AUSTIN, Texas, Apr. 28, 2005 — I'm down in the dumps. I have been for a while. Yeah, I'm sure you noticed. I keep trying to pump myself up. Enjoy eating out, movies, my workouts, writing. I try to think to plan lunches with people, sign up for tennis events, get after some of the things on my 'to do' list. But I seem to keep slipping into this gray area that is inconsistent with how good I feel and how nice the weather is and how really wonderful my life is.

And, yes, I know why. It isn't that my dad needs all this help right now going to appointments and

just living day to day. What has me down, what keeps me from signing up for a singles ladder or planning some of my long overdue lunches with friends is not knowing. In a couple of weeks will he still need a bit of assistance every day? Will he ever get back to driving? I am happier when I've settled into a routine and so has everyone else and things like vacations and special events seem possible to plan.

Physically I feel great myself. I would like to get more exercise but I've done pretty well in that regard in spite of everything. Mentally, I'm excited about all the things around me...the events we've planned to go to like ballet and opera; the movies I'm renting or would like to see in theaters; the books, magazines and newspapers I like to read; the writing I'd like to do; the things I'd like to learn.

But underneath all this is the unknown amount of time I'll be sucked into my dad's orbit. The place where we have to go to doctor's offices and pick up prescriptions and where days are marked by reading the Austin American-Statesman and taking blood pressure. I feel guilty feeling bored with his life. But, to me, it is boring. And as he goes slowly with his new pain, all the more boring. Don't get me wrong. I don't mind doing a few weeks of daily attention, or trying to help him arrange to live a life more circumscribed by pain than anything else if that's what it comes to. I owe him that much. But even though I try to read something stimulating while waiting in waiting rooms and go on with my life as much as possible, I see myself more and more spending time on his stuff that is deadly boring to me. And it makes me, as the French would say, 'have the cockroach.' J'ai le cafard means to be 'fed up or down in the dumps.' Literally though le cafard is a cockroach or insect. It is the French of the day from my calendar. Perhaps not coincidentally, it's Secretaries' Day aka 'Professional Assistants.'

So how did my day go? I got up and stumbled through coffee, shower, bed making and went to get Dad for an appointment with the GP. With the travel time, the visit, doing a few things to tidy up the house and shopping for a few groceries, it took about three hours. Dad said something to me the other day about his pain "taking the joy out of life." Yep. I get that. The weird thing is that he isn't in pain when he is still, most of the time. But the whole business takes the joy right out of things all right. I know people put up with much, much more. When my mother was in hospitals for 99 days, there was enormous amounts of time spent and frustratingly so while I tried to work. It sucked the joy right out, too.

I feel bad when I leave Dad. His mail hasn't come yet and he'll have to hope a neighbor or friend or random person calls on him so that he can get someone to get it out of the box on the street. But I need some time.

When I get home, the handyman is there. He's been doing some powerwashing and paint touchups. His wife is hobbling around organizing the tools. She has painful arthritis and has emphysema and has to go for the portable oxygen here and there. They are well into their sixties. Even the help is getting too old to work. I discuss getting a door handle fixed at Dad's house and he says he will come over in the morning. I've promised my dad I'll go over and, if he feels up to it, take him to church. Later I call my dad and say that we'll only go to the games for old folks day at church if the handyman gets there in time. All we do is try to keep the houses going these days, it seems at time. FFP tells the handyman on the way out: "Go to my dad's and fix that thing on the front door that is supposed to slow it down and keep it from slamming."

I fix myself some lunch, clean up the kitchen, take out the kitchen garbage.

Yeah, grumble, grumble. I'm embarrassed to be so down about such silly things. In fact, just setting down in pixels my cockroach and its cause, makes me laugh and decide that, in fact, my life is great. I have about three hours before I have to be somewhere for an event. I think I'll watch some DVDs or TV and read the paper. As my dad says, or used to, "It's a good life if you don't weaken." I get a request from FFP to make some digital pictures he took at one of his nonprofit events into prints. I take the time to set a Snapfish Album up for the person to use. I get a call from a friend who has had to have surgery on his right hand. He can't drive (stick shift) and I tell him I'll do lunch next week and pick him up and hear myself offering to do anything he needs. See my life is better! People around me are falling apart.

Throughout the day I've been reading an article in an eighteen-month-old copy of The New Yorker by Lawrence Wright. One moment I thank any gods who may actually exist that I wasn't born where the god people believe exists motivates extremists to persecute women and the rich powerful ruling kings and princes to indulge them to keep them from rising up and turning the country into Iran. The next moment I am angry for my gender and feel powerless to help women to be free everywhere.

I go in and finish watching Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation on DVD while looking at today's papers. FFP comes down and we discuss the social event that we are going to attend. (A party promoting the Ballet Austin Foundation and the Legacy Circle, which is a group of people who have remembered the Ballet with wills or other planned giving.)

"What are you wearing?" I ask.

"A suit." Pause. "I'd better go look at the invitation."

A bit later himself says: "Festive. The dress is festive."

"I don't do festive," I annouce. But I put on a black background blouse with little colored squares and a piece of jewelry (one of my few) with black pants, a gray blazer and a pair of black flats that look reasonably dressy.

The party is on Niles Road in that house that looks like a mausoleum. We enter in the gravel courtyard where white sangria (and water and white wine) is offered with Mexican-style apps while we meet and greet friends and discuss the various interpretations of 'festive' dress and listen to a violin and accordion player make music. A couple of people offer advice on Dad's back problems. One friend who I knew had lost a wife before we knew him said she died during back surgery and that he had accupuncture when his back acted up and it worked. His new wife's sister practices it.

We hear a few words and go inside. FFP and I are surprised that there is a sit down dinner. A piano player joins the player. The music continues. We have a nice table. A woman I didn't know well talks about nursing (she was a nurse, I think, before she married someone wealthy) and then during a discussion of relationships says that she has been widowed nineteen years, that her husband died in a kayak accident.

At the table, FFP is talking about someone he has written about who is the daughter of someone whose ex-husband went to school with him. "Forrest knows everybody," says someone.

After dinner we hear speeches about Ballet Austin and their work and hear about the foundation's endowment opportunities. The house is a good deal warmer inside than out. I've been here before when the couple who owns it wasn't divorced and they gave a party for the GM of The Four Seasons here who was moving away. It was built with Dell money. Sometimes I think of that day in the 1980's when we met Michael in his condo. Yeah, maybe FFP should have gone to work there when the company fired his firm. Maybe we should have bought stock all along. But I never look back at that stuff. But I do marvel at what has come from that beginning...Michael surrounded by gray market IBM PC's and trying to get some little tiny ads run in computer rags.

We go home. I am so tired for some reason. I'm asleep a little after ten with the intention of rising early.