or
in some ways, stayin‘ the same.
So, as many of you know (both of you who still read this, thanks Mom and Carla), I have started The Great Adventure. I am, after 10 years in Paradise, moving from Austin to San Francisco to at last be with Carla and her girls, and I am happy beyond measure. The Great Adventure was preceded, as was necessary, by The Great Purge, which largely consisted of selling, donating, or flat out just giving away the vast majority of my crap. This was a hugely stressful process that involved at least one sleepless night and resulted in the endurance of a sinus headache and infection well beyond the natural half-life for that kind of thing. Plus, now I can carry my entire life in the trunk of my car.
Except of course, for everything that’s already waiting for me in SF, most especially three beautiful little blond ladies who are hopefully eagerly awaiting my arrival.
I departed Austin on Sunday afternoon, rather uneventfully with little pomp and little circumstance, and I think that’s best. My entrance to that beloved little blue oasis in the red state that has been my home for so long was marked with considerably more of both, and it was not pretty, let me tell you. 10 Years Ago, as we call it now, my Mother and I rolled into town after an eleven hour drive from Lubbock that nearly exhausted both of us right into the grave, and then proceeded, within mere moments of getting out of our respective conveyances, to start tearing each other a new one. So, I was pleased that I managed to make it out of Austin and into Dallas with relatively little difficulty, and arrived safe and sound on the first stop on The Great Adventure, Mom’s House.
Mom’s House has been, I am very very grateful to find, exactly the same. She made Pot Roast. We talked a LOT. She bought me a much needed new pair of blue jeans, and gave me a little cash even though I told her not to. She helped me put a few extra things in boxes and ship them off, she told me how happy she was for me. We watched a movie, we went to my Grandmother’s place and cleaned up the yard a bit. We did, in short, the things we always do when I visit her. There were no grand pronouncements, there has been no sappy worrying (at least, no more so than usual), and this stop on The Great Adventure thus far is exactly the same as every other time I have been here, and while I am eagerly and enthusiastically undertaking this trip, and the great new life that awaits me at the end of it, I am incredibly grateful that this step remains familiar and unchanged. I am moving, and I am opening a great new chapter in my relationship with the love of my life, and I am hoping for sweeping change and grand rebuilding of many parts of that which make up Me, but I am really glad that this fundamental part, and by extension many, many others, remains unchanged.