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Austin for a Day

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I love it when the weekends are actually awesome. Often, the HUB/BUB and I stay too isolated. Hanging together at home or our farm. But, sometimes, just sometimes, we bust out and see a little bit of the world.

The whole family got up early yesterday and hit the farmer’s market and The Garage of Good, then blasted off to Austin to the Renegade Craft Fair. I’m a total Etsy addict, so to see all that stuff live and in person, all in one place, is pretty mind blowing. Even better that the inaugural fair last year (and most definitely more people). Walking around and seeing all the hand made stuff certainly gives you a reminder of how amazing people can be when they put their minds to it.

I only bought three things, but took a million cards so who knows what sort of trouble I’ll get into online in the future!We saw lots of cool stuff, but the highlight of the event was the Viva Zapata! booth, in a freaky flashback kinda way. Now, I’m walking the aisle and these purses catch my eye. They are vibrant and colorful and totally awesome. And as I’m looking at them, I realize I’ve seen them somewhere before. Then as I look harder, I realize I actually own one. I ask the woman behind the booth if she ever sold in New York, and she said yes. And I asked her if she ever sold out of someone’s apartment, and she said yes. They had a sale at her friend’s apartment once in 1999.

The Village? A white walk up I ask her? YES!

She then tells me that back then she was making the bags with a friend of hers (they are made from recycled Argentinian bus seat leather and are totally rad), and they had dissolved and had that sale to get rid of their remaining inventory. Then, like five years later, she decided to start making them again on her own.

Only a small handful of people went to that sale… so random.Afterwards, some boys I know went swimming in Barton Springs while their lame lady friend forgot her bathing suit and had to sit it out and take pictures instead. Loser. Dinner at Artz with a blue grass serenade. Ice cream at Phil’s and books at Half Price.

Like most semi-hipsters in San Antonio, I have a love/hate/jealousy thing with Austin. I love it because it does have a ton of cool stuff to do (way more than SA), but hate it because it doesn’t have the laid back, local feel that San Antonio does. Sometimes it feels too cool for its own good. But yesterday, as the sun was setting, I drank the Koolaid and started feeling all warm and snuggling on the inside about the place. Maybe one day we could move here… What would it be like if…?

Then I remembered the 30 minutes of traffic (on a Saturday morning! aghast!) we sat in to get there and I was glad to be headed home.

What a great world it would be if all the days were like this.

(Brainstorm, Andrew Le, Diane Koss, Leah Duncan, Public School, weather & noise)

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Bubo and Don

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Stayed up introducing Clash of the Titans to a whole new generation last night and I’d forgotten how awesome that owl is. I sat through the entire movie trying to figure out how difficult it would be to fashion one out of empty soda cans. My husband got fixated on how much Harry Hamlin looks like Jim Morrison, and insisted if he were a better actor he could have played him in The Doors movie.

Some alternate universe Lizard King.

I, on the other hand, just love watching all that old Ray Harryhausen stop motion footage. That stuff scared the crap out of me when I was little in the best possible way. Recently, we’ve watched Dinosaurus! and Land of the Gwangi, both totally cheesy but awesome movies, but I feel like it’s important to raise a child who doesn’t think CGI is real and can see the evolution of a craft. Plus, it trains him to not get bored when we force him to watch old Don Knotts movies.

Which we do. Sometimes.

Hello there

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I started blogging in June of 2006. I had a newborn baby. I was quitting my day job to stay at home with my son and write freelance. Like most “mommy bloggers”, I needed a place to vent. I spent many years years on that blog analyzing and over-analyzing myself, my son’s friends, motherhood, my family, and mostly, the color of my son’s poo. I even started another blog to catalogue and share my growing passion for collecting vintage children’s books for him.

Now, my son is fully-immersed in the throes of public education, so I thought it best to shut that mommy-blog down and start over. To create a place where I can be a person and a writer, and not always a mother first.

So here I am. Starting fresh.

If you have no idea who I am, my name is Burgin Streetman.

I worked for years in New York in book publishing before giving it all up to move to Texas. Now that I’ve weaned my son off the nipple and diaper trained him and gotten him through kindergarten, I’m taking some time to write and begin to find myself again.

As a writer of mainly non-fiction my whole life, I am, at last, embracing fiction. I just finished writing my first young adult novel, and I’m in the early stages of my second. Ask me again in a few months if I’m actually published.

We’ll see how it goes.

I love my life, but I bitch, a lot. And I mean A LOT. Just ask my husband.

Welcome aboard.

(Oh, and here’s a picture taken from inside the infamous Toilet Seat Museum, just ’cause it’s near my house and I can.)