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.

Eight Days and a Dark Place

It's been eight days since I was visible here. You are looking at a dark place. I've been in a state of euphoria or a dark place, swinging between the two. These office components were actually supposed to be a lighter stain. We decided we liked the dark okay, but we wish they had used it in the living room so we could have seen it the way we ordered it. We are living with it rather than sending a million little pieces back to the shop. It took them hours to load the trailer with the components to get them here and have us say, "oh, switched the stains." Anyway, it was chaos getting it in. We haven't quite got it finished. There is a punch list of little staining touch up they have to schedule. The room needs light. We recieved no fixture at all in the ceiling junction in this room for our umpty ump dollars. The bid for the track lights I wanted came in on the stratospheric side of implausible. Must get light, though. And new office chairs. And phones, lamps, supplies properly placed. We did get our computers moved. Mine has an annoying problem connecting to the rest of the network. Supposed to get some help with that today. I'm still upset with Apple that the Bluetooth wireless keyboard and (un)Mighty Mouse doesn't work better. They just arbitrarily quit working. Fortunately neither FFP nor I are relying on them. I have the wired versions (the wireless keyboard doesn't have a number pad but you know Mac isn't good with numbers!) and switch when they decide to quit working. FFP blanched at the little toy keyboard and we set him up with a much less sleek and design-driven wireless USB keyboard.

But progress is promised on all fronts. A bid for lighting we might can swallow, the glass desk top. A mattress delivered. (Monday! We've been on the sleeper sofa for six weeks plus I guess. We now have a platform bed that looks naked and alone with no mattress, a retreat for a monk or something.) Tuesday we get our real dining table, chairs, bar stools and console. We decided we better get them delivered before the warehouse lost them. However, we still have the install of track lights, shades (if we don't change our minds) and a speaker system and AV stuff. We'll try to cover the good furniture as we did with our couch and chairs and such while sawdust, paint and stain and six workers were swirling around to put in the cabinets. Finally it will be finished and we can start creating situations that need maintenance, failing to clean often enough, letting dust and piles of papers to be dealt with accumulate.

Meanwhile, at the old house, where we spend time sorting, packing and tossing still? Chaos. And the threat of needing to vacate in less than three weeks.

On the euphoria side is the fun of popping out to have salad and pizza at Frank and Angie's and watching the frenetic nightlife of Saturday night downtown from the safe remove of the tenth floor.

Taradiddle

The other morning I made my regular morning call to my Dad and he said "I have a word for you." He disappeared for a moment and returned to the phone and said 'taradiddle.' Then he spelled it. He found it while reading "Out of Africa." I looked it up (online, of course) and found:

taradiddle
1. a trivial lie;
2. pretentious or silly talk or writing

This seemed funny and appropriate to me somehow.

And I think it is a tribute to my dad that he is still finding words he doesn't know in books he's reading. That's probably the reason he's lived as long (and as independent) a life as he has.

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.

Changes

Things are changing so fast for us now. Downtown we are living a temporary lifestyle, sleeping on a sleeper sofa, using a laptop; the two bedrooms are largely empty awaiting built-in furniture. Monday work starts on that in our place (it has been happening in the cabinet maker's shop up to now). At the house, we continue to fix things up for sale and discard and redirect possessions. Two bedrooms, four closets, the original living room and a hallway are empty, repainted and floors refinished. A potential buyer pulled an inspection and we picked up a few more things to do from that. (And other things for which we said, um, OK so what?? or WTF? That's always the way with inspections.) I still find myself at the big house needing a shower after tennis and fortunately there is still a supply of soap, shampoo, towels, underwear, etc. I keep putting on shoes and jeans and polos there which end up at the condo. (I keep my tennis shoes that I play tennis in with me at all times so I have them for the next game. Tennis is my bulwark against change. It's the thing I do that's the same to keep the change from overwhelming me. FFP has some of these things, too.)

In this photo, fragments of reflected FFP and I appear in the window of Las Manitas with its signs and fliers. Also reflected is the growing Austonian. This was taken in June. The Austonian has started to peek up in view from our condo, too. We also are watching the progress of the Legacy apartments on Rainey Street from our condo. And from the exercise room we watch the Spring rising. (That's another condo building.) Things are changing and not just for us.

A couple of my friends have had to see parents go to more managed care situations of late. Our parental units rock along in their houses. My dad was outside today trying to get a little water on the foundation. (If you don't live in Austin, we are amidst a severe drought.) Not much has changed for them which is good. They don't tolerate change well.

Change is everywhere and I'm having to adapt. We've lived (or camped) in the condo long enough that we have to do chores here. Sweep the floor, do the dishes, feed ourselves, wash clothes. We still find the house needing these things, too. We still have maid service there. We are sorting and moving stuff around in the house and migrating stuff downtown. We have to get out of the way of the work that's going to be done there, however so that's another issue.

And so it goes. Change. Change. Change. And yet the old familiar house, the familiarity of Dad's house and the new and growing familiarity with our downtown condo and the places that surround it.

Objects Are Closer....

We were walking across a little plaza where Third Street ends going West. Part of someone's shattered rear view mirror was there. I shot this picture of the palm tree and our building before depositing it in the trash.

Bringing our 'surviving' objects to the condo and living close to them is making everything appear closer. Things are lightened from their surroundings and yet sometimes bulky in the new, limited space.

I wish I'd planned more about what stayed, how it was organized in this place. When we have our built-ins a lot will change, though. I wish I'd organized the stuff that looms at home a bit more.

But all my wishing won't reduce the load. Only tossing and giving and thinking about the stuff again does that. To cheer myself up, I think of everything that is already gone, away from us, in the landfill or the lake of secondhand things loose in the world.

A Place for Reflection

Yesterday, Independence Day, I caught the reflection of a flag fluttering in one of the porthole 'windows' of the Avenue Lofts. This spot, The Visible Woman, in all its incarnations (it has had a life going back to 1999, first on its own as WWW.VISWOMAN.COM) has always been a spot for reflection (and not just the photo kind). Lately, as I've gone through the motions of chores and duties at both my current 'homes' lots of reflection and introspection has taken place.

Living in the condo with only part of my possessions and no furniture in the bedroom or office has been interesting in many ways. The kitchen and bath are pretty fully outfitted. Despite that I have everything needed to shower, change clothes or cook a meal at what we've come to call 'the big house.' (Of course, there isn't much food at the house and no coffee maker since the little one cup french press got cracked.) We have fully embraced living downtown, stocking the kitchen partly from the Farmer's market, walking to restaurants and bars (and to last night's fireworks party at the Headliners Club), walking on the hike and bike trail and downtown streets, familarizing ourselves with things in our new, dense 'hood. I have the goal to visit all these different places anew, walking to them.

Deciding what stuff to bring to the condo and making new piles at home of stuff to discard or give away has necessitated a new round of touching and thinking about possessions. I've been loath to buy new things while this goes on. Of course, we've made big and little purchases for the condo, things we didn't have at the house or didn't have the thing with the right 'aesthetic.' I've avoided buying clothes, books or new gadgets. We are going to have new computers and TVs here eventually because of the necessity of reducing footprint.

I like my downtown perch and look forward to the day that it's my only spot. I'm ready to look forward and escape the pull of nostalgia that I get in the old house among the memories. I've taken a holiday these last two days and it's hard to know what to do with myself. I watched tennis, read, did a little cleaning around the condo (cleaning is SO much easier with lots fewer square feet...especially when there isn't much 'stuff').

I wish I had something profound to say, but I feel full of cobwebs and confusion, able to focus on the smallest things but losing the big picture, maybe.

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.

Overheated Nostalgia

The picture is from last June which, it seems to me, was not as hot. In any case, it was provided by a junk shop on South Lamar.

I have spent the last twenty-four hours or so at the old house, Shoal Creek manor, the burbs. It reminds me of my younger days of drifting around, making lots of use of other people's couches and spare rooms and hospitality; of sometimes being left alone in a space not exactly mine (maybe the parents' house, an aunt's, my sister's, maybe a friend's place) and being welcomed to use, consume, read anything I liked. Last night Forrest and I sorted through some food that was left here and found an unopened package of mild cheddar and some Saltines. I made coffee with the one cup French press, boiling water in the tea kettle I retrieved from the condo. When I flipped on the flame, I thought, "pretty soon you won't be cooking with gas." We found a couple of frozen entrées in the old refrigerator's freezer and had them for dinner. I found a bit of small batch bourbon in the bottom of a bottle to go with mine.

Today I'm goofing off around two areas of the house while the floor guy works diligently on the old 1951 floors. I should be doing something useful. I took a box labeled 'sort!' into the big room at the back of the house. I watched some Wimbledon, snacked on some Boursin I found in the frig unopened (barely beyond its 'best by' date) and got interested in an article in an old New Yorker that was in that box. Also in the box was an abacus I bought in San Francisco's Chinatown in 1966 along with the crudely translated guide to using it. (The latter still had its price tag: twenty-five cents. "You can be sure...........if you've got ABACUS You don't need a paper or pencil. It releives you of intricacy of tedious ciphering.) The summer of 1966 my sister and I took a languid trip west to Sacramento where she left me with some people who were parents of a friend of hers and took my VW Beetle off to visit with her husband at his temporary duty station at some Air Force Base. I welcomed the solitude, really. The couple seemed lonely as their daughter was grown. They went to work each day, but left lots of snacks and they treated us to that trip to San Francisco, I think. I would go out in the backyard and 'work on my tan' for a while, reading. Then I'd sit in the AC and watch TV and eat snacks. (Those little Goldfish crackers were a favorite that summer.) I taught myself to add long columns of numbers on the abacus. I never bothered to master multiplication but I could fly through adding up a big sum. I walked around the neighborhood and took what I thought were artsy pictures of houses and cars. I wrote long letters to my friends and, if I remember correctly, got some answers while I stayed there.

That staying around my own house of thirty years now gives me this feeling of scrounging, of life put on hold but full of possibility, is, I think, amusing.

I worked out today in the gym at my club. Back to the house to check on things, I pondered which place to take a shower in. I feel dislocated, distant and yet wonderfully able to concentrate on my old abacus and remember that old self, seeking adventures in the junk of a Chinese souvenir shop. It was impossibly exciting in its own way.

The guy doing the floors has been marveling at the accumulated gunk that has built up in fifty-seven years (we don't think they've EVER been refinished). There is some of that gunk in my brain, too, and I keep hoping that cycling through the junk again and again will finally sand it down and I'll find the person I'm supposed to be in my seventh decade on earth. It won't be a moment too soon to figure this out.

The World (well Austin) at My Feet

We came back to the condo and did a few chores and decided to relax 'a minute' and faced our chairs to the windows and watched some dramatic lightning and the bike race. FFP decided to take a nap and he was blocking my view of the bike race so I moved to his chair where you see my laptop and my foot and part of my view. I can watch the bikers going around the corner of Guadalupe and Fourth and I can watch the traffic jam caused by the closed streets at Fifth and San Antonio. I might drift off to sleep, but first I have to fold some laundry. I didn't really think I'd ever get to sit downtown and really just look out the window. It's tempting to never move or go outside but just watch from here.

At the Market

There are things you miss by having a Saturday morning tennis game. Forrest went to the Austin Farmer's Market downtown today. He ran into old friends of ours Johnny Guffey (a famous waiter at the equally famous Jeffrey's in Clarksville) and Gordon Fowler (a painter and husband to famous singer Marcia Ball). Johnny had his poodles out for an outing, too.

Happily (?) we have settled into an easy life of living two places. I'm typing this on a computer at the suburban (well by condo standards) house and I'm about to take a quick shower here and then we have plans for goofing off in both neighborhoods for the rest of the day. I should be downsizing. But tennis and goofing off really call to me.

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.

Age Appropriate

Yesterday a friend of ours closed her condo. She called me on her cell and I stepped out on our balcony to see her peering through the railing of hers, one floor up and a few doors to the south.

Silly? Yes. Forgive us.

More and more people are moving in. OK, most are younger than us. We have two couple friends in the 'hood, though, who are our age and live in other downtown buildings. And our friend who moved in is younger but still 'our generation.'

We went out for some Mexican food and then walked over to Congress which was taken over by the Republic of Texas Biker Rally. I I saw this customized three-wheeler and thought "now I might could ride that!" Sure an SUV could take you out, but you wouldn't fall over or need as much finesse. Finesse has become more and more missing from my life.

I was thinking about my options yesterday for AV equipment, motorized shades, lighting and how long it was going to take to get the custom bed and bookshelves and desks and I realized that we would be the end of the summer or close to it before we had that stuff in and had everything ready here. I knew this before but what I didn't know is that, as I said in the last post, we'd keep sleeping here a lot of nights. Sadly, we seem to have two of everything so we can go back and forth. There are dilemmas, though. I'm considering packing up the Capresso and bringing it here although the new Cuisinart drip is serving us well down here. (I'll use it later to make decaf for friends or a pot of coffee to quickly fill a thermos or to use some special beans that might be too oily for the Capresso's internal burr grinder.) Yeah, coffee is important to us. There are probably a dozen coffee shops within three blocks of here, too. We could walk to several from our old house for that matter.

But I ramble. I've accepted that for another two months or so, life will be neither here nor there. And today, I've got to find time to go to our other house and visit my dad. Tomorrow is Father's Day after all. I was thinking of bringing him down here for a visit. I wonder if I could use the handicapped tag so we could park closer to the elevator and whether the elevator will keep working. Oh, yeah. The elevators worked for a couple of days. They are going to have to get this thing worked out, I tell you.

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.

Follow the Bright Lights

After the Austin Lyric Opera performance last night of "The Bat" (with music by Johann Strauss as in Die Fledermaus and English lyric and hijinks by Esther's Follies) our friend Allan the playwright took this picture of us on the City Terrace with those alien looking lights on that little circular stage and a giant, thin tower of light that is on the building where we will have our future home.

I am incredulous that I have gotten so little done on the one hand and amazed at how much I have done on the other. Life is funny like that. I am in this state of pure euphoria, panic and confusion. I went out with some ladies and played tennis this morning which I haven't done in ages. It was fun and really took my mind off everything in spite of the fact that everyone was asking me about the stuff.

I keep packing up boxes for the movers to take and bags for me to take to the condo with various things I deem necessary to a civilized life. (Yeah, don't say it.) There will definitely be a many week period where whatever you want is wherever you are not. That may actually last quite some time because I think we will eventually store some things at our other house and, of course, the parking and storage being four floors down will mean that whatever you want is in storage or your trunk. But if we are lucky things will get simpler with every load of stuff that is tossed, preserved in its place or given away. Well, won't it? Won't life get simpler??? Really? Probably not. There will be new things to add to the confusion, new resistances to tossing newer things and, of course, the inevitable decay and obsolescence. So it goes. I suppose the important thing is to just take the next step. Or steps. And some of them will be trod next week.