers. The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Austin American-Statesman. I've read a few articles in The New Yorker of late, too.

I'm about 200 pages in on Ulysses. (My edition has 933 pages.) So when I'm reading that I'm immersed in the conversations and stream of consciousness of people in Dublin in 1904. I've well-prepared myself for this endeavor. (See here.) Still it's a dense and confusing book. Fun, though.

I'm at least three quarters of the way through A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and it's been good listening. I decided to listen to the tapes since I still have a cassette player in my car. After I finish this listen I'm going to give them to a friend. So I'm transported to the early twentieth century there, too. Williamsburg, Brooklyn. A clearer exposition but lots of details of life there.

I'm nearing the end of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I love the movie made from this book and I'm always thinking about it as I read. But the book has lots of philosophy and such, too, it's not straight narrative. So they both stand quite well, the book and its movie. Here I'm in the late '60's and early '70's in Czechoslovakia and Switzerland.

It's funny how the books you are reading occupy a little track in your brain. And when there are three? Well, it might seem like clutter but it works pretty well.

Reflecting

The big news here is that they are burying Lady Bird Johnson this morning. The ceremonies have taken all weekend. We didn't line up along the 50 mile route of the cortége. Instead we slept in and are sitting around the house pondering what to do with our Sunday.

Death is a time for reflection, of course. As are birthdays and the anniversaries. We've been celebrating a birthday for Forrest and last night attended a friend's party for her birthday. (She has the same birthday as Forrest actually.) There was great food at the party as the honoree is part of the food community and restaurateurs and foodies contributed to the pot luck. I took deviled eggs "à la Russe" as I call them. I mix up the filling with capers, onions, lemon pepper, lemon juice and mayo and top them with a bright colored caviar. When competing with foodies, deviled eggs are a good choice. Lots of people love them. No mater how many you make (I took 32 halves) you never take home leftovers. And usually no one else makes them.

It's lovely to have a day with no obligations. But it's an obligation in and of itself to not just sit.

A Cubic Foot of France

As those of you following along at home on the downsizing slippery slope may know, I often think of my 'stuff' in terms of cubic feet. As in "how many cubic feet did you take to the thrift store today?" A few years ago, I decided that my growing collection of travel guides and maps and clippings about places I wanted to go would be best collected in boxes so that when you got ready to go somewhere (or a friend asked for stuff about a certain place) you could just pull out a box. So it happened that I have a box labeled 'France' with about a cubic foot of stuff about France. Which would be sad enough if there weren't also a box with about as much material labeled 'Paris.' There are other boxes, too. For 'New York' for example.

This system of organizing the travel-related stuff works well enough. But now that I'm downsizing one has to ask whether all this really bears saving. Also, I found one very mysterious thing in this box. Stationery from a hotel in Paris. One that I'm pretty sure I never stayed in. OK, I'm completely sure I never stayed there. It is close to the last place I stayed in Paris so maybe we wandered in and got the stationery to remember the place? Or someone who stayed there brought it back for us? A look at the place on the WEB makes me want to go stay there! But where did I get this stationery?

So what did I do? I bookmarked the hotel's page on my computer. And I put the stationery back in the box with all the books, maps and language guides. And I closed the top. This will get decided another day.

Acquisition

Sunday we were visiting the South Congress area. Some businesses have moved or folded and the ones occupying space keep tending to the upper end of the scale. Uncommon Objects, its doorway reflecting us and the church across the street in this picture, has remained. Selling the odd and the end and always decorating their windows in an amazing way, they soldier on.

I've enjoyed buying things at Uncommon Objects. I've bought weird bookends, objects for the cocktail shaker (etc.) collection and some fake pastries. I once considered starting a fake food collection. Really. My problem for the years from the end of the eighties until 2002 was that I always had a rather large office at work tempting me to decorate with weird collections and stock it with books and such. And at home I had all this storage, many bookshelves. Every remodel (1994, 1996, 2004) brought an upheaval of moving stuff around that resulted in some divesting but eventually bringing more storage and more temptation. I had money and stuff was fun to shop for and look at. I dabbled in ebay. I went to discount stores. And I wandered into junk and antique shops and came out with stuff. People gave me presents. They were often inspired by my weird collections to give me really weird (but cool) stuff.

Given all the acquisition it is surprising that I'm not drowning in stuff even more than I am.

Much has been given away. Much has been thrown away. But I think I still have those fake pastries.

Brings you Up Short

Sorting through a box of things I'd saved for a collage project. (Remember there was plenty of storage around here if we were going to stay in this house.) I come across this 1997 photo. I'm sure this was a duplicate copy of this picture. I used some film camera or the other on this trip. I probably ordered several copies of all the photos I took. Who knows. The sun gleams off the Twin Towers as we sail down the Hudson on the QE2. Other pictures I have somewhere show my co-workers who were on the trip with this basic backdrop.

I saved the picture out. I don't know where the other copy is, at the moment. (Not that I looked for it.) I scanned it. As you can see.

The whole downsizing thing is depressing today. I have posted on Freecycle (a Yahoo group to give things away rather than toss them) to find a home for several cubic feet of weird stuff. We tossed some more books into the thrift store pile. We have cleaned off all the shelves in the hallway in preparation for painting the hall. I was talking to a friend who is also moving to the condo building downtown next year yesterday. We keep reassuring ourselves that it is OK to let things go. To not get depressed about it and just find good homes. We enjoyed the stuff while we had it. But, yeah, it's hard to know what to do with some of these photos! Here's one of me with eyes half closed, a case of bed head and a frown. Maybe I'll scan that one and put it up tomorrow.

And so it goes. I'm looking forward to having a lot less stuff. The process can get tedious, though.

Downsizing, The Subjournal

Part of downsizing is sorting stuff that has been sorted before. Including allegedly arty photographs of collage-like arrangements I took with my Polaroid 100 back in the early seventies. As I pondered what to do with these photos it occurred to me to scan them, creating more clutter on my computer, surely. And in this blog. But the photos are interesting and bring to mind other clutter, other ideas, other selves.

I thought of making a journal just about the downsizing effort. Instead I've just labeled entries here. (With 'downsizing' and 'stuff.') After all I'm contributing to two other blogs and there is a limit to the attention I should pay to blogging. When I should be sorting, tossing, deciding, consolidating, cataloging, arranging.

These little collages were arranged by me in an apartment in Dallas (well, Highland Park, actually). Before I moved to Austin (1975). I'd acquired an old type tray at a flea market, I think. I had also acquired some old wooden and iron type somewhere. The overgrown piece of okra? From my Dad's suburban gardening, I suspect. The bell peppers probably from the grocery store. (A favorite way to 'cook' for me then was to heat up some butter, thrown in chopped onions, bell peppers, mushrooms and sauté them and see what developed...maybe adding some browned meat and cans of corn, tomato sauce, whatever.) I didn't cook pasta that much but seem to have had some dried pasta on hand. Various ephemera I'd collected included wine corks, some ration coupons from World War II, Scrabble tiles, a rock that looked like a cameo, a ticket stub from the Deutsches Museum in Munich, a small ceramic turtle and a piece of coral. And a paper 'hanger' from a bottle of beer I bought on a train in some French-speaking part of Europe. It says "ne la jetez pas par la fenêtre...vous peurrirez blesser et même tuez quelq'un." Which, I believe says, given my limited French "don't throw it (feminine, la bouteille, the bottle) out the window...you might hurt or even kill someone."

It's interesting to think what happened to the things I owned at that moment. I only recently gave that Polaroid to a camera collector. I obviously saved the photos and the biodegradable things are gone. The coral? I don't have a clue. There are shells and natural things on a display in the house but no sign of that. I know that my mother-in-law tried to give the type tray away without my permission, it was retrieved and then, at some point I gave it away or sold it myself. I don't know if the type is still around. Mostly the stuff has flown. But the pictures remain. I remember taking them. Thinking them somewhat artistic, I guess, but not really being satisfied. I've always been intrigued by collage and wanted to create collages. Fact is, these photos turned up in a large box of stuff I'd saved only for the purpose of creating collages. Now, though, I've decided to save these photos in an 'archive' box. Sorting and sorting again. Only when I give stuff away or toss it in the trash is its fate sealed. I'm saving some of the stuff in this box with the idea that I'll give it to the arts magnet school for the kids to work into collages. But who knows? Maybe I'll throw the stuff away or sort it again!

If every piece of junk in this house gives me this much pause...I'll never finish downsizing.

Barely There

Ever feel like you are sort of missing from your own life? I don't know what it is but I feel disconnected today. Unable to solve some problems. A bit of a digestive upset (probably not helped by eating nachos, but hey I ate a 'good diet' yesterday and the upset came before that lunch). Doing things but not feeling like they are particularly useful. How to deal with that? Well, I usually deal with it by hibernating and reading and watching movies or TV. All the while thinking, on the back burner somewhere, about how to bring me back into my life. I think I here thunder out there. I guess it's going to rain again. Maybe the rain is the problem.

Junk as Art

Every quarter or so we get a postcard from the city announcing 'Large Item Pickup.' They promise to take lumber, furniture, appliances. They announce all kinds of rules and regulations. On the announced day piles appear at the curb. One of our neighbors had been accumulating odd items in one of their two driveways. Worrying that the house was becoming a hoarder house I was glad to see that a bunch of stuff is on the curb, hopefully waiting for the city trucks. (Which never arrive on the announced day, it sometimes is weeks after when they show up.) A piano stripped of its front and keys appeared among the neighbors stuff. It's amazing what accumulates and deteriorates in our lives. We have had some equally puzzling stuff hauled away from our place.

Oddly, since we are the downsizing royalty at the moment, we don't have anything on the curb. I'm not saying that we shouldn't have. I think there may be a few things in the storage shed that the city might pick up. But we have paid for hauling on a lot of stuff already. And nothing we could put out would look as forlorn and almost lovely as this old stripped piano in the rain.

Freedom

What was it old Kris Kristofferson said in that song I loved to hear Janis sing back in the day (the early seventies for me). Oh, yeah. "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose."

Be that as it may. When I know we have no plans for an afternoon and evening and nothing to do tomorrow during the day on the 4th...the alleged celebration of the nation's freedom but really a day for too much sun and booze...it pleases me. I like some 'free' time. Even retired I look forward to it.

I'm afraid the sun (if not the booze) is going to be spoiled for a number of people by the incessant rain. As I write this I hear it continuing outside. Lakes are closed.

We plan to watch Wimbledon (if it's not rained out) and in the evening have dinner with some friends at their house.

No flag picture today. Just the reflection (yeah, yet another) of yours truly in a junk shop window on South Lamar.