Category: growing up

Oh The Indignity!

Do you know what I had to do today?

It’s….it’s…a shock!

I had to SCRAPE ice off of my windshield so I could drive my car to work.

I know! Startling!

Back when I lived at a mile high, it was pretty standard stuff to walk to my car and have to deal with all that the frost laying on the windscreen (<- that's for my UK readers). I remember it well. Oh those were the days....I'd fire up the engine, get the defroster blowing some heat then I'd take a firm hold of my deluxe long handled easy-to-use ice scraper. While shivering in my long coat, work clothes and nice shoes, I'd scrape that bad boy squeaky clean. I was rather proud of my ice scraping capabilities back then. Heck, I don't even own an ice scraper anymore. I think I held on to that deluxe ice scraper for about two years after moving here to so-called sunny California. I remember cleaning out the Jeep and lobbing my scraper into the trash with a satisfied "I live in California now, dammit" smile. Let me just say this....an ice scraper doesn't help much with the fog. I simply traded one road hazard for another, really. So this morning, my lack of ice scraper ownage was never more apparent. I looked at the thin but sturdy layer of frost, and sighed. It was time to make do, and my library card was placed into service. Maybe later today I should go to my local library and check out "Call of the Wild” just to remind myself about what being really cold is all about.

(Thank you Albuquerque Public Schools for making me read Jack London so I can reference it now…. From great literature to a blathering blog post in three easy steps.)

There I was, shivering in no coat and my work clothes with nice shoes cursing and fuming as I scrape, scrape, scraped the frost. My old skills came in handy as I quickly knocked down the road hazard and got on my way.

What a way to start my Monday.

Can I get a pobre cita?

No? Fine. I’ll be a grownup today. But I’m not going to like it!






It appears that I’m derivative of myself. It was a year ago that I discussed this same topic. Only back on that day, I was in the haughty position of having parked my car in the garage. No such luck today, The Good Man got the good spot. *sigh* Love AND marriage.


Sometimes The Answer is Clear

Yesterday, when I saw that this week’s Theme Thursday was stairs, well, it didn’t take much for me to choose what to write about.

If yer talking New Mexico and yer talking stairs, then naturally…yer talking about Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe.

It is a stunningly beautiful and magical place.

For those unfamiliar, in the 1850’s the Loretto Chapel was being constructed, and when finished the Sisters of Loretto realized that, for whatever reason, no one planned a staircase to get from the floor of the church to the choir loft.

In addition, the chapel was made pretty small, so any staircase built would have to manage the impossibly small space.

The sisters were distraught at this situation and out of money for construction, so they prayed mightily about it. Legend has it that a man with carpentry skills arrived at the chapel and spent about six months creating an elaborate staircase that still stands today, the left without being paid.

The staircase is made from wood not native to the area, makes two full 360 degree turns with no center post for support, and uses only wood pegs, no nails or glue.

The chapel and the staircase have become busy tourist attractions and the chapel is also a very popular place to get married.

I’d hoped to be married there myself, but logistics were too difficult between California and New Mexico.

Enjoy a beautiful photo of the “miracle” staircase, one of my favorite destinations in the great State of New Mexico.



Loretto Chapel



Photo taken by user jfelderh and found at travel.webshots.com

Perthpective

What’s that old platitude, something like “you’re not the best judge of your own work?”

The more I give over to my creative side, I keep learning that lesson over and over. I think I have a good eye for editing my own work, and of course I’m usually wrong.

I’ve also learned that the best way to really see something objectively is to give it time.

Time is the great mediator.

(wow, I’m chock full to brimming with platitudes today!)

Anyhow, I got to thinking about this recently while sorting through my iPhoto library. As an amateur photographer, I take *a lot* of photographs. This is the advice of my friend, mentor and teacher, Marty Springer, so I follow her advice.

But this means my iPhoto library fills up fast with fair to middling to downright awful shots. Since all of this dreck was slowing down my iMac, I decided to save the photos elsewhere and start again.

Oh, and also…my New Year’s resolution is to get better about tagging all of my photos as I download them so I can search more quickly.

So in cleaning out my old photos, sifting through the pile, I came across the shot at the end of this post.

The Feline had climbed into the laundry basket that was lying on the ground, so I grabbed my camera and took a few snaps. I considered them throwaway photos. Less than throwaway. I downloaded them to my iMac and never looked back.

But something about this photo…it really works. It was taken probably two or more years ago when I was just learning my camera and had no idea about depth of field. And yet, the depth of field is what makes this photo interesting. It’s not a perfect photo but it’s also not bad. A little imperfect Photoshop adjustments and I’ll be damned…not too bad at all.

Because not only with time comes perspective, but also…I can learn some lessons from three years ago me. The one just learning about photography. The one who just snapped and didn’t think.

A careless shot can be magic.

I guess that’s why my photography teacher tells us never to delete photos. “You never know” she says.

click photo if interested in seeing a larger size

Photo by Karen Fayeth and subject to Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

An Oldie but a Goodie

This post first appeared on the blog in December 11, 2007. It’s one of my all time favorite posts. Fixed a few broken links, made some minor edits and away we go! Everything is still very true. Happy Holidays!

Top ten things I miss about Christmas in New Mexico

1) Annual shopping trip to Old Town. A mom and me tradition. Every year I’d get to pick out an ornament that was mine. I now have all those ornaments in a Thom McAnn shoebox that, yes, Sunday night I opened and hung them all on my tree. They are like a history of my life. I remember buying most of them and it gives me a good sense of continuity to have them on my tree.

2) Luminarias. I always was the one to make them at my house. My mom would drive me to an empty lot to dig up two buckets worth of dirt and I’d fold bags, place candles and light them. It was my job and I loved every folded bag and every candle and every small emergency when the bag caught on fire in the wind. I miss real luminarias.

3) The Bugg House, which, sadly, is no more. My sister lived over on Prospect and we’d go for a Christmas Eve walk in the evening to take a look at the outstanding display of holiday spirit. When I wwent to Winrock Mall to shop, I’d always swing by the Bugg house to take a look. No one does lights like the Buggs did.

4) Neighbors bringing over a plate of fresh made tamales as a Christmas gift. When there are three generations of Hispanic women in a kitchen with some masa and some shredded pork, magic happens. Yum! I also miss that people would bring tamales to work in a cooler and sell them to coworkers. I was always good for a dozen or more.

5) A ristra makes a good Christmas gift. I’ve given. I’ve received. I love ’em. They’d become a moldy mess here…and that makes me sad.

6) Biscochitos. My love for these is well documented.

7) Sixty-five degrees and warm on Christmas Day. Growin up, I think one year there was actually snow on the ground for the 25th. But it was melted by the end of the day. Oh Fair New Mexico, how I love your weather.

8) Christmas Eve midnight Mass in Spanish with the overpowering scent of frankincense filling up the overly warm church. Pure torture for a small child, but oh how I’d belt out the carols… And when we came home we could pick one present and open it. Gah! The torture of picking just one!

9) New Mexico piñon, gappy, scrawny Christmas trees that cost $15 at the Flea Market and were cut from the top of a larger tree just that morning. Look, to my mind, it ain’t a tree unless you are using low hanging ornaments to fill the obvious gaps. These fluffy overly full trees just ain’t my bag. If you aren’t turning the ‘bad spot’ to the wall, you paid too much for your tree.

10) Green chile stew for Christmas Eve dinner and posole for New Year’s. My mouth waters. It’s weep worthy. I can taste the nice soft potatoes in the stew, the chicken broth flavored just right…ouch! And posole to bring you luck with red chile and hunks of pork. Yeah……

*sigh* Now I’m homesick.

Which is not to say I don’t have happy holidays where I live now…but sometimes I feel melancholy. And that’s what the holidays are for, right?

Image via.

I Will Find My Way

The Velcro on my Rand McNally road atlas had been rendered useless. Tan carpet fuzz from the back of the Jeep embedded itself irrevocably into the hook side of the mechanism.

The map was considered a “just in case” for getting lost, which happens often. The atlas was purchased well before there was something called a Google to provide maps on something called the internet.

That road atlas was aspirational. I bought it hoping that maybe I could travel a lot of those blue lined roads over the course of my life.

But suddenly the road atlas had meaning. It was more than a “just in case,” it was an essential tool.

The page for New Mexico was well worn, but the page for California was starting to show the dirt and grease of eager fingers tracing a path over and over again. A reduced scale journey west to my new home.

The compass rose became my bouquet, a present from the universe, welcoming me to my new life.

At a holiday cocktail party, the map became obsolete. A friend and professional truck driver wrote directions on the back of an envelope. “This is the faster way to go, you’ll shave several miles off the trip,” he told me.

He’d personally traveled those roads. Roads that were visible to me only as lines on a page in my mind.

He was the first of many milestones on my journey.

The tattered envelope with scrawled black pen, “I-40 west to Barstow” wasn’t anywhere near as magical as the pages produced by Rand McNally, but it was more useful, more functional. I clung to that envelope because my life really did depend upon it.

And then, finally, it was time.

May 1997, just a few days before Memorial Day, I climbed up behind the wheel of my Jeep while my best friend strapped into the passenger seat and took possession of both the envelope and the Rand McNally.

I-40 was a road I knew. Straight. West. No worries. Grants passed by quickly. Then before we knew it, there was Gallup.

Then the Arizona border.

My tires made a noise as they passed over, and I cried. I didn’t just cross this border casually. It meant something. It was a new frontier.

The entire State of Arizona lay ahead. Since Arizona was familiar, it eased me in. We settled into the miles while listening to Tom Jones and George Strait. We listened to everything I had in that Jeep and then tried to find decent radio stations.

Six hours. That’s how long it takes to traverse the State of Arizona.

Then my tires made another small sound and another border was crossed.

I was in California. I didn’t cry this time. Simply renewed my resolve and kept driving.

That was thirteen years ago, but it could be yesterday for how fresh it remains in my mind.

May I never lose my resolve. May I never lose my desire. May I never lose my ability to read a good old fashioned road map.

All it takes is a map, a little guidance from someone who bothers to care, and a step in the right direction and you can find your way.

If only someone could draw a map to help me navigate the more difficult emotional roads in my life. Those are uncharted.

I am both mapmaker and traveler and the journey never ends.

But the compass rose is still just as beautiful.

Photograph by Karin Lindstrom and used royalty free from stock.xchng

This week’s Theme Thursday is map.