Sidetracked Charley

I live in an unincorporated area of Colfax County. Black Lake is a recognized area of that county and the farthest from the county seat of Raton. In fact I am closer to Taos and Mora. I routinely get summoned for jury duty in Mora and have to deline. I do my grocery shopping in Taos. I have been assigned the Angel Fire Zip Code. And get my mail on my rural route through Ocate which is in Mora. My legal address is Black Lake, NM 87710 and because of that Angel Fire Zip code designation everyone from my short term rental agency to UPS and Google tags me with Angel Fire. That actually works in my favor when it comes to short term rental occupancy because nobody books vacations in Raton. Since the coal mines closed they have been slowly dying. The current population of Raton is now 5734, down from 9000 and still declining. Its current source of income is county offices. We drive two hours to respond to jury duty of apply for licenses. Which is what they want me to do. The whole county of C

  As frequent readers will know it has not been an easy 2022. First there was the incident of black dog one followed quickly by tripping over black dog two. Followed by the snow at last. Fortunately I discovered Bob and Brad on YouTube. And I have learned to sleep on my back. At least for half the night. But they are not as good with thumbs as they are with backs. I decided to redo the decor in the upstairs of the vrbo, went positively manic about decorating beds with pillows, and stupidly did not count how many screws had to be removed to be over the bunk beds. This aserbated my skier's thumb big time. I do not remember it took 30 days to recover before but it did this time even if they called it Mommies' thumb. But that long not using your fingers, thumb and wrist take a toll. So when I went to lift my battery out of my Corolla I had to ask for help. Bought a new battery and guess what? They are as heavy as the old ones. And you cannot drive a batteryless Corolla to the mecha