Sidetracked Charley

It is quite difficult to stay on track through guests, holiday events, and all the cooking and shopping that entails. And as I discovered yesterday after the last house guest had departed it is near impossible to get immediately back on track even when the guest in question cleans up after herself expertly. And helps you with things like unloading the van from the fair. I had set the goal of re-hanging all my paintings sitting in boxes in the studio and getting most of the decorating done on the fresh cut tree. I got two paintings hung and most of the decorations on before collapsing before the television and wasting the afternoon watching DVD's and making trips to the kitchen for left-overs to munch on. I could blame the fatigue on fibro which probably had something to do with it. But basically it was a rebellion over a week of "have-to-do's." I really did not want to do anything regardless of energy level. So I enjoyed doing nothing much yesterday, but that st...

I had to go to Taos yesterday for an appointment with my legal aid attorneys and one of my witnesses in my defense against the contractor-from-hell. My witness is giving a deposition this afternoon. Needless to say I was not looking forward to the whole ordeal and so taking a tip from my father, who always combined our doctor visits with trips to toy stores, I decided to treat myself to working out at the gym and then a visit to my favorite kitchen store: Monet's Kitchen. My excuse was that I needed a harp and a mandolin. No, not musical instruments. A harp is a more intelligent hand potato peeler and a mandolin slices and juliennes. According to the chef that instructed us at the Taos School of Cooking last week both are indispensable in the kitchen. Monet's Kitchen is in the little Bent Street area of Taos with all the cute stores. It is were Moby Dicken's Book Store is. And my favorite yarn shop. I needed some #6 double pointed needles for a knitting project. So ...

I know how to cook. I learned from my mother who was a very respectable basic cook firmly rooted in the dishes she knew her family would eat and who every once in a while dared to inject something new. She taught me what a pinch was, and taste before you season, how to read a recipe book, and substitutions. College taught me books. I have always maintained school is not about memorization (teach for the test) but on learning how to continue to learn; ergo books. So graduating from my mother's kitchen I sought out cookbooks she didn't own; had no need to own. And I helped my friends in the kitchen when invited for dinner. Then there was eating out and guessing the ingredients and coming home and trying to duplicate that recipe. At a time between "serious jobs" I even worked as an apprentice chef in a small French/Italian restaurant with a great repetition. I was hired on the basis of my French Onion Soup. I make a devine French Onion Soup. But I don't cook wi...

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal . Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate...we can not consecrate...we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have...

Unnamed Arch in the Maze area of Canyonlands, Utah Life becomes just so much keeping on keeping on unless you have a dream to move toward. Long range goals and dreams that are rather nebulous because of their distance from your point in time are, of course, necessary but they too often fade from our focus. And short term plans like the fair I have at the end of the month are about the same as making payments on all your bills; more of just putting one foot in front of another. It is the middle range dream that is the most fun. My sister and I have engaged in the infamous Thelma and Louise Road trip three times before and found we had almost as much fun researching, plotting, planning, and equipping as we did finally setting out. We had not ventured out on a grand road trip since our 2006 adventure on Lake Powell. The minute we got into cell phone range after eight days in a technological black hole she received the call from Alan, her husband in Texas, that he had a job interview...

Happy Halloween everyone. I bought a pumpkin a few days ago and my intent was to carve it on All Hallows Eve - yesterday. But that did not get done. I was cleaning up the studio before making a mess again with the pumpkin and got sidetracked into preparing two platforms for two new paintings. I got out of Dodge over last weekend and came back to cold and extremely cold temperatures. It has been nice to be in the livingroom of my house not far from the woodstove. Yesterday the sun came out which warms the studio due to its passive solar design and ultimately the rest of my house. So it was comfortable to work in the studio. And the view was not reminding me of just how cold it was outside. How cold was it? Well, yesterday morning when I walked the fur kids the recorded temperature was 13F but there was a bitter wind which went right through my old winter coat. That is toast. I figured I might have to buy a new one and was debating Sierra Trading on line or the local thrift store w...

Firewood half stacked My father used to tell tales of the blizzards of his childhood in Kansas City. Like all young children I rolled my eyes sure this was a lot like the fish that got away which continued to grow upon every telling. As an adult living in the intermountain west and spending 20 years of that time as a ski instructor I have been trapped by avalanches and snowed into mountain resorts and snow blinded on the trail heading to the lodge. But all those were transient events compared to the Blizzard of '06/'07 and the winter that followed. It started snowing I believe on the 29th of December. I went out and gathered up firewood from the unstacked pile just delivered. It had been a mild winter to that point and I was sure the wood I had would suffice but had gotten extra at the last minute. Snow storms in New Mexico seldom hang around but this one did. It was still snowing on New Year's Day. By then we had 6 feet of what skiers call Champagne powder if the wind...