Home Again

We packed up the van (not OUR van, a rental, because our van had a double-whammy, pre-trip hissy fit) and drove to Albuquerque and back for the Christmas holidays. The traveling was lovely, the Sonars had a great time, the visit with family was rich, and I am very happy.

We left Coastal Texas in the afternoon on December 20th, with stories about the eclipse looping on the radio. That night, we were too tired to stay awake or to wake up for the eclipse, but as we stopped for the night in Sonora, Texas, I wrote, “Sonora under a solstice eclipse.” The moon was so big, a dusky color, like it was preparing for its big scene later that night.  

The next morning I was moved again by the windmills near Fort Stockton. Longtime readers here might remember that I wrote about the windmills last time we drove through. They line up like wanderers along the front edges of the mesas, soaring and spinning, roaring with the updrafts charging up the ridges.

At lunch that day we ate at Farley’s in Roswell, New Mexico and soaked up the delicious alien kitsch. The smart woman tending the bar there enhanced our lunch with a little Gaga, and the menu reminded us that “It’s better to live and learn than die stupid.”

Just around sunset on our second day of driving, we pulled through the mountain pass and into east Albuquerque to see that city dressed up in her winter jewels, the city lights twinkling on all around us. 

We visited with family that I hadn’t seen for decades. I managed to finish some last-minute knitting and felting (in the bathtub!) for Christmas gifts. We ate posole and chicken stuffed sopaipillas with green chile, and homemade marshmallows (Everyone should make marshmallows at least once in their life. We make them each year around the holidays.). I learned how to properly make our family’s fruit salad (yep, I’d been doing it wrong and I’m so glad to be enlightened).  We drove up into the mountains east of the city and found mud puddles and sledding-snow in the same spot. We slid and slid and slid and managed to get only our shoes muddy. 

I hope your holidays had some marshmallows and mud and a lot of love in them.

Memorable notes from the not-a-journal:

Did you say Deli Bean?

Deep Sand Beyond Shoulder

Pump jacks and the miasma of H2S every two skips (“Do Not Stop in Low Places”)

Me and Billy the Kid never got along, and outgoing D-Gov Bill Richardson should not pardon him. Dad reminds me that without clever writers, no one would even know about Billy the Kid. Or Jesus, I add in my head, winking and taking the hug.

Red or Green? Hot or Mild? Corn or Flour?

From am radio: Rupert Parish Disposal, Our Business Stinks but it’s Picking Up

Best railroad car graffitti: “snow” dripping from the “eaves” of a cargo box

Sympathetic Ignition

At Frog Pond Creek, somewhere in Texas, in the early morning fog, the Sonars inform me that this is good D&D fog, to cloak early morning travelers across the plains.

There IS a Garden of Eden in Eden, Texas.

Upon our return to the coastal plains: the land is so flat I feel like I can see the curve of the Earth.

Watch out for the Paper Boy and Other Friday Randomness

Without further ado, I present your Friday Randomness

1. I frequently get collection phone calls for someone with a similar name. I would not want to be the intended receiver of any of these calls. They are frequently more menacing than the paper boy in Better Off Dead. Which is my favorite line of writing this week. I crack myself up. 

2. Sonar X10 started a conversation like this yesterday: “If there’s a fairy in the van…” I think it was a warning about pixies tying my loose shoelaces to the pedals but I was laughing so hard I might have heard him wrong. 

3. I finished reading Sum: Forty Tales of the Afterlives by David Eagleton. Review to come, eventually. Another book I’d put in my top five for the year.

4. Driving to the grocery store the other day, I turned a corner and came face-to-face with the largest turkey vulture I have ever seen. It was perched on top of a road sign with it’s enormous wings spread wide, catching the buffeting breeze. A superstitious person might have taken it as an omen. I just wished I’d had the camera.

5. The turkey vulture has inspired me to require the main character in my Mud-Vampire story to swallow a rock. It strikes me as funny. I’m not sure how they’re connected either, except that I scribbled both of these things on a piece of paper in the van. Deciding this is the closest I’ve come to actually editing that story for two weeks. 

6. My NaNoWriMo word count is 42,800. I’m one day behind the goals I’d planned for myself at the beginning of the month, but I’m also feeling enthusiastic. How many words do you think I can churn out today?

7. One of my favorite elements from the commercially under-appreciated series Firefly is the word SHINY. I suppose it means something like cool or awesome, but with a certain folksy subtlety. I think you’d be awfully shiny if you left a comment down there. I say that with a pretty please, and my thumbs in my belt loops, rocking forward onto the toes of my boots, and batting my eyelashes.  So stand up and be shiny. Tell me anything you want. Tell me the weirdest thing you ever saw at the grocery store. Tell me your favorite thing to eat at family gatherings. Tell me if you’ve ever seen a turkey vulture THIS BIG.  I’m waiting.