The semester begins

Allison doesn't start school until next week but I started teaching on Tuesday and Joe went to the first session of his TA class this afternoons. He isn't home yet, so I don't know how it went. My class, on the other hand, seems fine. I even have a pair of sisters. I don't know their order but they are habited. It's a first and kind of fun, actually. They are very sweet and seem to be quite bright.

The grand tour

First, a little neighborhood ambiance. Alright, so not all of the houses on our street look like this but this is the sort of thing you see in Austin. It's eclectic!















Welcome to our house!




















The front room from the entry way. As you can see, it leads directly to the kitchen and dining area.















From the other direction. There's actually nice light in the kitchen. And look! The tile is the color of dirt with dirt colored grout! I could not be more happy about that.






















The kitchen is tiny but very functional an it has a ton of storage.
















I like the view out the kitchen window.















The girls have a lot of stuff but I found a place for it.


































Our room doubles as an office
















and triples as a library. Most of our books are in storage, though.

















So that's it.

The kids at auditorium shores

The kids like to play in the fountain here, in a downtown park. It's about 10 minutes drive from our house.

Wagoneering

We've been taking the wagon lots of places. Allison doesn't like to be in the sun.

Ever take it off any sweet jumps?

The Huffy.

I'm getting a bike!

So I've been in Austin for about 15 minutes, right? And now I need a bike. Everyone bikes here. There are bike lanes! All over! The commute to work is about 9 miles and through downtown, so it's not convenient but I've decided I should bike to the grocery store.

Ergo, craigslist and a new bike. I found one I liked. It's pink and it has a basket on the front. My plan is to buy a beater now and if I find that I do ride it regularly, then I'll be able to justify the expense of buying something a bit nicer.


This is my dream bike. I'll post a picture of my huffy with the basket on the handlebars when I get it tomorrow. I have to get the u-frame so I can ride in a skirt.















I already got a wagon to drag the kids down to the park. It's brilliant. It's super fun to live someplace this walkable, bikeable, wagonable, and bus-able.

Time for some breakfast tacos. More pics of the kids later.

Getting settled

So I mentioned that when we arrived, we were greeted by a squatter. We named her Emily. By "we" I mean "Allison" and she names almost everything "Emily."




















When we first arrived, the girls entertained themselves with the bare minimum of toys.



































Supplemented by a generous amount of running to and fro.
















We are just so close to having things more or less in place. I'll post a tour of our new home in pictures when we're done with that. Meanwhile, things have improved, now that the girls have their own things around them and Nana is here to help entertain them while Joe and I work on unpacking.

For the sake of clarity

Several people have asked me what moving to Austin means in terms of my dissertation--will I transfer, have I finished? The answer is that it means relatively little for my dissertation. I'm still writing--that's a long story, some of you know it--and I will finish my degree, assuming I finish it, from here. I'll communicate with my committee by email, which is what I did in Atlanta anyway, and I'll have to make a trip out to defend. Assuming I finsih.

I say assuming I finish because I don't know. I don't know if I'm making progress or not. I'm cautiously optimistic about the current situation with my committee but I really couldn't say whether--let alone when--this is going to be done. Whether or not I finish is, in some respect, up to me. In another respect, it isn't. At all. I've already produced hundreds of pages that went nowhere. I can't say that won't happen this time, as I approach the 100 page mark again. All I can do is write and hope for the best.

Incidentally, if the current dissertation direction doesn't work out, I'm not going to make yet another shift. I've already told my committee that. This is my last volley. It's been going well so far, which is the only reason I haven't quit already. Bottom line, if my committee asks me to start over yet again, I'm not interested in doing that. I'm going to leave the program without a degree. There's no question of a terminal master's. I already have one. They don't really grant them to folks leaving the PhD in my field. So that's it. Done.

I feel good about that decision. This has come to a place where it's about my survival, in a truly desperate sense. I can't keep participating in this cycle of...not even writing of rewriting. Of writing and then writing again. I can't and I shouldn't.

This isn't to say that I believe my work is poor--I certainly don't--or that I couldn't hack it, couldn't get down to writing, couldn't do the intellectual work. I can. I don't think I'd be a poor academic. I think I'd be quite good and I know I'm an excellent teacher. I've had a t-t job offer at a place I absolutely loved. I have confirmation from lots of other sources that my work is interesting and valuable. I have certain accomplishments. No, I really do think I'm good at this stuff. In fact, it's because I think my work is genuinely good that I have to stop this if I can't satisfy my committee this time around. That's the sense in which I think I shouldn't keep at this. I have something to offer and I shouldn't waste it stuck in the samsara of graduate school. Time to escape to nirvana by ridding myself of my attachment to getting a phd.

Nirvana, in this case, means part-time employment teaching somewhere in the short term but the longer term plan is to get my master's in social work. Yes, another degree! But a short one and only a master's. I might also consider a certification in clinical pastoral education to pursue professional chaplaincy--I'm especially interested in hospice work--but the first course of action would be to research programs in social work and see where that takes me.

I'm writing this all out here because while some people reading here know these things, some don't quite know what is happening and several people have asked me whether I'm finished and what not. I thought I'd put it down here for the sake of clarity. I may very well finish. I'm still working on the dissertation and yes, things seem to be going relatively well at the moment. But the future is uncertain. Of that I am sure.

Da Ali B Show

yo yo yo booyahkashah!

she says this is her mad face but I think she looks straight up gangsta. Born in the capital of the dirty south, ya'll.

Driving

Something to remember me by

I left them a present.

Hello, friends!

I expect we should have an influx of readers here, given that we've distributed the url at church, so hi, church people! Leave us a comment! I write everything here but Joe reads, too, so if you want to say something to him, feel free. I'm not sure what our internet access will be but I'll try to update this pretty regularly.

At the moment, I am poaching a wireless signal from a neighbor so I have to keep this entry fairly short.

We hired some help to load the truck on Monday and on Tuesday, Dan helped Joe pack most of the rest of it--for which we are eternally grateful!--and Christa watched the girls so I could get some work done inside the house. We finished loading on Wednesday morning. We had planned to leave by noon but didn't make it out until about 2:30. Still, we made it to Tuscaloosa in good time to have a swim, get dinner, and put the girls to bed.

The rest of the drive was fairly uneventful. We saw a lot of dead armadillos. We had to stop too many times for Allison to use the bathroom. The cab of the moving van is covered in a film of Sonja's hair. The girls did....okay. They were good between Tuscaloosa and Shreveport but Shreveport to Austin was a bit rough. It's a good thing they're cute. Really. You think I'm kidding. Especially Frances.

Two things greeted us on arrival. First, a lizard! We named her Emily. I have a picture of her. I'll post it later.

Second, the former tenants didn't bother to pull the trash to the curb when they left which is to say they left a stinking, festering, overflowing trash can full of the former contents of their refrigerator in the car port in over 100 degree heat. It had been there for days and we missed trash pickup by half a day. Which is to say, we were greeted by a rank smell, a swarm of flies, and a neighbor threatening to call the health department and no trash pick up until seven days hence.

Incidentally, the folks who share our duplex seem lovely--a family with a little boy the same age as Frances. On the other side, we have a hippy. Shocking, I know. Hippies? In Austin? Yes, well. Full beard to about mid chest, lots of decorative chimes and other shiny objects dangling from the trees, and I have yet to see the man don either shirt or shoes. He is very friendly and his house is well-kept. I'm not complaining.

The trash, though, was awful and our hippy neighbor told us he was going to call the health department if our landlord didn't do something about it. We called our landlord, who was out of town, and he tried to get someone to come out and take care of it. In the meantime, he suggested we take it to the dumpster at his place of business. We decided to take some of the trash to the dumpster--enough to close the lid.

Joe put down several cardboard boxes in the trunk and then he put bags of trash into individual boxes and put those in the trunk. It leaked. It leaked so that when he took one of the the boxes out, it fell apart and wet trash splattered all over the pavement. Nice. Then, I held open the dumpster and caught the edge of the bag on the lid and it ripped and sprayed trash juice all over Joe's shirt. Also very nice.

Truth be told, the car still smells vaguely of ick.

Thankfully, at 8 this morning, two men arrived in a pickup and took our trash can. They returned in about 20 minutes with the can, empty and emanating a pleasant aroma of bleach. It was lovely. I do think we have rather a good landlord.

Last night, we set up beds and crashed out. Today, we went to costco for some basic provisions and we worked on unloading enough of our crap to allow access to some of the things that need to go into storage. Joe rented a storage unit and we worked together unloading the heavier items. Then I took the kids home to put them to bed while he did a little more unloading. After that, we'll have our standard Saturday evening martinis.

Tomorrow, we'll have professional moving help, so things should get a bit easier, which is a good thing because this move has been really tough so far. It isn't very pleasant to move somewhere new only to find it full of stinking trash. It's been tough on the kids. Allison keeps telling me she doesn't like it here. Not to be depressive or anything. I'm just saying. The sooner we get things moved in, get this place resembling a home, and get the children back into a routine, the better.

Pictures to follow very shortly. Right now I have to help Joe park the truck.

hatz r fun

I love Ian and Clare

I do. They just left and I'm writing a quick note to tell you all a cute story about Allison. Clare has dubbed Allison the queen of non sequiturs, and this is true.

At a certain point, Allison announced that she's not a toddler anymore. We were appropriately impressed. No, you're not. you're a big girl, right? Well, Allison says. I'm not a toddler. I'm an artist.

That's right, you heard it here first. She's an artist. After that, she says she'll be a kindergartener.

The excruciating minutiae of my life plus pictures of las chicas

The cupboards are almost bare....but not quite. We're having Ian and Clare to dinner and well, I kinda shouldn't pack the kitchen until we do. I did put some things away.






































Sonja is pretty bored by the whole business. It doesn't involve food or walking.
















Frances, on the other hand, thinks messing up the house is lots of fun.



















Now, I have managed to empty the closets. Once I did this, I realized how really bad the interior looked, so I painted them. Yes, I know this was totally unnecessary. It's pretty!




















The shelves are almost empty, too.






















It's lovely to have a basement where we can stash all the stuff we've already packed.
















Of course, some of it is also cluttering up my living space. This is not cool









































Did I mention Frances thinks making messes is a whole lot of fun. Here she is. In spite of a head cold and the five immunization shots she got yesterday, she was in a spectacular mood today.





















Allison spent her time dancing like a ballerina





And waiting for Ian and Clare to show up. I had a picture of it but it won't upload and speaking of Ian and Clare...I need to get on with dinner.