Sidetracked Charley

I live in rural America. And I love it here. I even most times love what I do not have because I choose to live outside cities. But some of the things I do not have cause problems defining where I live. I do not have a zip code. I borrow neighboring zip codes depending on who is asking. In the United States of America a zip code is five or nine numbers that are added to a postal address to assist the sorting of mail. There are about 43,000 zip codes. They are attached to post offices which the USPS wants to reduce. Post Offices are attached largely to cities these days. Once Black Lake had a post office and our zip code I am told was 87734. But the USPS deleted that post office because there was no city but just a large rural area with farms and ranches and people like myself which loved living in rural areas.  When the Black Lake post office was closed the zip code was moved to Ocate, NM which is over the mountain and through the canyon and most notably in an entire other county. ...

Bedroom number one at Charley's Hideaway   When I first began this project of turning my attached apartment into a short term rental I figured it would be mostly about money. Covid-19 caused the Governor to close down art studios as non-essential businesses. And so I had time on my hands. In the first few weeks last year I cancelled all my private lessons, Art Up cancelled all the fairs. Even Dog Gone park suffered as people cancelled month and longer trips that left their dogs with me. I would have been looking into mortgage forgiveness rules if I had not just a few months before refinanced my house and taken some cash out. Cash which was suppose to be used to beautify the the outside and maybe even buy a green house. Instead it went into paying the mortgage when I fell short. I started thinking about short. I began a policy of taking dogs just for the day - Dog Bark Camp. That was a bonus idea because it seemed those trapped at home with their dogs all day were looking for r...

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...