When I look at the calendar I panic a little. December is almost here. That means that in a few weeks movers will come and wrap up our furniture, and will load all the boxes that contain the physical evidence of our lives onto a truck. After that our house will be nearly empty. It will take about eight weeks for everything to get to the port of Antwerp, unless the ship sinks and all of our stuff will end up on the bottom of the ocean, awaiting future archaeologists to dig it up and hypothesize about who we were and what we might have planned based on the sporadic remnants spared by time. (Wow, I digress... that is the archaeologist in me! ha.) Anyway, it will be weird to continue with "normal" life with a nearly empty house. But December is the Holiday month, so we will actually not be here that much. We will spend Christmas with Robert's family in Amarillo, Texas and in New Mexico, and that we are very much looking forward to.
November had my mother's birthday and we sang to her and had cake on her behalf, with a candle as Evelina likes it for a "happy day!" (as she calls it) with my mom connected via Sightspeed. How wonderful this is and how bizarre too, that for Evelina the computer is a connection to her grandparents. She will often ask for them (moeke, baba, gramma) and then run to the computer and point and say "yes, look!" The other day when she came home from daycare, there was no computer on my desk (it was in the shop for repair) and she noticed (of course) and nearly panicked. "Computer gone, moeke-baba gone, gramma gone!!!" she shouted and put her little head in her hands and cried. Robert and I were astounded by her reaction and I quickly showed her that all was OK as we still had the laptop. Phew! She knows they all exist as real people, but somehow they also reside inside the computer and with the device gone, well... they must have been gone too. It was touching to see.
Oh and then there was my birthday too! 38. Hard to believe. This too was celebrated with cake and candles and singing. I must say the biggest gift is having your child all worked up about delivering your cake and gift to you. She could not contain herself and her little feet trampled with excitement. I nearly forgot that there was something inside of the little bag (thank you Robert!) after her exhilaration. Robert and Evelina had a wonderful chocolate ganache cake made for me at the local bakery and it read "happy day Mama!" What more can one wish for.
The weekend before my birthday we went to the Texas Renaissance Festival. This is an annual themed outdoor festival outside of Houston. The theme of course being the "renaissance" period which is interpreted very broadly and quite different from what I as an art historian would define it. There are numerous little shops with everything from beads, to candles, to clothes in chainmail (even bikinis!), to costumes, etc. There are shows with belly dancers, jousting, magicians, and all kinds of other entertainment. People arrive in costume, from elaborate gowns, to skimpy gypsie atire, and fairies (why? Don't know but they do), alchemists and witches. People eat (corn-on-the cob, turkey legs, and pretzles) and drink (sometimes too much.) We had gone a few times before, years ago and I had loved it. I am not sure why we forgot about it for several years, but I am so happy we went again! I just loved it. It is tacky, totally white-trash (if my Euro-friends do not know what this means, they can email me and I will explain) and cheesy (same here -- I remember my Italian friend Germano taking issue with this term and trying to translate it!) But I loved it (or should there be no "but" in this phrase?). And of course, this year we had our own little fairy with us. She was adorable and turned many heads. I will post some pics of this day. I could have gone back a second time, but of course we didn't, it would have been less exciting and less "magical" the second time around. Oh, one more thing I should mention about this day. Evelina saw real elephants and camels and was pretty amazed about that. We were standing quite close when suddenly one of the elephants pooped! This made such a big impression on her that we still hear about that BIG elephant-poop that had to be picked up with a shovel no less. The world truly is amazing when you are a little toddler.
Thanksgiving was quiet and intimate. We stayed at home on the most-heavily-traveled long weekend in the country. It is rather ironic that over the years, it is precisly this all-American holiday which brings nearly all families together, we have mostly celebrated with just the two of us in Austin. And so it was to be for this last one (three of us now). We made a smallish Thanksgiving dinner and Evelina helped with everything she could. We also made pizzas much to Evelina's delight and I will share some of those pictures here.
One other highpoint was the fact that we got to visit Rebecca on the set of Friday Night Lights. For the uninitiated, FNL is a new TV series about a Texas town and its high-school football team. That is how it is known, but it is sooo much more than that. The show is filmed here in Austin and is in its 2nd season and Robert's sister Rebecca is one of the script-supervisors of the show (i.e. the very important person sitting next to the director.) Robert and I watched the pilot and were instantly hooked! Since we don't have TV we have watched all the episodes available on DVD, often 2 to 3 a night. The show really draws you in. So we feel like we know all of the characters. So how awesome when we got to go on set and see them film part of an episode. Now I am not one to be starstruck, and this show really doesn't have any stars in it (although I am sure that many of the actors will become that after this show) but it was supercool to actually MEET some of our favorite characters in the show (or did we meet the actors playing those characters? That is hard to say!) We met Coach Taylor (super cool) and his wife (on the show) and we met one of the football-players. (It was my lucky day because the one in this scene whom we met truly is eye-candy!) Of course we also met the director and some other behind-the-sceners, those very important people but whom nobody really drools over. I would have loved to stay, but space was tight and we obviously did not belong there, so we snuck out... We are trying to get Rebecca to get us in as extras, but I am afraid that it won't happen. The shooting will soon be done. That damned writers' strike. Curse them! I took a picture of Rebecca at work. I was too shy to take pics of the actors!
Our house is still on the market and we approach a difficult period now to try to sell a house. But we persist. It will happen! I had to remind Robert about the fact that most people are not like us and do not decide on buying a house after seeing it only twice (on the same day)! So how are things with THAT house? Well, we finally got the permit! YEAH!! That is 11 months after buying it, by the way. So this means that the heavy-duty interior construction and the replacing of the windows can start now. (yes, in case you thought that those previous pictures were of the heavy-duty work, no! That is still to come.) Several steel beams will be delivered this week actually and will be placed to support the house where we have decided to take walls away. After that, things ought to move more swifly. It is about time, no, considering we will be moving there in about 2 months! I truly cannot wait to be able to post pictures of the construction (as opposed to de-construction.) But for now, all I have is this. Will we truly be living there in February?
Well I will post more pics as I receive them. And I will try to keep everyone abreast of goings-on. With this, many greetings from Texas with love (oh dear, I will soon have to change the title of my blog!) Oh, and I do have to mention that finally the colder weather has blown in. How wonderful it is to be able to put on a jacket and wrap up in a scarf (well I do at least, many students are still wearing shorts and T-shirts, but I think that now they actually must be cold). It came overnight. 85 degrees F one day and 40 the next. That's Texas for ya! I will end with one more picture. Evelina has started using the potty... with drumrolls!
