Settling in

 Flash forward:

Halloween is over and Thanksgiving is right around the corner.  Most of the leaves are on the ground; a few linger, attached to branches that now are mostly bare. Autumn was glorious and brief.  According to the neighbors this was a more vibrant and mild autumn than some in the past, even though we had 12 inches of snow a couple weeks ago. 

Today was partly sunny and mild, in the 50s. The clouds moved quickly across the sky, giving the sun the opportunity to shine warmly between moments of chilly cloud cover. We raked most of the leaves in our yard to the curb last week, where the city picks them up with big vacuum trucks. Easier than I thought it was going to be. We were going to employ a couple of neighbor boys, but we felt pressured to get them to the curb before the vacuum arrived, and the one weekend we asked for help, the boys were visiting family. In between our old rakes and a new leafblower, we cleared the yard relatively quickly. 

I have not photographed/documented this move very much. We don't have cute kids to photograph any more - the 6th grader is happy to pose, but not always happy to have her poses shared. The days go by quickly. Although I still feel like a new comer 4 months into our stay here, I feel at home. I have a job, a book club, a walking friend, and a neighbor friend.  We have loved having our family and friends visit us for football games. We are happy to sit in the living room with cozy blankets and work on homework, grading, reading, watching a show, etc. It will be even cozier when we get a fire going  - an item on my to-do list is to clean the flue. There are still a LOT of things on the to-do list: lights, rugs, chairs, painting, hooks, pictures, etc, remain to be hung/cleaned/purchased.  But we feel settled in. We have most things put away, although some need to be reorganized, and we need to buy rugs and furnishings for the basement - I spend way too much time shopping when I just need to settle on something.  In the past it has been about six months before we felt moved in; it will probably be about that long at least here before our belongings are where they belong.

But today, I was walking home from campus, and I felt at home. We returned from a visit to San Diego last weekend where we reunited with some old friends and spent time with our daughter, and we reminisced about what a charmed life we had led there. But do we want to move back? We love visiting and having a daughter there, and while I do miss our wonderful friends and many aspects of life near the beach and mountains, I don't feel homesick for California. Rather, when we returned here, I felt like I was coming home. I no longer wake up uncertain of where I am.  

Then today we talked for a while at the football game with someone who is moving to Austin - we raved about the people, the trails, the good schools, the low taxes, the warmth,  HEB, .... why did we leave? they wanted to know. The job... but more than the job. The roots. It's hard to explain, but there it is. 

And here we are, feeling like we belong. 

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Chicks from Ladauto Si class - They grow quickly!
 

Visiting campus

 

 

San Diego

Week 3

Albert the Great ready for winter in his new puffer!

A new season

 This morning cool breezes greeted us as my husband and I stepped out the front door to walk the dog.  It's the second week of October. September is relegated to recent memory, with summer now the distant past. It doesn't seem fair that time should pass so quickly.

Yet the temperatures don't think it's summer. It's still in the 90s in the afternoons here. The impatiens are still blooming, but struggling with the lack of rain in this part of the country. Grass and leaves are turning brown but only because of hot and dry conditions.  I've given up watering my garden, although the basil and peppers haven't completely dried up like the tomatoes. I'm going to give up on tomatoes. Year after year I plant them, water them, weed them, and receive a small handful of fruit in return.  

I don't even really like tomatoes, but I envy the shrubby plants with stems drooping from the weight of laden branches that are browning in my parents' garden. Their tomatoes are rotting on the vine because they can't eat them all, and the neighbor's similarly have plenty. And they do nothing but stick seedlings in the ground! I labor for anemic tomatoes. The climate, the soil, the sun and rain, all are unpropitious for tomato growing. 

Instead here I can grow rosemary, peppers to hot to eat, tradescantia, pots of aloe. Lavender seems to survive, if not quite thrive. The shrubbery -boxwoods, nandina and gaura - grow with little care. And the lantana thrives and strives to take over the entire flower bed. 

But now, in mid October the plants are starting to slow their growth in response to the shortening days. The plumeria in pots still smells as fragrant as ever, and the five lemons on my potted lemon tree are finally turning yellow. One started to rot so I squeezed half in my juice, and one I picked too soon because I needed some citrus to squeeze on apples shredded for apple muffins - a recipe that only partially worked. 

The bats are back, swooping over the pool for snacks at dusk. Coyotes are singing regularly at night, curling the hair on the back of our little dog, causing him to growl huskily deep in his throats, as if he'd actually frighten one of his wild cousins instead of being a tasty snack. 

I have had little time for reflection, despite the fact that this time of year seems to inspire nostalgia and revisiting the past. Some of that is due to the start of the school year and the busyness of planning, grading, working. We also traveled two weekends in a row to Indiana, one for a Notre Dame football game - and a mini reunion with almost all of our kids (missing 2: the freshman in college, whom we had just dropped off two weeks prior, and the son who works an hourly wage job who couldn't take off work). We also revisited my parents and our son and daughter-in-law a couple weeks ago to honor my father's birthday and to celebrate at a baby shower the impending arrival of our first grandchild. This is something of a secret, but since this blog is also something of a secret, I'll record here my great excitement at the prospect of a new baby in the family! We have been hoping and praying for this baby!

Fitting that in fall we should celebrate a grandfather's birthday and a baby's eventual birth day.  As we celebrate the fruits of the garden labor in the season of harvest, some seeds fall to the ground to take root and bring forth new life.  And hopefully some seeds of wisdom will pass down to this next generation and bear fruit. Life continues to flourish, despite the harbingers of doom in the news and online.  And before this month is over, I'm going to try to coax a little more life out of my raised garden bed by planting a winter garden of greens. We'll see if they can defy the odds or survive and give us some good vitamins and minerals this winter ...

Flashback to college days. I still have this t-shirt and almost wore it since 90s fashion is back in...

It was so hot that the ice from the coolers served a new purpose.

A quick stop at the Chicago Art Institute while waiting for our flight. It's surprising how much you can see in 25 minutes. Not recommended as a rule, but worth it when you only have so much time and a free ticket...

This was the picture she wanted most to see.

Tasty shower treats.

Cousins

Still watching soccer.

Fall sweeps in

After all those blog flashbacks to the past summer, now it is time for more recent updates. I should be working on our moving claim and a paper and a job application, but instead I am procrastinating -or perhaps I should think of this writing session as warm up writing... 

Halloween decorations are up around our new neighborhood - lots of orange lights and inflatable ghouls. We've added our own strings of lights - the purple bat lights are happily at home here where bats are a local icon because they live under the highway overpasses - we just rescued one from our swimming pool. It must have fallen from the limb above the pool. Fortunately, our youngest saw it and called out before it had time to drown. I didn't think it was going to make it because it didn't crawl/fly out of the pool skimmer net for two days, but one day I came out and it was gone, either flown or eaten. I hope the little guy lived to eat more mosquitoes!.

The bat - glad Bert got his rabies shot

Until death do us never part... Ghouls in the hood

Our lame decor, as the girls judge it

Floating pumpkin tree - originality winner

Something scary at our window - plenty of food for it. Also killed a scorpion in the kitchen the other morning - kids wanted to rescue it, but I was not going to try to mess with it.

We've also draped some of our decade old cotton spider webs to our dying live oak in the front yard. A nice oxymoron there. I called three tree services to see about having it cut down. One was $1200, one was $750, and one was $400 cash. Guess who we are going to use? How much difference is there in the process of cutting down a medium sized tree? Perhaps it's time to buy a chain saw. It might add to the spookiness of the season.

Although that tree is brown and losing leaves, most of the trees around the area show no signs of changing color.  Nonetheless, the past couple mornings have had a chill in the air. The sun is rising as we drive to school at 7:20, and setting as we eat dinner.  The seasons are changing. I planted some mums along the walkway and bought some pumpkins. We've been here for over two months now. We hosted our first dinner party a couple weeks ago0 - a homecoming dinner party for about 10 kids and most of their parents. It's starting to feel more like home - other than it still smells slightly like smokers live here after I almost burned the house down. I accidentally left a pot of chickpeas boiling in a pot of water while I took our 7 yr old and the neighbor to the park. I completely forgot about them while the girls played for an hour until I opened the door to a billow of smoke when we returned. The whole house was full of smoke - but the smoke detectors were not going off - despite the fact that they were supposedly replaced as part of the inspection process. A bit concerning. 

The latest action in the "moving on" process has been switching our medical insurance and finding civilian providers. We now have two injured athletes who need care. First our son tore his ACL playing football - he's still playing, but will need surgery when the season ends. And then last week I took our daughter to get her sore foot checked out. Probably just a ligament strain, but the doctor ordered an x-ray. She detected a joint abnormality that could be a lisfranc fracture - a rare metatarsal injury - or it could be nothing. We need to see the orthopedist, but I am still straightening out the switch from Tricare West to Tricare East Retired, because the charges for John's care aren't covered yet. Sigh. We are so used to seeing doctors for free, that this change to a co-pay system has been a bit painful. Fortunately, the foot pain seems to be subsiding this week.

Finding a dentist is next on our list - a tougher decision because we have had such up and down experiences with dentists. Some dentists seem to want to fill every soft spot in our children's mouths and make me feel like a failure because I don't oversee their brushing and flossing. Other dentists we've seen have said nothing but "see you in six months" after our biannual cleaning. I'd like to find a dentist somewhere in the middle. And wouldn't you know that my son's retainer is not fitting right any more? His lower jaw has been growing faster than his upper jaw, so he has some alignment problems. Should I try to convince him that a strong lower jaw is handsome?

I shared pictures on social media last week of our high schoolers dressed up for homecoming. Several people commented that it looked like they were transitioning well. It's a process, I answered one. This is a good example of social media deception - not intentional, although did I share these photos out of a desire to prove we are settling in? To prove to whom? I need the reminder the most. Did I share them to prop up the kids? Peer pressure from all the other homecoming shares? After spending over an hour trying to decide which pictures and whether to post, I finally hit share, and then have second guessed all day the decision, as well as regretting the time wasted on media. The fact that people see the happy smiles and think all is well shows just how well a happy smile can cover the turmoil inside.  I've also noticed lately - maybe because Instagram is sharing more "You might like this" posts, or maybe because I signed up for a promotional giveaway not realizing all the targeted suggestions I might receive  --- that there are A LOT of Catholic mom instagram accounts that show young moms in beautiful spaces with lovely clean children and pretty dresses and cool coffee mugs by beautiful planners and journaling Bibles and thoughtful reflections about growing in holiness and being thankful.  What pressure for young moms! That is a lot of beauty to live up to. Perhaps one of the things I am most grateful for is that most of my child rearing of little kids was prior to the infiltration of influencer social media accounts. Even now I am susceptible to the envy, and I have to be careful around my youngest not to have the phone out often. I guess when the older kids were her age, they wanted to watch VCR tapes and veg in front of the TV, while she wants to watch PBS apps or other shows or look at pictures. But those tapes didn't link to other accounts -  she also sometimes looks through my instagram account to see photos of the cousins, and those "suggested for you" ads are all right there for her to peruse. Fortunately, they are mostly Catholic mom lifestyle pages or Travel Europe pages or Notre Dame sports reports or Bookshelf photo accounts ... following my clicks...

Back to my first point in that paragraph -- the kids. Comparatively, the kids are doing well. They aren't coming home in tears every day, although one day a classmate did tell our 15 year old daughter that she didn't like her - then a couple days later said it was just a joke. Not a funny one. There were some tears that day. And there have been lots of tears shed by the seven year old at odd moments. She tends to feel things strongly. Even the senior broke down a few times about his knee shortly after he tore his ACL, but not from the physical pain. Since the dr gave him permission to try playing with a brace, he is playing through the pain, and every game I am afraid he'll be pulled from the field with a his lower leg at an odd angle, but we've decided the few moments of glory are worth the risk. Perhaps one day we'll regret this decision, but the pain of watching him mourn lost dreams was excruciating. And amazingly, he has had some great catches and has scored a touchdown every game - so the pain has been worth it to him. 

  

Sporty and fancy photos

Meanwhile, I still do my own fair share - or unfair share, really - of mourning. I still have a hard time stopping the broken record of self-pity and self-recrimination about taking on so much debt for a house that isn't our dream house. I'm supposed to be writing a paper about Wendell Berry for an academic conference I signed up for in February or March - it's in three weeks!!- but I can't bring myself to read him because his words are like a knife in the heart. We had the chance to make a radical change and instead chose something that isn't anything like what we had talked about. I've decided it was temporary insanity. This summer was insane.  No one wants to read anymore about this little pity party I keep having for myself, but ugh, I can't seem to leave the party.  

My solution is to keep trying to remember things to be grateful for... the sunsets, the space, the new friends. I've got a new walking friend down the street, and the neighbors had an impromptu happy hour in their driveway the other night to celebrate the cooler weather.  And I'm working as a substitute teacher for the moment while I try to decide what's next - a teaching job? a new degree, either to earn a teaching certificate or to finally finish that PhD I started years ago? Is it too late for that? Any distraction or redirect is helpful, as the parenting experts say.  Shopping for bookshelves without buying any is my biggest distraction right now. One of these days perhaps I'll commit. 

In the meantime, we have been happy to host both our own newlywed children who came for a visit a weekend ago and then this weekend my cousin's newlywed children, who came to town for a wedding. With our oldest kids, we watched the high schoolers compete in football and cross country, suffered a car break down, and then spent a day exploring downtown Austin - walking along the other Colorado River for the first time, and shopping the hipster boutiques and bootshops on South Congress. My cousins' kids spent most of their time at the wedding festivities with their friends, but Sunday morning we had a lovely visit on the back porch lingering over brunch and coffee after Mass before they headed on their drive home.  As I mentioned in the comments section to Hope, it was nice to be able to pay forward the free place to stay, since we frequently received such kindnesses in our early days.   Much to be thankful for. 

 

Getting acquainted with our new towns with the "big kids." This was my penance last week - the priest said, "Enjoy it." Sometimes you get lucky in the confessional, I guess.

And now to look forward to the weekend's haunted festivities... the spooky decorations around the neighborhood likely foreshadow a lively evening on Halloween night ... much candy has been purchased. 

  

Fall colors