Hodie Christus Natus Est!

Merry Christmas to our loyal and patient readers! Christ was born in a stable, but the Darwin house resembles the inn, with family rattling merrily around the new homestead. The vast swathes of paneling give the place a fine acoustic, which my sister (the opera singer) has exploited to fine effect. Every day reveals new facets of the house, both amazing and discomfiting, such as: there used to be a house phone! The ceramic heater in the bathroom still works! Out of four showers in the house, only one is fully operational! The downstairs bathroom door neither catches nor latches -in fact, only one of the bathrooms locks! Fortunately, it's the one with the working shower.

The home Internet connection won't be functional until later this week, and the iPad, for all it's toy value, is recalcitrant when it comes to typing much more than a sentence or two. (Witness, or rather don't witness, because you can't, the paragraph of inimitable prose it just ate as I tried to fix a minor typo.) We shall be back in form soon, and with photos to boot. What the move takes away, it restores: the memory chip to the digital camera, lost in the move from Texas, was discovered again in the midst of packing for Columbus.

We're about to settle in the library to watch A Christmas Carol (the George C. Scott version; Darwin will countenance no other). God bless us, every one!

The Crazy Season

I'm so grateful for all the readers who are so generous with their prayers and love. Your comments cheered and encouraged me when I really needed it. I'm glad that we have such a generous and gracious readership. I would like to clear up concerns, however, that I'm either depressed or suffering from SAD. I love fall weather and the early darkness and the gray half-light of winter, but in fact it's been bright and gorgeous almost every day of our sojourn in The North. I also would never lightly dismiss signs of depression, since in my time I've lived with people who suffer from it and have seen what it can do to relationships and families, but that's never been something that's affected me -- thank God! I was hesitant to post because I feared sounding crazy, but this is a crazy season.

My biggest problem is really that my husband is gone five days a week. We knew going into this that it would be tricky, but I just wasn't prepared for the gaping hole this separation would rip in our family structure. The kids need Dad around for stability and love and discipline, and I need my husband for support and encouragement and love. We see Darwin every Friday night, of course, but it seems like it's Thursday each week when everything blows up. Of course!

We're starting to gather the threads together and start patching our existence back together. Darwin and I went back to Texas this weekend to be godparents to the prettiest little girl, and that time alone was just what we needed to shake off the difficulties of the week. This week I'm finally meeting up with people I know in this area, so the kids will get out and play with friends and I'll have some congenial adult company. We have in an offer on a perfect house for our family, and we're waiting for a response from the sellers. (And we got Ohio temp tags, so hopefully there's no more harassment from Cincinnati's finest.) We're weaving the strands back together -- for today, anyway. I don't think the crazy season will end any time soon. But I'm looking forward to the normal zany family craziness to take over from the unsettled fatherless moving craziness.

This Too

I've always had this image of myself, and I think it's pretty much borne out by reality, of being rational and level-headed and overall a clear thinker. I don't have a reputation for being high-maintenance. And I thought I was pretty equal to most situations. And maybe I still am, but this move is testing the limits of my emotional equilibrium.

I don't often write about being in a bad mood or feeling out-of-control, because I know that what's written is written, even when the moment passes, as it inevitably does. But lately, I live on the edge. It's been about eight weeks since we left Texas, and each week has been more difficult than the last. Perhaps that's to be expected: we're finally coming up on making an offer on a house in Columbus, with all the stress that entails; we're encountering frustrating delays with the relocation company regarding our house in Texas; we only see Darwin on the weekends (and the baby is four months old, with all the cyclical unpredictableness that entails); and the kids are unsettled and acting out. But I don't like my metamorphosis into some who's often on the verge of tears all day. I don't like the shaky panic I feel in my stomach when it's 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon and I remember that Daddy's not coming home tonight. And I don't like the increasing frequency with which I take all this out on the kids, who in turn have discovered that Mommy will allow them to watch hours of old cartoons after lunch so that she can just get some peace and quiet.

All this culminated this morning in my bursting into tears while bargaining with a policeman I discovered attempting to tow my van for having expired Texas plates. (And I'm delighted to discover that profiling is not practiced in the state of Ohio, since the cop solemnly declared of my four-year-old minivan bursting with children's paraphernalia, "Sometimes drug dealers use cars with expired plates and park 'em on the side streets here.") He magnanimously desisted after my strangled yelp in response to his suggestion that since I didn't have a permanent Ohio address, I could get temporary tags in my dad's address and bring them to the impound lot, but I was left with a citation and my dad's uniquely unparkable garage in which to house the minivan that dare not show its plates. This was compounded by the oddly out-of-body experience of weeping maudlin thanks to the sympathetic neighbor -- me! crying in public! To a person I've only ever nodded at! MrsDarwin, I hardly knew ye.

I know that this is not the end of the world, or even all that horrible a problem. People around the world are starving, are ill, are being abused or wondering if that dreaded knock on the door will come today, and my big issue is how to register a van in a new state before I fly to Texas tomorrow night. My life is not that bad, but it is wildly chaotic, and I'm dismayed to find that I can't handle it like I thought I could.

Today is Veterans' Day, and I salute all the military wives and mothers who hold up their families and our country. You're braver than I can be.

Just everything

Cincinnati is a city of steeples. On every hill (and the hills are legion) you see a spire or a pair of towers reaching above the trees. Many of these steeples I know only by sight, but some I can identify from the highway: down in Northside, off 75 and 74, is St. Pius X, where I was confirmed. I know St. Peter in Chains, off 75 downtown. Immaculata, in Mount Adams, where the pilgrims pray the steps every Good Friday, crowning the city above the merge from 471 to 71. Fr. Al Lauer once said that the history of the Catholic Church in Cincinnati can be traced roughly along Glenway Ave: St. Lawrence, St. Teresa, Our Lady of Lourdes, and St. Jude.

Columbus, I have to say, is not Cincinnati. Ah well...

Here, have some pix: here's the kids on Halloween.



And (cross your fingers) this is what we hope might become the new Darwin manor:

Your humble correspondent

Lookit me, posting on my own blog!

Believe me when I say I've missed you. I have composed numerous rants and half-posts in my fertile little brain, only to find that my current internet connection doesn't always deign to let me log in and post. And time is of the essence --I'm not exactly living the single mother lifestyle, since I have my dad and brother to help me out in the house during the week when Darwin is in Columbus, but there are many duties that now fall to my lot which consume a great deal of time and energy. Blah, blah, blah --who isn't overwhelmed? I keep reminding myself that statistically, I'm one of the most fortunate people in the world, in history. Most of my daily inconveniences are of the petty variety. I prayed that I could realize that there were worse fates than having one's son spill lemonade all over himself and the floor right before a road trip, and lo and behold, it turned out to be the feast day of St. Issac Jogues.

Since my email isn't always doing it for me, I've tried to turn to more traditional forms of correspondence --to whit, the letter. However, I've, run into the singular problem that no one sells stationery in Ohio. I seem to recall that in Texas you could walk into Target or Staples or any store of that I'll and find yourself in the midst of plenty of lovely writing paper and fine writing implements, delightful to the senses. In Ohio I've found no stationery so far, but everyone wants to sell me journals, scads of them. From which I can only deduce that the good citizens of Ohio want to write, but only about themselves? I'm making another foray tomorrow, to a Barnes and Noble in an expensive part of Columbus. Eons ago, when I worked at a Barnes and Noble in L.A., we used to be heavily stocked with stationery. If I strike out there, I'll just resort to snitching my dad's printer paper, I guess.

I used to be a great letter writer back in the day. By "great" I mean "prolific", not "talented". Darwin and I used to send each other tomes of agonized love, rich with all the cliches of the genre. I believe I fancied myself a great stylist. Upon sorting out our closet preparatory to the move, I found a box (a shoe box!) full of this old correspondence. As I paged through his letters and mine, I felt a sensation akin to that of the unfortunates subjected to the Total Perspective Vortex. Passages that once seemed so eloquent and incendiary now paraded with all the grace of a herd of hormonal elephants . The most engaging bits were the parts I tossed off as stupid filler: minutiae about family life or the weather or work. The most fascinating letter of all was one Darwin sent me from Greece, simply describing the place and his travels there. And I burned with shame to recall that at the time I'd sulked because I thought he didn't write enough about ME.

I've got a long way to go before I can even compete in the humility stakes with the big dogs like St. Isaac Jogues, but I guess it's a consolation that at least I still have a whole hand to write with. As I keep telling myself, things could definitely be worse.

Hello from OH

Yo.

We are here, kinda. The cars arrive today (in a few minutes, actually) and the Stuff shows up tomorrow or the next day or whenever. The kids take great delight in rattling around my dad's big old house -- we're certainly disrupting the bachelor routine of Pops and my kid brother. The cats are traumatized and cry all night, when they're not trying to jab a claw into my air bed.

Ohio in the fall is a good place at a good time. The trees are molting gorgeously, and the weather the day we arrived was made to order: breezy, cool, and about as un-Texas-like as September gets. Also un-Texas-like are the rather chilly evenings. We've spent our married life in Southern California and Central Texas, and so are woefully under-blanketed. Nor do we have the requisite pajamafication that an old house demands. Baby, having blown out on both her flannel blankets on Saturday, spent the evening wrapped in a big towel.

Darwin has already started work up in Columbus. He'll be driving back to see us in Cincinnati on the weekends and once during the week. This is working fine -- at noon on the first day. We'll see how we all feel about it on Friday...

Internet access is a bit sporadic until the computer gets set up, so we'll be in and out.

And our thanks to Jennifer and her husband -- not only for her kind words about us, but for her hospitality on our last night in Texas. We couldn't have asked for a more congenial send-off. I must lay to rest, however, the impression that I normally swan about in a fancy outfit and white eyeshadow, as per the photo Jen posted. No, dear readers, most days I look like this:

They're coming to take us away...

Today is it: they're packing us up for the Great Journey North. Never has the house been so clean. Never before has all the laundry been folded. Two years after we laid the floors and week before the move out, all the baseboards and transitions and shoe molding were nailed up. It's looking good here -- can't wait to see the pix after the house is painted and new carpet and faucets installed. Anyone want to buy a house near Austin, TX?

We lose home internet today or tomorrow, so posting may be light. That's all right, because all we'd be saying anyway is either, "Are we mad?" or "Are all the people mad?"

But before we go dark, let us call out a few of the fine Texas bloggers that we'll miss:

Jen of Conversion Diary
Dorian of Scrutinies
Opinionated Homeschooler
Brandon of Siris
Julie of Happy Catholic
Nicole of Words, Words
Tito and John Henry, contributors to The American Catholic
Kyle of Journeys in Alterity
Christopher of Sanctus Christopher

Columbus Day

MOVING TO OHIO IN TWO WEEKS OMG ARE WE CRAZY SO MUCH STUFF TO FIX AND CLEAN AND TOSS AND ORGANIZE THERE'S NOT ENOUGH HOURS IN THE DAY.

That is all.

Birmingham, sight unseen

Seven years ago we picked up and moved from Los Angeles (approximate) to Austin (approximate). We knew a bit about the area, having visited twice, and we had friends in town with a large extended family who embraced us and took us and became surrogate grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins for our children. This network laid enough foundation for us that was easy to get established in our new town. Not so easy, however, is moving somewhere completely unfamiliar with no one on the ground to orient you.

The family of a good college friend just moved to Birmingham, AL, for job reasons. She knows no one in the area and hasn't been in town long enough to find her way around. There are compensations that come with moving to a new place sight unseen: the ability to reinvent yourself (if that's what you want to do), the satisfaction of realizing that you can survive and thrive in an unfamiliar environment, the joy of having a nice big house in an area where homes are much cheaper than where you used to live (my friend moved from California; 'nuff said).

Still, self-reliance is a mixed bag. Being the strong one all the time grows wearisome. And that is why we have friends on the internet to give us the scoop. If you know anything about Birmingham, if you live in Birmingham, if you love Birmingham, help a sister out. Tell all.

Also, if you've moved to a new place sight unseen, share your tips for coping and thriving.

Changes

They say a change is as good as a rest, and maybe it is, but a change is not equivalent to a rest. They're two very different things, and we've been long on the one and short on the other.

Darwin is off to another state for a job interview. The changes are already starting: the realtor from church is coming on Sunday to assess the place; the garage is getting cleaned out; the cell phone bill is swollen with the contact demands of not one, but three long-distance job prospects. The view alters day-to-day as we consider and reconsider real estate affordability, dream job vs. proximity to family, the latest interview call, and the dead prospect that suddenly springs back to life. The days are busy and exciting. The evenings are filled with abortive attempts to debrief each other over the roar of hungry and sleepy children.

Tonight we got in the wrong lane driving away from the airport and ended up on a farm-to-market road which ran mostly parallel to the efficient toll road. At first I sought to turn around as soon as we could, but the road stretched on through Texas countryside like the straight and narrow path, unsullied by crossroads or driveways. I didn't know where I was, exactly, but I knew where I'd probably end up. On we drove, gradually soothed and then seduced by the beauty of the hill country and intricacy of the light playing through the creeping storm clouds. Soak up the scenery now, girls, I urged; the days are growing short.

Yes, very soothing, and then the clouds opened and a downpour of diluvial ferocity attacked us as we sat in construction traffic. Change: not restful.