At the end of September, John and I went on a quick trip to Albuquerque. Less than two weeks later, I went back to Albuquerque again for a wedding. If I had known back when we booked the first trip that I would be turning around and going right back for a wedding, we might have skipped the first trip! But we went, and had a good time, and here’s that story.
One cool thing that came out of our trip to Albuquerque was that we were able to do a favor for our friends, Mark and Steve. (By coincidence, this couple have the same first names as my brothers. It makes it easy to remember their names, lol!) Mark and Steve have a wonderful guest casita on their property in the North Valley, where we stay almost every time we go to Albuquerque.
We were at our campsite in Utah when we unexpectedly got a call from Mark. The tone of his greeting sounded hesitant and reluctant, or apologetic. I couldn’t imagine why Mark would be apologetically calling us except to cancel our casita reservation, and I couldn’t imagine him doing that unless something was really wrong – maybe his husband, Steve, was sick? I was worried. “Is everything ok?”, I asked, “Are you ok? Is Steve ok?”
They were fine. Whew! Turns out that Mark was calling to ask a favor – hence the reluctant or apologetic tone in his voice.
The story went like this. Mark and Steve own a cabin in the Jemez Mountains north of Albuquerque. This is in addition to their nice house and casita in Albuquerque. Their “cabin” is actually a house with a detached garage, presumably quite nice, knowing them. They were doing some remodeling and had newly stained the wooden exterior of their Jemez Mt. house, intending to stain the nearby garage the same color. But the manufacturer discontinued that particular stain before they were done.
You would have to know Mark and Steve to understand what a catastrophe that was. They are very particular and they would not be happy with a garage a slightly different shade than the house, even though they are two separate buildings. They would have to redo the entire house if they couldn’t manage to buy up enough of the original stain to finish the garage.
Mark was trying to explain the story about the stain, but I had a very poor cell connection at our campsite out in the middle of Utah. (We would have had no connection at all except for our Starlink, which boosts the connection quite a lot). Mark was saying “stain” but I could not parse what in the world he was saying. I was still surmising health issues. Finally he said, “Like paint, you know…” Oh! We are talking about a remodel issue! Now we were in familiar territory.
Of course John and I, who have done several remodels, totally understood their predicament. When they found out their stain was discontinued, they had quickly bought all the discontinued stain they could find in New Mexico and online (exactly what I’ve done myself, except in my case, for a specific color of grout).
After exhausting the New Mexico supply of discontinued stain they still needed 4 more gallons. Determined, they called every hardware and construction supply store in the region and finally found the remaining 4 gallons at an obscure hardware store in a suburb of Phoenix. They immediately bought it over the phone with a credit card, and the store agreed to hold it for them for one month.
But now, how were they going to get the stain to Albuquerque? Stain is considered a hazardous material so it’s not easy to ship. Someone would have to go get it. It was a long shot, but Mark decided to call us, even though Tucson is a full two hours drive from Phoenix.
We could have driven up to Phoenix for them, but as it turns out, we were camping in Utah and planning to drive back home through Phoenix the very next day! And we had a trip to Albuquerque scheduled for the next week! It wouldn’t even be out of our way. So that was the silver lining to our rather difficult camping trip in Utah. We were able to pick up Mark and Steve’s stain along the way home, and deliver it to them the very next week.
Our trip to Albuquerque also had another practical purpose: we were able to pick up a piece of furniture we had ordered. We are slowly over the years collecting furniture from Antigua Home Furnishings in Taos. https://antiguahomefurnishings.com/
I’ve probably mentioned them before. I get excited every time we get a new piece! We started buying their pieces quite some years ago, when we still lived in Albuquerque. We’ve been their customers so long that we’ve become friends. They’re up in Taos, but they frequently deliver to Albuquerque. So we arranged to meet them in Albuquerque to pick up our new cabinet when we were out there.
Here they are, unloading our latest piece. It’s a big cabinet but I had measured our 4Runner ahead of time and knew it would fit inside. You can see Mark and Steve’s casita behind the adobe wall.
By the way, here is a photo of the entry to Mark and Steve’s house. The interior is really beautiful too, with the walls full of Steve’s art, as well as many other local artist’s work.
We weren’t in Albuquerque just to collect and deliver goods however. There is a music event called Globalquerque that we like to attend at the end of every September. I’ve written about it before. It’s free and fun, and runs for two evenings, and is one of the many things that makes Albuquerque special.
And that leads me to another funny story.
On the first night of Globalquerque, John saw an old friend he has known for many years. Apparently Tom was once a close coworker of John’s, but they haven’t worked together for many years, so I had never met him and his wife Myra. When John pointed them out to me from a distance, I marched right over there to introduce myself, with John trotting along behind.
They seemed nice and we chatted and hung out most of the evening. Afterwards, on our drive back to the casita, John explained that Tom was not just a previous coworker – he was the brother of John’s ex-fiancée, Jane.
John had never been married before he married me, but he did have a fiancée when he was in his twenties. Jane was Tom’s sister, and that’s how John had met her – through Tom.
I had heard the story before. Apparently, it was a long distance relationship that fell apart when Jane was reluctant to move to Albuquerque and John was reluctant to find a different job elsewhere. Sounds like there were some communication difficulties too. In relationships, there always are.
Anyway, on the evening that we ran into Tom and Myra, I didn’t know they were Jane’s relatives. I only knew they were old friends of John’s. And no one mentioned Jane. Myra later told me that she spent the whole evening wondering if I knew about Jane, but not saying anything. Lol. So yes, I knew about Jane, but no, I didn’t realize that Tom was Jane’s brother.
It wouldn’t have mattered to me either way. Jane was a long time before me. There was no overlap; John did not leave her for me, nor did I ever worry that he would go back to her, nothing like that. She’s always just been a name from his past.
We ran into Tom and Myra again the next night and that time, I knew who they were. I asked about Jane and was glad to hear that she is well. She has a long-term partner, is still living in the same region up north, and has recently retired from the same job she had way back 3 decades ago when she was engaged to John. So yes, apparently not a woman who likes a lot of changes in her life. Uh, let’s not talk about how many job changes I’ve made and how many times I’ve moved in 3 decades!
It was nice to hear that Jane’s story turned out fine. I like to imagine that John’s did too (lol, right John?) And I was reminded how old we all are. We go through life making decisions that seem momentous, so significant at the time, decisions that completely alter the trajectory of our lives. But in the end, nothing stops the passage of time.
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