AUSTIN, Texas, May 14, 2005 — I have a lot of trouble getting up this morning and then I have trouble deciding what to do. I really need a haircut. I had time to take Dad to the barber but I didn't get a cut. (Jane the barber cuts my hair, too.) I would like to get a workout. I need to do some chores. I flail around a little on the workout angle, dressing for it. But then I think I really need to get that haircut. Jane only takes appointments on Friday and you can hardly ever get one. You mostly have to go wait in line. I undress and shower and wash my hair. She's already open because I slept too late. When she

opens at nine there is already a line. She used to let you call to get in line but no more. Still you can go up there and get in line and then leave to do stuff. It isn't far. When I walk in my Dad's picture is on her computer, a slide show screensaver of her customers. She estimates I'll be in line an hour. I go buy gas and go home and work on the journal for a bit. I send three e-mails. Two to warn relatives of packages I sent and chat to them. One to tell a mother I wouldn't attend a high school graduation party in Dallas.

It seems we are inundated with spring rituals this year. Oh, it isn't all that many. One of my cousins has a kid graduating high school, one college. We received a graduation announcement for a kid I haven't seen in a good eight years. Don't think I've had so much as a Christmas card from the parents in five. Tossed that one. Sent small checks to the graduating relatives, although a smaller one to the college graduate. Don't recall seeing the kid in a decade. Saw Mom and Dad a year or two ago, though. Consider myself close to my aunt, the grandmother. One of my cousins has a daughter getting married. Sent a gift using their wedding WEB page and online registrations. (Very discreet. Just a notice that you could RSVP using the WEB page. Naturally you can also find registration links.) Then we received a graduation announcement and party invite for the next door neighbors. Well, we have know them since before the parents married. Must find a cool gift for the kid. Discussed with the mother. Then we received an invitation from some people we haven't seen in years and years. They used to live across the street. When they had no children. Now one is graduating. They do send a card every holiday season, I think. They are sweet people. Maybe a small check? Some people send pictures with the invites now. This kid I haven't seen in years or maybe ever except in family holiday letters looks a bit like Harry Potter only blond. Given his parents he is probably a bit of a nerd. His parents were geologists who lost their oil company jobs in the eighties and came to Austin to start on a different tack with their careers.

We will go to none of the graduation ceremonies, of course. The Austin ones are in Frank Erwin Center. I am planning to go to the wedding. I'm close to the bride. The groom has been her boyfriend so long I consider him family as well. Forrest and Dad have agreed to go to it although they are less sanguine about attending a wedding. I admit they aren't my favorite thing to do.

I go back to the barber in time to see the guy ahead of me finish up. A discussion of computer problems, viruses and hard disk failures, ensues. I get my cut and go back home.

I could go work out but FFP is planting things, doing yard work. I decide to pitch in. But first I go strip the bed, put on clean sheets, put the old ones in the wash. Then I put on heavy socks and old hiking boots and put on an old long-sleeved shirt over my T-Shirt. I find the rubberized gloves. FFP is off to the garden store for more plants.

First I pull weeds in the freshly-dressed cypress mulch path. They sure come up fast. I suppose new ground cloth is probably in order one of these days. Then I tackle grass and weeds in an area that is gravel and stepping stones. I get some of the St. Augustine to come up as clumps of sod and transfer them to an area that needs grass. Then I tackle cutting down and cutting up bamboo. Our neighbors have a bamboo stand they never even look at. Half of their lot is just living and dead bamboo and other volunteer stuff. A tree with a diameter of at least eight inches grows surrounded by an old wash tub which clearly had the bottom rusted through decades ago. They could make a nice yard down to the creek but they don't. I'm sure they consider themselves environmentalists. That damn bamboo is always coming over trying to take over our yard.

When I'm done with this, I take a look at the furniture. The wrought iron stuff needs a good cleaning. A tile bench that never was meant to weather is collapsing. A victim of the fallen pergola. We had no 'out of weather' place to put it. I worry someone will sit on it. I press on the front edge of the seat and it collapses. That settles that. We will have it hauled off. Some of the tiles are really interesting fragments. But I'm not into using them. FFP leaves a message for our yard guys to haul it. The vinyl loungers need a good cleaning. Note to self to do this before the opera uses the yard as a venue. Also note to self to find the throw pillows we use in the yard when having a party. (The party planners will be renting chairs, of course.) The teak needs a good oiling. It is weathered and sort of green from vegetation but teak is sturdy. I go inside and find half a bottle of Natural Solution wood treatment and some old T-Shirts. I manage to put a coat into one half of the intricate Indian-looking large bench. I tell Forrest I'll need two or three bottles to finish the job and do the four modern-looking chairs and foot stool. In this shady area, FFP is planting an exotic fern he got at Gardens. He's good at picking plants and arranging them. The labor is all I'm capable of.

I've been at it three hours. I do some pick up and storage of tools and supplies and go inside. I didn't get a workout today but all the bending and stretching and hauling sure stretched my strength. If I hadn't been working out, this would have made me sore tomorrow. As it is, the work and the two Advil I took have worked out the kinks from my workout yesterday. I haven't been keeping up with my exercise enough not to get sore from time to time when I do weight stuff.

We shower and snack and sit around relaxing until time to get ready for a fundraiser for Aids Services Austin. I believe it was billed as art, food, music, wine. We go down W. Fifth and find a parking place on Baylor and go to F8 Gallery. They've hung some new work since we visited last. Some paintings on paper by Bruce Tinch and some photos by Richard Griffin. FFP is intrigued by the former and the painter is present. We talk to him and FFP introduces him to other people. We see a lot of people we know. We meet a young gal about town who runs a WEB site of Austin happenings, Holly's Hot Happenings. We talk to friends, meet some new people, talk to the owner and the manager of the gallery. We have some great food (thanks Jeffrey's, Cafe Josie), some good wine. Our money goes to a good cause (Aids Services Austin) and we talk to several people who work there.

One of the new people we meet is Melanie Moore (who I kept thinking was Melody). She runs Badger Dog Literary Publishing. What a cool set of projects and an innovative way of following her dreams. Dang, I'm always meeting people who do what I dream and so much better! But we must remember that I am doing my art. And you are sitting right in the middle of it, for better or, more likely, worse.

We are about to say our goodbyes when a young friend arrives at the party. She has been a wait person at several restaurants we frequent. We greet her warmly. A statuesque older woman behind her says, "I'm her mother." We greet her, tell her the daughter's a sweet kid. I ask why they've come to this party.

"Because of the photographs." Then we realize that Richard Griffin's photos of a nude dancer are of this girl. We'd been looking at the photos as artistic nudes with interesting bronze finishes that accentuated the girl's dance moves and her lovely brown skin. We hadn't thought we might know the person. We go back around to look again, saying goodbye again to a number of friends.

Then it's home, a little bit of Saturday Night Live and bed.