Monday, December 23, 1991

I count the days off.  One, two, three, four.  Yesterday marked the halfway point of my Christmas vacation.  I wonder if there is anything I can do to put on the brakes, make the minutes pass like hours?

By early afternoon, I wonder if I would have been better off working.  Except for an hour watching Perry Mason, I'm on my feet doing chores or keeping up with the boys.  Oh, and of course there is much taping of old tunes, an effort, actually, to reduce the size of my record collection.  At 3, I'm more than ready for a martini, which puts me in a fine mood for making a spaghetti dinner.  Andy has a haircut appointment with Pat at 4:30 and that's the time we arrive.  Andy is a well-behaved customer, and Eddie's a little angel sitting on my lap.  JoAnna's home when we get back.  It's another evening of TV, read.

September 25, 1991

After a couple of hours on the telephone, mostly dealing with the problem of rescheduling the next LINK meeting, I go to the dentist for the first time in more than two years.  I am amazed to learn that it's been that long.  I felt a need to avoid Brad after his repeated offers to join the Optimists.

On the way home to get my hair cut, I stop at home to relieve myself.

At the library, I have a follow-up conversation with Julie Brunnette over the phone.  Now I feel better.

I pick up Andy at daycare, and once we get home, get into some chores.

July 23, 1991

I'm up early and leave the house by 7:30, stopping at the library to see if there's anything of interest on my desk.  It does seem that the library is in unusual disarray.  Monday must have been a killer circ day.

I eat breakfast -- French toast, no appetite for eggs and potatoes -- at Olde Town Inn, then get my hair cut.  I spend the rest of the morning doing yard work:  trimming the shrubs and mulching a weedy area under the forsythia.  After feeding Eddie lunch, I spend nearly two hours on the bedroom floor with him, oftentimes content to watch him interact with anything he comes in contact with.  He's so animated and alert.

Once he takes a nap, I think about taking a bike ride, but only get as far as washing the bike.  When Eddie wakes up, we play on the hammock until JoAnna and Andy return home.  We go to Nautigal for supper, then after dropping off, the Club for volleyball, my first team appearance.  I play terribly but then so does everyone else on the team.  Self-fulfilling prophecy?  Where is my reserve of self-esteem?

February 26, 1991

Instead of leaving the house early, I decide that exercising is more important than a thorough review of my lecture.  The result:  the rockiest session to date.  A few times I feel as though I'm performing without a net.  I may have even been incoherent for the briefest of times.  The mouth was running and the brain was racing to keep up.  I do admit that session 4 is my least favorite lecture and one that will be completely revamped between now and 1993.  At least from this point I nowhere to go but up.

I stop at Madison Public to photocopy some pages from the U.S. Code.  Great machines they have there.  One accepts only nickels and produces almost illegible copies.  Another accepts dimes, but the change machines spits out only quarters and nickels.

During the afternoon before going to the library, I respond to my wife's nagging by getting a haircut and a physical.

Free Haircut in Middleton

I swear this guy looks familiar.

Another surprise visit from Eddie. He stopped by the house just as I was getting ready to run a few errands – groceries for supper, primarily. (I’d grown tired of leftover turkey loaf and beef stew, the entrees I prepared for JoAnna and me on Monday and Tuesday.)

“What brings you home?” I asked, pleased to have him interrupt my solitary day.

“Haircut,” he said, pointing to his head.

I thought he looked a few weeks away from one, but Eddie does like to keep his hair cropped short.

“Where are the clippers?” he asked.

“In the cabinet above the dryer,” I said.

When he packed to move into his dorm two weeks ago, I suggested that he bring them along, but he chose to leave them at home.

He also grabbed a chair and placed it on the driveway just beyond the open garage door. I rounded up an extension cord.

“Which attached should I use?” I asked.

“Didn’t you use the ‘4’ last time?”

“I thought it was the ‘5’. You don’t want to look like your junior year picture.”

During a football camp that kicked off the practice schedule, Eddie volunteered, or so he has always claimed, to have his hair cut Mohawk-style. He didn’t like the results and ended up with a shaved head.

He insisted on the ‘4’ attachment, so I went to work. As I glided the clippers around the contours of his head, I was surprised by how much hair fell to the driveway. Eddie’s thick mane is courtesy of the Richard side of the family. Andy was blessed (cursed?) with the thin, wispy, and oftentimes disappearing Nelson hair.

Once I’d finished the haircut to Eddie’s precise specifications – he’s particularly fussy about the stray hairs along the back of his neck – he inspected the refrigerator and heated up a bowl of beef stew.

“It’s good,” he commented, “but it could be a little bit thicker.”

I feigned indignation at this critique, but actually I had thought the same thing after the first spoonful.

At the end of his two-hour visit, I gave Eddie a ride back to his dorm, which is located in an area of the campus that has lot of open space, plus tennis courts and at least one set-up for sand volleyball. As it was a perfect September day, the area was alive with activity. It made me recall the excitement I always felt at the start of each of my years at Buffalo. And for a brief moment, I even wanted to go back in time. But then I’d have to live the last 40 years of my life all over again. I’m very happy being where I am!