Our New Life in Austin

Where are you? What's your house like? What's been going on? When are you going to call? We need an update. Yes, well, to all these questions, I offer the following.

The trip to Austin was mostly uneventful; we left on Saturday morning and arrived in Austin on Sunday evening. Except for the time the pop-up camper began swaying so horribly that the semi-truck and me in Jon's pick-up truck slowed down considerably as we offered up desperate prayers that Jon would get control of the pop-up and thankful prayers that the suburban is a heavy vehicle, or the time I had to sleep on the bathroom floor at the hotel with Daisy so she wouldn't bark, growl or whine every time a hotel guest walked noisily down the hall, or the time we nearly left Charles somewhere....come to think of it, is Charles around here? Other than that, it went about as smoothly as a trip involving 6 kids, an 80lb red boned hound, 2 parents, grandpa, two vehicles, and a camper can go.

We arrived at our new address under the worst of circumstances. Namely because I'd been averaging 3 hours of sleep a night for quite a few nights running, the kids were very hyper having been cooped up in cars for a couple days, and Daisy was exuberantly sniffing and barking at everything. Furthermore, Jon was tense about my opinion of the house I'd never seen, and the home owners still had two cars parked in the driveway and 3 tiny yippee ankle biter dogs hollering their wee heads off in the sunroom. And so we burst upon the house and yard, party of 10.

Amongst wriggling excited humans dashing about, opening and closing doors, I surveyed the new landing pad. The house is odd and dark, with additions, hallways and extra doors here and there disrupting any sort of modern open flow that characterizes today's architecture. The kitchen is so dark that even I have to turn on lights in the middle of the day, and in a comparison of my past kitchen in terms of brightness and size....it's better not to compare. The master bedroom is a very odd sort, where the windows to the outside no longer look outside as an addition was put on--so the windows look into the small addition (now housing my sewing room) and two windows look out of the sewing room into the backyard. The master bath--hilarity will have to suffice as description since my camera battery died and I cannot download pictures until I unpack the box with the battery. I've no doubt the light fixtures and bathroom counters were the most hip in the mid-70's.

I was rather deflated and distressed. And poor Jon was worried sick muttering, " I should have never chosen the house."

Once I had a moment to catch my breath and rally my spirits, I began in earnest to mentally arrange our stuff in the current landscape since the movers and the semi-truck would arrive first thing in the morning and unpack in a whirl wind of activity that might take me weeks to sort out. Jon went to book a hotel for the night which took some doing since I was adamant that Daisy stay with us and not be left at the strange house alone--but he found a great spot after 45 minutes of phone calls--very clean, perfectly arranged, and dog friendly. Best part, it was the least expensive of all the hotels he contacted.

Daisy was a gem that night at the hotel which was good because I needed to sleep in a bed for a good many hours which I did, and we showed up back at the house to find the moving staff ready and waiting on Monday morning.

We were really blessed with the best moving staff ever. Five guys along with Patty and Dennis, unloaded the truck, and I directed everyone to the right rooms. 28,000 lbs of furnishings, books, and stuff were absorbed by the house in a mere 6 hours. It was remarkable. Then Patty and Dennis bid adieu to the local moving staff, and set to work unpacking; Grandpa, Jon and I assisting that effort.

By Tuesday morning, I had to admire Jon's ability to pick a house that was really very well suited to our "odd" life. The backyard is huge, fenced, with trees, a big shed, and a perfect spot for the trampoline which is up and running. The place is teeming with wild life, and the boys have been catching dozens of snakes, lizards, toads, huge caterpillars, and other assortments which they have to release from captivity nightly. I think all the lizards are tail-less in our yard now.

The three car garage was converted into a one car garage with a big finished off room perfectly suited to homeschooling with built in book shelves and counters, and plenty of room for instruments, books, computer, printer, school supplies, 6 desks, and all else. A little hallway goes from finished garage school room to the small hallway in the house, containing a broom closet, the washer and dryer, and an extra bathroom that everyone forgets we have until the other two are occupied. From there you enter the dinette area which of course has my huge desk, and then the "cozy" kitchen to the right. The kitchen is down right tiny with a set of double ovens from the 70's (which I like very much) that have never been used. They were shocked to be put into play on day 2 of our arrival, and have been turned on at least once a day since.

My kitchen is a tiny contained unit so it is more like a work room which no one can see anyway. Sprouts are in various stages of advance, tupperware rectangles full of sugar, cornmeal and beans are stacked up in one corner with the Berkey water filter, all my electrical appliances line the counters since there's no room in a cabinet, and so on and so forth. Unfortunately, the 4 corners of the small room are essentially unusable because of the way the cabinets were installed. But the very good news is that it has forced me to do what I needed to do a long time ago--purge the kitchen of all things not frequently used and not essential to the daily culinary life of the Hodges family.

The sunroom is housing unpacked boxes, the sewing room doubles as my radio studio and Jon's office when he's working from home, the children's rooms are big enough, and the family room is very large with a high open beamed ceiling and a big brick fireplace. Lots of loaded bookshelves complete the picture. The dining room is the loveliest room in the house with a wide shelf the length of the room under the front windows that holds oil lamps, cake stand, fruit bowl, etc. Bookshelves line two other walls, and the piano is nicely ensconced along the 4th wall. Doors close it off from the kitchen and from the entry way.

Overall I am very pleased with the final product and have congratulated Jon on a job well done. Though we are still unpacking boxes, we are getting ever closer to a routine of music practice, school and play time though we aren't quite there yet.

I've not yet seen a single child in the vast neighborhood except my own. Charles while walking Daisy the other day overheard a neighbor remark to another, "It sure is weird seeing kids around here." We seem to be the odd man out wherever we go, but everyone is fine with that.

One night I went for a jog around midnight and was startled to come upon 4 deer posed in a yard. It really isn't the sort of neighborhood you would find fake deer in the yard but I couldn't believe they were real. They were real all right and having the best time running and playing all over the place. I "ran" into them 3 more times over the next 30 minutes. Very pleasant.

The days are HOT, in the 100's. The nights are very pleasant, mid-70's, and the stars are absolutely divine. We live in south Austin, the farthest you can go and still be within the city limits, which is nice because it puts us farther from the light pollution at night. Most days the suburban sets in the driveway unused, and I'm kept very occupied feeding these people, unpacking, maintaining clean laundry and doing my daily radio show.

Jon is on the road most days, sometimes making an appearance at lunch and home most nights. He loves his job and is ecstatic that he can come "home" rather than stay in hotels as he did for June and July. I like the more leisurely pace of mornings since Jon doesn't have to be out the door as quickly and everyone can have breakfast together after the sun is up.

And that in a nutshell--I guess a rather big nutshell--sums up the Reader's Digest version of the Hodges new life.