I have been tagged by the darling Katie, who is on her way to becoming one of the best horse riders in New Zealand, over at A Girl and Her Horse and by my faraway friend in Romania who I hear is in dire need of a good Mexican restaurant in his neighborhood, The Transylvanian Horseman, to tell you seven things about myself. I guess these are supposed to be things that you don't know. But as I spill my guts regularly on this blog, I guess I'm going to have to dig deep for this post. Here goes--

1. I am a technical super genius who is capable of sharing my vast knowledge with others, including little children. I recently educated my 10-year-old on how our home wireless network works.

2. I was a Midwestern punk rocker when I was 19. No kidding. I was a cadaverous 110 pounds and had short purple hair. I wore 1950s party dresses and combat boots when I went out. My parents were so proud.

3. I had a boyfriend in college for a little while whose name was ... Bummer. Bummer played the guitar and swore he was going to New York City to make films when he graduated from college. While I met a couple of one-hit-wonder types through Bummer, he didn't go on to NYC and wound up as a school photographer somewhere in the Midwest.

Bummer.

4. With spring coming, I am having serious lust attacks over this and have in fact been to visit it several times at the Suzuki dealership--

5. My abusive ex-husband was so controlling that he got mad if I bought plastic clothing hangers for my closet. Oh yeah--that, and powdered sugar donuts, which were strictly prohibited. I've had all the clothing hangers I could use and more since I departed, and in a variety of interesting colors too. As for powdered sugar donuts, well, they just make me fat, but I still smirk a little to myself on the rare occasion that I buy them at the grocer.

6. I love my hammock.

7. I want a goat. I always have to spend a lot of time in the goat barn at the State Fair to visit with and admire what I consider to be one of the most charming creatures on the earth. But my husband says I have too many pets already. However, if someone were to send me one, say, in the mail, or via some kind of special delivery goat freight, well, I would have to accept it, wouldn't I? I mean, it would be rude to turn down a gift, just plain bad manners? And I wouldn't want to hurt anyone's feelings.

Posted by Kimberly at January 31, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3)

I've been tagged by Angry Buttons for an Invisible Image Meme. Here are five photos that I found hanging around on my hard drive.

There's something about the circus. Especially anything to do with circus horses. Where do I sign up? Maybe in another life ...

Gates of Vienna. Forget the Twelfth Imam...

I had to make my kid an Anubis costume for the Mythology Fair. I used this photo as a guide. It turned out very cool.

From gapingvoid.com. This cartoon is taped to the wall above my desk at the office. The anti-authority streak in me, I guess. No. It's a bureaucracy survival tactic because it always makes me smile when I look up and see it.

The most gorgeous man in Hollywood ever. William Holden. And one of the hottest movie scenes ever IMHO is with William Holden and Kim Novak in the film Picnic. Rent it on NetFlix. Now. And wait for the scene where she's dancing on the dock in her high heels. For Will. Sizzle ...

Posted by Kimberly at January 31, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3)

My ten-year-old son Cole and I bask in the impossibly brilliant afternoon, a 46-degree day interjected in between months of bitter snow and a spring that seems too far away to hope for yet.

We sit side by side on the ground, which is almost a little warm, but not quite, on the side of a hill, next to his newly constructed fort, legs stretched out in front of us, examining our hiking boots. Well, actually, he’s trying to crunch the toe of mine with his. But to no avail because I’m still bigger than he is. At least today.

Cole’s lost in a long and detailed explanation of how he built the fort out of all those pinon branches (and the benches from my dilapidated picnic table plus several miles of baling twine, and what all else is no doubt missing from my kitchen cabinets), but I’m only half listening. Instead I’m seeing unruly blonde hair the color of wheat, the delicate curve of a jaw that can harden into stubbornness if the mood strikes, well-shaped and generally unwashed ears beneath a camoflauge hunting cap, coal eyelashes that nearly brush his cheeks, dewy skin, eloquent, dimpled hands, all against this wild backdrop of god’s creation.

Not that I’m trying to imply that the boy’s an angel or anything.

His class just had an outing at the Natural History Museum. A sleepover, in fact. It doesn’t exactly take a genius to consider the sheer and massive potential for mischief in any program entitled Night at the Museum.

So, as a matter of basic physics and the laws of the nature of the universe and all that, my son and two of his fourth grade friends sneaked away from their sleeping bags and their snoring chaperone in the middle of the night to get a really good look at The Lava Exhibit. Can you imagine three grade school boys wielding flashlights and being left entirely up to their own devices in the wee hours near any kind of attraction containing the word l-a-v-a?

Well, luckily, nothing got broken—that wasn’t the intent of the uncontrollably curious—just thoroughly explored. I understand that a heart-pounding chase with a museum security guard ensued. Apparently that young man was as hot on those boys' tracks as the red molten lava from a live volcanoe.

At least that's the way Cole tells it. I bet he nearly peed his pants when the guard shouted, HEY YOU BOYS WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN THERE!, although he'd never fess up to such a thing. He may even have returned to school today as a fourth-grade legend. One of the heroes of The Lava Exhibit. A Night at the Museum maverick.

I can still see the look on his face when he realized I wasn’t mad. (One of his sister's friends grabbed me by the hand and told me everything in breathless, in-the-know glee almost the moment I walked into school, well before he had a chance to make his case.) And when I just laughed after his struggle to tell me exactly what happened at The Lava Exhibit--his sheepish, bordering on tears, face reddening, start and stop attempts to explain the who, what, when, where, and how of the incident--he laughed too, albeit, in a kind of relieved, whew, I’m so glad I’m not in deep dark trouble, kind of way. You could probably hear us giggling and then snorting, tears in my eyes, anyway, all the way across the school yard.

The only sound now is the wind in the pine needles. My little boy and I sit together in comfortable silence, until all too quickly the sun starts to sink over the mesa top. To my mild surprise, I find that I’ve been drawing circles in the dirt with a twig, and realize that if I put the two of them together, because they are nearly touching, I almost have drawn an eternity symbol, that flat figure eight, here in the earth at the root of the trees, at my ten-year-old's feet in his muddy boots.

As the pine tree shadows are lengthening and the air is getting cooler and cooler on my face, I find myself wishing that this day would last just a little bit longer. If that yellow orb would just retrace its tracks a few steps across the sky, that would be fine with me.

Because it hasn’t escaped me that my Cole's fort is built at the furthermost corner of the yard, butted right up against the barbed wire fence line of our property that borders thousands of acres of National Forest, way above the rocky arroyo that winds its way down to the Pecos River a few miles away.

Some sort of outpost, the kind that boys have been building since, you know, the dawn of time.

The adventures have just barely begun.

Posted by Kimberly at January 28, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (2)

I finally return with the right bridle in hand to find my children's house guest--the barely-thirteen-year-old who's all arms and legs and tangled blond hair down to her bony shoulder blades, the one who seems oblivious to her own pale beauty, as if mirrors simply didn't exist, and who's hardly been around horses, having spent most of her life in the city--with her skinny arms wrapped around Teyla's neck in a sweet embrace, long fingers intertwined in her salt and pepper mane, head pressed against the appaloosa mare she hasn't a clue is made out of steel and granite.

I start to tell her that the horse really doesn't like much hugging, that she was a rescue from a series of bad situations, and that she's really not big on the mooshy gooshy stuff, she likes her room, you see--but instead of tossing me her usual long-suffering glance, the gritty Teyla turns her head towards me and sighs, eye softening.

And I don't.

Posted by Kimberly at January 27, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3)

If you'd have told me even a year ago that I'd be able to sit at a table in a spic and span prep school gymnasium, right next to my ex--

you know, the charmer who slept with other women while we were married, who left me by the side of I-25 once in a teensy tiny bit of a rayon dress and heels in the middle of the high desert because I hadn't cleaned the house fast enough and we were running late to pick up his buddy at the Albuquerque Sunport and he was m-a-d, and who sent me to the hospital (yeah, him, remember?) just before I left him for good

--filling out the Parental Interview Form for my daughter's seventh-grade application packet, because there's only one Parental Interview Form allowed per child. Period. No matter if the child's parents live on opposite sides of the Grand Canyon.

I'd have called you a bald faced liar.

But there I was, me, the writer, in what I'd call a pretty fix for my protagonist, wielding the sharpened pencil, waxing eloquent with the answers to the questions on the Parental Interview Form about my precious girl, and actually asking for input from the other parent, and writing it down to boot.

Because darn it, the Parental Interview Form is, as far as I can tell, key to getting my kid into this excellent school with limited openings and hundreds of applicants, whose parents are all muttering and murmuring around me as they fill out their Parental Interview Forms too. And all the while I'm being nice, and polite, and smiling, I'm saying to myself, I love my daughter, I love my daughter, I love my daughter.

Nearly last--but not quite, I see a few other parents rubbing the erasers of their No. 2 pencils to stubs--I make my way through the sea of folding tables to turn our completed form and pencils into the grinning admissions counselor and then return to gather my things and sit on the opposite side of the table, where I manage a little small talk, a series of masterful riffs to a virtually speechless audience, about horses, and orchards, and honeybees, as I wait for my daughter to finish her interview.

Posted by Kimberly at January 27, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (4)

OK. One scheduling misunderstanding and a few other appointments canceled because of the severe inclement winter weather we're having, and I finally got the specialist out to see Caprichosa, our horse whose been suffering from a lameness in her left hind leg following a trauma that we weren't privy too. (Was she kicked by one of the other horses in the pasture, did she thrash around in the fence, etc.? We've only seen the lameness in the aftermath of whatever caused it.)

It's fibrotic myopathy of the semitendinosus/tendorosis muscles. (More info here.)

Plain speaking -- Scar tissue in muscle. It prevents the horse from swinging that left hind leg fully forward. During the walk, her leg actually comes up short (that's been my description of her gait at the walk, although it's barely noticeable at a trot and canter), as if it gets caught, can't stretch out from that big muscle, with the left hind hoof coming down just before it tracks where it should.

The vet suggests a conservative approach to start. Give her bute every day and ride her. He told me that if she was his horse, he'd use her. She is usable, but she's going to have that funny shortened stride which is really noticeable only at the walk.

We can also go the surgical route, where they remove or cut apart the scar tissue. I understand that might improve the horse's gait some. And it might not. I'm going to wait out the bad weather and consider it.

Anyone have any experience with fibrotic myopathy and the surgery? Sure would like to hear from you.

Posted by Kimberly at January 25, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (6)

Last night I dreamed that the bees (which I've ordered from these nice folks, by the way, and which we'll be picking up in March or April, six pounds of workers bees and drone bees and two queen bees to be exact ...)

were flying away,

with my brand spanking new Langstroth hives

in their clutches. (Oh. Pardon me. That's their pretarsus claws.)

And there was nothing I could do, but watch, as they carried the freshly painted brooders and the supers higher and higher on thousands of little wings, buzzing into the bright blue breeze of the cloudless sky, right over the tops of my cottonwood trees.

Apparently I need to lay off of the honey. (Just bought a beautiful varietal at Whole Foods.)

And the new beekeeping catalog.

Posted by Kimberly at January 25, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3)

I've had it.

We are not gridlocked, not quite yet, into the northbound rush hour traffic out of Albuquerque. Although I expect to be momentarily.

My ten and eleven-year-olds--who've just had to spend three whole excruciatingly boring hours with me in the overcrowded ballroom of a downtown hotel at a job fair (I'm a recruiter, and not for high-end corporate executive or techno-savvy types, just to clarify the reality of the situation), necessitated by my lack of scheduling capabilities--are hunkered down in the cushy seats of the SUV, complaining loudly that what I do for a living is awful.

Just awful.

How can you stand it, Mom, they ask?

Good thing I'm beyond getting my feelings hurt.

Well. Almost.

They are pulling their MP3 players out of their coat pockets, preparing to check out on the long ride home, and here it comes out of my mouth. "Well, you can just think about me talking about a million miles a minute and passing out crummy photocopies (instead of the nice glossy brochures all of the other recruiters seem to have) to the unwashed masses in the ballroom of some hotel when you are enjoying that super expensive private school we bust our butts working to send you guys to."

They are speechless.

Sometimes I wish I had a time-out button for my mouth. So I could push it and get ten seconds of silence to consider my words before they've escaped, run off like unruly colts.

Sometimes I wish I had a panic button for when the real oddballs show up at the recruiting booth. Something hidden under the table that I could just push and the cavalry would come running. Heck, maybe they'd just carry me right on out of there. All the way to a sunny beach in Mexico. Or to a job as a stay-at-home mom.

But I'm not holding my breath.

Like when an old cowboy--as skinny as a rail, ragged blue jeans pulled up nearly to his chin, belt buckle up to his bloodshot eyeballs--sidles up a little too close and begins complaining, before I've even had a chance to greet him, that we wouldn't hire him because he's sixty four years old, (goddammit.). I begin to explain about EOE, but he's already embarked on a loud and lengthy explanation of the time he spent in prison. As a convicted felon. A convicted felon, he says it again. There's a hard edge around his eyes as if he's almost daring me to get concerned, real concerned, but I hold my ground until he turns his attention elsewhere.

Or when the sullen young men draped in more gold than Midas himself and sporting cubic zirconia earrings, the really nice ones from Wal-Mart, show up. They don't take their sunglasses off to talk to me in what turns out to be essentially a series of grunts and monosyllables. I try my best and hand them a photocopy.

Then there's the misplaced looking man from some far away African country, in his immaculate pressed white shirt, with the lilting accent, a face as round as the moon itself and cheeks like apples, who blathers nonsense from one table to another, his eyes like glass. While I'm listening to what he's trying to say, I imagine him as some tribal king, stalking a lion on the African plain. I find out during our long and uncomfortable exchange which he seems to have no intention of ending, and in which I am smiling so hard I'm hurting myself with my own cautious politeness, that he works at the salad bar. Although he can't say where.

Or when that stupid woman thinks that my two well-tended-looking children who are watching Scooby Doo on my laptop behind me are part of the child welfare system for which I am recruiting ...

That's when I could use that button. A button to keep it at bay. A button for the madness. A button for the sometimes middle of the night middle-aged terrors. The breathless, heart racing, is this it?.

Sometimes you do what you have to do to make a living. Especially in a small town and in a state that's at the bottom of the socio-economic heap in this country, I tell the kids. But they are only half listening. I tell them that if I had another job, a more glamorous job, let's say, that we might not have the flexibility for me to spend as much time with them with I do. Like, they might wind up spending all of their free time in after care.

That gets their attention.

And then as we break out of the traffic quagmire, and head up the highway towards the Sangre de Cristos, I see it. Just peeking at us over the horizon. Over there at the very edge of the earth the lady makes herself known.

Look! I tell the kids. Jessie removes the earbuds from her ears and gives her brother a thump. He sits up, startled eyes reflected in the rear view mirror, in the cool glow.

The new moon is rising. She spills her radiance out like water sloshing over the sides of a bucket. Plays hide and seek with us on the undulating highway. Softens the hard edges of the traffic lights with her glow.

She shines her light on commuters, recruiters, kids, moms, and stark raving lunatics.

I figure we're all just trying to make it home.

Posted by Kimberly at January 23, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (2)

I wake to heeler dogs in my wake. Bob tails wagging. All toothy smiles. Being bump bumped bumped by black noses in a not very subtle attempt to herd me toward the kitchen. Their black lips are pulled back in the crack of dawn question about where's my breakfast?

I make school lunches sometime around 5:30 AM. Thank god for Trader Joe's, I mutter to myself I can't tell you how many mornings while I wait for the first cup of hot coffee to course through my veins. I wonder how many more peanut butter sandwiches I will make in my lifetime? How many have I made already?

Red Dawg asks politely for one of those organic chicken quesadillas I'm wrapping up in foil right now if you don't mind, to which I respond with an equally polite no. I am barely aware of the fact that my kitchen is carpeted in heeler dogs as I step across them to stoke the fire in the woodburning stove.

I walk to the barn greeted by the bellowing and hollering of no, not cows, but four cranky mares and one very large Percheron gelding. They snuffle my arms and my hands with their muzzles, one at a time, letting me know that they think they are starving and may die from malnutrition just about any moment now if I don't get a move on.

How many bales of hay have I tossed into that feeder, I ask myself, as I'm hissing at the horses like a she-devil goose to give me some breathing room puh-LEEEEEEse while I attempt to shove an 80-pound bale of hay through one of those little openings on the side of the feeder because I can't exactly lift it over my head and toss it in there. Oh, and did I mention it's still dark?

Although there is a moon. Beautiful, beautiful thing. I stop and stare at her a moment.

Wild-eyed barn cats are actually visible this morning beneath tractor wheels, behind a wheelbarrow, in the rafters. Waiting. Waiting for their breakfast. Licking their chops. They might consider eating me if I don't hurry.

And it strikes me that while I am many things, I am undoubtedly, unequivocably, irrevocably, and always The Chuck Wagon around these parts.

Come and get it.

Posted by Kimberly at January 23, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Check out Anne's new blog, The Clock Stops Here. I'm not going to try to live to extreme old age. I'm not going to try to look young when I'm not (but I am young and that's why I look that way and will continue to look that way). Nobody needs to see my belly button. The only tattoos I'll be getting are ones to duplicate or mimic body parts and features that have dropped below the horizon, so to speak. And I'm not going to work hard at anything, because what's the point of that?

But I'm not going to throw my health away. A friend of mine said people in my family live to be the age of giant sequoias. May as well be in shape to enjoy however many years I'll get in this forest.

Amen.

My grandma had one of those kitchen clocks with the moving eyes. I remember sitting at her linoleum covered table in the kitchen as a kid, drinking milk, watching it watching me. Beady cat eyes moving back and forth. Toothy feline smile. Tail swinging.

I'm afraid that devil clock would have kept me out of the kitchen! (These days, that might not be a bad thing.)

Posted by Kimberly at January 23, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

I give you the side splittingly funny ... Achmed the Dead Terrorist.

(Warning: nothing PC here and some bad language.)

Posted by Kimberly at January 22, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (2)

I just received this delightful photo from Shannon. That's her. The three year old cutie in the raccoon hat (her favorite hat ever) in the midst of the hounds. Circa 1968.

(Just between you and me, I think she's wearing that ol' raccoon right now, and it suggested to her to email the photo. I mean ... he probably chattered and chattered away until she did it. That's what happens when you wear a varmint on top of your brain.)

Thanks Shannon! You made my day.

Anyone else willing to come forward with a varmint cute, snuggly raccoon hat complete with tail of their own?

Posted by Kimberly at January 22, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Abuela. The Rio Grande cottonwood tree Dennis and the kids gave me for mother’s day years ago. She’s well over 30 foot tall now. I lay my hand lightly on her trunk. To let her know I’m here.

The cottonwood’s bare branches scrape the sky. They rattle in the wind. The ever present wind. The wind that comes from who knows where and that won't go away. In the spring her heart shaped leaves will billow in the wind like the sails on a ship, and some days she will nearly sail away, but she won't, which is what I love about her most. This afternoon, the soil is pried loose from the buffalo grass’s fingers by dirt devil wind gusts. The gritty stuff sticks to my lips, my eyes, my hair, and I am reminded once again how much I hate the wind blown winters in New Mexico.

I was at the Santa Fe Opera once, at a pre-opera party. Some newbies from Oklahoma were in attendance. When the wind kicked up and the August sky turned black and blue, they packed up their gourmet tail gate dinner and their fine wine and high tailed it for home, muttering about tornado weather. Well, I grew up on the plains too, so I understood completely. Those folks hadn’t been in New Mexico long enough to know that tornadoes don’t just come barreling down upon us from the Sangre de Cristos, no matter how ugly the sky gets.

Although they do in my dreams, let me tell you.

I think of it as my legacy from spending a few evenings in tornado shelters as a kid. I can still hear my three-year-old sister’s shouts of “don’t shut the lid!” from where she huddled on my grandma’s lap in the corner, her face tear-stained in the flickering light of the kerosene lamp, terrified at the prospect of being shut into a hole. And from those tornado drills in school, with the siren keening, clanging, hunched up against a metal locker with my arms wrapped around my head, as if that would do any good. That time the storm was upon us so fast my mom put me and my sister in the hallway of our little house with our bed pillows and told us to stay put while she tried to get a hold of my dad on the telephone before we all got blown to Kingdom Come.

Sometimes in the middle of the night, here in the relative safety of the Pecos mountains, I find myself standing on the front porch of the old farmhouse I grew up in, and here they come, right on cue. Three or four tornadoes churning churning churning across the neighbor’s field, cows and crows and barn timbers flying, the bubbling black mess roaring like a pride of lions. And I’m sure I’m a goner, until suddenly the funnel clouds freeze in place, poised above me in the eeriest silence imaginable—transformed into what I am always surprised to see are giant wooden Indians, of the dime store variety, from antique shops, I suppose. I think they have something to do with cigars, as they wield their tomahawks high up in the clouds. Just as though they were about to whack me or take my scalp.

But they don’t. Because I wake up. Thankfully.

I sit down on the ground, my back against Abuela to feel the sun warming my face. Her name means grandmother. She is the first tree we planted here on the ranch. Her bark is rough. Her trunk sways in the wild January wind, and she rocks me, rocks me, nearly lulls me to sleep. The earth is warm. Warm and cool and a little damp at the same time. I hug my knees to my chest, enjoying her company, determined not to be windswept.

The roots of the Rio Grande cottonwood and the roots of her sister trees—we’ve planted something like 65 on the ranch, Dennis and the kids and I, and our Percheron horse Toby has eaten the top out of one, so that makes it something more like 64 1/2—reach down deep underground. Deeper than you or I or anyone can imagine. And their bare branches hold up the sky.

Across the top of the fence, I see my husband strolling up and down the rows of his fruit orchard, garden hose in hand, giving the trees a drink of water under the watchful eye of an ever curious appaloosa.

Posted by Kimberly at January 22, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)

This one's for the lovely Anne, with a hat tip to Angry.

Prior to becoming The Mink King, Randy was a card carrying member of the Royal Order of the Water Buffalo. (And yes, a varmint made him do it.)

Posted by Kimberly at January 21, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3)

When asked why he stole the petty cash from the drawer in the office to buy more chocolate bars, Dwayne replied, "The varmint made me do it."

(This is for Angry. Who has made the brilliant observation about "the ‘critter’s face’ staring out from the front of the hat rather like a co-pilot". Sending me into what could possibly be a whirlwind of tasteless posting.)

Related Link: The Big Bad Beaver God

Posted by Kimberly at January 21, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)

I’m a big believer in small beginnings. Layers of experience. One on top of the other. And before you know it, you’ve mastered something.

Like these two vaulters who are learning how to approach the equestrian vaulting horse in preparation for the mount. You can see they’re a little timid. This is the first time they’ve done this. Shakespear is awfully large. But as we moved from walk to trot to canter, the smiles got bigger and bigger on their faces. They became more exhilarated. That’s what happens when you’re sprouting wings.

You have to run out along the longe line, facing forward, with determination, towards the horse’s head, like you mean it. Commitment is what this is. And, as the horse passes to your right, which he inevitably will because his legs are a lot longer than yours and he has four of them, you raise your arms and all of a sudden the handles are miraculously there for you to grab onto. You run a few strides alongside of the Irish Draft and then punch your feet forward and let your hips swing up.

We stopped there.

I don’t have video of the cantering. All that cantering. Because in the absence of our experienced teenage vaulter who can demonstrate all of this to the newbies, they got me instead. And as I felt Shakespeare's long stride picking me up off of the ground, I was suddenly all smiles too.

I like the idea of passing down this knowledge from the mature to the young. Funny how you can be my age and not have the lithe body with all of that budding potential in it like these girls and still teach them how to play their strong physical (and spiritual) selves like instruments.

It reminds me of this framed poster of a painting by fabulous artist Michael Parkes that hangs in my daughter’s room. Leda’s Daughter. I think it speaks for itself.

Small beginnings.

Posted by Kimberly at January 21, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

No kidding.

Posted by Kimberly at January 20, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)

A Coyote Hat for the Mountain Man from Cabela's.

At the family-run grocery store in the nearby mountain village, I’m checking the contents of my shopping basket against my mental grocery list. I suppose I have a thing against paper. My very organized husband would second that.

I look up to say hello to the checker, the elderly woman who nearly always asks me for ID if I’m buying beer or wine. I started this tradition a while ago by asking her pointedly if she didn’t want to see my ID regarding the bottle of merlot I handed her after she’d just carded some pimply faced teenage boys who were trying to get away with something. Now she’s got me. I’m a victim of my own smart aleckiness. I’m ready for her, though, with NM driver’s license in hand--demonstrating what we both know as sure as we’re standing here, that I’m well beyond the legal age.

Instead of my friend’s twinkling blue eyes deep set in sun baked wrinkles, I find myself staring into two hard, black beads, the shining eyes of a varmint.

A creature from another time and place.

I nearly drop the can of Bush’s Baked Beans, and then I realize it’s not a varmint, but a hat. A hat made out of a beaver or something closely akin to the buck toothed creature . A wolverine? A marmot? A hedgehog? Whatever it is, the critter is dead as a doornail. Grotesquely resplendent with overstuffed, slightly unnatural head, limp legs, paws with tiny claws all intact, and a bushy tail hanging down the back of the wearer, almost to his waist.

I hand over all of my groceries and watch in fascination as the wooly man scans the bar codes. His mustache and beard and eyes are as inky black as the fur of the dead animal that comprises the decorative thing he’s wearing on his head. I fight the compulsion to say something like, “Nice hat,” because I nearly always feel compelled to comment on surprising things, even if it’s not wholly honest, you know in the spirit of self-preservation and social niceties. Probably because there’s a slew of other things I’d rather say, or ask, but can’t.

But the thought that there might be an iron hammer behind the counter, maybe a lightning bolt, something that would be wielded by a Big Bad Beaver God (or maybe a mountain man whose spent too much time alone in the wilderness), keeps my mouth shut.

The Big Bad Beaver God is careful not to squish the cellophane wrapped loaf of bread as he places it with big square hands on top of my other groceries in the paper bag. He looks like he might have ridden in with Odin and his crew as he swipes my credit card, but that gets pretty much spoiled by the beer belly bulging out of his flannel shirt over the top of his Wranglers.

Well, that and the Harley-Davidson leather vest.

I am proud of myself for not asking him sweetly and with the utmost seriousness and respect just where he got that fabulous hat. I try not to stare, but gosh darn it if I can’t take my eyes off the thing. I want to hold it in my hands. See how it’s made. Heck, try it on and look in the mirror. Talk to the guy about why he wears such a thing. In the grocery store. I mean, what’s up with that?

Do Big Bad Beaver Gods wear get ups like this so mortals like myself will stare, slack jawed? Do they want to be worshiped with attention? Or would they really just prefer to be left alone, treading the earth, but not quite touching the ground?

I manage to just say Thank You and Have a Nice Day. Nothing more. Nothing less.

On the way home, I drive my SUV across the bridge over the creek with the beaver dam that’s been there for years. The one I nearly stop on each and every time if there’s no one behind me on the rural road. Just to try and catch a glimpse of the builder through the windows.

Posted by Kimberly at January 20, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (2)

After poking fun at an innocent hiker in $500 worth of fancy REI duds with a little help from reader Kelley who envisions him in $200 sunglasses and requiring emergency assistance from the local sheriff's posse (and their mountain horses!), I just realized that my groovy new winter hat that came in the mail last week is from ... REI ...

But. Never mind that.

Somewhere in the hazy recesses of my mind, I recall a girl who never would have been caught dead in a hat with earflaps. (You may recall my other stylish winter hat from the Barn Babe Contest.) I recall a young woman skiing down a mountain in Taos with her dark hair flying, ears naked. Never mind a little thing like frostbite. She was cool.

When I wore this out to the barn for the first time, I knew my percheron horse Toby was going to like this hat. After all, it has an interesting tassle on top, perfect for snatching. (For the record, I will not be teaching any more draft horses to steal hats on command. Toby takes the hat and then begins walking away from me or a little kid. The giving it back part we still don't have down. He is enough of a character to find this immensely funny.) But instead of snatching my new sherpa hat by the tassles and winging it around over my head as I expected him to do, he snuffled it. Closed his big snuffleupagus eyes and huffed and puffed into it. Breathed it in like a fine wine. The big horse followed me around the pasture like he was in love with that hat.

There's no accounting for taste apparently.

I remember a neighbor calling me once because she was concerned her horse was colicking. I threw on my winter barn duds and ran down the arroyo to her ranch. As I had my ear pressed to her gelding's side, listening for signs of life in his gastrointestinal system, my friend and I caught each other's eye, and we just started laughing. It's as if we were reading each other's mind.

We both had on hats with earflaps.

Yeah. She used to ski at Taos too. Blonde hair flying.

Posted by Kimberly at January 20, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

I dislike authority.

I have a problem with it.

Some folks think it's a flaw.

I don't care.

I really dislike big government. In fact, I deplore it. I don't need to live in a nanny state.

I am really annoyed by what Transylvanian Horseman describes as the Romanian government's plan to ban horse carts on many roads in that country as some bureaucratic idiot's idea of modernity.

This stupidity pisses me off just as much as the mountain hiker tourist from some large metropolitan city in his $500 worth of REI hiking duds who doesn't want to step in horse manure on a mountain trail in the middle of the wilderness that belongs to all Americans. And so from time to time we hear whispers about how horsepeople are going to have to fight in the future to be able to ride our horses in our national parks.

People who complain about horses are simply un-American. There. I said it. And, in the case of what the Transylvanian horseman's tale, I'd venture to say un-Romanian.

Heck, the U.S.A. was built on horse power. Looks like Romania is still running on it. If the idiots will stay out of the way and let people live their lives the way that they want to live it, I'll bet those hardy folks will be just fine.

I guess I'm a bit of a libertarian at heart. I want to live my life as free as possible. With as little intervention from the suits and bureaucrats as possible. Have you heard about how people in California may no longer be able to control the thermostats in their own homes? Do we want the government having control of the termperatures in our homes?

Hell no. I won't go.

Toby and I will be heading up to the wild country any day now for good. I'm considering a career as one of those mountain women. As far away from the rule makers and the architects of our soooooooper dooooooooooper modern future as possible.

Singularity is a concept that both concerns and intrigues me. "One conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue."

Posted by Kimberly at January 18, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3)

I know, what the hell does this have to do with horses, right?!

But I do love the Fred man. And he's right, Huckabilly is a liberal, not a conservative. Here's what Rush had to say about Fred's comments. He's spot on in my humble opinion.

I've been run ragged this week. I came home from work last night and fell asleep on the sofa at 6PM. At some point, I actually dragged myself to bed and slept soundly for 12+ hours.

And the good news--

is that we are safe from the layoff scare now. The national lab my husband works for had lots of people sign up for the early retirement they were offering, thus saving the behinds of the rest of us poor scared-to-death slobs. We were just informed that we are all OK and that no one's goin' against their will.

I think part of the raggedness is just the shock of the sheer relief of not having the potential of losing our livelihood hanging over our heads anymore. It's funny how you endure something over which you have absolutely no control for a long period of time with a kind of stoicism, and then when the relief comes, you simply collapse. You had no idea how stoic you'd become!

The sun was shining today. We spent time outside with the horses, doing some barn and paddock cleaning. We are both breathing much easier now.

I don't believe I've mentioned before that I'm married to kind of a real life Jack Bauer (he will roll his eyes if he hears me calling him that), and that's really all I can say on the topic. I can say that as long as there are folks out there who want to kill freedom loving people, we probably have a reason to believe the job we rely on is as secure as anything can reasonably be in this strange and unpredictable world. But the same dark cloud has been hanging over all of us for too long, until this week.

(Now if I could just photoshop a Stetson cowboy hat onto ol' Jack here ... maybe add in a snotty Polish Arabian mare ...)

Heck, today feels like a Brand New Day, and tomorrow I'm going to the big fancy horse barn filled with dressage queens and do some equestrian vaulting, or at least longe the vaulting horse for grade school girls who don't have a messed up ankle and bursitis in the other knee.

Here's Thompson's comment on "virgins" in reference to the momentary naval standoff this week in the Straits of Hormuz, which made me laugh out loud.

And laughing is good. Very good indeed these days.

Posted by Kimberly at January 12, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3)

Would you be surprised if I told you that one of my favorite restaraunts in Santa Fe is a little place called the Bobcat Bite? In this tiny little cafe, you might very well find yourself eating at the counter next to a bunch of horsemen and women in spurs and oilskin coats and weathered cowboy hats. At least that's who was there when I went to this restaraunt for the very first time almost 20 years ago.

A hamburger smothered in Monterey Jack cheese and green chile is perfect for today's snowstorm (although I don't have any room left), and the best, the very very best, meal to get going again after an afternoon of equestrian vaulting. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Plus, it's on the way home.

If the winter snow lasts too much longer, I'm going to get fat, and then the vaulting horse will not want to have a thing to do with me.

Posted by Kimberly at January 7, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (2)

I got up at the crack of dawn this morning to feed the horses in the dark and then head to work in Santa Fe in a snowstorm. Glorieta Pass gets some nasty weather and it can turn on you fast.

Blizzard like weather is an occasion to eat and buy groceries, in my estimation. This morning, I braved the frigid cold and the gigantic white flakes, to trudge over to the Mission Cafe, a very quaint adobe cafe, and order myself a green-chile smothered breakfast burrito with eggs, bacon, and potatoes. The smothered part is what's really important.

Then I grocery shopped at Trader Joe's at lunchtime. Gotta stock up in case we get snowed in, you know, and found a delectable green chile pork roast in the meat department. I'm going to make that guy with some seasoned roasted potatoes and beans for dinner.

The State Question here in New Mexico when you are eating out is "Red or green?" (As in red chile or green chile?) And we New Mexicans all are quite opinionated as to which we like best. And for those who can't make the decision, then there's always the third alternative -- Christmas.

The snow rages on. But as long as I've got green chile, I'm good.

Posted by Kimberly at January 7, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (2)

This wild country I live in with its ruined pueblos, its red rock, its mountains, its hailstorms, its scraggly pinon, its flash floods, its trailer houses, its golden hawks, is as honest as the day is long. Either it will kill you. Or it will not.

I've ridden through hailstorms high in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains that beat the leaves off of the aspen trees, their limp skeletons strewn across the forest floor, and make the meadows look like a snowscape in the middle of the summer. Where all of a sudden you can see your horse's breath on a June day. And then your own. And you pull the collar of your oilskin slicker closer, realizing it's a mighty thin thread and sheer force of will and a little gravity that holds you here on the face of this windswept place.

It's raining today.

Rain is always an event here in New Mexico, where the sun shines almost every single day. I woke up to the sound of the rain on the metal roof and thought first of the horses who have endured days of bitter cold and snow, and now this gray wet downpour. But stubborn creatures, they won't be in their shelter. They'll be humped up instead with their backs to the weather in the pinon trees. Resolute and drenched in their shaggy coats.

And I think of a summer rain a few years ago, when my little boy C. and I didn't run into the house for shelter as the thunder boomed and all of a sudden the storm was upon us and the cold wet rain pummeled our bodies, our t-shirts and jeans sticking to us like second skins. No. We ran and yelled and waved our arms at the dark clouds, daring it to bring it on, come on, bring on the rain. Our tenacious heeler dog, Matilda, grinned and gladly joined in the fray.

We stood beneath the eaves of the house and let it run off of us in great rivulets, rivers of ozone, silver waves. C.'s blonde hair was plastered to his head. He was laughing as raindrops clung to his long eyelashes--the ones that most girls would envy and that the ladies at the grocery store always comment on until he ducks his head half in embarassment and half in enjoyment at the attention.

We jumped up and down in puddles, splashing mud all over our blue jeans.

We had ourselves a time.

Posted by Kimberly at January 6, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last night in New Hampshire, the real conservative Fred took on Rudy Giuliani over amnesty for illegal immigrants.

What the media had to say about Fred Thompson's debate performance.

Fred on TV today.

Posted by Kimberly at January 6, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Envy.

Something happened recently that just set it off in me.

The woman who has everything.

Perfect kids. Perfect house. Perfect husband. Perfect relatives. Perfect meals. Perfect home schooling. Perfect kitchen. Perfect washer and dryer. Perfect relationship with her Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Perfect tasteful overstuffed sofa. Perfect vacations. Perfect cute nose. Perfect stay-at-home. Perfect nanny and housekeeper. Perfect shoes. Perfect green lawn and flowers arranged just so. Picture after picture of a flawless life without one single glitch to speak of.

Not to mention perfect makeup.

Oh, she's flesh and blood alright. Do you know her?

Gawd, she drives me crazy.

Posted by Kimberly at January 5, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (7)

OK, I had vowed to stay away from politics here. But with the debates this weekend and New Hampshire and South Carolina coming up, here it is. I'm a moderate conservative whose interested in securing our borders, ensuring our sovereignty, taking tough measures against illegal immigration and the companies that are hiring them. I'm concerned about my nation's safety in the face of Islamic extremists. I believe in the constitution of the United States of America, and I want limited government. I don't need a nanny, babysitter state, thank you. I believe in the separation of church and state, which is one of the many reasons why Huckabee is not my candidate. (His views on immigration and pardoning rapists has something to do with that as well.) Giuliani wants to take away our guns, and he's not going to be tough on immigration. McCain is in bed with the liberals on the immigration issue and I suspect would like to see the Amero as our currency in the future. Romney seems to be trying to buy the election, has jumped on the religious bandwagon too much for my taste (believe me, I don't care if he's a Mormon. They're fine people. I don't care what religion he is. I'm looking for a president, not a minister.), and had illegals working at his mansion up until recently.

Let me tell you a story. My parents, who worked all of their lives and have now retired to Arkansas, wound up in the emergency room in the hospital of their very nice small town when my mother was critically ill. The emergency room was filled with illegals. My dad worked for 35 years for the same company and has health insurance. The emergency room tried to put my 70-year-old mom in line behind people who are here illegally and who were at the hospital for free (well, working Americans are paying fo it) medical care for their cold and other ailments that should be seen somewhere other than the emergency room. My dad had to get fairly assertive. He told the hospital folks that he and my mother are American citizens, that he worked for 30+ years for 40+ hours a week, and that they have health insurance, that my mother was critically ill, and that he wanted her seen immediately, ahead of the illegals with the flu. Yep. This is an upper-middle class neighborhood in Arkansas. (And see the Canadian health system for an example of government health care. No. Thank. You.)

I don't hate people from Mexico. What I don't like is this flagrant disregard for the law of the U.S. I hate it that they have to live in the shadows here. I see it in Santa Fe, every day, this shadow sub-class. Americans who take advantage of those poor people are doing just that ... taking advantage and behaving with absolute inhumanity. I'd like to see Mexico solve its own problems instead of encouraging their people to come here illegally. Heck, their economy requires the income from illegals, I understand.

My party doesn't represent all of us moderate conservatives either. I don't think that Huckabee, Romney, McCain, and Giuliani are real conservatives, not because of their views on abortion and gays, as a segment of the conservative party seems to care about to the neglect of all of the other issues. I mean, if we are overrun with illegals and are under terrorists nuclear attacks, who will have time or who will even be around to argue about abortion and gay rights? I don't want a theocrat telling me what I can do with my body, and I don't want him/her telling any other woman that. I don't care if gay people want to spend their lives together in a committed relationship. My sister and her partner have done that for over 20 years, and I simply don't care what happens in their bedroom, or the bedroom of anyone else for that matter. That's where a lot of the members of my party and I part ways. Why is it that some of the most pious, religious folk are often the smallest and meanest people you'd never care to meet?

I have many liberal conservative friends, too, just for the record. And I respect your right to think the way that you think and choose who and what you choose. That's what makes America great. That's what our forefathers fought and died for.

I've had it with Fox and CNN and the rest of the media trying to limit my choices on who to vote for for president by talking about only their choices as if those are the only candidates who exist. I'm sick of 30-second sound bytes. What We Want in a President, The Wall Street Journal. You can find Fred's principles here.

I don't intend to argue about politics with anyone here, and this is not a political blog by any stretch of the imagination. But, I just wanted to take this opportunity to say that I believe in Fred Thompson. He's the real conservative.

Posted by Kimberly at January 5, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (2)

I can spend hours on the DraftsForSale.com website. Just don't tell my percheron horse Toby. I wouldn't want to hurt the Big Boo's feelings. This handsome team of percherons Rip and Bob, is currently listed for $9,000.

Don't you think I could get myself a team like this and give wagon rides on Rowe Mesa? Feed people breakfast burritos and hot coffee at dawn. Take along the charming heeler dogs. Get myself a brand new stetson and a driving coat and open up for business. That's a nice idea until I begin to think of the breadth of the spectrum of humanity who could show up as clients. My social skills just might not be up to the task, although my husband swears I can strike up a conversation with just about anybody.

Maybe I don't have to buy a whole team? Just get Toby an equally Big Boo-type friend. (I wanted to name the big percheron horse Boo [or Brother], but everyone in my family had a fit and disagreed. But there are ways around these things, you see.)

We were horrified a few years ago to see our beautiful mesa listed in one of the New Mexico horse magazines as one of the best places to ride in the state. (It is 36,000 acres of rolling grassland, pinon, juniper, ponderosa.) Right there on the front page. The author of that article was also pretty keen to point out what an ideal location it is for driving, with thousands of acres criss- crossed with lovely Forest Service roads. We expected it to be overrun after that article came out, but apparently no one was paying much attention. Thankfully.

Now I understand that some of our weasel-like politicians are selling us out to the four-wheeler crowd. The post office has been plastered with notices of who to contact and where to sign the petition for the mesa. Don't even get me started on that tirade. (I had a coyote-like dog once who made it her business to eat four-wheeler tires for lunch and always lived to tell about it. I can always get another one.)

It's funny, at the old Pecos Pueblo ruins--which were donated to the public, as I understand it, by the beautiful movie actress Greer Garson, who for many years lived on the Forked Lightning ranch with her husband--they show this kind of hokey movie at the main ranger station. It's narrated by Ms. Garson herself, in her cultured and melodic voice, and at the very end, she makes this rousing speech about progress and the Old Santa Fe Trail that always takes me by surprise.

You see, I live right on the Old Santa Fe trail. And this is where the Pecos Pueblo ruins are located. The conquistadors came up across the mesa top, I understand. I still crane my neck up and look for them occasionally when I'm standing in the back yard, doing something mundane, like filling the dog water dish. And if I did, I'd tell whatever shadows remain of the Pueblo Indians to run.

So, in this little film, Greer Garson is talking about how wonderful, how splendid, all this progress is, and these images of horses and wagons are flashing across the screen to eventually fade out and be replaced by images of 18-wheelers cruising down a modern interstate.

18-wheelers. I kid you not.

At that point, I just want to walk out.

I have noticed that no one ever applauds.

One of these mornings, I'd like to wake up and walk out my front door to see the highway gone.

Posted by Kimberly at January 4, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)

I. Am. So. There.

You must check out the exquisite photos by this talented artist Isabelle Ann. A wizard, no, better yet, a veritable goddess, with the camera and photoshop.

Posted by Kimberly at January 3, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Transylvanian Horseman on life in a place where they still deliver hay with horses and carts. Perhaps the local people somehow, deep inside their consciousness, still feel the need to defend their homes and livestock? Many farmsteads are laid out in ways that suggest fortification. The stable may be under the same roof as the house. Or house and stable may be contained within a stout wall. There are always dogs on guard. Being careful of life and possessions is a habit formed through long experience of tumultuous history, generation upon generation. (Read it all.)

Right now, during the dead of winter, I’m going to work in the dark and returning early enough to have about 45 minutes of daylight if I’m lucky. Dennis has a longer