Saturday. November 10, 2001

yeah, I'll never get paid to arrange flowers

memorabilia from a TV show, for sale on ebay, natch

"Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away."

"For What It's Worth" Buffalo Springfield, 1966

I wake up early enough and allow myself an Aloe Vera and some Advil and a trip to the bathroom. And I crawl back in bed. Late night. I fall asleep again, in quite a stupor apparently. I wake up and it's nearly nine and FFP is all dressed and I didn't know he left the bed.

But it's glorious. Because it's Saturday but I am also going to be on vacation next week. So, I can take things at a pace that is comfortable, doing things just how and when I please, not feeling rushed or panicky.

I decide to do the laundry. FFP usually handles it, but I am all about doing chores on my time off. So, I load up the washer and fold some sheets that FFP has already cleaned.

I wander across the street to a garage sale. My neighbor, Andy, is selling old Mac gear, working laptops with docking stations and working desktops for $35 and $80 (monochrome/color). He is showing people who look suscipious and clueless about these things. He isn't selling a lot, but some of the other sellers (it appears to be a multi-family affair) are moving stereos and stuff. All the kid's clothes and the out-grown toys are selling well.

Andy and I chat about digital video, WEB pages, hardware, software and selling things on ebay. The kids are selling lemonade and giant pickles. I wish that I'd gotten some of my cleaning done so that I could have given them some stuff to get rid of in the sale. Next time. By the end of next week, with all the cleaning I plan, I will have piles of stuff to get rid of. Right. I'll probably haul it to the thrift store to get it gone. Get it out of my life and out of my way. Or, maybe, I'll have LB's curbside mall, everything one price...free. If, in fact, I don't resort to the 'stuff it in the closet' instead of the real cleaning.

FFP comes over from our house and offers to go get tacos at La Victoria. Andy offers me a Krispy Kreme but I refuse. I finally toddle off to my own house after himself is back from our neighborhood Mexican bakery. I eat my chorizo and egg taco and get another cuppa. I change the wash and start the dishwasher. I'm all about housework. I tell FFP we should spiffy up the indoor plants. To cheer up for the winter and look good for the Thanksgiving fete. You don't have to ask FFP twice to buy plants and pot things. Only being frugal stops him. For me, the potting soil and bending and stooping and the not having a clue what to buy are inhibitors.

I stop to fiddle with my WEB page and, I admit it, surf a little. But I have lots of time. Don't I?

Must do chores. I keep up with the laundry, changing stuff washer to dryer, taking it inside and folding. I hook up the dishwasher. (Yes, we still have a portable dishwasher. I sometimes forget how backward we are.) I decide to clean out the coffee/spice/condiment/tea cabinet.

This cabinet, like the refrigerator, is one of those things you shouldn't put off. Midway through, being brutal with the tossing, I tell FFP (who has come home with lots of plants and some fresh flowers) that we need some of those 'extra garbage' things to attach to sacks next Friday. I feel certain that if I keep after the cleanup that the 'pay as you throw' container will be full. Soon.

Somewhere in there I help unload plants and volunteer to arrange the fresh ones. I initially think my arrangements awkard and stupid but then decide they look OK. Just 'OK' though. No one is going to pay me to do it for a living. Nope. I scatter plant stuff everywhere and have to stop and sweep that up, too.

FFP works out back, piping the Longhorns blowout on radio out there. I wonder if some friends of mine whom I haven't seen in a long while are in town for the Horns home game. I'd feel more self-righteous about them not calling to see about seeing us if we weren't going out tonight. Still, I wonder if they came to the game, how they are doing.

These household chores really never end, do they? I feel I've been quite busy with them and yet I haven't made a significant dent.

It is educational, though. Who knew that instant coffee could become a solid lump and then grow mold? And people often give you teas or spices as gifts so I think about people who gave me things. I wonder when we acquired a lifetime supply of those pink (not sugar) sweetener packs and why they were in a cut glass bowl with a silver rim. I also wonder if the chemicals ever go bad.

I decide to take a break from the obvious piles and work on our personal budget. So, yeah, I kind of knew that spending money having some fun in Florence at the end of my business trip, getting some more dental work and buying my mom some clothes would insure that the budget was blown. But the good news is that we are still saving lots of money. In fact, if you believed these figures, we could almost live without working. Depending on what our health insurance cost. Of course, Greenspan is going to lower interest rates to zero, making it great for banks, mediocre for hapless continual borrowers but impossible for those of us wishing to retire and use our funds' earnings to do so. If you don't have a pension, forget it. The ordinary soul will no longer be able to make money in fixed investments and will have to risk money in the stock market in a heart-stopping attempt to make retirement funds generate money for retirement without spending all the principal.

Perhaps, I'm being a little bitter and hysterical. But the description I heard of the effect of Greenspan's continual downward rate adjustments seems apt: pushing on a string.

A lot of people live off putting money into banks or other institutions to produce an income. They loan it to others. Banks are giving less and less. Sad. But these things cycle, don't they?

I pull my head out of the personal budgeting. (When my guests come for Thanksgiving they aren't going to know if I'm caught up with my computer work, are there?). I decide to go back to the obvious piles. Piles of stuff. My office has become a repository for recent magazines. They clutter the floor, the last available surface and the dog and I keep tripping over them. I decide that I will pare the piles in the other rooms and make room for the recent ones there. This is the 'start somewhere else' approach to cleaning. Sort of like cleaning out a closet to make room for the stuff cluttering the room. A time-consuming affair.

I do sack up a bunch of magazines for recycling. But I haven't really made a dent. And the floor of my office is still cluttered.

But...it's time to go out and hear Ann Hampton Callaway. Gayle, our bookkeeper, comes over. We pick up another gal in our neighborhood. We go to the Scottish Rite theater. I've never been there. It's a small theater with a balcony and they've set up tables. We are supposed to be at a table but there's a mix-up. So...I look around, see the empty balcony and suggest we sit there. Turns out to be a great place to sit.

Forrest is jazzed. He knows who this woman is, has bought her CDs, Rebecca has sung her praises. I'm pleased to go out for piano and tunes, cabaret and jazz. I like this stuff. Then I am blown away by how good she is. Great voice, writes some good lyrics, funny. She can also imitate Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. (Not to mention her mother the piano teacher and several jazz instruments.) She can scat. I'm not so impressed with the sitcom song. (The Nanny theme.) But everyone has to have some cash cows. No harm there. I have never seen one minute of this show, I don't think. And I don't really care either, I think all I need to know is that Ann wrote the theme song. It's important to know what you one day want to do and know and what you never care to. (I'm working on a feature about that, matter of fact.)

At the end of the show, Ann writes a song on the spot using phrases from the audience including Bombay Saphire Gin. (Also, enchilada, Mazola, Willie.)

After the show we go to Four Seasons. It's crowded with people basking in the drubbing that the Longhorns gave the Jayhawks, some in that hideous burnt orange color. We manage to grab one couch across from some of these folks. Two couples. The men are these rude, dominating types who act like they own the place. We ask to use a chair. "Yeah, you can have it. You can take it home." They say, when our pizza arrives, "No thanks, we don't want any." I smile at them politely and whisper to Gayle how I hate guys who make comments like that, appearing to be funny, but really shouting "I'm a white male and I'm better than everyone and it's all about me." Their wives become objects of pity in my eyes.

So, I'm glad when we run them off and Ann Hampton Callaway and some of her entourage can take the places. Rebecca's boyfriend Steve and our friend Amy join us.

Ann orders a martini. So I switch from wine. (Let's see...that makes a progression from a coke and a Shiner Bock at the show through a Franciscan cab onto a martini. Just one each, though. Just documenting in case there is a combo here that might be a sure headache to be avoided in the future.)

Ann sang some and Rebecca joined her a bit and then a fantastic local singer, Cody Ross, sang while Ann played. This whole event and a couple more performances next year are productions of Austin Cabaret Theater. An idea whose time has come, I hope. Cody will be performing in May.

Wow. These chicks can sing! FFP had a hand in planning this happy accident of voices coming together and closing Four Seasons bar. It didn't feel like 2AM. Hey, maybe that's a good song lyric. Songwriters, feel free to extract from today's Just Typing feature and build a lyric and make a song we can remember fifty years from now. As always, no copyrights anywhere on this page except as decoration. Yeah, I know. Hey, I'm keeping my day job.

 ©©©©

Who says I'm 53? Out two nights past two, baby. I take the Aloe and Advil and a big drink of water before I go to bed. I'm not stupid.

P.S. Did you notice that I didn't recount everything I ate today? Huh, huh? Yeah, the taco. And that mention of the pizza. (Two slices, sun-dried tomatoes, smoked chicken, goat cheese.) I told you everything I drank while we were out. (Coke, Shiner, Cab, Martini. Three olives.) But I didn't mention the plate of nachos, the salmon cake or the liter of Weisen beer I had at home. Or the bites of oatmeal cookie at the show. Or the sugared pecans or spicy crunchy snacks I had at Four Seasons. Aren't you glad that today, for once, you weren't subjected to my entirely awful diet in its every morsel? When I'm 103, the researchers are going to find this and be amazed. But didn't have to read it. Because surely you didn't make it this far.

Meta:
All caught up. The only thing imperiling posting is lots of chores to prepare for the Thanksgiving feast and relatives visiting.

JUJUST TYPING
It didn't feel like 2 AM.
Voices scatting.
Up and down my spine.
Sending me back, back in time.
It didn't feel like last call.
It wasn't 2 AM.
It was everybody, one and all.
Feeling the music.
Feeling its time.
Forgetting everything that had gone on.
Except for the song.