Sunday, November 1 – Saturday, November 7, 2009
We turned our clocks back last night and set the alarm, just to make sure our body clocks didn’t get too far out of whack with the time change, but it really didn’t matter…we still woke up with the sun except that it was an hour earlier than usual.
My first activity was to get Benji and take him for his morning walk. By the time I opened the door and stepped inside, Benji was ready to go; but first, I made sure his food was in the bowl and on the floor where he could get at it…didn’t want to repeat yesterday’s mistake!
Our walk was brisk, but uneventful and after a stop at Big V so Benji could have a short visit with “Aunt Barbara” and replenish his water tank, we finished the walk around the perimeter roads and got him back home.
With the extra time we had before going to church, we lazed around; Barbara made some editorial changes and then proofed and posted last week’s journal/blog; then, we got caught up on our morning email and e-magazine/paper readings.
It was an absolutely gorgeous morning, so I began making plans for finishing up the work I started yesterday in Jean’s yard. Job one was to restring the weed-eater, haul extension cords to the small barn, and trim around four of the trees and the outbuildings. With mild weather and no wind, it was an easy task and gave me hope that raking out the remaining two trees and mowing the yard could be an achievable task this afternoon.
Church was wonderful again this morning…great music and a timely sermon…it feels like the church that I grew up in.
This afternoon we goofed off for a while and then I went over to Jean’s house and finished raking out from under the last two pecan trees. I thought I’d be able to do the mowing, but the late afternoon sun drops like a brick with the new time change, so I gave it up for a lost cause.
Tonight Barbara and I went to KFC and got orders to take back to Jean’s house where we ate and watched the @$%^ Yankees take another game from the Phillies.
While she hasn’t had her birthday yet this year, Barbara reached her “Medicare years” today. Now all we have to do is send her medical bills to the White House…ain’t life wonderful!!!
Monday, November 2
Birthday greetings go out today to 3-year old Jonah Duke in Knox City, Texas, and to Cousin Danny Wright (who is much older than 3) in Tallahassee, Florida!!!
We got up early this morning to make sure we heard Becky and some of the musical cast on the interview show on KSVP. The community theater is doing Nun-Sensation in a couple of weeks and the radio station is spotlighting some of the cast members.
When the show was over, I went over to Jerry and Nancy’s to get Benji and go on our morning walk. Then, it was time to get busy with the pre-pecan harvest. I had raked several stacks of pecans, hulls, and assorted weeds and grasses last night…this morning it was time to sort through the stacks and separate the good stuff from the bad.
Barbara spent much of her day cooking (three wonderful meals) and washing dishes, but did take some time out during the late morning and afternoon to sit outside on our “porch” and do some reading. It was an absolutely gorgeous day…bright sunshine, clear skies, and mild temperatures…a perfect day to be outside doing something or nothing.
I finished the last of the mowing, but was too tired to go through the three remaining stacks of trash. Instead, I took a warm shower, rested a bit, and then washed the car, which was still filthy from our ride through the wet caliche roads in the Sacramento Mountains last week.
With that done, we took Benji for his afternoon walk. Barbara decided that we should have brought the camera since the billy goat next door had returned so I made a quick detour to get it. The photo on the left shows Benji and me in the alley with Jerry and Nancy’s home in the background.
The neighbor next to us has a little billy goat, so we got his picture to add to the collection of flora and fauna around our “Little” house on the prairie.
We, like everyone else, are still adjusting to the early cloak of darkness. I decided to walk down to the mailbox about 5:00 and called Barbara to tell her to go check out the moon as it was already appearing.
Tuesday, November 3
The weather forecast for the next couple of days was so nice that we decided early this morning to get away from home for a bit and ride up to the mountains to check out the fall foliage and go to the evening service at the J Bar J Country Church in Ruidoso.
We left Artesia at 8:00, stopped at Daylight Donuts in Roswell for coffee and a couple of apple fritters, and then made a leisurely ride to Ruidoso, stopping frequently to look at the changing colors of the trees as we entered the Hondo Valley at Riverside.
Since we spent last fall back in Virginia and Georgia, the rich colors of red, orange, yellow were still vivid in our minds. Therefore, we felt it was important to document a New Mexico fall which is very different! The poplar trees just go from green to yellow…a very vibrant, neon yellow which our inexpensive camera doesn’t capture all that well.
The one thing that she really misses about our retirement way of life is the easy access to doing the laundry.
So… this trip she said she wanted to bring the clothes, towels, robes, etc. and get caught up while she had the luxury of just walking down the hall. In fact, as soon as we arrived, she asked Teresa, the hotel clerk, if we could have a room close to the washer and dryers!
The service at J Bar J tonight was a little different; both of us came away feeling that the preacher was maybe a little distracted by something, but the message was good, even if the delivery was a little off. And, the music, as always, was wonderful. The congregation is mostly on the “senior” side (we’re among the younger couples there), but they do know those old songs and sing them with lots of feeling!
Since we had to leave for church before the towels and robes were completely dry, we got to finish them after church…don’t tell us that we don’t know how to enjoy a day off!
Wednesday, November 4
Since we were on a “vacation” of sorts, we took our time getting up and around this morning and enjoyed a good breakfast at the hotel before packing the car and driving back down the mountain.
For the benefit of our friends from back east who have not experienced the wide-open spaces that we have in southeastern New Mexico, we stopped at a high point west of Roswell to take a panoramic collage of the area. Pictures don’t do the country justice, but they do show that we can see forever from here (and in all directions). The mountain in one of the shots is Capitan Mountain.
Tonight we went over to visit with Jean for a bit. Barbara was feeling a little under the weather, so she returned to Big V while I stayed with Jean to watch game six (and, it turned out, the final game) of the World Series. Needless to say, the @#$% Yankees won again, earning their 27th world championship.
Thursday, November 5
What a slow day this turned out to be!
We can’t recount much, since we didn’t do much other than go to Walmart and the cleaners this morning. After we got home and put everything away, I went out and cleaned out the rest of the piles of pecans…now have a bag and a half of pecans gathered and the real harvest hasn’t even started.
Barbara occupied her time by reading and fixing meals, and this afternoon I took Benji out for his afternoon constitutional.
We visited Jean for a few minutes this evening and then returned to Big V to while away the evening as I sorted through what seemed like a kazillion picture files on my laptop to try to make some sense and order out of them.
We received a set of Halloween pictures from Paul, Stephanie, and Wesley this week. Barbara wrote Paul and asked if it was all right for us to post them in the journal/blog since we comment about them all the time. Paul said it was fine with them, so here they are.
Happy 70th Birthday to brother-in-law Cal Crenshaw in Roswell, New Mexico!
We were both up late last night reading, so waking up was hard to do (say, is there a song in there somewhere?!)
I went to the Methodist Men’s breakfast and then stopped at Walmart for a battery that we hoped would stop the screaming from our carbon monoxide alarm. Then, we both settled in to working at our computers. Barbara is fighting with hers to load a workable photo album program and I tried to set up and print some photos. Neither of us had much luck…don’t have a clue about what’s wrong with Barbara’s computer, and I needed a fresh color cartridge for the printer. Some days it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed!
We took Little Red out this afternoon to ride around the property and look for ant beds that needed killing before the cold weather sets in and all the little critters hunker down for the winter. Armed with a jug of Amdro, we found several active beds and scattered the “candy” all around while the ants fought over which ones could carry the most down to the nest.
While we were stopped at one of the nests, I noticed a devil’s head (AKA horse crippler) close by; so, while Barbara scouted around for more ants, I drove back to the barn, got a spade, and returned to start digging out the devil’s head.
We’ve written about devil’s heads before, but the condensed version is that they are small cacti that have “heads” that grow just above the surface of the ground. They are covered with thick interlacing thorns that can puncture even truck tires. The roots extend 8-10 inches below the surface and the only way to destroy the plant is to dig it out of the hard-packed ground.
By the time we finished crisscrossing the four acres, we dug out 14 devil’s heads and killed a half dozen ant beds…not bad for an hour’s work.
I went to the Bulldogs football game tonight while Barbara stayed home and listened to it on the radio. Artesia played Roswell Goddard for the district championship and, unfortunately, couldn’t muster the necessary defense to prevent a 47-35 loss. Still, the Bulldogs will enter the state playoffs next week as the second-place team from the district.
Nancy’s medical office drew out for seats in one of the four new sky boxes, so we got to sit in comfort at the top of the home side and enjoy complimentary food and soft drinks while we watched the game. On a personal note, after spending a lifetime outside with the bands or supervising games, I find it difficult to sit through a game…old habits die hard.
For retirees, it’s sometimes difficult to tell when the “regular” week ends and the weekend begins, but today just had a feel of Saturday about it from the time we woke up.
We took our time getting around, but were soon busy taking care of minor chores around the place…Barbara fixed breakfast, we both did some straightening and cleaning around Big V, and I went out and did some basic maintenance chores at the small barn…certainly nothing extremely noteworthy, but stuff that needed to be done.
The afternoon was a continuation of the morning, with even less activity…reading, watching football, and napping; but, we did get in a game of washers for the first time in about a month.
Barbara went out to the movies tonight with Nancy and Becky while I watched the OU/Nebraska football game, alternating between the TV in Big V and the one at Jean’s house.
Barbara: After Nancy called and asked me to go see The Christmas Carol, I realized that the last movie I remember going to at the Landsun Theatre was my senior year here in Artesia. The movie, Gone With the Wind, was showing and Mom and Dad had said I couldn't go since it had a cuss word in it and the story line was to risque'. Well...being rather headstrong, I went without them knowing it. In light of the movies our kids and grandkids watch now, the line, "Frankly, my darling, I don't give a damn." seems rather tame doesn't it?
Anyway, Becky, Nancy, and I enjoyed a very different version of this old Christmas tale written by Dickens. We agreed on the way home that this movie is definitely not for little ones!
Jim: We often close our weekly epistles from Artesia with, “From our “Little” house on the prairie,” but we don’t believe we’ve ever given a good “picture” of the neighborhood that we share with Jean, Jerry, and Nancy.
The beautiful weather this week gave us several great opportunities to take pictures of the area and we put them together in this collage to give our constant readers a view of where we live when we are in Artesia.
The larger photo in the upper right shows the layout…Jean’s house on the left, the large barn with Big V parked beside it, and Jerry and Nancy’s house on the right. Below that shot and moving from right to left is the view of the barn and Big V from Jean’s house, the view of Jean’s house from Big V, the view of Jerry and Nancy’s house from Big V, Big V and the south side of the barn as seen from Jerry and Nancy’s road, and finally, in the top left, the front of Jerry and Nancy’s house.
From our “Little” house on the prairie,
Jim/Dad/Gramps and Barbara/Mom/Grams
