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Friday May 26, 2000
"Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." Robert Frost
dads waiting for their day
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a texas thing Wow, that martini last night sucked it out of me. It made me feel like organ snatchers had visited me in the night. I think Gin and I must part company. I finally decided food and coffee weren't going to work alone and swallowed Ibuprofin. After enough of that magic, I was good as new. Work went OK. I wrote some reports, I studied some angles, I read some reports, I listened to people tell me how things worked. I plotted and planned about how to make a difference. I ask my bosses for a raise. Why not? What harm in that. I don't really have a boss in the traditional sense. No one really reviews my work. No one has for years. Having failed to find bendy soldiers for Memorial Day, I have arranged all the dads I could find. My own dad showed up with a van load of stuff to stick in the storage unit. I came home at lunch and, sure enough, he showed up about then and Forrest and I helped him unload it. There were boxes that said 'Easter' and 'XMAS' and 'Russia' and 'Alaska and Hawaii' and 'Turtles.' One box came untaped and some of my mom's hobby stuff, bottles of paint, rubber gloves, paint brushes, came spilling out. We picked it up and put it in and folded the top of the box. Nothing broke. No harm done. Mostly they could live forever without this stuff. But no harm. It's easier to rent the unit and store it than discuss it. I thought about it and I'll bet we have five times as much stuff as my parents. Of course, we aren't faced with moving. I had to rush back to work for a meeting. So dad took himself to Luby's for lunch. He was going to spend the night, but came back and told Forrest that he was just going to drive back. An eighty-three year old man drives over four hundred miles and does that packing and unpacking. Amazing. Hope I'm able to do that at that age. This evening we had dinner at the Capitol. We bought a dinner for ten in the Lieutenant Governor's apartment at a charity function. By chance, everyone at the party grew up in Texas. That is amazing. We didn't really plan it that way. We just invited various friends to make an interesting crowd. Do you know how rare it is to sit down with that many Texans in one place in Austin. Yes, I know we are deep in the heart of Texas. I promise you that Texans are scarce as hen's teeth. My goal for the weekend is to conquer the newspaper piles and clean up this office. I mean it. Really. |
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