Moving ain't easy

I used to love to move. Maybe it's because I moved so much I was forced to love it. A year here, a semester there. We spent two years in our most recent place, the longest I've lived in the same place outside my parents' home. That little old apartment was also the most dynamic of the places I've lived.

As the Pregnant One, I got off the hook when we moved in two years ago, letting my uncles and cousins trek up and down those stairs carrying heavy boxes. A few months after we moved it, the apartment served as the home we welcomed Julian into, the one where he'd eventually learn to walk and sleep in his own room. A television crew and two stylish celebrities also blitzed through that house, ridding of our lives more than just holey jeans and stretched-out shirts. I learned how to tip-toe down those stairs in shiny new shoes, and then I quickly figured out how to haul back up them -- still in the heels remember -- with bags full of new cookbooks, food magazines and product samples to try out.

We knew we'd need a yard and more space when Julian entered toddlerhood, which didn't exactly coincide with our lease expiring, but we made do for the months in between.

When it was time to find a new home, we looked for weeks and nothing stuck, until we happened upon a nice duplex with a big yard and a kind landlord just 200 yards from our apartment.

We signed the lease and started moving in the same day. Well, Ian started moving. Thanksgiving week happens to be one of the busiest for any food writer, so I couldn't do much until Wednesday, which is also when my parents arrived to help. By Wednesday night, I still wasn't doing much moving because I was bowing to the porcelain gods after a bad something or other at work. Triste, ineed.

By Thanksgiving morning, I was feeling better, and the family had most of the important stuff moved. We had dinner at Uncle Tom's house, but I wasn't that into it, either because of the menu or my weakened appetite, I'm still not sure. We decided we'd spend our first night in the new house on Thanksgiving, even though said kind landlord hadn't had the gas turned on, so we were without heat, a stove or a water heater. Mega triste, I know.

Thanks to a big fireplace, lots of wood from Uncle Tom's and a house full of folks, we made it through the long holiday weekend just fine.

My parents took off Saturday night, just a few hours before another Missourian arrived. Scott, who has been in the process of moving to Austin since spring, will use us as a home base while he figures things out this week. With all the piddling to be done, Ian and I are grateful for the help with Julian and for keeping that fireplace going until we get the gas going on Tuesday.

On one of our final trips back to the old place, I scrubbed and scrubbed to get the crayon off the wall, with little success. Ian vacuumed, and Julian shrieked as he playfully ran from empty room to empty room.

I forgot how hard it is to adjust to completely new surroundings. I think about what it's like for the little guy, who now, in addition to having a whole new house to adjust to is also learning how to sleep for the first time in a bed, not a crib.

To be continued when I have time to add photos and update on the new house with gas and Internet...

Dreams of space travel and simple days

I'm enjoying a very nice cup of coffee in Hotel ZaZa, a hip, upscale place right in the middle of Herman Park and the Museum District in Houston, where my balcony overlook the Museum of Fine Art and many of the park's lush trees.

I'm playing hooky from the Association of Food Journalists conference, a four day affair with dozens of other newspaper and freelance food writers, restaurant critics and food editors (all very different positions, I assure you), to A) catch up on a wee bit of sleep and B) reminisce about the last time I was in Houston for a conference.

It was a whopping 15 years ago (which is whopping when it's more than half your lifetime), in 1993, for a Young Astronauts conference, a gathering of members of Young Astronaut chapters from across the U.S. We had a pretty strong YA chapter in Aurora, where science-minded students from all elementary school grades would meet after school with teachers and talk about the bernoulli principle and jet propulsion and conduct experiments that involved messy ingredients and homemade hovercrafts that used vacuums to move around the smelly cafeteria where we met.

All very fun for eager 10-year-olds, but not near as much fun as going to NASA and hoping you pushed a wrong button that launched you and your buddies into space.

My mom, who as a teacher was one of the Young Astronaut leaders, had planned to go to that year's YA conference, but although my brain, like most young brains, understood she was going, I didn't comprehend what that meant until the day or two before she left. Once it clicked that she was about to go on a majorly cool adventure, I threw a fit and probably threatened to never talk to her again unless she let me go.

As my wee luck would have it, a small rural school my mom had once worked at was sending a busload of kids overnight to Houston (it was too late to get a plane ticket to go with Mom) and they had an extra seat. So I packed my little kid bags and headed to Bois D'Arc, which is where my parents were living when I was born, the night before the conference started. A TV crew was there, and KY3 anchor Tony Beason picked my little smiling face out of the crowd to interview for the nightly newscast (I ended up interning with him before starting Mizzou. Small world, huh?).

That long, dark bus ride was a milestone for me. Hunched in the rigid seats, I made fast friends with the older students, listening to the Beach Boys and Beatles on their Walkmans and checking out their teen magazines and for the first time getting what it meant to be cool.

By the time the sun rose, we were in a foreign land I now call home. Texas felt like the Deep South and going to NASA and touching the side of a rocket that had been in outer space made me even more sure that one day I, too, would go in space.

Hearing John Lennon sing "Help" might have given me a glimpse of the grown-up world, but I still embraced my childhood dreams.

In fact, as illogical as it might seem, this group of food journalists is going to NASA today, hypothetically to learn about the challenges of feeding astronauts in space, but for at least for one of them, it will be more about revisiting those eager, precocious days where anything was possible, the realities of adulthood be damned.

(If you want to see if I "accidentally" launch us into space on the field trip to NASA today, check out my live-tweeting of the conference, over on Twitter.)

Now and then

While we're talking about now, I have to talk about then.

Then being Austin City Limits Music Festival 2004. I had just returned from Spain and was approaching what I consider one of the most fulfilled, terrifying and exciting times of my life. It was Troy's idea to take a road trip from Missouri to Austin to go to the ACL Fest, the year highlighted by Spoon, Franz Ferdinand, Modest Mouse, Ryan Adams, Antibalis Afrobeat, the Pixies and Los Lonely Boys.

We left Columbia, Mo., after class Thursday afternoon four years ago and drove through the night, arriving at Uncle Tom's house just as he was leaving for work on Friday morning. We slept until he got home, drove with him downtown, renegade parked near Shoal Creek Saloon and walked to Zilker. We did this for three days, and on the third day, after watching Ben Harper close the festival, Troy and I drove through the night in time to make it to Monday morning classes, which neither of us felt like we could afford to miss.

I could regal you with stories -- little ones and big ones -- but mainly ones I know hold deep meaning only to me.

These photos capture that.

It was my first and last full ACL weekend, and tomorrow will be the first time I re-enter those gates. (In the years in between, I've only taken in the artists from the hike-and-bike trail or from friends' nearby houses.)

I will be working for the newspaper. I will have a child at day care (an addition in our lives that I haven't be able to adequately blog about).

I will have a restless heart and an overactive head. You see, some things never really do change.

It's the same, but different.

It is, but it isn't, Troy used to aggravate me by saying.




Not a day goes by that I don't wonder what he would say about my life now.

A San Francisco treat

My time in San Francisco has been incredibly fun and fulfilling. Spending time with Emily, her boyfriend Kyle and her friends Sara and Weber has been awesome. We've eaten some killer sushi, enjoyed some beautiful sights and shared some delightful insights. These are the photos I've taken with my phone camera (I forgot the cord to my other one), so they will have to do until I get home....

Julian photos August 2008

I didn't realize what a busy month it had been until I flipped through all the photos from the past four weeks. Between hanging out on the potty and eating barbecue, Julian has had a couple of trips to the library, a weekend with Erin in Houston, a run-in with the sofa (thus the scabby lip) and a camping trip with Corey this weekend to Enchanted Rock, west of Austin in the Hill Country.

When we were huffing it around Enchanted Rock, I realized that the last time Julian and I had been to the top of that giant granite rock was when I was about seven months pregnant. It was also his first camping trip as an interactive toddler, but I think he's more work at home than he is in the wide outdoors. Too much to explore. I guess that's why we all get out in the woods every now and then.

Update: I've started making many of my photos on Flickr viewable for only friends. So, if you can only see a handful of pictures in this slideshow and would like to be able to see more, make me a friend/contact on Flickr. You'll have to set up a Flickr account if you don't have one. Sorry for the inconvenience!

A road trip to Missouri, baby in tow

Julian and I drove up to Dallas to pick up my old Spanish roommate, Erin, so we could go visit another roommate, Rachel, and her husband Russell, who were visiting the Southwest Missouri homeland. We had a grand time, driving 12 hours each way through the backroads of Oklahoma and Arkansas to spend two days with our closest friends and family.

It was a fantastic four days.

Work, work, work, today. Off to Dallas tonight. Arrive in Missouri with Erin and baby J tomorrow afternoon to see Rachel and Russman! It's been a year February since we've seen them. Julian was just 4 weeks old and nursing (he had his first bottle with them!) when they saw him last. We took our first road trip with the baby to San Antonio while they were here, too. Oh, how quickly things change.

On this road trip, it will be just the three of us (Ian's staying here for some quiet time.) for just a few days. Floating the James River and picking blueberries are on the agenda, as are unforgettable times with many of my favorite people on Earth.

But before I go, I've got to finish next week's column and go out to a rabbit/chicken/duck farm for an interview.

Missouri, here we come!

Sueños con España

Blame the nisperos, but Spain has been on my mind this week, even moreso after reading Lucy McCauley's "Lesson from the Road" essay on mothering.com. She wrote about traveling in Europe with her kiddo and how wonderfully different (and challenging) it was. I can only imagine, but what I wouldn't give to try. Here's her take:

On our final day in Madrid, when I was trying to get us out the door to see some last sites, my daughter stopped me mid-motion. Unceremoniously plopping her little bum on my lap, she sat looking out the balcony windows, contentedly drinking from her sippy cup, as if we had nothing else to do. When I tried to move and get us both up and going, I was stopped by the sheer pressure of her body—and by the view in front of me, which I hadn't taken time to really notice before.

Two windows opened onto a wrought-iron balcony and a clear-skied fall morning in Madrid. Sunlight played on an ancient, five-story, ochre-stained building across the way. Each floor had balconies, and the shades were pulled out and over them—how the Spanish let in the air and keep out the sun. The scent of café con leche wafted up from the streets below, and I could hear people greeting one another in staccato phrases as they passed by.

We sat a long time gazing out that window, my baby and I, taking it all in as if we had nowhere else in the world to be, as if we had come all the way to Spain for just that moment. And in a way, I guess you could say we had.

Alicante, Spain, September 2003

Getting The Goods on my New York trip

Here I am, wrapping up 8 hours at work, mentally preparing myself to get on a plane in less than 8 hours from now. I am so excited at the prospect of sleeping on a plane for the first time since Julian was born that I might even forgo a pre-flight coffee. Might.

From here on out this week, posts regarding What Not to Wear and New York in general will be posted on The Goods, Marques Harper's fashion blog on statesman.com/thegoods. You can keep coming to this page and clicking the above photo or the links in this text to get there if you so desire.

I'm going to try to post a couple of times a day, so check back often!

Wish me luck!

Oh, and don't be shy about leaving me comments on that blog. The more comments you leave, the more the people who are letting me take this and run will think I actually know what I'm doing. :)

Do I really look that bad?

Never in my life did I think reality TV would be on my list o' life experiences. But, thanks to my adoring fiance (and hordes of caring friends and family who's also helped along the way), I'm going to be on What Not to Wear!

It still doesn't even seem real. Last night. How it all went down. Stacy London and Clinton Kelly practically jumping me at a Velvet Brick show at the Red Eye Fly downtown. What seemed like a dozen cameras. A lighting crew. A (fake) $5,000 Bank of America debit card with my name printed on it. And dozens of familiar faces – you sneaky bunch – filling the crowd.

Apparently this has all been in the works since last February when, as I sat on the couch recovering from the C-section and both of us adjusting to a brand new Julianito, Ian and Corey thought it would be a kind gesture (and shot in the dark) to nominate me for this fashion makeover reality TV show on TLC. Now, I've watched my fair share of What Not to Wear and always take mental notes as I watch the hosts purge an unsuspected duckling's closet and, by the end, reveal a sharper dressed, better presented and more confident swan.

I think we all know the weak spots or challenges in how we present ourselves. Weight, skin tone, acne. Unruly curly hair, an unhealthy addiction to Target, perhaps. I'm a sucker for sentimentality, too. Those shorts of my dad's that I stole when I graduated from high school kept me horribly out of fashion (on both sides of the Atlantic) for years. But they were his. And they went with me on all those adventures. Who cares if they have holes in the crotch and the drawstring is about to snap? How could I betray something so comforting to both my body and my soul? I can't be the only person who feels this way about tangible items. Do all pack rats feel this way? Is it a Cancer thing?

So I better get ready to say goodbye to those shorts. And the 3-sizes-too-big pants I've doodled all over that I bought with Australian Russ my freshman year of college. And my so-called motorcycle jacket that I bought in Spain and that (barely) kept me warm during those winter travels to England and Italy. And my dad's (stained) Padres baseball shirt that he worn when I was a baby. Oh and my embarrassingly ugly yet incredibly comfortable collection of slip-on shoes.

I'm headed to New York at the end of the month. That's pretty much all I know for now. I'll keep you posted.

Thank you all for helping bring this awesome opportunity my way. I owe you big time.

Thanks, Paige, for the photos!

Florida farewell

Even as I left Florida by Ricci

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My friend Ricci is leaving Florida. She's lived here since she and Troy moved there after graduation. So two years-ish. She's a journalist, a seeker, a good spirit. I didn't know her that well in college, just through Troy, and Troy was her roommate in Sarasota when he died in June 2006. It was hard enough for me to lose my best friend while I was thousands of miles away; I could not imagine going through how she has. Sorting his books and clothes. Walking down the same sidewalks, the same beaches. There is much more to be said about this, but not here.

I'm posting Ricci's farewell video to Florida; she's moving to Senagal, moving on from her first jobs out of college. I can't wait to hear about her adventures. Makes me realize even more that she's going to make this dream of freelancing really come true. But she had to say goodbye. I really liked this style of video, the music, the pace, the colors. Watching Troy's last months come alive before my eyes. When all of those pictures were taken, I was in Austin, starting a new chapter of my own. I hadn't had the chance to visit him, so the people, the places, the stories were always diluted by the static through which he told me about them over the phone.

Ricci's very brave in leaving what looks like an incredible time behind. I'm sure there are many more for this awesome girl to come.

From the vast archival desert...

...I pull this photo of my mom and me from way back in May 2002. We were driving through the Arizona (or hell, it could have been New Mexico, to a Midwestern girl like me, they all looked captivatingly the same), en route to San Diego.

It was the first of two summers I interned at KPBS radio, worked myriad jobs (holla, Kinko's) and got my fill of sweet coastal California life. Uncle Chris invited me out there at the end of his Pioneers and Settlers speech, one of the pivotal invitations I've received in my life. He opened his home and his family to me. I helped grocery shop and cook (and ate plenty, I'm sure. Gez, lay off the Pokey sticks, would ya, Ads?). Mother's and Father's Day. Birthdays. I felt like an adopted daughter. They were so patient as a stumbled and triumphed in my new surrounding. It's still a time period of my life of which I am so proud. Making friends out there. Going to movies, parks, festivals and beaches entirely on my own. Discovering Addie outside Missouri was thrilling. It was the exciting taste of exploration that led to me studying in Spain my junior year of college and, eventually, to move to Austin.

And my mom, literally my life's connection to Missouri, came with me on my journey across the country to drop me off on this new chapter. Neither of us really comprehended the impact of my time out there, which, as a The New York Times article last week concluded, is better. No preachy parting words. No defiance of parental authority (I'd had my fill of that the previous two semesters as a freshman at MU). Just buzzing through the CDs and random truck stops along I-40, observing the now, recalling the past and hinting at the future along the way.

I fell in love a couple of times in San Diego, but fresh out of my chrysalis, I mainly fell in love with me. You're supposed to do that in college. You finally get to make all these concrete decisions based on whatever the hell you want. I'm just so thankful that they gave me the opportunity to do that. The Cooks for providing a home away from home. My parents for the good old '98 Corolla I still drive and for keeping me company along the way.

________________________________

Randomly from the archives: Dearest Scott Schnelle, always the animal lover, took in a pair of skunks right before I took off that summer. On one of those trips to Lockwood to visit Troy, he showed them off inside their little cardboard box homes. If I remember correctly, one of the little guys stuck around and, though he lived outside, hung around the house for awhile. Unless I'm getting my animal stories swapped. Scott has so many run-ins with critters, it's hard to keep the tales straight. Ask him about the bobcat sometime. Or maybe the two Jills.

Thought I might showcase a different baby every now and then.

Excellent adventures

We just took Shiva to our favorite dog park, Red Bud Isle. Stopped at Torchy’s on the way for a few of the best damn tacos Austin has to offer. Apparently every dog at the park thought green chili pork tacos would make a good lunch, too. Shiva fended them off and we eventually ate in peace, once all the people talking on their cell phones finally moved on. I thought taking your dog to the park was supposed to get you away from things that require batteries and signals. Oh, well. We enjoyed our little adventure.

And little adventures comprise big adventures, right? Lots of people dear to me are on some pretty sweet grand adventures right now. Bobby is guiding Scouts in the boundary waters of Canada. Daniel just got back from weeks touring around South America and is wrapping up his 10 months abroad. Cousin Nick is doing the same thing in Costa Rica. Rachel and Russell are breaking in their Portland shoes, Blythe is planning the Big One, Brittany is on the verge of a move to the Big Easy, Emily is hitting her stride in San Francisco. I guess taking risks is a prerequisite of friendship for me.

However, a conversation with dear friend Coulter recently (he was visiting from PA for a few days) planted a seed in my head: exotic travel or big moves (or even late nights of debauchery) aren’t the only kinds of adventure. He’s got that fear of settling that we all have. Settling for less than what we deserve. Throughout college, the way to avoid that was to go, go, go. And when you graduate and get a real job, 6 months or a year into it, you get that urge to go again. I did. Most people I know did. And I imagine it’s a cycle that takes years to break. One of the realities of having Julian, I accepted, was that my adventuresome days of college were ending. And that made me a little sad. No yearlong stints teaching English in South America (at least not for 20 years or so).

I didn’t realize, however, that the adventure was just shifting. From circumnavigating the planet to holding a little boy’s hand as he discovers sitting up and sippy cups. A trip to the dog park and Blockbuster may be the only time we leave the house today, (well, minus work) but this Julian thing makes home life an adventure all its own, with all the ups and downs and thrills and tears that any balls-to-the-wall trip may hold. Having a baby, deciding to leave your high school sweet heart, putting in the grunt work to plow through graduate school, getting a promotion at work, these are the adventures of another of life’s chapters. Eventually, if you go, go, go for longer than you are supposed to, you’re just avoiding these other adventures, the not-so-glamorous ones. But there’s a time and a place for both, and I’m certainly glad that I, and so many of my friends, are willing to embrace whichever kind we find ourselves facing.

(And, if you're a hard, passionate worker with a little bit of luck, the glamorous adventure comes to you. Rock climbin' Corey has been so dilligent with schoolwork and regular work in the past year, and a month or so ago he got the offer to rig an avant garde, outdoor dance project called Blue Lapis Light. Coulter and I got to watch the dazzling fruit of his labor Friday night during one of the group's performances. After the show, we got to talk with him and some of the dancers. He was absolutely in his element and was the happiest I've seen him, I believe. Good things come to good people.)