... but close! Mine look more like chile relleno popsicles because the chilies were small and the cheese sticks stuck out quite a bit on their own. But at least everything was encased in batter and they were delicious! The batter needed to be a teensy bit thicker, but all in all we were pretty pleased.

When I named my earlier blog post the other day I’m sure you noticed that I had “normal” in quotes. It seems like things haven’t been “normal” here for quite some time. We had an earthquake, then Hurricane Irene. After Irene we had tropical depression Lee who dropped just as much rain on us as Irene had the week before! Roads are still washed out with gaping swathes where the pavement used to be.

Then we went to Colorado to the cabin. After being home for not quite two weeks we went to New Mexico. Then the big freak October snow storm comes along and dumps 19 inches of snow on our fair township and we are without power for four days. What’s normal about any of that?

Now we are finally feeling like we can settle down to normal New Jersey life again. I’ve been in the West so much lately that I am having a little trouble adjusting. But maybe that’s due to the power outage. It was strange, I have to tell you. But now at least we know what it’s like and that we can survive just fine on our own for a while. Any longer than four days might be pushing the limit. Especially in the dead of winter. If that happens and we know something is coming we’ll be sure and blow up the air bed beforehand so we can sleep downstairs in front of the fire. Just in case ...

Before we left we made sure to get up most of the leaves that had fallen. I’m glad we did because now we have more than ever. Too bad Johnny is in the shop—again. The belt on the deck broke again but this time there was a pulley that was broken as well. So, back to the John Deere hospital Johnny went on Wednesday. He’s due back mid-week but rain is expected by then. I’m sure the leaves will be taken care of eventually, but I hate to see them blanketing and stifling the grass.

This morning we will head off to the farmer’s market at Warwick in search of really good bread for our cheese fondue tonight. The market is looking very sad this year due to all the crop loss with Irene and Lee. All the squash and pumpkins were lost along with the other late season crops. It’s pretty slim pickins’. Usually we would take Mia but it’s pretty chilly out there. We’d have to bundle up for sure. Even our seat heaters and Mia’s adjustable temperature controls wouldn’t make a dent. Maybe we’ll give it a go anyway.

We should get out the chain saw and take care of some huge limbs but I don’t think either one of us feels much like it this weekend. Our beautiful big oak tree in the back yard suffered the most damage. A whole part of the upper trunk broke off plus a huge limb. It’s sad but we can’t see the damage too much from this side of the tree. A few other trees in the front yard lost significant portions of their tops, most of which ended up straddling the fence on neighbor Aileen’s side. Poor trees.

I did so enjoy spending alone time with my in-laws. I’ve never done that before and I thoroughly enjoyed both of them. We kept busy with lots of little drives around the area and eating great Mexican food. I’ll be sharing some photos very soon. We also had a special day where we drove to meet up again with Rick to the tiny town of Cloudcroft at an elevation that equals that of the cabin (over 8,600 feet) where it had snowed the night before. We ate a wonderful lunch sitting by the window watching the fog roll in and blanket everything in soft white and grey. Very magical.

on the way up to Cloudcroft

Rick and I then drove back together, stopping at White Sands (more pics coming of that too!) and Aguirre Spring.

Aguirre Spring is right at the foot of the Organ Mountains, but on the opposite side from the town of Las Cruces. Here are the Organ Mountains as seen from Las Cruces.

And a shot of them with the late afternoon sun on the opposite side.

The following two photos were taken at Aquirre Spring. It’s a beautiful place!

I rambled a lot more in this post than I expected too and was just going to talk a bit. Instead I ended up doing photos of my trip to New Mexico! Oh well. Sometimes it just goes like that. I hope you enjoyed both the rambling and the photos! More coming soon!

OOPS! I almost forgot! Did I ever tell you that my mother-in-law makes THE BEST Chile Rellenos in the world? Yum!!!!!!!

I have this strange urge to run around the house turning on every light and every single thing that is electric. I stood under the shower with hot water pouring out of the shower head for as long as I possibly could this morning. It felt so good to be truly clean again since it was Sunday at 5:00 a.m. when I had last felt that way. It was so nice to get up to a warm house with heat pouring out of the vents!

It really makes you appreciate the things we all take for granted. I’ve read a lot of books and seen many movies where people are struggling to live in a post apocalyptic world, and believe me, it felt that way to us this week. It makes you wonder what it would be like if something cataclismic did happen to our world and there was no longer any power, no gasoline to run our cars, no food being delivered to the grocery stores.

Yesterday when Rick got home from work he was very excited to see a utility crew working on our problem. We walked down to take a look. Lots of activity!

Several neighbors had gathered to watch. One neighbor who lives near where the trees fell across the road said that they saw the flash as power was lost. He also said he heard at the sound of tires spinning and took the flashlight out to see. The trees had crushed a car as they came down! The person in the car walked away unscathed. I think it must have been their lucky day!

We were optimistic even after we asked one of the crew if this meant our power would be back on shortly. He said non-committally “depends on where you live.” Both Rick and I pointed back up our road and he just shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.

One of our neighbors at the end of the road had just bought a brand new generator and it was chugging away. The opened box was still in his driveway. Rick had brought home a generator too on loan from someone at work. We knew this would guarantee that our power would come back on. It just had to!

When we got back to the house we checked the web site for Rockland Electric once again. It said we could expect to be back on the grid by 6:00 p.m. But 6:00 p.m. came and went with no change. We cooked by lamp light for what we hoped was the last time, then settled in by the wood stove for some good conversation.

You know how the story ends, so I’ll stop here!

What a year this has been for weather!

We are home and without power. One of our neighbors was nice enough to snow-blow a portion of our driveway so we could get in and I managed to get in touch with the cat sitter before she came to the house so I could ask her to leave the house key in the mailbox so we could get into the house. Usually we use the garage door, but of course with no power that option was out.

We cooked a meal of spaghetti on two butane burners that we keep for emergencies. Two of our lanterns worked and the other one needed batteries. We lit plenty of candles. We also had oil lamps but we had purchased the wrong kind of fuel for them so they didn’t shed much light, so to speak. We slept with an added duvet for warmth.

It’s so quiet. Almost like an end-of-the-world scenario in our neighborhood. Our neighbors across the street bailed out and went down to the their house on the shore.

Rick has no power at work so he is at home today. I guess we’ll read, maybe put a puzzle together.

The food in our freezer is now starting to thaw, so I guess we’ll BBQ chicken breasts tonight and eat up the frozen veggies.

We didn’t lose any trees but several large limbs are down and scattered around. So, with that we were lucky.

Not sure when our power will be restored so I might not be blogging since the only way we have of charging our cell phones and our iPads (without them we wouldn’t be blogging or have email) is to start up the truck and plug them in one at a time.

Oh the joys of camping within your own home!


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But not snow! Even though this looks like snow it is in fact white sand. These photos were taken at White Sands Monument between Las Cruces and Alamogordo. Miles and miles of white gypsum sand dunes that are constantly shifting. More on White Sands after we get home.



If we were in New Jersey today, which Bigsis is right, we are not, we would be in the midst of a rare October snowstorm. Sigh. I’m missing it! I am pretty sure our limo driver will have to let us out at the top of our driveway and we’ll have to slog through at least a foot of snow tomorrow! So far today at 5:00 eastern time we’ve had five inches according to neighbor Kim who so nicely went over and put figgy inside our garage.

I think I’ve finally eaten my fill of mexican fare so it’s time to go home. We’ve had a great time and I’ve been given the royal family treatment.

Tomorrow we get up bright and early to catch our flight to Houston. Fingers crossed our flight won’t be delayed because of backups at the Newark airport due to the storm. We’ll catch up on the flip side back in New Jersey with more photos from New Mexico!

And probably more photos of white stuff. Snow in October!

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