You Can't Go Home Again

By rights I ought to feel silly pointing to this building (shot here reflected in the pond north of the Palmer Events Center) and saying "I live there." I don't, though. Feel silly, that is. People do find it exciting or shocking, though. Austin hasn't been that much of a high rise living town until recently. Before the 360, the 18 story AMLI and the Monarch, most apartment and condo projects were shorter and lower key. But we are movin' on up to apartments in the sky. OK, our place is not on such a high floor. I am a little tired of answering the questions about how we like it, do we miss our house, do we miss the space, the stuff.

By rights I should miss our old place. Miss the pretty yard, the space, the stuff I left behind, gave away. But really I don't. It's the same old, same old really. Wishing I could/would find the time to clean out the drawers, shelves, cabinets and the storage unit in the parking structure. Wishing I would find time to write. I am forced to keep things tidier, I guess, because the piles would be in my face.

In spite of living at the "Shoal Creek Manse" (as we called it, tongues firmly in cheek) for about thirty-one years, I don't miss living there. And I finally realized why.

I don't ever settle into a place, I don't think. Not in a way that makes moving difficult. Maybe I did as a kid. I started out living in a 2-1 farmhouse with a basement and a screen porch (which got enclosed at some point and became a narrow tiny bedroom for my six-year-old self at some point). I knew nothing else, really. Except the grandmother's house which, come to think of it, had a porch that had been converted to accommodate my old granddad. (He was twenty-one years older than my grandmother and thus a quite elderly man when I was born. And I don't mean sixty. He was seventy-three when I was born.) I do remember not liking to spend a night anywhere but my grandmother's house or at home. Possible exception was my aunts' house in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas. Gradually I became comfortable with being away from home. I even sought it out, eager to see things, have adventures.

When I was about ten, we moved. To a bigger town than the small town with my grandmother's house. (Our farmhouse was outside this smaller town.) We moved to a brand new tract house in town. It wasn't a city but this town had a bowling alley. Imagine that! I don't remember being disturbed by moving. My whole family went, of course, and we still saw my grandmother. Sometimes she took a bus and a cab to get to our new house and come take care of me.

That little 3/2 house was my home for ten years. I went to the elementary down the street and to the old Junior high and high school 'in town.' I rode my bike around the neighborhood, learned to drive and drove around town. (I wasn't allowed to drive far out of town, but I had a friend that lived as far east as we did west and we were back and forth all the time.) It came time for college. I'd be going away to live in a dorm. I got to take a couple of trips that summer after graduation. And while I was gone on one of them, my parents packed up and moved to a suburb of Dallas so Dad would be closer to his work.

I never really lived in that new house. (Another 3/2 tract house, with a bit bigger family room.) Oh, I did go there on school holidays, I lived there one summer and commuted to my college town. Between apartments and situations I'd move in with all my stuff and out again. When I graduated from college I got a job in Dallas and, too broke to put a deposit on an apartment, lived with the parents for quite a few months, paying my mother rent. It was a crash place for me. The very friendliest of places to light between here and there.

I moved to Austin in 1975. I rented an apartment that I would live in for less than a year. I married FFP and joined him in a little 2/1 house that he'd bought several years before. A little more than a year after that we saw a 'For Sale' sign down the street and bought a bigger house. Which we remodeled four times, making it bigger and bigger, until it had three bedrooms, two and a half baths, a large separate office with wet bar and a large entertainment room. (At 550 square feet, almost as big as the first house.) The master suite had been expanded to include a commodious bath and a pretty big walk-in. The basic house always had tons of storage, fairly good-sized bedrooms and a huge kitchen with walk-in pantry. It wasn't a manse, but it was big, especially compared to the tiny apartments and tract houses and dorm rooms I'd lived in.

Do I miss that big house? No. It never felt like home. I realize that beyond the farmhouse or that first tract house, no place ever did seem like anything but a temporary place to sleep, eat, entertain.

If I feel I 'want to go home' what it really means is that I want to exit the company and clutter and be alone in whatever abode that is. Maybe a room someone has loaned me in a house. Maybe a hotel room. Or a condo in a high rise. Home is me, alone, writing. (Or in the modern era, blogging.) Or just thinking. I can even be 'home' in public if I'm not with anyone. People can be all around as long as they aren't with me and don't require anything of me.

FFP is an exception to the people rules. I can be in close proximity to him and still feel at home. I do enjoy some alone time when I don't feel that what I'm doing (cleaning, playing music, dragging things out of closets) might disturb him. But I can certainly be 'at home' with him in the room. (Like now.) In the old house, we had office space as far away as possible from one another. (Not really intentionally, just the way it happened. We called and e-mailed each other. We still e-mail each other. So sue us.) As we moved out and fixed up the house, we moved into the large office together and now we share a small one. I'm at home here. But I'm just as much at home in a coffee shop somewhere with a notebook or my laptop. Home is in my head somehow. We have made our place more comfortable here since we were 'camping' in the living room but I'm no more at home here now.

Yeah, homesick is something I really can't feel. I can miss seeing people. I used to miss FFP and the various dogs when I'd be on a trip without them. I used to miss seeing my parents. But the structure and surroundings? I could enjoy them, some were more comfy and accommodating than others, but I could never really miss them. If I didn't have a comfortable place to be, I'd regret that. And I'd feel lost if I didn't have things I wanted in close proximity to me. I could miss a town, I guess. I've certainly come back from Europe missing Mexican food and I've missed places I've been because of the things to do (entertainment, museums, cafes, bars, the streets). But I'll sleep happily here or there. We have everything we really need and enjoy from the old house here. So, no, I don't miss it. I find I miss some of the neighborhood restaurants and coffee shops that aren't quite duplicated downtown, but I'd miss the ones around here and their particular joys if I was back there.

You can't go home again because it's not a spot with GPS coordinates. At least not for me.

Onward

I have lifted my head and will now move onward. I will finish sorting and straightening the stuff that didn't already get tossed. I will do creative projects. I will learn new things. I will entertain my friends with witty conversation that never touches on the topics of downsizing and moving. I will make a book of shop window reflections. I will call this one 'Butterfly' and wonder if people notice the building reflected in the glass. I will buy strange black frocks and mix it up with society types. Well, maybe scratch the last part.

The weekend was kind of strange. Between me and VMWare, I bollixed my Windows image. (I'm running MAC OS X and XP on this machine). My techie tended to blame the setup and the software, but, you know, I pay him. I must pay him one day to teach me the magic. He got most everything back and what he didn't recover I think we got all fixed up from the data backups. This happened Friday night and Saturday I tried to fix it and recovered stuff to my laptop and Sunday he fixed it for me.

I played tennis Saturday and then, because I was part way north, made a trip to Costco and then my Dad's. He wanted D batteries and toilet paper. He had a stash of the latter in the garage but he didn't notice it. I visited with him, did a few things for him that he can't do and sorted three boxes of books. I took two boxes back to the condo because we do have some space for books still. You have to mount the ladder to get to most of the rest of the space, but this is where books as decoration comes in. Who has time to read anyway?

Actually I now have times when I choose between reading the papers, reading a book or The New Yorker or writing. Or watching TV. Or, you know, eating and drinking.

Saturday we went early to Lambert's just as they opened when there was no one at the bar but staff chatting and getting briefed. Craig, the actor bartender who looks like some famous actor or maybe an amalgam of two or three, served us some food and I had a cucumber gimlet (with vodka substituted for the gin they recommend). OK, I had a glass of wine, too. We came back and I finished reading an interesting article in a New Yorker that was a couple weeks old and watched some of the U.S. Open tennis and then we went to the building's media room and watched the U.T. football game with a few other residents while a private party raged outside in the clubroom. The sound-proofing is good...the sound only rushed in when someone opened the door.

I spent five hours on Sunday, closer to six really watching my techie minister to my computers and network while I was going through some paper files and straightening them out. A lot of stuff got moved rather haphazardly at the end. After that, I had cabin fever. Or, in this case, tenth floor condo fever. (FFP had been out to take stuff to my car and storage and to get tacos and across the hall to work out.) We headed over to Taste and sat around eating stuff and drinking wine and picking out some party wine to take home and working the NY Times Sunday magazine crossword and talking to three of the owners of the place who were around working and planning. Then jazz started at five so we listened for a while before going home and reading some more Sunday papers while alternating between tennis and football and watching "Mad Men."

A good weekend. Except for the computer woes and evertying seems to be working out now including some new features we added to the mix. I don't think FFP started his car since Friday night. (When he drove five of us to see Elaine Stritch at Austin Cabaret Theater at Mansion at Judge's Hill.)

This morning we had a little shower downtown. I was supposed to play tennis so I called the captain of the team I'm subbing for and said "You know, if it's going to be a rainout I don't want to start my car!" But she said it wasn't raining and had only sprinkled a little earlier. I went and played. It went to three sets, but I was on the winning side. It didn't hurt that my partner (tall and twenty years younger than I) hit a few aces and service winners in the last game.

So here I am. Back with the details. I'm going out to lunch. I'll report back. No unexamined meals. I'm going to be a better correspondent. With you and with myself.

Reflecting on Who I Am

I am grappling with my new life and all its components. Yesterday I had a meeting in my old neighborhood and afterward I tried to locate new owners of our house because they got some of our mail (because, of course, the P.O. can't seem to forward it all). I didn't find the owners but it was weird ringing my old door bell, standing on the porch and checking out whether wasps had rebuilt the nest we'd eliminated right before we sold it. Then I made the trip downtown from the old house which I've made so often this summer. True, it's not that different from the trip from my in-laws house a few blocks away to our new abode. I made that trip the day before because I had to do something for my mother-in-law. We made the trip back and forth so many times, trying to clean out the old house, live in the new one, move stuff.

Today I went to the old house again, got the mail and visited with the new owners in their house. It is odd it not being my house especially with some of our old furniture still there.

I suppose I'm settled in the condo, but sometimes it feels surreal being there. I don't plan to leave downtown until Tuesday. Unless we decide to do something I haven't thought of as yet. That's weird.

Who am I? Where do I live?

Stopping to Reflect

Time for reflection has been largely missing until the last week or so, but finally there has been time to slowly and calmly ponder things. I've even had time to go through a few old photos and receipts and try (and fail) to catch up on my newspaper reading. I've been nervous the last two days while lighting was installed. That's almost done, though, and the condo is peaceful and calm. Over my shoulder, FFP is typing either a column or an e-mail and making a phone call. My desk is neat as a pin. I've done my daily checking of financial stuff. I have a couple of hours before a dinner date and can read or watch TV. Or, you know, blog.

There has been much going on in the world while we worried our little corner of it. The Olympics and that little dust-up between Russia and Georgia. Now the U.S. Open of Tennis and the Democratic Convention. I've satisfied myself with random bits of the programming, mostly consumed off the DVR. I'd be trying to clean up something or follow a workman around or fret over where I'd hidden something and I'd walk by the TV and see a bit of synchronized swimming or whatever, watch and marvel and go on. They repeated Michael Phelps' feats (and that of his relay teammates) endlessly so you couldn't miss those. I'm going to keep up with the U.S. Open similarly. I caught a few shots today between the times the electricians cut off power to the living room.

It's feeling comfortable here (although I really wish my comfy office chair would come in). I have stuff to catch up on that I've let go while trying to move out, move in, fix up, change address, etc. A teeth cleaning, a car maintenance and a haircut come to mind. Always something more to do. The Austin social season is cooking up also and events are starting to edge onto the calendar from September to May. I'd like to plan some trips.

But, hey, right now I think I'll catch a little tennis and finish reading the Sunday newspaper.

Big Sigh

I should be relieved. I'm out of the house. Of course, I still don't have the lights, shades or TVs I ordered and the glass desk for the office still hasn't been delivered and I don't have the chair I ordered for the office. (Forrest and I contend for the one we managed to get while we wait for it.) But I should be relieved. Somehow, though, I felt happier and less dislocated when we were camping, living in the living room, sleeping on the foldout bed and eating off a card table, sharing a laptop and with a lot of our stuff hostage in a house we weren't living in. Really, honestly, this is nice. Just enough stuff. Well within reach. When we have the new lights and all and that office chair, it will be, if not perfect, really nice. Why the let down? Just the usual 'after crisis' let down, I guess.

Well, That's That, Isn't It?

There I am, snapping a shop window on Second as if I live in the neighborhood. Of course, I've lived here, more or less, since June 2. But now I don't have another home to go to for showers, TV, the occasional sleep and sorting, sifting, tossing, cleaning, tossing, freting. Most of the 'stuff' that survived is tucked into this place, the 43 square foot storage unit in the parking garage or at our parents' houses. And a lot of it still needs a bit of sifting. And organizing. We haven't completely lost anything (that I know of) except for a remote to a DVD/VCR that I bet shows up if I go through everything. Which I will. One day. Meanwhile, I'm going to try to get this place finished with all the lights, AV and shades we want installed. And buy a few more things (or get them delivered). And then WHAT? You tell me.

Countdown

I snapped this reflection of my outline against a mural being painted in a space that I guess is going to be a design studio last night. After a hard day of moving, we were walking to have a good meal and a glass of wine. We are exhausted with the effort to move every last thing we want to keep from the big house by Thursday night. The new owners say we can take our time, but things work out better in a sale if you make a clean break of it. We are now working our way through rooms, only leaving things we are giving to the new owners, tools that we are using (tape, scissors, packing, boxes, bags, etc.) and things we need to give special attention to. I am feeling more like the black outline of myself than the colorful swirl of the mural. But that will change. Soon I'll have one home and although I'll be surrounded by boxes of books and artifacts that haven't found a place, they will be books I love, books that survived sifting and sorting up to ten times to make the move and artifacts that escaped, over and over, a trip to a charity sale. All will be well. But must survive the week.

What Makes a Home?

What makes a home anyway? We've been 'living' in the condo off and on, mostly on, since June 2. Almost two months.

I guess if you have a working kitchen, shower, bed then you can make a home.

The kitchen was reasonably functional the day we moved in. We brought some pots and pans, glasses, plates, silverware and a coffee maker. It wasn't long before we decided we had to move our favorite coffee maker. The refrigerator, stove, microwave, disposal, etc. were all functional.

For seating we had the movers bring a card table and Costco folding chairs as well as our ultimate 'sitting and reading and watching TV' chairs from our old bedroom. Yesterday the bar stools, chairs, table and console you see above were delivered. They'd been in the warehouse a while because we thought they were a bit fragile to have around while cabinet makers drug in hundreds of pieces of wood of varying sizes up to about twelve feet long. We still have to have lighting guys come in with lengths of track and anchor drills for sag support. And big screens TVs to be delivered. But we couldn't wait any longer. I feared the stuff would disappear from the warehouse. And a card table and folding chairs just didn't cut it any more.

We slept on the sofa bed until Monday when, our custom platform bed having been delivered, we got the new mattress. If you enlarge the picture above you can just see that the bedroom is finally not empty save a massage chair and a lamp. Who knows when that new sofa bed will be opened up again? We like to say that the Extended Stay America on Sixth is our guest room.

Really things are functional now. We need office chairs and lighting desparately. We would enjoy better sound and TV. Although a Bose, a 19inch LCD and the right attitude have gone a long way towards entertaining us. Not to mention the scores of bars and restaurants within walking distance of our front door.

Transient

I'm the opposite of homeless. I'm homeful. This hasn't made me feel more at home, however. It's made me feel at loose ends. Like I'm on an odd working vacation in old haunts.

I feel like I'm on a trip and I keep losing my luggage. As I predicted, things are always in the wrong place. Need to write a check at the house? Checkbook is downtown. Come to the house and get a shower after tennis and then try to find a pair of loafers you like in the closet. Things I like to wear keep migrating downtown. I have to carefully sack up my sweaty tennis clothes, however, and take them downtown to launder them so I'll have them when I head to tennis.

When we are at our 'big house' we will go to places in the 'hood like we are folks returning to an old neighborhood where they once lived. Downtown we feel at home in the neighborhood and in our place but we have so little stuff down there that it is exceedingly odd.

There is still enough stuff at Shoal Creek to lead a life. I have a set of toiletries, a few clothes (although besides the loafer shortage I find that I never have a belt and keep going through ones FFP obviously hasn't worn in ages looking for one I can steal).

We keep thinning the stuff. Shredding ancient financial statements and business records. Putting out our 'free' sign with junk at the curb. FFP took another load to the thrift store, several boxes of kitchen stuff, clothes. I don't miss any of it when it's gone. Of course not. In the wake of all these departures, however, the stuff seems to be blooming and growing. Maybe it's dragging open cabinets and drawers and places of refuge. Maybe it's that there is some secret river of stuff that flows through this house.

I feel like I'm on a trip. I've taken along some old clothes and hope to just leave them behind as they get dirty. I haven't actually done this in the past, leaving behind worn out underwear and jackets and shirts with elbows almost (or actually) worn through. I wouldn't do this now if I were going on a real trip. Heck, I might get something new to wear.

The picture above was taken two years ago when we took a car trip in our old Accord. We'd driven straight through until we got to Baltimore where we stayed an extra night so we could have a look around, go to some museums. I don't know that we'd even thought of moving out of the house then. Forrest was settling into retirement. We wanted to go somewhere. And we did. I feel like a lot has changed since then.

Since I have so many places that I randomly find myself these days, I've been having a rather eclectic reading list. Our papers are delivered downtown, dropped in front of our door by the concierge. Sometimes at night I read them there. I have taken a couple of books down there that I'd been trying to finish forever. I have been reading Tobias Wolff's "In Pharaoh's Army" in Forrest's car. (And also when we are out in his car and we go somewhere to eat, just the two of us, which is a time when we read and only converse if the reading leads us to something we want to discuss.) I found myself reading magazines still scattered around the house when I'm there or a section of newspaper from months ago. While eating a sandwich in the kitchen of the house the other day, I read a little booklet of Globe Facts that turned up somewhere and that I was about to toss. The earth is almost a perfect sphere. However, the diameter from pole to pole is twenty-seven miles shorter than the equator diameter. This isn't stuff you need to save a little booklet for reference. (The booklet probably came with a globe I bought at some time in the past.) I should throw it away. But here I am reading it while eating a Thundercloud sub. We never seem to have food at the house and we have gone to the nearby Thundercloud for sandwiches several times. We have revisited Fonda San Miguel Restaurant, Billy's, Blue Star and Mother's in a similar sort of goodbye gesture. But we'll probably still go to these places. We went downtown when we didn't live there, after all.

There are so many things that need doing that I'm often paralyzed from it. I run away to the other house or suddenly 'have' to blog or do something on the computer. Inch by inch I get things done, though, or by power of suggestion FFP does them for me.

One thing I haven't found time to do is keep up my personal journal. I'm sure I'll regret that one day. I'll be trying to figure out exactly when something happened and then information just won't be there. Meanwhile, a pile of hand-written journals awaits the thinning in the storage room at the house. That's a tough one. I get set adrift on a river of memories and can't find my way back to shore.

In a way, when I'm not worrying and obsessing and trying to figure what the heck to do with something, I'm enjoying this. It's like being on vacation in two spots in my own town. I've become used to the keys and access cards for my hotels, found my favorite coffee spots and yet I'm distant enough from work and duty to just enjoy reading for pleasure. Then the work and duty comes roaing back.

Everyone says I will look back on this with amusement, that it will all be over one day. I guess. It seems to have become a permanent lifestyle.

Green

The blur in this photo is the UT rowing team flashing by on Lady Bird Lake (Town Lake to you old timers).

When we announced our intention to give up our house in the urban 'burbs (not that far out but with a little land around the house and a creek behind) people would 'tour' the backyard and sometimes they would wave a hand around and say "but won't you miss all this?"

We'd think of the time we spent working on the place, planting and weeding and chopping and the expense of paying others in recent years to do mowing and edging. (I once edged myself with a weed whacker. Whoa. That was hard on the back!) "No," we'd say uneasily.

"But you had all those great parties!"

We would both think, at that point, of all the effort to get things looking perfect, about how hard it was to get the ponds looking good and squirting water, about cleaning out the potting shed dozens of times (fighting against rat squatters often enough). About trying to have fish in the ponds when the raccoons like sushi. We'd think of the four of five giant cans of Yard Guard fog it took to tamp the mosquitoes for a four to six hour period for a party. We created an illusion of green wonder. But it was an illusion. Sometimes we used the yard for our own pleasure. We'd sit at the solid limestone picnic table after a party inside when the weather was nice. Or we would take The New York Times outside on a Sunday and lounge on our chaises and read and doze. (We'd often have to ignite citronella sticks and spray insect repellent on ourselves to avoid the bites.)

If we wanted to wander nature beyond our contained area, we could occasionally (during drought) walk in the Shoal Creek bed. Or we could go to Ramsey Park a mile away (and boring to boot, all developed with a ball field, swimming pool, playground and no interesting natural stuff although one time I saw Austin's monk parrots in the trees there). Northwest Park, a bit further afield has a nice pond. There is a wet land park behind Central Market that is kind of nice. Point? I do have one.

From our downtown condo, we can be on the Lady Bird Lake Hike and Bike Trail in about a minute. There are things growing. There are swans. And last night I happened to look out the windows at about 8:20 and there were curling black ribbons over the lake which I recognized as the Mexican Free-Tailed bats going out to dinner. It was really an amazing view of them, showing no individual bats but the flight patterns (in several directions) of the whole group. (Yesterday we walked under the Congress Avenue Bridge and smelled the bats, too, by the way.) It is a better view from our place than from the Four Seasons where they are just curly streams but you are close enough that the patterns aren't as obvious. I'll have to walk down to the bridge some time and see that angle. (Although inside in the cool with a drink is my favorite way to watch nature. Not really. Well, sort of.)

We hope the move will be green in another way, too, eventually. (When we don't still have the house and our parents in two other houses.) We hope we will use our own two feet to walk to get groceries, dry cleaning, eat out, buy stuff. That we won't drive somewhere every day to get exercise. (I haven't given up tennis and it's a little far to walk there, I think. At least in the current weather.) We could walk to a lot of things in the old neighborhood (which can't be said for a lot of truly suburban areas).

So for everyone who thinks we've given up a private park for a bunch of sidewalks, well not so much. And no watering bill!

Housekeeping

We stopped by to check on my dad today. When he finishes newspapers he tosses them on a chair next to his. Same with junk mail, anything destined for paper recycling. When I stop by I always pick up all the papers and put them in a grocery bag. Sometimes he asks me to load or unload the dishwasher, too, as it requires more bending than his back needs. Today he asked me to unload it, but I found it mostly empty. Maybe the maid did it. There were a lot of dishes on the counter, though, so I put them in the dishwasher and washed his little French press by hand that he makes his one cup of coffee in every day. He keeps up the good fight (with the help of his weekly maid), but he always appreciates us doing a couple of things when we stop by. A little housekeeping.

When you have three houses, it can take a lot of housekeeping. How can there be laundry at both houses? And dishes? And dust?

Dad pointed out the other day that if you don't live in a place, it can "deteriorate fast." It's true of course. Sometimes even if you are living in it, the deterioration sets in.

I have good intentions, of course When I live in less space, I'll be a better housekeeper! Meanwhile I chase between all the houses and I'm always spotting something that needs to be done. Sadly, we've also found the need to buy new things for the condo. As much stuff as we have, we don't have the 'right' think for a spot.

The picture is a heirloom tomato ripening in a new bowl we bought at a charity auction for the condo.

We have brought some things to the condo from the house and made little areas that look fresh and new from our old stuff, rearranged. That's sort of fun. Even though we are waiting on some built-ins before we hand all our art, FFP had to hang a few things or he just wouldn't feel comfortable.

Too many houses. To keep.

Temporary Quarters

Until, say, the middle of August we will be living part time at the condo under a "temporary quarters" arrangement. Our custom bed will be built at some point, we will have a mattress we already paid for delivered and voilà, we won't be sleeping on the sleeper sofa. I was making it back into a sofa each day or at least when we had guests coming by, but I've stopped doing that and just spread a new comforter over some new sheets and added throw pillows pillaged (pillaged pillows, cool) from the master bedroom at home.

The master suite at home is a shadow of itself. Gone are the chairs we had in front of the TV. They flank the bed in this photo and are our official chairs for beginning life here. Ditto the couch, only not posing as a bed most of the time. Our joke is that the Extended Stay America on West Sixth will be our guest room. No, the condos don't have a unit you can rent on a short term basis for guests.

Also visible in this picture is one of the lamps we brought from our bedside in the old master suite. If we can get some more lighting installed in the ceiling we can maybe ditch these. Or we might buy something new. I'm terrible at picking lamps and liking lamps I pick. You can also see a couple of books stacked by FFP's yellow chair. They are on a temporary end table of a Palaset cube (see below). The end table issue will be resolved when the couch is against the wall (it was out from the wall for measuring and painting and we have just left it for future stuff) and when everything else is in place. I'm using an ottoman that converts from table to seat and has storage and rolls around. This was also filched from the master suite at the house. (I moved some other side tables to the spot at the house that originally were used in the media room when we watched TV in there). I'm thinking of trying to find another similar thing to buy.

Lastly, in the picture above you see a small flat screen TV and some other stuff and a tangle of wires. I bought the TV for the office (which has no furniture so far, just boxes and a couple of lamps, neither of which is destined to stay) and to use for the 'interim.' I figured we could watch it until we got a fancy flat screen screwed to the wall after we got built-ins. Below it is the DirecTV HD DVR. DirecTV has a monopoly here. We still have Time Warner and three (!) receivers at the house. One is a DVR. I think it is dutifully recording Jeopardy episodes I'm not watching. I took the DVD player out of our master suite, though, and it and its cables are adding to the mess here. (Now if I can just remember to get the remote from the house.) In addition I added a wireless router and its power and Internet cable. I added the cell phones and chargers there and another surge suppressor was needed. So. Wires and more wires. Won't be able to hide wires until we have built-ins and even then, you know, life is wired. (Although I've added a printer that is wireless. So, while it's plugged into the wall, is just off by itself. On a temporary piece of furniture, an Elfa rolling cart.) The TV and components are resting on two Palaset Cubes. They are made from some sort of plastic that you can sand and paint. I bought them about thirty-five years ago when I lived in an apartment in Dallas (actually it was in Highland Park). I grouped different ones with drawers and shelves and doors and put a desk top on them. These guys followed me from place to place and while the desk top disappeared years ago the cubes were everywhere, supporting things in my office and Forrest's and providing storage. I figure they will have a new life in the storage room I have here eventually. Although we are talking about painting some to use in a little space beside the door.

It's funny what things cling to you and what things go away.

What you can't see in this picture are the Costco folding chairs and card table that are standing in for our beautiful new dining table and chairs which we are going to leave at the store's storage until we aren't doing construction. Truthfully I like this spartan yet functional existence. I type on my laptop at a small built-in desk where I have a phone and answering machine, too.

We have moved a lot of things but not enough that we don't have closet and cabinet space to hide things away and tidy them up. Everything is just a few steps away in this place (except the car and storage unit which are down the elevator four floors). We probably save steps. So we need to step across the hall and go into the fitness center for a few more rounds with the cardio machines. Or else walk some place to have dinner.

Vertiginous

I shot this picture out the window at the south end of the hallway at the condo. I was standing there the other day and realized that one could get a good case of vertigo there. Or one could just uproot everything at once, live in two places, puzzle over a new environment with an ever increasing cast of new neighbors.

Heck, we were driving in our 'burbs neighborhood today and we met a guy at a stop sign on a giant unicycle. First I thought he was a guy that we'd seen before but then I realized that the other guy was on one of those old-fashioned cycles with the large wheel in front and a tiny one in back.

Everything seems odd and disorienting. Clearly we have two (or more of everything.) We have enough clothes and shoes in the condo closet to sustain us (especially for the blazing hot days we've been having). There are also a couple of pieces of luggage there. But the closet in the house looks full.

Today we are trying to move our favorite coffee machine downtown. It leaves us without a way to make coffee at the house, really, unless we hunt up some ground coffee and some hot water (I took the kettle to condo, too) and use a French press. I could bring back the drip coffee maker, but it seems futile and backwards although without our office built out I'm still bringing stuff back to file and such.

I'm making a plan in my head for how the installation of built-ins, AV, shades, lighting can go in the next few weeks. There isn't much I can do to speed things up except sign contracts and bug the condo people about approvals and make appointments to bring in stuff on the freight elevator.

FFP thinks he will feel better with one piece of art on the wall so we are going to hang a poster in our bathroom out of the old bathroom.

A creepy feeling of sadness, excitement, anger, futility, vitality, confusion and a strange calm has come over me. The latter is from sitting in the condo in the one room with furniture watching something on the TV and/or reading and having coffee or a drink. It's very focused with a minimum of distraction. Like being off on a vacation with a minimum of 'stuff' along, just enough. Being in temporary quarters where you have stuff to eat and drink and all the clothes and toiletries you need and some entertainment but not too much 'baggage.'

I want to just sit down, though, and work on a creative project or read a book and not think about what isn't working at the condo or how much will be disrupted by our projects before we are settled or about how we have to empty and sell this house. Of course, I was always wanting that ever since retirement and something always seems to be in the way.

We are so lucky, though. We have two places to live that are high and dry and not in a war zone. Even with the roar of motorcycles we aren't bothered by the noise downtown as our friend who just moved in seems to be. She's also bothered by the light from the AMLI and Frost Bank (the condo people were too cheap to put shades over the door and another pane in the condo). Not me. I'm going to get shades but not black out ones, just something to reduce the solar gain. I think anyway. I'm really pretty happy in the glass box. Especially if the other rooms where furnished with a proper bed and proper office respectively.

I'm rambling, huh? I'm a little dizzy but not as dizzy as I sound in this. One step at a time, right? Meanwhile, FFP suggested that we test out downtown restaurants we hadn't tried before and we started trying to think what they were. Now doesn't that sound like fun? We ate a traditional breakfast today at Blue Star in our 'burbs. I fished a book by Tobias Wolff out of FFP's car and read it while eating and drinking coffee. Nothing settles me down like eating and reading. There's a lesson there. A stabilizer in the vertiginous sea.

Home is Where the Heart Is

I'm not sure where my heart is or if my heart is in it. I keep working through the issues, moving along, checking things off lists, real or mental. I like my condo home but I feel despair when I'm knocking about the deserted house in the 'burbs. There is so much to sort, so many decisions to make. There are things we can't move until we have the built-ins built. This is a saga, but, ultimately I think they will look good and fit the odd walls better. When we sleep at the condo, we have to make up the sofa bed. (We are building a custom platform bed.) Still we keep sleeping here. Because we need to meet workmen here or because we just want to wake up here or because we don't want to go home at night after dinner downtown. When we do sleep at home, it feels right to be there and we have most of life's necessary elelments there. (As well as here.) You know: computing with the Internet, coffee, a few clothes, food, booze. Life won't be simpler, though, until we really only live one place. Financially expenses are inflated by the condo monthly costs and our income is reduced by having too much money in real estate. But we can't get serious about selling the house until we get the condo ready to receive the last of our possessions. (Oh, yeah, I know. We could put stuff in storage somewhere. I'm trying to avoid that.)

Every day we get closer. I hope anyway. My heart is in the downtown lifestyle for sure. I just hope my head can get around it and I can pull it off.

[Photo is some kids' art in the window on Congress of a Latino Arts Gallery.]

Notes From Downtown

I haven't been keeping a good 'personal' journal of what is going on with me. (I usually write down some notes in a Word document about what I do each day. Boring.) Last night I sat down to try to post here. (I already received one "Are you OK, Visible Woman?" note so I knew, given the statistics of such things that roughly four of you out there were wondering the same thing.) So. Yeah. Now, Austin Daily Photo has been going along, dutifully posting a pic a day. So there's that.

But what wisdom to post here?

I just couldn't decide.

Should I talk about sampling tacos downtown? (Las Manitas and Jo's so far and both are great, I must say.) But that's kind of boring. Lots of tacos in my old neighborhood, too.

Should I talk about the parking garage. How, being on level 6, it takes two minutes to get in or out? How the door from the elevators to parking sticks and we can't get them to fix it yet? Boring.

OK. How about what feels like 'home' at this point? Sometimes we stay in what we now call the 'big house' and we have a computer setup there with bells and whistles (scanners/printers/copiers, wireless, etc.) and we have a fancy bed we bought in 2004 and Time Warner Cable and DVR. Several rooms are almost empty. One room has too much stuff in it, stacked with paintings and such from other rooms. Our bedroom is missing our "TV-watching, sleeping, reading" chairs because they are at the condo. The Capresso, our beloved coffee machine, is still at home. We have a new Cuisinart drip coffee thing at the condo. We will ultimately use the Capresso every day at the condo and the Cuisnart as a backup or to make decaf for friends. We are back and forth, though, and need to be caffeinated at both ends. One of my neighbors said that they know when someone has really moved and that is when the computer moves. Well, I'm typing this on my laptop at the condo where Internet miraculously appeared in the wall when we moved in and, tonight, a nice wireless signal has also shown up. So, yeah, is someone moved when the computers move? Or the coffee? Well we have both at both ends. Confusing. And possibly, um, boring.

I feel pretty much at home at the condo, really. Oh, I have to go through quite a bit of stuff to make and unmake the sleeper sofa but after a few nights camping on it I have to say it is comfortable enough. Our night light is the Frost Tower and the green light band of the new AMLI building. I can see the red H on the Hilton, too. We are going to have a platform bed built and we have a new mattress ordered for it. But. First we have to (1) get the plan approved to attach some cabinetry to outside walls; and (2) get the cabinet guy in here with materials and get it done. I'm hopeful, though. The closet people almost did their thing today. Tomorrow they promise that things will be finished, that the right lengths of things and the proper brackets will finish it off. And, I feel better now that we have painted the walls something that is not white. Made the place feel better and more personal.

I could talk about the saga of the hot water heater. How the inspector I hired found that the lower element was burned out, how they repaired it without a washer and it leaked, how there is still moisture from somewhere in the upper element. (I had it inspected again!) Yeah, but, boring, yes?

Hey. I could write about how really close Whole Foods is to us. I walked there today. It was pretty hot but I didn't break a sweat. I had some tuna/avocado rolls and a Naked Juice Green Machine Super Food and then I bought some Hummus dips and Tofu dip and chips for the Austin Film Festival kids and walked further west for my film team meeting. FFP was handling the 'big house' and met me there. I was unbelievably smug about walking to Whole Foods and the Festival office. (It's less than a mile, but hey. I'm Urban Girl. OK, Urban Old Lady. Whatever.)

Did I mention that I got DirecTV installed (only choice here) and then over the weekend couldn't get some channels? But I commandeered the installer in the lobby today and he replaced something to strengthen my signal. I just have a 19 inch TV here but HD is reasonable.

Wait. Wait. The elevators. Actually today they worked OK although it was a bit slow getting our closet guy's stuff up and down. But we have had some annoying outages. Ho. Hum.

I know, I know! I'll talk about Lance Armstrong's bike and coffee shop next door. They are even delivering some free pastries and coffee to the club room for a while. Yeah, nothing much to go with that topic.

I guess I could talk about all that stuff still at the 'big house' that I don't need. Or how exciting it is to look forward to the day when we can pick and choose the art and books to come here. But then, what to do with the stuff left behind? Are you as bored with downsizing as I am?

Well, none of it matters much, does it? I met a woman yesterday whose life is so clearly delineated by tragedy that it completely refocused her life. Forever. There are lots of people like that, but most of us think that whether the TV works or we can find our socks matters.

All this typing. Still no focus. Well, anyway I'm here. I'm marching on. I have too many homes.

Embrace the Chaos

That's my motto for the day. For the coming days. (The photo is a shop window reflection photo of my nieces taken on South Congress of the window of Off the Wall, a weird little place with a combination of vintage and new mostly unnecessary items.)

I lost my favorite commuter cup yesterday. I probably left it on the tennis court. Not turned in, though. Have you ever noticed how lost and found deals are full of good stuff but never your stuff?

I worked out today a little. As I was using the recumbent bike and some weights I realized that I will probably be using the gym at the country club far less now that I have a gym at my building.

I have been moving stuff from room to room, trying to get things out of the way of the movers, collecting all but the bigger pieces of furniture in the living room, stuff we plan to carry ourselves in another room. I have possibly packed the last box for the movers although I may pack one more. FFP cleaned out the cupboards in the galley kitchen in his office (sink and small fridge with cabinets and a counter top). He finished a job I started a few weeks ago. We found stuff for the thrift store (almost two cubic feet), stuff to take to the condo, a basket full of garbage, etc. He said, "I've been in this office eleven years." Yikes. It's true, we finished this renovation in January 1997 and he moved here from a building we owned and leased the building out. Hard to believe.

So why am I blogging and not getting my act together? I believe it's ye old paralysis in the face of an overwhelming bunch of stuff that needs doing.

I'll Keep the Light On

Tomorrow we close on the condo. In a perhaps foolish move we will also have about a half a truck load of furniture and a few (maybe twelve} boxes delivered with notations on the outside that are sufficiently vague to make me open most of them to find anything. It will be crazy and dislocating. FFP has the idea to spend some nights soon downtown. You might see a lonely light on the right of the column in this picture, low down, just where the tiny balconies begin. (By the way, notice how there is a streak on the lighted circles at the Long Center. They are reflecting the 360.)

We've hired not only a mover but two other people tomorrow to supervise the activities at both ends. Oh, and a lawyer for the closing. My modus operandi now is to hire a new expert whenever I get overwhelmed. I hope all my experts get along where their purviews overlap. I think they will. They must. I'm too old for this!

I might not post too much for a while, but I know I'll be tempted to do it, to drag Visible Woman readers (as well as Austin Daily Photo ones) along on this adventure.

Neglect, Regret and Paying Attention

This shot of an old piece of silver in the window of Let's Dish on South Lamar shows the whiffs of neglect. I had a couple of (cheap) silver wine buckets that went off to the thrift store the other day. They needed a bit of polish. Well, more than a bit. I left it to the next owner. I kept an (even cheaper) oversized chrome champagne bucket. I have forgotten just now where I put it but I figure I'll take it to the condo and ice down a bottle of champagne for when the ultimate toast needs to be made.

I've found many things around here that have been neglected I'm afraid. Objects that we thought we'd use left to collect dust. Souvenirs I couldn't leave a foreign land without and yet now sort of regret owning. I have found the relics of old attempts at organization that I now find amusing.

As we pile things in the front room to move to the condo and upset the flow of the rest of the house I regret things not being where I've come to expect them. I've had a few pangs of regret about leaving this place, too, I suppose, but mostly I regret being in the situation of straddling the two properties. I know in advance that whatever I want will be at the other place. I regret that we are doing a bunch of redecoration in the new place because it delays settling in. While still owning the house buys us time to deal with all the stuff I regret having to keep up with this one. I sometimes feel that I didn't enjoy the remodels we did here fully, but then I remember all the great parties in the great room and how much I've enjoyed our master suite for the last four years. I'm using FFP's office now and he probably got a lot of use out of this space. Still. I keep looking at things that I acquired and the promise they held when I paid the credit card bill and think "Gee, did I ever really need that?" If it's a gadget, I often ask "Did I ever actually learn to use it?"

So it goes. Some people are sanguine about using and losing things. If you saw the garage at my dad's place, you'd see that he believed in using, saving, reusing things for a lifetime. I think I got some of that and then mixed with a modern, disposable sensibility that leads straight to neglect and regret.

When I think of the river of stuff that was here in this house over the years but has gone away, I'm surprised there is anything left. But there is lots left. Sitting in piles, looking neglected.

It is one of those times in my life when I feel like it is hard to pay attention to what is going on. We are communicating with scores of people, it seems like, about closing our place, moving some stuff in and painting, building custom furniture, getting new AV equipment. Whenever I have a problem, I hire another expert and then I have to coordinate one expert with another.

But I'm moving on. Someday I'll get out of this house. I will have all my worldly goods in my condo or my other house. I'll forget about things I left behind and then one day, maybe in the window of a junk store I'm photographing, I'll see something and realize "I used to have something like that." But then I won't feel regret. I will feel amusement and relief. And, if I'm tempted, I'll buy the thing in the window.

Today we went to a restaurant for lunch. I picked up a book from FFP's car to read while we ate. Sitting in the restaurant, nothing to do but read it, I realized that I was enjoying it very much. I have had trouble finding time to read with that kind of focus and attention. I wish I thought things would get simpler soon. However, no, they will get lots more complicated before they get simpler. I delude myself into thinking that the day will come when I will wake up in the morning and realize that there is nothing I have to do that day to take care of residences or get rid of stuff and I will find some new way to complicate things and go buy something or plan a trip somewhere or start a project. Or, at least, check a book out of the library that I won't find time to read.

Where Is My Head?

Between a bunch of relative visiting and the countdown to closing the condo and starting the move, I feel like I am losing my head. I also have been hearing the phrase "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone" in my head.

So, yeah one niece flew in Tuesday and the rest arrived by car and another couple of cousins and some of their offspring at various times. Our house is a disaster so we didn't entertain anyone here except for a few minutes. I've had my fill of playscapes, toy shops, candy and ice cream for a while.

The downsizing effort is getting very weird and frazzled. We are getting more stuff ready to give away and I'm trying to pack up a few boxes for the movers with essentials for living in another chaos central in the condo while we work on it. I know that I'll ultimately be happy that I painted a little and put in custom shelves and custom closet fittings. But another part of me wishes we didn't have to go through all that at the other end. Tomorrow we see if they have fixed nicks and dings that we may in fact paint over. (Although most of the things were things that we were not touching, of course.)

We are going to move a little bit of permanent furniture and some temporary stuff (a couple of lamps, a folding table and some folding chairs for example). We hope to be able to 'camp out' down there if we wish while we are working on it. So we are trying to plan for stocking the bathrooms and the kitchen with a few things. It's crazy, like going on a trip or something.

I keep finding things I wish I'd cleaned out years ago and then I settle in to do something and I have everything where I can find it or things look a certain way and I think "maybe I'll miss this, maybe I won't like my condo setup." Of course, most of the time I say to myself that I can't wait to not have things scattered all over so much space and to be shut of a lot of the things stacked around here.

Sigh.

The picture was taken on South Congress of the window of Austin Art Glass. I didn't visit the store. Wouldn't be wise with little ones in tow. Nope, we visited the Kid Genius for toys and the Big Top for candy.

Initimate Confessions

Well, not really that kind of intimate. Just occurred to me to title it thus because of the photo. (Taken recently of mannequins at Let's Dish on South Lamar if I'm not mistaken. I like the wigs and the way the slips drape.)

I am almost completely paralyzed by trying to figure out what to do next. I took my dad to the doctor (his repaired retina is doing well so far) and did a few things around his house and then went to one of his banks and got him some money for his granddaughters and great grandchildren to spend while they are here. Tomorrow I'll do some more chores at his house, buy a few groceries for over there and pick up one of my nieces and her smallest son at the airport during rush hour. Wednesday at some point the other niece, her husband, their daughter and my other two great nephews arrive by car. Yikes. I reassured Dad that they will all leave on Sunday. He said he'd survive.

I have so much to do around here. I have lists and lists of lists. What the mover will move. What will we move. What we will wait to have delivered until something is painted or built. It's not cosmic. Repeat. Talked to one of the AV people. I asked about blank plates in the floor that the condo people said were speaker things. He said they didn't have anything in the floor! Uh, OK. This is going to be such fun. He is also having trouble sending me an e-mail, even though I sent him one that he can reply to! Bodes, if not the worst, a less than stellar customer experience. He did call me back finally, however.

OK. Just do something. Even if it is wrong.