January 18, 2016

6-goddamn-17.  My body didn’t get the memo this was MLK’s day of honor, so I was up...

…to get back in the groove with Pitbull  as I cleaned and cooked up more soup (and use the leek I bought).  Body is hurting, my knees must not be thrilled with the eight mile adventure, but it had been raining!  I was Ball-Point Birding…it was almost perfect!  I may have pulled something one of the many times I slipped on the wet mud.  Makes me think of when I climbed Mt Ralston and fell, how Mabi was right there by my side.  Yesterday, every time I yelped, she’d bolt over to me.  I will take a longer Epsom bath tonight.

I met Tim, the landscape dude (gardener).  He is a cool guy and has a truck bigger than the house the kids and I occupied in Placerville.  We talked about wood-burning stoves and the cost of propane.  Sometimes, many times, I truly enjoy getting to know people, yet sometimes, I want to be further away from them than anything. I needed to get an ax, a mop for the hardwood floors and 3 keys made, but I couldn’t find the axes anywhere so I asked an older man who worked there and we started talking.  He mentioned the dangers…(I’m wondering if they are required to say something along these lines).  I told him how, when I was 12, I was the one who would go out to the woodshed (in Austria) and I was the one who split the wood, that my son was interested in doing this and had been hacking away with the hatchet.  We shelter our kids too damn much, without letting them try things that, a hundred years ago, 8 year old boys were doing.  I was complimented on being a good mom in letting my son do a potentially dangerous thing.  Yay, danger. 

  

I was on my way to pickup The Boy when my sister Face-Timed me, so I pulled over (I was in a private community, anyway, not on busy streets) and we chatted for a minute.  Today is Lupe's birthday. I realize this sounds ridiculous, but that woman had been on my mind all morning long.  This must be why (I love subconscious process). This woman raised us, along with our mother.  She was always there.  I remember Lupe when she first appeared in our lives, I was almost 4.  She would stay with us when our parents when out of town, she would make and bring us homemade tortillas when we were sick, she would recite the alphabet or count in numbers for me in Spanish when I was afraid to be alone at night.  We played with her daughter, we were at her wedding (downstairs at Chesa Nova, my dad's other restaurant), we were so much a family with Lupe...or were we?  I have often looked back at those people who were so special to my life and wondered, because I was the little white girl with a dad who appeared to be (and was, by most accounts) quite well-to-do.  Midland, Texas has long been a rich town because of oil, yet there are easily the haves and the have-nots. I was in the side of the haves. This is a long, drawn-out story...one I'll touch upon another time.  The bottom line is,  Lupe is an incredible woman and I was so fortunate to have her in my life....

Got the kids, quick trip for lunch foods for them, then headed home.  I needed to get to Zumba. I made a couple if mistakes: one was wearing my long sleeved Giants shirt.  The other was not taking ibuprofen. I used the roller on my very-pained back and then jumped right in.  This enthusiasm may have been a mistake...late in the class I couldn't move much anymore, so I headed back to the roller, which helped a lot. It was another disco aquarium Zumba, but with much less oomph.

Home to Maggie, her friend and Ethan...a not-quick (it took way too long, but I couldn't move)  whipping up of healthy muffins, and now I sit in a hot Epsom bath in pain.  I'm too young to be this old.


Pictures:  Before-Zumba shot (after my body was sweaty and contorted due to pain); The walkway which is cleaner than the inside of my house; The ax.