Austin RRFM

In a random act of senseless violence I lost a cousin last month. She was radical and idealistic and genuinely believed there was a better way than how our society exists. And she wasn't afraid to live out her principles. Every time I think of her I am inspired to greater kindness and a more meaningful existence.

She founded the San Francisco Really Really Free Market, a sort of monthly garage sale, except that nothing is bought or sold. It is more like a potluck where everyone contributes what they can and everyone walks away enriched by the experience in some way. Austin's RRFM is this Sunday on the east side of town. Sounds like it's worth checking out.

This is for you, Kirsten.

like being 14 all over again

Back in Austin and readjusting to non-vacation life. As well as my own "cooking." Which is in parenthesis quotations because these days it's actually what passes for cooking, but usually involves something frozen coming out the microwave hot. Also adjusting to the fact that my parents are getting along and by all appearances communicating after a year long separation and God only knows how much of my adolescence. Call me a cynic, but this dramatic of a change in my dad all of a sudden makes me wary.

But on a more shameful, frightening note, I went through my old closet while back home. Came across my tape collection from middle school. In addition to a wide range songs ripped off the radio were two Carman tapes and a Newsboys tape. Mortifying.

one week in

Only in a state job is possible to take three days off work and get an eleven day holiday out of the deal. Much less be able to do it after your first week. Upon leaving on Friday I still didn't have access to my computer or the permission to do anything independently. I did spend at least four hours doing online training courses on the lab computer, which kept crashing on me. Somehow I think this a fairly good indication of what having a government job is going to be like...

Tomorrow I'm off for the east for Christmas. Big plans to do some serious sleeping in and eating my mom's cooking. Though I doubt I'll get my most sincere Christmas wish for snow.

one door away from heaven

Plenty of hubub in the house this year and yet I still can't seem to drown out the worries of Austin, which have followed me to east coast. I love my family, but yet I'm seriously irritated half the time. Grouchy in my old age or some such.

It's bitter cold here. Last night I donned a coat and sat basking in the moonlight and the sound of the waves crashing on the rocks, looking for a moment of internal peace long after the house had gone quiet. It's all energy somehow, light, motion, sound, five year old boy... The two year old carries around his blanket like Linus, occasionally moving too quickly and tripping over it. There is love here, in this house that is finally feeling broken in after fifteen years, that's starting to smell the way I remember the cottage smelling, of old wood and dust and salt air settled into the cracks. There are answers somewhere in this, just at the edge of my peripheral vision, just beyond graspable.

deep breaths

Wake up, wake up this ain’t just a thing that you
Give up give up don’t you say that I’d be
Better off better off, sleepin’ by myself and wonderin’
If I’m better off better off, without you boy
-Colbie Caillat

Does it get easier? More than a month now and I still on occasion have to concentrate on remembering how to breathe.

Hoping Thanksgiving weekend at the cove will help. Salt water cures all and I need my family.

satisfaction

Spending time with my close friends just hanging out last night at Andrew and Rachel's was the best Saturday night I've had in a long time. It may sound sacrilegious to some, but it was the kind of satisfying a rugby gathering never seems to be. They truly are the family I've created for myself here in Austin.

From a local blogger on "How To Live in Austin", via Austin Metablog:

"If you don't like hippies, tattoos, piercings, poetry, metal, alt-country, tourists, politicians, science, technology, organic food, mohawks, hybrid cards, or anything else associated with these things, move to Dallas."

Well, that effectively removes the chance of most of my family moving here for several reasons or others. Thanks to the hippies and mohawks, or science and metal, I'm safe. Whew. However, it seems that I have other issues:

"Austin's Craigslist is great, but don't troll for dates on it. This town is one of the best places in the nation for dating. If you can't find love in Austin, you're doing it wrong."

My secret is out. I've been spending late nights furtively stalked Craigslist for love now that my thesis is out of my life. No, not really. Based on my track record of living here three years and not yet finding someone within the city limits to call my own, however, I am apparently a failure.

Though, I seem to be doing something right based on the great friends I've found and life I'm making for myself here. Though I really do need to do something about this living on the far north side.

inclusion

Home from back home... For the first time in a long time I was not seriously considering how to get out of coming back to Austin. Presumably because now I only have good things to come back to. The week was a bit crazy, but I love my mother's family. It becomes more apparent each time I'm around them where certain previously unexplained parts of my personality stem from.

As much as I love and appreciate them, however, it becomes overwhelming after a while. At one point during Saturday's party I took refuge in the for-the-moment uncrowded house where my mom's brother, Steve, and his wife, Debra, were also hiding out. This elicted a "You're anti-social, too?" from Debra. Upon responding that it sometimes is just too much Steve piped in with a cheery "Don't worry, you've got plenty of time to get worse." It's nice to be included in the club.

grey and cold and wet

It's a rainy, cold weekday afternoon in the Northern Shenandoah Valley and I'm attempting to focus on alcoholic mice and miRNA function with little success. Everything I write seems completely plagarized, but mostly because everyone says essentially the same thing over and over again in their brief overviews of alcoholism and its effects on society to start off their journal articles. Half of what I'm reading isn't sticking through the haze of sinus pressure. What I would really rather be doing is watching The Fellowship of the Ring on the very large TV at home whilst curled up on the sofa.

Hanging out with my brothers has proven interesting. They've both grown up a lot in the last year and remarkably making decisions that directly affect the rest of their lives. My mother is moving forward and upward in the wake of her separation from my father. It hasn't been easy on anyone, but in the long run it's a major positive for everyone involved. Not having him in the house has definitely made for a much more relaxed few days at home; no worrying about keeping things on an even keel, wondering how long it would before before something miniscule and inconsequential sets him off again. Christmas Day won't be nearly so peaceful.

Rhode Island Dreaming

Thanksgiving made for an absolutely amazing weekend. I had forgotten how wonderful it is to have family around. Family one gets along with, that is. I have a plethora of photos from my trip, all of which are currently languishing in my computer because I left my USB cord in Rhode Island. My aunt is mailing it to me, so hopefully I'll have it back and photos posted soon.

My cousins, Cameron and Devon, are the cutest kids ever. Two and four may be the perfect age, at least when you get to give them back. From intense and sarcastically competitive Scrabble games to walks on the beach to pumpkin cheesecake, all in a place I love, I cannot imagine having a more perfect Thanksgiving weekend. Not to mention the fact that I finally figured out where my sense of humor and some other major parts of my personality come from. And I was genuinely happy. More so than I have been in a long time.

All of this is enough to make me seriously consider moving to New England. Finding a job wouldn't be difficult, one of my mom's brothers works as a consultant in the biomedical field and offered to use his connections, I'd be close to family, my allergies are negligible compared to Austin, the ocean is right there, and the northeast actually has seasons. However, I don't know how much of that reasoning is my deep dissatisfaction with graduate school speaking and how much of it is really what I want. Nor do I think I'm ready to pick up and leave all of my Austin friends. It took a long time to find my support network and I seriously doubt I'll ever find a group quite like them ever again. Then there's my rugby team and the fact that Austin is finally starting to feel familiar. Really, though, all of this is pointless conjecture because unless I'm prepared to walk away from my degree none of this is feasible for at least another six months. But it is a relief to know there is somewhere I could escape to that I am happy.

thanksgiving

Less than an hour before I head to catch the shuttle to the airport. While I'm not feeling particularly enthusiastic about spending the next twelve hours or so dealing with air travel I am extremely excited about this holiday. I fly into BWI via Denver (wha?) midnight-ish and from there am heading north to Jamestown, RI with my mom and youngest brother. It's about an eight hour drive and there was no option for changing my flights, even with a hefty fine; it seems holiday travel really doesn't lend itself to changing plans.

There is absolutely nowhere in the world I would rather be this weekend than with this particular group of family in Hull Cove, Jamestown, RI. I'm probably going to have an interesting time explaining just why I'm mastering out my graduate program, but otherwise these are people whom, given the opportunity, I would choose for family and I haven't seen most of them since the summer of 2004. The cove has been a refuge for me all of my life; some of my earliest memories involve family vacations there surrounded by my cousins and my mother's siblings. I still hear the waves in my dreams to this day.

In four days I'll be back in the reality of life, hopefully with plenty of family anecdotes that don't involve being offered cheap whiskey by my grandfather (That was the other side of the family, last Christmas. This upcoming Christmas I'll probably need it.) Until then, though, it's comfort food, and time with a book next to the fireplace and waking up with the waves outside my window.