Category: Las Cruces

Come to me…

Sweet precious weekend.

Glorious, tasty two days of freedom from the shackles that bind.

I need it.

Crave it.

And yet…here I am at work. I have more meetings yet to go today. Many more. One of them will be rather ugly.

So I’m still on an uphill trudge.

But other than the weekend, I have something to keep working toward. See, last night I had a conversation with my best good friend. If you can believe it (I can’t) we celebrate twenty years of friendship this year. Mind boggling.

She makes her residence in Las Cruces and graciously offered to throw a backyard “together” for The Good Man and me and a variety of our friends. It will be a chance to catch up with my New Mexico familia and I couldn’t be MORE excited to be there.

I mean, it’s not just seeing old friends, hugging my beautiful godkids, breathing clear desert air, seeing mountains in the distance, resting, not working, but also one big reason……

I’m running about a quart low on green chile.

Old habits die hard.

Today as I meandered my way over to the shuttle bus to take me to the train, I picked my way through the parking lot at work. “Picked my way” because there is heavy construction going on at the building next door to mine.

Sitting there, by itself, in the lot, was an empty wooden wire spool. You know the type. Found at most construction areas.

Wanna know my first thought? “Man, should I take that?”

You know, it’s been some fifteen years since I graduated college. While I personally never had a wooden spool table, many friends did. I dated a few guys who did. I think the wooden spool furniture sensation is mainly a guy thing. Along with bookshelves made of cinder blocks and plywood.

It’s the same feeling I get when I see empty milk crates. I used many a purloined milk crate in my collegiate career. Good bookshelves, storage devices, and even a bedside table.

I think I still have some of those indestructible blue plastic things in my basement (all apologies to Price’s Dairy from, you know, fifteen years ago. What is the statute of limitations on absconding with a milk crate?).

Oh, is also happens when I see wooden pallets. Back then they were made from a pretty dense wood and if, say, a friend filled up the back of his pickup with a bunch of stolen pallets, piled them up by the river, poured diesel fuel on them and lit a match, you’d not only have a nice roaring fire, you’d have a long lasting warm, bright fire by which to socialize with friends.

For some reason, this old scrounging habit dies hard. The “making it work” when you have no money, and what little you do have must be saved to buy beer phenomenon still lives deep within me on a cellular level.

Despite the fact that I have a real job now and can buy beer, you know, pretty much whenever, I still have that moment of “I could take that…” and think about how it could be made useful.

I seriously considered how to get that spool out of there.

Then remembered a) I don’t need a table. I have one. A nice one. And 2) even if I didn’t have one, I could go to Ikea and buy a nice one. I don’t have to settle for a splintery wood spool.

So I’m still a scrounger from way back. But I refuse to eat Ramen noodles anymore.

Some habits you just gotta leave behind.

Head out for the highway

Yes, Monday finds me back at my same gray walled office. Back to work, slogging through emails and working up my expense report.

All in all, the trip to Florida was a good one.

I’m glad to be home. It was a long haul on Saturday, hopping a couple planes and ultimately arriving almost two hours later than I was supposed to. But I made it and a really cute boy was waiting for me when I came down the stairs to baggage claim.

I didn’t sleep well on the trip, so was glad to sleep in my own little bed, and sleep I did. Woke up Sunday morning MUCH refreshed. The Good Man fussed over me and that helped get me right, too.

Back to “regular” work today. While making the drive in this morning, I was thinking about what made the Florida trip fun, and I hit on a thought.

I got to drive.

Now, don’t gave me that doggy head tilt look. Let me explain.

“Back in the day” living in New Mexico, one of my best stress relievers was to get in the car and drive. Not always with a destination, sometimes just driving, watching the white lines roll by.

Since I went to school in Las Cruces and my folks lived in Carlsbad, I had a LOT of hours in the middle of NOWHERE, hum of the tires as my companion.

I got a LOT of good thinking done during those drives.

Meditation. That’s really what it is.

Well now living here in a densely populated area, just getting in the car and going isn’t all that meditative. With all the traffic, it is stress inducing.

When I lived in Albuquerque, I could drive for a half hour in pretty much any direction and be OUT of the city, humming along at 75 mph, and letting the stress float away.

Here, I can drive a half hour and be ever more mired in humanity.

So I enjoyed the fact that, last week, I got some road time. The ride on I-4W to Clearwater Beach took about two and a half hours all in. It was a little densely populated around Tampa Bay and that stressed me, but had moments of a peaceful ride. It got really good when I got off I-4 and into the small roads winding through Clearwater and over all the causeways.

The trip to Cocoa Beach was only about an hour and was PERFECT for highway meditation. (see, I still can find NOTHING wrong with Cocoa Beach). SR-528E is pretty rural, away from people, not heavily trafficked on a weekday. The tolls do take a bit away from that trip, but even they are manageable. You get a rhythm of hitting the various toll plazas and you know they’ll be there (kind of like having to stop at a Border Patrol station…so it’s all good).

And during those two drives a lot of thinking got done. Some useful (i.e. where should I emphasize success criteria for my team this year), some not (i.e. why do so called “80’s” radio stations only play the cheesy “hits” like “Jump” (both Van Halen and Pointer sisters), and not the deeper cuts from bands like Depeche Mode or The Cure?).

Getting all that thinking done is healing. I find I’m in a better mood today than when I left. Like I’ve grown from my journey.

I sure wish I could more easily hit the open road from where I live to think things out.

Oh well, just another reason to miss my fair New Mexico.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Have you ever known a place that, in your memories, takes on a dream quality?

It can be almost any place. I have lots of them.

But one that shows up in my dreams quite often is this really greasy spoon in Las Cruces. A college hangout. Oh did I have some fun times there, and the tasty green chile cheese burgers that still haunt me.

That place is called Dick’s Cafe.

It’s a place with plastic windows covered with a greasy film. It has torn vinyl seats and ugly formica tables. The desert sun pours in through those windows, lighting up the room and the grimy linoleum floor.

And there is a jukebox. Oh that jukebox. I used to ask cute cowboys for their pocket change and they would give it to me. My best friend and I would play our faves. And we smiled, and laughed, and told stories and picked on each other and occasionally picked up on each other. It is genuinely the stuff of my dreams. All the individual memories blended together into one beautiful and happy amalgam.

When visiting Las Cruces, my pulse still quickens driving past Dick’s. Back in the day, we would drive by real slow and survey the pickups parked out front. My best friend and I had a game, how many could we recognize. She was always better than me at that, but if we saw a good one, one belonging to a good friend or a particularly cute boy that needed to be flirted with, we’d turn in to the dirt parking lot and grab a coke and some fries. The days went by slow and easy then.

What’s great is that Dick’s has been around since 1959. My best friend’s parents, my surrogate Mom and Dad, have just as fond memories about Dick’s as we do. THAT is an institution, people!

Why am I waxing rhapsodic about Dick’s today?

Because I just read in the Las Cruces Sun News that they had a fire overnight. Article here.

If the physical place is gone, it can live on in my memories. But it would be a sad day for me to have to say goodbye to the actual place.

Just writing this, remembering the days, makes me smile. Fridays at Dick’s were especially fun.

An urgent email went out to my best friend who still lives in Las Cruces for some on the scene reporting…

Countin’ ’em

*sigh* Monday. It’s Monday again. Why God why?!?!?

I guess cuz it has to be.

Granted, I had today off. Not because of the holiday. My company doesn’t give us that one off. Nah. I took a few days vacation.

I was honored, over the weekend, to have a visit from my best friend. She lives in Las Cruces and made quite a long trip to get here. Should have gone easy, but due to inclement weather somewhere or other, she languished in the unfathomably ugly Phoenix airport, cutting short our visit time by several hours.

We hadn’t had the chance to be together in person for quite a while. October, I think, was the last gathering in New Mexico. She hadn’t been this way for years.

The occasion of her visit was to begin her duties as my Matron of Honor (what a terrible thing to call a nice married lady…”matron”, feh!).

Those duties included 1) calming my ass down, 2) helping me look at wedding magazines without crying in anxiety and 3) going with me to choose a wedding dress.

It is that last one, the wedding dress one, where she earned her combat pay.

Despite having been in several weddings, I’ve never had the, uh, agony, pleasure, of going with a friend through the whole dress buying process.

Through the recommendation of a work friend, I found a place in San Francisco (right off Union Square) that you can choose from their “menu” and they make you a custom fit dress. The friend that made the recommend doesn’t have a model perfect bod, and I saw her wedding photos. She looked *stunning*. I figured these were the people to work some magic.

Let’s review. 1) wedding dress shopping, 2) in San Francisco, 3) off Union Square, 4) getting measured.

I. Was. Terrified.

The good news is, as of this year, my friend has been my best friend for, count ’em, twenty years. Yup, met back in 1988. Oh the lives we’ve lived since then.

So I felt comfortable in the presence of The Good Man and The Best Friend to say, “I’m scared.”

And bless them both, they talked me down, fed me breakfast, told me I’d be great and brought me to the fifth story, blonde-wood floored dress shop feeling strong and confident and loved.

As an aside, let me tell you this bit of Too Much Information. At the shop, they hand you a strapless bra, some really awful gold lamé shoes, tell you to strip down and we’ll be right back with dresses for you to try on.

I wore a pair of steel belted control top hose to try to better my chances. So there I stood, shivering in a billowy curtained dressing room wearing black hose, a strapless bra and gold shoes. The urge to wheeze, “anyone want a cocktail” like a Reno waitress was too much to bear.

I stood there, horribly nervous and horribly uncomfortable and I looked over at my friend. She gave me an “it’s going to be ok look” and all I could do was bust out laughing.

The laughing stopped when they slipped the first dress over my head. Who knew I had a waist? Who knew I could actually pull off a strapless?

My friend was brutally honest with me on each dress we tried on and after an hour and a half, I think we’ve settled on a good one.

After that, the rest of the weekend was easy. We did sightseeing and had good eats. I got the rare chance to spend several days with my two most favorite people in the world. And was so gratified to see how well they got along with each other, as well.

I choked back a lot of tears this morning dropping her off at the airport. She has to get home to my two gorgeous goddaughters and her husband as well. I’ll see her again soon, but tonight my heart aches.

I miss my best friend, each day, very much.

Together she and I have learned a lot of lessons.

The most recent, from the dress shop employee.

The key to femininity is:

Spanx and a sash.

And she’s not lying, that sh*t can work wonders!

Most people in this world, if asked to make a party list, can fill a page with a list of friends. I cannot. I have very few friends, but the friends I do have mean everything to me. They are more than friends, they are family.

For that, I am grateful.

Add to that, my friend carted a bag of Hatch grown green chile out here and whipped up a batch of rellenos Sunday night that would make you cry (and I think The Good Man and I did weep, just a little, in gratitude). THAT is love.

Photo below to make you drool.