San Xavier del Bac

Mister C and I went to Tucson on Thursday to hear a lecture by a photographer. The lecture wasn't until five thirty but we headed down early so I could visit San Xavier del Bac, which I absolutely love. It's so beautiful and so very out of place. You come around a bend in the *rode and it just rises up out of the desert. This gorgeous, blindingly white mission contrasting sharply with the mostly brown background.

It's really hard to get a decent photo of the place though because of the tourists. When we went a few years ago, we made the mistake of going on a weekend and there were thousands of tourists milling aimlessly around. This time, since it was a Thursday afternoon, there were probably less than a hundred. But it was still amazingly difficult to get a decent photo because even though the total numbers were down substantially, the number of idiots didn't seem to be reduced much.

I don't mean to judge (or maybe I do), but the fact is that NOBODY needs to make a cell phone call while standing smack dab in the middle of the front gate to the place. Nobody. Especially not four hundred pound bald guys with mismatched outfits and heavy facial hair. And especially not for an extended period of time. I mean come on, it's obvious that other tourists are trying to take a picture of the place in it's entirety. Which means that we'd like to get the whole path leading through the pillars with the gorgeous heavy wooden doors to the chapel beyond. No, really, we would. We're not actually all standing here with our cameras pointed in your direction because we want you in our pictures. I finally gave up and went to take the rest of the pictures I wanted and then managed to get a few on our way out. Even then though, it was like playing a game of cat and mouse trying to avoid having a tourist show up through one of the portholes just as I was pushing the button.

But, idiots aside, it's really such a beautiful, peaceful place and they've done a fantastic job on the renovations so far. When my friend Brandy eventually comes down here we're going to head on down to Tucson so she can take pictures as well. I've already given her the heads up that I want to try and get there right about when they open, which is seven in the morning. Which means that we'll have to leave our house by about five am. It won't be pretty, but it's doable.

So anyway, here are a few shots that I managed to take that didn't have tourists milling around in them. Well, that's not entirely true. I'm pretty sure there's a tourist in the fifth portal from the left but he/she is wearing a brown or black top so they aren't standing out.









*I'm leaving this in as written because it made me laugh out loud when my mother pointed it out to me. Guess I shouldn't type up posts past my bedtime! I do actually know the difference between "rode" and "road", just not late at night apparently. Thanks for the heads up Mamoo!

The day after Christmas

Our main tree has been dying since two weeks before Christmas so we had made the decision that we would pull it down as soon as possible. On Sunday, after some nagging from Mister C, I undecorated the tree so it could be dragged out of the house and gotten rid of.

What I didn't count on when I started the process was the methodology that Mister C would employ to get rid of the tree. I guess I thought the process of dismemberment would begin once the tree got outside. I guess I was wrong.

Check out the mighty hunter carefully approaching the tree from behind. Note what he is carrying in his hand. That's right people, he's going to attempt an indoor landscaping project! (at this point I must add: kids, don't try this at home!)



He attacks the unsuspecting tree from an un-defensible angle. His trusty hunting dogs circle warily in case the tree makes a break for it.



He has his prey right where he wants it! He looks rather pleased with himself, no? It looks like it's pine salad for dinner tonight!



Getting into the field dressing portion of the hunt. Note the wild kitten "helping" from the left. He had to be removed before he became an amputee.



Oh lord, the pine needles are raining onto my carpet!



Izzy hoping she gets her portion of the kill, a branch maybe?



Another wild cat stalks around the landscaping. It was at this point that the mighty hunter was forced to remove all of the wild critters from the area as they were causing him to slow down the dismemberment process. They all got shoved unceremoniously into the bedroom. Much squawking and complaining commenced immediately.



I think he just removed the "tree steaks". You know, the most desired portion of the tree.



And no, my carpet wasn't always green.



Fully dressed tree, just need to have the "head" stuffed and hung on my wall to commemorate The Great Christmas Tree Kill of 2010!



And the mighty hunter drags his prey out of his favored hunting grounds.



Seriously, don't try this at home.

Weak, starving tree hugger

Guess I haven't posted in a few days. That's probably because I'm weak from lack of food. Yeah, I'm watching what I eat. What of it? Sorry, I'm a bit out of sorts. Who knew a lack of bacon could do that to a girl?

I decided while on my trip to visit Ninny that I really need to start taking better care of myself. Not necessarily so I can look good, although that wouldn't bother me in the least, but because I'm finally realizing that not taking care of myself will eventually shorten my life. And I want to be around for a long time. Mostly so I can continue to harass and torture Mister C. But also because we just seem to die off too young in my family. So I started with the basics.

On Wednesday morning, I logged back onto my SparkPeople page and got to work. I've been documenting every time food crosses my lips. Just for the record, that's a lot of documenting. The nice thing with this method is if I'm feeling too lazy to go type in the food I'm thinking of eating, there's a pretty good chance I'm not going to eat it. I also reaffirmed my decision not to consume soda. The empty calories are bad enough, the insane desire for pizza as soon as I take the first sip is worse. And finally, my coffee absolutely sucks. No sugar. No milk. No creamer. No happiness.

As for the exercise portion of things, well that's a little bit harder. Because the treadmill is probably a full two feet from my side of the bed. Two feet! Normally I practically trip over it on my way to get my warm, sweet caffeine fix. Now, I have to force myself to actually get on it.

So on Wednesday, I did twenty minutes of walking. Yesterday I opted to go pull weeds for fifteen minutes and then do some strength training for my flabby upper body. Today, I managed to walk at a decent pace for thirty seven minutes. Mostly this was due to the fact that a home improvement show started not long after I got on that I wanted to finish watching. Because I was in shock. Apparently on this particular show, three different renovations are evaluated and compared for which family got the most for their money. That's not the shocking part. The shocking part is that each of these people spent $100,000 on a basement renovation. What the hell? That's almost three times as much as I spent on my first house! I mean, I've sold houses recently that cost less than that. For the entire house. And the land it's sitting on. And they were livable as they were. Long story short, I think I'm in the wrong line of work and I'll be tuning in tomorrow.

One more thing is part of my change towards a healthier me, I'm going to try a produce co-op. It's not one where I have to sign up for a year or commit to a lifelong willingness to hug trees. I just have to order and pay for a basket of fresh produce on Tuesday and then pick it up on Saturday morning. I have no say in what I get, I just know it will be six fruits and six vegetables that are currently in season. At $15 it seemed like a good deal but I'll know for sure tomorrow when I pick it up. If it sucks, it's not a huge loss. If it's awesome, I got a great deal. I'll take a picture of my basket after I get it home tomorrow. Part of what's interesting to me about this is that I'm pretty confident we'll be trying some new foods around here. I'm also pretty sure I'll have to start looking up new recipes to figure out what to do with some of it. Either way, by this time tomorrow I'll know if I'm going to do it again next week.

So, lack of food, crappy coffee, forcing myself to exercise and possibly turning into a tree hugger. Yeah, that about wraps it up.

Consequences of clutter

My house is not perfect. I have some clutter. Mostly my clutter consists of books and Master J's school work but there are a few other things (such as toys) laying around. I really try to keep certain rooms clutter free. My guest room is clutter free. My bedroom is usually clutter free. My dining room and living room look pretty good as well. My kitchen however, is another story. My counters seem to collect growing piles of books and stray paper. I do go through Master J's school papers weekly and recycle about 95% of them but there's still a lot left. I think the schools could save millions of dollars just on paper if they quit sending every notice five times over. But that's a different story. The story today is about my kitchen clutter. The past two days at school, Master J has had an exceedingly difficult time being respectful. Yesterday he got to see the principal, which is never a good thing. Mister C decided that an appropriate course of action would entail Master J writing a sentence about being respectful multiple times. We had a bunch of running around to do yesterday and didn't get back until after 5:30 so Master J didn't get started on writing his sentences until almost 6:00. At first he did pretty well. He needed to do three pages (about 24 lines each) of writing and he got the first page done in about 15 minutes. He started the second page and got about 5 lines in when Mister C came home after getting new tires put on his truck. Of course Master J wanted to see those new tires and I made the mistake of letting him. He never got back on track. So by 7:30 when it was time for him to go to bed, he was exactly no further along in his task. So he had to start over this morning. And here's where it gets interesting. When he started working on it, he was very fidgety. He was talking, making noises, swinging his feet, etc. Since there's no point in leaving the room when he has a task if I want it to get done, I decided to start doing some cleaning. I put away the clean dishes, emptied the sink of the dirty ones, put some lotions back in my bathroom and recycled a bunch of papers. I noticed at this point that he was working diligently and better yet, quietly. I kept clearing and cleaning. I collected up his library books that were going back today and neatly stacked the remainder. I put away all of his toys that had been sitting around. It was when I was wiping down the counters that I realized he had been sitting quietly working for 45 minutes. He got done with his writing and calmly went to read a book. So I asked him about it. Did it help him to focus when there wasn't a bunch of stuff laying around. And he said he thought so. I think what's going on is that for him, every little thing in his line of sight is distracting. This is where I believe his ADHD kicks in. He hyper focuses on all the clutter that's around. It's kind of like if I were trying to concentrate on reading a book that I wasn't really interested in anyway and all around me people were talking loudly, with a lot of body animation. Only for him, the way his mind is wired is what makes those inanimate objects seem so distracting. So I guess the main point here is that I'm thinking that if I have less clutter around, I should have fewer problems with distraction. Which kind of sucks because I've spent a lot of years just to get my clutter down to the point it's at today.

Amongst the idiots, good people dwell

Well, after much irritation and many false starts, I finally sold Master J's bunk beds last night. I've had them out on Craigslist since Sunday night after we got back from Thanksgiving in La-La Land. I've had at least five people that e-mailed saying they wanted them and asking for my address. After giving my address and phone number, not one of them showed up. I can't tell you how many people e-mailed to ask if I still had them and when I said "yes", they disappeared back into the underbelly of Craigslist. Damned poll takers! What is the point of asking if I have something if you're not interested in buying it? That makes no sense to me. Anyway, I got a really nice e-mail from a lady saying it was exactly what she was looking for and asking if I would be willing to wait until Friday night for her and her husband to pick it up. Having no other viable offers, I of course said I would. She had given her phone number in her email so I called and left a message with her and gave her my number. She actually called back (that was unexpected!) and sounded very excited. About two hours later, she called back again to ask if she could come last night instead. I of course said yes again. Then she called a third time to tell me that they were on the way. They drove an hour and a half to get to my house. They never tried to talk me down on price and they were so excited about the beds and the bedding I was selling with it that I almost felt guilty for selling it to them. They were the kind of people you want to live next door to because they were funny, sweet and easy to talk to. I had a bunch of other stuff that I had planned to take to Goodwill but after I spoke to her the third time I went out and sorted it out. I set aside the clothes I thought would fit her boys and offered them to them when they arrived. I also offered her all my kid sized hangers and some other random things that Master J had outgrown. She took what would work for them and said how amazing it was that everything that they needed, we had. I say some people restore your faith in humanity and sometimes we're blessed enough to come in contact with them as a reminder.