Pain...

This isn't a blog about my dang jaw, which has been hurting for a week (self-diagnosed jaw clenching and teeth grinding in my sleep).  This isn't a blog about Thomas's low back, which is hurting him terribly.  These physical pains may keep us awake at night or disturb our days, but not like the heart-wrenching pain of losing a loved one.

 

It has been a week, and I have been at a loss of words of what to put here.  I don't wish to over-sentimentalize or tell a flowery tale.  The truth just sucks.  And for all the vocabulary we have, there really is no better way to say it than, "This really sucks!" 

 

My little friend Liam has gone to be with God.  He died on Friday, February 18th, leaving his poor Mama and Daddy and big brother Ezra here on earth.  I like to picture him free of the tubes, the warming bed, and monitors, playing with his Uncle Jonathan.  Ahna and Oren did a lovely job capturing his short life in a beautiful collection of pictures.  Thomas and I were fortunate to be with them on Tuesday to honor Liam's life and send him to God with our prayers. 

 

It is somewhat easy for me to want to focus on the positive: that Thomas and I were both able to take the time off work to be there, that we were all together to support each other but more importantly Ahna and Oren, that Liam will never have to suffer anymore, that so many people love and care for Ahna and Oren, that the weather was absolutely gorgeous to be gathered outside, that the service was very beautiful with special contributions from both grandmothers, and so on.  But for all the beauty of the day, it really sucked.  It really sucked that we weren't rallying together and celebrating with food for a different occasion. 

 

I can only imagine the indelible mark left on a parent's heart after the loss of one's own flesh and blood.  There is a pain that we have felt in our heart and in our head and even in our soul for the incomprehensible loss of Liam's health, and now for the loss of his life.  I haven't heard of a cure-all salve for this kind of hurt, but time and the love of friends and family usually help.  I invite you to join the circle of love and to lift up Ahna, Oren, and Ezra, their family and friends, and all who mourn and grieve the loss of Liam.  (www.ourlittlehippie.com)

Time flies...

What a week! Life rolls on, and tomorrow is March! It is a little alarming how quickly the year has started. Maybe I thought we would have to make up the snow days or something. It will be spring before I know it, and I have to admit that I am not quite ready. I am sure the time has been flying because my weekends have been (and will be) blurring into the weekdays. It seems that nearly every weekend I have at least a few hours of work. We were able to get away overnight to Santa Fe last week. We needed to do some grocery shopping, but we also made time to check out the art museum, the Chuck Jones gallery, and the plaza. Thomas introduced me to the deliciousness of Posas (El Merendero), which even had a vegetarian tamale on the menu. It was fun, and now I have three weekends of work coming up. Maybe we can sneak away again at the end of March.

My tall, dark, and handsome man standing by a doorway in the courtyard of the art museum. He would have been a very stooped man walking through doorways that short back in the day or a very stupid man for hitting his head over and over again.

Timing is everything....

This morning I had the opportunity to sit and visit with our homeless neighbors.  They are temporarily "house-sitting" for another neighbor that lives and works out of state most of the year.  It was good to see them, especially in such positive spirits.  I appreciate the attitude they have taken about starting over, though I am sure they save their moments of despair for each other and not with me.  They are soon to be moving to Springer in a cousin's vacant house, but first the water line and furnace need to be repaired.  There has been an outpouring of assistance, and even the radio is announcing the bank accounts established for people to donate their support to them.  We talked about the paperwork, the lost treasures, and even how to treat gout.  If possible, when they are more settled, they would consider putting an old single wide back on the land to enjoy day trips or overnights in comfortable weather...their own private picnic grounds when life in the "city" gets to be too much.

 

From there I headed in to work.  The sun was already high and warming, and as I approached Rayado, I saw a wonderful sight.  There was a cluster of shapes moving west across the ranch land on the east side of the highway.  I anticipated the cluster, about 8 or 9 deer, would move across the highway, so I slowed and watched them spring up over the barbed wire and prance across the highway to spring up and over the fence on that side.  The deer were really quite beautiful, and it was just plain fun to watch.  The way they can bound over the fence from a standing position is quite remarkable, as I can neither jump that high nor that far from a standing position.  And sure, even a running start wouldn't change things much.

 

It just made me thankful for divine timing.  There is nothing one can do to change one's course in a day to make sure one is in the right place at the right time because we just can't anticipate what we might get to see.  Thomas didn't drop trash at the dumpsters Monday on his way to work, so he stopped on the way home.  From there he watched a pair of bald eagles diving into a field as they hunted for their afternoon snack.  He didn't know when he passed by in the morning that the afternoon stop would be worth the wait.  When I saw the mountain lion and the times I have seen eagles, I didn't know to be at a particular place at a particular time to witness something special.

 
And then I wonder what the good reason could be that I got stuck behind the school bus coming home from work, and not even just the school bus, but behind a slow Texan that was behind the slow school bus.  It took a while for the right opportunity, but I passed them both and was on my way.

Anyway, I ramble, but truly I feel blessed with God's timing to lay things before me, both majestic and mundane.  It is, as I was teaching a few weeks ago, a gift of the Spirit...wonder and awe!

Nostalgia that didn't rise to the occasion

Who wouldn't love that face?!?!

That is the heart focaccia of last night's dinner...and my sweet baboo! Tonight I didn't beat Thomas home by much, and as he hadn't called to say when he was leaving, I was hesitant to know what to fix for dinner. He would likely be hungry, but he could show up in one minute or fifty....what's a good wife to do? I had picked up some mozz for making pizza. I planned to make some pizza dough and make a deep dish pizza circa July 14, 2008. I would improvise with green chiles in place of the jalapenos, and maybe no Guinness. Thomas and I had our first date on my porch, but a couple of nights later he took me out for pizza at Wyman's (our first date out) before he took me grocery shopping. As luck would have it, the yeast was just proofing as Thomas pulled up. I hurried through making the dough and setting it to rise, but it never really did. Actually, there is no "really" about it. It flat our looked like the lump of dough I put in the bowl when I uncovered it forty minutes later. It was like rolling out cold modeling clay, so I skipped the deep dish notion. He wanted pepperoni on his side, so mine was extra green chile and pineapple-y. I slid it into the oven and hoped it would be okay. And it was! And now we are still full. And even though I asked Tom to bring home dulce de leche ice cream, neither of us have any room. Guess I will have to work on that pizza dough recipe...And maybe ice cream for breakfast? (just kidding - I would never do that...got to keep up my healthy reputation...)

Wishing you a day of love....

Valentine's Day has come again, and the notes I thought I would have written and mailed are still just in my head.

 

I did get to share some love with Thomas yesterday.  I like to cook, but Thomas laments that I usually ask his opinion too much while I am cooking.  "Do you think ____ would go good with ____?"  "Should I add some more ____ to this?"  "Would you rather have ______ or _____?"  This line of questioning annoys the man, so I made dinner last night without asking any questions of him....well, except his help at the end to peel the main course.

 

A little bit ago, Thomas and I happened upon a really good deal on frozen lobster tails.  Thomas likes to respond "lobster" when I ask him what he wants for dinner.  So we got some, and last night I finally served up some lobster for him.  I made focaccia bread - heart shaped for my love, which was the longest of the labor of love because of letting it rise and all that.  I made large shells with a creamy white wine reduction.  I did roast a red bell pepper over the fire so that I could puree it and make the sauce pinkish red, though it cam out more orange-y.  And atop the shells and sauce was the lobster tail.  I opened a bottle of New Mexican wine we received as a wedding present, and we toasted almost 8 months of wedded bliss...truly....blissful!  It was fun to have something fancy-ish in the middle of Miami, though I wished I had fresh greens for a salad.  What to do to top that for dinner tonight, I just don't know!

 

Disclaimer: While I didn't ask Thomas for help, I did ask my parents for the how-to on the lobster. 

Double Disclaimer: I know this sounds like I am tooting my own horn, but I was pretty pleased with myself for what I would consider an adventurous meal.

 

 

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What a day...

This morning I was afraid that I got up at 8 am.  I know that is sleeping in for some, and compared to my weekday rising, it is later.  However, I don't want to imagine that 8 am ever feels late.  It turned out that a book was blocking my view of the alarm clock and it was almost 9 am.  Much better!

Tom had already suggested that we work together on the wood pile/wood porch today because it was going to be sunny, so I woke up and fixed a hearty breakfast of eggs, fake chorizo, potatoes and green chiles, etc.  It may have been a little too hearty, since we didn't have a chance to digest before donning our work clothes over several warm layers.  

I tried to stock as much of the wood in the porch next to the fireplace, leaving the porch nearly empty.  I dumped the ashes in the compost and swept up all the bark and debris out of the porch.  It was ready to be refilled, but most of the pile was under snow.  Tom pulled out a few pallets to re-stack the wood.  We were able to clear a lot of the snowy stuff to reveal the drier wood in the middle.  As we walked around the pile, we had to bend over to pick up the wood.  We were actually towering over our pile!  It seemed hard to believe we had burned up that much wood!  As we continued through the layers, I saw layers and layers of wood under the snow level.  Crazy!

I needed to change gears, so I grabbed the ax and began swinging.  My first piece took several tries to make a dent.  Thomas suggested a better hand position, and then I started splitting the wood with no problem.  (Usually when we fell a tree, we just "block" it into the right length and load up the trunk in 12 - 16" rounds.  These were what I was splitting.)  It was a lot of fun to see the wood split apart, and I am glad to know I can do it.  I still think the power splitter is a lot easier, of course, but maybe my arms won't jiggle so much if I keep it up!

Anyway, that was most of the day.  I had to work this afternoon at a couple of trainings in Angel Fire - 75 minutes of training, 165 minutes of driving...yuck!  Now I am off to bed, so I can get up early for work again...

Just plain lucky...

I feel like it should be a good omen to see a bald eagle.  At least I feel like I could use a good omen.  I approached a bunch of birds in the road hovering over some small roadkill in the middle of the highway.  As the birds scattered for me, it looked like one bird had been dipped in snow.  As I passed the bird on the fence post, it was unmistakably a bald eagle.  It was very pretty.  The end.

A reminder of days in the big city...

Before I lived in Denver, I lived in Jersey City, NJ from 1999-2000.  A city surrounded by other cities and water, it was a small area ( about 21 square miles) an a large populations (240,000 at that time).  When I moved to Denver, a city about eight times larger in land with a population only about 2.5 times larger, I really did feel like it was one big wide open space after the density of Jersey City, really an urban suburb of New York City.  It was quite an experience living there with so many people....row houses, towering apartment/condo buildings, awesome public transportation (I knew a lot of adults who didn't know how to drive a car because they never needed one), and incomparable diversity.  Comparatively, our property, if it were in Jersey City, would be home to about 660 people.

 

Winter on the East Coast was different than anywhere else I have lived because fallen snow didn't usually go anywhere.  Plowed snow could last for months.  The sun didn't just pop back out.  Once the curb was covered, it stayed covered, all the while getting nastier and nastier.  Lots of little apartment dogs and big house dogs would do their business where the grass or curb used to be, and given the snowy conditions, owners rarely picked up after their pets.  That is nasty to see each time to you walk up or down the street on the way to the bus or the PATH train or the little corner market.  Gross!! 

 

So I recall this story with humor.  I left the house just past 7 am this morning to catch a ride with Marie and the kids in to town.  (My car was already in town.)  Thomas asked incredulously if I was walking.  Even though it was in the single digits, I was bundled to walk - usually down our drive, down our road, and at least the distance of our property towards the Salas house.  Marie picks me up somewhere along the highway usually, as it is too cold to stand in place and wait and I don't want to keep her waiting for me. 

 

Thomas hopped in his truck while it warmed up, and I made my way through the snow.  It was really easy to do because Pop came over yesterday and bladed the drive again, but all the same I wore my big boots and not my clogs.  When I turned down the road, which has now been covered with snow for over a week, I came across a little patch of yellow snow.  Scattered by the wind, there were rabbit pellets in all directions.  Such a sight had me laughing this morning as I remembered walking past the nasty snow on my way to work eleven years ago.    Oh, the nostalgia and laughter in the little things is what really matters...

 

Damsel in Distress

I am not sure if anyone knows where New Mexico is on the map, certainly not Miami.  We were left off the map when last week's storm hit Texas to Maine.  NE New Mexico was hit with a major storm, and temps were over 40 degrees below normal.  I am not sure if the coldest we got was 26 below zero, but Thursday morning that was the temp before factoring wind chill.  Anyhow, the snow we expected didn't really come.  We got about six inches is all...enough for a couple snow days.

Saturday night it snowed again.  Thomas and I left extra early for mass, so I could sing and read, and it took forty-five minutes (about twice as long).  We got another three to five inches. 

Yesterday was a beautiful sunny day.  I even took a short walk through town as a "lunch break", as I was in town for about 12 hours and needed to break up the day.  Plus, I hitched a ride with Marie and the kids, so I was without wheels.  I was delighted for the walk and the sunshine.  While Thomas and I were away at work, the plow fairy showed up and "bladed" the driveway with the tractor, which made it nice for walking to and from the car.  Otherwise, the snow really hadn't melted, except off the road. 

(Yes, the story is still going, as anyone who knows me would expect.  I can't just cut to the chase because you have to know the back story, too.)

Marie and I loaded into the van about 7:10 pm and headed home.  There has been talk of a storm blowing in around midnight, but at that particular time, the sky was clear, the air was crisp, and the stars were twinkling.  Oh yeah, and the wind was blowing hard!  HARD!  So hard, that when we rounded the corner from the "s curves", we were blinded.  Worse for Marie than for me, but at one point I thought a car was driving right into us.  The wind was coming from the west and picking up the top layers of snow from Sunday.  We literally came to a stop a couple times because there was no sign of the road or anything else to give us bearings.  The snow was so thick that the headlights didn't penetrate it, but reflected back to us like oncoming traffic.  It was definitely tense for that stretch.  The wind continued to blow, but the rest of the ride was okay.  Marie was certainly my hero last night for getting us home safely.  I was grateful not to be in my little car that might have just been picked up and blown over to Oklahoma.

This morning I decided I would drive when I woke up to no new snow.  I had a meeting at 1pm a mile from the office, and I didn't want to walk.  I let Marie know I wouldn't be riding with her, but fifteen-twenty minutes into her commute, she caught me still at home and told me to wait.  The stretch where the blowing snow was so bad last night was covered in snow drifts that she didn't think my car could clear or get through.  She thought with the morning sun and DOT clearing the road, I might be better off half an hour later.  So I waited.

The road was perfectly clear as it had been the night before until I rounded the bend to the long stretch of drifts.  Several cars were pointed towards me, and the plow in the middle of it had only packed one lane of snow in the first rather deep section.  Other stretches were scraped to the asphalt, but many were still deep with snow.  I pulled over as far as I could in my 96 Honda Civic Coupe, hardly an all-terrain vehicle, and watched as the traffic carefully passed.  Ahead was the length of the hill, and it was very icy anywhere that it wasn't snowy.  I took it slow and made it just fine to the top, where it gratefully gave way to clear roads before the "s curves".  The rest of the way was mostly clear with a hint of drifts here and there.  As I climbed up to the last curve before "Monkey Hill", there was a berm of snow in the middle of the road.  As I rounded the curve to the descent, I realized I chose the lawful side of the road to be on and not the correct side.  The lane was a dead end into the snow, and try as I might, I couldn't get over the snow in the middle of the road to the clear side.  I tried to reverse, to turn the wheel, to rock, to anything, but my car was not moving.  I hopped out (in my clogs, no less, as I had not planned any walking today) and started to dig out the front wheels.  The under side of my bumper did not clear the snow in front of it my much.  I tried to reverse and rock, but came up empty just as a small four door sedan came up the hill heading the other way.  Eddie stopped.  He offered to help push me out, but his efforts only slid me further into the ditch.  Bummer!

I reached for my cell phone to call Daniel, who worked just a couple miles down the hill from where I was stuck.  Unfortunately, I only had his home number, so I turned to Eddie.  He called some friends at Philmont to send some help, but told them to wait when we saw a truck approaching from that direction.  The truck was DOT, and when the guy hopped out, he exclaimed that I got stuck in the same place he got stuck IN THE SNOW PLOW!!!  Seriously?!?!  You'd think you would not leave a dead end from a snow plow on a blind curve!  Or maybe I would think that because I was the one who discovered it.  Gratefully there were no other people coming and going along the highway during our travails.  The DOT guy grabbed a shovel and dug through the berm of snow.  Then he and Eddie both pushed from the passenger side, and my little car floated right out onto the cleared section of road.  Again, I was very lucky somebody didn't come around that blind curve and plow right into the back of me, as there would have been little need to dig out a wreck.

I made it to the office and put my wet feet over a heater vent.  I called Daniel at work and got all the numbers I needed to put in my phone "just in case".  A few hours later I was back on the road coming home with Marie.  School let out early, and most offices let people go home, as the roads became a mess.  Our highway was icy and packing up with snow already.  By now there are easily another five or six inches on top of the old snow.  Brrrr....

Here's to another snow day and all my heroes!!!

Devastated...

I am feeling physically and mentally exhausted.  It's hard to figure out precisely why.  I have been working a lot.  I have had a lot on my mind.  But somehow it feels like a lot can be attributed to the past 24 hours.

I have been awash in emotions.  I feel relief.  I feel sorrow and sadness.  I feel gratitude.  I feel disappointment.  I feel empathy.  I feel awe.  I feel disbelief.  I feel devastation.

Yesterday afternoon I ran into someone at the post office in Cimarron.  He asked about the post office in Miami, to which I replied that it was fine.  I couldn't figure out what he was implying.  I learned that there was a fire.  I had no idea what that meant or what had happened.  Shortly after the woman I was waiting to meet from Albuquerque so we could set up for this morning's training asked about a trailer fire in Miami.  I felt like I was really missing out on something big - Miami is such a small town that it felt awkward not knowing what happened and hearing it from someone from Albuquerque.

As soon as I was able to head home, I drove in a hurry, hoping to get home before the light had faded.  There was not much left of the light, but I could see the blackened frame of the trailer, the broken out windows, the hollowness.  A fire broke out and has left one of our neighbors homeless and without possession.  Thomas and the guys were all there, most getting to fight their first structure fire.  They fought a good fight for probably about 6 hours.  Time moves in different ways when dealing with an emergency, and all were mostly oblivious to anything but the task at hand.  They were muddy and smokey and tired.  Thomas and I just got our bunker gear, but his doesn't look as new as mine anymore.

Evidently it was quite a spectacle.  There were lots of fire trucks - the neighboring departments showed up to provide support, the ladies auxiliary with sandwiches, and the lookie-loos, neighbors and people just passing by.  There was a lot of water.  Still the site is surrounded with snow from the storm of the week, and another is blowing in now.  I can't imagine what it would have been like to have helped, to have had a purpose and role in helping our neighbor: the rush of actually getting to fight a fire tempered with knowing the woman now homeless.  I also can't help but wonder what a liability I would have been with such little training.

Maybe it was because I wasn't there that I feel so emotional about it, that I feel such empathy and devastation for our neighbor.  She is an older woman who lived alone except for her pets.  I don't think she ever married, and I don't know that she has any children.  I just keep thinking about how a person later in life starts life over.  No pictures, no blankie, no heirloom cedar chest from Grandma.  Losing every piece of clothing save what was worn out of the house, favorite books,  souvenirs, music collections.  How does one get back all those account numbers and data filed away of financial records or memberships or insurance?  Does life start over in the same place and same way or...what?

My heart pours out to our neighbor and to all the men who were there to try to stop the damage.  My heart is just very full, and the rest of me feels empty....
?

And this little piggy stayed home....

I made a break for the mailbox today at 2 pm.  I had been in the house for 47.5 hours straight, unless you count stepping into the wood porch to gather more firewood "outside".  It is a chilly uninsulated space, but it is sealed off from the elements.  I have been working away on the computer for work during the day, but somehow the house keeps getting smaller and smaller.  The temperatures have been excessively frigid, and my quick foray to the mailbox left me with ten popsicles where my fingers should have been.

 

So school has been canceled the last two days, but tomorrow I expect not.  These are days that will have to be made up, and I am sure the novelty of a day home wouldn't last one more day.  I hope to catch a ride into town with Marie in the morning, sparing me at least one more day from what I hear are really icy roads. 

 

So tonight we revisit the board games...  Monday night Thomas and I each picked a Flight of the Conchords episode and one game to play.  Thus we entertained ourselves.  Last night we had the good fortune of a visit from Pop with a really cheesy vampire movie.  Tonight, back to the games...we'll see how long it lasts!