Feeling down today.
Ranger Leon had to fill in for staff shortage at Santa Cruz Lake recreation area, about an hour and a half from where we live, so we packed up the camper and stayed there from Wednesday evening June 8th for the duration of his assignment through early afternoon Sunday June 12th.
It was a decent campsite but had no hook-ups so we had to conserve water and electricity (had a generator to charge our batteries) but no air conditioning. It was HOT.
Also we were "Off The Grid" and spent the four days without cell service or internet. I'm not sure if that was a blessing or a curse. (I did drive into Española for a few groceries and propane so I did check email and texts).
I actually read about three quarters of a BOOK. A real hardcover book with paper pages. I had started "In Memory of Angel Clare" by Christopher Bram about a year or more ago but never could get past the first few chapters. And I've enjoyed other novels by Bram. This time I started from the beginning and had a better go of it. It was still a bit difficult getting through those first chapters, but now I want to finish it.
I tried reading for a couple of hours by the lakeshore with my feet in the water but as the sun got overhead and to the west I couldn't keep my beach chair in the shade and it was HOT.
Unfortunately, even though the lake had pretty clear, clean water, swimming is not allowed in Santa Cruz Lake...there is really no decent body of water for swimming in most of New Mexico.
Cochiti Lake is murky, silty, brown and usually gets toxic algae. Abiquiu Lake has very rocky shore and murky waters as well. I've swam in both. Elephant Butte is a thousand miles away (not really, but it may as well be) and that is unappealing for a variety of reasons. But, as they say, "I digress."
To get to the point of my foul mood today...the unrelenting sun is brutally HOT. It has worn me down. And we have had unrelenting WIND in New Mexico almost daily for more than a month. The wind makes me angry. Not to mention wild fires and smoke now and then. And the nasty prickly things like goat heads and all the weeds, not to mention cactus and the damn monotonous juniper trees and rocks and dirt, and dust, and did I mention WIND which is HOT and blows the deck carpet up and the furniture cushions and the sun shade and drives me batty.
And something is snacking on my Swiss Chard and green beans and broccoli and gardening is all out war here. And I really find New Mexican "cuisine" boring and nasty. It's all the same no matter what they call it: beans, cheese, iceberg lettuce, chopped tomato, slimy guacamole, tortilla/buritto/taco, some shredded meat and SMOTHERED with GREEN CHILE and more cheese. Why SMOTHER anything with chili? Everything tastes the same. And there is no decent Italian market and you can't find a pastrami sandwich to save your life and no one has ever heard of pirogi. The Land of Entrapment. Six and a half years. The honeymoon has ended.
When we got home from the lake (to a power outage and no way to cool the house for several hours) we unloaded our trailer and parked it in a space across the street (there is room for four vehicles/trailers). The town had just resurfaced the roads last week and we had to move our camper out of the parking area which was also resurfaced. We were instucted to park temporarily at town hall but only overnight when the parking area had fresh blacktop (or whatever). We were instructed NOT to leave our trailer in the temporary lot for longer than necessary. Which we did.
So hooking up the camper and moving it is pain, but, well it goes with the territory. So yesterday (Sunday) we parked it in our spot in the parking area. That chore done. This afternoon, the "mayor" called to inform me that we had to move the trailer AGAIN because they are going to paint yellow lines in the parking area TOMORROW. (I Leon is convinced that they will divide the four spaces into five spaces just to make it difficult for everyone to squeeze in).
I went off on the "mayor" and sarcastically said "Oh, sure, we'll just move the camper, yeah, just like that, like it's just an easy deasy thing, sure, yeah right. I am so dam fed up with this crap." He insisted that this had been "mentioned" "repeatedly" but there were no instructions to that effect on the original notice. I told him I was fed up with "fricken heaven with a fricken zip code" that because of the Pueblo getting very restrictive we are no longer allowed to hike there or walk there or hike Tent Rocks National Monument, or probably even breath their precious air.
When Leon got home we went across the street to move the camper and found the NOTE:
Which set me off even more and I sent off an angry text to the "mayor". I should have said, "go ahead, tow it."
So today, in addition to having watched the Congressional hearings and seeing the country going to hell, and someone taking my shopping cart with my green bags, it was again HOT and WINDY and HOT.
The feral horses were in the tribal land along the road as I drove home and they were "grazing" for whatever dead scraps of grass or weeds they could find. It almost made me cry that they were out there in the blazing SUN and HEAT, especially the black and brown ones. And I was thinking that it was cruel to have brought them here in the first place.
Leon said that while he was out on patrol today he came across three dead horses and another group of horses seemed to be fighting or sparing. There is nothing for them to eat in this godforsaken desert. And I'm feeling like I'm suffocating. Enough.
I think maybe I should give my therapist a call.
(exchanging glances with Mitchell, Debra, and Bob)
Hang in there, pardner. Things will get better soon.
BTW - what is this pye-row-jee you speak of?
It's peer-og-ee and they are basically Polish ravioli (stuffed with potato, or cabbage or farmers cheese and I think boiled...then you saute them with butter..yum). Our neighbor in New Britain, CT used to make them with the church ladies at the local Polish Catholic parish where they would sell them after Sunday Mass and she would always give us the ones "that weren't perfect" but they were perfect enough for us. CT "Yankees" are all kinds of ethnic ancestry and the food....
Ditto, ditto, ditto.
All the wildfires are out now?
Russ, by no means are the wild fires in New Mexico out or contained.
I will post a separate post.
Glad you’re no currently at risk. I can’t imagine the air quality issues everywhere as a result.
Thanks for the update, I had no idea. The fires have dropped out of the headlines on Google News.
I wonder what you and Leon think of the Park Service admitting they were responsible for starting this catastrophe? (At least, that's what the short summary I read seemed to indicate.)
Mitch, Fortunately the air where we live has been mostly tolerable except for some brief periods...either that or we've adapted to breathing smoke.
Russ, Leon works for Bureau of Land Management. Like many here in New Mexico we think the US Forest Service (not the Park Service) was totally foolish and irresponsible for doing "controlled burn" during the driest and during unprecedented winds, and in one case leaving a burn pile they thought was extinguished but which flared up again many days/weeks later. These fires have devastated hundreds of thousands of acre of forest.
And Debra and Bob: Always appreciate your comments as well. But I always have a problem commenting on your blog, Bob. Maybe it is me or my blogger settings or Firefox or Safari????
This is what I see, but cannot type into the space where it says Enter Comment: