Sunday

Aug 19, 2001

rain

Good news to see a few clouds and rain. Bad news to give up a walk for it. I get up early. FFP is up, rustling the papers and filling the Capresso with beans. It seems dark for 6:30. That's the clouds. Forrest says yellow jackets have invaded the front porch. He goes out to attack them with some spray and says it's starting to rain. I let sleeping dogs lie and don't even call SuRu. I read some of the paper and work on my journal. Coffee, then more coffee. I like Sunday.

FFP makes a breakfast of migas and bacon. This very filling. There is more thunder but not enough rain to really suit me. I get more coffee.

I do a little planning for the vacation. I check the reservations on the airline site to make sure no changes have been made. I make a basic packing list outline for both me and FFP.

I've been working on putting up entries for old vacation days that were previously only recorded in little notebooks and with photos and souvenirs stashed in a cardboard box. Currently working on a trip to Normandy, Paris and Berlin in 1999, I put up one more day, I review a bunch of photos and scraps of paper and my notes. This is really hard and tedious work but it is a lot of fun to go back and savor the moments. Trips deserve leisurely planning and leisurely reflection upon a return to home. But for working people they rarely get it. Instead, you are rushed to prepare and back to work when you return, quick to forget the trip. Without the souvenirs and photos, a lot of this trip, only a little more than two years old, would be lost.

I do some scanning of pictures from that trip. I briefly wonder how much weight I've gained since that trip. Not more than ten pounds, probably more like seven. Still, I look a lot better and younger in these pix Pam took. I mean look at this or this. The hair is pretty radical and cool on the beach, too! A result of wind more than grooming!

I scan other pictures, ones of great nephew Jack that my niece has sent. Scanning is a large pain and so when I do it I do other things and then, of course, I forget what I'm doing.

I also decide to use this leisurely Sunday to review some of the journals I read. I end up on diarest.net reading some of the pages nominated for awards. I have always thought you had to have a registered journal to vote in their awards deal. Upon reading a bit more closely, I notice that the requirement isn't that you are registered, you just have to provide the URL for a journal (your own) and it has to be there if someone checks. My readers know that I would never intentionally register anywhere. (My own sister sent me a note complaining about no updates on the page. I don't know where she's looking but I didn't enlighten her. I occasionally get pictures from here and put them on my Mom's computer. So far, she hasn't seemed to figure out that she can read the journal! Or she isn't telling.)

Where was I? Oh, yeah. Reading journals. It seems like a waste of time, I know. I finally find myself skimming and then I know I've absorbed all the mundane bits of other people's lives that I have room for at the moment. As far as I know, no one I know well keeps an online journal. That would be weird. So sorry for the weirdness, friends and family of mine who have figured out how to get here. In the end, I decide that voting fairly is too much trouble. And even casually providing the link to these guys too much like registering. I have also almost stopped sending e-mail to other journalers although I sometimes do so with the link to our page no where in the message.

I really don't like poetry too much. Occasionally, something grabs me. I like trying to write it, especially on the frig, though. Go figure. Very, very free stuff, though. Anyway, today's 'Just Typing' comes from a discussion at breakfast yesterday about all these cities that sound like 'can' somewhat.

I finally decide that I should do something that feels more like an accomplishment that reading journals, writing entries, scanning pictures and surfing.

So...I clean up the guest room. Or that's what I decide to do. That and get together some of my stuff for my vacation. Did I mention that I'm going on vacation? Well, I go in there and I decide to take pictures of the junk in that room. (This is one of the things you only do because you have an on-line journal, I promise.) I put away some stuff and get my toiletry kit in order for the vacation. I keep my travel and packing stuff in the guest room.

After a short time, though, I get bored. And I'm back to surfing, scanning and watching TV. Sort of all at once. Will I get Alzheimer's before I conquer ADD?

While I'm watching an old Mash and deciding that it is entirely too much trouble to get to know these journals that are nominated for awards well enough to vote, FFP comes in and shows me the entertainment guide from the NY Times and says, "Look at all the stuff that is going on." We decide to eat a salad.

Not long after the salad, I'm sitting at the kitchen table, completing the Sunday papers (I know, amazing). FFP suggests we go to Westwood.

Westwood's gym is still under construction. The tent on the basketball court that is full of equipment is desserted. We ride the bikes for about twenty minutes, watching boats on Lake Austin and reading our books. I try a few weight machines. I feel clumsy against the lowest weights but I try to do a few smooth reps.

I decide to take a walk. I walk around the largely desserted tennis courts. I see a few people, hear a few thwacks. Most of the noise comes from the pool where people are enjoying the waning days of summer. A couple of bikes are tossed haphazardly under a tree. I don't feel like I belong here. Sure we paid thousands of dollars and collected two or three members' signatures. Sure we pay a couple of hundred a month. I should feel like I own a piece of the place. But I'm not quite comfortable yet with it. Not like the kids on those bikes or the two little boys who walk back down 35th toward home after their swim.

Home again, I really do finish the Sunday paper.

We watch the season-ending Six Feet Under double episode. At the beginning, someone always dies. And sometimes at other points. Bodies for the funeral home. But these are usually strangers. When one of the regular characters is threatened, though, I hide my eyes and make FFP narrate. I have, over the years, become better able to put boundaries between me and movies (between me and others for that matter), but I'm still, basically, a wimp. And I think, in a way, it's a trait I'm not going to fix. Becoming inured to violence doesn't seem like a worthy goal.

shoes, posing themselves (exact repose of these items on the guest room floor...I don't remember when they got here)

"We know all autobiographies are public lies. Are journals, then, nothing more than private lies?"
Joseph Epstein , Talking to oneself
The New Criterion (Online)

a small collection on the guest room shelf

JUST TYPING

canard


"Cannes?" he said, candidly.

"No, Caen," she said with canny concern.

"Canaan?" he asked, patting the canine.

"No, Cairns," she said stroking the canary.

"Cancun?" he asked, licking the candy.

"No, Canal Zone," she answering between canapés.

"Canberra?" he asked, fork above cannoli.

"No, Canton," she answered eyeing the canna.

"Candida?" he asked.

"No, cancer."

[With apologies to my friends who suggested this typing. Who knows where it goes?]

Meta info and links:

I'm always struggling to get organized. So it was nice to read that other people have this problem in one of John Bailey's entries.

I'm reading Narcissus Leaves the Pool by Joseph Epstein. Yes, he of the online article I've been quoting of late. I like it, but wish the essays had dates when first written. I'm always obsessed with when things are written.