the owl looked up at the stars above adn sang to a small guitar

I have an enormously long post to make about enormously large changes we’ll soon be making and my reaction, but as it always seems, I’m not currently with time to explore en blogue.  So, suffice to say, I’ll try, but we’re headed back to Carlsbad Caverns today for another explore, then to the Dollar Store (no thriftstore in town) to get gifts for Sissy’s birthday (tomorrow) and somewhere in the day I’m going to try to fit some hours of work in.  Pretty much a normal, hectic day.  So, my abandoned readers, keep the faith, an update will arrive…

Fort Davis, Texas

Jamie has taken over many of my chores since he got back from the US (in May) and is finding the budget aspect to be a challenge. After spending the thousands we did to bring Michael back, I instituted a strict budget and part of the budget is a limit of $600 a month on food. He gets another $50 a month for household items. Until recently, he figured he could just steal money from other budgeted items. That might have worked in other months, but $200+ in unexpected medicines (for ProstaQ, etc.) blew that fail-safe out of the water. It took a little “discussion” but I think he understands the idea of a budget now and how it should work. But I think he could really use some encouragement from you internets. He is coming very close to using his entire $600 allottment of food already but I think he can make it if he stays away from meat. And frankly, with the hormone, antibiotic and steriod laden meat in the US, I’m not so sure that is a bad thing. Michael, who LOVES meat is so aghast at the prospect of limited to no meat, that he is using his food stamp money to buy meat. So, if you’re so inclined, and even if you’re not, but could be pursuaded to become so inclined, drop him a little line at jamie.s.jam@gmail.com and give him some support. I think he can make the money stretch to the end of the month but he’ll need some encouragement.

The thriftstore here in town (Ft. Davis) is a little gem. I have purchased 6-7 pairs of shorts (good, heavy, cargo style) for the boys, swimsuits for both of the boys, a skirt and skort for sissy, skort for ellen, at least 5-6 shirts for the girls and am still under $20. Yesterday I found two Corelle plates (I’m trying to get rid of all our plastic without going to stoneware; stonewear in the trailer is simply Not A Good Thing but it does make for good crushed stone).

The other day we headed out to Davis Mountain Resort, which sounds like it should be a lovely, manicured lawn type of place with tennis courts and multiple swimming pools, but is actually an enormous ranch which has been subdivided. It is about 10-15 miles west of Ft. Davis making it even more remote than Marfa or Alpine or Ft. Davis (what I am now calling the “tri-cities area”, which is something of a joke since the largest town of the three is Alpine, weighing in with a whopping population of SIX THOUSAND). But wait, there’s more! After driving out into lovely valleys and mountains and through 396 acre ranch after 396-acre ranch, you’ll find the the DMR. The plethora of mailboxes on the road are an indication. The grading equipment along the 5-7 miles of dirt road approaching the DMR are another. This is no typical “resort”. Many of the roads in the “resort” are 4WD only, and while we scoffed at that designation from the safety of our trailer in Ft. Davis, once we got to the resort and started up some of the roads, we realized why they were designated as such. Many of the non-4WD roads were rutted where the rains had carved out their own pathways. Once our massive van reached the 4WD roads we decided to keep to the “good” roads before we got terribly stuck. Jamie wanted to check out a trailer and 7 acres of property but since the road was 4WD only, we gave up and just decided to enjoy the ride. Jamie has been scouting the idea of starting a bike shop in Alpine as he is finding there might be a good market for it. I’m not so excited about settling down, but the kids are ready for a home-base of some kind. This really is a very lovely area of Texas, but it is still Texas, and I’m not yet able to drop the stereotype I have of Texas, especially after reading about some of the folk inhabiting the DMR. Shiver.

So, send Jamie some support (Michael right now is trying to get him to take him into town to the store so he can spend money…) and love. We’ll leave here on Monday and head up to Santa Fe. Michael wants to go through Section 52 (Roswell) but that takes us out of our planned way and we had planned to stop in El Paso for supplies. We’ll see. Our destination for the immediate future is Albuquerque for Sept 6-10 and the Live and Learn Conference .

and on the 12th floor of the ACME building, one man is still trying to find the answers to life's persistent questions

The boys were disappointed again this week when Carl Kasell announced that Peter Sagal was again on vacation. They live for the weekends and Car Talk, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me and Prarie Home Companion. If we were living in a stick house, I’m sure they’d know so much more of typical American kid pop culture, but instead of Pokemon or some TV show that I’m so removed from American pop culture that *I* don’t even know what is current, the boys love to listen to NPR’s finest. They recite the intro to each and every segment, the intro to each show, they “do” Carl Kasell and Peter Sagal and LOVE Guy Noir and The Life of the Cowboys and the Katsup advisory board. Jesse’s favorite part of “Wait Wait” is the lightning fill in the blank. I have no idea why; he rarely gets a question right and furthermore, I’d be astonished if he knew any of the answers. They both adore Guy Noir (and that man is ALWAYS finding some woman with pants so tight he can read the writing on the laundry instructions or something similar, but I doubt they “get” that part either) and have begun to love “The Life of the Cowboys”, both on PHC.

So, thanks to Jamie, who insisted on Sirius, each weekend the boys creep out of bed, switch the Sirius from Howard Stern to NPR and turn the radio on in their room to enjoy a day of their favorite programs. On Sunday they listen to them all again and somehow manage to enjoy them even more the second time around. Tonight they’re enjoying a lovely fire while I try to encourage Ellen to go to sleep. *I* need to get up early, so I’m so hoping she’ll go down before 11.

Ft. Davis continues to draw us in, Jamie is hoping to look at a piece of property tomorrow and Michael is going to visit the Alpine UU Church. It is quiet, it is peaceful and it is heavenly. I’m trying very hard to drop my negative stereotype of Texas.

They say that Montana is “Big Sky Country” and as I’ve never been, I can’t disagree. I would be hard pressed, however, to find bigger sky than that which we’ve seen in Texas. This must be cloud season and throughout each day, they seem to try to outdo each other. The depth and range of color in the clouds alone is astounding. The rainbows, the enormous black thunderheads and deep blue sky are indescribable. I can’t think of a more beautiful sky anwhere we’ve been.

when we last left our intrepid wanderers...

We were falling in love all over again (doesn’t this get boring???) with Saltillo. Since Ellen steadfastly refused to leave Saltillo (and who wouldn’t blame her, the windy roads, the 2 hours of travel) Jamie and Michael first headed to the canyon, then Jamie, Michael and 3 kids, and then an extra day was needed as the boys were ADAMANT that I see the canyon. So, the day before we left, the boys and I headed into Los Lirios and Laguna de Sanchez and The Canyon. On the way I picked up a couple hitchhikers (well, in Mexico, it is rare to hitchhike, it is simply expected that when you’re in a rural area and have a giantesque vehicle, OF COURSE you’ll pick people up. That’s how, one day, the kids and I ended up with an extended family of some 20-25 people in the van. But I’ve already told that story…

I asked a LOT of questions and had a really good time getting familiar with the area from locals. I was asked to come and drink membrillo wine with them and had to turn them down a few times but it was an incredibly enjoyable ride. And I remembered how beautiful we found this area last year. It is indescribeably beautiful. Green, green EMERALD green grass and it is everywhere. Perhaps in Veracruz or Michoacan or Chiapas your eyes aren’t starved for emerald green, but everywhere we’ve been, the green is from cactus and corn and chile plants. Here are acres upon acres (almost all for sale) of blowing, long, green grass. And fat cows. And fat horses. And row after row of lovely little apple trees. And membrillo trees. And interspersed, tiny little towns perched in tiny valleys, barely able to climb the steep slopes of the valley walls. Or even more tiny towns perched on the tip top of a switchback. And wood. Never, anywhere in Mexico, have I seen wooden homes. They are ladrillo (brick) or cement block or cement block covered with cement “paint”. It was so terribly odd to see wood homes and I felt like I was in Chicken Alaska. The mountains we drove through were not gentle giants; these were fierce, jutting, jabbing, thrusting pinnacles forcing the landscape higher and higher. They were such a contrast to the soft and flowing valleys of windblown grasses, dotted with small apple farms.

Jamie was SO ready to buy up whatever we could afford, and once we’ve been through Veracruz, should he still want to, I’d be all for it. This year, instead of heading to La Laguna de Sanchez, we headed towards Santiago and The Canyon. It has a name, but everyone I talked to called it “The Canyon”. And it is a spectacular canyon. A tiny strip of crumbled white granite serves as a road, but it is not a road to be taken in the rainy season. Rivers swallow the road and cliffs pour down upon it. We were lucky to have dry days to explore.

So, we had a little difficulty leaving Saltillo, but eventually, the mail, horses, English language and library awaiting us in Ft. Davis called to us and we headed northward. For some reason, I remembered last years travel to the border as being much shorter than this years. Last year we had lovely cloudy skies, some rain and low temperatures. This year it was terribly hot once we descended from Saltillo’s saving 5000ft. We left late, to avoid the heat of the day, but this placed us about 1.5 hours from the border at sunset. I hate driving at night in Mexico as the cows, goats, donkeys and horses will meander on the highway and stopping the long long trailer is not for the faint of heart. As neither Jamie nor Michael feel comfortable navigating, I am in the lead, with the trailer, driving and navigating. A long drive is quite stressful and by the time we reached the border town of Ciudad Acuña, I was beat. It was 10pm and about 97F but I was done; made an executive decision and parked at a Pemex.

It was a noisy, hot, miserable night and only Ellen got decent sleep. Everyone was tired and grouchy the next morning, but I was so glad I had stopped. The bridge to the border is easy to miss in the daylight and I had not been looking forward to crossing and navigating twists and turns in the blackness of night. (has someone cued the violins yet or what?) We actually had less hassle and one of the border guards SMILED!!! Oh My Goodness, I was astounded! She was quite nice but still took our membrillo and found 2 eggs and got our limes. We didn’t have to go through the building redtape of proving who was whom and we were gone in about 20 minutes.
We have been in Ft. Davis since last Sunday and I have been spending a good portion of each and every day on the phone (pay phone at the office), sitting in a camp chair, swatting flies and attending to business. I had the boys Xmas presents sent that sat in rain for two days, a router to arrange the return and replacement of, brake controllers to return and replace, the list seems endless and I add more to it each day. But we LOVE it here at Prude Ranch and we love the tiny community of Ft. Davis. The libaray is a gem, the thriftstore has already taken some $20 for clothing and books, the weather is superb, the MacDonald Observatory is amazing and the ranch itself is a paradise. We are camped in a field of grass that we share with a universe of flies. The girls feed and pet horses everyday and on ocassion, horses run through camp. The office/restaurant area has a lovely seating area to simply sit and read or watch TV or play many of the board games they have available.
And WE GOT MAIL! Oh it was lovely to get all our mail. So we are happy and loving it here at 5000ft in Texas. We’ll stay for another week (waiting for the replacement router, but enjoying the hell out of life here) and then head to Santa Fe. And now, I MUST get back to work and earn some money for the family.

Saliendo por el otro lado

Everywhere I talk to people about the US, it is always referred as “the other side” (el otro lado). Tomorrow, we will finally end our 6 months (plus) in Mexico and trade tortas for sandwiches, manzanas for apples, queso for cheese but we’ll never trade the beauty of all we love of Mexico. Yesterday, Jamie returned to the canyon outside of La Laguna Sanchez, an area we found last year and fell in love all over again. Last year we were ready to move here but knew we needed to see more of the country. It is such an incredible area but the photos at Flickr just do not do it justice.

 I’m sure I’ll write more in the days to come, but I need to do a quick update as we’ll be out of contact for a little while. Michael is dreading the heat of Texas (well, we all are) and I contemplated heading to Chihuaua and then over to Presidio and then Alpine and Ft. Davis, but Jamie nixed that idea (and honestly, I’m not sure we’d make Chihuaua in one day). So, it is off to the oven that is Texas; spending summer at 5000-7000ft is our idea of air conditioning.

happy birthday, Mom!

Today is my mom’s birthday and she is a grand 60 years young!

Ellen has thrown up the last two nights running and last night I managed to sleep from sometime after 6am until 8:30.  Yippee!  Since it was the second night, my brain is running very much on empty.  As such, we didn’t leave for the US today and Jamie and Michael spent the day cycling and finding a place that we all MUST visit tomorrow, so barring any further vomiting episodes tonight, we’ll head for what Jamie is calling “Little Yosemite”.  We’ve always loved this side of the Sierra Madre, but he was really taken with the spot they visited today.  We tried to get there last year, but due to Hurricane Emily, it was underwater along with any and all roads leading there.  Ellen has been drinking soy milk today and eating bread and cream cheese but she is still very hungry.  Since the vomiting has come out of the blue; she is fine all day and eats well but wakes after midnight vomiting her poor little guts out for hours and hours, I’ve really been holding her back from eating.  She’s not too happy about that.  Jamie thinks it might be the green pommegrantes the kids are eating.  They’ve found green (but ripe!) apricots, membrillo (also green, but it is always green) and pomms (green, of course) and have been eating with abandon.  This is truly their idea of heaven; all kinds of their favorite fruit trees all free for the picking.

Well, I’m using up the very little of what is left of my functioning brain, so please wish my lovely mother a Happy 58th birthday and light 25 candles for her cake!  We are hoping to head to the US the day after and honestly, the miser in me is glad.  In Morelos we paid 40 pesos a night; here it is two hundred and fifty!  Course, we have pools and playgrounds and courtyards and biking areas, a gym and fruit trees all at our disposal.

Saltillo, Coahuila

I haven’t posted in such a long time that I don’t think I’ll ever catch up. I almost don’t want to even try; it seems insurmountable. Our computer had such a lovely vacation traveling the country that I don’t think it wanted to come home. I think that when I last left the saga, IBM had promised that the computer would be delivered BEFORE 10am last Wednesday. Or sometime. Really, it is quite irrelevant; promising to deliver on a specific day at a specific time here in Mexico is simply a wonderful joke that you should simply enjoy and not rely upon. I’m certain that no-one is surprised to find the computer never found its way on Wednesday. More to the point, the computer NEVER managed to find its way home. When UPS and IBM realized that it MIGHT be delivered on Monday (that would be tomorrow) they put their little heads together and authorized me to drive 130km to Aguascalientes and 130km back to Zacatecas to pick up the computer. I’m such a lucky duck.
Ellen and I decided to make it a special one on one day and when we arrived at the UPS office 15 minutes after it had been closed for a two hour (standard) lunch, that sealed the deal for us. We had a lovely lunch at a seafood restaurant and Ellen got the shrimp she has been craving for so long. We then wandered about the neighborhood; I didn’t want to drive anywhere as it had taken me 45 minutes to find the office and peeked and poked our noses here and there.

Picking up the computer was so anti-climactic after all the delays and wrong addresses and returns and glitches; 2 minutes with the clerk, a signature and we were gone. I’ve got it just about completely setup so I can give the kids this machine and when we get back to the US (we’re one day away from the border here in Saltillo) I’ll send my Toshiba in for warranty service.

Today we drove from Zacatecas to Saltillo and it was a LONG day. We had planned on leaving at 8am but spent so much time yesterday doing errands and saying “goodbye” to Zacatecas, that we woke with absolutely no preparation done. Jamie and I started packing everything up at about 8am, and by 10:40 all the tires had been topped off, gas tanks filled, lunches and breakfasts packed and we were heading out. The drive was rather uneventful until we got just outside Saltillo where the skies poured buckets and buckets of rain on the earth, uprooting light poles in the middle of the highway, turning road to river and wreaking havoc. We missed the absolute tormenta but suffered its destruction. Fording river (that was once a street) after river, spinning out on rocks on the “riverbed”, we inched towards the hotel and RV park.

The kids talked us into KFC for dinner (first time in a year) so everyone pigged out on greasy crispy chicken and they are now riding around the park. They really love it here and remember it well from last year. I think we’ll be here 3-4 days and then we’ll head to Texas.

jonsing for the good shit

We’ve been supremely busy doing nothing. I have been working, Jamie does laundry and cooks, the kids play and mess the place up and steadfastly refuse to do anything we want. On Saturday I headed into town to get blood work done and since it was sunny (again!) decided to try to take some pictures. I headed to my favorite buildings and plazas and found the reason that we’ve seen so many plazas with bleachers and stages setup. There is an International Folkloric Festival in town and when I strolled past the Plaza de Armas I found very very many groups had gathered and were performing impromptu dances and music. It was so lovely to sit and watch and enjoy without being harassed about how BORING it was and could we LEAVE yet and WHEN could we leave yet and WHY were we here and could we LEAVE and that someone was thirsty or had to pee. So I enjoyed, though guiltily, as I knew Jamie had the kids at the trailer. But I also knew they were using the computer and relatively zoned out. So I enjoyed a bit more and wished I could come and go as I pleased just to enjoy.

The next day I was successful in dragging all their sorry asses to town to find out about the festival and see if we’d have another appearance of folklorists. Unfortunately, the performances were to be much later that night but we did happen upon a clown group performing at one of the tiny plazas. The kids weren’t able to follow the whole thing but they did find the clowns pretty funny, especially when Pike and Jesse were called up on stage. Pike left early, frustrated by his lack of Spanish, but Jesse was in LOVE with the limelight. He bowed to all four corners at each applause (bringing more), he played along with the entire skit (with help from Pike who would run up and relay my translation when things got too difficult) and even kissed a boy! I’m almost certain the boy (and many members of the audience) did not believe that Jesse is a boy. He got a clown nose, flashlight thingy and balloon penguin for his efforts. He was so “high” after the performance and it was quite obvious that he fell head over heels for the limelight.

Yesterday, I dragged the entire family into town (AGAIN!) and we watched a couple performances of the festival. The Michoacan contingent performed beautiful dances and ended with 2 or 3 hilarious “danza de los viejos” old men dances. The kids LOVED the dances and were really glad they came. Unfortunately Jesse got a bad headache as we were waiting for the main performance of the night, but I was able to go “backstage” and take many photos of the beautiful dancers and their costumes. After looking at the photos and trying to “fix” them due to the limitations of my point and shoot camera, I’m SO jonsing for a DSLR. I’ve been looking at the Nikon D50 and Canon Rebel and Pentax *st…Way back when I had a Pentax SLR and loved it. Going digital would be even better. But the prices… I just don’t think I can find it in the budget.

I got my blood tests back and my white cell count is coming back, so apparently the first test wasn’t a fluke. Guess I was really sick. I’m feeling much much better these days and would say I’m almost back to snuff.

Oh, I’ve uploaded a video from the festival at YouTube, I’ll see if I can’t post it here (you’ll need flash or quicktime or somesuchcrap). Ok, you’ll have to click this link to see it. I can’t get it to embed.

For those following along; our computer is back in Guadalajara. On Friday I noticed that UPS’s website indicated the address was wrong. I called them and corrected it (IBM had left off vital information) and they said they’d relay the information to wherever it was (San Luis Potosi?) and to call back Monday morning for a status. Monday morning found that they needed more time to find the package and requested I call back that evening. Apparently the package had been outsourced to a private courier as Zacatecas is considered “remote” to UPS. When I called this morning I was told that the package had been returned to IBM in Guadalajara because the private courier didn’t get the correct address in time. After talking to (and admonishing) IBM (who screwed up the addy in the first place) I was told the computer would be sent overnight from Guad and would be here by 10am TOMORROW! So, I’m crossing my fingers and toes. We need to get out of the country soon as all our permits are expiring, but I’d honestly suffer any delay if it meant I could attend more of the folkloric festival.