Sidetracked Charley

  It is easy in March and April in New Mexico to blame the weather. And since March 2020 it has been really easy to blame the pandemic. For four years we could blame Trump. And since January 6, 2021 we can still blame Trump and his trumpsters. But I was raised to not whine. And blaming someone or something is whining. But I am going to whine. I am going to blame perhaps all of the above, except for weather, on the failure to acquire a washer and dryer for my vacation rental. I had one ordered from Home Depot. I had one ordered for delivery March 24th. They delivered to Albuquerque. Would take two more weeks to get a refund. Drove to Lowe's in Espanola and bought a set double charging the credit card hoping for the stimulus check and/or Home Depot refund before payment was required. They could not deliver until this last Thursday. But because of Governor's way of opening or shutting down whole counties Lowe's could not install due to the 16 new cases in Raton two hours away ...

Supposedly I am on the last lap of having my apartment ready for short term rental. I had a goal of being ready to take guests on the 1st of April. And per advice attempted a listing on AirBnB as of the 15th of March. Best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry. "To a Mouse" by Robert Burns.  After days of building my listing it still insisted it was in Taos, New Mexico. And nothing I could do got the attention of the site managers. Would have been frustrating enough without going through another virtual battle with Lowe's Building site to get a reasonably priced washer and dryer delivered. And then the plumbing issue. And Amazon failed me with their two day delivery schedule going to nine days on the little amenities required to please guests. Oh, did I mention the succession of snow storms. Whatever snow we didn't see in "real winter" we got shoved into a couple weeks in just before spring and after. I truly harbored thoughts of admitting this was stu...