Vixen Chronicles

First I was too cold and now I can't get cool enough. There is no air-conditioning here. I didn't know it when I planned this, or it didn't occur to me. The first night, I told my landlord that I was a little warm in my room at the cottage. “No, problem, we'll fix that.” Silly me, I thought that meant that they would turn up the air conditioner to that comfort zone we talk about, you know, between 68 and 72. “We'll just open a window or two.” I was perplexed as I followed them around the house. They opened window after window and explained to me how this was an efficient house that was designed to be hot in the winter and cool in the summer. It just wasn't cool enough. I walked around Oak Bluff, in and out of the various merchants on Circuit avenue. Guess what? No air conditioning there either. The weather was balmy, not quite hot, but I wouldn't exactly call it cool either. It wasn't in your face hot like in Texas, but just warm enough to make...

I needed a break from all the moving, so I headed to the beach. I headed to take my daughter to camp, actually, and decided to wait for her at a nearby Beach town. She is going to the historical Camp Atwater,and no, its not a Fresh Air Fund Camp like the characters in Marrying UP said it was. I made that up. That's why its called fiction. She's never been to sleep away camp before so I was worried that she would have a hard time. She is just a baby. I tried to expose her to this type of thing before when we went to an overnight Mother-daughter camp with the Girl Scouts. I think I blogged about that too. In my heart, I knew that if that camp was anything like Camp Atwater, there was a good chance she wouldn't want to stay. It can't be a good experience if the one thing she remembers most is the smell. Driving up to Camp Atwter it was a pleasant surprise. It was camp, but certainly less "rustic" than where we stayed. We rolled into expertly manicured and...

Moving is getting tiring. People say "moving" like its a one point in time thing, but in actuality, it is a process. We have physically moved all our stuff from point A to point B, but now I am sifting through all the stuff in the boxes and trying to get it in its place. Everything has a place, and I just gotta find it. Truth be told, I am throwing/donating a lot of things that had found their way to the back of the closet or that have outlived its usefulness. I'm finding having less stuff kind of refreshing. Liberating even. I have help, thank goodness. I wanted things to go smoothly for my family, so pre-moved, I went through and purged a lot of things. Clothes I hadn't worn in two years. A shoe or two. Some of them I looked at and wondered how the hell they found their way into my closet in the first place. What was so attractive before was butt-ugly now. I evenpurged for my other half because he is not a person who throws things away. Trust me fellas, men...

My struggle with nature continues. You see, alas, I have moved to the KUN-CHER-EEE. I am still sitting in the midst of boxes, albeit fewer than before, but in the midst of boxes nonetheless. It's one thing when you move from house to house or neighborhood to neighborhood. In those cases, you can still rely on the old faithful things you know. Same people, dry cleaners, grocery store, but I have moved to a different city and I am just lost. Where I have moved the grabage company does not provide trash cans, and since, as a result of my move, I have a lot of trash, I found myself in need of the "man-supermarket", AKA Home Depot. I looked it up on the internet, found an address and then tried to put it in my trusty (or so I thought) navigation system. After 20 minutes of trying, I decided to give it a go and just drove in the general direction that I thought it was in. Well, I drove around in circles and ended up there quite accidently, but not before I called relativ...

So, I moved to a new city and I think nature and I have finally reached an equilibrium. I'm sitting in a house surrounded by hundreds of boxes and I haven't really seen one creepy crawly inside the house with me yet. What I have seen is lots of nature. The first two days the movers left most of the doors open as they were going in and out. I just KNEW I was going to have things in the house,especially with my recent track record. This is south Texas, for goodness sakes. Lo and behold, I was right. I kept hearing this incessant chirping that was driving me nuts. It didn't take me long to figure out I had visitors. The house is on a hill and apparently with the doors open, birds thought they could fly right through. All of the possible scenarios that could happen to me and only to me, ran through my head. Can birds get rabies? I was sure if it were possible, I was sure to get bitten, scratched or crapped on. (They claim that its good luck when you get crapped on by...

Warning, the following contains graphic language and is an absolutely true story. It is not for the faint of heart and children are advised to leave the room. Moving is a muthaf----. I couldn't sit still and let the packers pack my stuff, I had to walk through and see if there was something I could do. Of course, there is always stuff behind stuff, especially in kid's room. Behind my daughter's kitchen, a discarded night gown was lurking. I decided to pick it up and put it where it belonged when--ouch, no sh--(*&^^%%', I heard a snapping sound and felt sharp pain on my fingers. Ohmigod! I threw my phone and the nightgown and grabbed my finger, crunking again. I was getting good at this. My kids screamed "What's wrong, Mom?!" Something had bitten me. Immediately, I thought the worse. I grabbed my finger and tried to hold the poison I knew to be coursing through my views down in the digit. Maybe I had been stung by a brown recluse? I thought ...

Can't sleep. Can you believe I had an uneventful weekend and 4th of July? This is the first year I did absolutely nothing. Well, I did sign books at the Essence Music Festival in Houston, but I went in, signed the books and came back home. No, they don't give you free concert tix or anything like it when you do that. I did get to meet a few folks from Austin, some people even recognized me from TV. That's a big deal for me because authors don't get recognized. Its not like begin a TV star. It's been a long time since I signed books like that. We stood in front of the table and basically accosted passers-by with our bookmarks and postcards. I used to do that type of thing all the time when I was self published. I would even use my then three year old daughter as a shill. Folks would stop to remark on how cute she would and then she would do the accosting, slipping them some material and blinking her eyelashes. "My mommy is an author, would you b...