Buy Roberto's

I was in the grocery store and couldn't resist the pack of tortillas emblazoned with our new town. Good photo. Sucky tortillas (half the package was MOLDING when I opened it). Roberto's is a local restaurant that is also a tortilleria. SUCKY restaurant. Good tortillas. This is pretty suggestive of our new town.

Okay. Things I miss that I'll try not to dwell on:

• 3 Asian groceries in town
• Excellent frozen custard drive thru-- if you go, order a Tiger's Blood Old Fashioned Soda. then ship it to me on dry ice!
• Downtown farmer's market selling with concord grapes, sweet corn, watermelons, etc.
• Being 2 hours from Chicago
• Double features at the Lake Shore Drive In movie theatre in Monticello (we saw Kung Fu Panda there before we moved)
• U-Pick blueberries at Prelock Blueberry Farm (we moved before their season began *sob*)
• U-Pick strawberries at Pretty Prarie Berry Farm (we picked 27 pounds before we moved)

AND a provisional list of stuff I like here.

• $0.33 for a gorgeous bunch of cilantro.
• Our lovely house with my studio in the garage and an immense backyard for the kitties to explore.
• Being 3 hours drive from my parents
• The plaza in Mesilla
• "downtown" "farmer's" market selling neato crafts and southwestern jewelry. I'm developing a thing for turquoise. (They razed the entire downtown mall in the 60's for urban development that never happened. And the farmers here seem to grow chiles and zucchini and the occasional scrawny ear of corn. But they have some neato arts and crafts)
• All the wildlife in our backyard

Okay. I know it's a sad, short list. I said it was provisional, and I intend to add to it. I'm in driving distance to Roswell, NM, the UFO capital of the US. And Terminator 4 is filming near where my Dad works. And my mom had surgery and I was able to drive up and take care of her for a couple of days on the fly. These are all good things. I'm sure there will be more.

The Move is OVER!!

Serendipity: After days of toting boxes down flights of stairs and loading them onto a moving truck, the church next door provided this moment of irony. Check out the reflection of our yellow Penske truck. Really, God? Really?
So we have been moved for a month. In fact, it's a month to the day that we've been out of our beloved apartment in Indiana. Intending to rent a moving truck on July 1, we finished moving out of two third floor apartments (mostly without the use of any elevators, and entirely without any outside assistance at all), and finally got entirely packed and on the road on the 4th of July. We drove out of town at 10pm, desperate to make SOME attempt to leave the state. As we drove into the night, fireworks from the University and those fired off by locals in their subdivisions flew over the highway on both sides. It was like a celebration that our move was finally underway.

I'm so glad it's over. I lost 4 lbs. and developed some serious biceps, triceps, and forearms from this ordeal. And a wheeze. Here's hoping the dry desert air will cure me!

In our last desperate moments when I despaired that we would never get all of our belongings into the truck, I was able to appreciate how lovely our home was, with its arts and crafts built-in bar and cabinets. We so loved the clean white walls, high ceilings, dark wood trim, hardwood floors and beveled glass fixtures. Here Bijoux is doing the last walkthrough. Of course, I'm conveniently forgetting how much of an inferno it is in the summer, although we lived through it with a box a/c in the bedroom, and fans. And I'm willfully leaving out memories of the cast of unsavory neighbors living on the second floor and in the basement. I choose to remember how I would trot down the back steps to get a copy of the Sunday paper on Sunday mornings, and being walking distance to the downtown farmer's market, and discovering our proximity to the Trolley bus stop in March.
Last post I promised the Coldest Pop in Town! and here it is:If you're thirsty, it's in Nashville, In. Although I can't vouch for the coldness of said pop.

We actually made the trip across the country twice. Once to find a place to live, and then the move with the kittens and household. Househunting from 1500 miles away is impossible. But we found a beautiful house for rent with a eucalyptus tree and a rosemary shrub dripping down from the second tier of the backyard. It will be such a luxury to park in an actual garage. Zips made part of it into a workshop for me to work on paintings and crafty projects. There are ledges all over the kitchen to display vintage lunchboxes and for Zips to explore. In short, perfect.

For the real move, Mini was the most miserable, yowling and doing somersaults in her little cage all across the country. Zips did pretty well. She mostly slept and gave me little nose nudges through the bars.I think Mini has all but bounced back. Here Zips keeps an eye on her underneath the eucalyptus.

Next up, I will lament the things I miss most about the Indiana that I never expected to, and attempt to showcase things about this town I find promising.

In Nashville Indiana they grow peonies as big as yer HEAD!

So we had our second annual trip to Brown County-- (you can read about the first one in the September postings). Similar deal-- log cabin home, lots of fire and Yves veggie hot dogs. I was able to document the Perfect S'More this time:

Before:After:

My trick is to hold the graham cracker with the chocolate on it over the fire (hence the little roast-y lines) to melt the chocolate, while your beloved soul mate is toasting (burning) the marshmallow to perfection. mmmmm. I salivate. No wonder my diss is about food!

And from the town of Nashville, here are some of the loveliest and largest peonies I have ever seen! Zipper's grandma PJ would love them!

Next up, "the coldest pop in town!" more photos and a recipe for super teriyaki vegetarian kebabs.

Grief and Prospectus-ing

In doing research for the next phase in my PhD-ing, I'm trying to see if my favorite authors have anything new coming out. I really wish authors had something like IMDB, so I could see if a new book might come out-- like if something is currently filming, or in postproduction. Ruth Ozeki's writing is amazing (her novels have changed my eating patterns and God willing, will constitute a chapter of my dissertation). So looking at her website, I am compelled to link to a PDF for her most recent article, called The Art of Losing: On Writing, Dying & Mom. Like any good fan, I bought her documentary Halving the Bones and absolutely fell in love with her mother. I couldn't believe it when confronted with the cremains of her mother, she immediately started piecing through ash and bone fragments with her hands, commenting on how beautiful, how tiny and fragile the shards of her mother are. Now I feel like I've lost a loved one too, although I'm just a grad student reading, and Ozeki lost her mother over three years ago. In any case, because I share her mother's fondness for chocolate and brightly colored flowers, this is for both of them.

My next post will be happier, and will explain that in Nashville, Indiana, they grow peonies as big as your head.

Prepping for a Road Trip

Okay, maybe I'm jumping the gun, but I'm trying to plan our driving route for the big move. I think we'll be sticking to Interstates. Looking for veg-friendly pit stops along our route. Here's a highly recommended joint in Springfield, MO called the Wellspring Cafe that looks promising. Here's one for Tulsa. Of course, it may prove more of a challenge to find a friendly place driving through Texas, but we might swing in to Eat-Rite. It's more than I was expecting to find! God knows, maybe this will be a matter of packing a cooler with our own goodies!

I can't wait. I really can't.

By the way...

I've bought a tape gun. The offer letter came, was signed, and faxed back. I already think of salsa as a breakfast food.

I'm looking forward to seeing what sushi with green chiles tastes like!

You Know You're From Las Cruces When..

Excerpts:

-You know not to go to Mesilla on Sundays.
-Your Christmas decorations include a ton of sand and paper bags.
-Most restaurants you go to begin with "El" or "Los".
-You're pissed off whenever you go to a store outside Cruces and they don't sell Roberto's brand tortillas.
-You can't control your car on wet pavement.
-You always get kinda excited for the "Southern New Mexico State Fair"
-You've used the term "The LC".
-You think salsa is a breakfast food.
-You are immune to heartburn.
-You thought about giving up green chile for lent but realized you could never make it.