Friday morning

This is my life right now:
It's 8:24 am on a Friday morning in December, and I'm happily breakfasting on leftover chicken enchiladas with blue corn tortillas & green chile from this tiny little mom'n'pop place whose existence is a secret carefully and jealously guarded by locals. The dog is sleeping in a patch of sunlight on my bed, and I just broke the second bowl in under a week. The first one I didn't even mind breaking, because it made such a satisfying smash on our Mexican tiles, but the second one just made a thud on the linoleum. I'm listening to an old Hot Dish show -- 7 March 2002, I believe (also known as the "animal episode") -- on tape. "Hot Dish for Lunch! (with Mary and Molly)" was my radio show -- with co-DJ Mary Hoeschen of Duluth, MN -- on Grinnell's radio station, KDIC. Happily, I have most of our shows on tape, and have taken to listening to them on bleary-eyed mornings. I'd much rather listen to senior-year-Mary and senior-year-Molly (and sometimes special guest stars s-y-Dan, s-y-George, s-y-Kevin, and Beck) joke about the West Side Diner, Norweigan statues in northern Minnesota, the Pub, evading campus security, tiger alarm clocks, and other such nonsense than listen to shrill "shock jocks" on crappy morning radio. Any day. Of course, I prefer the selection of music that Mary & I played to the "selection" most radio stations play (with the exception, perhaps, of WMMM in Madison and KUNI in central Iowa). Plus, almost all of my Hot Dish tapes has the first ten minutes of Chris Rathjen's & Nick Wagner's show, which had a ridiculously long name -- "Chris & Nick's something something Smileytime de Vida, (fiesta extravaganza bonanza ole!)." Their show came after ours, and always made me laugh. Every Thursday after our show, Mary and I would go to Dairy Queen for lunch, then I'd drop Mary off at work and go to Bob's Underground Cafe. I was the manager of Bob's then, and on Thursdays I'd meet the delivery guy, inventory & put away the week's supply of Tofutti Cuties & other organic stuff, and do the bank from the previous night -- all the while listening to Chris & Nick's show, sometimes laughing out loud, often calling in to joke with them.

Anyhow, to all the angry people who emailed me saying "Update your goddamn blog!" I extend my sincerest apologies.

Oh, and CONGRATULATIONS HEATHER JAMES for surviving the big NaNoWriMo challenge! Very proud of you, darling.

So it's December, the special time of year when you can't even get an oil change without having to suffer through yet another rendition of "Santa Baby" or "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer." I made the mistake of saying something at work about how it still seemed a little early for so much xmas, and one of the thrift store girls stared at me in disbelief. "Molly, there are only 3 shopping weekends before Christmas." Uh, sorry.

Here's the problem: it's too warm to be almost-christmas! The mornings usually start off with a chill, but by mid-afternoon it's almost always warm enough to run around in a tee-shirt. A tee-shirt! It's not time for Christmas until it's too cold outside to do anything but run from your car to whatever building is closest, even if it's your neighbor's house. My northern friends keep telling me about snow, and I am one jealous girl. It snowed once, about three weeks ago, but only in the mountains, and it all melted the next day.

However, I did go to Colorado for Thanksgiving, and got to play in a little bit of snow there. The drive to Pagosa Springs from Albuquerque was just amazing. It's only 200 miles -- less than the distance from Grinnell to Oregon -- and (no offense, Iowa and Wisconsin) it's a far prettier drive than the 240 mile stretch of 151 I know by heart. Driving north on 84, you pass through chain after chain of snow-capped mountains, which grow ever more wild and breathtaking as you go. The land around Abiquiu, too -- the part of New Mexico where Georgia O'Keeffe lived at her "Ghost Ranch" -- is just stunning, with its rocky cliffs striped in reds & oranges. And then the last hour of the drive -- from Chama to Pagosa -- was just incredibly picturesque (in the old-fashioned sense of the word), and for a while I thought of the Romantics & their sense of the sublime --- until I caught myself & forced myself to think along less intellectual lines.

I have more to report, of course, but I need to wrap this up or I'll be late to the day-long meeting I have to attend today. BO-ring!

Until next time, here's Anna Karenina (Or, Like, Most Of It), a sestina.