Land of Enchantment

While traveling back to Arizona from Austin, I found the west Texas landscape quite stunning...stunning as in hit by a baseball bat to the side of the noggin til your head is buzzing and each mile is deja vu all over again.

If we hadn't had this fun book to listen to, we might have given up and died on the lone prairie with Cheeto stained fingers and bladders full of Diet Coke.

As we neared the border of New Mexico I asked my husband to pull off the I-10 to drive around Lordsburg.  Now, this request alone is a positive diagnosis of delirium, but hear me out.


When our first little baby was a few months old, my husband was assigned to work on a flood control project on the Arizona/New Mexico border.  Lordsburg was the closest place with available "housing"

So we lived in a dusty little town with nice people and no sidewalks, broken glass and wind. The first time I tried to bake cookies I discovered my oven/range was a mouse condo, full of tunnels and droppings.  Since cookie baking was out, there was little to do but breathe clean desert air, and occasionally eat dinner at the truckstop.  I was so desperate for entertainment that I began watching a soap opera (Santa Barbara) and running in the evening.

But I also had all day to enjoy my sweet baby. 

We occasionally dressed her up in our efforts 

to provide her with a stimulating creative environment.  

 In spite of the tumbleweeds and no movie theater, it was an idyllic time.

After wandering around last week looking for landmarks ("I could swear it was by a broken down windmill") we found the old homestead.

 If I moved back, I bet I would start watching soap operas again.