an anniversary of sorts

I get up and dawdle. I have been retired four months! Seems momentous. FFP goes off to do an interview for West Austin News. I intend to go to the club. I'm sitting in the kitchen reading the paper (something I rarely do in the morning, oddly enough, since retired). The garage door opens. Seems too soon for FFP to be back. It's my dad. He had gone to the bank he's currently using in our neighborhood to make a deposit but they are, of course, closed since it's the MLK birthday (celebrated).

We talk, share a cup of coffee, he reads e-mail from his friends that I've printed, I read something from Sunday's paper. He seems at loose ends. He asks twice if I've worked out and I say I was going when he came and now I'm visiting with him. Then he says, "I'll go home and you go work out."

And I would have. FFP actually came home about five minutes after he pulled out. I get my stuff together and go upstairs to check on something 'on my way out.' It is 11.

FFP says, "Want to go to lunch somewhere?"

"I was going to work out. But I guess I could do it this afternoon. I don't have anything else to do."

"I was thinking of Mother's," he says. We haven't been there in ages. Minutes before they open we are sitting there, he and I, in front of Mother's Cafe on Duval, the long-standing natural food cafe. We gobble chips and good salsa and each have a plate of enchiladas. Mine have spinach and mushrooms. The sides are black beans and brown rice. We read our books.

I am very full and it is very warm. I tell FFP I think I'll go somewhere and sit on a patio drinking coffee until my food settles and I can work out. He says he'll go. We stop by the house and then head down to Mozart's. The lake looks funny with the birds hanging out over the mud revealed by lake lowering. The first table we try is abandoned when a bird poops on it, splashing a couple of drops on FFP's tie. (Yes, I have on sweats and he has on a white shirt and tie.)

We get a table with no branches above. The place is noisy with grackles squawking, a baby screaming. An Indian family of several generations, snaps pictures of each other. People use their laptops (free wireless Internet here) and take notes the old fashioned way with paper and pens and highlighters. Before we changed tables, I heard a man say "the subjective unquantifiable internal aspects" to a concerned-looking young woman. You gotta love Austin. Another young couple talks about wine. I think he is thinking of starting a business finding hard-to-locate wines. He says something about 'wine detective.' I could be wrong.

FFP writes on a yellow legal pad, framing his article from this morning's interview. I take some notes and read. Some young people gather at a nearby table, ebbing and flowing to get drinks. One gal, in a ball cap, says, "He owes me money right now." Then another gal apologizes for being late and this same gal says, "You now have forty-five minutes of my time."

FFP is ready to go. Me, too. My lunch is almost settled.

At home, I have an idea. I've been thinking of it for a while. I could walk to the club and then do my workout. It's such a nice day. It's only three miles. Well, a bit more actually. I tell FFP this plan. He doesn't seem as dubious as I thought he would.

I put some stuff in a backpack and head out. FFP plans to come to the club at 5:30 and he can pick me up. I leave the house at 2:35. I go Hancock and cross Mopac. (No exit there so less perilous.) I stop at Russell's coffee shop and get a bottle of water and go to the bathroom. I head up Balcones. There are hills up and down. There are no sidewalks. I keep having to switch back and forth to find some shoulder or someone's lawn to walk on. I startle one lady who is filling in some tire tracks in her lawn with soil. I emerge from around a bush and she is right there. Then we have a short cheerful discussion about the nice day and the destruction of her lawn. She seems to feel that she has to fix it now.

I walk and walk, dodging from side to side to avoid the SUVs. After an hour and a half, I'm at the club. I feel a little tired and sweaty. But I go to the gym and ride the exercise bike and read my book and then work over the upper body on some machines and weights. I go outside by the (still not open from repairs) pool and read a little. FFP comes. I go inside and ride the bike on a low level for a bit and read some more. (Paris to the Moon is a great book for you Francophiles.)

FFP and I go home and eat salads. Then I have a banana and a Clementine, some cheese and chips and the last of those blasted ginger lemon creme cookies. FFP has a scotch and water and I have a Jack Daniels and water. We have watched Who Wants to Win $64,000 and Go Home with dinner. We watch Boston Public. We watch part of a documentary on the 1974 Ali/Foreman fight in Zaire. We watch CSI Miami. (I prefer Las Vegas. I never thought I'd write that sentence.) We watch the news. I watch more TV now. But when we go out, I don't miss it. And I watch very little during the day. CNBC sometimes. Usually only when we need to invest a little money.

I feel tired. In that pleasant way like when you were a kid and you swam all afternoon and really got tired and then had an appetite for your mom's dinner for a change and then curled up and fell asleep with your parents giving that look that says 'we wore her out this time.' I go to bed and try to read and flip through movies, but soon I'm asleep.