AUSTIN, Texas, Apr. 9, 2005 —There is nothing on the calendar. That is so rare. I try to sleep in but FFP and the dog wake me up. Dad calls at 8:30. He reports that "his leg feels better but it almost didn't work when he got up."

"Your leg? Your leg hurts? I thought it was your back?"

"It's moved down into my left hip and leg. I didn't think I was going to be able to get in my paper but then it started to feel better. I took a pain pill but it hasn't had time to work. I did go buy gas. This is the most I've ever spent on gas. Over $31. And it wasn't empty.

I meant to get gas yesterday but something interfered."

"Your car breaking down," I offered.

"Yeah. Anyway I wanted you to know I'm up and around."

"What do you have planned for today."

"Nothing. I'm done. I might water some plants if I feel like it."

His complaints and the fact that he's voicing them is worrying me. Is he going to be all right living there alone?

I'm sitting in front of my computer pondering the journal and its time vortex. I love doing it, having it and a couple of readers I think really enjoy it. But I do wonder about the people who arrive at my wad of web space after searching for "blue banlon dreams" or "movie of a woman being rapped." [Ed. note: the latter a sad collision of the searcher's spelling problems and the Visible Woman talking about a movie where a door was rapped on. In other cases, the author's typos collide with the misspellings of a user.]

I am less disturbed about people searching for pictures of okra or 'KaDeWe pictures' and finding some picture of mine in a Google or Yahooo collection. (The latter was an attractive picture of pigs' feet and such in a KaDeWe display case.) I went to some trouble to foil a person using a picture of mine for some blogging site (and not even bothering to steal it, just referring to my site so I would see it in my stats). I refrained from spoiling the background of candy hearts on someone's site even though, again, they used my picture from my site, not even bothering to steal it and place it on their site. If they'd done the latter I would have probably never figured it out in a million years. Like Citizen Rob says "If you steal any of it for your own use, you are unspeakably lame."

I guess what I'm saying is that the journal has its good points. People read it to really follow along with my life, I can use it to try to figure out my life (like 'what did I do last week?), be creative (oh, yeah, sure). I can use it to remember things I did, all right, and they sometimes surprise me. It makes me focus on one thing for every single day. Although I hesitate to call it an accomplishment. It makes me type, spell, etc. every day. Sometimes I would even call it writing.

But the journal is helping create a huge swamp of unedited words and pictures, organized by moron bots into searchable stuff of questionable value. And now if anyone ever searches for 'moron swamp' this page will come up. It is this sense of the hopeless sea of meaningless stuff that makes me have a link to buying anatomy models on my journal cover. I really feel for people who land at my oh-so-cleverly named journal (Visible Woman) looking for educational toys.

Ah, well, what to do? I have too much time on my hands, worrying about these things.

And the whole 'wondering if I should be doing this journal' act which loyal readers know I go through over and over again in these pages always makes me think of readers who are out there reading, perhaps, friends of mine. And I wonder how they are doing. This one went to Paris (is there now??) and is this one OK because I haven't really heard from her lately. And this other one responded with a comment to this month's pages. (Hi, Jerry, always good to know you are OK.) Then there are the people I haven't met, just readers. (Well, there is at least one. Hi, Annie. She likes to see a side of Austin that is not her milieu. I appreciate that. I rely on my friends to bring different things to my attention. I get it.) In short, journals work if they allow friends to stay in touch (although it can be one-way) and allow people to experience other lives a little. I keep up with journalers in Austin, England, California, Oregon. I find it's hard to jump into some of the blogs and journals and really get a sense of the lives. But others, well, I feel like I know them in very intimate ways. And I think this site certainly allows that. I hope. Although it also scares me to death. If you arrive from New York propelled by a search for 'who eats soup in Ireland.' I don't know what to do with that and I suspect you felt lost, too, whoever you were.

I finally go for an abbreviated workout. I want to leave some energy for tidying up the house. So I do thirty minutes on the bike and exercises for lower back and abs and a single set of static lunges and head home. I put on jeans, heavy socks, old hiking boots and an old shirt over my T-Shirt. I go out to the garage and start poking around. I help FFP a little (spreading out drop clothes and gathering up jars for his 'studio' which is just a corner of the storage room below his office; changing the toner on the copy machine) and I sort tools and paint and rags and car stuff and yard tools for hours. Hours. And I barely make a dent. But I do fill the garbage container about half full and identify other stuff for discarding. And I put a few things on the curb with a free sign in an attempt to get rid of some other stuff. Any time you throw something away, it's a victory. I've been intending to do a thorough cleaning and discarding in all areas of the place for the last two and a half years. At least I spend a couple of hours on it now and again. Finally I just wear down. I put the stuff back so that FFP can get his car in with him helping me a bit.

We decide to shower up (after working out and sweating and cleaning and sweating I really need one!) and go to Fonda. We beat the crowd by getting there before they are seating people and having a drink in the bar. I eat and drink too much (two Negro Modelos, some little apps, chips, salsa, a chile relleno and some rice).

At home I watch a movie I rented from Netflix (Spring Forward) which I think is a neat bit of ensemble acting. FFP dozes. I finish the day's newspapers and we go to bed.