Next Step

January 29, 2023

Hello again,

Well, we've had an active week of weather again, ranging anywhere from 10 to 50 degrees, starting snowy again, like last week, but ending very, very windy and dry.  Today, we had our two outside doors open, with only the screen doors shut, for a few hours over lunch and into the afternoon.  The wind had calmed down, the sun was just blasting away, and the nearly fifty degree high could almost be perceived as a brisk spring afternoon.  Erin's been out in the garden, finally clearing away all of last year's debris.  She has been working on this little by little, but now has a perfectly clean and spotless garden again.  She's trying to figure out how to start all of her seeds indoors with our rowdy crew of kitten-pirates on the loose inside.  She brought a lot of our cardboard out of storage to lay down around the beds to then cover with mulch from a big pile that we have nearby.  Last year, she rearranged the layout of the garden and tore out every single bed and re-positioned everything.  This changed things to her liking, but also let loose a riot of volunteer flowers that quickly took over the garden during the monsoon season.  It was very cool to look at, but the mosquitos had come with the rains, so Erin just let things go that way for the rest of the year and actually still got quite a bit of produce in the end.  This time, everything is already in place and she's going to snuff all the flowers out long before they germinate in a few months.  She has one bed reserved for garlic, but is otherwise trying to see just how many different things she can fit in the remaining eleven beds.  Most nights lately, she sits on the couch after dinner with her graph paper and pencil, furiously scribbling and then erasing, scribbling and then erasing...it should be grand to behold!  Every year has always been better than the former thus far.  You should have seen her huge garden back in Pennsylvania on a little patch of Susquehanna River floodplain soil!  She's enjoying the challenge of changing climates immensely!

As far as my job is concerned, it's official and the countdown has begun.  The foreman packed up all his tools on Friday and took them up to the place he and his fiancee are renting in Pagosa Springs, CO.  She graduated last spring and moved up there last summer to start her national forest service job.  He's been meaning to join her ever since but has continually been induced by the boss to stay on and help to get the house completely done(it probably helped that the boss's condo in Santa Fe was offered up as a midpoint between owning a house in Vegas and renting a place in CO).  But, we're apparently nearer to the end than we thought and he will be coming back every other week through February and then will be gone for good.  It appears that the architect that I'm working for from Santa Fe will be downsizing after this and will only be doing one build at a time, much smaller than this project, and I won't be needed anymore.  So, perhaps by March, I will be in need of a job.  I applied for a managerial job at Big R, which is a feed and ranch store based out of CO that only has about thirty stores...so, corporate, but not monster corporate.  They need an assistant manager in Las Vegas, but also many manager posts scattered about their five-state area.  I really don't want to move, but nothing is ruled out at this point.  My co-worker, Valentin, said he could get me on any number of construction crews in Santa Fe.  Unlike this build, this would all be in Spanish and more of the same with all the menial jobs that need done around a site.  I feel I've already risen to the language challenge, but I do get tired of getting home at the end of the day and not being able to move!  Erin has a crazy idea...she'd like to buy the local gas station that's for sale in San Jose.  It's the only gas station along 50 miles of I-25(you have to go 20 miles towards Vegas or 30 miles towards Santa Fe) and is in a super cute building with all the potential in the world.  We rent our storage units from the owner's son, which are just behind the gas station, and the first time we met his Dad he said that we ought to buy his business upon hearing that we had just sold our feed mill.  Erin and I are great at running a store and she dreams of putting in a certified kitchen where she could cook and bake things to sell.  We should go and see his Dad again.  It's been for sale ever since we got here at the end of 2020, so who knows, maybe he'd be open to an owner carry situation?  Dollar down, dollar a day..?  In any event, it looks like decision time will soon be upon us and we'll have to find another means of bringing a little money in.  Too bad I can't get paid to hang out with horses all day!

Now, here is this week's batch of pictures for your viewing pleasure.  First up, a shot I took of Willow playing with one of the kittens, wedged into a Greenies box, that I fooled around with a little on the computer.  Then, three shots of our kitten outing from earlier today: first, Ebony descending out of the tree to perch on our stoop's fence; then, Zia, Chelly and all of Chelly's five kittens lined up to go outside; and, finally, Willow checking to see if Bootsie's outside kittens are still residing in Cat 5(the coolest-ever cat house on our front stoop that we built).  Next, three shots of Erin's garden: first, the whole thing all cleaned up; then, her bed of garlic; and, also, Larry, Moe & Curly waiting to see what we're doing next.  Then, two shots of a treat that Valentin gave me the other morning for breakfast at work: he called it a durazno, which is Spanish for peach, but durazno tarts look like little peach pies, so I'm not sure what this is actually called, but it was a fun way to start the day!  This is accompanied by a shot of the yoga studio, where I was working that morning.  You can see the boss's house facing this one, behind the sample wall...ours is perpendicular to that, to the left, but the roof line runs in a continuous line with the boss's house.  The next two shots are from a trip into Santa Fe last weekend to get groceries: we were cruising into town on St Michael's Drive, heading east to west, and these snow-clad mountains could be seen looming outside of town ahead of us.  Then, three different shots from when I was out feeding the horses in the morning this week: first, pre-dawn glow; then, a spirited sunrise bursting out from behind the clouds; and, finally, the sun just cresting the hill over the main horse gate.  The next three shots are from one night's sunset when the mesa still had snow stuck to it, making everything a wonderful blend of red, green and white.  Then, a shot from the horse feeders of Jupiter high up over the moon, with Venus below it, down closer to the horizon.  And, finally, walking back down the hill at the end of a long day, with our front light glowing in a field of darkened, white snow, guiding my steps.

Take care and see you soon,