Sidetracked Charley

I am an active dreamer. I dream in color and I quite often remember my dreams in vivid detail. But some nights my dreams are just more over the top. Last night was such a night. I woke up feeling as if I had participated in some Olympic event. The last dream before waking was of skiing. I have not skied in eight years but I was on a familiar run - one that is a combination of places I have skied and all the horrid fears skiers can have when they drop over the top into unfamiliar terrain. Getting up seemed wise. It certainly was going to be more relaxing. I have often wondered if my more vivid dreams, and nights like this last with seemingly endless dreams, have a root cause. I know I am apt to get a round of nightmares when I am coming down with something. And dreams that repeat like the airport bathroom dream (a version of the empty box dream women often suffer) occur when I am quite frustrated. I dream more on the three days of full moon influence (day before through day after). ...

And it has definitely been one of those weeks. Looking back maybe it has been one of those months. I always have these expectations of quiet hermitage for the first quarter of the year. And perhaps on reflection that expectation is unrealistic. Just snow can be derailing when it comes in two feet dumps. It has to be dealt with. And it doesn't take two feet. Wednesday night the wind blew. Howled. And it built up drifts and ridges and mountains of the snow which fell before and added another six inches to the total. Just the six inches would have shut down New York City. Us mountain folk bundle up and grab the snow shovel and do what needs to be done.  But a major impediment yesterday were the tourists. The ones staying right across the road decided since they could not get in their driveway they would park in the middle of the county road right in front of the driveway I was shoveling out. Then the group from Houston staying up the hill arrived all upset the driveway to their h...

Let me mention I love weather. One of my favorite parts of flight lessons was learning about weather. And learning to draw my own conclusions because if I learned anything from flying and living in the mountain west it is that the weatherman knows nothing about our weather. They know so little about mountain effect snow that prior to the previous Winter Olympics in Utah the federal government funded a two year study of mountain weather. They learned nothing it seems. I find the severe weather statements and advisories and watches almost comic. ... UNSETTLED WEATHER PATTERN CONTINUES FOR THE REST OF THIS WEEK... INCREASING CLOUDS OVER WESTERN NEW MEXICO THIS MORNING WERE THE SIGNAL OF ANOTHER APPROACHING WEATHER DISTURBANCE... WHICH WILL IMPACT NORTHERN AND CENTRAL NEW MEXICO STARTING LATER TONIGHT AND CONTINUE INTO THURSDAY NIGHT.  Strong beginning I suppose but note they had to wait until there were actually clouds to the west of us to come up with this. So there is a need t...

Woke up this morning to the silence of snow and total awareness that it was not time to get up. I don't keep a clock beside my bed and in the winter especially in the middle of a snow storm there are no telltale signs of morning approaching. But I knew. So I snuggled down deeper into the covers surrounded by fur kids and sought to go back to sleep. Almost succeeded a couple times but my mind was beset with hamster-wheel-thinking. I used to raise hamsters as a kid and sold them to pet stores. They love their wheels. I used to watch them run in them endlessly and wonder if they knew they were not getting anywhere. To this day I cannot get on a treadmill or a stair stepper and not think of hamsters and their wheels. But I digress. Subject of this blog is hamster-wheel-thinking - going round and round a subject and not getting anywhere but back to where you started. When my mind gets into HWT mode it doesn't matter what subject it is tossing around endlessly. This morning at a...

I have recently gotten involved with reading Anne Perry's series of novels on World War I. I love historic fiction and Anne Perry has been a favorite of mine for her Victorian Era mystery novels feature William Monk and Thomas Pitt. I was gratified when reading No Graves Yet , the first in the series to find these books are also mysteries. Though the mystery seems secondary to horror of war. I just finished the second in what I thought was going to be a three book series but evidently it was a longer war. Thus far there are five. No Graves As Yet Shoulder the Sky Angels in the Gloom At some Disputed Barricade We Shall Not Sleep The first two books which I have finished have definitely helped me understand the German/British connection. What a love hate relationship that one is. My father is of Irish, English and Scot ancestry and my mother was half German with a lot of other things tossed in there. Our home from time to time seemed like a reenactment of WWI and WWII . ...

Went through another session with my lawyer to prepare me for trial on the 19th of March. First time we did this is was a lot more about fact finding for her case preparation. This time was more about posing questions that would actually be asked while I was in the witness box by either my attorney or the opposing attorney on cross. We prepped for two hours and then she informed my that my direct would likely be 2 1/2 and then it would be the other attorney's turn. I am exhausted just thinking about it. And with the effects of my head injury I have major doubts about my ability to answer questions while sitting in one place for that long - or longer. Especially when the questions will be hostile from his attorney. I have my doubts about being able to physically and mentally make it through the remaining month of trial preparation. I could lose by tharning out when asked the question, "When to you begin planning to cheat your contractor?" And then there are all the ru...

I am reading Anne Perry's second book of her WWI trilogy: Shoulder the Sky . Reading about a chaplain on the front lines having to bolster the faith of others can be a bit depressing. How does one keep the faith that this too shall pass? Let alone spread a positive message to the soldiers on the front lines about a loving god. There are months that just get you down. February is a month with low cosmic energy (sorry, but cannot think of another way of expressing that). But I have decided to do something stressful like diet. And my two year battle against my contractor-from-hell comes to a head the 19th of March. Shrinks will tell you there are more suicides in this month than December, which most of us believe with Christmas depression. And those among us fighting chronic illness go through the biggest crises in February. And those with fatal illnesses die. Mortuaries hate the month. The ground is frozen but more people die than any other month discounting those with a WWI Ger...

  I got an awful case of the flu last April. It was the worst viral infection I have had since the Hong Kong flu in 1968. I personally think it was the H1N1 but as I felt entirely too bad to even leave the house for three weeks I have no proof. I did not even near my former self until the end of May. By then it had been six weeks of being couch potato. And because of secondary infections in my mouth I had gone from my healthy diet of proteins to soft white stuff. I craved anything with milk. Besides I was trying to get my natural immune system back up to par and was making my own organic yogurt. You can gain weight on yogurt. I am proof. Until the flu I had established a balance of exercise and sensible eating which worked at maintaining a balance with my scale and clothes. But the flu and weakened condition following the flu threw all that out the window. And every time I tried to get back to my fitness routine another round of not feeling good would interject itself. Or the str...

The theory is having survived the gradual disintegration of Yahoo 360 I am a master at coping with platform glitches. Oh, but that were true. I find myself totally intolerant of Facebook following their not (in my opinion) successful launch of their new format. And when I at last, after posting several comments that would not stick around, logged off until notified by a friend they have this fixed I decided there is such a thing as Post Traumatic Internet Stress Syndrone or PTISS. Pronounced with the T silent. I am frankly PTISSed off. I thought I had found a social network that met my needs and wants especially when combined with my blogs here on Blogspot. I even researched and set up automatic feeds of two of my blogs: Creative Journey to Binford-Bell Studio Fan Page and this blog to my regular profile page. There have been some minor glitches from the beginning but nothing I could not cope with as in FB takes their own jolly good time to do this seemingly automatic function. Then...

Februray 9th, 2010 This was a very pretty snow storm. Meaning there was no wind and just these huge flakes cascading down seemingly forever. I went out this morning and with a broom brushed the snow from the top of my van. The last time I had that much snow on the top it broke the windshield. I had never even considered snow to be that heavy. Of course my standard poodle and labradoodle are in their element. Snow, they figure, was made just for them. So naturally a walk (it really is more like porpoising when it is this deep) was in order and I took along the camera and did a slide show for everyone in the southern climes.

Cannot blame Mercury being in retrograde because it was not. But last week seemed all about communications or missed communications. Talking or writing at odds bad enough to make you want to be mum for the rest of your life. And get off the internet forever. Replies I got from e-mails sent in regard to the every growing Lake Coyote in my backyard were so off the mark I re-read my own missive two or three times to see if I had made a faulty edit. NO. I wrote what I meant they just read what they wanted to read. Whatever let them off the hook as it were. On verbal conversations I even checked back in once with a third party and she also didn't have a clue where the other person was coming from about what I supposedly said. She had heard what it was I thought I had said. Ever have one of those weeks? I got to the point I didn't even want to try and clarify their opinions. Even Facebook was against me by not allowing deletes this week. No editing is bad enough but no deletes i...

And one of the winners is: Frosty Aspen And the weather report says : THE POTENTIAL EXISTS FOR SIGNIFICANT SNOW ACCUMULATIONS FROM THE EAST SLOPES OF THE SANGRE DE CRISTO AND SANDIA MOUNTAINS EASTWARD TO THE OKLAHOMA AND TEXAS BORDERS. Beginning tonight and going through Sunday. Don't you like that phrase - the potential exists? The weather reporting bureaus have been wrong all winter long. The storms have been giving us a miss on the whole. We did get the 6 inches forecast on the last storm but it was a day early. Skiers were ecstatic and the people that invested heavily in snow plowing equipment three winters ago were able to at last get out and use it this winter. The man that once made $600 one month just from me plowed the snow from the driveway across from me and pushed into the west entry of my loop driveway. THANK YOU, VERY MUCH. And on to the edge of my property so it can melt and join Coyote Lake. I don't think I am calling him again. When I mentioned what Paul...

I first addressed this issue of the ever growing Little Coyote Creek (I will soon be dropping the modifier - Little) on my blog Travels With Charley and figured it was time for an update. Rising waters are temporarily frozen due to weather. Or since they are under the snow I haven't a clue whether they are frozen or not. But Friday when the sun reappears there will of course be more barely thawed water to add to my growing water issue. I am now calling it unofficially Coyote Lake and am looking for a used Sunfish sail boat for spring. And as the picture of Leeds Castle in England shows I won't be the first home with a water feature out the back door. My letter writing (well, e-mail writing) has finally gotten the attention of some governing bodies. The county of Colfax still thinks I am talking the irrigation ditch and not the creek but the state engineer's branch office in Cimarron is beginning to see the picture. They have scheduled a site visit for Monday. Hope by ...