Jinx!

I think I may have made it snow. I posted yesterday about being down on winter (cold and snow) and we woke up this morning to heavy gray skies and giant wet snow flakes drifting down out of the sky! Ah well, embrace the moment. We really have not had that much snow this season so far so it actually does look pretty out there. We took Rudy for our usual morning walk and we all got absolutely soaked. It's 36 degrees out so it's not even all that cold. All in all... not too bad. Maybe I will take back some of my attitude from yesterday. I probably should not have taken the camera out on the walk because of how wet it got.... but I did.

Our front gate which leads out to Canyon Rd

The English Garden

Snowy Trail Blazer

Sleeping Trees

Snow Beard

Trying to love the snow

Tiny World

Big Bill McLane

See Ya...

Rudy loves to catch snow balls. Unfortunately and curiously it usually ends up making him puke. I know, I know. It's too confusing to think about for long and it does not stop him from wanting to do it so....

Wet Head

We are holed up again inside now. Billy and I go to bootcamp at noon and then I hope we can build a fire and curl up for the next 24 hours. Happy MLK Day.... hope you are having a good one.

Cooped Up

Winter. I will never say that I enjoy any aspect of it. Cold can kiss my ass.... snow looks great out the window but I'll take a pass on going out in it much. Dark at 4:30? While it is beneficial for my current sleep/work schedule it sucks eggs. I want to be able to have the doors and windows open... I want to see green on the trees... I want to go barefoot. Remind me again why we moved back to the mainland from Hawaii? That was really, really dumb. Sigh.

This winter so far has not been too harsh. It has been so mild in fact that I am currently suffering from my juniper allergy. In January. This is about the only reason why I could be moved to cheer for a deep cold spell to fall upon us and linger. Rudy is also suffering from seasonal affective disorder. He lays around in a piss poor mood and all he wants to do otherwise is eat. See?

Go ahead and look at the larger version of this by clicking on it and take a gander at the dirty look on his face. He is a hater.  The dude is hard up. He even has a dried sweet potato treat wedged back there by his bum but he could care less. I think I may buy him a bottle of bourbon just to help him through until we get to the end of February. Everyone likes to pretend come March that Spring Is Here! So I will let Rudy ride that shenanigan train too. Until then... bottoms up Rudy. Just don't puke on the rug.

The apartment feels like a nest at times. We have too much stuff, it's warm in here and the thick adobe walls can sometimes make you feel as though you were twenty stories underground in a tomb. The thick draperies and blankets we have covering the windows aren't doing us any favors in that department either. I have grown to depend on them though... to block out the car headlights that race through our bedroom every 5 minutes for hours right around the time we go to bed.

I did notice that our orchid on the high window ledge in the bathroom is getting ready to bloom. I can't even remember what color the flowers are... purple? So that will be cool to watch them open up.

My favorite tea tin has been getting a real work out. We drink about 40 gallons of hot tea per day. I'm hooked on genmaicha. Does anyone have a suggestion for a good chai? I am thinking of blending my own as I can never quite find a store bought variety that does the trick for me.

My cookie cutters above the fridge are looking sort of lonely.... I need to find the time to bake up a mess of rockets and hippos to deliver to friends with kids. I have not even used most of them yet. I have a monkey and a bison and a bunch of other random shapes. It's just a question of when will a Martha Stewart mood strike?

Our mantle is such a glom of nick nacks. One of my favorites is the little green wooden guy. He is super old, hand carved and hand painted. He's meant to walk/waddle down a plank board with his big feet. Billy bought me the groovy purple crystal a few years back. We saw it in a gem & mineral store and I was taken with all it's little facets and sparkles. It is supposed to be straight up, pure magic (of the fairy variety.) So far nothing big has come of it but I love it anyway.

The photo on the right is my Grandmother's family (on my Mom's side) on their cotton plantation in Arkansas when my Gram was a young teenager. The pic to the left of it is her parents. I love both of these photos dearly even though I never met my great grandparents and I only know (knew) 3 out of the ten people in the group shot. The photos make me feel grounded somehow. Knowing that these sort of folks are my roots makes me feel like part of an old oak tree even if I am still somewhat of a bitter little acorn.

Billy is painting. Every day. Some things (barely ever if not) never change. He is working on a self portrait which I will post an image of when it's been completed. It's been years since he did one... and I think this one will be really cool.

I'm off to start a new book. Haruki Murakami's 1Q84. Anyone else reading it or planning to?

The Weight of a Tooth

Try to imagine what your life would be like if your teeth looked like this. It would really make an impact I think.... right? Rudy carries the weight effortlessly. Such a strong man.

Late Saturday Afternoon

I finished up the work week today and now have three days off. Yessssssss. This is a very good thing. It puts my head in a good place and I almost immediately feel my creative juices flowing. It's winter. It's kinda slow around these parts.... but I have a list a mile long of stuff I want to do. One of the top things on that list is to get back to shooting photos if not daily at least three times a week or so. I'm tired this afternoon and SORE (thanks FRANK!) so I did not wander far but thankfully I don't have to. Our homestead here is about as inspirational as anything you could hope for.  I went out and wandered around the property and caught the moon rising over the mountains and there was gorgeous light everywhere.

Hope you are having a cozy and inspiring weekend.

Our front door, a tapestry I found at the thrift this summer

Down the hall by Adam's. 

The Old Bike

La Luna

Beautiful Moon

Winter Tunnel

Good Night Little Fatty!

These are my favorite winter birds here. They are so common and plain jane but adorable all the same. 

How many calories are in that marshmallow?

One new development in our lives over the past few months is that Young William and I enrolled in a fitness boot camp. Holy crap, right? Yeah.... that's what I originally said. Holy CRRAAAAP!!! The place we are going to is Boot Camp Santa Fe and we totally love it. I have maybe never been more surprised at myself in my whole life.  We were initially prodded to join by Jeff and Kari (friends and owners of the place where I work) because they wanted to join up and start getting in better shape. So we did it... we are now about ten weeks in to a 3 day a week schedule getting our asses whooped. Whipped? Whooped. Definitely WHOOPED. For the initial 8 weeks (the beginner class) we went and never missed a class. I was sore every day for 8 weeks solid. For reals.

For anyone out there curious about joining a boot camp here is a bit about our particular class..... it's 50 minutes long, you have about a 5 to 8 minute warm up period of stretching and getting your heart rate up a bit and then the next 40 minutes consists of squats, sit ups, push ups, holding the plank pose, mountain climbers, jumping rope, more squats, more sits ups and so on and so forth. You never stop moving and there are a million variations on the theme. I never knew there were so many ways to do sit ups. You will feel like you are going to straight up die for sure at least two or three times during the class. Then there is a quick cool down stretching session right at the end. The thing I have grown to love about the class is that it pushes you to work harder than you ever would alone. Well, for most people anyway. I am sure there are some fitness buffs out there that can go ape shit all by themselves but I am not one of them. After finishing the 8 week beginner class and then doing two of FRANK'S classes over the holiday break time (you must say the name FRANK with some authority and volume because FRANK means business) I feel stronger than I have in perhaps my entire life. Billy is feeling it too although he used to be a muscle head back in the day unlike me so his body has gone down this road before... whereas mine has most certainly not. Allow me to mention that I achieved a moment toward the end of one of FRANK'S classes where I was actually gagging. My body was trying to make me barf.... but I did not let it. Sheer will power people. Sheeeeer will power at work there.

So yeah! We are now enrolled in the nest session of camp and classes started again this week. We plan to keep going three days a week for the next 16 weeks to carry us through til Spring when we will drop one day of class so we can go hiking in the mountains on that day instead. I also just signed up for this thing called Gym Pact which is a free application for iPhones or iPads (nothing on the market yet for droids etc.) where you pledge how many days a week you are planning to go to the gym and a dollar amount you must pay in if you miss a day (I pledged ten bucks.) You check in when you get to the gym and the GPS registers whether or not you are really there.... if you don't check in then you pay ten bucks. If you DO check in and never miss a scheduled day at the gym then you actually MAKE money. The money comes from the lazy slobs who did not go when they said they would... and the funds go straight into a paypal account. Cool, right? I have no idea what the earnings will be.... a pretty insignificant amount I am sure, but what the Hell, it's another motivating factor to get us there.

Other than that news it's pretty much business as usual around here. Rudy is crabby because it's winter. He is usually stationed by the door that looks out on to the entry way to our compound in his cozy bed garumphing and mumbling at the passers by....

Yesterday I made some from scratch marshmallows. We have been trying really hard to not eat sweets but listen up Yo, it ain't easy. These gigantic marshmallows only have about 30 calories per.... so they are a great way to shut your brain up when it goes scratching around bitching and moaning that it needs sugar. I made mine with orange zest, cardamom spice and organic orange extract. Here is the recipe I used.... you can modify it any old way you please which is awesome. You do need a candy thermometer and a stand mixer with a whisk attachment so go out and buy those things pronto if you don't have them on hand already. I also doubled the recipe and just put it in a 9 x 13 inch pan with no problems.

If you have never had a real marshmallow before they really do beat the pants right off of the store bought variety. There is no comparison. Especially for putting in hot chocolate.

2012 and an attempt to blog again....

Our front gate at El Zaguan, Christmas Eve farolito walk on Canyon Rd, 2011

I think I made about 5 or 6 posts here total in 2011. Not so chatty this past year I suppose. It's not for lack of a lot of stuff happening though.... we moved back across the country from Nantucket to Santa Fe, landed an artist residency on Canyon Rd, made tons of fabulous new friends, Billy had a very successful solo show at the gallery here where we live and was featuring in an article about artists in Airstream Life magazine. We helped friends Jeff and Kari open their new, from scratch donut shop (where I still work now) and life marches on with all it's tricky curve balls and moments of beauty intertwined. We all have another year under our belts, albeit a tough one for a lot of us.

I used to post long stories here and loads of photos. For now I hope to pop in a few times a week and just share what's up... even if it's just every day simple stuff. No sense in back peddling and trying to fill in the gap from now going back to my last post which was over 6 months ago.... I am just gonna stick with here and now. Cool? Kosher? You dig?

Happy New Year everyone.... let's do everything we can to make it a good one.