Neighborhood Beauty

It's been a tough week, but in the last few days I still managed to find the beauty in my own neighborhood:



Birds will build a nest in anything, these birds liked the "Q" in ABQ.




When it's been a tough day, nothing beats a cup of this sweet smelling lavendar and spearmint tea. It came in a sturdy addorable tin too.



I found these flowers growing out of the sidewalk when I went for a walk around the block. They were so pretty, and the seeds must have escaped the neighbors yard.




I find the humor in the everyday, like this warning on the back of a dog leash I found yesteray. There is an acutal diagram of your dog wrapping the leash around your legs with a warning.




I thought the birds lined up on the wire looked pretty against the blue sky, hanging over a neighbor's house.




These annoying neighbor dogs wouldn't stop barking at me as I walked by, so I might have teased them a little.




My dog always finds a reason to be happy, me standing next to her can be enough. She won't stop wagging her tail.

Broken Body and Fighting Spirit

I've been offline for a while since a car accident that put me in a lot of pain. The worst thing that can happen to me is to loose my freedom, and being stuck in bed for days has taken it's toll on my spirt. My best friend keep calling on me, as well as a few other important people in my life, which helped. I wasn't able to cry or even laugh without extreme pain, sometimes staring at the ceiling alone for hours in silence. Yesterday after what must have been two whole days of laying on my back, I was able to get up. I could barely walk, but made my way to the deck hanging off the top story of my house to see outside. There was a cool late August breeze, wet wood on my bare feet, and Sandia Peak in my backyard. Nothing is more beautiful than something we take advantage of everyday, until it is taken away from us.

It wasn't easy getting up, it sometimes took me a few hours to stand up, every slight movement very painful. I never give up though.

Ibo

I received a German phone call and got to hear a song from new Ibrhahim Tatlises (affectionately called Ibo) CD over the line. I love my collection of Arabic and Turkish tapes, and have all of Ibo's tapes from 2003 till now. Little things like that can really change the mood of your day for the better.

Fat Raindrops

Big fat raindrops fell out of the semi-desert sky as we were hiking up the Sandias right now. It was refreshing, because Albuquerque is still pretty hot in late August. Where there is rain and sun, there is a rainbow, and we saw one over one of the peaks. I love that I now live at the base of the mountain in the Northeast, but miss certain parts about my quite, brightly colored apartment next to UNM, within walking distance of Knob Hill.

Antonio R.

Click on it to see the detail. At the intersection of Central and Yale in the UNM area of Albuquerque. The ad on this bus cracked me up. A casino wants to take your money and this old guy is probably spending his whole Social Security check there.

Doggy Backpacks and Watermelon Peaks

I love seeing the humor in this modern culture, and yesterday I saw not one, but two dogs in backpacks. These aren't just any backpacks, they are ones meant to carry babies and kids on your back while you hike. The first one I saw was a lady carrying a small poodle on her back, which made us all laugh. The other one was a guy on a bike who had on a kid carrier with a large golden retriever on his back! I have never seen such a large dog being carried on someones back, that is what makes America so wonderiful everyone.

Yesterday I was invited hiking by my friend, and I pictured a nice leisurely walk for a mile or two. I wasn't prepared for the 3 mile hike and back up and down Albuquerque's 10,000ft Sandia Peak! The desert scrub at around 5,000 ft where we started turned into juniper and pinyon pine trees around 6,000ft, then douglas fir and ponderosa pine around 8,000ft and finally aspen trees applauding us at the top around 9,000ft. I'm a pretty competitive person, so I wasn't going to show the 3 girls and their dogs that I was with that I was out of shape and dying inside. I lasted a few miles and several thousand feet into the sky, keeping up with them and hiding my pain well. Then I couldn't breath, and I felt nauseated and couldn't walk anymore. My company either flys me to South Padre Island or San Diego all the time, so I really live at sea level even though my stuff stays a mile high all the time. My friend stayed with me as I huffed and puffed while sitting on a rock under the pines for several minutes, trying to suck in as much oxygen as possible. Then I had her go ahead with the others, while I forced myself further up the mountain, stopping every few steps for more oxygen. My heart rate was going crazy. I finally caught up to them and we all headed down, much easier than going up. The massaging shower head helped, but my legs still ache. I didn't have enough energy to do anything else yesterday, laying on the sofa with a remote in my hand in my pajamas with a down comforter over my beat up body. I was so worn out, I didn't even want to eat.

3 Trick Candles Instead of 29 Normal Ones

It was one hour until my 29th birthday officially started, and I was in bed snuggling Bare Bear (a teddy wearing nothing but cowboy boots) instead of a man when this info commercial came on with an anti-aging skin care system. I work outside and forget sunscreen a lot, and just started looking for fine lines on my face last month. As a personal joke with myself, I got on my cell and ordered Cindy Crawford's miracle melon enzyme crap. I know she probably has a crew of beauty experts following her around shading her face from the sun and reminding her to take vitamins and probably even a personal chef who is an expert at cooking her meals that only use ingredients that make her skin reflect wrinkles. I'm going to try it anyway, my only birthday present other than a make-it-yourself necklace kit. Nothing else exciting happened on my birthday, but my skin will be fabulous!

Juniper Juice and Judas

Nothing is as wonderful as hanging out with an old friend, drinking disgusting gin (her favorite), and watching a movie that leaves you confused and laughing. It was called something like "On the road with Judas", but Judas never went on the road. I think the whole movie was in the author's imagination where he wrote a book with no plot. It was confusing with him being interviewed on some lame talk show in his mind with the actors that played the characters that were based on a real story, so there were a lot of Judases running around the movie. It won a lot of awards, but do I care that some Seattle film society gave it an award? No, I want my $5 back!

The most beautiful moment today was walking down Central St in Nob Hill in Albuquerque, my old home. There was even a homeless guy yelling at a trash can, and I felt homesick for that broken down apartment that I moved out of last month, good memories. What stood out the most was that the tattoo shop had a new tattooed manikin in the window, and I think she had plastic surgery, because those breasts were ginormous.

My Quarter-life Crisis

My love life is lacking...maybe more on that later. Children...zero, cats...zero, house plants...dead. I turn 29 on Friday. This isn't what I wanted for a life at this age. I'm one to look on the positive side though, and I try to find the beauty in the most mundane things.

Today, it was spun sugar. What is spun sugar? It looks like a bird's nest of sugar and it was sitting on top a chocolate cupcake in Martha Stewart's cupcake book. I told everyone in my family that I am baking my own cake for my birthday in two days, and I think that cake will have spun sugar on top.