October

The end of summer doesn't quite bring to the end my current segment of time. This year's summer I've been a frequent commuter between Minnesota and New Mexico.

June – drove to Minnesota to attend a child's graduation from a training academy. They remain children even after they become fully functioning tax paying adults.

July – remained in Minnesota to 1) visit my mother who had fallen in January and now dos best with a live body staying with her. 2) take the older grandbabies camping for a week 3) visit the young grandbabies who used to live in New Mexico and who I sorely miss, 4) stay with my mother so the current stayee could take a break and 5) see and visit with my children who may be parents, or not, and who I also miss.

August – back in New Mexico to continue on projects that, hopefully, will make the house I'm sitting more attractive to buyers. Currently said projects include chronically cleaning southwestern wind blown dirt out of every corner, off every baseboard and dug out of every carpet edge and upgrading a bathroom including replacing the toilet. Replacing some cracked tile & scrubbing the above dirt out of the grout is still ongoing.

September – back to Minnesota to babysit the sweetest little dog I've met and to keep gardens, really an artist's outlet, from totally fading while the owners took time to celebrate 30 years of co-living. I love you both and am glad I had a chance to help. The side benefit from this, and well worth the drive, was pigging out on garden ripe tomatoes, grazing on peak of ripeness raspberries and picking supper veggies minutes before preparing them. Hmmm! It was almost enough to pull me back to Minnesota forever.

October – this month is only a third done and it feels like it is already spent! Mother turned 98; I did not be drive back to help her celebrate since I've agreed to be the stayee for the winter. A grandchild will soon turn three and I won't be returning for his party. Parts I ordered for some additional repairs arrived today so between scrubbing grout, repairing damaged grout and sealing the places that are is now pristinely clean, I will be repairing some sadly neglected furniture fixing. Why my children have chosen to live with broken isn't hard to figure. While I won't bet the farm on it, I do think I've spent around 100 hours just taking care of minor irritations. Are any of you bothered by the gap between baseboard and flooring? I sit on the john and see a gap that has gradually turned from ok-its-a-gap to how-the-f**-could-the-builder-let-that-go!!! And I don't even know if the builder did let it go – but since I've found several things that did slip by I'll jump to conclusions.

The long and short of it is, I'm here on temporary so haven't been pursuing my own life as I could and I'm starting to feel pretty lonely. There has to be respectfully aged women someplace and I don't know where to look. Did browse the area craig's list once and found babies! It was a sad day in my life when I admitted to me that babies are no longer interesting. Does that make me old?

Must be older anyway since I've digressed. After the floor is finished and I'm done with repairs, its time to head back to Minnesota for a fun-filled winter of shoveling. And maybe I will finally be cool, as in temperature, I've long given up being cool.

Actually, I started writing this because of a supply run to Las Crucas. There is some major interstate road-building going on there so naturally I missed my alternate turn. While working my way to where I wanted to be rather than where I was, I read a billboard encouraging TB tests. I thought TB was pretty done however there is lots of migration around my parts so I did some web browsing and discovered there are close to a half-million cases of TB every year in Latin America and that 50,000 people or so die of it every year. There are many differences here in the southwest from north central.. Seems to me, TB potential is one of the more significant.

New Mexico Living -

I've been here a couple of weeks or so since the family left and it surely is quiet. I miss playing with or holding the grandbabies, I miss seeing their parents and having actual conversations. And I miss becoming more acquainted with my daughter-in-law. Oh well, I guess.

Since I feel motivated to give the kids something for occupying their house, I've started the last of the packing and cleaning. So far packing has been minimal, stuff like the bathroom wastebasket and a few stray toys they may have left behind on purpose. And I've started a small heap of stuff to bring with me when I see them next. Things like a partial package of diapers, a toy Forrest and I used to play with, things like that. I am glad to see his rope was taken, we played for hours with that rope. Sometimes it was a fishing line, sometimes a rescue rope and sometimes it caught his stuffed dog or fought off monsters. Even when he really, really liked a game and we played it a hundred times I didn't care. It put me in mind of how fast my own kids grew up and how soon once becomes be too much.

One of the other things I do is sweep the front sidewalk. Did I mention the wind tends to blow in the afternoon and sometimes its still blowing in the morning. On calm mornings I sweep in front of the house door and the driveway. Three days ago I started to sweep. I cleaned by the front door and partially moved a drift of door by the garage. That drift seemed fairly big and I was tired of walking through it on the way to Scout. Unfortunately it was in the afternoon so lots of the dirt blew back to around the house. After I made a path I quit.

Now its two days later. A good portion of the garage dirt blew away however I found pebbles in the lee of the car to clear away. And this time I decided to measure the powdery dirt in front of the main door. I easily picked up a quart and then swept the rest back under some nearby cedar bushes. It looked like my quart came from under those same bushes since I found bits of cedar debris on top of it. And it looks darker than the driveway sweepings, so I think I will try planting in it.

Humidity runs around minus 10% so water evaporates while I hold it. If I showered and then walked around the yard (6ft block fence folks) I'd be dry when I returned, covered with fine dust but dry.

Another task is dusting. All that wind blows the very fine dust in through every nonexistent crack a house has. Down here, you don't need an energy audit to tell where the leaks are, all a body needs to do is look for dust patterns.

Thinking of dust, Scout has the same problem. One of the first things I did after parking her in the house lee was wash the bedding. And for a few days there were no clouds of fine, air-choking dust when I moved covers to lie down, no coughing fits, no taste of clay when I breathed. Now I understand why all the homeless looking people also seem the color of dirt.

Alas, I hear the siren call of dust bunnies and must heed their call.