I've been checking out a half-dozen books at a time from the library, about gardening in its various permutations. I've been reading about organic gardening, gardening in central Texas, composting, and so forth. I have plans to figure out how to keep raspberries growing and healthy in our alkaline soil, and to grow strawberries successfully, not to mention to grow all sorts of awesome things for salads and cooking. I can't wait to get dirt under my fingernails. I can't wait to go inside tomorrow, with my tape measure in hand. It's all very exciting.

There's so much we want to do with the place, and it's so hard to prioritize. It would be awesome to have nice furniture for the patio, but that has to come after the refrigerator and the lawn mower and the new couch and...

We're still trying to come to terms with being in so much debt, even though it's "good" debt. The numbers feel kind of staggering, and at some point, that much money is nonsensical.

So for now, I'll focus on the fact that we have a little house of our very own, with a flower garden, a vegetable garden, and a big tree for shade.

We took an Informal Class through UT at the beginning of April, just after Scott got a job offer (but before he started) because we wanted to know what we needed to do to get ourselves in shape to buy a house. The plan was to get some financial advice, then save up some money in the coming year to buy a house next summer.

We had an offer accepted on a cool little house within about a month of the class.

Which is to say, this is all moving rather fast. Two months ago, we were still waiting for the arrival of Scott's green card, and now we're learning more than we ever really cared to know about homeowners insurance.

Neither of us has become independently wealthy in the last few months, so we had to be a little creative in our house search. Sadly, we couldn't afford anything in central Austin, so the place we chose is up near Parmer and MoPac, in the vicinity of Fry's. There are pros and cons to this, of course.

Pros:

• We didn't have to sell all four of our kidneys to afford the closing costs.


• Our house is within walking distance to Fry's.


• Our house is marginally larger than a closet.


• We have a back yard! With a fenced in vegetable garden!

Cons:

• We won't live in Central Austin anymore.


• We won't be walking distance to Central Market.


• We're both farther from work, and we want to maintain our one-green-car lifestyle. Buses don't go to the part of town Scott works in, so I get to ride the bus every day. (Related pro: there's a bus stop across the street from my house.)


• Traffic. Ugh.

I'm still excited enough about the prospect of having a place of our own (with, for instance, a working dishwasher) that I'm not stressing out yet about the longer bus rides to work. And have I mentioned the vegetable garden?

This year, I planted a few tomato plants at my mom's house in her garden, because I didn't have a great place to put them at our duplex. I keep teasing my mom that she needs to go out with an umbrella any time there's a chance of hail, to protect the tomatoes. (Have I mentioned that my mom doesn't even like tomatoes?) So next year, I'll be able to go out with my own umbrella.

The house is even nicer than the garden. It's got pergo floors and pretty painted walls and cathedral ceilings. It has a baby crib, too. People keep teasing me about the crib, but it's not ours, I swear.

Once our offer was accepted, I started getting the urge to drive by the new place and start digging beds in their front yard. Scott didn't think the current owners would appreciate that much, so I've managed to refrain. So far. He keeps teasing me that I'm always about two steps ahead on the planning process. So far, I've kept myself awake at night trying to figure out to my satisfaction where we can put the litter box, where we can build a compost bin, whether we'll have enough room to plant the various kinds of plants I wish to plant, and where all our artwork will go.

It's great, really. I'm loving it.

I haven't been writing. Obviously. I hadn't taken any really inspiring pictures in quite a while, either, until a few days ago, when I took my cousin on a little photoshoot. I'll post those someday. Maybe.

I don't imagine I'll ever forget 2006. It's the year I got married (July 15th) and the year I turned 30 (November 29th). I got sick four or five times (three of those times were within three weeks of one another, all centered around my 30th birthday, which did nothing for my burgeoning little mid-life crisis). Stupid magical recurring stomach virus.

Marriage is blissful. Truly. We're very happy. I'm so amused at all the people who ask me, "So how's married life treating you?" They ask that as though it were an innocuous question, but it's so loaded with meaning and insinuation. Are you fighting yet? Is it working out? Do you wish you'd dated longer? No, yes, and no, thank you... we may have done the majority of our dating from 2,000 miles away, but I wasn't mistaken in my knowledge that Scott is my soulmate.

This was the year when I set some plans aside for now, even as I began to dream of a new future. I'm hoping that 2007 brings some of those dreams into fruition.

A happy and blessed new year to you all.

-Rachel

Last week, walking to the bus stop, I saw the first photographable scenes that I've seen in months. It was late in the afternoon, before an evening rainstorm, and behind some low-hanging dark clouds, the light was phenomenal as it shone on the buildings downtown. There's a certain kind of light and a certain gray sky that makes every color richer and more saturated. That was the light I had that evening.

...Of course, I didn't have my camera with me that day.

Today, I started craving a road trip - a nice, long road trip to somewhere far from here, like Montana or Washington. The weather has been pleasant the last week or so, with temperatures blessedly dropping a bit, and I find myself wanting to get out of here and away from the office for a while. Scott and I haven't had a chance to take any road trips together, and I'm dying to reprise Claudia's and my trip westward to San Diego, or the trip my family took from Forth Worth to Canada when I was about fourteen.

On that long-ago road trip, there were four of us squished into a VW Jetta, and my kid sister kept invading my limited personal space. But what I remember most clearly were the long nights we drove in the middle of nowhere in desolate, seemingly unpopulated states like Wyoming, toward the next bit of civilization, and how vividly I could see the stars, with no light pollution or clouds interfering with my view.

I made Scott promise that we'd take our road trip before he starts working. We're tangled in bureaucratic immigration nonsense again, so it may be a while until then anyway, but I don't want this to be something we talk about but never do. We can do this. I just hope we do it soon.

I'll take my camera along.

I think my weblogging conscience is catching up to me.

Yesterday, I had nothing to say. That's not true. I had something to say that was at least moderately insightful, but I don't remember what it was, so perhaps it was only faux-insightful. Everyone else I read and watch has already written wonderful and insightful prose about what it means to be five years removed from the most awful, aweful, terrible tragedy I've ever seen. And goodness knows, in the days leading up to September 11th, 2006, every branch of mainstream media (and, I'd wager, every branch of alternative media) has spent far too much energy trying to tell me what I should think about it.

I've been avoiding the media at every turn this week. Last night, we watched Antiques Roadshow, and then I switched to Jewelry Television so that I could avoid watching our Illustrious Leader, whose smug mug was broadcast on every other channel we receive on our super-basic cable. I remember, okay? I do. Really. I'm not going to forget what happened on September 11, 2006.

Also? I'm so tired of people calling it "9-11." "Nine-eleven." I think people abbreviate it because it helps them objectify it and extract themselves from the horror of what happened that day. To me, it just seems glib.

I get, though, that we're all dealing with this in our own way, and that my avoidant way is no better than the way of the people who watched all the docudramas that Hollywood could churn out. And I'm balancing a healthy bit of guilt for the fact that I'm deliriously happy at the moment, enjoying married life with my sweet, funny, snuggly husband immensely.

We're waiting on the plodding bureaucracy of the Department of Homeland Security (the irony of which has not escaped me) to issue my snuggly husband's green card so that he can find gainful employment (and save us from an indefinite future as a single-income household). Waiting is infinitely easier this time than it was when we were waiting for his visa. We're together now, at least, and money is just... money.

If there's anything that September 11th taught me, it's that life is short and uncertain. Being together and deliriously happy is as much as I can ask for.

For me, this was a fairly positive development. I never had any brothers, and in my family, people could generally be trusted to keep our hands to themselves and keep the violence to a minimum as we traveled from place to place.

When Scott and I were first traveling back and forth to visit one another, I'd spend the first couple of days of each visit forgetting about the game entirely, and getting slugged rather frequently until I remembered to keep an eye out. Once I did start paying attention, though, I could pretty well dominate the game. (Then I'd leave and start seeing slug bugs everywhere, and have no one to slug for them.)

When we traveled to Vancouver for Scott's troublesome visa interview, we were so tired from walking everywhere that we'd just acknowledge the punch buggies verbally without bothering to throw the punch at all. That quickly turned into my most efficient defensive maneuver: call the slug bug so it can't be called on me first!

Back in Austin, the game has evolved a little bit over the last month and a half or so. For a couple of days, only vintage Beetles counted for a slug. Then we thought to convert it to more unusual 'bugs, like convertibles or ones decorated like a ladybug. Eventually, we moved to a dynamic and slug bug ruleset. According to the Scott and Rachel Slug Bug/Punch Buggy Guidelines, we pick a color theme each day and can only punch for Beetles that fall within that theme. Sometimes, we pick a color, like blue, and other times, we pick something more creative, like fruit or vegetable colors. For those, naturally, we have to identify the fruit that we're color-matching, and we can only claim a fruit once.

And so the slugging continues, if on a more reasonable basis, and we can carry out a normal conversation when driving in the car.

Sometimes.

We've decided. Next time, we're totally eloping.

We spent the first couple of days in Fredericksburg (and heading back to Kerrville to visit with the rest of the family still there), and then came to New Braunfels and Gruene for a couple of days. We've been staying in fancy-schmancy little bed and breakfasts, which is a very cool experience, and eating out at nice restaurants. It's been extraordinarily hot, just in time to indoctrinate my poor Canadian husband (I've been having to practice using all these crazy married words, not to mention my new last name), so we've been trying to stay close to the water.

Tomorrow, we head to Galveston for a couple of days. Coming from the coast, it never occurred to me to travel to Galveston when I was younger. I've been wanting to go see it before it gets washed back into the ocean, and this seems like as good an opportunity as any.

Married, I guess.

Tomorrow.

That is all. :)

I took yesterday off to start getting settled in.

I'm back at work today, and last I saw, he was sleeping soundly and enjoying his life of leisure.

I'm happy.

It's good. All good.

Thank goodness.

This is by no means the end of this process, but if all goes well tomorrow, it'll be the last stage of this process that we'll have to spend apart.

This makes me very happy. :)

Happy Monday, all.