RAINING IN NEW MEXICO?

Thursday, April 07, 2011

Good lord and lady, it's raining here in the mountains! No wonder my joints were aching yesterday. (That and lifting the filled 20-pound (or is it 20-gallon?) propane tank. I can see I'm going to have to have some help with tanks when I live alone. A dolly or a serious cart. I doubt it would work to roll a full tank. I really don't want to blow up. If I do I'd rather die quick. I HATE going to the hospital for extended visits. And I really LOVE having skin.

On the other hand, I could get an electric hot water heater if I should hit the lottery. A hot water heater and taking a trip to Europe, I mean, and not necessarily in that order.

Hmmm, I could get propane delivered for $1000 a fill-up. It’d probably take me a two or three years to use up the propane needed for my hot water alone. But they make you order a fill-up now and again or they come and take the tank back. (Really.)

I suppose I could heat the damn water on the stove. I don’t need showers much. I have a hot tub to sanitize me, but I don't know if I really like that idea.

I'm going to have to get someone to teach me how to hook up the tank. Of course I can get a bigger tank that would last longer and have my lazy, grumpy, inconsiderate son (he says it's stress) to get it filled and hook it up for me. He told me that if I wanted him to help me, I should call him and say, "Get your ass over here and hook up the fucking propane tank, you lazy son-of-a-bitch asshole." And he added, "You don't know how to talk to people!"

Okay... And who's he kidding? I taught him to talk like that.

I wouldn't be using as much propane and hot water as he and his family do. Of course if I were rich I'd get an electric hot water heater and pay an electrician to hook it up. It couldn't cost much more than the damn electric stove. It was a $1400 stove, a last-year's-model, marked down to a mere $450. I got it home and found out that we didn't really have a 220-outlet behind the gas stove after all. So I only had to pay an electrician $1100 to have the line put in. Not bad considering he had to run the line along the outside roof overhang in a metal pipe all the way from the main electric box in the back of the house to the kitchen near the front. About fifty miles of it. So much for a good deal on the stove.

I guess the stove was worth it. It features what I wanted--ceramic top and self-cleaning oven and considerably cleaner than my old stove. It’s a small price to pay for cooked food the rest of my life, right?

Like I started to say, my son & his sweetie take showers everyday and wash their kids up very often in the over sized bathtub that leaks into my laundry room below (they deny their kids are splashing.) It's a big tub with “jacuzzi” jets that I never used after we got the hot tub.

I'd have the tub removed if I could. But it's non-removable. Probably weighs as much as a hundred 20-pound propane tanks.

Not to mention cemented-in.

BTW, I thought little boys are supposed to be dirty. When my kids were little I found out a lot of dirt rubs off on the sheets at night. That was Las Vegas NV desert dirt (modified sand that brushes off.) I loved it. Las Vegas I mean, not just the sand. The weather was so good that the kids could pay outside all year. It only rained 4 inches a year (mostly at the same time causing flash floods.) It only ever snowed once while we lived there and then only because one of my kids--never admitted who he was--prayed for snow. It melted about 20 minutes later.

The only thing about LV sand, you didn’t dare walk on it bare-footed in the summer. Super-Ouch. Though you could probably bake an egg on it. I think my kids tried it once. The dog ate it before we could tell.

Here in the East Mountains the dirt is what adobe bricks are made of. You have to wash your kids off quick or it sticks. There are some houses in old town with adobe bricks 300 years old. I wouldn't want my grandsons walking around looking like Horno Ovens. I've included a picture of an horno below for people who have never seen one. Those who thought NM was really in Mexico. And thought they needed a passport to visit here. (I met person who thought Las Vegas was in California. But at least CA’s in the United States.)


New Mexicans really use modern BBQ grills here. Most hornos are for decoration. Or in museums.

Oh the sun's trying to come out now. Partly cloudy must be weatherman code for intermittent overcast. I do hope the trees got enough water to keep them going a little while longer. Though I suppose the 100-foot Ponderosa Pines have roots a hundred feet deep into an underground river or something. Our well is only 199 feet deep so we aren't in competition with the trees for water. I hope. If we run out of water we can have it delivered. I saw the truck a couple months ago.

What did I want to say today? Oh yeah. I watched the movie The Social Network about the guy(s) that started Facebook. It was mostly talk -- very very fast talk. I did get the feel of what a college is like as well as seeing the horrific types of parties kids have now-a-days. Hell, I admit I might have been to some equally scary parties back in my college days and early marriedhood. But I didn’t shock as easily then and of course I was drunk so who can remember?

It hasn't rained here since...I don’t know when. It snowed precious little all winter. Mild winter except for the cold snaps of 35 below zero with warmer gusts of minus ten. Froze our water pipes twice.

I called the snowplow guy only once (for 75 fucking dollars) and bought some new all-season tires (for a mere 500 dollars plus tossing out the tires off my year-old car.)

Holy shit. I have a good excuse for throwing away money — "mania." Thank God and Goddess, there'er good meds for that now. I still have the habit of getting rid of money. I’m just not depressed about it like I used to be.

I was sure after getting all-weather tires installed that I wouldn't ever need them. It's like the reverse of washing your car and it rains. Like, umm, get car insurance so you won't have an accident. Or buy health insurance so you never get sick. Having life insurance so you don't die. Well, you will eventually. But you know what I mean. I guess getting new tires when you already have really new tires is better than wasting money on candy for instance.

At least I'm prepared in case the universe decides to put things back to normal, i.e., piles of snow and hubcap-deep mud. Driving on ice is tricky too. Since the road is paved now it makes the snow melt all day. When it freezes at night it's like ice hockey with a 3000-pound puck.

I had a little car when I first moved to Juan Tomas that could get up steep Juan Tomas hill only sliding down a few times getting to the top. At least I slid in a circle and faced downhill. Anyone coming along would think I’d planned to come and would know enough to get the hell out of the way so I wouldn't bounce off of them on the way to the bottom.

I'm too chicken to drive in snow or mud these days. Wisdom comes with age, you know.

I have experience with slippery mud, too. I took the top of unpaved Juan Tomas Road in the mud. Much to my surprise, I found out brakes don't work on slippery stuff! I slid onto a tree stump. I didn't notice the bumper was a bit crooked until later. I didn’t consider a slip off the road to be an accident and I'm pretty sure I wasn't at fault. I had a good excuse: MUD. So my insurance company never heard from me. At least it was a relief to know the stump couldn't sue.

Gravel is equally slippery. I found out the hard way when I took a turn a wee bit too fast. I made the turn on two wheels. I mean, literally. My son who was about eleven said, "Hey, cool. Let's do it again!" Recently, on his way to drop off his little boy at school on the snowy road, he gunned his “vintage” (dilapidated) Camero to take Juan Tomas hill and slid into a tree. Twice. Some people only learn by repetition. He didn't think THAT was cool. No one was hurt and the Camero was officially declared junk finally, so some good came out of it.

I hoped it would rain enough today even if it led to mud. I haven't ventured out to see for myself. It would be easy to let the dog in and watch for muddy footprints. I could actually walk outside to see how much mud clings to my shoes, but I don't dare do that. As I said, adobe mud is slippery and it’s vastly heavy when it dries on shoes. Adobe mud hardens into industrial strength cement.

Oh yeah. I have to record my dream before I forget the whole thing. I usually forget my dreams but find the mood they set lingers with me all day. I was with some guy that looked like a cross between two of Ed's friends Harold and Tim at a self-improvement conference lead by some jackass that wanted us to remove our pants and line up in our underwear so we would get over embarrassment. I refused to do it. I decided then and there I was a rebel. Finally I did get up and get in a line for woman's restroom. When I dream I'm waiting for a stall, it means I have to go in real life. So I usually wake up and go. Thankfully it's in that order.

I also had a dream about being back at my old job at the LVMPD standing at the counter trying to see over a bunch of old typewriters. I suggested to the boss that we move some of them, and she was the same bitch she was back then. No. They had to stay there. I still have nightmares about the records bureau.

Oh, I know what woke me up in the night. The electricity kept blinking off and on. I could hear the cordless phone bleeping when the electricity started back up again. It was out only a few seconds at a time. But I noticed instantly that it is so QUIET when the electricity was off. There is definitely a sound when electricity goes thorough wires, even when electrical devices “off.” It’s amazing (until I get an electric bill for $500.)

We're too far from Taos to hear the Taos Hum. But I could swear, now and then, that Juan Tomas has a hum too. Or maybe it's the Air Force base a few mountains over testing some sort flying craft they made with secret alien technology?

This IS New Mexico, home of the Roswell flying saucer crash sixty-five years ago. Yeah, right. LOL-doubled. That rumor didn't even start until 30 or 40 years later. I have heard rumors it was a weather balloon. True, those suckers are scary when you see your first one. But I'm sure I read somewhere it was a spy balloon that the American government put up to circle the earth to see what Russian war-mongers were up to in the cold-war era after WWII.

However, my theory is it was a leftover Japanese balloon that had a bomb attached that crashed in Roswell. The government DID have a cover-up on those things. There were hundreds (or at least dozens) of them) drifting across the Pacific long after the war was over. None of the others, of course, exploded.

Hey. I saw it on PBS so it's true. PBS doesn't lie.

I hope all these armed balloons are gone by now. You just never know.

I’ve got to go now. It's almost lunch time and I haven't eaten breakfast yet.

To my friends and relatives, come over and visit me in NM. You don’t need a passport. Honest.