Austin to San Francisco

I’ve had enough of flying.  I promised myself last year when I got off that final long flight from Singapore that I’d never step foot on an airplane again.  Of course I didn’t believe my own promise.  David was already talking about a trip to Alaska.  What did I think—that we were going to drive there? 

This morning I put my little dog, Trip, in the kennel.  So while David is rushing around, excited and tense the way he gets when he’s got a flight to catch, I’m sad and unfocused.  Trip is sweet and small and he thinks he’s in hell when I’m not there. 

Our schedule relaxed when our flight was moved back an hour.  We end up getting to the airport right at the hunger time when we’re both snippy.  I scandalize David by saying I’d rather have a bloody Mary than food. 

“It’s too early for a bloody Mary,” he tells me

“It’s never too early for a bloody Mary,” I say.  “Besides, a bloody Mary before flying is what I do.”  I get away with many indulgences by citing tradition. 

“Food first,” he insists.  And he does indeed need food.  His fingers are trembling the way they do when he gets too hungry. 

We share half a rotisserie chicken, which isn’t bad.  As we’re finishing, a couple with a crying baby claims the empty table next to us.  The two adults are offensively fat.  They eat hamburgers and fries while their baby releases shrill screams, which upsets David, prompting him to complain about how they’re tending to their own needs before their kid’s. 

“You knew when you chose this table,” I say, “that people over whom we have no control would likely sit next to us.”

“How could I know who was going to sit there?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

This brief holiday is for my benefit.  When our son, Curtis, went to San Francisco a couple of months ago I mentioned that I’d never been there.  Next thing I knew, David had made reservations.  We’re staying at a B & B in the Mission District.  We’ve got plans to take the ferry to Alcatraz.  We’ll visit Chinatown, which I will compare to Singapore’s Chinatown, one of my favorite places in the world.  Golden Gate Bridge, Union Square, and Golden Gate Park are also musts.  There’s an antique area I want to explore. 

Having delayed departure twice, the airline has now moved our flight forward forty-five minutes.  We rush toward our gate.

In an effort to be considerate, the man in front of me in the check-in line turns away from his companion to cough, releasing a mouthful of moist germs into my face.  I recoil.  For the next several days I will be facing this type of horror—how many strangers have drilled their farts into this seat?  How many snot-sticky hands have clutched this rail?  How long has it been since the bed cover has been laundered?  Did the last person to walk barefoot in this room have a toenail fungus?  To travel is to risk disease.  The trick is to not think about it. 

It's been a long time since I've flown within the states.  United Airways charges for television and movies.  It charges for food and drinks.  I don't understand this need for austerity, not when the flight is full and oil prices are so far down they're practically below.  It seems stingy and mean-spirited, though I suppose these days people bring their entertainment with them.  The Asian airlines feed their passengers continuously, as do the European ones, no extra charge.  The attendant comes by.  I pay eight dollars for the bloody Mary I didn't have time for at the terminal.   

Who is this Barbara Jordan?  

This is where we got our airport chicken.  He looks happy to have fed me.  

Dell is all over the place in Austin.  I wonder why.  

Day-to-Day

We’ve fallen into a routine, which is the same one I’ve had for years, except now it includes David, who these days sleeps until seven-fifteen, which I will never understand.  I’ve been up a couple of hours by then; I’ve rehydrated, written a couple of pages, and checked emails. 

The schedule is:  exercise in the morning, eat lunch, take a rest (he sleeps, I read), run errands.  In between all this I do laundry and put the dishes away, and David does the gardening, which is a massive undertaking.  On Monday afternoons I play Mahjong and on Thursdays David golfs. 

It’s a comfortable pattern, and just because we follow a routine doesn’t mean we’re boring or bored.  There’s plenty to do.  But gone are the days when I wrote about swiftlet caves and turtle-egg beaches, exotic lands and anomalous cultural behaviors.  I suppose I could tell the exciting story about how, the other morning in spin class, I got so vigorous that I caught my gold chain on one of the bike handles and broke the clasp.  And then the nice man at the jewelry store replaced the busted clasp for a reasonable sum. 

Or I could share how my little dog, Trip, eleven now, loves to chase rabbits and comes back with burrs caught deep in his coat.  Yesterday I gave up trying to pick the things out, but cut them out instead, which makes for an odd-looking dog. 

Currently, I have no major project to offer diversion.  When I lived in Singapore or Houston and got hit with an empty day or two, I’d shop.  I’ve heard that some people don’t enjoy shopping, which baffles me.  I find malls magical, flea markets intriguing, antique stores whimsical.  I get this trait from my father, who was in Germany after the war when there was nothing to buy, no food, no clothes, no shoes, no hair products.  When I was a child his favorite pastime was to pace up and down every aisle at Kmart, his face alight with wonder. 

“Look at all the stuff,” he’d say.  “This is the best place in the world.”

It sounds like a patriotic statement, but he meant it literally.  Kmart, to him, was the best place in the world.

When we first moved to Marble Falls, David wanted to go on a grand adventure every day.  For the first time ever he was free to explore the place he was living.

“I can’t go adventuring with you every day,” I told him.  “I have a house to care for, a dog to walk, dinner to put together.”

So we agreed to have an excursion in the area once a week.  We toured several city centers.  We hiked around lakes and through wildlife reserves.  We went boating and kayaking (enjoyed the boat, not impressed with the kayak).  Next week we’re going to rent jet skis for an afternoon and see if we want to invest in a pair. 

“Why two?” David asks.  “Why can’t you just ride on the back of mine?”

“Because I want to control my own jet ski.”  It’s a reasonable assertion.  He would never put up with riding on the back of mine. 

He and I have different ideas about what jet skis are for.  He thinks they should be fun.  I think they should be relaxing.  He goes voom-voom and likes to splash.  I go putt-putt-putt and like to think deep thoughts.  We’ll see. 

Today’s plan is to walk for exercise in the morning, then find an air-conditioned mall in Austin.  The walk will be up and back on County Road 401, four miles, a little over an hour.  This walk is never dull because nature is fascinating to us city folk.  So far we’ve seen a mother armadillo and her four babies, too many leaping deer to count, a rattlesnake, and a fox.  Once a bird thought David was a bush and it kept flying at him, looking for a place to settle, which caused him to wave his arms and ask “Bird, what are you thinking?” 

The mall in the afternoon is for my entertainment.  David will read while I wander through Sephora and feel the texture of the fabrics at J. Jill.  There’s nothing I need, so I won’t buy anything but, like with my father, it satisfies my soul to see the abundance found in the world we inhabit.  Although, come to think of it, I do need something yellow in my closet. 

Doesn't it look magical?  

This is what David does while I shop.  The way his arms are resting on his belly makes him look fat, but he's actually lost fifteen pounds now that he's not sitting at a desk all day and he's so active outdoors.  

This is the quilt I recently finished.

Jen Waldo Sells Two Books

From Amarillo, Texas, to London Literati. 

Yay me! 

Arcadia, an international literary publisher in the UK, likes my work well enough to invest in it and me.  Arcadia is an independent company, a hold-out in a business dominated by corporations, so grandly and stubbornly old-school that its staff wanted to see paper copies.  In 2014 Arcadia was named the Sunday Times Small Publisher of the Year.  It has twice won the Independent Publishers Guild Diversity Award, and it publishes award-winning writers from sixty countries. 

It’s flattering to have the term “literary” applied to my writing.  It makes me feel erudite, as though I plan ahead, deliberately employing devices such as foreshadowing and symbolism, anthropomorphism and imagery, when what I really do is simpler and more organic:  I tell stories.  And I don’t mean to make light of this—telling a story well, which is my goal, is a painful and laborious process.  

And where else would my writing find a home, other than with a discerning publisher whose aim is to put in print original quality writing from around the globe?  Until this time, genre-less, my work has been adrift, a sad orphan, ignored because it couldn’t be categorized.  Not mystery or suspense.  Not Romance.  Not Adventure.  Not Horror.  When people ask what I write, the closest I can come to defining it is disaster and humor holding hands.

Now that my books have been selected for publication, the editing process will begin.  My agent, Helen Mangham, with the Jacaranda Literary Agency, anticipates that much work will be needed.  My hackles rise when she tells me this, and I smooth them down.  Contrary to the common metaphor, my work is not my baby, and it is not perfect.  My goal here is to produce the best product possible.  On the other hand—what re-writing could possibly be required?  I’m a brutal self-editor.  Editing, a process I once respected, now causes me to cower.  I fear for my plots and characters, descriptions and titles; and most of all, I fear for my endings. 

I share my anxieties with friends over brunch. 

“Is there sex?  They’ll want sex,” Anna says. 

“Also, there should be violence,” Travis adds. 

“This is a literary publisher.”  I stress the word because they don’t seem to have grasped the intellectual implication, the highbrow level to which I have risen.  Literary means no sex or violence required.  

The manuscripts Arcadia has chosen are two of my favorites:

Old Buildings in North Texas, wherein a recovering cocaine addict moves back to her hometown and explores abandoned buildings as she attempts to reclaim her life.

Why Stuff Matters, the story of a grieving widow and her stepdaughter as they deal with the elderly, eccentric, and avaricious vendors in an antique mall.

My one-sentence summaries don’t do justice to the completed works, which contain quirky characters and hilarious plot turns, and are dedicated to the sequence of personal disintegration, salvaging, rising up, and moving forward. 

So anyway, I'm thrilled.  Good thing we recently moved to this house, which has ceilings high enough to accommodate my big head.  

Would you buy a book by this woman?

Local Sights

When David and I move to a new location, we promise ourselves that we’ll get to know all the points of interest in the area.  Usually we don’t manage it.  We get busy with our day-to-day, and pretty soon we’re slaves to our routine, which doesn’t include sight-seeing.  This time we’re determined to do things differently.  There’s a lot to do and see here in the hill country, and we’re looking forward to exploring. 

To that end, we rented a boat earlier in the week and motored up the Colorado River, and then the length of Lake LBJ all the way to Horseshoe Bay.  There was little boat traffic, and the water was calm and cool.  The thing to do at this lake is to look at the houses along the water.  Most of the shoreline is developed and the lots and homes go for a fortune.  At one point, I drove the boat while David managed to stay afloat on a round inflated raft, which didn’t look easy or comfortable.  We swam, we ate chicken, I drank a glass of wine, and David had a beer.  What we were mainly doing was answering the question—do we want to buy a boat?  The rent for four hours was two-eighty, which, because I’m frugal, seemed expensive.  On the other hand you’d have to use a boat at least once a week for several years to justify the cost of purchase, not to mention storage and maintenance, the hassle of towing it around, and getting it in and out of the water.  Only true devotees go to the trouble.  If you rent it, you just pull out your credit card and go.  I can see doing this two or three times a year, probably when we have visitors.  It’s pleasant on the lake, but no, we won’t be buying a boat.   

The way we might go is kayaks.  We haven’t been out on Lake Marble Falls, which is nearby and seldom crowded.  We have a rental reservation for kayaks next Saturday, and we'll do that on LMF.  

Today we’re visiting Fredericksburg.  The ads in the tourist magazine are for antique shops, gift shops, wine-tasting bars, and restaurants.  So antiquing, wine, and food—for me, a perfect day. 

The drive is easy—twenty minutes to Johnson City, right for half an hour on 290, which morphs into Fredericksburg’s Main Street.  Lined with quaint store-fronts, old-style signage, and charming covered walkways, it’s designed to attract.  We park as soon as we’re able, planning to walk up one side and return on the other. 

The first shop we enter is called Linens-N-More.  The ad in the magazine claimed that it has the largest collection of placemats and matching napkins in the state.  (A selling point?  Seriously?)  A room off to the side boasts a thousand quilts.  Indeed, I’ve never seen so many quilts, not even at a quilt show.  

Next on the agenda is a gallery that specializes in glass art.  Our house has a tall built-in display alcove that we're compelled to fill, and we immediately see the possibilities in this shop—long-necked vases, swirled bowls, elegant fountains; typically, David likes one piece and I like another.  It’ll take us months of debate to figure this out.  We take pictures and move on. 

Next we hit an endless row of gift and accessory shops, all filled with the same useless, yet artfully arranged, crap.  I, of course, must go into every one of them, with David patiently trailing.  I drag him into a clothing store that claims to have unique designs; and I wonder how a place can make this claim when on every rack there are rows of tops and skirts that are exactly the same.  Does no one pay attention to the meaning of words anymore?

In one shop I overhear one woman ask another, “Ain’t we have came into this store already?”

What does this even mean?  The grammar makes me cringe, and David says, as he does every time I’m appalled by the vernacular, “Remember where you are.” 

Next up, lunch.  There are so many restaurants to choose from—authentic German, barbecue, Texmexentric.  David's hungry for a Reuben, so we go to Winslow’s.  I have chicken and dumplings, a rare indulgence.  After lunch, our major fun find is across the street—Rustic Rob’s.   Here they offer samples for tasting of absolutely everything in the store, from raspberry chipotle sauce to jalapeno olives to, my favorite, peach butter.  We buy mustard, chili mix, and barbecue sauce, then head to the car. 

As David drives us home, I take a nap. 

Lake LBJ, tick.  Fredericksburg, tick. 

The Colorado River

Main Street, Fredericksburg

The display alcove

David likes this one.

And I like this one.