Hi! Remember when I said that I would be writing over at the Austin Post about my family’s experience of moving back to Texas?

There are five articles over there now:

♥ A Return to Texas

♥ 2000 Miles in 2 Days – Or How to Turn a Road Trip Into a Fever Dream

♥ Staying Afloat and Letting Go of Job Kittens

♥ Tales of the Reluctant Kerrvillians

♥ Moving Out and Moving On

I encourage you to follow Austin Post (RSS feed here); it’s a great site written by and for the Austin community, and I’m proud to be contributing there.

We’re in Texas!

We arrived a week ago and have been settling in and enjoying quality time with my family.

I am still on the search for a full-time job in Austin, but I’ve been hired to do a column about our experience of moving back to Texas for Austin Post in the meantime, so that is where I will be doing the bulk of my blogging for the near future.

I am also selling 30 copies of Yellow Rose Recipes. When we were packing to move back to Texas, I unearthed a box I didn’t know I had. Oops! But that’s good news for those of you who have contacted me wanting Yellow Rose Recipes. If you are one of those people, order quickly! When they’re gone, they’re gone!

I just wanted to let you know that as of this morning, I have moved Yellow Rose Greatest Hits from Lulu to Amazon’s Createspace.

A few months ago, my girl Joni sent me an email, the gist of which was: “Switch to Createspace! It’s cheaper and people can search for your book on Amazon, which you want, duh,” but so much nicer, because Joni is a sweetheart and I love her. Because of all the stuff that’s been going on in my life, I backburnered this excellent advice because I assumed that the transition would be a pain in the ass. It totally wasn’t! So I switched last night and now Yellow Rose Greatest Hits is available to you for much less.

That’s all! We are moving in a little more than two weeks, so I’m going to pop out of here and go back to packing and cleaning.

The title of this post comes from one of my favorite Lyle Lovett songs, “That’s Right (You’re Not From Texas).” Do you know it? If not:

Are you getting the idea yet of what this post is here to say? I bet that you’ve guessed by now, but I will spit it out, anyway:

My family is moving to Austin!

This has all happened kind of quickly, but it feels really good. As bittersweet as it will be to leave Portland, especially under these circumstances, I could not be more excited about returning to the arms of my family and some of my dearest friends. Just thinking about getting to see some of my favorite people on a regular basis gets me all emotional.

Texas friends, I look forward to seeing you soon.

Portland friends: thank you so much for five years of joy and silliness, of drinks in mason jars and summer evenings of grilling while wearing hoodies, of coffee and donuts at Sweetpea and Christmas cookie parties, of food carts and sitting on blankets watching birds fly into a chimney, of Summer Parkways and berry picking, trips to the coast and Bagby hot springs. It’s been lovely and I will miss you dearly.

Let me back up. I had to close my small business in November 2011.

Or should I start with: In February 2010, I was laid off from the company where I’d worked for over a decade.

Or: In August 2009, I bought my first home.

No, I know where I really began:

In October 2008, I moved with my husband and infant son from Portland, OR to Kerrville, TX to move in with my parents. The situation was always meant to be temporary. Our plan was that we would live with my parents for seven months (rent free, but paying our portion of the utilities) so that we could pay off all of our debt and save up for a down payment on a home in Portland. It was incredibly humbling, but it felt like a mature decision. We wanted a clean start! We wanted to do this the right way. If we were going to take on a mortgage, we wanted to make sure that we could swing that mortgage payment every month, even if “something happened.”

Living with my parents for seven months was wonderful and trying in all the ways that you might expect it would be. Have you seen that show Parenthood? Or: do you have a family? So, yeah, you know what I’m talking about. It was a regular tearjerker from day one. My parents were there to see my son take his first steps. My mom and I had explosive arguments and could barely speak to each other for days. My parents got to know my husband in a way that they never could have otherwise, and vice versa, which has formed a close bond between them all. I found myself reverting to behaviors around my parents that I was sure I’d left in my teenage years, and was extremely ashamed of myself, which led to periods of self-doubt and depression.

But at the end of our time in Texas, we had achieved exactly what we set out to do: My parents had seven months of being able to see their grandchild every day, and we had paid off all debts and were financially prepared to buy a house.

So we did just that. In May 2009, we moved back to Portland, and we closed on our first home at the end of July.

A few weeks later, the company for which I had been working for 10 years cut my hours in half.

I started looking for a new job immediately. Matt started looking for a job immediately. Our ideal situation of the first two years of Milo’s life of work-from-home mom and stay-at-home dad was crumbling around us. During this time, I had a few interviews, but they led nowhere, other than my getting my hopes up. I received no job offers. Our very small savings account rapidly dwindled as we found ourselves scrambling to pay our modest mortgage and bills every month. We became what is known as “house poor.”

In February 2010, I was laid off.

I immediately put up ads offering nanny services, and within a week or two, I was watching a few kids part-time. I continued to look for full-time work in addition to trying to find a few more kids to watch to fill in the hours so that I was working full-time hours.

As my little in-home daycare grew, I stopped looking for other jobs. I loved the kids. I loved being able to be with Milo every day. I began taking classes at Portland Childcare Resource and Referral and pursuing my license so that I could be a licensed daycare and take on a few more little ones. Our home began to look less and less like a home and more and more like a daycare as we devoted more square footage to the business. In December, Matt started working part-time as a delivery driver for Sweetpea.

By February 2011, I was working 48 hour weeks and collapsing in an exhausted heap at the end of my work days, but we were finally, finally able to pay our bills. It continued this way for five more months.

Then, in August 2011, I lost 4 out of 6 of my kids. One kid “graduated” to preschool, one had a parent lose a job and no longer required daycare, one had a new baby brother and the parents decided to get a nanny to stay with both kids, and one needed longer days than I was offering.

Between August and October, I struggled to replace the children I’d lost, but to no avail. I had always joked that childcare was a recession-proof industry, but if the recession gets so bad that neither parent can find a job, daycare is the last thing that they need.

In mid-October, I let the parents of the remaining children know that I was closing the daycare after Thanksgiving, and I began searching for a full-time job.

Between mid-October and the end of January, I applied for over 80 jobs. About half of them were out-of-state, because there were so few job postings in Portland that applying for Portland jobs took about 30 minutes every day, after which I would “work on my cover letter writing skills” by applying for jobs out-of-state. The truth is that if any of those jobs had led to a promising position, my family would have moved. Matt and I discussed this possibility, but we held out hope that I would find something in Portland so that we wouldn’t have uproot our family and sell our house in an upside-down market.

In January, I started to get phone and in-person interviews. Not a ton, but a dozen or so. The vast majority were with daycares and preschools looking for teachers, and weren’t even paying enough to cover our bills, but I went to those interviews, anyway, and put on my best hire-me face. I was eager. I was diligent. I worked harder at the job of getting a job than many people work at their full-time jobs.

One of the interviews was with a publisher of educational materials. The English major in me who’d fantasized about having a publishing job was elated. We met at a Starbucks and talked for an hour. Wait, that is not true. He talked. For nearly 45 minutes straight. He told me about the history of his company, about the position, about what he wanted the position to become, about the office environment, about himself and his vision for the company. He asked me hardly any questions. It was the weirdest interview I’d ever had, but his enthusiasm was contagious, and I definitely got caught up in it.

That was a Monday. He had me come to the office for a second interview on Tuesday, where I met his wife, who also worked for him, and two employees I would be working closely with. On Tuesday and Wednesday, he sent me follow-up emails requesting additional information.

On Thursday, he made me a job offer. The offer was below even the very lowest salary which I’d set at the bottom of my required salary range. I consulted with my father, who was in HR, and my good friend Kevin, who has been in HR forever (and wrote Let’s All Find Awesome Jobs, which you should get right now), and following their advice, I counter-offered with the bottom of my salary range. He compromised and said that he would pay me at the midpoint between his offer and mine for the first three months, after which he would pay me my requested salary. I agreed. It would mean that my family would continue to struggle even after I had a job, but three months didn’t seem too long.

I started the following Tuesday, and for the first couple of weeks, things were going well. My coworkers were smart, I was being praised daily for my work, and I was getting into a good groove.

Then, there started to be signs that things were a little off. The biggest tip-off would be when I asked about the person who’d had the job before me, and why he’d left. My coworker dodged the question a bit and lowered her voice and said that he’d only been there a couple of months, and it wasn’t a good fit. So I asked about who’d been in the position before him. At this point, my coworker really hemmed and hawed, and so I sat down and said: “I think maybe you should explain this me.”

At which point it came out that I was the fourth person in the position since June 2011, and that my boss had fired the first two people within one month of hiring them.

What you’re thinking now is: “GIANT RED FLAG, Joanna. I hope you started looking for another job right then.” You’re right. I should have. There have been very few regrets I’ve had about my decisions in the past five years. My biggest regret is that I bought a house, even though everyone in my life seemed to think it was a great decision. My other regret is that I heard this piece of information, and I didn’t immediately think: “Oh, okay, I need to get the hell out of here.”

My coworker immediately followed this piece of information with: “But he really likes you! And I really like you! Don’t be worried. And please, please, please don’t quit!”

Because I am a moron, I said: “I’m not going to quit,” and I buckled down even more. I worked harder. I had been working at learning the business and doing everything that was asked of me, but now I morphed into super-employee. I bent over backwards and turned my life upside down. When it became clear that we needed to move Milo to a new preschool to accommodate my work schedule, we started him at a new preschool which cost $250 more per month than his old preschool, but that opened at 7 AM so that I could be at work by 7:30. My boss said that he wanted me to take over the marketing role, so I checked out 8 books about marketing from the library, and started reading them in my extremely limited free time. I worked through lunch every day. When my entire family came down with the same chest cold, I stayed home in the morning with Milo, and then when Matt came and relieved me, I went into work and put in 6 hours with a fever and a wracking cough.

And then I was fired. I was told that I had done a great job, but that it wasn’t a good fit. I got two weeks of severance.

So here we are, three years after we made the decision to move in with my parents and two years after we bought the house. We have hardly any income. We are in an upside down situation with our house where we now owe more than the house is worth. The job market in Portland is nonexistent. We have no family in Portland. We have many good friends here, none of whom can provide job connections because almost all of them own their own businesses, are unemployed, or work in industries where they, too, are barely able to pay their own bills, and that is without having a family to support.

We are strongly considering foreclosing on our home and moving to Texas to live with my parents until we can find work in Texas. At least in Texas, we have family and a huge network of friends who will support us.

We honestly don’t know what else to do.

Are we supposed to stay in Portland indefinitely, waiting for this recession to end and for the job market and housing market to turn around while we work 2-3 jobs each, handing half of that income over to pay daycare for our son, getting support from the government, getting help from my in-laws when we can’t make the bills ourselves, and never seeing each other, never saving any money, never seeing our families, alternately treading water and drowning?

Is that what we’re supposed to do?

Because that seems like certain misery, and I’m having a hard time understanding exactly what it was that I did wrong. What did I do wrong? I have worked my ass off every day of my adult life.

I have been tight-lipped about all of this, both here and in my personal life. If you know me, you might have known bits and pieces of this, but probably not the whole story. The whole truth is that this is all a huge source of shame for me. I come from a long line of hard workers, of no-nonsense, nose-to-the-grindstone, buckle-down, do-a-better-job-than-the-next-guy-and-smile-while-you’re-at-it type of people. It has killed me to have to apply for government support, to accept help from my in-laws, to admit that I need help at all. The day that I filled out the application for food benefits, I locked myself in the bathroom and cried for 10 minutes. I want to be better. I want to do better.

I have to believe that it will get better, that if I have to make choices which hurt right now, that I am still moving in the right direction, and that I’m doing it for my son, so that he can have a good life. I have to believe that.

It happened so fast, in fact, that it wasn’t until Friday that it really and truly hit me that after four years of working from home and getting to be with Milo all day, we’re going to be separated.

snow day

I know that it will be harder on me than it will be on him. He will be home with Matt, and they will be having adventures, going to preschool, running errands, playing, going on walks… his day-to-day life will hardly change at all.

walking in the snow

But I will miss him so much.

I have been trying to soak it all up. I have taken him on some mom-and-son dates in the last few days. Friday, we went to the library, followed by happy hour pizza slices at Pizza Fino:

goofy

Saturday, we were lucky enough to be invited to a complimentary meal at the opening weekend of a new vegan restaurant here in the Portland area, Veggie Grill.

We were given a cool product to play with, Wikki Stix, while we waited for our food, so of course we spelled Milo’s name.

milo spelled in wikki stix

I had been told by friends that I had to try the buffalo wings, and sure enough: they were spicy and delicious!

Veggie Grill buffalo wings

I had the Santa Fe Chickin’ sandwich and Milo had the Chickin’ Nuggets:

Santa Fe Chickin' Sandwich

Milo eats his nuggets

I think that Milo enjoyed his sweet potato fries more than the nuggets themselves, no surprise there.

This afternoon, I have some low-key family time in mind. I might give Milo’s hair a trim. If it stays dry, we might go for a hike or a scooter ride (Milo) and walk (Matt and me). If Milo has his say, there will be at least one game of Candyland played. I will take way too many pictures. Milo will put up with it so long as I show them to him on the iPhone afterward. It will be just another afternoon for him. Hopefully he won’t notice me sniffling and wiping at my eyes.

I loved it and wanted to pass it on to you.

It started this summer when I was making my Fluffy Pancakes for Milo on a regular basis. You know, in the morning, the time when pancakes are typically made.

I found myself fantasizing about the boxed pancake mixes that I grew up with, the omnipresent box of pancake mix which can still be found in most American pantries to this day:

Oh the convenience! Boxed mixes are made for early morning cooking and baking! I wished I could just measure out the dry ingredients, add the wet ingredients, give it a few good stirs, and be done with it.

Then I thought: “Wait, why can’t I?”

I quadrupled the dry ingredients of my pancake mix, put it in an airtight container in the pantry with a sticker on it which reminded me of the quantities needed per batch, and voila! Homemade vegan packaged pancake mix!

This led me to wonder what else in my day-to-day life would be even easier if I made a mix beforehand, and I started making mixes like crazy: waffles, corn muffins, muesli, even nuggets!

I happened to make a batch of nuggets mix today and I documented the process so that you could see how easy it is:

First I measure out the dry ingredients for one batch of the recipe into a bowl:

Then I mix the ingredients, and I use a measuring cup to double-check the total amount of dry ingredients, since this will be my dry measurement later:

Now that I have my dry measurement, I quadruple all of the dry ingredient amounts and add it all to a storage container. I like to reuse my coffee cans, since they hold a lot:

Shake it well to mix up all those ingredients, or enlist a kid to do it for you!

Finally, write the measurement on a sticker on the container. I also write the measurements for the liquid amounts, so that I don’t have to drag out my cookbook every time that I want to make nuggets.

Ta-da! So easy! Now the next time that I want to make nuggets, it’s just that much easier to get the ball rolling. This is also a great way to enlist another member of your household to do more cooking: some cooking novices might have trouble following a recipe, but literally anyone can mix dry and wet ingredients together and shove it in an oven.

What was your biggest food revelation in 2011?

office and craft room

Remember my goals for the holidays? So far I have managed to do well on all of them…except for finding a sitter for Matt’s and my anniversary. But that’s okay! We don’t have any money, anyway, so I will probably just make a nice dinner and we’ll drink the beer left over from our annual cookie party (and cookies, to boot) and watch a movie on Netflix instant, curled up together on the couch. That’s the thing about having your anniversary fall two days after Christmas: by the time that it rolls around every year, we are kind of over going out.

But that’s not why I’m here! I’m here to tell you about the holiday discount on Yellow Rose Greatest Hits! Between now and the last day of Hanukkah (December 28th), Yellow Rose Greatest Hits will be 15% off! Hot damn!

Here is what international tastemaker and trendsetter My Mom had to say about Yellow Rose Greatest Hits:

I also have now had a chance to really look through Yellow Rose Greatest Hits, and it’s just wonderful. As in your first book, it reads as though you’re a friend and you’re standing right beside the cook and chatting through the recipe as a friend would. It’s definitely a must-have, even if one has Yellow Rose (Recipes).

I’d say that’s a pretty strong endorsement. She said “must-have,” and My Mom doesn’t just throw around language like that about books her daughter writes.

I hope you’re having a wonderful holiday season with plenty of days off and a seemingly neverending cup of cocoa.

I snapped these while at the Alberta Coop:

dark chocolate covered sandwich cookies with peppermint

Christmas fir potpourri

the elusive vegan caramels

stroopwaffels

Nikki McClure calendar

The photos that I snapped while at Back to Eden are all crappy because my mind wasn’t exactly on photography. It was on the mint chocolate soft serve that was being prepared for me. Regardless:

peppermint patties

Go Max Jokers

And here are a few I took at New Seasons the other night while I was waiting for my wok bowl. I love both the Moonstruck product line and their beautiful packaging:

chocolate-covered almonds and cranberries

dark chocolate espresso and chile bars

hot cocoa

If chocolate doesn’t do it for you, how about these fantastic ornaments, many of which are locally made?

ornaments at New Seasons

more ornaments

Of course, now that I’m looking at all of these, I can see that there is a strong emphasis on chocolate, but really: isn’t that the way that it should be?

I’m still trying to figure out what I’m making for our stocking stuffer snacks this year. Last year, I made a variety of sweet and savory treats, but we ran out of the snack mixes long before anything else. I’m starting to think that I should just make snack mixes, spiced nuts, and maybe this peanut butter popcorn recipe I’ve been wanting to try.

If you’re a holiday baker, how’s it coming? Do you stick to your family favorites every year or branch out?