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.