Chapter 1: Welcome to The Burbs

I am no great adventurer. I’m just a girl from Louisiana who followed a dream to New York City as have many country bumpkins before me. Everything was new and fascinating there, and I explored the city from stem to stern, getting into all sorts of trouble along the way.  I blinked away my twenties in the theater world, then skedaddled back south before exploding from too much city and not enough wild, which I found in spades in Austin. With new terrain to explore, I blinked away my thirties being a river school instructor by day and an actress by night.  I would morph from Tom Sawyer to Stella DuBois daily for months on end. I fell in love with one of the few New Yorkers in town (will ironies never cease?) and then jumped right into marriage and motherhood……