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!!!!!!!

Can you guess where I am instead? A mountain range with a cotton field in front of it.

The sky above.


And below these fluffy bolls of cotton!







Here is another photo clue since I don’t think you could guess from just cotton.


A field of ready-to-harvest red chilies.




And pecans too, still on the tree!




Harvesting chilies.



We’re in Las Cruces, New Mexico! Just about as far south as you can go and still be in New Mexico. If I was a bird I could fly 40 miles due south of here and be in Mexico! I am staying with Rick’s parents while he has business for three days in a town about an hour and a half north of here. I am trying to eat as much Mexican food as possible and completely avoid Italian restaurants or food! So far, so good.


Click on a picture to enlarge it!

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30 years. My how the years have flown by! It doesn’t seem like that long.

30 years ago today I married what would turn out to be my best friend even though I didn’t know it at the time. Sure I loved him, but I couldn’t see into the future. I couldn’t see all that we would come to share.

Here we are in all our early 80’s glory:

Happy Anniversary to my best friend!

I had forgotten all about them. The little gold box of letters we found when we cleaned out my mom’s house after her death. Letters written by my father to my mother after he moved to Florida, while we stayed behind in New York preparing for the move. Letters written from March 1967 through April 1967; 10 letters in all. Letters also written by my father to my mother when he went back to Florida in 1980 to work and my mother stayed on in Colorado, spanning time from January 1980 through June 1980; 15 letters in all.

I came across the little gold Godiva chocolate box bound by a rubber band tucked away inside a box of miscellaneous old photos and memorabilia. I held it in my hands for a few minutes, debating. Do I read them? Yes? No? It would be like reading their personal diary, or at least my father’s side of things. A one-way window into the world of the adults that were my parents together, as a couple, and not just the"mommy and daddy” I was familiar with. Do I really want to know? Especially the 1980 period which might contain things I don’t want to hear about. That was in the middle of what I call my father’s “dark period.” I finally decided that I needed to read what my father had written all those years ago that made my mother keep them. After all, both my parents are gone now so I can no longer judge them for whatever might be written on all those folded pages neatly tucked inside their envelopes.

And so, the decision was made. I brought the little box of letters upstairs and sat down to read.

Saturday we bought ourselves an early Christmas gift: an XBOX 360 with Kinect. Have you seen them? When we bought our Wii game system a few years back we thought it was brilliant technology. And it was back then. Now instead of either having to stand on a balance board or hold a wireless remote, all we have to do to interact with certain games is hold up our hand to sign in to start, then just move! Two cameras track your body’s movements. You move, your avatar on screen duplicates your move. Rick noticed that even when I started rolling up my sleeves my on-screen persona was doing the same thing. Almost creepy!

We just went to look at Best Buy on Saturday. Honestly we did. We walked in to the video section and the salesman asked what we were looking for. We told him and he looked at us and said “Well first tell me what kind of games the kids you’re buying this for like to play because that might make a difference in the system you should be looking at.” Hmmm, what to say? I looked over at Rick and said “Honey, what kind of games do we like to play?” At this point the salesman broke out in a grin, slapped me on the arm and said something like “way to go!” or “good for you!” Surely we can’t be the only adults who like to do this sort of thing??

They had a huge flat screen TV set up so that people could try out the amazing Kinect technology for themselves. It was set up for bowling. I tried it out. I walked up to the screen and held my arm out to the side to “pick up the ball.” I lined myself up, took a few steps and “threw” the ball. I got a strike!

Of course we bought one. Plus the sports game and the workout game. We discussed whether or not to wrap it up and put it under the Christmas tree or to set it up and play now. When we got home I was tending to dogs but Rick was no where to be seen. There he was in the living room putting the XBOX stuff together. “I thought we were going to wait until Christmas?” I asked him. “Well, I just wanted to see if we needed any cables or anything. Plus when Carolyn comes for Thanksgiving we can all play,” he replied.

Uh huh.

We played a few games and got used to how it works and overall found it very responsive. I somehow beat Rick at bowling and he beat me in our game against each other of table tennis. There are a few things that could use a little better user interface, like setting up your avatar, but overall it performs beautifully.  And it knows who we are: it knows that Rick is Rick when he stands in front of it and it knows it’s me when we switch places. Pretty amazing!

We are both looking forward to doing the yoga on the workout game. The Wii had yoga but you really didn’t know if you were doing the position correctly or not since all it really took into consideration was balance. This one should correct us if we are doing it wrong. Plus, the games are fun and it gets us off the couch and moving!

I guess we are really just kids at heart.