My Letter to You

You know those letters people used to send, back in the days when Christmas cards were a thing? Those tales of all the trips and accomplishments and highlights of a family's year? 

I'm writing one for you here. I am breaking my blog fast and posting a new entry to tell you what all's gone on for the past year.

Today on my deck. My prairie garden of pots has gone
by but the weedy explosion still enchants. Nice afternoon.

I stopped writing my blog "Enchanted" last year after living here in Santa Fe for six years, and after I had run out of things to post about. 

The break turned out to be a complete stoppage. I got distracted. What's been going on since I stopped?

Well, my world got smaller -- at least the people in it did. My three year old (soon to be four!) granddaughter and my just turned one year old grandson are now taking up lots of my attention. A toddler and an infant are A LOT. No one told me being a grandmother would be this intense.

The sweetest, cutest, healthiest, most entertaining grandkids on the planet.
I am blessed beyond reason, although late to the grandparent game.

I go out to see them in California often. I'd love to blog about them all the time, but even though my son and daughter in law are not squirrelly about posting pictures, they are not my kids to publicize. 

Our hotel in New Orleans in the
French Quarter and various sights. 

My world got smaller in other ways, not so good. 

Jim has always had episodic back problems but is now almost totally immobile, in constant pain, using a walker. A round of physical therapy followed by a possible MRI and perhaps a nerve block is underway, but it has been months with no relief and more months to go under this protocol.

We no longer travel, or even sightsee around town. We did go to New Orleans in March, but the trip was difficult, despite wheelchairs at the airport and Ubers in town. It just didn't work. 

(At that, New Orleans was a compromise. Our original booking was in Maui at Lahaina, which went up in catastrophic, tragic flames a week after we booked. So that didn't happen.)

After trying to travel to New Orleans, we knew we'd have to cancel any other events or travel. The world has gotten very small for both of us.

SWAIA fashion show model

Despite that, I still do things I enjoy around town, like the May indigenous fashion show staged by the Southwest Association for Indian Arts. 

It was an over the top expensive gala over several days, professionally staged and featuring modern haute couture from native designers, not just feathers and beads. Edgy stuff and beautiful designs.

Old friends flew in to Santa Fe for it and we had dinners and get togethers like we used to in the old days when everyone used to gather for Indian Market.

Other updates: my younger son in Denver had a bad year. He drove down to visit us twice for some Mom time after a relationship ended badly, his catalytic converter was stolen, his truck was totaled a week after the converter was fixed (no injuries, thank god), he lost his job, and it all went sideways for him. 

He coped, he managed, and he got through, but it took a lot of my emotional energy away from blogging.

He eventually got rehired when the company, reorganizing after the pandemic, realized it cut staff too far. He was rehired at the firm he loved working for, got a new truck, and is back on keel. His romantic relationships continue to founder, though.

What else happened this year?

My gardens enchant. Not mature, not even very interesting, but a delight to me, except for the failures, the dead stuff and the plants needing to be replaced. The rest is good.

A little bit of my gardens this year.

My bookgroup gets older (I'm 75 now. that's a whole other story.) Among the group there have been hip fractures, knees replaced, shoulder surgeries, all manner of ailments, and we carry on, the most interesting, most well traveled and most engaging group of women. Ditsy, old and fragile, but what a great group these ladies are. 

Just a few books we read. So many more . . . 

I had health and work challenges all last year. After a cold, I developed uncontrolled asthma, which, living at 7,000 feet, is bad for you. It went on for months but in the end the pulmonologist got me on the right meds, after noting in my medical file: "Patient has high eosinophils. Has been tested. Is allergic to everything". Well, that explains things.

And the work issues? I'm not employed, but I volunteered years ago to chair our homeowners association landscape committee, which morphed into a major work effort to manage landscape vendors, troubleshoot irrigation breakdowns, broker Hispano-Anglo communications, lobby the board of directors, and write contracts, bids and performance reviews. It was a lot. 

More pictures of grandkids. It's hard to know when to stop.

I now have three wonderful volunteers who can take over, and I am quitting, after six years, and taking back my time. 

The committee documentation alone filled my computer and shouldered aside any stuff I wanted to blog about.

A new dawn awaits as 2025 approaches -- I can breathe now, I no longer have to figure out irrigation valve control issues in broken Spanish, my gardens aren't so needy, our immobile and homebound lives are what they are, sort of. My grandchildren are everything. 

Even though my energies aren't as distracted now I'm still not sure what to blog about. If I do post anything in the future, I'll want to change direction and find new topics. 

Maybe I'll try writing fiction.