Today for a period of time I was wearing two belts. A black one and a brown one.

Not only am I a dork, I’m a senile dork.

Note, this post is as you see a month old. I unknowingly had it set to private until 10/4

We’ve had children living with us for twenty one years. Until today. Yesterday we moved Quinn into her dorm at the U of M. Along with 5000 other freshmen. She’s starting an exciting new phase of life and so are we. It’s a strange feeling to wake up and not have any children in the house, with really no prospect of any for a couple of months. And then only temporarily. Kind of scary. Will Becky and I be able to tolerate each other without the mutual project of raising children to hold us together? Will I use the free time in anything close to productive fashion. And will we figure out a way to retire before we’re too old to enjoy it much. Not likely with the loans we’re piling up for college.

In the mean time our aging cat seems to be having aging cat problems. Like forgetting where to pee. My wife is now wrestling a carpet cleaner around the family room trying to get to the point where we could actually invite people over to our house without them turning us in to county public health. That’s correct, I’m sitting here blithely typing away while she cleans the carpet. It’s a well established social convention in this country that any excrement inside the house and outside the plumbing was in the bailiwick of the wife. And so it should be. I did my time shoveling dog shit after the snow melt.

Is any odor more pervasive than cat pee. Or nasal burningly disgusting. Houses that smell like cat pee cross all socioeconomic strata, consider the women in Grey’s Garden, an aunt and a cousin of Jackie O. who let their beautiful seaside house in the Hamptons turn into one of those cat infested garbage houses that pop up everywhere from time to time. I’m sure that when visitors come to your house when it reeks of cat pee, they think that you are teetering on that slippery slope. “I think maybe the Keller’s have gone a little nuts since the girls left. We should be sure to check in on them once in awhile.”

Los Lobos were, of course, great. For their encore, they filled the stage with dancing women from the crowd. You could barely see the band.

This morning we’re going to a sixtieth birthday brunch for a college friend. I’m old.

I just finished reading Everyman by Phillip Roth. I don’t recommend it to anyone my age. Depressing.

Tonight we’re seeing Los Lobos at the Zoo. Should be a great show.

…that some people cannot stand the fact that I am able to navigate through life soley on the basis of my good looks and charm?

We’re taking Lucia down to Ames today. She’s moving into an off campus appartment with three Landscape Arcthitecture students. Them in two weeks we deliver Quinn to the University of Minnesota and we will be alone in the house together. For years I’ve joked about how glad I’ll be to get them both out of the house, but faced with the reality of the situation, I’m starting to feel a little anxiety. I know I’m going to miss them a lot. They’ve grown up to be such vibrant young women.

When I look at my “Footprints” I keep seeing what seems like someone from Ukraine googles something that connects them to my guestbook. Is it the same person? Or is there something in my guestbook that just happens to be hot in the former Soviet Union. Is there a way to find out what the search terms are for these google references?

This morning I put my underwear on backwards.