Will we stay?

  It's grey in Austin today and currently 55F with showers and a cool breeze. It's March and the clocks went forward yesterday but we are still stuck in a what has been long Texas winter. I look longingly at the leaf covered pool reflecting the milk white sky. We haven't swum since the beginning...

At last an alive Armadillo

it is my third year in America and finally I got to see a live Armadillo! It was just walking across our road and then down into the shrubbery. It is not the first Armadillo I have seen here. Sadly I have seen many dead ones on the roads. Like badgers in the UK it...

Missing the Queen of Christmas

My mum was the Queen of Christmas. Starting in November with the making of aromatic brandy, cinnamon, raison Christmas puddings and ending in January with sweeping up the needles from the always impeccably decorated real Christmas Tree hung with twinkling lights and glinting baubles with the pine cone 'Nissa' hidden in the centre. For a...

Waves

Waves of grief homesickness and nostalgia as my son leaves another school

How do you feel?

This is not some deep reflection on grief or the weird alienation that even after two years sometimes hits me as an expat in Austin - an aerial freeway? A drive through donut shop? Turning right on a red light? Post on a Sunday? None of these things seem real. But they are here. No...

Looking for the positive

I am sitting on my bed, with the bedroom door shut, hiding from, but also listening to, the Insurance Adjuster Outside talking to my husband about the damage I caused to the garage and most of its contents. I sit ignoring the glorious honey rays of sun as it gently slips away and instead I...

Flowering a death

I missed Jill's funeral yesterday. Not that I had had much enthusiasm for a third flight back across the Atlantic for a funeral in less than 6 months. But I did want to be there to share the grief. To say goodbye. But in the end, as many expats find, the cost, distance and organization...

Farewell beloved Earth Mother

Jill Nickalls died this morning. She was an amazing woman loving and welcoming. Her house, and especially her kitchen, was always open to visitors. Her kitchen was so cosy and relaxing with its paintings, overflowing open shelves, AGA and long wooden table you felt you could sit for hours.  Jill always seemed to have something...

Zoom Burst

Take a one second shutter speed and a zoom lens and some patience and your everyday pets are elevated to mystical 'trippy' beings shining out into the universe. Behold my dog     And my fish (in their trans-dimensional aquarium)

Dream

What do you dream of? My son became a Canyon Vista Honours student yesterday for his kindness and responsibility. He got a haircut today. He dreams of being a musician in a rock band. My current dream is to be a photographer. My class at ASOO brought me one step closer to that today. New...