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.