Austin, TEXAS, December 3, 2005 — We woke up and both of us were out of bed at least once. FFP fed the dog, let her out. I just went to the toilet. Then we went back to bed and I slept until after eight. I got up and dressed for the gym. I had three cups of coffee while sending off a long e-mail to my friend Mags in South Africa and an e-mail to some Ball relatives who have email about the family calendar. I caught up the journal and prepared for putting a new month into my budget spreadsheets. (I know...it might be easier with Quicken or Money or something but I've got this system and it works pretty well and so I'm leaving it alone.)

I felt real happy. I don't know why. Because

I'd gotten the family calendar out of the way? Because I had committed to doing the budget thing even if I hadn't reall done anything but made a few notes from the checkbook and stacked up a few receipts? Because I'd had so much coffee? I had a little twinge of sadness over an elderly dog in South Africa who had to be put down according to an e-mail I received. But with dog friends you are always more prepared for the inevitable. Is that because we euthanize them when they are suffering? Or because their lifespans are so much shorter than ours? Anyway, I'd already acknowledged the facts on the dog's health and felt sad for her when I took this picture.

R.I.P Duffy

After 11:30, I headed out to go to the post office and then to the gym. FFP had already been to the club and was getting ready to 'tune in his eyeballs' for the big UT game. I figured there would be no better time to go to the post office and gym than while UT was playing in the Big 12 Championship!

The post office wasn't busy. I could have stood in line to get my large envelopes containing calendars mailed. I think there were two people in line. But I used the thing where you swipe your credit card and weight your stuff and get stickers for postage yourself.

I decided to wander through Tarrytown Pharmacy (next door to the post office I'd gone to) after I got my mailing done. It was deserted pretty much. The football game was playing over the store speakers rather than Muzak. They have a bunch of overpriced gift items at this local spot and I thought they might have something for my mother-in-law. I ended up buying a book of Austin 'then and now' pictures for my in-laws and one of Texas tales for my dad and a refrigerator (magnet-attached) memo pad for my mother-in-law with bluebonnets on it. No bargains but just so easy to shop and pay. I have to have some gifts to wrap up for the old folks. I finally wandered over to the club. I was surprised to see a multi-generation, multi-gender basketball game going on. I thought everyone would be watching TV. Inside the gym I was soon left alone. Me and a young lady manning the front desk. Jazzy Christmas music was playing over the speakers. Four TVs playing three football games and Fox News. I did fifty minutes on the bike, finishing up an article from last week's The New York Times Magazine about tsunami survivors. (Most of them believe Allah chose them because they were a decadent society, not as decadent as others but a society that more is required of so, you know, chosen. You can twist these religious ideas to fit anything. Their tenets also say that the moment of your death is pre-ordained but you can choose to be good or bad up to that time.) I read a little bit from other newspaper sections and read a few pages of an iUniverse-published novel by my friend SuRu's niece. I didn't listen to the UT game but I could watch it. It was quite one-sided.

Since nobody else was in the club (really, nobody but the girl over at the desk), I arranged a mat and some equipment in front of the TVs and did some lunges and balanced leg lifts and sit-ups and stuff. As I finished up and half time was coming up a guy came in with his iPod to sit on a bike and watch the game. I did a set of stuff for the triceps and a set for the lats and went home. I mean really...if I can't have the place to myself!

I needed to work on the budget. But first I ate some lunch, read a little paper, watched a little of the game. Then just as I was about to settle down and do the budget, the mail came.

After Chalow announced the mailman, we sorted the mail.

I had a Christmas card from a cousin's kid on my mother's side of the family. A branch of the family that I don't really communicate much with. Especially this guy's dad (my first cousin) and his kids. I gave these kids lots of things when they were little. I was Santa Claus to them more than once, actually paying for bikes and wagons and other toys. But I've been cool to them since my cousin and his wife borrowed $2000 from my parents and then acted like it didn't need to be repaid. Ever. There is an issue of honesty and integrity. You want to hear "we are trying to pay it back" even if it's a lie. You figure that you cut that kind of behavior off by just walking away. At least they won't get in your pocketbook again. And this was worse than my pocketbook, it was my parents; money. And I'd encouraged them to help them. Nothing I could do would really forgive it. My sister tried. She said "all is forgiven." But you can't forgive debts that aren't owed to you. My sister has taken a lot from my parents. Sometimes she acted like it was 'borrowing.' They forgave her. That's OK.

All people have to do is try to pay the money back. Five bucks a week since this happened would have handled it. No interest required. Show good faith. So I open up this card and this kid (I say kid but he is 40!) has written inside, after the usual stuff, "P.S. Keep up the journal— a great read."

Now, I no longer remember which kid this guy's parents borrowed the money for. (And later claimed it was the son's, not their, responsibility to repay; conveniently, he could say 'huh?') I actually don't think it was the guy sending this card, but his brother. But now I realize that this man is, perhaps, reading the journal. That he will see that we don't ignore all our relatives. I didn't send him a card or send one to anyone in that family. I didn't make calendars for them. I had an e-mail the other day from this guy's sister. It was addressed to my dad or my mom's old e-mail (more likely) but, of course, I actually receive those. It was full of her woes. Fortunately she's a believer and says "God is in control and I can fully rely on him." That's good. Because that family took their best shot at getting help from me or my dad and got their $2000 but that's the end of it. Oh, I'm not saying I would never, ever help anyone in this branch of family. But it's unlikely. My mother might but she is gone. My dad had enough, too, with this incident. They aren't his relatives, but my mother's. And my mom's brother, from which this branch of family springs, did things that didn't please my dad while my grandparents on that side were alive. Suffice to say that my father took care of his in-laws like a loyal son, but their son did not, in his opinion.

The point is, though, that I have a journal. People I don't bother with, related or not, can read what I have to say. If I drop you [not you, it's rhetorical] you can still track my every move. If you drop me (like the person described here), nobody stops you from reading this. And, on occasion, finding yourself written about. It's an experience everyone has who writes out in the open here in cyberspace. (Or in published material for that matter.) One can use a password, of course, so that they create a circle of people they allow to read all (or part) of their journal. But, hey, I don't want to go to the trouble of managing passwords and IDs. I once experimented with it and actually issued the things but I didn't go through with it. And besides if I protected the whole thing (which I experimented with once, long ago) then I couldn't participate in my friend Jette's Holidailies Portal.

[Ed. Note: I just realized something...one reason you like writing your journal online, or, rather, as HTML, is that you can link off to the many tangents in your brain.]

My thoughts about my mother's family provides a twinge of guilt that I don't send them calendars. Maybe not so much this family that I've given the cold shoulder to, but even my Mom's younger sister and her family. People I'm not estranged from but nevertheless rarely see. I sent them Christmas cards, of course. This makes me reorganize the calendar data so there's a version for that side of the family, just in case I feel like doing anything about it.

And this whole line of thought made me realize that I take all this too seriously and no one else cares much one way or the other. FFP's extended family is much less close. In fact, if we didn't hire some of his cousins to do things, we would only see them at funerals. (Many of them are local and show up for funerals quite, if you will pardon the expression, religiously.)

And the fact that no one really cares about any of this, made me happy all by itself. I know I'm petty and self-centered. And I live in this great country where no one can stop me. Like I said...I was unreasonably happy today. And I figure that getting communications from this family when they probably know I snub them on purpose is not evidence that they want to be family. It's more likely evidence that they want to re-establish a possible gravy train. A source of low-interest, possibly free, money. That's crass, but there it is. Actually, they probably are not thinking that way. They are probably not that crass. But they must know that my dad and I think that way.

I left the football humming on my office TV and fiddled with the credit card statements online and receipts and the budget. I took my time looking through the credit card bills and receipts. Looking at all the things I spend money on that eclipse that unpaid debt I can't forgive (including, to be fair to me, as I always like to do, a lot of charity and gifts). I actually enjoy looking at this stuff once I get started.

I was fooling around with all these credit card statements, scribbled pieces of paper and receipts when suddenly I realized I'd finished the job. That made me euphoric, of course. First because I'd entered all this stuff and finished something. And second because we weren't over our budget for the month according to my admittedly rough calculations. Oh, later I saw I left something out and included some things that belonged in December but it is close enough for our purposes. I was unreasonably happy and I saw no reason to do an largely unnecessary job perfectly.

Yes. I was unreasonably happy today. Of course, I have many reasons to be happy. Good health. (I felt great after my workout.) Good friends and family. (The ones that I choose to associate with and who haven't dropped me!) Plenty of money. Retirement. So maybe I was reasonably happy. It just doesn't always happen that way. You have reasons (many) to be happy, but you don't collect on them. I am usually unreasonably unhappy! Not today, though. Even thinking about the character flaw that makes me unable to forgive some relatives, cannot bring me down today.

About the time I finished up with the budget, I realized it was time to get ready for the evening, for the parties we'd been invited to.

We headed up into the wilds of Westlake Hills (the trip that begins by going over the low water bridge, up the hill and right at the four-way stop). We looked in the dark that is 6:30 these days, for a street we'd been to several times. We made a wrong cue or two but eventually got there, avoiding collisions with deer. We parked and walked along looking for a house that was near to the one that we'd been to before. The neighbors were having a 60th Birthday party for our friend. We saw a house but couldn't spy a number. The door was open.

"It smells like a party," said FFP, walking ahead.

We spied a poster inside the door that indicated it was the right place. "How does a party smell?" I asked.

"You smell it. It smells like catering." He was right.

We walked in. We didn't see anyone in the first couple of rooms. We saw catering staff in the kitchen. We heard voices and kept going down steps and found some guests who had arrived before us. We knew a couple, got some introductions to others. We got drinks, then food. We wandered around the pool taking in the view of downtown and back at the modern house with bold paint in the rooms. More people arrived. We found more people to talk to, new people to meet. Time flew by. We even saw the birthday boy. We met people who'd come from all over the country to come to the party. We met the decorator for the house we were in. We discussed the use of Deco with Modern. We took a tour of the house on our own. All the way up to a top deck, accessible by a spiral staircase where the view was awesome. After we made our way back down, there was cake. Two cakes. One looked like a pyramid. The owners of Sweetish Hill were apparently responsible for the cake since they were there fussing over them. We ate the cake (small pieces of each were passed around) and it was wonderful.

Finally we decided that if we were going to get to the second party we'd have to leave. We got back across Balcones Fault without hitting a deer which is always good although we did see a critter we couldn't identify scurry across the road and some deer lounging in the ditch. We went over to a neighborhood north of campus and our fairly staid friends had a tent in the front yard with a bank and dance floor. In fact our staid lawyer friend was fronting the band on keyboards and singing. The party was winding down. I had some club soda, we danced until the band stopped and we visited with the hosts and friends. We talked about the other party we'd been to and other people were talking about parties they'd been to before. We talked with some friends who live in this magnificant home overlooking Lake Austin about how we only lived in a fraction of our space. Not surprising for them, I guess, but it shocks me sometimes.

I was fading, but still unreasonably happy. These parties were fun and different. FFP had scored some ballet PR, we'd caught up with the doings of friends. I enjoyed giving a party last year. But I'm secretly glad I'm not this year. Although I may trot out the decorations and have a few people over here and there for drinks and chats. But that's dangerous because last year's party grew out of having a couple of guys who live down the street over for a drink! Soon, I was giving a full-blown party with all kinds of drink and food and decoration for fifty people. Don't go there.

We drove home (not far from this party) and I actually read a bit of the latestThe New Yorker and a section of yesterday's newspaper. Then, sleep.