Discovered it helps to read the instructions. Lost consciousness Saturday night almost immediately after proper adjustment of birthday chair.
Discovered it helps to read the instructions. Lost consciousness Saturday night almost immediately after proper adjustment of birthday chair.
Have not once dozed off in new, birthday easy chair. Somehow wary of its comforts. Meanwhile, aching joints convincing me that if you don’t use it, you do in fact lose it. Slow learner probably should have put off chair investment a while longer.
And combination of chair and sweets perhaps not the best way to celebrate a 65th birthday, but the cookies — what’s left of them — are great. (And, as insiders know: oatmeal raisin — my favorite). Thanks, Winifred.
The cookie-accompanying card from Nancy, the nice call from Jane and the poem from Hope cheered me greatly and made me yearn to be closer to each of them.
But as for writing about anything other than chairs and cookies after a week at work, I recall the quote of Sheriff Morey Johnson in Lonely Are the Brave, staring up into the Sandias as Jack Burns and Whiskey escaped — sort of:
“I haven’t got enough spit left to wet a stick of gum.”
For the record, broke down after two years of deliberation and bought a reclining chair for my 65th birthday.
Only now about to try it out. Almost looks too easy-going. It’s been sitting in the back of my truck for the past two days.
Well, here goes. Might not report back real soon.
Northbound: Breaking for home on I-25 after day at work on 65th birthday. Coop and I have tomorrow off. (Well, he has every day off, but tomorrow I’ll be joining him). Yeehaw.
Shake a leg, lazy bones.
Life goes on in New Mexico:
Woke to the sound of a breeze in the piñons and junipers — to my ears distinctly New Mexico and one of the reasons I live here.
Brewed coffee — thanking goodness for continued operation of the family-run Whiting Coffee Company on Osuna in Albuquerque — squared myself in front of the iMac and cautiously opened its windows to news — my own paper and local news first.
Caution is advised because there was the usual grim crime story, 
and crime seems increasingly grimmer in Albuquerque.
There was a report about damming and diverting water from New Mexico’s “last wild river,” the Gila.
There was a column about a guy who hikes the high country with his wire fox terrier. (Believe me, we are a dog-lovers’ newspaper).
Another writer examined the New Mexico tradition of descansos, memorials placed at the sites of deaths, too often car crashes.
And, most cheerfully to me, our bear-beat reporter wrote that he had been up in the Sandias with a Game and Fish biologist who says the food supply for bears is “hugely better” this year, compared to past drought years that sent the bears wandering into town and trouble.
All of the stories accompanied by fine photos from Journal photographers. (Photos here, respectively, by Nicole Perez, Jim Thompson, Jim Thompson and Dean Hanson. The piñon is one of my lame iPhone deals, although it’s pretty hard to catch wind in the trees. I’ve had no luck recording the sound either).
As for for government and economic news, I can do no better at the moment than to recommend John Trever’s editorial cartoon this morning on bidding for Tesla.
I know this is not the whole New Mexico story this morning. I’ll read the other stuff in the paper later, if I didn’t read it going in.
For now, out into that breeze.
Mid-day August buildup to help me celebrate my mini-vacation.
Age 65, which I am near, is starting to seem weird — as if I didn’t take 40, 50 and 60 seriously.
Did I even have those birthdays? And who is that white-haired guy in the window’s reflection?
If I could draw, the cartoon of my thoughts would be a dinosaur trying on Google glasses or admiring a smartwatch on a reptilian wrist. Something optimistic. No glancing skyward at the incoming meteorite.
I’m still trying to figure out what kind of saurus I am. I’ll have to ask one of my nephews if there is one known for good will.
Good karma heading into extinction might be the best I can do. I’ll probably still read about the death of newspapers after I retire. It’s been a 40-year parade. But I won’t feel so much like I fell off my horse in front of crowd.
I know Cooper has a significant take-it-easy gene, I know he is getting older and I know that his heavy black coat just doesn’t get along with New Mexico summers. Now, I think I know something else about my animal shelter friend, who, at an uncertain age, came home with me eight years ago with only stitches, ticks, a lung infection and fear of thunder, lightning, gunshots, squeaky toys and opening drawers to show for his life so far.
There were those brown eyes, orange brows and snow-white front paws, the right one of which he is apt to extend in greeting if the receiver seems likely to respond in good faith. And there was never any question about moving in here. He was home from Day 1, easily transitioning from the hard plastic crib at Albuquerque’s Eastside Animal Shelter to any piece of furniture that suited him in his new Placitas digs.
At any rate, I started to sink into depression today when he balked on our morning walk. I would be more worried about disease if he did not otherwise seem healthy, if I did not regularly take him to the vet for “senior wellness checks” and if I didn’t know that, given the go-ahead, he would readily trot DOWN the hill to see his friend Sara, a three-year-old German short-haired pointer who lives with owners who are fond of Australian Shepherds, or, in Cooper’s case, what the shelter called an “Aussie X.”
I also know that two inches of snow on the ground would turn him into a puppy. And I know that when we go out tonight, he will be happy to lie on the mesa top, sniffing the breeze and scanning the horizon.
But, sorry Cooper, the snow is four or five months off, just taking in the view won’t keep my heart pumping and my legs from locking up and, while Sara’s folks like you, they did not move here simply to provide you ice water or let you wear out their grass wrestling with Sara.
So, for the the first time since Cooper moved in, I went on a morning walk by myself.
Outward bound, I was in a funk about Cooper’s age, thinking of previous dogs, and how certain, dreaded transitions are inescapable. But, by the return leg, all that still being true, I also remembered that Cooper and I had walked this exact same dry, rocky path several thousand times over the past eight years.
Accordingly, I have added simply bored to the list of possible reasons for Cooper balking on warm-weather walks.
Sorry, Coop, this old dog is still learning new tricks. And, sprawled on the bed with the ceiling fan turning above, you didn’t seem bothered at all when I returned sweaty from my walk alone.
The walking stuff is less of a mystery to me this morning. I think maybe I need to stretch my legs more than you do these days. But I still don’t have a clue about the opening of drawers.
Placitas hammered on Tuesday and soaked again on Friday. Flooding in downtown Albuquerque. Roof leak here Tuesday night. Seafood on my patio this morning. iPhone suddenly shooting black and white.
Most of the state had substantial rainfall in July and so far it’s continuing into August. Sure seems like storms have been more electrical than usual — lightning hanging around six, seven hours at a stretch. Cooper and I heading out this morning before it returns.
Can’t do anything about extreme weather or do-nothing Congress, so just going for a walk.
dreamranch 