Oh Fair New Mexico

That’s not supposed to be funny

And yet, it is.

Was reading an article today in the online version of the San Francisco Chronicle, the SFGate with the headline of “Flushed jail items cause S.F. court flooding.”

The article talks about how inmates at the San Francisco Hall of Justice managed to flush two orange jumpsuits and a bed sheet down the toilet, thus causing a major backup of raw sewage into the courtrooms.

Workers got the mess cleaned up last night only to have it flood again in the morning.

Just. Ew. Talk about a crappy day at work.

Sorry. No really, I actually am sorry. I’ve been on a pun kick lately. But that’s not the funny part.

The funny part comes toward the end of the article.

Here, I’ll quote it directly:

“…the last major problem occurred in the mid-1990s and prompted the city to purchase grinders, known as ‘muffin monsters,’ that are installed on sewage pipes.”

Giggle. *snort* Chuckle. Guffaw.

Muffin monsters?

Ok really. Honestly?

How am I not supposed to laugh at that?

I immediately dashed into the other room to share my new phrase with The Good Man.

Thus proving once more that I am the intellectual equivalent of a twelve-year-old boy.

But come ON. Muffin monsters?

Ok, ok, they really exist and that’s really what the manufacturer calls them.

They look like this:

That’s all well and good, but I don’t care who you are, that’s still funny!

*giggle snort*

The things that matter

I had a really great time being in southern New Mexico over the weekend. I got to spend time with many of my old Ag College friends who still rely on the weather and the earth to make a good part of their living.

I got back to my rural roots. It was a fresh reminder.

While I whine and complain about all the rain we got this year in Northern California, I was reminded, plenty reminded, that water is still the heart of life in a town like Las Cruces.

Simple water. Yet not so simple.

As we drove out to my best friend’s house, which is well and gone north of Las Cruces, my old senses kicked in. I smelled the water before I saw it. We rounded a corner and could see that the main irrigation ditch was running high.

“Someone must have ordered water,” I said aloud to no one in particular.

“That looks like almond trees going in,” I pointed out to my husband.

“Whoa, that used to be a cotton field…looks like they put in chile,” I commented.

I greeted each pasture and expanse of farmland like an old friend.

“Chickens!” I exclaimed when we came to a traffic jam on the road (us and another car). The Good Man had asked, “um, why are we stopped?” and I had the better view around the car ahead.

There was a bantam rooster doing his strut on the warm asphalt of that rural New Mexico state road. We all waited for him to go by. He took his time.

Once at the party, The Good Man and I at one point talked with my best friend’s dad. He said that they were having trouble with a neighbor up the road diverting their water. They’d order and not enough would show up.

I’ve been reading a lot of Louis L’Amour stories lately. In those books, diverting someone’s water is a killing sort of offense.

I said to my dad-by-proxy, “you oughta weld that guy’s gate shut” and he laughed. Don’t think he hadn’t already considered it. (and by gate, I meant irrigation gate, not the entry to his driveway)

As the night wore on, it got to be about two o’clock in the morning. The evening dew, such that it was, was starting to settle. I said to my husband, “this is good hay cutting weather.” He asked why, and I said, “the dew makes the stalks wet and they bend instead of break.”

I used to date a guy in college who had to end our dates fairly early because he had to get home and cut hay. I learned to recognize that smell. It meant it was time for him to scoot on home. Time to work when the water is in the air….

The next day, out at my friend’s place, I learned the water in the irrigation ditch was running so high because it was a “free day” for the community. They got to water as needed.

I was wearing flip-flops and I tromped around the soggy yard helping my god-dog look for his favorite ball. The water made the air smell sweet. It also made the frogs come out and sing their sexy mating songs rather loudly.

We ate dinner outside with a chorus of humping frogs to accompany our meal.

All because of water.

Living in the city like I do, I take water for granted. I turn on the tap, and there it is. It falls from the sky and I curse the nuisance.

Yesterday, I was shopping at Nordstrom for a nice outfit to wear for a very important meeting today.

While I shopped in luxury, I looked down at my flip-flops. They still bore the dried mud from my friend’s home. I tossed back my head and laughed at the beautiful, grounding irony of it all.

May I never forget the land and the people who rely daily on the value of pure, simple water.

Rather out of focus photo of my cranky god-cat and the gate at my friend’s place.

Seeing myself in a new way

You know, looking at a photograph of myself is always an interesting and somewhat humbling experience.

In a photo, I never quite look the way that I imagine I look.

Where did those lines around the eyes come from? Do my hips really look like that?

Ah well.

The other day, I received an interesting photograph that surely has me pondering some things.

Here, I’ll share the photo with you, my fabulous readers, so you can see what I’m talking about.

It is a fun photo of me driving! Isn’t that neat! A perspective one doesn’t often get.

Look at me…intense expression on my face. Hands firmly at ten and two. Or maybe more like eleven and one, but no matter.

That’s a concentrated and skillful driver, no?

Yup, that photo was kindly mailed to me by the Superior Court of the county where I live.

Wasn’t that sweet?

It appears they are of the belief that I didn’t stop fully before making a right turn at a red light into a very busy intersection.

And so for the luxury of a faboo photo of me behind the wheel, I was charged $500.

I’m *ever* so pleased about that. Tickled pink. And other euphemisms I can’t think of right now to sarcastically convey that I’m not very pleased AT ALL!

Next step: onward to driving school. Yay me.

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate red light cameras? Oh I really hate them.

Things you learn about yourself when you travel

So, this past weekend, The Good Man and I made a whirlwind trip to Southern New Mexico to celebrate my best friend’s 40th birthday.

There was bbq brisket and tender ribs and homemade ice cream with homemade german chocolate cake on the menu.

Of *course* I was going to be there.

It’s not a bad trip from San Francisco to Las Cruces, but it does take a skosh of effort sometimes.

So while riding planes, trains and automobiles, I learned a few things about myself.

Here’s some of the top thoughts while on the journey:

The speed of the girl, while in motion, is variable depending on geography.

New Mexico, the land of mañana, moves very, very slowly. San Francisco, on the other hand, moves very, very quickly.

I do ok going from the super fast pace to the nice slow moving pace.

I have one hell of a time coming back from slow motion into 90 miles per hour.

In fact, I think I stripped a gear.

The sort of person you are becomes self evident after sitting for an hour on the tarmac.

San Francisco was having bad weather yesterday, so our connecting flight was delayed by a couple hours. Then they said, “hurry up and let’s get loaded” so we complied. The plane backed from the gate, rolled toward the runway, and stopped.

And there we sat.

And sat.

They were having a hard time getting a window for take off. They said we could go at any minute. So we all had to stay seated and buckled in.

As we waited.

You really get a sense of a person under these sorts of circumstances.

The lady behind me started making ever more angry calls to her husband. The people in front of us who started out as strangers quickly became friends, trading stories about delayed flights in their collective past.

A lady across the aisle angrily flipped pages in her magazine and sighed. Loud, frustrated sighs.

Me, I read. I had a really good book, so that helped. But after a while, I was getting grumpy and frustrated too. So then I put down my book and started fidgeting. And then it seemed a good idea to start annoying The Good Man because isn’t that what husbands are for?

I guess I’m the sort of person that can be patient…but only for a little while.

Southwest Airlines open seating policy makes people rather aggressive.

Seriously. It’s a seat. It’s not a gold medal event. Find a seat. Sit in a seat. If you have to sit in a middle seat, it doesn’t mean you lost the contest. It just means you have to sit in a middle seat for a few hours. Get over it.

Airports will go to great lengths to get you to buy their overpriced food.

I’m almost positive Auntie Anne’s pretzel place was piping hot cinnamon sugar odor into the terminal. Gooey tasty cinnamon suguar. It was damn near irresistible.

I saw another guy with three Popeye’s boxed meals walking by. He was by himself…

And then there’s Starbucks. Evil place. They suck you in.

I *might* have to succumbed to some of these delights, but the food in the airport is NEVER as good as it is at a real stand alone shop.

But they manage to sucker in almost every weary traveler, prisoners of TSA policies, too weak and famished to resist paying seven dollars for a soggy hamburger.

It ain’t right.

Millions of years from now, archeologists will describe us as a quaint nomadic tribe so attached to our possessions that we dragged them around with us in small wheeled wagons called “samsonites”.

Honestly. Have you ever seen people so damn attached to their suitcase full of crap?

Ok. Well. I am way guilty on this one.

But at least I’m willing to check my rolley bag and not have to clutch it to my chest, and cram, shove and heave-ho it into the overhead compartment.

Ah well, as the old saying goes, all’s well that ends well. It was a fantastic trip to New Mexico, much green chile was consumed. Many wild college era stories were told and fun was had.

Now back to our regularly scheduled insanity….

And so…what exactly is this creature? Vol. 2

You’ll recall I first asked this question back in November.

The answer then was: persimmon.

Today, in my continuing quest to understand what in the sam hell is growing in my own backyard, I bring you the next installment in the series.

Ladies and Gentlemen…ask you. What exactly is *this*:

(no fair answering first, Natalie!)

I have a tree laden with these little guys. The birds fight over the fruit that bears a color and skin resemblance to an apricot.

The neighborhood squirrels will come running up the power line, put their little paws together over their head, and swan dive into the tree to sample of these fruits.

The bugs love this tree so much, a spider has moved in and built one hell of a web. This allows him to freely sample of the bug buffet. There are bug carcasses strewn all over the place. I haven’t seen a spider web like that since Hawaii!

The fruit on the tree looks a little bit like a small peach or a big apricot. But they aren’t.

Curious, I pulled one that looked ripe from the tree and split it open.

This mutant fruit has not one but TWO stones at the center!

Another I opened had not two but THREE stones!

What the hell?

I didn’t sample the fruit right away. The saliva-evaporating tannin in the under ripe persimmon I ate first and asked questions later taught me a huge lesson.

Nope, I was going to do some research before biting in this time.

With a little help of another overheard conversation between my landlord and his elderly father, I remembered them discussing the old man’s love of something called a loquat.

Hmm. Loquat. It sounds like a concatenation of a couple other words…like lemon and apricot. Or lemon and kumquat.

Is this one of those weird hybrid fruits? No. It’s not.

Loquat is actually an Americanized spelling of a Cantonese word, lou gwat, or the words mean “reed orange.”

This is another tree that is found mainly in Asian countries and was brought along to the Bay Area. It’s a very hardy tree!

Evidently the fruit has a mild sedative effect.

Evidently the seeds have a mild bit of cyanide. Yay.

Note to self: eat the fruit, not the pit.

Okay!

So today I dove in like a squirrel and picked a couple ripe samples.

It’s very tart like a citrus fruit but a consistency much like an apricot.

I like it!

Ok, mystery solved! Off to find recipes for loquats!