Category: The Good Man

Check the signs

The government cares. No really, they do. And so with their help, I’ve taken a good look at myself today. I mean, a real good look.

How are YOU feeling? Maybe you could check in too?

Herewith:

Getting Through Tough Economic Times from the Department of Health and Human Services.

“It is important to be aware of signs that financial problems may be adversely affecting your emotional or mental well being –or that of someone you care about.”

In other words….Did Mr. Jones take all your cash? Does that tick you off?

Let’s check in, shall we?

Warning Signs

Persistent Sadness/Crying

Only when I look at my bank account.

Excessive Anxiety

Only when I look at my bank account.

Lack of Sleep/Constant Fatigue

Yes. But I can’t really blame the economy for the fact that we are having cold windy nights, and since my personal internal thermometer tends to run hot, the cat and The Good Man sleep on top of me to stay warm.

Excessive Irritability/Anger

Only at 3:00 in the morning when I’m burning up hot and can’t get fourteen pounds of cat or six feet two inches of husband off of me.

Increased drinking

Yeah, a little. The Good Man, his friend and me did have two bottles of wine on Sunday (at a bar-b-que). Did you know that Lambrusco is really tasty and drinks awfully easily? Did you know that with enough fizzy red wine in your gullet, you kinda feel a lot better about a whole lot of things in your life? Well, that and the red meat. And the smoked fish from Alaska. Damn…that was a fine dinner…..

Illicit drug use, including misuse of medications

Does Claritin count? Because with this wind, my eyes and nose are like faucets. I may be abusing the stuff…not sure.

Difficulty paying attention or staying focused

What’s that over there? I think I’m hungry. What’s the square root of 686?

Apathy – not caring about things that are usually important to you

Whatever.

Not being able to function as well at work, school or home

Let’s see…after a marathon two days of writing a presentation in which I basically justified my job to our new austere European owners, today I’m at work with nothing to do and writing on my blog.

Not sure I could be less value added if I tried. Or should that be value subtracted? Not sure how the absolute values work in relation to lazyosity.

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Hmm. Ok. So I’m not sure I can draw any conclusions from that exercise.

And I think they may have left a few off the list. My additions:

Do you check your online money accounts more than three times a day?

Do you find yourself in the lunchroom with your coworkers discussing tax rates?

Do you cut coupons where you rarely did before?

Do you and your spouse look for “free” events, samples, activities and services?

Do you calculate how much gas it would take to get to a destination as a “go/no go” decision on running an errand?

Do you watch too much CNBC and then find yourself yelling at Jim Cramer and blaming him for a lot of things that aren’t actually his fault? (this one applies to Jon Stewart only)

Do you have fantasies about how good it used to be…in 2006?

If so…seek help.

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Ok, ok, I kid, I kid, but the online resource is actually pretty serious.

Link thanks to Bruce Daniels over at the ABQjournal.

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“I’m certain I have no idea what you are blathering on about, human. Now feed me.

Do you ever…?

So there you are, say, commuting to work, and you are in a mellow mood. Talk radio doesn’t sound good. Local stations mostly suck, and besides, your nerves don’t want to be jangled today.

So you, you know, put the local light rock station on your car radio.

There you are, driving and thinking and listening to easy listening music that dates back a few years. Ok, more than a few years. A few decades, really. And you know all the words. You remember when that song was top ten. You recall when you heard it coming through your all in one turntable/radio unit with the dial drift and the scratchy single speaker.

So there you are, listening. Then, say, maybe a schlocky 1970’s love song comes on. One you haven’t heard in a really long time. And so you think “wow…what ever happened to THIS embarrassing song…” but then you listen to it a bit more, and you hear the words. And you are touched.

You think, “Well, but for some totally seventies arrangements, this is a really beautiful song.”

So you’re driving along, hearing the words, and thinking of the one you love most. Say, your fantastic spouse…and you hear these syrupy love words and you think to yourself “yes! Yes that too! Oh! And that other sentiment is *totally* my sweetie.”

And then maybe you cry a little bit. Not sadness, but because you’ve just heard words that totally encapsulate how powerfully you feel for that person who agreed to share their life with you.

It gets you right in the chest, and you let some tears roll down your cheeks and smile because you know you are the luckiest person in the whole wide world because you somehow found this amazing person who sees past your flaws and loves you anyway.

And you feel humble and unworthy but powerfully fortunate, like you won the lottery and the World Series all in one.

So then the song ends, and is followed by some more recent bit of clanky 90’s attempt at music, and the tears dry up and you take your exit to get to work, and a knobsack in a green Honda cuts you off. And so you call Honda boy a name worse than knobsack and drive on and you sniffle and you laugh at yourself for being such a sappy old fool.

Then you get to work and go upstairs and lose yourself in email, but that humble and lottery winning feeling prevails. And you think about writing your fantastic spouse the love letter of the century, but you can’t quite make the words sound anything other than schlocky.

So you just dwell in that quiet, humble, post-cry space and tell people that your allergies are acting up when they ask what is wrong with you.

But it’s not the allergies…it’s that damn 1970’s song that got a hold of you…

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Does this ever happen to you? Or is this just me? (And perhaps some helpful female hormones)

Or should I just give up and get fitted for a leisure suit now?

Using a protractor

I think this whole getting used to being married thing is harder than I anticipated.

I started thinking about this at about 2:00 am last night (this morning?).

That was when I woke up cold and teetering on the edge of my bed.

See, I share my queen-sized with two others, one human, one feline. And somehow, I’m getting the fuzzy end of this lollipop.

I woke up this morning pretty cranky. I tried to tug on the blanket to cover my shivering shoulders, but to no avail, it wouldn’t budge.

So I assessed the situation. Turns out my six feet two inch husband was soundly asleep, and had arranged himself, roughly, into a right angle in our bed.

Yes, full on 90 degrees, the fulcrum of which was well over on my side of the bed. And by fulcrum, of course, I mean his big ol’ bootay shoved over that invisible line that has kept the peace in marriages for centuries.

On my side. Long limbed brotha was taking up a full three quarters of the entire bed.

And then, as if dotting the i, at the apex of the fulcrum rested our fourteen pound feline, limbs akimbo, thus taking up about half of the remaining quarter of the bed I got to inhabit.

I generally try not to disturb people when fast asleep, because I ask the same courtesy, so I tried just to make do. For about five minutes.

Then I got mad. And said aloud, “I’m taking back the night!”

Floppy cat was lifted and relocated. Good. Getting movement from the boy was going to take more thought.

So I went in for the nuzzle. The plan was, I nuzzle, and as he turns to return it, he will shift that bootay back over into the demilitarized zone.

It worked perfectly.

Then, as he turned, I tugged with all I had on the blanket, thus unloosening endless folds of blanket.

Yes. Success!

Happier with the more obtuse angle of the husband and the relocated location of the feline, I wrapped as much blanket around me as possible, dug in firmly in my space, turned my back on everyone, and went back to sleep.

You know…when I was single, I was able to flop like a starfish in the middle of my bed and sleep all night, undeterred.

I never knew a wife has to learn to be so cagy…

This day in history

I remember that day. St. Paddy’s Day, 2007. Yes, a magical day by all accounts.

No leprechauns leaped. No green beer was guzzled. No four-leaf clovers were molested.

But I did have the luck of the Irish : wink :

It was on this date, two years ago, that Oh Fair New Mexico breathed its first blog post.

It was The Good Man who first suggested the theme for my blog. He went with the “write what you know” angle, and it worked. Ok, more often than not, this blog is my personal ramblings and not really NM related, but that’s ok too. I took the idea and ran with it, as they say.

I’d wanted to write a blog for the discipline of writing something every day. I wanted more than an extensive journal rat-a-tapped in Word and kept on my hard drive. I wanted a place to publicly air my thoughts and twisted ideas.

I remember in the beginning, I timidly sent Avelino Maestas an email asking for advice. His blog seemed so freaking cool, what with his gorgeous photographs interspersed with is his witty, smart writing. I had NO idea how to blog, and Avelino very kindly gave me some pointers and encouragement and then out of the nest I fell to test my own ideas.

So here I am at 532 blog posts later and I think my wings are getting a bit stronger.

My work as a writer has increased IMMENSELY because of the discipline of writing this blog every weekday. Some days I cramp up for ideas and then I force myself to write something anyway, even if it’s terrible. Some days, I have more ideas than I can put down in writing.

Often, my loving husband (who was but a boyfriend when this whole thing began) will say, “I can’t believe you blogged about that” (most recent example was about the toilets at a restaurant we visited).

Occasionally I have blogged about something that hits me on a very deep emotional level, and I know that maybe no one wants to hear me, but I have to say it anyway.

Once or twice I’ve even gotten political.

My most popular post thus far caught me off guard. I wrote it for me, the melancholy of a NM ex-pat longing for home at the holidays. But it evidently struck a chord with some of the folks back home, too.

So I continue on with my blog. It’s for me. It’s for you. It’s for New Mexico. Each year I go through the agony of missing where I come from and reconciling to where I live now. The ebb and flow of life.

For all the folks who give me a read now and then, thank you. I actually cannot properly express my gratitude. As someone trying very hard to make a go as a writer, any pair of eyes on anything I write is a genuine gift.

I realize that these sort of blogiversary posts are rather self-congratulatory. Heck, in the midst of all the rejection letters I get from publishers..if I don’t pat my ownself on the back, who else is gonna do it for me?

By the way…The Good Man has promised me a dinner at a really nice restaurant when I get 100 visitors in one day on this blog. The closest I’ve come is 88. So my goal in the third year of blogging is to finally collect on that dinner! I know ya’ll can help me with my cause!

Meanwhile, Oh Fair New Mexico, you still sing a song in my heart. You and me, we are one. Thanks for the inspiration and for my humble beginnings.

Cheers to the next 500 posts!

Photo by Karen Fayeth

The end of civility?

This, the next in my line of roadway rants. See my four way stop discussion here.

This weekend The Good Man and I had occasion to take a bit of a road trip. Just down Highway 1, a small jaunt in order to meet up with a whole passel of my in-laws. (passel being smaller than a gang but larger than a group)

As we drove, in many instances, we were forced to merge, to turn, to navigate our way carefully through the highways and byways of the Bay Area.

I noticed, as The Good Man drove, he always, very politely, gives a wave when someone does him the favor of letting him into a lane, or allows him to turn in a busy, congested area, or stops to let him through.

I also noticed that when The Good Man generously does the same for others, he rarely gets a wave of thanks and recognition in return.

Politeness, it seems, is on the soon-to-be extinct list.

This makes me cranky.

Sure, I know that a polite wave isn’t required by any driving laws. I’ll have you know that when I had to take that drivers safety class to work the points off from a speeding violation, it was often suggested that a polite wave was much appreciated by others on the road. That acknowledging each other actually makes us drive better.

Connectedness people! Put down your Blackberry and say hi to an actual person sometimes!

I shall tack on a quick rant: Upon employment here at my new job, I tried, in vain, for two weeks to say hello to the security guard on the first floor who I must walk directly past EVERY day. It seems strange not to acknowledge another human you see five of every seven days of your life. But he will NOT say hello to me. Will. Not. It kind of hurts my feelings…..