When I dream, I dream in Charleston...

Even after being in Austin for over seven months, I am often homesick. Homesickness, thankfully, isn't debilitating. But it shows up in the strangest ways.

I still love to look at photos of my house in Charleston in Wagener Terrace. Not only did I love that house and lived there for eight years, I adored the neighborhood. I have some good memories of that house. I wrote my first book in my home office in that house. I got my puppy in that house and met so many wonderful neighbors walking that little furball around the neighborhood. I trained her in the side yard. She played with her dog friends in the back yard. Someone else lives there now.



I miss azaleas. I miss Hampton Park. I miss Lulu's dog friends. I miss my family. I miss my sunroom. I miss my sweet neighbor Therese, who used to bring me the loveliest leftover dinner plates with ethnic and organic food. She once cooked me Ethiopian food simply because I mentioned I'd never tried it. I miss Carl and Donna across the street. There was something comforting on weekend mornings about watching them work in their yard or on their house. I miss my monkey, who lived a block up the street after he moved out and used to bring me fresh tomatoes from his garden. I miss Tom and Ellie and Lulu misses Nando, their Havanese - the first dog love she had at only 8 weeks old. I miss my freelancer friends I used to have lunch with at Earthfare's cafe. I miss my BFF, who used to come over and eat Chinese food from Hot Mustard with me at least once a week. I miss Doretha, Angie, Linda, Janet, Jason, Aluette, Jay (and Tater!), Sabrina, Margaret, Ida, Amy, Leigh, Lee, Misty, Archie, Colleen, and so many more.

I never really needed my GPS in Charleston, since I grew up there, but in Austin, Samantha (GPS voice) and I communicate frequently. I couldn't find my way around Austin without Samantha. But I am going to confess for the first time here: My "home" setting in my GPS is still Grove Street in Charleston. I haven't changed it.

I haven't gotten a Texas driver's license or Texas tags for my car yet. My tags don't expire until next month, and my license is good until 2011, so I figured it was OK to wait. If I get pulled over, I figured I'd just tell them I recently relocated. Something about switching tags and getting a Texas license makes it feel so permanent, and makes me feel a little like I can't go home if I wanted to RIGHT NOW. I don't, but I like having the option.

Sometimes when I dream, even now, I dream in Charleston. And sometimes I wake up and I'm surprised to be in a room I don't recognize. Where are my blush pink walls, my 1940s glass windows, my high ceilings, my hardwood floors? And then I remember: I am in Texas.

So maybe I've been dragging my feet a little bit, literally and figuratively. But next month, I'm going to have to go wherever one goes to switch tags. I will also have to have my vehicle inspected, as they do that in Texas. And get a new license at the DMV.

I'm making new friends here, new memories, and there is a strong chance that someday years from now I will look back and feel so much nostalgia for Austin that I can hardly stand it. But it's new to me still and that's not a bad thing. I know it will eventually feel like home. And I needed this change of scenery. I need to be here.

I share my neighborhood with many deer...

At least three or four times a week, I see deer - sometimes clusters of four or five at a time - just hanging out in my neighborhood. They're pretty brave, even though Lulu barks at them (she's an 8 pound ball of fluff and they probably think she's a barking bunny). They get pretty close to my front door. Definitely something I've never seen in Charleston! (other than at James Island County Park while driving around to look at the holiday lights).

An insomniac says what?

I'm writing this at 5am on a Sunday morning, as I've been awake since 4. I've taken the dog for a walk already. Interesting things happen at this hour, besides early morning humidity. I had company - an elderly woman out walking her dog, two young men leaving an apartment down the block, clearly still inebriated from the night before and stumbling back to wherever they came from, people leaving their houses for jobs or maybe church (at this hour, I'm impressed by their commitment). People returning home from overnight jobs. It's still quiet and I find myself actually enjoying the early morning dark.

My usual insomnia pattern - the stress-related one - involves not being able to fall asleep, or falling asleep for a few hours and waking at 2 or 3am to flip channels on the television or pick up a book for a while until I'm sleepy again. Lately, even if I go to bed after midnight, I find myself waking early in the morning - 5 or 6am. It reminds me of my grandmother, who after the age of 70 or so, would wake before sunrise when she stayed with us for summers. My sisters and I would roll out of bed at 8 or 9am to find my grandmother in the kitchen, hair already combed out from rollers, baking rolls for breakfast or making fry bread with orange preserves. She would have already quietly picked up around the house - "puttering," she called it. She'd have already spent an hour or so sitting at the dining room table and playing solitaire with a deck of cards, or watching early morning infomercials on television. I used to call this "old person insomnia." And now, apparently I have it.

After walking the dog, I finished reading "Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee" (I think one of the best autobiographies of Harper Lee, even though Lee herself refused to participate). I don't want coffee this early, otherwise I'll find myself cleaning the house by 7am and at the library when it first opens like I did when I woke up before 6am yesterday.

Since I have a few years before middle-age, I know I'm not having "old person insomnia," but this is still something. Something different than the frustration that comes when I lie awake at 3am, different from not being able to fall asleep. I feel productive, wide awake even without coffee, and if Target was open this early I'd probably get in the car and cross one more thing off of my to-do list for the weekend. These early morning hours feel more like gift than curse. But being someone who can easily sleep past 9am unless I set the alarm, I wonder where this is coming from. I'm not 70, I don't have a newborn, I don't even have a houseful of family who will wake up in a few hours expecting fry bread with orange marmalade (not that I have either of those things in the fridge).

The dog has already gone back to sleep. The cat is still sleeping in the same spot from last night. And I'm trying to decide if I will pick up a new book, or try to go back to sleep myself. I feel like I'll miss something important if I do.

I love my neighborhood but it is getting on my nerves today...

I live in gorgeous Wagener Terrace about 3 blocks away from Hampton Park and 2 blocks from the water. I love it here and, despite having to make cutbacks due to lack of a regular day job, I'm making do with freelancing so I can keep paying rent here just so I won't have to move. That's how much I love it. My neighbors are great (even though I never spoke to a single one until I got the puppy in December - now I know at least the ones with dogs) and it's such a diverse neighborhood with lots of "creatives" close to my age working from home too.

However, I've been trying to work all morning (since 7am, BTW) over the noise of my neighbors across the street with a hired crew jack-hammering their walkways so they can build new ones. There are two huge work trucks right across from where my home office is and between the jackhammers, the trucks beeping, and the workmen shouting, my usual lovely day with windows wide open has turned into Noise City. Also, the puppy has gone completely insane from the noise and won't stop barking, so I can't even make phone calls.

Two, there's a sort of meth-head older dude from down the street who is living in a house while he "fixes it up" (that's code for smoking crack in a house that someone is letting him "borrow"). He walks up and down the street during the day and I've said hi/bye in passing just to be nice, but last week he started asking me for cigarettes. This morning, he came over when I had Lou out in the yard and asked for money for the bus. And to use my cell phone. And for a ride somewhere (because I told him I didn't have any cash, which is true - I rarely carry cash). He stood in my front yard scratching his arms while I was ON MY CELL PHONE asking me to use it. Um...no, no, and no. One of my other neighbors told me he's like a stray dog - give him anything and he'll camp out on your doorstep. Don't get me wrong: I have feelings. I feel for his being in a poor financial situation. I feel for him not having reliable transportation. But I don't like to feel like I'm being taken advantage of for being nice. So I had to show my bitch side this morning and that's not a great start to my day.

Today feels like a wash. I can't concentrate to work and am afraid to hang out in the yard because I'd rather avoid Johnny Crackhead than have to tell him to f*ck off.

On a positive note, it could be worse. If I lived a few houses up I'd be next to the duplex that rents to college students who have nightly front AND backyard hootenannies that go on until the wee hours. I've walked Lou late at night past that place and there are college girls puking in the front yard, drunk frat douchebags screaming "I love you man," and 50 cars parked half on the road, half on the sidewalk. I feel for the people who live next door to those assholes. I know them and they've called the police multiple times, but apparently one of the college kid's mom owns the building so they're not in danger of being evicted.

So all I have to deal with is a day of heavy construction (god, I hope it's just today) and avoiding Johnny Crackhead. And I still love my neighborhood.

Update p.s.: So not kidding. Five minutes after I wrote this and posted it, I took Lou out and Johnny Crackhead made a beeline down the street towards my house. He apparently didn't get enough bitch this morning. We're going to change our walk route today.

Forecast for a Sunday morning bike ride...

Hot, hazy, humid...

...and happy that my sunscreen is working.