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...

Catching up

So much has been happening lately, there's hasn't been much time or mental capacity to blog much about what's going on.

Suffice it to say that living in uncertainty, both personal and environmental (hello, crazy news cycle and quickly changing world), creates endless opportunities for profound growth and discovery. As long as we remember that, we can conquer the intimidating unknown with grace and courage.

Here are some things that I do know:

ACL is a whole lot more fun when you randomly run into people you know. Marques Harper, the Statesman's style writer, and I had some fun playing around the shopping area at the festival yesterday, including taking some photos at the WaMu (read FDIC/JP Morgan) photo booth and shopping for sunglasses. We were both working the festival. My job was to take photos of people eating from the fabulous food court, which I wrote about earlier this week. His was to take photos of the fabulously dressed concert-goers. (His was the blog I contributed to when I was going through What Not to Wear in New York earlier this year.)


Tigers are cool. We saw this one at the Austin Zoo today.

Julian is awesome. His favorite thing to do now is drink "nilk," go "fast" and put "contats" in his eyes. Oh, and he's still obsessed with stars, trucks and "copters."


Community-supported agriculture helps make even a tiny, poorly lit kitchen like ours look lush and inviting.

(Insert picture of a happy Julian with LaLa,
the wonderful South Austin abuelita who takes care of him during the days now.)

Having Julian in day care is a huge step forward for everyone in the house. Julian has needed the stimulation (in fact, it's possible his two naps a day were linked to boredom. I'd nap that much if I stayed home all day, too!), Ian has needed the space and I have needed to see how this next chapter of my life is going to look, which includes Julian being in "school." What's awesome is that LaLa wants the kids to be kids for as long as they can, so "school" is just her way of describing the playtime/learning time balance she gives them. I think Julian just really likes a sweet woman who lets him cook, a little fellow named DJ and a little thing called Nilla Wafers that mommy never buys.

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.

All of now

Sometimes, in life, we have to focus on the little things to get us through the big crashing waves of change. My mom directed me to this Ralph Marston Daily Motivator from Saturday:

All of now

The bright sun shines in the clear blue sky. Shimmering waves glisten on a restless sea.

Beauty fills the world. Possibility fills your life.

The problems are real. Yet in each one is the opportunity to move forward.

This sparkling moment is one of a kind. Take it in with love and with gratitude, and remember to live it fully.

This magical mystery that is your life knows only the limits you choose to give it. In the heart of your spirit you can experience anything you decide to experience.

Life is in all of now. See it, feel it and know it as it fills you with wonder and joy.

Here is Julian "cooking" eggs, one of the many things that fills me with wonder and joy.

It is a privilege to be his mother.

Just one more snuggle

Fellow toddler mom Jenny posted something about her son Ollie that resonated with me today. He and Julian are almost the same age, and they are both at this stage of intense and physical of love and play.

He feels free to touch us, pat us, lash out at us, snuggle up to us, or in my case, nurse, http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifas if we don't have separate bodies but are extensions of each other.

It is funny to think about how this will slowly fade away as he gets older. It has already done so, some, and will continue to. There will be a time where he and I will think it inappropriate or weird to snuggle up to me as he does (especially since right now he is fond of snaking one hand into my bra). And there will be a time where he will no longer have sweet baby skin to caress on his back or tummy and I will not be able to give him all the kisses I want, while he giggles for more.

Julian likes the sensory experience of taste and touch, so he loves fingers in the mouth, be it sucking his own thumb or feeling mommy's molars. It's amazing how even Ian gives up nearly every bit of personal space for Julian to explore. He climbs all over me, using my limbs as a ladder and my hair as handle bars. I'm his La-Z-Boy, his horse and his skateboard. He pokes my eyes and inspects my toes. He's so curious about the human body, both his own and others'.

He is a snuggler, but I think it could already be fading. Each time I hold him, hoping that he'll stay still a little longer. A little longer. What is it about that baby skin? I think about losing the intimacy to nuzzle that soft neck when he gets older, and then I remember how gradual and natural it happened between me and my parents. Never gone, just different ways of expressing emotions. But they taught me well, so I know good and well that I can still look forward to playing mama Shamu well into elementary school.

I, too, am sad at the thought of the day when he won't want to give me such big, sloppy kisses, so I just try to enjoy as many of them as I can now.

Things worth looking forward to

What a week! With the What Not to Wear show coming up on Friday, things have been picking up around here. I've been working on an article for Thursday's newspaper, talking to the three other contributors from the Austin area, doing interviews for the Aurora and Springfield newspapers, and, of course, taking in some South by Southwest. We also squeezed in a trip to Fort Worth yesterday and today for Ian's birthday. Whew. Makes me tired just recalling, but it's been an awesome week.

Has anyone else caught the What Not to Wear preview?? My in-laws saw it Friday night and I saw it yesterday afternoon. It seems like TLC is running it about every hour. It's just a snippet of clips from my ambush and when they trashed my closet, including a sound bit of Stacy telling me I'm being more like "Raggedy Addie."

It's so surreal to see myself on TV. It almost doesn't seem like it's me. It seems like some body double, who happens to sound and act like me. So, it's concrete now: Friday, March 21, 8 p.m. central.

I have to work this afternoon (always on the go, go, go, you know), but a small piece of wonderfulness from our trip to visit Ian's family yesterday.

He has a 5-year-old niece, Jenna, a sweet, sweet child who loves life and those around her. We love going up there to play in the backyard with her and her 2-year-old brother, Michael. We were talking about birthdays yesterday (Ian's been thinking about it a lot with the big 3-6 coming up tomorrow) and I asked her what she thought was the best age. "Five," she said. "Cause you can do stuff when you're a kid that you can't do when you're an adult."

Oh, I share that sentiment when I look at a set of monkey bars and wonder how the hell I ever swung all the way across them. But I think it's cooler that she loves the age she's at. Despite all the toys, the Hello Kitty, the Bratz, the television characters, she still loves where she's at, not where she's going. Something we can all strive for, no matter if we're facing 6 or 36 or 66.

Spare any change?

RonD has some points to consider about this What Not to Wear thing. How change is inevitable, essential, and at its root, a little bit scary.

Humans seem hard-wired to reinvent themselves every six, seven, eight years. But how often can one accomplish such a TOTAL update -- hair, makeup and that BAD ASS WARDROBE you get to pick -- in such sweeping fashion? And without doling out any of your own dimes! Goddamn, but that's fine.

Enjoy the experience. You should feel excited, and a little out of breath. Dashes of sweet anticipation. You will change in ways you don't know, but they'll be good and cool changes ... The Japanese like to say that you can do nothing about your feelings; change your behavior and your feelings will follow. I'm excited to see what the new exterior will do for the inside you.

On the surface, What Not to Wear is about fashion, of course. But if you've watched the show more than a couple of times, you know it also extends deeper than that. Even in the lamest of cases, a change in appearance, for the better, is going to affect the made-over person on many nuanced layers, which are different for every person. The show thrusts them into reinvention, a total update, as RonD puts it, something we all could use every few years. And, YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO PAY FOR IT. I mean, seriously, I am awash in gratitude for Ian and the universe powers that be lined this up for me. It's like I won the lottery and hit the Mega Millions jackpot of inflicted personal change and growth.

And with winning the lottery comes all kinds of unexpected changes, which I'll do my best to be prepared for. Stacy and Clinton aren't known for being polite in this process. They are as much life coaches as stylists. They dig into the psychology behind weight and overall physical appearance. There is often crying.

As in life, just as you start thinking you know exactly how it will be, something else will come along and mix it up. Television show or notwithstanding, I will try to take Mr. Davis' advice about enjoying the anticipation of the unknown and remembering the very "Ask and it is Given" mindset that you cannot change how you feel, only how you choose to behave and react.

The opposite of buyer's remorse

"Do they really throw your clothes away?" – probably the most frequent question I've heard about this whole TV ordeal – has an easy and logical answer. No, the What Not to Wear folks don't throw your clothes away. They recycle them by giving the still usable stuff to the Goodwill or Salvation Army. I say still usable because I'm sure some of the clothes, including some of my own, have seen their last owner. (Do I have to bring up the warn-out crotches again?)

They usually riffle through your wardrobe in their studios in New York, but they are trying some new things this season. I didn't really know what they were going to do at the house on Thursday, so I hadn't officially said goodbye to some of my favorite items I knew they would be pitching. But after Stacy and Clinton purged my closet and tore apart pretty much everything they pulled out, I was surprisingly unattached to it. Maybe it was the adrenaline, though, because I woke up yesterday (Friday) and realized that I had to get dressed and that my go-to pieces were gone. Gone, gone, gone.

Nothing I can do about it now, less scouring every thrift store in town hoping to hit the one where they deposited my stuff. A wardrobe full of items, many of which were probably purchased at said thrift store, that were so familiar to me that someone else will now pick through, take home and make them their own only so that one day a reality television show can come along and tell them they've failed. Wow. I sound bitter already don't I? I'm not. Really. I promise. For years, I have gotten a kick out of second-hand stuff. And by the reaction of people around me, the thrift items were a hit. The multi-colored striped sweater? The green corduroy pants? That green and pink silk wrap-around skirt? I will miss them. But not enough to re-buy them. I'm ready to put those pieces – and their equally blase and worn out friends – behind me. Not to say that I won't ever buy a piece of thrift store clothing again. I'm guessing I just need to rethink how I use those items.

They left me with enough clothes for the next couple of weeks and a few crappy items hidden in the back of the closet and at the bottom of the drawers. One pair of jeans. One pair of shorts. A couple of pairs of pants, some shirts (oh, sorry, "These aren't shirts," Stacy shrieks. "These are T-shirts!"), a few sweaters and long sleeves. So don't pick on me if I look even worse between now and when I go. :)