The Visible Woman...January 5, 2001

I spent most of the work day preparing a presentation that, when the week begain, I didn't know I would have to give.

I had lunch at the parents' house again. Salad, sweet potato casserole, pork chops, green bean casserole. Then we walked to the end of the cul-de-sac and back to the house next door where we talked to a neighbor. Dad said, "I think there are only about twenty houses or so on our street." When we got back inside, I logged onto the Internet and looked at the taxpayer data base for Travis County. There were fourteen houses and three lots.

I got an e-mail from my cousin Larry, laughing over the talking scale, having heard it discussed at the aunts' house. Wow, it was always hard to buy for them. Then lived in a small 2-1 house, maybe six hundred square feet. So they didn't have room for too many knick-knacks. They kept a folder with letters and stuff from each niece or nephew. For a place to store it, they tucked it away in the truck of one of their cars. When they traveled, they'd bring it in and put in on a little screen porch. That same porch had a toy box, built around 1945 from my sister. For years and years through two generations of kids, it held a variety of toys. But buying for them was hard. They didn't have a clothes dryer and hung clothes on a line. One year I got them a laundry basket with legs that popped out of the bottom for use when hanging out clothes. I bought my Aunt Wynnie a compact 35MM camera to replace an old 110 cartridge one she had with a rubber band to hold it together. But I don't think she used it too much and, after she died unexpectedly after knee surgery, I got it back. I also got some Georg Jensen dessert spoons I'd gotten them in 1972 in Copenhagen. Yeah...they were really hard to buy for. But I wish they were still around so I could try.

FFP and I went to an outreach program of the ALO at a beautiful old (built in 1908 in Round Rock and moved) house in Hyde Park. Met a couple who also lived in the hood, a dermatologist and a telecommunications guy, who lived in the neighborhood and were really into wine. They'd provided wine for the party and told us about a neighborhood wine club.

We went to the Seasons after that and heard Rebecca do a few tunes. Gray Hawn was there saying she was going to go on an authentic trail ride on King Ranch land and take pictures and go somewhere else and take pictures of wild horses and was invited somewhere in Africa to take pictures and was writing a book called The Art of Romantic Photography.