Baby Talk

I know you are all as crazy over puppies as I am (*smile*) so here's a video to help pass the time.



I was on my way home yesterday and looked out over the mountains and realized this was the most of the Black Range I've been able to see. Must have something to do with precipitation and the way the clouds were. Anyway, I pulled over and snapped this picture. These are the mountains that my house sits at the base of.

Check, check, check, no check

Hire a sports guy - check (did that Monday)
Buy my dream German Shepherd - check (did that Tuesday)
Cry angry tears because I couldn't get my pilot lights to stay lit - check (did that Wednesday)
Deliver 7 Aussie pups - check (did that Thursday)

It's amazing how, out of all those glorious things, it's the one piddly thing in the middle that drew my emotion Wednesday night.

Okay, so I'm a girl.

But at that moment, when I'm laying on my stomach in front of the hot water heater, flame thrower in hand, trying to make sense of the directions and it's not working, and I really just want to take a bath and enjoy the luxury of, oh you know, hot water - at that moment angry tears burned my eyes and I grumbled about the "f*&^ing directions" and the "damn hot water heater" and I think I even (gently) tossed the flame thrower on the table in hopeless retreat.

So I can't do everything. And lighting pilot lights is one of those things.

"Where is a man when you need one?" was the real question running through my mind. When you actually need one for all the handiness that makes them, well, different from me, you can't find one.

My co-worker mused over lunch:
"Holly, I just can't figure it out. I mean, you stay up all night to deliver puppies, you're a ranching girl, you cook, and you STILL can't snag yourself a good cowboy? Not even to light your pilot lights?"

Yeah, that's how bad it's gotten, Sam. I can't even get a damn pilot light lit.

As if my honey-do list wasn't long enough after 25 years of...waiting, I've got one more thing to add before the order is shipped:

MUST LIGHT FIRE

The interpretation is yours to make.

While you're making it, I'm heading home to make a truce with the flame thrower I (gently) tossed on the table last night and try this whole thing over again. You know, with as much flame and propane as I've been mixing in the house over the past two days it's a wonder there hasn't been an explosion on my road.

I found a lake...

I love lakes.

After spending the past 5 years living 20 minutes from 175,000 acres of lake and spending as much waking (and sleeping) time on or near it as possible, you won't be surprised to hear that I almost cried yesterday when the dogs and I topped a hill and saw this:


Honestly, we all thought we'd died and gone to heaven.

I promptly dug my book out of my bag, grabbed the dog's leashes and my (pink, 5-mega-pixel) camera, let them out of the station wagon and away we went. The first thing Marley did was take a swim but he did it so promptly I missed getting his first swim in....3 months...on film. So you'll just have to take my word that he was a very, very, very happy dog as you can kind of tell by this (slightly stoic) expression on his face:


While Marley thought about swimming across the little lake to visit the fishers...


...Jada was embarking on lake adventures of her own, staring at the bubbly green algae that abounded where we were:

For those who are curious as to what this New Mexico lake looks like in its entirety, the following are for you:



So after the dogs played and I'd read some, I decided to check out some trails around there, thinking, in my old Kentucky ways, that I was sitting on acre upon acre of public land to be used and enjoyed by, well, the public. But it wasn't so:

As you can tell, Jada is very confused as to why I stopped and turned around. We did walk on the side of the mountain where there were no signs. I was cautious, though. People in New Mexico like guns.

I felt slightly confined because it seemed every way I'd turned that day for a good hike it was thwarted. Before we found the lake, I drove to what is called the City of Rocks State Park, which is about 25 minutes from my house. I'd been told by a friend that you had to pay $5 to park; it outraged me when she told me and it certainly outraged me when I saw the sign for myself. I mean, my taxes are already paying for the whole park and I have to pay $5 to park? Are you kidding me?

But they weren't.

So I snapped a picture, pulled over on this side of the stupid sign and let the dogs out to pee. A ranger was promptly over in his Polaris thingie asking if I was going into the park. No, sir, as a matter of fact I'm not.

Mostly because:
1) I didn't have $5 on me and
2) I wasn't going to pay it

Besides, the City of Rocks looked stupid anyway:


But the good news is: we stayed at the lake for almost 2 hours and then went home where I continued reading my book on the porch:


And the dogs slept near me and I think Marley is saying 'thank you' here:

Photo of the Day

I took this picture with my trusty little pink 5 megapixel digital camera that always stays in my purse. Thankfully I took it with me to the game because the people who I thought were going to be there taking pictures for me weren't.
Not too bad of a shot for an $80 camera.
This was snapped right before I had to move before getting side-swiped.

Time Out!

We take a moment from our regularly scheduled programming to bring you this message: Holly is losing her mind in the office.

Not really.

What I thought could possible be a day off has turned into a 9 hour work day and I'm sitting here trying to pull on my football hat and churn out a good ------------------------------------->
For the ones who know anything about sports and what my life has centered around for the past 3 weeks, you'll know what that last word is.



Illustration of how I felt about my day off not being a day off ----------------->
In better news, Brooke called me at the ass-crack of dawn this morning, which roused me out of bed, which proved beneficial because I got errands done before coming into work. Otherwise I'd have slept way too late. Thank you Brooke!!







This is something I'm very happy about --------------------------------->
If you're going to be hanging out with at all in the next, oh, 2 months, you're going to be hearing a lot about puppies! And actually, even if you're not able to hang out with me in person, you're still going to hear a lot about puppies (Kristin!) :)








My plan for tomorrow ---------------->
My team and I are covering 3 first round state championship high school games. Wow. We're good.













Do you know what's coming? ------>













Yes, The Nose came with me all the way from Kentucky!!! -------------->















I'm going to finish the football preview and go home. ------------>















In other news, and I don't have pictures to back this up, I had to cook dinner for my dogs last night. Two days in a row, I forgot to go buy dog food so when I got home at 1 a.m., I made them stove-top oatmeal and mixed in lunch meat and cooked bacon/bacon grease. They were quite pleased with the concoction and I CANNOT forget to get dog food tonight on my way home!

Photos of Me

I had this idea last night when I got home to shoot some snapshots of my (sometimes boring, most of the time crazy) life. So I did. And because you all care, here they are:

The first thing I do when I get home is take off my shoes, and, as you can see here, I'm not very good at taking them off in the appropriate places.









The pile of paint, which is indicative of the creativity that took place last week.













Cooking my celebration dinner - a celebration because I found out last night I can hire a sports reporter! So it was home-grown rib-eye steak, mashed potatoes and green beans.












Marley was really confused why we weren't playing -
















And last night, I broke a cup - one of my favorite coffee cups from mom.














I did the dishes...finally.
















This is my audience while I'm cooking, washing dishes or doing anything really. I move from room to room and my entourage follows me. Makes me feel popular. :)











My completed meal - it was heavenly.

A large portion of my weekend (and that being 12 hours on Saturday) was spent doing what I seemingly do best...driving.

And since Blogger didn't do what I asked, you'll have to look at the second picture first and then the first to really understand what I'm talking about.

When I got home Saturday after a long day of driving, talking, writing, driving some more and trying to figure out the ins and outs of football-telling, I sat on the couch and pounded out a quick column. The following is from that column, which I think best describes the feeling I have when I'm driving in New Mexico:

By the time I've reached Datil, I've crossed the Continental Divide three times (if I counted right) and feel as if I'm sitting on top of the world. In Kentucky, I used to have that feeling but on a much smaller scale. We'd be horse-back riding in the woods for hours and then all of a sudden, the trees would part and deliver us into a meadow full of green grass and a tranquility that the mountains didn't carry.
When I get to Datil, that's what I feel like.
The highways have carried me up a couple thousand feet through mountain ranges and rock edifaces to this: the high plains, where the mountains I was once in the middle of retreat to the background to allow the peacefulness of this massive meadow to take over. On one side, some of the mountains look like sand dunes; they're void of trees or grass and the afternoon sun glints off their tops, making them appear like gigantic gray caps. On the other side, there are more mountains but these have green junipers and cedars. In between is acre upon acre of plains.

Now, that's how I feel about traveling in New Mexico, poetically speaking. Later in the column, I get to the nuts and bolts of how I really feel about it:

Hwy. 117 is the type of New Mexico highway who's job is 1) be a road and 2) test the toughness of its passengers. Loose gravel, no center lines and sporadic roughness are just some of the things it uses to test your endurance. One of the rancher's wives actually said that the road conditions was one thing she saw deter people from living out there.

And if written words aren't enough, here's some video proof for you:



It's really not as bad as I'm sure my voice makes it out to be - there were lots of factors that day that made the trip less then appealing:

1) I was sick
2) I was tired
3) I was driving alone

But despite those factors, the trip is always rewarding because a) it is beautiful...and that's pretty much all there is to say about it. It's pretty beautiful country.