"Every Artist Was Once An Amateur"

I had a good day yesterday. It started off by going to dim sum with my mom and sister. We had dumplings galore- shrimp, scallop, pork and shrimp, chicken and basil, and jalapeno shrimp morsels. We also had barbecue steamed buns, sea bass, and peking duck. It was all scrumptious! We ended the meal with fortune cookies (the title is my fortune) and pictures with the buddha.

My mom and I then went to T.arget to get gifts for my cousins birthdays. My mom and I have birthdays one week apart (hers is on the 5th). My cousins have the same birthdays as ours. So we usually all celebrate together, but this year we didn't- which is fine with me.

Afterwards, she dropped me off at home and I took a nap on the couch. I woke up 45 minutes later with Mr. H standing over me with the telephone in his hand, "It's Dad", he whispered.

I sat up half-asleep and confused. When I said hello, my MIL and FIL started singing to me! Can you believe this? I haven't spoken to them in a week and a half but they called me to wish me happy birthday. I still find this a little dumbfounding. I thought for sure my FIL wouldn't remember and my MIL just wouldn't care, but I was wrong. I don't know if this is her way of trying to make ammends (because she does not apologize) or if she was just trying to be nice. Either way, it was much appreciated.

For dinner Mr. H, Aaron and I went to dinner at a local pizzeria. We had never been there before (I had a coupon), but it was honestly some of the best pizza I have ever had. Then we went to my mom's house for birthday cake. She is not a baker by any means, in fact it's very difficult for her to follow a recipe, but this is one thing she has figured out how to make (and she's good at it!). She made me Tres Leches cake with fresh strawberries. mmmmm :-)

On the way home, it started to rain. I haven't seen rain in several weeks. so it was nice to see and smell. And the lightning was incredible. I wish I had a camera fast enough to capture the root like structure in the sky. It was a perfect nightcap to my day. Thanks everyone for the thoughtful birthday wishes!

Here are a few of my favorite photos from the evening:

It's My Birthday!

That just means I have permission to eat as much cake as I want :-)

This is the cake I made for Father's Day. It's super simple and so easy. If you can follow directions on a box, you can make this.

German Chocolate Cake

• 1 box German Chocolate cake mix
• 1 container Coconut Pecan frosting

Make cake according to directions on back of box. Stir frosting into batter. Bake in bundt pan for 50-60 mins at temp recommended on box. That's it. I sprinkled it with powdered sugar so it looks pretty.

[Enter Title Here]

I struggled to find a title for this post and could only come up with these intelligent tidbits:

Blah/Ugh/Spare Me/Gag Me/Whatever/Boo!/Piss on It/ Fuck 'Em/Suck It/Give Me A Break/Selfish Bastards/Enough Is Enough/Get Over Yourself/I Just Want One!/Can You Spare One or Two or Three?/Showing Me Up/Rubbing It In My Face/Go Home!/ Show Offs/Do You Believe This?/Keeping Up With The Jones'/Soccer Mom on Crack/Polygamists Practice Big Love/:-P/I Might Be Sick/

Which one do you like? I'm kind of partial to "Suck It!" It's simple and to the point.

I Spy With My Little "Eye"...

...A Magpie in the Aspen Tree!

Day 14- Going Home

We intended to leave around 9 am, but by the time we got the rental car and and went to the grocery store (after driving past it twice) to get lunch fixin's we ended up leaving Santa Fe at 11:51 am.

We drove and drove for several hours and just stopped long enough for potty breaks. We made a quick detour in Ft. Sumner, NM to see "Billy The Kid's" Grave! How exciting! And I must say it was hot as hell, but I got to see "Billy The Kid's" Grave!

These last 3 photos don't have anything to do with Billy, but I thought they were beautiful. The one with the flowers is a child's grave. The "tomb" is filled with soil and flowers that people had left. Along side the flowers were coins- mostly pennies. Maybe to make a wish? I'm not sure, but I thought it was interesting. The cross is part of the gate and centered in the middle of the cross is one and a half year old baby Christian Palmer's grave stone dating back to 1900-1902.

We drove more and more and finally stopped at a gas station so we could feed Autumn. She slept happily across the back seat for the majority of the trip with the exception of when she rode on my lap (cause she had to be with her momma :-)). She did very well and I am so proud of her and her patience. Traveling with pets isn't always pleasant.

We got home at 1:52 am. Exactly 14 hours and 1 minute. Right on time- I estimated 14 hours. I missed the smell of our house. A fenced yard for Autumn to run around in. My own shower. Our own bed. Our sheets. The humidity (I never thought I'd say that). The boys.

It is so good to be home.

Please Help!

Please keep A in your thoughts and prayers. She needs all the support she can get right now.

I wish there was more I could do...

Day 12 and 13

Back to our regularly scheduled program.

Day 12- As I said in Day 11, we were completely worn out and I was a little sunburned despite dousing myself in SPF 55 prior to leaving the house. But seeing Mesa Verde was incredible and so worth it.

We hung out most of the day doing nothing. Mr. H ran into town to run a few errands, I stayed home with my in-laws and the dogs. Since it was our last night in Durango Mr. H and I decided to head into town for a nice dinner downtown. We went to Ken & Sue's on Main St and stuffed ourselves silly.

After dinner we walked around and visited a few shops and galleries that were still open. Then we went to The Strater Hotel's Diamond Belle Saloon. It was so much fun. There was a piano man providing the entertainment and a lady wearing fishnet stockings and a feather in her hair (and not much else). We had a couple drinks and went home to do laundry- fun :-)

Day 13- I don't even want to think about this day anymore. It sucked majorly. I think more than anything, I am disappointed in his parents. There was bound to be some kind of confrontation between us because...well just because. They get on my nerves because they don't know when to stop talking and bitching about everything. Sometimes enough is enough. And it was finally enough.

I haven't spoken to them since Wednesday night. In fact I didn't even speak to them at all during this whole ordeal . I just sat there and cried because I was so upset and they did all the talking...er, yelling. They left after dropping us off and we went up to our room. I think one of the reasons my MIL was so upset is because they reserved 2 rooms for us at a hotel. One for them and one for us. Of course this was after she told us to get the fuck out. We reserved our own room at a different hotel, thinking they were going to stay at the rental house. (They didn't stay in the rental property because the A/C didn't work.) I don't know what she expected us to do??? Maybe she expected us to do what she wanted us to do. What she thought was the "correct" thing to do. And by "correct" I mean what ever she says is "correct". Whatever.

We ended up walking about 3 and a half city blocks to IHOP because it was the closest restaurant to the hotel. That and because it was already 10:30pm and everything was closed. We did not enjoy our dinner. Not in the least. In fact I think we both cried at some point over our eggs- mine over easy, his scrambled. There were a couple families there. Even one with a crying baby.

We shouldn't have been at IHOP. We shouldn't have been in a separate hotel across town by ourselves. We shouldn't have had to look for a rental car at midnight. We shouldn't have had to drive 14 hours to get home. But we did. And we're okay. We still have eachother and that's all that matters.

* * * * *

I'll update tomorrow about our trip home. It was actually quite pleasant.

Fucked Up

This is a different kind of post. This is going to be a bitch fest. Hang on to your seats, people.

I'll update you on Day 12 when I'm feeling less pissy and my headache goes away. But for now, I'm going to talk about my in-laws and how fucking mad they make me.

It all started yesterday when my in-laws were in a pissy mood because Mr. H went into town to get a prescription from Walgreens. He was gone for a couple of hours- which seems like a long time, doesn't it? Well, at the last minute my FIL said he needed a Rx filled. Usually one calls in a scrip so they don't have to wait, but he didn't. So Mr. H ended up having to go to 3 different places to get his filled. Then he made a short stop at a smoke shop on his way home. My MIL slept all day til 5 and my FIL just hung out around the house (as usual). There wasn't any mention of going anywhere (they're home bodies). Besides my FIL won't go anywhere without my MIL anyway.

Mr. H and I were going to go to dinner since it was our last night in Durango. We invited his parents to go with us because we thought they might like to get out of the house too. They said yes, then about an hour before our dinner reservation, they changed their minds. They stayed home and sent us on our way.

This morning, my FIL was being an ass to me, for some unknown reason. He told me in a very rude way that I "needed to tell Mr. H that it was his responsibility to take Autumn out". Autumn gets up first thing in the morning and runs down stairs to play with her doggie friend Sierra. She has does this every morning we have been here. While she's down stairs, my FIL lets her out to tinkle when Sierra goes out. Well apparently, Autumn got up early this morning (at 6) and needed to go out. She didn't nudge us or try to wake us up (which she usually does), she just ran down stairs. So I was verbally reprimanded for it.

Before we checked out of the house, my FIL told me I needed to tell Mr. H that he needed to switch drivers on the trip to Santa Fe and he didn't want any flack. And at this point he's pointing fingers at me and getting loud. I assured him Mr. H didn't have a problem switching off drivers as that's what we did on the drive up here. He says, "You're not listening to me! Tell him..." I said fine and walked off.

Right before we got to Santa Fe, both in-laws were in the backseat and were cold. They have their own air control system in the back, but they wanted us to turn our air down in the front seat. Mr. H obliged, he turned it from 60 degrees to 66, he angled the vents away from them and put the fan on low. Not 2 minutes later, "God Damnit Mr. H! I'm not gonna tell you again! Turn the air down!" I turned around and said "there's a blanket back there if you need it" FIL says " That's not what I want. I want him to turn the air down!" I replied with, "It was just a suggestion. That's why we brought it...I'm sorry..."

Mr. H stood up for me, and told them both that they needed to be aware of what they were saying to me (because I was sitting inthe front seat crying and trying to not be noticeable). His mom piped in and said "there's enough rudeness to go around", and started talking about how rude we were being to her this whole trip. Wha? Oh, I could have been rude. Lord knows I would have loved to tell her off many times. There were many times it was warranted, believe me.

We got to our rental house, and Mr. H and his parents got into an argument. I was sitting in the adjacent room (crying again) and listening to their whole conversation. There was name calling and it ended with, "Get the fuck out!"

So we are now sitting in a Hampton Inn with all our stuff, no car, no food and no where to go. When his parents dropped us off, his mother rolled down the window and said, "MONICA DON'T YOU EVER DISRESPECT YOUR FIL AGAIN" and drove off.

We're trying to get a rental car, but we're not having any luck. Sorry, but there won't be any postcards sent from Santa Fe. I wish there were. I wish I had stories to tell about how great our day was, but there won't be any of those posts. This vacation has turned to complete shit and I feel like a teenager that has been kicked out of their home. Only we're thousands of miles from home and that's our "fucking problem". So I've been told.

Day 11

I first have to say "AHHHHHHH!" There's way too much fucking family togetherness going on around here. Okay, I feel better.

* * * * *

We drove to Mesa Verde yesterday. It is really a lot greener than I expected. There really is a mesa and it is green - who knew? Most of the pictures that you see from this place are of stone and soil and remnants of life hundreds and hundreds of years ago left by the Ancestral Puebloans (that's what they want to be called. We know them as the Anasazi Indians), so I didn't really expect to see any form of vegetation, but I did. In 1996 there was a huge fire that caused a lot of damage to some of the ruins and the land. Today there are thousands of burnt trees still standing, charred like little toothpicks in a field of green brush. It was really quite beautiful and a little sad.

We visited Cliff Palace on our tour. There are 3 guided tours you can take each about 1-1.5 hours long. It was HOT and I was completely worn out after our hike. That last little bit of hiking up the narrow and steep steps did me in. But the views were incredible.

By the way, Postcards went out yesterday, so you should be getting them soon :-)

Day 8, 9 and 10

Day 8- Friday we drove for many hours up through the mountains and back. It was beautiful. We drove from Durango to Silverton (a very small mining town in the valley) where we stopped for lunch then to Ouray to Telluride then back down through some smaller towns back home. Total trip was only about 237 miles, but it took forever driving up those steep mountains and around those hairpin turns going 35 most of the way. We left the house at 1:20 and didn't get home until 9. We had a great time and took some wonderful photos (mostly through the window as we were driving) of the mountains. Some even had snow on them.

-On the way to Silverton-



-Tiny town of Silverton-



-near Red Mountain (red for it's iron content)-


-On the way to Ouray-


-Telluride Park-



Day 9- We went to the Farmer's Market where we bought handmade goatsmilk soap- Coconut Lime and Rosemary Mint (I think ?) I also bought a little wool lamb for a woman selling spun wool. So cute!

We went to breakfast, then headed back downtown for Art in The Park, and a fundraiser on Main Street benefitting the Durango Children's Museum. We didn't paticipate in the arts and crafts for the museum though. There were tons of kids and families all around. Had I known that, I probably would have avoided it. It didn't really upset me, it was just hard seeing fathers with their children playing and having a good time. I wanted to be part of it, but in a different way. So we left shortly after that and picked up a smoothie on the way home- yum!

Day 10- Father's Day. It was fairly quiet as we all slept in. I got up and made Eggs Benedict, hash browns and fruit salad for brunch. We watched movies all day and laid out on the deck. I made German Chocolate Cupcakes (I'll post a recipe later, stay tuned!) and later in the evening, Mr. H cooked steaks on the grill and we played Yahtzee. Mr. H won twice- and he doesn't even like the game. The Father's opened their gifts and we watched a little more TV, before heading to bed. We missed our boys, but we knew they were well taken care of (Thank you Monica for visiting them!!!) Here are a few photos of the day.

Good Night. Sleep Tight.

My Love,

I know days like this aren't always "happy", especially when our boys aren't with us, but I do what I can to fill the void. Days of happiness await us- that I can promise. I love you more than you'll ever know and so do they. I hope your Father's Day is the best it can possibly be.

Sam and Jack, I wish you were here. We miss you so much.

xoxo, Monica

It's your day. Do what you do best and take it easy.

Thinking of all you father's out there that are missing your children.