So little time, so much stuff

Post Thanksgiving. So much going on. Weeks hurtle past like minutes, while minutes only show up once or twice a day, usually on the front of the microwave. Seconds are only myths. Hours are things that I try to sleep as many of as possible.

Weeks are things that take the place of days in the old reckoning. The weekly Jessel things fly past like telephone poles on a road trip. Rain happens, then the next thing I know it's beautiful and clear and the only sign that rain happened is telltale puddles on the ground. Was that rain last night, or last week? Or was that another, different rain? Who can tell? Who can remember?

I've splurged on two (Count 'em, two!) trips to Yoshi's (an Oakland jazz club) in the last few weeks, a place I hadn't been in probably a decade. Such fun. Live music, world class musicians, not earsplitting, nice people. Such fun. Tuck and Patti last night. Rhiannan a few weeks back. Both times with Mary Jenson, my music partner. Last night her husband Scott and my best and only girl Bonnie went along. Good food, confused service, and a psychotic GPS travel system. Following the mechanical lady in the dashboard, we were steered away from any freeway home, and shunted onto a local artery. When I saw that it had planned for us to go 18 miles on San Pablo Avenue I knew it was time to rely on our own selves.

The trust business creeps along. The household of my folks, 50+ years of accumulated material objects, is now being appraised. Some of the trust has been distributed, a smattering, really, but enough to give me something to run on. My accountant (I never thought I'd need an accountant, but, there she is) says it won't be finished until she has the tax stuff to complete my mom's 2005 tax, and the tax stuff won't arrive until the end of January 2006, so there are still months of fun ahead.

I actually got a real live art commission from the Sharpsteen Museum Auxillary. One of the original ladies in the Auxillary is moving to the east coast, and I've painted the museum as a going away present. Let me see if there's a picture of it somewhere...ah, here it is...
I'll give it to Bobbie at the going away party this Wednesday. I've known her for a long time. She got involved with the Museum not too long after I did, which was, yes, 30 years ago. Hard to believe. So many of those years are only faint memories, like weeks from last year, or days from last month.

Journey through the past

I've been consumed the past couple of weeks by the unexpected and not unfrightening task of going through my folks' house, pulling out everything in it, and segregating it from all my stuff that I've spent the last few months moving into it.

This has been a daunting task.

Bonnie has been invaluable. I've often found myself unable to focus, wandering around the house like a zombie. By gently prodding and pulling, she has been able to keep me going. This is the same house I lived in for 30 years before moving out. Nearly everything my parents acquired in their 58 years there is still there. I spent the last two days dragging everything out of the attic, which I used to play in, but which I hadn't been in for probably 40 years.

Delightfully, some toys turned up which I remember barely, if at all. Here are a few of them.



Here we have, right to left, Katy Kackler, Buzzy Bee (I think), Teddy Zilo, and Merry Mutt. These are from the late 40s and early 50s. When rolled along the ground, Katy flaps her wings and clucks. Teddy actually plays his xylophone. Merry Mutt would also, but, alas, his parts are not quite up to it.

There is so much stuff of this vintage that I feel like I'm in a time machine.

There are a whole stack of "Hit Parade" magazines from the 40s that my mom must have memorized, filled with the hit songs of the day (along with quite a few no one has ever heard from since.) And there are many Popular Science and Popular Mechanics magazines from the mid 40s to 50s which my dad must have gotten after he got out of the army. I read them from the late 50s on, but never knew that my dad had gotten them earlier. We always had them around the house, but I never saw him reading them.