Category: Home and hearth

Fall back/run away

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
A gloomy Nov. 1 follows a delightful Halloween. What the hell, we got an extra hour in the sack to start the month. Or did we?

Quite the Halloween we had here.

The weather was perfect — neither too cold nor too warm, and the anticipated rain never appeared. As a consequence we served what I think was a record number of trick-or-treaters before lights out, around 9 p.m.

Boo.

All manner of Burqueños rang our doorbell — young and old and in between, costumes ranging from casual to wildly elaborate, the mood celebratory throughout. Not at all the sort of mob one has to run from.

I choose to see it as an omen. A bunch of strangers sharing a moment, however briefly. See, it can be done. May the spirit endure.

We may yet get a puck in the gob from the gods, who seem intent on flogging us with a windy, watery cat-o’-nine-tails. It would be swell if they took a couple days off — like, through Election Day — but the trees are already dancing a jig so I’m not counting on it. Today may be another running opportunity, and perhaps tomorrow as well.

In any event, I need to get outside for a while. Sundays are when Herself does the serious housecleaning, and like Nature, I abhor a vacuum.

30: Not an end, a beginning

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
“And a good morning to you too, Acu-Rite.”

Welp, piss on the dogs and call in the fire — it’s definitely fall.

The weather has been so gentle lately that we shut off all the HVAC machinery; I can’t remember the last time the air conditioners clicked on.

And thus the furnace mos def did not click on last night, which — along with the news flash from Acu-Rite pictured above — explains why I felt a tad chilly upon awakening this morning despite being wrapped in sheet and blanket like a geezer burrito.

The uniform of the day immediately shifted from shorts and T-shirt to pants and flannel shirt over long-sleeved henley. Also, wool socks, which should go without saying. I stopped short of a watch cap and gloves.

Miss Mia knows what time it is, and what the temperature is, too.

Having mowed the lawn yesterday with plans to water today, I had to trot outside at stupid-thirty to change the sprinkler system’s start time from 5 a.m. to 10. The sun doesn’t clear the Sandias until well past 8:30 and there’s no point in creating a rink in the back yard when neither of us owns skates.

And ride time just got pushed back until noon, because it’s gonna take me some time to remember where I stashed all the cool-weather Lycra.

Tell you what, though. That first cup of coffee sure smells good when the first freeze is nipping at your nose.

Steelmen

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments
A tale of two Eurocrosses.

Cyclocross in July? Is there no Tour de France?

Well, yes and no.

This year’s Tour may be a little too hot to handle, for a couple of stages at least, thanks to fires in the Pyrénées-Orientales area. And anyway, I quit paying attention once the magazines quit paying me money.

Cycling is like … well, like pretty much anything, really. I’d rather do it than watch it.

So this morning, instead of watching UAE Team Emirates-XRG and Tadej Pogačar stomp all comers into a thin paste, I rolled out for a short ride on my favorite Steelman Eurocross, planning to take in the usual mix of asphalt and dirt.

About six miles in, halfway through a circuit of the Elena Gallegos Open Space, the rear tire started going soft. I stopped to add a few psi with a minipump, but what that tire really wanted was a fresh tube.

Well. Shit. What I’m doing here is cyclocross, kinda, sorta. Fuck a fresh tube, I’ll take a fresh bike. Where’s the pit?

About five miles away. In my garage.

So I swoop gingerly down from the EG, along Simms to the Tramway bike path, Comanche, and home, mindful of a rear tire whose tread is getting a little too chummy with its rim.

And I snatch up my second favorite Steelman Eurocross. Boom! Back in the race! Finished first in a field of one on my pit bike, with no further mechanicals. There was an awards banquet, featuring the remnants of Taco Thursday (h/t to stage winner Isaac del Toro) in a flour tortilla with a scattering of arugula, a spoonful of homemade salsa fresca, and a sprinkling of grated Kerrygold Blarney.

The crowd roared.

OK, so maybe that was the vacuum cleaner. Herself has her own race on Sundays, which is all about making El Rancho Pendejo look less like a race pit and more like a home. It’s a much tougher event.

The cat’s meow

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
Miss Mia Sopaipilla once again enjoys a full complement of servants.

We’re finally back to what passes for normal around here.

Herself has returned from Tennessee and Miss Mia Sopaipilla couldn’t be happier. I’m not the person you want to see first thing in the early morning hours, when the Voices are in full throat, roaring for coffee and news, the cacophony just a few decibels short of drowning out the clicking, popping, and squeaking of various OE bits from 1954 announcing their imminent failure. And with the factory warranty long since expired, too.

I lack a certain ruthless efficiency at stupid-thirty. Stack a few extra chores atop my tiny little pile and I am prone to mutter about Sisyphus as the rocks start rolling downhill.

I do manage to achieve some sort of spastic rhythm after a few days catching bad hops in the valley. But it’s not a pretty thing to watch.

Especially for Miss Mia. For openers, I like my coffee black, to match my aura, while Herself will share a dollop of frothy cream from her cuppa. I’ll pour Miss Mia a shot straight from the container, but it’s not the same. So off she goes, stalking from room to room, looking for Herself and that fat mug of cream with just a hint of coffee.

Never you mind that the litter box is cleaned and the water refreshed, food and meds served up, bedding shaken out. These are services, to be expected. It’s the little extras that make the difference between living and merely existing.

Eventually Miss Mia cycles through the Two Stages of Feline Grief: “I want something,” and “Fuck it, I’ll take a nap.”

And then I can finally have my coffee. Black.

Mother’s Day +1

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
“Squatters’ rights, yo.”

We’re generally light on mothers around here come the second Sunday in May. Herself isn’t one, and neither is Miss Mia Sopaipilla.

But for this Mother’s Day we have a robin sitting on a clutch of eggs in a fine, strong nest built in the Chinese pistache outside the dining room.

Two feeders, no waiting.

We’ve had doves cobble together some half-assed homes under the front overhang that mostly turn into fly-thru eateries for the neighborhood raptors. Hummingbirds tuck their teensy little bide-a-wees into the pines out front. And a variety of little cheepers have grown up in a dead limb of the backyard maple, holed at top and bottom by a ladder-backed woodpecker. A tree dude accidentally sawed it off while pruning the maple a while back, but he reinstalled it and it’s been home to at least one more family since then, so, winning, etc.

None of these little mothers ever pays any rent, but we don’t care. We even provide free feeds at our BB&B (Bird Bed & Breakfast). From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs, as the fella says.