AUSTIN, Texas, June 3, 2005 — I always seem to be preparing. When do I do something?

Fiddling with preparing. Looking up hotels for trips without actually booking them. Planning events with friends. Helping FFP with his newsletters or columns. Talking about doing stuff outside. The morning was thus frittered away, accompanied by coffee and an overripe banana.

Finally I decide to go to the club and sweat. Just ride the exercise bicycle, read. So noon finds me sweating, reading a week old section from The New York Times about the Chrysler Building which is having its seventy-five birthday.

I actually stay on the bike an hour and then reduce the resistance and slowly pedal while my pulse recedes from 145. I didn't get much newspaper read. The four TV screens arrayed over the stormy-looking Lake Austin showed a soap opera, a news show (a security video of an abduction played over and over), a redecorating show doing an elaborate game room and, the real distraction, French Open. Federer and Nadal. The latter looking for all the world like a young version of Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean. What an intense match. In spite of my long ride it is still going when I leave. A group of swim club kids and Moms and little wading pool kids hover around the pool, removed due to a lightning scare.

I go home. Eat salad and some turkey pesto sausage. Shower. Watch some more of the great tennis match on the red dirt.

The maid comes. Good thing or I'd be scrambling to clean even more tomorrow before people come to the backyard party. (Yeah, they will come inside no doubt in spite assurances that they probably will not. Can't have it looking back. They have to mess it up.)

Dad comes. We retreat to my office. I put all his physical therapy appointments on the calendar. He went by himself for the first time today. He says some relatives may visit him Sunday. I consult my calendar and tell him we have an event starting at six o'clock. "If they come enough before that, I'll come over and see them." I have a cousin's daughter who lives at Lake Buchanan and her mother (my cousin) and sister are coming to see her. They don't really keep up with me that much. They call Dad occasionally or maybe he calls them. I do get the baby and wedding annoucements. People never skimp on that no matter if they won't answer an e-mail for months.

We go early for his appointment to get the thyroid uptake test. It takes a while. I read some old newspapers. He comes out and has to wait for it to be read. The pills he took yesterday where radioactive or something and would be absorbed by the thyroid and visible on the scan? Finally a woman comes out and says that he needs to come back for an ultrasound. We make an appointment for Monday.

"They found a test you hadn't had," I joke. We schedule it around his PT and my social event. Later I'll joke with him: "I thought ultrasounds were for pregnant women." He will pat his gut (where he still has weight in spite of a weight loss that seems to have been mostly his muscles) and say "maybe they'll get rid of this." Sense of humor is intact.

It is rush hour when we get back to my house. Too nerve-wracking for him to drive home. I make him a small cup of coffee, a pimento cheese sandwich and a salad. We watch the news on TV. I read some of the day's papers. There are lots of things I should be doing. FFP makes some fish stew. (We don't know if the fish ban after taking the pills continues after the test but Dad liked the sandwich anyway.) I eat some of the stew. Dad heads home around seven.

I have many things to do before the party. But I just watch the softball championships and sort through old books and newspapers. There is always tomorrow. I'll dedicate my whole day to just tidying up. Getting ready to have people have a party here that I really have no control over. Which is good and bad. I'll be ready. Then the organizers or the guests will throw me a curve. Or the weather. Always preparing. Never doing. Sleep now.