What's Good For The 1% Is Good For The Gander

Slow On The Uptake 

While hanging out in bed this morning somewhere between sleep and wakefulness,  I started thinking about payroll taxes of all things.  Do you remember that as part of the stimulus to get the economy rolling again, payroll taxes were lowered by a full two percentage points and totally forgiven for people, like my sister and brother-in-law, who were bringing in a certain amount of income or less.  Conservatives didn't like the plan.  It coddled people and made them dependent on an ever-expanding government.  At their first chance, Congress reinstated the earlier tax rate in the name of, I guess, fairness.

So I started thinking about that attitude, the attitude that says forgiving my barely-making-ends-meet brother-in-law the pittance of payroll taxes (6.5% of his meagre income) he pays would somehow hurt him and the country.  Back in the 80's Reagan and Tip O'Neal (sp?) agreed to raise the rate of the payroll tax to the current 6.5% in an effort to restore long-term solvency to Social Security.  The rate went up and, if Reagan and Alan Greenspan had in fact put that extra money into the SS Trust Fund instead of using it to defray the unsustainable cost of Reagan's popular (to the wealthy) tax cuts, Social Security would be on pretty firm footing even as we speak.  But they didn't do that.  Not only didn't they do that, but the 6.5% payroll tax only applied to an individual's first $110,000 of earnings (payroll taxes going to Medicare were set at something like 1.4% and applied to all income).

If that's the case (and it is), I couldn't help but think about the hypocrisy of all those folks (read:Mitt Romney and the rest of the 1%) who were screaming doom and gloom over letting people like my brother-in-law off the payroll tax hook.  Romney famously talked about creators and takers.  The takers were all those people who were living off the largesse of the federal government without paying their fair share in taxes.  These takers were being turned into dependent free-loaders by profligate Democrats.  Insert as many GASPS here as you would like.

But what about people like Romney and Ryan and Coburn and Boehner and Limbaugh and Hannity, etc.?  I suspect Romney's income is above $110,000.  Let's be conservative and say he pulls down $500,000 in salary from Bain, or whoever.  That means he earns $400,00 free of payroll tax.  Doesn't that governmental break turn him into a dependent taker just like the break for my brother-in-law made him a taker.  And what if Romney invests a couple of million in a mutual fund like Berkshire Hathaway and gains 10% in value over a year?  Does he have to pay any payroll taxes on that?  The answer is no.

I know I am a wild-eyed liberal, but there seems to be a fundamental unfairness here.  It seems like we believe (rather our Congress comprised of wealthy white guys believes) that eliminating the taxes of the poor makes them dependent takers and hurts our country; on the other hand, eliminating the taxes of the wealthy creates jobs and makes our country great.  After all what's good for the 1% is good for the country.  I would have to take exception here.  The truth is that what is good for the 1% is good for the 1%, country be damned.

SUNDAY ON THE COUCH WITH KATHERINE

Good Morning.  This is Katherine.  If I do not identify myself, it's Jim.  I know this is hard for everybody, but we taught forever together and raised kids together and slept together and have done everything together and we seem to blog and FaceBook together and it gets really confusing for some folks.   Today it's Katherine though.

"Good Morning" is my current favorite greeting, but I always hear it in my friend David's voice.  He is a native of Birmingham, Alabama.  He has a wonderful voice and accent.  It's delicious when he calls and out pops his version of "Good Morning." I wish you could hear him when I type this.

I just watched SUNDAY MORNING.  It is my favorite television show.  I learn so much.  Kevin Kline married Phoebe Cates (the swimming pool girl in FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH).  Is that cool or what?

The show always makes me think like an artist.  It's the suns.  Between each segment there is a different artistic rendition of the sun.  They are beautiful.  I love looking at the suns.

We have a large artistic sun hanging above (maybe over) our shower in our bedroom bath.  It was the final touch on my bathroom vision several years ago.

Jim was instrumental in making my artistic vision of the bathroom happen.  Jim retiled the shower in deep royal blue rectangular tiles with very white grout.  He tiled the floor with small white tiles, again with white grout.  Jim's handyman guru, Bud Simmons, advised against the white grout.  I ignored him--I was painting the bathroom.

The tile is wonderful.  Thank you sweetie.  I still like my white grout.  I especially like the part where you clean it.

I had Jim paint the walls gray.  I ordered super gigantic beach towels from Sundance (on sale for an amazing $18 per towel--an Olympic shopping coup for my side).  Two wildly striped towels hang from a very cool and heavy-duty towel rack that stores the extras above.   I put up a painting of a scientist holding a test tube by former student Shawnty Whitam who seems to be swimming in an ocean on the only wall with enough size for it.

Just above the toilet paper, there is a poster former student Lisa Woltkamp Kish gave us.  It's a collection of haikus that appeared on marquis's in NYC one year.  Jim asks me sometimes which is the best or my favorite.  I refuse to respond.  Each trip to the bathroom is a new experience and I see one in a whole new way.  What can I say?

Toilet paper is stored in a blue and white Chinese vase thing my mom gave me.  Works.  There is a giant stainless steel jack (you know--like the game of jacks) in the corner on the floor.  My AP students gave it to me the day I returned to class from cancer treatments.  I played jacks with students for years.  I love it.  It's heavy and lovely and full of wonder for me.

With all this, the bathroom was an unfinished painting.  Bud and Janet Simmons provided the solution when they invited us to spend time with them in Puerto Vallarta.  After a tour through the market by the river cut, I knew I needed a sun for my bathroom painting.

We looked at various places and returned to markets and I finally fell in love with our sun.  It is "Hedwig."  It is both male and female and I always connect it with the time Jim and I went to see Hedwig and the Angry Inch and were the only straight folks in the audience and at dinner afterwards a former student spotted us and walked up and said hello and announced he'd come out  before we could say howdy.  A memorable date.  Mostly--I loved Hedwig, the movie--very mythic about the sexes.  It is still something I love to watch.

Anyway, I fell for the lone bi-sexual sun we saw in a market stall and I didn't bargain enough to please Bud.  I didn't bargain at all.  I loved the sun.  The family running the stall where I bought my sun went to great lengths to tape it up in cardboard slabs so I could get it home. The sun is big.  It's pretty heavy.  It's gorgeous.  It's hard to explain how hard they worked so I could get my sun home.

Time passed and we headed home with my sun in hand.  This was our first trip to Mexico and we were leaving before Bud and Janet and we were on our own with minimal cash at that point.

I can't remember how many get-into-a-plane-and-back-home steps we had taken when we were required to go pay some folks to re-package our sun.  For reasons that were unclear, we needed to redo the amazing box structure the stall family had built around my sun.  We watched as airport officials carefully cut away the box on our sun and rewrapped it with cardboard from the same pile.  They must have known how much cash we had left--it took it all to pay them for their efforts.

Hedwig, my sun, once it made it back to Colorado, was the end of my bathroom painting.  I love my bathroom.

It was the suns on Sunday Morning that got me started.  I'm pretty frustrated that I have an artist's eye without the obsession needed to do some things I'd like.  Jim has written two books and I've seen obsession.  It's annoying, but it's impressive as hell.

I know I see many things through the eyes of George Seurat as Stephen Sondheim saw him in Sunday the Park with George.  It's one of the works of art that changed how I saw the world.  That's a lot for a musical comedy.

In the musical, George lists the words he thinks make art.  I used to know them by heart and now I know I'm missing several.

Here are George's words the ones I remember, and how I see them in my wee artistic world:

ORDER:  This is structure and pattern.  It is a simple as chronological order or as complicated as the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.  Some structure must illuminate parameters and then it is the artist's job to break those parameters.  There is an intentional ocean/water thing going on in my bathroom and my haiku poster and my jack sculpture break the rules.  Master the structure and then break it where it shows.  Knit a lace shawl, but it do it with a yarn no one else will.   That's what I'm playing with now. Knitting outside the lines.

LIGHT:  This is point of view.  I taught our kids to look at paintings by teaching them to look for where the light was coming from and that way they could think about point of view.  It was sheer intuition.  It works though.  I also want to take the word literally.  Art is light--like art is not heavy.  Ponderous things are sermons, not art.  My bathroom, my knitting--I hope I'm seeing things like a painter (sigh because I do not paint with any grace at all) and I hope there is a sense of humor in there somewhere.

COMPOSITION:  What is the object composed of? Color? Notes? Words? Yarn? Wood? What are the limits and possibilities?  I am collecting Mexican tiles for another bathroom.  I am beginning a composition.  In writing I think of this in terms of ideas and details and vocabulary and grammar and all those kinds of things.  I have always had a really hard time explaining this because it seems so obvious.  It's more than the medium--that's all the more I want to say about this.

DESIGN:  This is the purpose.  Why did the artist do this?  I wanted to enjoy hanging out in my bathroom and frankly there isn't a spot anywhere in the house that isn't covered in art and the bathroom was the only room left at that point.  Now I want to paint with yarn and I want to stretch boundaries with textures and colors.  My biggest frustration there is that my knitting skills have not yet caught up with what I can see in my head.  I never even got close in any other medium.

TENSION:  This is juxtaposition.  Two things stand next to each other that don't belong and it arrests the viewer and with luck the viewer emotes or thinks or reacts in some way the object has provoked.  Though ludicrous examples, I'm happy with how my bathroom and knitting hold up here.

HARMONY:  This is George's last word.  All of the elements must come together into something that is comfortable even if the composition or the subject or  the content of the art is not comfortable.  I need to really like entering my bathroom or wearing my knitted creation.  I need to feel more complete after reading the book or seeing the movie.

I'm done.  I'm tired.  We're headed to the art museum to see the Paris exhibit and a late lunch afterwards.  It seems fitting.

I WISH LUNCH COULD LAST FOREVER

Cholon Modern Asian Bistro vis a vis Bones

We met Franny and Willa for lunch yesterday at Cholon Modern Asian Bistro.  It sits on the corner of 16th Street and Blake with big windows lining both facades.  Kathie and I got there a little early and were having a drink when we saw Franny walking by with Willa quick striding beside her.  One of my greatest joys in life lately is the reaction on Willa's face whenever she sees us and yesterday was no disappointment.  Kathie tapped on the glass and when Willa saw us through the window, her eyes got wider--I call them Willa-wide.  Her pacifier almost dropped out of her smiling mouth and she came over to give the window a return tap.  After a start like that, how could lunch be anything but wonderful.

Lunch is my favorite meal out.  I love sitting at a table, especially if it is a beautiful day and the table is outside or at least by a window, watching people walk by, drinking a crisp wine or a beer sweaty with the cold, and going through a succession of creative small plates.  Bones is probably my favorite place for lunch, even though the ambience is hardly that of a French sidewalk cafe.  I mean the crowd ambling past to get a beef combination at Benny's is fairly pedestrian (excuse the completely unintentional pun).  But the food--if there are enough of us, we like to go through all the appetizers--is sensational, from the Shishito peppers (my favorite appetizer of all time) to the steamed buns to the escargot pot stickers.

I wanted to go to Cholon because 5280 had rated it the second best restaurant, behind Frasca, in the area, and in particular raved about the steamed buns.  Well, my loyalty to the Bonnano brand was sufficient to compel me to go out and make the inevitable comparison.

Let's start with the obvious.  It is ridiculous to compare the two.  Cholon is sleek and gleaming with roomy tables sitting on classy carpets and a long, beautifully appointed bar to greet you at the door.  If you've ever been to a restaurant by Morimoto, Cholon is in that mold, although not nearly so amazingly stark and opulent at the same time.  Bones, on the other hand, is a corner noodle bar loaded to the rafters with people sucking up noodle bowls and other people standing by the door waiting to get their chance.  It's noisy.  I'm deaf to begin with, so talking is not something I plan on whenever I go there.  I'm too busy eating.  Cholon is a beautiful room with quiet, efficient, perfect service.  Bones is a tight little joint with waiters and waitresses brushing by tables on their way up the rickety stairs to get drink orders.

But when it comes to food, the comparison becomes more interesting.  Just like at Bones, we ordered all the appetizers.  First came two orders of soup dumplings, the other reason I wanted to try the place out.  Last time we were in New York visiting Nate and Ashley we had soup dumplings at Joe's Shanghai and they were a revelation, unlike anything I had ever had.  The dumplings (4 per order) at Cholon would also have been a revelation had I never been to New York; instead, they were different--filled with onion soup rather than the chickeney asian broth at Joe's.  Forget that.  I'm being a New York snob.  Those are the most irritating kind.  You know, the ones who, whenever they eat ANYTHING, will say, "this is quite good, but you can get much better ones at this little shop in the East Village."  In fact, the dumplings were to die for and I'll be sure to come back for more in the future.

Next came what I had been waiting for, the steamed buns.  They were beautifully presented.  Everything was beautifully presented.  In fact, I would have to say it was the most impressive plating I had seen in Denver.  And the flavor and texture and all of that was terrific, but the steamed buns at Bones are better.  Not prettier.  At first glance, not nearly as impressive.  But they simply taste better and the texture, the mouth feel, of the actual buns was better.  They're more addictive.  If I were only after the buns, no contest, I'm going to go to Bones.

But then the rest of the apps came out one at a time and they were down to the last detail at least as good as the rest of the fare at Bones.  There was a peppery toast thing with a cocoanut dipping sauce that we all thought Willa would love.  Alas, she is getting picky in her eating as she gets older and she turned up her nose at it.  That was okay with me as I popped the last piece of toast into my mouth.  A pretty traditional plate of delicious pot stickers showed up next.  The last app I tried was the beef skewers.  Sometimes at restaurants--it happens at Mizuna regularly--I'll take the first taste of a new dish and it will be so overwhelmingly perfect that I have to sit up, put my fork down, and fend off tears of wonderment.  Such was my reaction to the beef skewers.

We had a great afternoon.  The lunch lasted about two hours.  The perfect amount of time.  Cholon is definitely, as the saying goes, a destination restaurant, but when it comes to taste, inventiveness, and vibe, Bones remains my gold standard.  It's also A LOT cheaper.

THE MOST INSIDIOUS TECH INNOVATION IN THE HISTORY OF MAN

A Parable

I went on line the minute the new iPhone 5s were available.  At first, the site took forever to load and then I kept getting error messages.  When I finally got through and jumped through all the hoops, they told me I would get my new phone in two months.

Two months!

There were only two ways to look at this.  If the incredibly high volume glitching up the site was any indication, then it must be a great device well worth waiting for.  On the other hand, the glitches and two month wait are proof that Apple is incompetent and arrogantly overreaching.  I came to the only conclusion I could and realized that the iPhone 5 as presented by the Apple Corporation is the most insidious technological innovation in the history of man and trashed my forms and went back to my dial phone.  Ma Bell never made me wait!

But even though I was frustrated, I was kind of happy.  The whole experience confirmed my certainty that everything and everyone in the world other than me and the people I hang out with are slowly chipping away at my freedom.  By going back to my dial phone I struck a blow for the kind of liberty our founding fathers were talking about when they couldn't get enough bars to call out of Philadelphia.

A Mind Run Amok

Memory Touring

At the end of My Dinner With Andre Wally takes a cab back to his cold apartment and as he looks through the window at the storefronts passing by, he remembers certain moments in his life.  There he is getting an ice cream cone with friends at a drug store, there he is meeting his father outside a restaurant, there he is with his mother buying a suit, etc.  It remains one of my favorite movie moments.

But lately I've been having the same experience and I'm not sure what I think about it.  In the film, Wally's memory tour perfectly illustrates how our ephemeral lives progress from one patch of holy ground to the next.  However, my actual memory tour keeps sending mixed messages, all of them troubling.  Have I moved into my personal home stretch, as it were, and I'm trying to make some sort of final accounting?  Has my mind just totally run amok, grasping at random memories like so many straws?  And most disturbing, what am I to think when I can remember losing a hubcap twenty-five years ago at the intersection of Hampden and Wadsworth, but I can't remember the errand that has placed me at said intersection in the first place?

Franny, Ken, Willa, and Cheese moved some time ago from their old place close to Sloan's Lake to a nifty little Victorian in the general area of 38th and Lowell.  That is what started this whole thing.  In order to get there, I have to drive by a lot of old stomping grounds, all holding old memories, both good and bad.

There I am being an ass to some hapless clerk at a 7-11 on the way to a soccer game.  I don't even remember the cause.

There is Franny in her stroller on the sidelines of the boys' soccer games wearing her blue bonnet, Chris and Nate running by in their green Wheat Ridge recreational soccer uniforms.

There I am driving to Vinnola's on a Friday night getting all the fixings for pizza to take back to our house at 3510 Teller.

There I am in Dr. Arendt's first office on Wadsworth getting gassed before a filling.

There I am at what used to be Mon Petit, a pretty good french restaurant, turning red with embarrassment when Kathie's mom literally yells "STOP!" as the waiter tries to pour the sauce over her chateaubriand.

I'm at Elitches--old Elitches--with Virgil and Jeri on Hewlit-Packard day at the park.  Virgil made sure to get there early enough to score one of picnic tables looking over the walk into the park from Tennyson.

I'm at Elitches years later standing outside the playhouse and Chris makes fun of me for wearing a white leisure suit.  What am I thinking?  Hey!  It's the eighties.

There I am at Regis.  It's 1966 and we have to run all the way up Lowell to Loretto Heights as part of freshmen orientation.

And there I am again just a few blocks up 50th at The Blue Guitar, one of those college neighborhood folk music places.  I'm five feet from Rene Heredia and I hear live flamenco guitar for the first time.  If you know flamenco, you are envious right now.

I'm at Marycrest High School in 1971.  It's my first teaching gig.  There are girls in plaid skirts sitting under shady trees discussing Animal Farm.

It isn't just places that set me off.  It's my family.  Whenever Brooklyn directs Sammy in a little playlet--like her cruise director bit yesterday--I see Chris and Nate as little boys, two actors in search of an audience.

When I see Willa already creating little playworlds to inhabit, I see little Franny in her blue bride dress already choreographing events in the back yard.

I'm about to drive over to Franny's for lunch.  I think I'll take a detour down 32nd and then over to 35th at Pierce.  Just down the street is Paramount Park where the boys and I used to go to practice soccer.  Franny had a softball game there once a long time ago.

A Journey to the Jammie Drawer

Don't be confused.  Today it's Katherine and not Jim.  The content of this will make that important.

I just went up to the bedroom and took off my once favorite pair of leggings and put them in my jammie drawer.  It was a big moment.  Going through my jammie drawer reminds me of an old Sophomore Language Arts assignment where kids worked on introductions and somehow led the reader to masterful lists of the flotsam and jetsam that occupied their various junk drawers.  Exceptions could be made if you had a great medicine cabinet, or tool box, jewelry box, or even a jammie drawer.

My jammie drawer has a two purchased pair of flannels for the winter, a pair of long sweats, and a pair of short sweats.  All essential comfy wear for around the house.  It's the other stuff I want to talk about though.

There are three Howard Dean T-shirts.  I love Howard Dean.  He started his political career trying to get bike paths in Vermont because it was a healthy thing to do.  He ended up learning how to use the internet in politics and teaching the Democratic party to fight for the whole country and not just the blue states.  Franny worked for him and I scored three oversized shirts.  The best thing Howard Dean ever did was order the perfect T-shirt for bedtime.  No other politician has met his T-shirt standard since.  My three T's are not long for this world.  I try not to wear them because of this.

There is one T-shirt from Belize.  Jim hadn't packed enough.  I must say he's always a light packer, but he always misses on one item.  He forgot underwear when we went to Aspen once.  Try to buy basic men's underwear in Aspen.  Every store suggested we drive to Glenwood where underwear could be purchased.  Anyway, we went to Belize and he didn't bring enough T-shirts (go figure) and he bought this one and then he didn't like it.  I do.  It's in trouble too.

There is a pair of Walt DisneyWorld plaid boxers with Mickey waving (tiredly, I admit) at the rim of my left leg.  These were originally a strange gift to Franny from Chris when she was at Dunstan and disdaining Disney.  She never wore them.  I found them a while back (I was still teaching) and was so excited to have comfy boxers for my jammie drawer.  Another favorite item destined soon to go away.

There is a Snooze baseball shirt--the kind like a T-shirt with 3/4 length sleeves.  Mine is grey with green sleeves.  I bought it to wear because it would look cool and I don't mind advertising Snooze.  It just didn't fit.  My girl body and the boy shirt just didn't work in terms of public consumption.  It's fine in the den though.

There are two Patagonia hiking tops that fit before the mastectomy and don't fit now.  The gaps under the arms are too icky and I have nasty scars.  Again, on a really hot night I'm fine in the den.

I just put in the most expensive thing ever in my jammie drawer.  Several years ago (I think four--I just don't know), we went to California.  First we met Franny's in-laws in Santa Rosa, then we went to Justin Garland's beautiful wedding in Berkeley, and finally we headed up to the Napa valley.  I had a clothes disaster at the wedding.  The dress I brought had broken and I hadn't noticed somehow.  I lost the pair of shoes I had planned to wear.  I wore a cowgirl shirt and shoes that killed me at a setting that needed lovely-butt-sensible shoes (the ones that have never appeared again).  I was sad.

When we got to Napa we got there too early to check in and we went shopping and I bought a pair of leggings and tunics.  They were the first garments since the mastectomy that I felt good in.  We spent too much money, but I felt good every time I put the leggings or any of the tunics on.

The leggings are done.  Girls will understand this.  I can't throw them out.  They are a part of how I look in the mirror and do my own little version of Funny Girl's, "Well, hello gorgeous."

I put on newer leggings.  Basically the same as the Napa ones, just no story.  I put the first ones, the Napa leggings, in the jammie drawer.  They will feel really good when the weather gets chillier.

River Rock Necklaces and Other Weird Stuff I Think About

Katherine here.

I drive a lot.  It balances out the 35 years where I hardly drove at all.

Most of my married life we had only one car and Jim drove it.  He often wonders why I'm such a backseat driver.  35 years of riding can do it.

These days I drive from school to school and observe second year teachers working to help kids and earn licenses.  I drive from school to school.  I know this city.   I'm not sure Jim likes this about me, but I know the best route to almost anyplace around Denver, Aurora, Littleton, and most of Douglas County.  I'm worthless up north.  I'm okay with that.

I need to occupy myself while I drive from school to school to school to school.  Sometimes I listen to music.  I have a billion stations on the Sirius thing.  After a while, they all play the same songs over and over.  Sometimes I listen to 104.3 The Fan.  I'm loyal.  Chris advertises there.  Sports radio is okay if the radio people aren't intent on whipping us up into irrational hatred.  The Joe Flacco banner on the stadium was a real boon to them, but I couldn't take it.  I couldn't listen all last week because of this.

I do want the Broncos to win tomorrow night when the season opens.   I can't imagine what 104.3 The Fan will be like if we lose.  These are angry people and they want listeners to be angry.

Mostly I drive in silence and I think.  Even though the world is falling apart, I think about stupid stuff.  It keeps me occupied.

For instance, I've noticed that going north is significantly faster than going south.  I make the lights.  The traffic moves.  My life is Federal, Sheridan, Wadsworth, Kipling--I go north and south often.  Going north is always pleasant and going south makes me feel like a spawning salmon.  I've never noticed this when going east and west where I have even fewer rivers to navigate.  I notice these things.

A recent odd meditation has been about what I have dubbed "river rock" necklaces.  For reasons I haven't yet puzzled out, a morning weather person must be an attractive female who makes guys at gyms take notice.  They must have big boobs accentuated by tight clothing (usually bright) and an open neckline accented by a "river rock" necklace.  We see Lauren Whitney on the CBS station more often than not and she's the Platonic ideal of weather ladies.  She has a virtual plethora of "river rock" necklaces.  The whole, now very young, female crew has a variety of "river rock" necklaces.  It's a movement that's been building for several years.

These necklaces are large.  Numbers of large, really large, stones are strung together on large chains.  The stones and chains are large.  Given the size of the boobs, I just don't know how they hold everything up.

My friend David, a significant jeweler in Alabama, calls these necklaces "Pebbles and Bam Bam" necklaces.  I like this too.

I'm just not wild about them.  They scream artificial unless somebody with some real live money is wearing them.  I'm okay with "river rock" necklaces if the green stones are really emeralds.  Maybe.

You can tell I've spent some time on the "river rock" necklace thing.

Yesterday I spent emotional energy feeling badly because Roger Federer lost in the US Open.  I suspect his life in Dubai or Monoco or wherever is just peachy keen.  He hasn't worried much about me.  Why do I do this?  Why do I spend even an instant wondering what stupid things Von Miller has done.  I do though.

We watched the new version of The Great Gatsby this past weekend and I thought about it between downtown schools.  It wasn't really worth a long drive.  My advice--never watch movie versions of your meaning-of-life books.  It looks like it was done on Instagram.  The worst thing is that the movie is pretty good until Gatsby shows up.  That's a problem for me.

I have also been thinking about where I could have meals on the road on the way to Scottsdale next March.  It's never too early to think about road trip meals.  I love driving to the Tetons because of the destination, but I also really like the drive and I love our little food stops along the way.  We stop and have breakfast at Johnson's Corner (the truck stop a bit south of the Loveland exit) and it serves the most amazing German sausage.  Really.  Lander and Dubois have great little places to eat.  It's a joy.  It's only 10 months before we go again.

Driving towards Santa Fe or Arizona is the opposite.  We try to avoid the chain places.  We have tried for years without success.  There are a billion places to eat in Santa Fe.  It's the in-between places that are hard.  The McDonalds in Trinidad left the list (we had been desperate) when a man came in packing a huge pistol and looking like he wanted to shoot something.  It was the most un-nerving meal I've ever had.  We don't stop in Trinidad anymore.  We both got food poisoning at a Mom and Pop place a local recommended in Raton.  We aren't stopping there again.  It's hard to find a spot and I think about this a lot.

It's odd, but the best meal we've had headed south was in Gallup, New Mexico a couple of years ago when we were returning from what I thought would be my last trip to Arizona.  We saw The Grand Canyon and several spring training games for the Rockies during that trip.  The weather was not great for our 10th visit to Arizona.  I was done.  It always snows in March when we visit.  Arizona is out to get me.

We are going back though and we will watch baseball and find a spa or something this time.  March again.  We can't help it.  That's when spring break is.

It's just the eating on the way down there I think about while driving around and I'm stuck with the thought that the motel/restaurant where John Wayne stayed while filming with John Ford in Gallup is our best bet.  The John Wayne burger and the crusty delivery was better than Trinidad.  We didn't get sick either.

I also have been worrying about the snake in the garden.  I have never seen it, but the burrowed holes that move from place to place indicate its presence.  The bunny population has been reduced as well.  I'm sure bunnies don't hibernate and there just aren't as many as there were earlier this summer.  My harebells aren't all bent over because the bunnies have been hiding in them.  For the longest time, there was a fox who kept the bunny population down.  The fox is gone though.  I don't know what happened there, but I worry about it.  It was a beautiful fox.

I have a snake.  It's been on the move.  I am afraid I will see it.  The bunnies aren't eating my veggies this year.  The squirrels are.  Do snakes eat squirrels?  Mother Nature forces a girl to think.  And to keep an eye out for snakes.

The world has always begun anew in the fall and I think fall things while I drive.  School stuff still, but it is also the time of the REI Labor Day sale.  It's important.  I spent a goodly amount of time thinking about what I should target for our yearly winter upgrades (boots last year).  Coats are ordered this year and I sometimes hum the "Wells Fargo Wagon" song from The Music Man at times like this.  I like this kind of thinking.   Jim will like his new coat even though he didn't "need" one.  He hasn't needed anything since we got married.

That's it.  I know the world is falling apart.  I don't think about it much.  It's a very confusing world.

I look at my mom.  She's lovely and 86 and has retreated into the Rockies, the Broncos, and Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy movies.  I think about how to convince her that her twenty year old Afro American housekeeper would never, ever, in a million, billion years want to steal one of her Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy movies.  I know.  I am a good daughter and I have watched one all the way through and part of another.  No one would ever steal one of these movies.  Her retreat is part of what makes her paranoid though.

I only bring Mom up because I don't know how long it takes to move from thinking about where to have lunch on the way to Scottsdale to being like my mom and living in a world where you suspect people of taking your Nelson Eddy movies.  I could be thinking about Syria instead.

On another note--It's important to note that I've thought through the casting of Ben Affleck as Batman.  I'm good with it.