Category: Albuquerque

Can’t I Just Have Something Nice!?!

That title must be said in an Edith Bunker sort of voice.

Come with me to the Wayback Machine…

I remember back in the day, grade school era in Albuquerque, when I used to spend time over at my best friend Kathy’s house. It was small, white with pink trim, located over by Montgomery park, across from the public swimming pool.

That little house had this front room, right as you came in the door, that featured these really nice blue velour couches. Very cushiony.

However, those pretty couches were covered with thick plastic wrap. Her mother explained that was “to protect” the couches.

In Albuquerque on a hot summer day, those dang couches were miserable.

There were also plastic runners on the floor. This was “to protect” the carpet.

I once stepped outside the line, as is my way, and got my ear chewed off by Kathy’s mom.

That tiny Hispanic lady also drove a metallic blue Oldsmobile. Kathy and I used to take gymnastics lessons at the YMCA. Kathy’s mom would take that Olds to the car wash every single week during the hour we had our lessons.

She wouldn’t pay to have it dried, just washed, so she’d roll up with water droplets hanging off the sides. (You can get away with that in the 7% humidity of New Mexico.)

Why am I telling you this?

I got to thinking about Kathy’s mom today as I was looking at my brand spanking new iPhone 4.

It’s a beauty of a new phone. A bit heaver than the last model. The screen is amazingly clear. The black and chrome styling. Haaawt!

So here I am with this beautiful phone that isn’t cheap. It’s something really, really nice. And what did I do? I put an ugly plastic case around this marvel of industrial engineering.

You know, “to protect” it.

I tried to find the coolest case I could, but really, there’s not much out there that enhances the beauty and design of the iPhone.

I’m just “keeping it for nice.”

I know you know what I mean.

Word of the day: Obdurate

ob·du·rate   [ob-doo-rit, -dyoo-] –adjective

1. unmoved by persuasion, pity, or tender feelings; stubborn; unyielding.
2. stubbornly resistant to moral influence; persistently impenitent: an obdurate sinner.

Ah obdurate. How I embody you so.

This word crossed my path again yesterday while watching an episode of Jeeves & Wooster, a fun British show that dates back to the early 90’s. The PG Wodehouse books date back much farther than that, some written in the early 1900’s and now in public domain (thus all loaded up on my Kindle!).

The Good Man introduced me to Jeeves & Wooster and I’m now hopelessly in love.

I love language and words, and Wodehouse certainly had a way with the Queen’s English.

So I sort of chuckled this morning when I turned to my blog idea generator, and this was the suggestion:

“When other people tell me what to do….”

Answer: I become obdurate.

I’m not proud of it. It’s just in my nature.

As the third of three kids born to a very smart and very in control family, I was “the baby” and thus everyone just, you know, told me what to do.

This certainly got me past many a hazard in my infancy, but there came a time, I don’t know what age, when damnit, I was tired of being told what to do!

So much so, that being told what to do made me act out.

It’s a trait that’s carried through to adulthood. In fact, it only became more deeply entrenched an increased in velocity.

One would think that this would make me a very bad employee. Actually, when it comes to managers I like and respect, I have no trouble being told what to do in the workplace.

No, Madame Obdurate is more of a home life kind of gal.

Which makes friends, family and loved ones *ever* so happy.

I find my tendency to dig in when someone tells me what to do really isn’t all that unique. It’s pretty much a go-to for most of us.

Because we’re all special little snowflakes, we want to do things our own damn way and I don’t care what you say and pa-tooey!

Yeah.

As I often say to my friends, you don’t have to be free of your emotional baggage, you just have to be self-aware about it.

See how I reel ’em in? Look at that face? Would she harm a fly? No, I don’t think so. But tell her what to do and WHAMMO! Obdurate all up in your grille!

Whoa! Fair New Mexico

Looking for news from the homeland, I hit up the news tab on Google and put in New Mexico as my search term.

And what did I get back from that big omnipotent search engine?

New Mexico man set on fire after losing drinking game

3 dead in New Mexico business shooting…

and

Police search for two after finding missing boy (in New Mexico)*

My oh my former home state. Very busy in the news today. But not, you know, in a good way.

Clearly, Bill disapproves….

* text in parentheses is mine.

An Unexpected Convergence of the Universe

Had a weird day yesterday.

Well, most of my days are weird. Yesterday was especially so.

I was working in the studio and painting up a storm. Since The Good Man was out and about, I took the opportunity to turn on the oldies country station I like. 104.7 out of Albuquerque does an internet stream.

It’s a great station for classic country stuff. I try to spare The Good Man from my country music as much as I can. All for the sake of the marriage and things like that….

So as I painted, on the radio came Merle Haggard, and George Strait, a little Ray Price and even a stab at some Garth Brooks (the old stuff).

Well, it didn’t take but a minute, and I was vacuumed up into the Wayback Machine. I found myself struggling with heart pangs that were hard to ignore.

It doesn’t help that I’m also reading a Max Evan’s book right now. In it, he describes horses and New Mexico plains and mountains…

Well, it’s more than a girl can take.

I tried to fight off the homesick but it started to hurt deep inside.

So I called up my best friend.

“You either gotta come get me out of this wayback machine or you gotta get in here with me,” I left on her voicemail.

She called back quick. “Open the hatch, I’m coming in!” she said.

So being the kind of friend that you keep around for some twenty plus years, she talked me down and reminded me that I’m just a couple weeks from actually *being* in New Mexico again. So could I just hold out a bit?

Feeling a lot better, I hung up the phone and turned off the radio.

Then the Good Man came home and all was right in my world again.

About an hour later, I heard my iPhone buzz.

I picked it up to see that my old boss from Sandia Labs was pinging me. She is a dear friend and the best boss I’ve ever had. She told me that she and her boss (who was my first manager at Sandia and is also a good friend and a fine Aggie alum) were having drinks while out on a business trip.
Their conversation had turned to stories about, well, me.

She was recounting a few of them via text messages (we had a lot of fun back in those days…the mid-90’s) and she said, “That was the best time I’ve ever had at work. We should never have let you go to the Bay Area.”

And damnit all if that sharp pang didn’t come right back to my heart.

Now I keep in touch with my former amazing Boss Lady, but we haven’t spoken a lot in the past year (other than to congratulate her on a recent marriage).

Sort of out of nowhere, on a day when I’m homesick anyway, there she was relating stories of a great time in my life back when I lived in Albuquerque.

And I seized up a little.

It was weird how all these events came together on one day.

So I talked it over with The Good Man. I told him I’m afraid of forgetting who I am and where I come from. He suggested that just that fear alone may keep it from being so.

He asked, “Do you want to move back?”

And I said, “No, because I think I’d yearn for San Francisco if I left!”

Over the weekend, we went to see a theater show, “The Tosca Project,” that was so San Francisco and the heart of North Beach that I love profoundly, that it was moving and deeply gratifying to my soul.

The thought of being far away from the soul of that City is a sad thought.

Sometimes I’m a girl caught between all the Karens that make up who I am.

I don’t have any answers. I figure I’m just going to have a very high electrical bill this month, what with all this constant use of the Wayback Machine (it’s not Energy Star rated…..)

Things They Didn’t Teach Me

I’ve been a proud holder of a driver’s license for, oh say, about twenty-five years.

I first learned to drive our automatic transmission, four-wheel drive, 1972 Chevy Blazer on the hard packed dirt roads around Logan, New Mexico. Population 1,002.

Those roads were wide, empty of other cars, and easy to navigate.

Ya wanna park? Sure. Pull up somewhere near the house. That’ll work.

Then I got a more formal education from the ubiquitous McGinnis School of Driving. Don’t know if it is still the same now, but back then, every high school kid in Albuquerque learned to drive from McGinnis.

We got the usual lessons. Hands and 10 and 2. Back up in a straight line. Parallel park between the orange cones.

That parallel parking one…I didn’t need that much in Albuquerque.

I needed it A LOT more once I moved to the Bay Area.

Parallel parking in San Francisco is like a sport. People will actually spectate the event. Comment on your technique. And point and laugh as you make six runs at that freaking small spot that you’ve just spent over an hour searching for.

These are things that Mr. McGinnis didn’t teach.

That “spent an hour looking for a spot” is what got me thinking. Last night, The Good Man and I had an event up in the great City of San Francisco. It was to be held in the part of the City they call the Marina.

Now…we were feeling pretty good about our odds of parking (another thing McGinnis didn’t teach, thinking ahead to where you’ll park) because where we were headed has a pretty ample parking area. It’s a big wide street with a line of parking spaces down the middle (Fillmore, for my SF readers). Plus, it was a Tuesday night.

Lots of spaces and a weeknight? High potential! Score!

However….

Luck was not on our side. An accident on 280 and backed up traffic for a hometown baseball game left us running late as it was. And when we got to the Marina…there wasn’t a spot to be had.

So we did what we had to do. We began the slow circle around and around and around. Trolling for a spot.

McGinnis didn’t teach me that.

Then the consideration of an ever so slightly empty spot at the curb. Can I fit my car in that? What are the odds the people living there will call the cops because my bumper is hanging in their driveway? Am I leaking over into the red zone? What are the odds I’ll get a ticket?

Mr. McGinnis also did not teach me that.

And then, while panic growing and growing as we are now a half hour late for our event, the sheer ecstasy of actually FINALLY finding a spot. A big spot! A good spot! A spot we didn’t even have to fend off other drivers to get into!

Yes! Sweet mystery of life at last I’ve found you!

Oh the relief. The weeping. The joy.

McGinnis School of Driving definitely did *not* teach me that.

I had to learn that all on my own.

I’m pretty lucky these days because The Good Man, a longtime San Francisco dweller by way of a Brooklyn upbringing isn’t a’feared of these sorts of things. He’ll plunge into the wackiest of driving, parking and navigating situations with ease and aplomb. Most of the time, like last night, he’s got the wheel and I don’t have to worry about it.

Because me, I learned to drive on empty dirt roads.

What the hell are all these cars doing around here!?!?!

(Don’t think I haven’t TOTALLY whipped in front of a Trolley Car to get to a good parking spot. Because I have.)