Home Again

October 13, 2013

Saturday’s High			79
Saturday’s Low			45
Days in Las Cruces			111
Steps/Miles walked Saturday		13,034	6.5
Steps/Miles walked		869,558	434.8

Sorry for missing yesterday’s post, and for being late today.

On Friday, October 11, Scott, Mudder, Pops & I drove over to Hobbs, NM, where Scott’s LB (little brother) and his family live. Our eldest niece, C, was marching in the band for a big half time show, and we’d all been invited to come see. So, we watched the football game (first time I’ve seen a high school fb game in I have no clue how long! The Hobbs team is a powerhouse this year, and show every sign of maybe being able to bring home the championship this year for the first time since the 1970’s. They clobbered the poor Lovington team. Final score was 47 – 0… Same as Nebraska’s the next day. C’s half time show was really good, featured lots of patriotic music, culminating in Taps. I cry every time I hear that!

Then after spending the night at LB’s home and attending a dance performance (C and her littler sister B both are dancers, as is the youngest child, A who is 3… those really are the initials of their first name!) at a Catholic Church annual fair. We’ll be going back to Hobbs some time in December to see C and B perform in the town’s annual performance of “The Nutcracker”. C has the lead role! So proud!

After the performance at the church, the four of us loaded up and began the long journey home, stopping once in Carlsbad for lunch, then again in El Paso to stretch and walk around the outlet mall.

This state, this region, never ceases to amaze me. At first I was a little disappointed to go to Hobbs the way we did. There are two main ways to get to Hobbs from Las Cruces; one is to cross the White Sands Missile Range to Alamogordo, then up through Cloudcroft, to Roswell, and then down to Hobbs. The second is to El Paso, around the north side of the city, then across west Texas, through the Guadalupe Mountain National Park to Carlsbad, then over to Hobbs. I love the drive through Cloudcroft.

But we decided to take the El Paso route, as it’s shorter and faster. And Wow! That is now my favorite route. I’ve heard tell how boring that part of Texas is. Well, the people who say that are simply, plainly, and obviously quite WRONG! True, once you leave El Paso in the rear view mirror, there’s no more towns, though a few manufactured homes and travel trailers dot the land. But the terrain and the scenery more than make up for no towns! In fact, towns would damage the scenery.

And the most beautiful is the return, from Carlsbad, driving southwest and west to El Paso. Those towering mountain peaks, the the plains below them as one drops down from the Guadalupe pass are just breathtaking for me.

Daily Gratitude

So, this being Sunday, I owe two “Daily Gratitude” thoughts, since I wasn’t able to post yesterday. I have been writing these, posting the first thing I would think of as I wake up each morning, even if I wrote late in the day.

Saturday morning, I woke up at 7 am. I had to wait about 40 minutes for the bathroom (hard for me first thing in the morning!) After dressing, I let myself out of the house, and set out for a walk. It was a lovely morning, so I walked down to the highway, and set out on it. By the time I had returned at a little after 9 am, everyone was awake, and I had walked over four miles.

As I walked, I considered all I had already been thankful for during the past week, Scott, those family members who have already gone home to the Lord, each of my brothers. And I realized how so very grateful I am for my brothers’ families, their wives and my nephews… and my nephews wives and their children. But especially so for my sisters-in-law, D & M.

These two wonderful women have been so supportive throughout the past decade. Actually, they have been supportive for the past several decades, but this past one especially. These ten years encompass my coming out described in the last post, as well as the period of Mom & Dad’s Alzheimer’s and dying. Each of my brothers and their wives played very important roles in helping me to get through this time.

And then, this morning, Ixchel was the first to wake me up. Normally, Nikki takes the lead in waking us up. And then I have to wake up Ixchel. But this morning, Ixchel did the honors. And she did so early! So, at 6 am, we set out in the dark of the pre-dawn morning to do our morning walk. Of course, now as I type this, she is sound asleep with her Papa… Scott.

As I walked, my mind turned to thoughts of… dogs. And so it is this morning, Sunday October 13, 2013 that I am grateful for Nikki & Ixchel. Silly, I know, to focus my gratitude on my furkids, but why not?

My two girls (and numerous puppies & kitties that have graced my life over the past fifty five years) play very pivotal roles in my life. They tend to round off the rough edges of my life. They go with the flow of life, teaching us to follow and not dwell on the hard stuff… and they teach us to stop for the good stuff, to slow down.

Things happen when we walk. Dogs bark at us, some people growl at us and tell us to get away from them. It’s just part of life to the girls (I sometimes tend to grumble about those people for quite some time… the girls have already forgotten). And then when something good comes along, some delight scent (I don’t want to know what that might be) we can stop along the path and spend several minutes investigating each and every nuance of that, from every possible angle.

There’s something for us, as humans, to learn from that. The first is, nothing is so bad that we should dwell on it, let it get under our skin, and by so doing take control of our lives. How often have I given control of my life, not to God or to goodness, but to the bad, because I dwell on it. When I dwell on something, that something OWNS me!

And the second is, when beauty and goodness comes your way, stop and check it out. Life is too short not to. Stop and smell the roses. Stop and get a whiff of exotic spice. Watch the sun slowly dip over the mountains in the west, or pop joyously into the sky from the east. Slow down, tilt your head back and really observe the lace of the Milky Way as it arches over you… a sight one can only see when one leaves the city behind!

Yeah, I’m grateful for my girls, and all the furries who’ve filled my life.

Prayer Intention

For today’s quote, I paraphrase one I saw somewhere not long ago, but can no longer find:

“One can do much after first praying. One should do nothing before first praying.”

I dipped again into the clays this morning, and pulled back the hand… which stands for care.

Care is helping others, being mindful of those in need. The homeless living in Las Cruces’s huge tent city.

So many for us to think of, to pray for. I choose today to pray for my friend Kevin, who is hard at work with the Red Cross in support of those in Wayne, Nebraska, who lost everything to a tornado this past week. The residents need prayer, and those who are there helping them need prayer too!