A Night at Downton ... plus some other stuff.

Well Reader, last Sunday we had our much-anticipated Downton Abbey Season Finale party, at the old Austin City Limit studios.  May I just say that watching Downton Abbey, in a room of similarly enthusiastic fans, is light years better than watching Downton Abbey holed up alone with your computer  in bed, wearing your retainer and sitting through the Royal Caribbean Cruise commercials?  Shocking I know!

That's my dear friend Vija and I above.  Vija is astounding for two reasons: A) she dressed up in appropriate period wear, as we are now tumbling headlong into the 1920's with our friends at Downton, and B) she made me a Dowager Countess paper DOLL!  Here's a close-up.

There she is, holding her prize-winning roses.  She's probably rolling her eyes at Cousin Isobel for something annoying she just said.

I've been terribly light on posts this week Reader, and I promise there is a reason for that.  I've hinted and I've teased, but we really are moving over to the new Austin Eavesdropper design and platform as we speak.  It's both exciting and scary.

I was having dinner with my new editor and friend David the other night, who works for CitySearch.  He has an eye for branding and marketing, the things I'm supposed to be good at too since I am, after all, a publicist.  And what's funny is, I can advise other people all day long on their brands: If they need better design, how they can reach their audience more effectively, etc.  But when David starting talking Austin Eavesdropper's brand ... I immediately got squirmy.  Insecure.  

It's so hard to get out of the creative thing you love, and step back, look at it objectively.  I have slowly gotten better at talking about Austin Eavesdropper (unlike this time last year around SXSW), have figured out its elevator pitch.  I have been lucky, God - lucky! - to have blog designer friends, as well as lifestyle blogger friends, who don't get all freaky neurotic about self-branding like I do.  

I guess there's a teensy, tiny part of me that worries about losing my authentic voice if I branded Austin Eavesdropper too hard.  Like I couldn't come to you guys anymore, you people reading this post, and let loose when I need to.  Like it would be too much, and you'd say: "WHOA there, Tolly!  Back to pretty images and stories about Austin, please.  Rein it in."

I wonder if other bloggers ever feel this way?  

Some of my favorite posts on this site have kind of addressed heavier stuff in my life -- when Ross had an intervention with our close friend for example, or when my college boyfriend Courtland died.  These aren't necessarily the most commented-on posts, but I loved writing them and processing them and I don't want that stuff to go away when Austin Eavesdropper is sparklier and newer.  Don't worry -- it's not my goal in life to depress you all the time.  But I get a special high off of writing stuff that feels real.  Confessional, even.

Anyway.  This post got slightly heavier than I intended ... I thought I was just going to write a few lines about Maggie Smith.  Snap my laptop shut, skip off to the rest of my day. 

But I'm glad we had this talk.  If feels like it's been a while, since I've told you what was actually on my mind.  I know I am crazy fortunate.  I've got supportive readers and blogger buddies and artistic friends who help me birth my nutty little visions, like AETV.  Despite all my hand-wringing, I really can't overstate how giddy I am to foist the new site on you.  Because it purdy.

Perhaps it's appropriate, though, that as we say goodbye to Austin Eavesdropper's home here on Blogspot, I give it thanks for letting me be that girl.  The one who DOES freak out and DOES get nervous and DOES talk about it, and you, generous souls that you are, listen and nod.  You lean forward, rather than run away.  You tell me that I make sense, even when I only halfway do.

And, I just want you to know that I really, really appreciate that.

The creatures of this house.

It's quite domestic around here. 

Do you remember Claudia, Reader?  It's been a while since we really let her have her own post.  Here is a picture of the two of us from back in the day, Claudia totally loving and appreciating my affection.  She and I were at home the other day when a tiny bird flew into our house, and I could not believe it held still while I snapped its picture.  Look at it winking! 

Also.  Ross and I are still faithfully doing Greenling each week.  Now, 80% of the time we know what we have received, because Greenling always provides a helpful list -- with recipes! -- of our box's offerings.  But sometimes, even after we have consulted said list, one item is still a mystery.  Enter the potato ... thing, above.  Are you noticing the face I carved into it?  That is the expression a vegetable makes when it doesn't know what it is.  I asked Ross and our buddy Jason what I should do with it, and they suggest I cut it into slices.  Done. 

Finally, I just wanted to share the most delightful comment from an Eavesdroppper reader: Mary Miller, one of the authors I mentioned a couple of weeks ago.  She wrote me the kindest email, and inspired by Claudia, I thought I'd share part of it with you.  In her note, she described the things this blog makes her want to do ...

 

Just being.

I was telling Ross this morning that I think Claudia and I can really relate to each other.  Claudia, as you may or may not know, is our cat.

"We're both anxious, impatient, and only children!" I said.  

He looked at me with the sudden realization that he had, in fact, married a crazy cat lady.

But the funny thing is, I told him this while Claudia was curled up on my lap, getting her tiny forehead scratched.  She was utterly at peace, resting her chin on my arm, and even peeked one eye open at me for a few blissful seconds.  Her little face said, "this is exactly what I want."

***

It was funny because, just a few moments earlier, Claudia was skittering around in her nervous morning way: Meowing urgently, scratching things she's not supposed to scratch, biting us with just enough pressure to indicate, "I'm kind of playing, but I also kind of want MORE WET CAT FOOD DAMMIT." 

I could tell she didn't know what she wanted, because she actually had everything -- food, water, our attention -- but that frenetic cat energy kept jerking through her.  It reminded me of myself.

***

On Saturday night, I went to see an energy work healer.  I had heard about her through a friend, who wrote me a few days ago to ask if I would ever be interested in a session.

"YES," I wrote.

One thing I've debated about several times before is just how open I should be about my spiritual leanings on this blog.  That's mostly because: 

A) They're a little all over the place.  Back in high school I was a very serious Christian for a couple of years, and while I'm not so much anymore, one thing that always stuck with me was "not picking and choosing parts of scripture that you like."  Isn't that funny?  I still have this hang-up about only getting into Buddhism for the meditation and attachment doctrines, for example.  I feel "bad" that these are my two genuinely favorite parts about Buddhism, and I totally picked them out from Buddhist scripture.  I'm slowly learning to realize that it is OK to study a variety of different spiritualities and faiths, to choose practices that really work for you, and just ... live your life.

B) I'm worried it will scare people off.  You, for example.  Maybe you're atheist.  Maybe you're Christian.  Either way, I imagine you thinking: "Energy work? Freak," and x-ing right out of this blog. But I think that's alright, too. There are some parts of my life I'll always keep private and sacred, others that I am moved to share.

And Saturday night was one of them.

So: back to my friend's message. I texted the energy healer soon after, and set up our session.  After we sat down, I started telling her about my New Years Words.

"Well last year, it was openness," I said, feeling that was definitely an energy healer-approved kind of word, "and this year, it is evolve," thinking I had probably just blown her mind.

She just nodded then, smiling wisely.  

"I should also tell you too that I'm a very easy cryer, so ... just ... FYI."

She explained to me that people express all kinds of things during energy work and that tears weren't good or bad, just a different form of energy. Which immediately put me at ease. Because tears can make things really weird, and I didn't want to muck up our work together by obliging her to feel sorry for me. With that out of the way, I relaxed, and sank down into things a bit more.

It's hard to describe what happened for the next hour, so I'll just tell you the two things that struck me the most:

One. She immediately went to my stomach. Part of this woman's energy work is identifying "blockages" in your body and then helping you release them. (If you're into yoga at all you may be familiar with the concept of chakras; this is totally similar, if not identical.)

I mention this because I have had stomach issues for a REALLY long time. They became more frequent in grad school, but the problem may have even started earlier than that.  As you can imagine, energy work sessions are not so much "hmm, I see you have a gastro-intestinal disorder!" as a more mind-body-spirit thing.  The latter perspective is frequently written off in the West as super hippie (I know because I used to do the writing off), but in Chinese medicine, Indian medicine, and in many other parts of the world it's not as bizarre to consider that maybe - maybe? - the reason you feel so bad could have something to do with forces not strictly corporeal.  

Two. She told me my feminine energy was very depleted.

Now my mind was blown.  I wanted to say, "girl, did you not see the mascara I blotted all over this Kleenex?" but held my tongue, suspecting she might be referring to a deeper feminine something.  And indeed she was.

"When you told me about your word, 'openness,' it made me wonder if a lot - I mean a lot - of things had come into your life lately, and if it sometimes wasn't a little overwhelming," she said. I told her that was a zillion percent true.

I told her I couldn't believe all of the good things I have in my life, and that also, I feel totally ungrateful when I'm not experiencing them to their fullest. I told her I felt tired all the time, and asked why is that, when I've got so many zingy projects, side jobs, hobbies, relationships, etc. to fill my day?

She gave me that same wise smile from earlier.

"You can keep your words, Tolly, but I want to give you a couple of new ones. They are: 'just be.'"

"Just be?"

"'Just. Be.'"

I am a doer by nature, so you can imagine how foreign a concept this is.  Just be?  Won't I get bored?

Maybe.  But perhaps boredom isn't so bad.

***

There's one thing I've noticed in certain types of spiritual people: They are very good at "just being," and also, they have lots of energy.

My cat Claudia and I are examples of the opposite: We are anxious doers, and we tend to drain ourselves very quickly.  She scratches furniture, I pull out hairs on the back of my neck, and neither activity satisfies us. 

So I'm going to take my energy healer's advice.  I'm going to keep "evolve," but maybe not be so forceful about it.  Do I still have goals?  Yes.  Lots of them.  But I think now I can meet my goals in the middle, by letting them take their time, and helping them along when they need me. 

(By the way.  The reason I didn't go into extreme detail with the energy work itself is because as I understand it, it's very tailored to each person.  I can tell you that mine involved meditation, and lots of smells ... good smells!  It was exciting, and I'll just be frank here, I totally loved it.  If you are into this kind of thing and if you live here in Austin, please feel free to contact me if you want more info about my gal.)

Source.

The New Year's Dive.

We all had very vague notions of what was going to happen on New Year's Eve.  "2012," we murmured.  "This.  Is.  Big."

And yet, my friends and I were undecided on how to ring it in properly.  We're at that in-between age, when we're too old for Sixth Street or anything resembling it, but also too broke to shell out for fancy ticketed parties.  In the end, somebody suggested dinner and a dive bar down south, the kind with pool and neon beer signs and a bartender named Dixie. Yes: Dixie.   

"Who witnessed my wedding proposal, I might add," said my friend David.  "One year ago exactly.  Also, I guarantee you won't find a better damn jukebox anywhere: It plays Johnny Cash AND Marvin Gaye."

Well shoot.  Johnny?  Marvin?  A proven history of romance?  It's no wonder we ended up at Horseshoe Lounge.   

 Dixie

David

"Am I reading that correctly -- roadkill jerky?" I asked David.

"Yes," he sighed, "we lost Happy Jack this year.  He used to always come around and sell that jerky to the regulars.  It was this big honor to play Happy Jack at shuffleboard, and he'd get up in your face if you won.  Try and fight you.  But this is the kind of place where you don't fight and hug; you threaten to fight and then you talk it out and THEN you hug."

I liked this.  A bar where everybody not only knows your name, they also know conflict resolution.  I don't know about you, but I credit Dixie.  

Something to know about my friends and I: We are not pool sharks.  But we are very enthusiastic, and in pool as in so many other areas of life, I prefer enthused company over skilled company.  I can't remember who won the round we played, probably because we interrupted our own game when Otis Redding came on. 

You know something else? For years after I moved back to Austin, I thought the Horseshoe Lounge was actually called "Lucky Lounge," because it has an actual horseshoe on the sign in the place the word 'horseshoe' should be. Whenever people talked about Lucky Lounge (a real, albeit very different, establishment in Austin), I thought: "that's clever!" It was only later that I realized that Lucky Lounge was downtown, with no horseshoe, Grey Goose bottle service, and an occasional velvet rope.  I'm pretty sure Happy Jack never sold roadkill jerky there.

At midnight, Dixie walked around giving everyone plastic flutes of champagne, and laid out a mini buffet (with black-eyed peas, naturally) at the back of the bar.  Do you eat black-eyed peas on New Year's, Reader?  I used to think it was universal, but now I realize it's just Southern.  It's also the only tradition my parents are truly adamant about: We could have a plastic Christmas tree, skip pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving, but by God you WILL eat your black-eyed peas on New Year's.

I went out walkin' then, after midnight.  In the moonlight.  Just like Patsy.  Mine was a shorter distance (to my car), and while I didn't see a weeping willow, I saw something better: my friend Megan's plastic New Year's crown still perched jauntily on her head.  I think we can all agree you've had a good night when you walk out still wearing your party favors.

We shivered in the car and waited for the heater to kick on, and I told Megan I could totally get used to this dive bar New Year's thing.

What we once were.

Ever since I spent Christmas with my three little nephews, I've been thinking about this line from the Wordsworth poem, "Tintern Abbey:"

May I behold in thee what I was once.

In that poem, Wordsworth is looking out over the countryside with his sister, thrilled to see that this is all new to her, that she's getting an enormous kick out of the nearby mountain, the blue sky, the "deep and gloomy wood."  He's been coming to this spot for years, and its magic is wearing off, but in his sister's eyes, he gets to see it new again.

I know this sounds terribly corn pone Reader, but I really do think that kids make Christmas.  "HA!" I can just hear my young parent friends saying.  "Wait until you have some of your own."  Don't worry, I want to tell them.  We're still totally figuring out how to be grown-ups over here.

But on Sunday, when our families spent Christmas together for the first time (Ross's and mine), the morning was just a little bit louder, the presents ripped open a little more vigorously, and the toy train watched with a little more intensity than it was for any of us five years ago.  That's about when Ross's sister had her first baby -- the one modeling Sponge Bob paraphernalia above.

And I think we've all been a little more childlike since.

Tattoo lust + one more red hair moment.

At Propaganda on Tuesday, I couldn't help but notice Lindsay's amazing tattoos.  Lindsay works the front desk there, and if you ever go, you must check them out.  Aren't they glorious? 

Also ... Reader.  Because I'm very sentimental, I was paging through old photos of me with red hair last night, and I found this hilarious one taken a few years ago.  Can we please laugh at this together?  It was taken for Vain's website to show off Buffy's color work, and while Buffy is a genius (as is the photographer), I really do appear to have just stumbled out of a psychiatric ward:   

Like ... what is going on here??  Would you not be terrified if this person walked into your house?  Somebody call the Betty Ford!

The photographer at the time told us to imagine we were getting arrested for something, and while the other hair models imagined something ... sexy?  Like, indecent exposure?  I imagined that I had just been involved in a hit-and-run accident.  Um, what?  Who thinks like that?  I may even have started crying during this shoot, because I felt so guilty about running over a (fictional) person.  I'm pretty sure Tyra would NOT approve.

(At least the hair is poppin.')

The end of my red period.

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Freshly minted brunette here, reporting for duty!

Well Reader, I said goodbye to my red tresses yesterday.  How strange!  Even this morning, the new 'do still feels somewhat wig-like.

My beloved Buffy, the girl who turned me red almost exactly three years ago, made the switch with me.  Back then, in late 2008, I was still blond -- and the new hue changed everything.  

You know what they say, about blondes having more fun?  Lies.  I got fifty times more attention as a redhead than I ever did as a blond.  Inspired by Joan Holloway on Mad Men, and particularly by how bold she was, I waltzed into Buffy's chair at Vain and fanned out some pictures.  I was 26, and I wanted some of that boldness for myself.  

Have you ever gone red before, Reader?  If not, I think you should.  Everyone should.  Just to see how it feels, because let me tell you, red is an absolute trip. 

I believe that other redheads present and former can vouch for this: Red goes beyond stares on the street.  My hair has probably been every shade on the red rainbow, from demure ginger, to maroon, to loud, screaming Poison Ivy.  An old lady I used to go grocery shopping with thought I was Irish, my classmates at my 10-year high school reunion voted me "Most Changed" last year, and my Dad once called me "Crayola Head."  So red not only imbues confidence, you see: It makes people process you differently. 

But sometime recently, I saw a picture of myself on an overcast day, and the red suddenly looked ... too much.  Like it didn't fit me anymore.  I craved something more natural, something less look-at-me.  Isn't that funny?  You'd think I'd never give this great thing up, this fun color that got me so much attention.  But I just had this gut feeling.  A beloved chapter (my twenties?) was closing. 

And now?  Well, new color is always a little weird, but I like the new me.  I feel confident in a different way.  Mature!  That's the word.  I feel mature.  Less Poison Ivy, more Jane Birkin.  Thank you for transforming me yet again, Buffy.  You always make me feel so comfortable in your chair, and totally jazzed by the time I leave. 

I love you and your hair dying wizardry!

(PS: Buffy moved two weeks ago to Propaganda on West 5th.  I recommend her to everyone that I know.)

Somewhere over the rainbow cake.

For most of my life, I have had two big dreams of inexplicable origin:

1. To see someone holding a sign with my name on it in the airport, and

2. To witness a live wedding proposal.

And, actually?  Scratch the inexplicable origin part. Don't both of these things happen in Sleepless in Seattle?  They seem like the kind of things that should happen in Sleepless in Seattle. 

I saw that movie when I was 11, and it was about that time when I decided that both Dreams #1 and #2 were dreams worth having.  They were just terribly romantic.  Well, at least #2 was. Why did I think that someone (a chauffeur) holding up a sign (made of cardboard) with your name on it was so special?  (Fact: I still scan the cardboard signs at baggage claim after every flight, secretly hoping one of them says "Moseley.")

Anyway, I told my parents about Dream #1, and they made it come true a few years ago at the Houston airport.  But Dream #2?  Well, aside from my own engagement, that one would have to wait. 

Until Friday, that is.  Friday!  The one that just happened.  And you guys: It happened at my house.

See this delightful girl above?  You know her well from my previous posts.  Amy is one of my best friends, and we had a birthday party for her at our place on Friday.

(My sweet baby kitty!  She looks so sleepy in this picture.)

Because Amy is generous and clever, she decided to turn her birthday party into a little more than that.  "But how?" you ask.  "How can you possibly top a 26th birthday, especially one that comes with an exciting rainbow birthday cake?"  Well, one way is to plan a surprise wedding proposal.

Amy secretly plotted with the gentleman below, to have everybody gather around her birthday cake as she was blowing out candles.  Cake that the lovely lady below - Nicki - had made for her.  And after Amy blew out the candles, Nicki was spun around ... to face Tom, with a ring.

Internet, meet the newly and very beautiful engaged couple, Nicki and Tom!

Oh, Reader.  I wish you could have seen it.  You would have just died.  The whole thing happened in front of a crowd of Nicki and Tom's closest friends, and right before he got down on one knee, Tom said (in a slightly shaky voice): "Six years ago Nicki, I called you back, and I'm really, really glad that I did."

We were all packed into Ross's studio in the backyard, and when Nicki said yes, everybody clapped and cheered wildly. "You're ENGAGED!" Amy screamed, and hugged her, her best friend since middle school.  

I stood there with the cake, thinking about the fact that I got to witness my first wedding proposal right there in my own backyard.  The whole thing cast this gauzy glow over my weekend that, even on a Monday morning, still hasn't gone away.