The process of moving has involved Damon spending much of his time in the office, rearranging bits and bytes among three or four different laptops, including mine. I’ve walked into the room numerous times only to stand in the doorway, slackjawed in fatigue, wondering in my little mind whether it may be wise to interrupt the binary flow and ask for my computer. Most of the time I pause there for a minute, holding my breath, until I decide that I’d rather go pick my nose or knit, or do both, in no particular order. Craziness becomes me when I’m in limbo, manifesting itself in peculiar ways.

I had a lovely photomosaic from the holidays which, after Damon looked sideways at my computer, got lost. Not that it was his fault. I blame it rather on my computer, for being there on the countertop, in his plain view. So intimidating was his glance from across the room that Safari just quit on him. On all of us, really. It took me about an hour to put together, so you can understand my frustration and the hesitation I feel trying to making another. And until I have packed. But first, priorities: blogging. After all, I’ve been such a prolific blogger the past 4 months, right?

For the record, I did get a Shuffle for Christmas and it’s probably the coolest thing on my list of cool things on the planet, next to this really cool other new thing I got for christmas, called a FISHEYE lens! I still can’t believe it. I must’ve been a good girl last year. Or something.

The act of moving feels second nature. We have been moving every two or three years for the past decade, Damon and I, so this time feels not unlike the rest. We know the drill: Before it’s too late, one last taste of everything we love…Today, Magnolia cafe pancakes–without the kids; a muddy plod through the greenbelt basin; yesterday, skateboarding after dark at the top of Damon’s old parking garage. Shotgunning Shiner beer and watching the weather change above us. I wish we could experience one more thunderstorm before we depart on Wednesday for the west coast; I’ll miss the stratospheric drama we’re accustomed to here, but we’ll exchange all that for a new trove of earthly spactacles: quakes, geysers, hot springs and bubbling mud pits. Purple sulphur bacteria. And heaving kelp beds beneath tiny boats. I decided to unearth the kelp quilt I started several months ago and pack it with the hotel yarn stash, fodder for my late nights to come, once we arrive in Mountain View.

Wow, this is awkward. That struggling for the right anecdotes when you’re standing there with a towering armful of them, ready to topple over. An anxious pause in conversation with a long-distance friend, when you know there’s something you’re forgetting to mention.

Well, here it is, the big thing I’ve forgotten to mention: We are moving back to California. At the end of the month, a big tractor trailer will back into our bending driveway. It will rip off the lowest, brittle oak limbs that cover the stretch of pavement where Ford has learned to skateboard and park over the spot, near the garbage cans, where the chickens keep scattering leaves in their search for grubs. And somehow, when this all happens, I will be in a hotel room in Mountain View, probably still scanning Craigslist for a place for us to live.

It’s not that we don’t love Austin. We’ve managed to sink a pretty thick taproot into the limestone bedrock here, and bought a lot to build on and sunk our teeth through some great plans for our future here. And we’re keeping that foothold here. Nothing changes that.

It’s just that someone really needs Damon right now, enough that they found him, interviewed him 23 times over the course of 3 months and made it virtually impossible for us to justify staying here in Austin, when every fiber in our body was begging us to just stay put. One of his colleagues sums it up well: You’d have to kick yourself in the arse every day if you stayed. And I can’t live with a husband who kicks himself in the arse every day; only one of us can do that in this household and I claim that right for myself. For reasons that aren’t important right now and that vary from day to day anyway.

And because it’s the holidays and I’m packing and making presents and freaking out, I’ve given and exceeded the five minute limit I put on blogging tonight. I don’t have any new pictures. I do have so many things I regret not writing about over the past few months; the time has simply slipped through my fingers. I’ve instead been rewarding myself lately, at the tail end of the day, with a beer, a shameful tv program and a lapful of wool between busy but meditative needles.

This is home. Beyond this sycamore sapling (which, grandparents, Chas can identify!) lies a limestone expanse covering hundreds of acres, porous with trails and itching with wildlife. I haven’t begun to scratch the surface on my true feelings of place here, mostly because I have grown accustomed to actually being there either with the children or with Damon. We scramble and hike with friends and kids, but mostly we run. Almost every morning.

This morning, as we craggled our way through the round pebble creekbed, now bone dry. Frost crept upon the stands of wildflowers, long since browned by summer’s hot draught. A curious carving of ice, easily mistaken for packing foam, glistened around the base of each weed. Layers upon layers of crystalline ice ribbons sheathed brown stem. I dislodged a dry column of webbed crystal. During the night, in a last defense against the harsh northern wind, each stem swelled and burst, and seeping slowly from the plant oozed all sap and life to form intricate whorls of feathery ice curls. Layer after layer melted into my red hand. Happy to prove to Damon that it wasn’t frozen dog pee, I wiped my hands and kept on running.

This, among all daily surprises I encounter here, is why I don’t do treadmills. And this, followed by Tacodeli’s agua de melon (2 glasses) and poblano, spinach and egg tacos (with a half cup of the sour cream+fresh jalapeno hot sauce) is one very big reason why I’d rather not move. But change is in the air….

A double-take, and I see Ford drinking milk straight out of the carton; he is five going on fifteen. The array of cheerios on the table ground him solidly at five, though, harking back at two.

Chas, meanwhile, sneaks a few steps ahead of me when I’m not looking. Here, he is taking a break from sit-down longboarding in the driveway, elated with the feeling of being able to soar only inches above concrete, all by himself.

I have a cache of smiley moments to toss onto the page but not a lot of time to do it right now: the way the sun dappled through cool limestone shadows as we rambled through the canyon, grazing the chalky outcroppings with little fingers; laughing at the dancing chickens in our yard; standing on stools in the kitchen, cutting vegetables for a pot of soup and laughing at the carrots that kept rolling off the countertop and onto the floor. Despite the occasional headaches, this job rocks!

Ford, the White Witch from Narnia, along with Mr. Incrediboy, on the walk to the school carnival. Looking pretty tired already. But they perked up after each squirted a half-can of cookie icing into their mouths while we grownups weren’t paying attention.

Chas, on Halloween night, decided to be the White Witch, too. But in battle dress.
It looks even better with the red lollipop hanging from the pelt, but I lost that photo somewhere.