Tired Feet

August 20, 2023

Hello again,

The dog days of summer continue with most of the week being hot and dry and then a real gullywasher of a thunderstorm here and there.  Last week saw a slight moderation in temperatures, but they sprang right back up again by the end of this week.  Although one day at the beginning of the week didn't get out of the 70s and was overcast all day.  Truly, those are days to treasure out in the desert Southwest.  Where I come from, mild and dreary days are your typical type of weather, but not out here!  In the meantime, we're still preparing for our move and are getting ready in little fits and starts, but we're also trying to maximize our downtime on the weekends.  It's hard working on a ranch and out in the hot sun all week long! Or maybe worse, being on your hands and knees scrubbing and cleaning every day!  It's really hard to scrape ourselves off of the couch and out of bed first thing Saturday mornings so that we can hit the hot springs, and until we get home four or so hours later, after running our errands, we're usually pretty shot.  Totally worth it, but very tiring.  Sundays are a crap shoot, but just as often as not we spend most of the time reading.  Back East, when we still owned our feed mill, Sunday was the only day that the store was closed and nothing needed to be tended to, so we continue to have a very strong 'Jammy Day' streak alive and well within us!  In all seriousness, we really don't have very much to move out of our casita to the boss's old house next-door.  The real work will start once we do that and then have to make a million trips to storage to get the rest of our stuff that we haven't been able to(or willing to) access in three years!  I've avoided being lectured at by Erin for three years now on 'really needing to go through all of my clothes.'  Of course, living out of two cardboard boxes worth of clothes has its downside, but it has kept me from having to sort through all of my clothes and make piles of 'Love it!' or 'Leave it!'  But, if memory serves, I'm pretty sure there are upwards of a half-dozen or more boxes in storage with my name on it.  I've avoided having to make the hard decisions about which pairs of pants to keep by making a pile of torn jeans that I wanted Erin to sew for me.  Well, needless to say, much like a Mexican standoff, she never sews any of them and I never bring up the fact that I only have three pairs of pants left without holes in them!  Ah, the joys of ranch life!  Actually, we both had intended to sort through all of our stuff before moving, but somehow life didn't let that happen.  One thing led to another and suddenly we were out West with a truckload of stuff!

I haven't seen my buddy, Valentin, since he stopped working on the ranch about a month ago.  It's weird not to prattle on all day, back and forth, in our own, unique version of Spanglish.  Everyone is gone, actually, other than me.  The architect has been coming out once a week to nail down and finish all kinds of little odds and ends that never got taken care of before the boss moved in.  Valentin is working for him in Santa Fe and I'm sure is really busy.  Having a one-mile commute to work was great, but he did have to run to Santa Fe once or twice a week for errands, so maybe this is just as well.  I'm still trying to lasso him into getting our yearly hike to the top of the mesa done one of these weekends.  Two years ago we did it in August and last year was in May, so we'll see which new month we can add to our list this time.  Back here, life on the ranch is wearing me out!  I'll just get one thing finally changed with the irrigation and then something else pops up.  The dogs suddenly need to go to the vet.  Contractors randomly show up to fine-tune some things now that the boss is moved in.  Horse issues.  Cat issues.  More trees to plant.  Tent caterpillars to kill.  More contractors showing up needing help and asking a million questions that I have to get specific answers to.  On and on and on.  I love never having to go to town very much, but quite a few days I've logged upwards of 6-8 miles walking til it's all said and done.  Still, I love it here and don't miss the days of having a store and tending to the public at 8am every day of my life(of course, with people always showing up early and angrily demanding that they needed waited on before opening because they were in a hurry!)  I don't mind my current predicament in the least, truth be told, and I've never minded my feet being tired at the end of the day.  There's a certain kind of pleasure derived solely from working with one's hands all day long, out in the weather, every day of the year, in every season and type of condition.

Now, this week, I have an entire batch of pictures from Erin!  First up, three cat shots: first, little baby Mickey stretching and sleeping; then, little Monkey, who didn't have enough space in the womb to fully stretch out and needs daily foot stretching to unlock his tendons; and, then, Pinkerton, one of the older kittens, out napping on the patio.  Next up, five different shots of the flora out here that caught Erin's eye lately in and around the garden and elsewhere on the ranch.  Then, a shot of me at the Skillet with my freshly-served Chile Cheeseburger Chimi...always super hot and full of green chiles and everything chopped into tiny pieces!  Next, two shots of Erin's new kind of bread that she's making...previously, she always made unformed boules out of one pound of dough, now she's been experimenting with two pounds of dough baked in forms to make sandwich bread.  Totally awesome!  Then, a shot of Erin's lunch one day while she was out shopping in Santa Fe...always Thai or vegetarian or something similar!  Next, three shots from the garden: first, the day's yield; then, all the garlic; and, finally, lots of green shooting out of the ground, even with all the heat.  And, lastly, the latest batch of soap that Erin got done.  She's holding off on making any new batches until we move, but is ready to really ramp up production once we get next-door and she has some room to spread out and work on things.

See you soon.