Can you believe it? We arrive in New Mexico and it snows. Last night we ordered pizza and the drive was perilous. Freezing slush caused cars to slide into 180's and the pizza place understood why we were 40 minutes late picking up our order. "Drive safe!" The girl at the window admonished. I decided to close my eyes and pray hard the whole way home (since a third set of eyes doesn't do any good anyway) and I prayed for her since it was still snowing and it would be worse when her shift was over.
We watched "the Grapes of Wrath" with our pizza and Angry Orchard hard cider (another first for me - I'd never had a beer before). We agreed as we ejected the VHS tape an hour and a half in that the movie was incredibly well-acted and -flmed, and that we had seen enough. I read the Wikipedia summary of the ending and confirmed out decision.
The depression-era movie about a large, dirt-poor family searching in vain for work was heavy on my soul. We watched Frozen in order to lighten the load.
Anyhow, we listened to recordings of the guy we came for on the way home.
There were four acts tonight and we stuck through them in spite of the cringes and awkwardness of new performers. The crowd was kind and it really was a good time.
Arriving in Albuquerque, Heather and I hung out in a Barnes and Noble to shelter from the gray cold outside. She told me that the state was more enchanting and colorful to her the last time she had come. I haven't been before, so the landscape is thrilling.
The mountains are pointy and jagged like the kind I used to draw as generic mountains when I was a child. I might not yet have seen snow-covered mountains making those nature drawings but something in me believed they were out there when mom told me to draw them and so I drew them.
Heather loves the state nonetheless. She will live there someday, she says. She turned to me and asked, "What state will you live in?"
"All of them."
I learned a little about Cirque de Soleil from the guy we're visiting here. He has a huge book all about it. I can see Cirque's makeup and art and travel being part of my future.
I'm sitting in the back seat of our Dodge Journey because Heather and Matt are navigating. It makes me feel like a kid again when mom and dad would sit in the front!
We visited the "Old City" of Albuquerque and a lot of places were closed because of the snow. Sugar skulls abounded at the tourist shops which speaks to happy memories of mine from my face-painting days at Dutch Wonderland.
I found a ring that made me think of the "frozen fractals" Elsa sings about in the movie we watched last night but how nice that I told the lady I felt I could spend my money more wisely! I had room to buy the better ring tonight!
In the old city was an old church. The walls are five feet thick. Most importantly, on the walls were numbered paintings depicting the narrative of Jesus' crucifixion. Could these be the stations of the cross I had been wondering about earlier? I think so.
New Mexico was a good state today.
Danielle did you decide on the movie instead of reading the book to Heather as she drives? There are multiple Angry Orchard varieties, which did you have and did you like it?
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