Category: where I come from

What is this strange ritualistic dance?

This morning, driving to work, I saw many of my fellow Californians doing something odd…strange…weird….and yet, it felt vaguely familiar.

Yes, I passed the residential roads of my neighborhood and saw my fellow citizens by their cars…behaving oddly.

Some were using credit cards.

Others slapping with a newspaper.

One using just his bare hands.

All looked out of place.

Seems we had some low temps last night and these poor Californians were having to actually scrape the frost off their windshields.

I was never so happy for being able to park my car in the garage!

Oh I have scraped many a windshield in my day. Oh yes indeed.

I *hate* it.

Living in mile high Albuquerque, it was even worse when it snowed. So you’d brush off the snow, and THEN have to tackle the frost. Usually in my nice work clothes and high heels…in the wet and the mud. Boo!

Here, I don’t even own an ice scraper. I threw it away somewhere around year 2 post move. Don’t need it.

Clearly, no one else around here owns one either. The guy slapping his window with a newspaper gave me the most giggles. Beating the ice into submission? That is SO not going to work.

Thankfully it was a light frost and really, just starting up the car and getting the defroster going for several minutes would probably clear it up.

But the perplexed looks and utter consternation. That was good comedy as I sailed by in my warm, garage parked Jeep.

Whoa, I didn’t know…

The upcoming film “Hotel for Dogs” was a book penned by none other than New Mexico’s own Lois Duncan. As a kid, I loved many of Ms. Duncan’s books.

I understand that the hype from the film has given new life to her writing career that went a bit off track after the brutal unsolved killing of her 20 year old daughter.

Back in the day, my mom used to take us kids swimming on a hot summer day to the Coronado Club on Kirtland Air Force base. Occasionally we’d see Ms. Duncan there (I believe her husband worked for Sandia Labs).

That was back in the days when mommies stayed at home and would take the kiddies to the pool and we would meet daddies after work for dinner. It may do my mom’s heart good to know that I have incredibly fond memories of those days.

And that fondness includes Lois Duncan. I’m happy to see her back in the show.

This was all brought to the front of my mind by a great article written by Joline Gutierrez Krueger for the ABQjournal:

“Real-Life Tragedy Almost Derails ‘Hotel for Dogs’ Author’s Career”

Please have snow, and mistletoe

Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

Ok, so yesterday and today I have been listening to big time holiday music.

This morning as I drove in to work, singing along, I sang about snow while noticing the raging rainstorm pelting my windshield.

You know what…given where and how I was raised, and even where I live now, most of these traditional holiday songs are truly meaningless to me.

Rarely was there snow on the ground at Christmas in Albuquerque. If there was (once, I think) it was melted before the day was out.

No where in the collection of holiday songs is the singer lamenting for Christmas of their youth were it was 65 and sunny.

Or having tamales to eat on Christmas Eve.

Or plucking a piñon tannenbaum out of the pile for 15 bucks a piece at the flea market.

Or filling paper bags with sand.

No, the “east coast bias” that applies to sports seems to infiltrate the holiday as well.

Heck, in my new digs, Christmas is about rain. And crab (tis crab season, yum!).

Where’s the song for that?

Doesn’t exist!

I *could* feel bad that the east coasters get snow and fabulous Macy’s windows filled with displays and thus they get to understand the true meaning of the old standards.

But I don’t. I wouldn’t trade my own memories for all the Fa La La La La in the world.

*Poing*Plonk*Sprang*Plink*

Oh yes, ’tis that time of year again.

When holiday cards fill my mailbox at home.

And most of those shiny envelopes contain family cards where my fabulous friends enclose a photo card…a photo of their children and occasionally the children and the pet.

As I open all of these cards and see the children of my dear friends and how they’ve grown over another year, the gray hairs begin popping out all over.

Yesterday I opened a card from a really great friend from college. She is about ninety pounds soaking wet, full of energy, and full of fight.

Back in school, I had a devastating breakup with a boyfriend just before starting graduate school. I considered giving up, I was lost and just couldn’t care anymore…but she refused to let some guy screw up my whole life and career. She grabbed my hand and pulled me through.

She made me go to class. She made me study. She partnered with me on presentations and her charm, poise and fire were like a salve to a wounded soul. I owe her and the other two in our gang of four because without them, I’d never have completed my MBA. Truly.

Later, when she had an even more horrific breakup, and was on the verge, I turned around and took her hand and helped pulled her through, too.

This girl was a crazy person, and that’s what I loved most about her. One time in a near empty bar on a Wednesday night (pitchers of beer were buy one get one for goodness sakes!) she demonstrated, on the dance floor of the club, the appropriate form for sliding into second base. She rubbed a layer of skin off her legs, but damnit, we all learned something that night!

There was also the occasion where we had to pull her out of a fight with a group of drunk guys who wanted to use the pool table that she was unwilling to give up. Who cares if she was drunk and only chasing balls around the felt, hardly sinking a one. The girl was there first! Principles, people!

Anyhow, that amazing fighter of a crazy lady sent me her card this year. And her beautifully tiny blond porcelain doll of a daughter is now…uh…thirteen.

*ploing*sproing*bawannggggg*

I almost passed out. Really, I got woozy and had to sit.

How can it be that the distance between today and those college years that are so crisp and clear like they were yesterday are a whole human teenager away? (plus a few years, actually)

How can that be?

No really! How *can that be*???

The roots of my raising run deep…

Ok, well, maybe a taste of the holiday spirit came and got me this weekend.

The tree went up.

And the kitchen got cookin’.

It ain’t Christmas without a batch of biscochitos. (Recipe here from the PNM cookbook.) It’s a family tradition.

Here are the little beauties, just before going in the oven….deelish already:

And then, fully cooked, fulfilling their destiny. So lightly baked, so flaky, so anise-y. Oh yeah. New Mexico comes to visit.

Many of these bad boys will be going with me to work. These Californians need a taste of where I come from!