Category: love and marriage

Oh Fair New Mexico At The County Fair

Look! Look! Look!!

My biscochitos (the New Mexico State cookie) won a blue ribbon at the county fair!

Yeah, baby!!





The recipe I use is from the PNM sponsored Cocinas de New Mexico cookbook. It’s the cookbook my mom used for years and now I have my own copy. Order yours here.

Upon seeing my blue ribbon, The Good Man, a city boy through and through said, “hunh….as a kid back in Brooklyn, I never could have imagined I’d be married to girl who won a blue ribbon at the county fair.” Then I reminded him that I was also in a sorority.

He actually had to wander off by himself for a bit to ponder the meaning of his life.


Oh…That’s Not A Good Sound

Last evening, I sat curled up in the corner of my comfy couch, sleeping feline nearby, laptop lid up, idly surfing about, catching up on the news of the day. The Good Man did something similar in the next room. Giants baseball on the radio, the sounds of Duane Kuiper calling the game.

From out of nowhere, the lights flickered, and then went out. The instant it went dark, a loud whining sound could be heard outside. The unmistakable sound of a power transformer under extreme strain. It went on for a long time. Stopped, then started again.

And I slipped back into memory. It was the early 1990’s. My folks were living in Carlsbad and I was home for a few weeks between summer school and the start of the regular school year at NMSU.

It was a beautiful, clear summer day. I decided to take a long walk and get some exercise in before my folks came home from work. I left the house about 3:30 in the afternoon and walked down long country roads. My folks were living on the outskirts of Carlsbad at that time (if you’re from there, it was out on Cherry Lane near the CARC farm).

The first half of the walk was great. It was a gorgeous New Mexico day. On my return trip, things started to get ominous. In August in the southeastern part of the state, storms come in fast and furious. Emphasis on furious. Carlsbad is at the tail end of tornado alley, but being at the tail end doesn’t mean the tornados are any less frequent.

As I walked a little faster, the sky turned deep black, and then green. The clouds started to boil. This was bad. Very, very bad.

The rain came quickly and the temperature dropped twenty degrees. The powerful winds whipped raindrops into my bare legs and arms. Then the hail started. Small icy bits at first, then growing larger.

My whole body shuddered when I heard the sirens I’d come to both fear and hate. Tornado sirens. That meant a tornado had been spotted and all we could do was wait.

I was still about a mile from home, on foot, and in the center of the storm.

I picked up the pace a lot more. I ran off and on, but as I’m not a runner, I had to slow down so I could catch my breath.

Already drenched, I groaned when the rain picked up intensity. Thunder shook the ground, the trees, the terrified girl by the side of the road.

Lightning cracked out of the sky and hit a power pole across the street and ahead a bit.

That’s when I heard that sound. A power transformer under strain.

The power transformer exploded, sending flames and sparks into the sky.

I dove headfirst into a now very soaked alfalfa field, remembering my early training on “get low when lightning is around,” and lay as flat as possible, hugging mother earth while lightning struck all around.

Soon the heart of the storm moved on and I could hear the thunder a couple miles away, counting “one Mississippi, two Mississippi” between lightning strikes and thunderclaps.

When it seemed I was safe, I leapt up and ran for my folk’s home as fast as I could. I got home safely. I called my mom (a no-no in the storm, but I needed my mommy!) and since we had no tornado shelter, she recommended that I stay to the center of the house and if a tornado was coming to get into the bathtub and hunker down.

“Get ready to leave the house!” The Good Man commanded sharply, snapping me from my reverie. I was back in Northern California and that transformer sound had stopped.

I jumped to action, running to get the cat carrier out of the closet and once The Feline was secure (she loves the cat carrier and walks right in with no complaint) I ran room to room and unplugged every device that was attached to a socket. The Good Man was on the phone with PG&E advising them of the situation.

We dashed outside to see what was going on and the neighbors were all outside too, talking over what they saw and heard. Soon the sirens of a fire engine came racing toward us and the firemen let us know a powerline was down two streets over but no explanation as to why the powerline came down on a quiet evening. PG&E were on their way and we should go back inside.

We lit candles and got out flashlights and settled back into the couch. Safe. On that summer day back when in Carlsbad, I was also safe. Tornados did touch down, but several miles away.

This past April when an earthquake came along and the house and ground shook, The Good Man, a longtime veteran of the Bay Area, commanded “Get in a doorway!” and I did.

I’m grateful to have a partner who is the epitome of grace under fire, and I’m grateful for my Mom’s wise support from two decades ago, too. Mostly, I’m just grateful when there is someone strong and wise to guide me through a crisis.

That makes me feel safe.




Image from Ring Electric’s blog.


Mmmm. Tastes Like Turkey!

I’ve ranted off an on over the years about the plaguey b*stards with fluffy tails that run roughshod over my yard, streets and power lines. They eat the insulation off of cables. They eat all the plants out of the ground. They eat all the apricots off my favorite tree (and holler at me when I try to pick a few so I can make a nice pie.)

In case I’ve been too mild on this topic, I’ll say it out clear: I hate squirrels.

So I smiled to myself when I saw this headline linked off of CNN.com: Give Squirrel a Whirl

Yes, you of tender tummy and mild disposition, they’re talking eatin’ squirrel on the Eatocracry blog.

“The general consensus was that it tasted more earthy and sumptuous than the darkest turkey they’d ever tasted”

Now, I may not actually want to have one of these somnabitches on my dinner plate, but I’ll certainly help with the supply chain. If this trend takes off, I’m sitting on a gold mine over here.

The only trouble is…The Good Man won’t let me fire a bb gun at the rodents. He says the neighbors might not approve…you know, owing to the fact that my bb gun aim has never been right.



Rodent, it’s what’s for dinner.


Epiphany On Aisle Seven

So there I am, standing in my local Target store looking at something called Lactaid because evidently God has a sense of humor and I’m pretty sure I’ve become lactose intolerant.

I’ll spare you the details, but I’ve had a bowl of cereal for dinner this evening and I’m bloated up bigger than Airabelle, the Creamland Dairy hot air balloon (last seen at the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta).

Pride goeth before a burp, and the thought of taking something to stop this feeling seems real, real appealing. I’m comparing and contrasting the relative merits of the store brand “dairy digestive aid” versus the name brand “dairy digestive aid” when in my peripheral vision, I note a man walk by behind me. I can tell it’s a man by the gait and by what he’s wearing as he shops the aisles.

I hardly notice my fellow shopper, but moments later, I get a whiff of cologne.

Oh my.

It’s that scent, that same deep musk and leather tinged scent that reminds me of someone I used to know. Suddenly I’m not in a Target store but I’m in the cab of an early model step side red Ford pickup truck sitting next to that memory and I’m mainlining that scent like a addict huffs paint.

The one I knew wasn’t especially tall but he was broad in the shoulders, owing to many long hours spent practicing his team roping skills. He was a dusky hued fellow of Native American extraction with ice blue eyes that made me go weak in the knees when he’d walk past me on campus.

We only went out on two dates because he was as squirrely as a rabid woodchuck, but oh my heavens was he handsome. Just those two dates were enough to make me smile wickedly to myself some twenty years later.

So I throw into my cart whichever box of digestive aid was in hand as I sensed the sweet smelling gent shopping in the next aisle. I look at the sign on the end cap containing the Target version of the Dewey Decimal system announcing, “dental hygiene,” and think to myself, “why, yes, I could go for something in a minty fresh breath.”

I fix my casual smile, not too wide, not too meager, just Mona Lisa enough, and sashay toward the mouthwash shelves. Memories of slow two stepping dances to the sounds of something like Alabama or George Straight or Merle Haggard fill my mind. I lean casually next to the Listerine and glance up at the object of my olfactory desire.

There stands a mid-fiftyish man with a boiler hanging over a belt holding up a pair of unflattering pants that evidently contain no butt a’tall. His unkempt hair graying rapidly from the top of his ratty hairdo to the bottom of his scruffy beard. What appears to be a remnant of dinner still lingers there on his, oh my is that really a knockoff Members Only jacket he’s wearing?

I beat a hasty retreat and three rows down, I huddle at the end of the hand sanitizer aisle. I need to regroup.

That was, as they say in the vernacular, a buzz kill. Suddenly visions of New Mexico State Ag Week dances under a clear high-desert starry sky vanish and I find myself once again an almost forty-two year old woman in a Target store. I take inventory of my own raggedy outfit, with frowsy hair escaping a hasty pony tail, glasses framing my weakening eyes and a hand cart full of things like GasX and Lactaid announcing that not only was that guy not the guy that I once knew, but I am in no way that girl I wish I was any longer.

The girl I am now needs to buy some Ziploc bags so she can pack her non-dairy, non-wheat, low-fat lunch to take to my “is this really what I wanted to be when I grew up” job and slog my way through another day, as my tummy churns and my hair grays and I no longer ride in red pickup trucks and wonder what it will be like when I’m all grown up.

This is what it will be like. This is what it is. Just me and my rumbly tumbly and enough freedom and disposable income to make it interesting. When I’m done daydreaming and remembering and purchasing my products of middle aged despair, I get to go home to The Good Man who smells of soap and cute boy and is a pretty gosh darn fine reason for going home.

For some reason, even with my frowsy ponytail and corrective lenses and an occasional bout of lactose intolerance, he still thinks I’m pretty cool. And pretty.

Crazy ol’ fool. (Me, not The Good Man)


Awesomest Street in Chicago



Photo from coolead‘s Flickr photostream.


Ramble On

More Unconscious Mutterings free association fun for the post-Easter Monday morning blahs.


  1. Squid :: When handed to an experienced chef in an Italian restaurant and made into Calimari frittata? Yes please!


  2. Wife :: A descriptor I still can’t get used to.


  3. Promising :: On Friday I had to renew my driver’s license. The DMV I went to was dull, gray and windowless. That said, there were plenty of young kids in line to take their written tests to get their learner permits. For them, those government gray walls held something rather promising. For me…drudgery.


  4. Tingle :: What happened when I used The Good Man’s “invigorating body wash” containing peppermint oil. Peppermint oil + lady parts = no


  5. Off balance :: Me. Daily. Gravity and I don’t get along.


  6. Nice :: What everyone calls me. “Oh that Karen is so nice!” If they only knew the evil that lurks within my mind. I’m just too polite to act on any of it. Which is why they call me nice.


  7. Honor :: One of those phrases you hope you never have to respond to: “How do you plead?” Always reply,”Not guilty, your honor.”


  8. Emphatic :: Helps if you are rather emphatic when you say it, too.


  9. Siren :: Here’s something I don’t miss from back home in New Mexico: the tornado siren. It freaked me when they even tested the damn thing. My family’s tenure in Carlsbad was fraught with that sound. brr!

    When I visited Hawaii, I didn’t know they tested the Tsunami siren once a month. I’d taken off at a sprint before a nice bystander told me the deal.


  10. Plated :: With this whole boom in the celebrity chef, one term that’s now in the vernacular is the term plated, as in “oh I love how the chef plated this entrée.” It seems like an abomination of the English language. Not that I’m above abusing the language a little now and again. Can’t explain why this particular use just bugs me. Though doesn’t annoy me as much as “yum-o,” which should get the speaker of that phrase summarily kicked in the shin.

Ok, done rambling, verbally shambling, and linguistically wandering.





That there’s a visual pun…it’s a Rambler. The 1968 version. My folks used to own a Rambler. It got stuck in the mud up in the mountains of Cuba, NM. Good memory.