#207A

After a year of planning, dreaming, doubting, saving and pep talks, I'm here and I love it. I miss people at home, but this feels perfect. Mom stayed with me all week, trudging all over town for supplies, groceries and furniture, bravely downing a year's worth of Aleve after schlepping half of my crap and a bunch of new (and of course heavy) things up to my third floor home. The moment I walked in I knew everything would be OK. I'm glad I stressed and organized and obsessed about money and logistics, but that dissolved when I walked in and saw how my little shabby apartment that I'd spent five minutes in before signing up was transformed into this sparkling, perfectly suited home for me and the furry ones. I was worried about the noise because I'm about a five minute walk from UT, but besides comings and goings of neighbors, I haven't heard anything. I have yet to hear voices, showers, anything. Ahhh.
Thursday, while we were busily unpacking and cleaning, Mom decided to take a break to search for an old friend on the internet. It turned out that she was right that she had moved to the Austin area, and she was the first result to come up on the search page. She called and started to explain who she was, but quickly found that explanations were unnecessary. She knew who she was right away, and we got together with she and her husband that night at their 'farm'(more like a petting zoo), and had dinner at their house, catching up on years of family news and gossip. Friday we got to do some fun things, including visiting my new running store, RunTex. Besides those breaks and a few nice lunches and dinners out (most of which were within spitting distance of my house) I was a slave driver. I was so excited to see my house unpacked, and I hate clutter and chaos. Mom dutifully obliged, though. I'm a lucky girl. I had to take her to the airport this morning, and it was so strange to drop her at the curbside check-in and come back here alone. It solidified the fact that this hasn't been a vacation, but is the beginning of a new chapter. I suppose this is a honeymoon phase, but I can't foresee what I'll get annoyed with here yet. Well, maybe traffic. I'm seeing what happens when a city grows faster than it can plan for. There are only two major highways, both running north/south, and everyone wants to go where I do, it seems. I'll just do my very best to get a job I can ride or walk to. Besides that, I think this might have been the best decision I've made, so far.