Albuquerque
9 September 2009
We just got back from the Hispanic Bar Convention in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We had fun. I bought some fun things in Old Town, real treasures, like this spiny oyster and opal necklace that has the Grecian design where it fans out onto your chest. It’s not big, but it is lovely. I was wearing it down there and so many of the locals told me how stunning it looked. Sweet.
Then I found this dress at the boutique right in our hotel. Normally I wouldn’t bother even going into a boutique in a hotel, they can be so expensive, but David kept encouraging me to go and see. So I did and there I found this wonderful flirty black dress made of tencel.
Have you ever bought anything made out of that fabric? It’s a man made fiber and it’s wonderful to pack because it doesn’t wrinkle. I used to have another outfit made out of this stuff, but I wore it so much I was sick of it and gave it away, then later I wished I had not.
So now I have this lovely dress that is down to my ankles, but at the knee it is flared, so that when I wear it, the hem swirls around when I walk, it is so cute, so girly flirty!!!
The top of the dress is form draping, it flows down straight over my hips with a faux buckle at the hem of the top on one side, just a little accent that’s interesting. The sleeves at to my elbows and they also flare and it has a simple princess neckline. When I tried it on I asked what the price was and the boutique mother said it was “from a designer in Scottsdale” which of course meant it was going to be expensive. Well it definitely was, ridiculously so, but after some negotiation she dropped the price 50% for me. In the end, the long and the short of it was I came home with it and even at 50% off, it was still ridiculously expensive. Har har. It’s not my usual thing to buy something like this, I usually shop the bargains at T. J. Maxx and Ross, then sales at Macy’s. Oh but I have no regrets!!!!! I can’t wait to wear it!!!!
The boutique mother’s son was there and he did the jewelry designed in their display cases. We got to talking and I mentioned a little about my stupid brother living down there in Truth or Consequences, NM and how he tried to kill himself with alcohol poisoning and now is in a hospital where they have been trying to recover his body to some form of normalcy for the last couple of weeks. The drive there would have been three hours one way. I wasn’t thinking I should do that for him, and was commenting under my breath about this.
What an enlightenment that was for me because he related his own story about a friend who did the same thing and how I should not bother going down there to see him because then I would have to carry that image of him for the rest of my life and it would “just drag you down.” As he said, “Those guys who get that far are hopeless, they never turn around, so don’t kid yourself. It would just depress you forever.”
I thanked him for empowering me to stick to my decision to not shower my hopeless brother with any attention by going down to see him, wasting an entire day driving three hours each way. The thing is with him, he could continue like this for some time to come. He has never had the resolve to make a better life for himself. He lived for the day when he could finally start collecting his social security check, which he did and then he promptly started drinking and drinking, asking his kids for “money for food”.
On a lighter note, Old Town was delightful. I sat on this park bench in a little courtyard and marveled at all the hummingbirds dashing to and fro. I even learned they had their own song. I didn’t realize that. And of course, what a pleasure to watch them sit on a branch and take a break from flying….but of course not for long!!!! There must have been a hundred of them, all Rufus hummingbirds [I think] and I wondered if any of them came from our neighborhood? They were so amazing, I even got my husband to sit down with me one afternoon to enjoy the spectacle. It was so much fun.
One morning we were walking out of our hotel, across the parking lot and David, for the first time, watched with amazement how the roadrunner postures himself, ducks and runs, then fans his tail when he stops – while on a mission to somewhere important on his little webbed feet. It absolutely delighted him to watch this bird, he kept commenting how neat it was to watch one “in the wild.” I assume he meant versus one in a zoo.
And then we marveled at what I think was a Swainson’s hawk getting chased away by some smaller birds from the little square in the central park in Old Town. “Watch them, David, they are chasing him away, fifty little birds sending that guy a message!!!!” He loved it!!!!
Their art museum was huge and very well done, especially their sculpture park. There are lots of artists that live in the southwest, and lots of really good artists at that!!!
We also went to their natural history museum which was fun with all of those dinosaurs recreated. The one that stuck to my bones was the brontosaurus because I didn’t realize how long their tails were. Those vertebrae bones just kept getting smaller and smaller so that by the time it was at the end of their tails, they were kind of small. That was fun.
They had a movie on Egypt in their theater which we really enjoyed, especially as the excitement is growing between us for our trip in November. Of course this one was set in the 1930s when it still was just being discovered where those kings and queens were really buried. It looked so exotic, kind of like this photo I have of my father on a camel, life there was still unaffected at that time. I love this photo because it reminds me of “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. My father had so much curiosity and so much adventure in his life. These days everything is so geared to the tourists, it’s not like it was back then. Part of this tour package includes a four day boat ride down the Nile, stopping each day at some place interesting. We can’t wait!!!
Hope you have an enjoyable day!
Liza
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