Like dating but worse.

Last summer I was drinking champagne in a trendy bar in Clarendon, chatting with Shep and SingleGirl about a friend of Ed's. This friend was a girl of surpassing coolness who had me cracking up within five minutes of meeting her. I liked her and invited her to a big happy hour I'd planned. "But," I told Shep and SingleGirl, "I can't really invest in her, I don't have time for another friend." They nodded and we commiserated for a while about how making time for people can be a hassle.

And it was true - I used to have so many fantastic people in my life that I'd schedule in laundry days, to remind myself that clean undies would make all those happy hours and dinners and coffee dates and wineries trips more fun. Settling in the city where I grew up meant I hadn't had to make new friends since ninth grade. I don't know how to make friends, I just have them. Good ones. Who were always around when I needed a shoulder to cry on to a date to a chick flick.

So now I'm in San Antonio, and aside from Ed's Dancing Grandma, I know no one. No One. Who's going to help me explore Texas Wine Country? Who do we watch the Superbowl with? Who's going to keep me from dying of boredom while I job search? Who's going to take some of the pressure off Ed to entertain me?

I'm on Friend Alert. At the grocery store, in the neighborhood, at the coffee shop, I'm watching for people who Look Cool. Ed and I went to an orientation for a church we're thinking of joining, and when three people about our age showed up I got the jitters. I sat up straighter and smoothed my hair. I smiled tentatively at one girl when she caught my eye. I poured coffee for the guy behind me during the coffee break. I worked the room and came away with digits.

After the obligatory wait period so I didn't seem too eager, I called one girl and got her voice mail. "Hi, it's Katie? From Saturday? I was wondering if you wanted to get a coffee? Sometime this week? Or whenever? Call me?" I hung up and thought "Man I sounded dumb." I thought about what I wished I'd said and rehearsed my lines before I called the next number. "Hi, it's Katie? From Saturday? Want to go to dinner? Call meee......" So much for rehearsal. I hung up with butterflies in my stomach. I hope they like me! Did I sound too eager? Too needy?

I thought I was done with this type of scene when I got married.

Picture: Fail

As news of snow rolls across the rest of the country and Meredith posts pictures of what I'm missing back East, this morning it was in the mid 30s when I woke up and the kids next door were dressed like...like kids in DC are probably dressed this morning. I went out to snap a picture of them all rolled up in blankets and hats like it's 50 degrees colder than it is, but realized at the last second that taking pictures of random kids and posting them on the Internet isn't something their parents would be really thrilled about.

So I decided to take a picture of the palm tree in front of our house, to make Meredith jealous. At the last second I decided to take a picture of the cat instead. I think all I really got is a picture of my own shadow...but that shadow's wearing short sleeves. Yeehaw, bitches! Enjoy your "beautiful," "scenic," "seasonal" snow!

Things I didn't expect (Part II)

Yesterday afternoon I went to the closest H-E-B. Here in San Antonio you don't go to the grocery store, you go to the H-E-B (and don't try to call it "heb" unless you want to sound like a DC dweebus). I didn't even think to myself "how hard can it be?" because it didn't cross my mind that going to the grocery store could ever be hard.

My. Goodness. To call H-E-B a "grocery store" is like calling a monsoon a "sprinkle." H-E-B has groceries, but H-E-B also sells auto parts and baby clothes and houseplants. I went in with my grocery list clutched in my fist and walked out an hour later with only half the things on my list and cartoon poppy eyes from complete overwhelmedness. I had to escape before my head exploded from the sheer magnitude of the place. Finding NutriGrain bars would have required a safari down the cereal aisle and I just wasn't up to it.

Today I drove uptown to Central Market. It's owned by H-E-B but is more like a Whole Foods - it's mostly organic foods, upscale and smaller. I think Ed and I are going to start eating organic just so I can handle grocery shopping.

When left to myself too long

Wednesday morning I opened the front and back doors so I could chuck boxes out of them and started unpacking. When I looked up this cat was in the middle of the dining room. It just stood there looking at me until I said "hey, cat!" Then it ran away.

Since then I've been careful to keep the back screen door shut and it likes to sit there watching me through the glass, and when I eat lunch outside it comes and hangs out, probably because that first day I shared my turkey sandwich with it.

Today it came over while I was changing out my license plates (for TEXAS plates yeehaw) and batted at the screws. I fed it some milk, petted it for quite a while, and thought, "I gotta get a picture of my new friend!"

So I did. My first Texas friend is a nameless, genderless cat. Oh, the pathos.

Finally (Part II)

Last night we slept at the new house for the first time. We have arrived! Um, only the house looks like this:Well, it looks like that except in the parts that I've started unpacking, which look like this:

I don't know if you can see it, but there are random Christmas ornaments in the mess. Why, you might ask, were there Christmas ornaments in the box with the living room lamp? And where, by the way, is the other lamp? The box was labeled "living room lamps." Maybe the fake candles could be called lamps?

And here's me on the one piece of open floor. Yes, I'm still wearing my running shorts. No, I haven't showered today. Yes, I'm damn sexy.


Remember when I said "come see if the house likes you too?" Give it a month, right now the house is throwing a fit. I'll soothe it and we'll be ready for guests well before St. Patrick's Day - the river is dyed green and the Riverwalk turns into a giant pub crawl. I'm betting Ed a backrub that someone will fall in that day. Double backrubs if it's not me.

Things I didn't expect (Part I)

Moving to San Antonio, I didn't realize there wouldn't be a Starbucks on every corner. I've been giving this some hard thought, and I may be forced to break up with Cinnamon Dolce Latte. CDL and I have been having a torrid affair every Monday morning for years now, but I'm finding he may be more effort than he's worth. I'm not saying we'll never have breakup latte, but Diet Dr. Pepper lives next door, and he's a DOCTOR.

Why moving is worthwhile

I took this today between dips of fresh salsa while we were having lunch outside. It's January. I'm going to love it here.

But thanks to all of you who have been in touch this week. It means a lot to not be forgotten.

Presenting Casa MacSly

Last Sunday we went by the guest-house, library, den, new kitchen dream house we'd peeked through the windows to see. The owner was there and let us take a tour, and it was craziness. New everything. Tall granite countertops. A guest house with kitchenette and bathroom.

We went back in the main house from the huge backyard and I asked the owner if he was willing to lower the rent if we signed a one year lease. He said he already had an offer for full asking price with one year lease, so I winked at Ed and I left. Driving away, Ed said we'd better put in an offer at full price right away, but I called shenanigans. No way did the guy already have an offer on the table; the place had been vacant for six months and it was just too coincidental that he "had an offer" when we went by.

Ed didn't get a shenanigans vibe from the owner, though, so the next day while Ed was at work I called the listing realtor. I offered to come down and sign the one-year lease, full price. He told me not to bother, since they already had two offers. Point, Ed.

We decided we didn't want that place anyways. It was weirdly laid out, the countertops were too high, and the guest house had (gasp!) linoleum floors. Eww.

A long and boring story about finding another house goes here, but let's skip to the good part: welcome to our new home. It's two bedrooms with a living room, big office/dining room, and two car detached garage for Rock Band parties. It has a big wrap-around porch in the front and a small porch in the back.


At our going away party, a friend teased Ed that we'd better find a place before he started his new job, because if I went househunting by myself we'd end up with more charm and glass doorknobs than practicality. That's exactly what happened. How do I love thee, little house? One glass doorknob, two glass doorknobs...there's four in the picture below.

There are little glass doorknobs on the built-in bookcases. I kid you not.

And I think the house likes us back - there's a smiley face chalked onto a tree in the backyard.


There's a guest room - come see if the house likes you too!

My legs don't bend that way.

So, what're you complaining about, Katie? Get a job already!

Hum. I know I've only been in San Antonio a week, but this is a valid question that no one's had the cojones (see, I'm Texan already) to ask yet. The answer is that I had it in my head that I was going to interview for a very specific County job, a job I've been cultivating for the last six months and which seemed likely to be offered me. But on January 6, 2009, a hiring freeze was announced for the entire County. Yeah. So now I'm wondering if I should wait for that job to come open again (there are several vacancies and the Director is desperate to fill them), or find something else?

So, while I discern what to make of that twist, I'm a hotelwife (I've demoted myself from "housewife") with no friends and no activities. This morning I dropped Ed's truck at the dealership, took the courtesy shuttle back to the hotel, and sat down to sulk about not having transportation. A couple of friends IM'd me right then and I was snappy.

Then I went for a looong run. I came back after time in the sunshine and looked up cooking classes and a running club and found a church online and read the local news and am really trying to kick my own butt until I feel more myself.

It's hard.

In case you thought I was kidding

I've had about enough of this housewife nonsense. I have three things to do today while Ed's off earning the bacon. Sign the lease on a place, take delivery of my car, and take Ed's truck to the dealership to have the sunroof looked at. The sunroof is stuck open, which would be a big problem in DC but here is only a minor inconvenience (Sha-ZAM, hometown bitches!)

So after dropping Ed at work this morning with a kiss, bag lunch, and admonition to play nice, I called the realtor and said I'd love to come over right then and sign the lease. No can do, she's got an open house from 10-noon and another client at 12:30. But she'll try to duck out of the open house and squeeze me in. It's noon and I haven't been squeezed.

My car is going to arrive sometime between 12:30 and 2pm. That sounds nice and definite, until you consider its recent random road trip through Texas, which makes me exceedingly skeptical it'll hit town today, and besides, if it arrives while I'm signing a lease it'll go right back on the truck and make a couple more circuits of the state.

And Ed's car needed to be dropped this morning to be looked at today, but I refuse to be a homeless housewife with no transportation.

So when he says, "Lucy, I'm home! What did you do today?" I'll have to admit that I couldn't accomplish a single thing. Embarrassing. Not only am I a bored housewife, I'm a bad one.

Truckin' like the do-dah man

I've noticed that I'm by no means the only person driving around San Antonio in a big ol' SUV. But my Civic was supposed to catch up with us yesterday at the latest and I was looking forward to having it back.

So yesterday I tracked it online again, and to my surprise it was still listed in Mesquite, Texas, where it's supposedly been since last Saturday. So I called the car lady. This is a true-to-my-interpretation story of what happened next:

Her: I'm sorry about your car.

Me: Is it going to arrive soon?

Her: No idea. We've lost track of it and are pretty sure it was picked up by a gang of itinerant Texas pickup trucks.

Me: But it was a tough city car! It knows how to defend itself from bullies and mace them in the face.

Her: Honey, your city car doesn't even know how to rope a chicken. It had no chance.

Me: Aw.

Her: At least it was probably over quickly. Do you want a rental car while we figure out what's going on?

Me: Nah, I think I'll try to rent a Vespa.

Her: You're never going to fit in here.

lady of leisure

Ed's first day of work is today, so it's the first day of my new bon-bon eating, spa-going, ladies-who-lunching lifestyle. My car hasn't come yet so I drove him to work in his truck, he was fresh in his best suit for his first day at his new school...em, job. Then I came back to the extended stay hotel and straightened up the room. It took two minutes. I turned on the tv, turned it off again, picked up a magazine, put it back down, paced the length of the room twice and went back out to the car. I drove around (the area we hope will be) our new neighborhood, trying to find the nearest Target or grocery store or other services. I found none. I drove back downtown and tried to find a Starbucks. After twenty minutes I found one, no parking nearby. Finally I found a little independent coffee shop that had an empty parking lot in front. I looked at it for a minute, decided it looked dirty, and drove on.

I plugged "Target" into Ed's new navigation system and drove 20 minutes down the freeway and bought laundry detergent. I came back to the hotel; did three loads of laundry before I ran out of quarters. I went for an hour long walk, and now it's noon and I'm out of things to do.

Girl needs a j-o-b.

Home is where the rent money goes

Yesterday Ed and I went home hunting - Ed's company hooked us up with a realtor, thank goodness, or we'd have ended up with one of the apartment buildings "recommended" by rent.com. We saw two of those buildings yesterday morning and they were terrible; expensive and inconvenient and small.

But I don't know if I should thank goodness yet, since she first took us to a house in the King William district - a historic neighborhood that Ed and I already knew we really liked, and showed us gorgeous house. Gorgeous. It has a new kitchen. It has a sunroom, which I've already named "Katie's library." It has den for Ed. IT HAS A GUESTHOUSE. It costs 50% more a month than we wanted to pay.

Here's me convincing myself that the next house we went to see, in a less interesting neigborhood, with crazy colored rooms, sagging porch, bookcases at catywumpus angles and a kitchen that's sticky and still full of the previous tenant's food, but which is within our price range, was a good house:


It's also ugly on the outside.
Now, there are two good parts to this story. One is that our realtor couldn't get in to the King William house; the electronic key holder was broken. So I've only seen Katie's library through the windows. Maybe the whole house smells like cat pee and we'll hate it if and when we see the inside (supposedly they're trying to find a spare key still).

The second good part is that after that terrible house above we saw a very nice, big, wood floored condo in a building with a big pool and party room. We could definitely live there for a year and save up enough money to buy a King William house with a library and new kitchen.

So I'm going to hope that King William house is terrible from the inside and that the condo is where we end up. Katie's library may have to wait.

Because we all know how patient I am.

Finally (Part I)

It's all going to be okay. There is Braum's in Texas. The closest store is three hours from San Antonio, road trip possible.

This is reassuring, since we arrived in San Antonio about three hours ago and I'm tired of traveling, I'm tired of my luggage, and I'm tired of being homeless. But I'm jazzed that Ed found the first Braum's on the interstate (Springfield, Illinois), then we stopped again for lunch yesterday in Coffeyville Kansas, and then, because God wants me in Texas, there was a Braum's today at lunchtime in Denison, Texas.

I texted my dad, who first introduced me to Braum's as a child, "There's Braum's in Texas!"

He wrote back, "Buy some," to which I responded "duuuuuuuh...." just in case he's missing me. I wanted to remind him why he's glad I'm grown up and moved away and not 14 years old and rolling my eyes at everything he says.

To be Texan...

My sister said I can move to Texas but will never be Texan. I called shenanigans and said I'll be the Best Texan Ever, but the more I think about it the more I wonder if I'm willing to do what it would take. I think I would have to:

• Say "yeehaw," non-ironically
• Wear cowboy hats and/or boots
• Be nice to strangers
• Not honk at people who don't move when the light turns green
• Own and operate a shotgun
• Take Spanish lessons instead of French
  
• Drink domestic beer
• Have big hair and manicured nails
• Understand the attraction of high school football and of beauty pageants
• Think driving four hours for barbeque ribs is a good use of time
• Know my neighbor's last name and drink preference
• Stop confusing "hook 'em horns" with the sign for "I love you"
• Walk and talk like there's time to be wasted
• Understand what 110 degrees feels like - for three months at a time
• Eat breakfast burritos
• Think bigger is better
• Trade my Civic for a Ford F350
• Say "don't mess with Texas" without adding "bitches"
• Stop making fun of Texas.

Hum. I'll let y'all know how this goes.

Resolutions '09

My New Year's Resolutions:

1) Find a home

2) Get a job

3) Make friends