Category: October 2024

Seven days until Christmas! And 13 days to finish writing about October, November and December if I want to be caught up by the end of the year.

In October we got to see Barack Obama, who was campaigning for Kamala Harris. I am less political than a lot of my friends, but I felt lucky to get tickets to this event, and was determined to go. I knew the large crowd would be intimidating, but I have never actually seen a president before.

Even the long line to get in was intimidating. The people walking away on the right are heading towards the back of the line (as were we, when I took that photo). You can’t even see the end of the line in this photo. Luckily it moved relatively quickly. Still, an hour or more in line is well beyond what I’m usually willing to wait for anything.

Once inside, we were packed, standing shoulder to shoulder. Luckily it was a friendly, happy crowd, or I think I would have bolted. As it was, John held on to my shoulders to ground me, and that helped.

We were very far from the speakers. This photo that John took is zoomed in quite a bit.

We stood forever, and listened to various speeches. I particularly liked the one by Tucson’s Mayor, Regina Romero. Finally it was time for Obama to speak. He’s an excellent speaker, very convincing, and we were all inspired to do what we could to help Kamala’s campaign.

As if we didn’t have enough of crowds for one weekend, the next day we went to a local car show. At least it was outdoors, and much more lightly attended.

The car show was right along the Loop trail, a bike path that goes all the way around Tucson, so we were able to ride our bikes there. Being near the Loop was one of my top criteria when we were house hunting. I like riding, but I’m not comfortable riding my bike out in traffic. Thanks to the trail, I can get to several great places on my bike: one of my favorite plant nurseries, several parks, a good farmer’s market, our local community center, several coffee shops, and even the local Lowes and Costco. Just don’t buy anything large!

It was just by chance that the car show was along the Loop. It was held on the grounds of a private school. Ironically, almost no one else rode their bikes to the car show. Huh, wonder why?

Political swag was not allowed at the car show, probably so we wouldn’t start shooting each other, this being late October. But there were some people who did more subtle things, like wear Trump hair wigs. I’d say it was a very different crowd than the day before at Obama’s rally.

I ignored all that and took pictures of the cars. Of course I liked the small cute ones the best.

This next one says it’s the first place winner in the category of “Rat Rod”. I get it. I’ve had days like that.

Here’s an adorable little old Mini Cooper.

These next ones are kit cars.

And my favorite Mini Cooper of all! A baby truck, awwww.

And a camper van! With lots of matching plaid things. Spiffy.

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The next noteworthy event after our trip to Albuquerque at the end of September was another trip to Albuquerque! My big event in early October was the wedding of two dear friends of mine. I knew both Miriam and Casey before they started dating, so it was fun to watch their courtship unfold.

John wasn’t able to go, and I was reluctant to make the drive by myself in one day. Google says it’s a 6.5 hour drive, but it takes me 7.5 or 8 hours with stops, and it’s a long day for me by myself. My back hurts! Although I discovered that a low-volt electric massager that can plug into a car outlet is a life saver. But still, I splurged on an Airbnb on the way over. I drove most of the way, and stayed south of Albuquerque in Truth or Consequences, a small and weirdly named town along Hwy. I-25 in southern New Mexico. There’s a story behind the name, you can google it.

I drove John’s 4Runner because my new-to-me, older electric BMW i3 has very poor range. On the way out the door, I sneakily stuck 2 election magnets onto the back of the 4Runner. This was, you remember, back in October.

I had originally bought the magnets for my i3, but turns out my i3 is made of some sort of lightweight composite material that isn’t magnetic! So I couldn’t use my election magnets on my car.

I like to get into the spirit of the election. But John doesn’t like us to display bumper stickers or yard signs. He and I generally agree about politics, but I’m guessing he just wants to avoid the public controversy. It’s not polite to have a public fight with your neighbors with competing yard signs! I understand how he feels, because it’s gotten extremely contentious in the last several years, which has taken all the fun out of it.

I have always had a somewhat more a blasé attitude than many of my friends. I prefer to treat the election more like a fun and healthy community event than a life-or-death battle. Although I do agree that we need to protect our democratic form of government. We need to keep having free and fair elections. Unfortunately, an inevitable consequence of democracy is that we will sometimes elect total freaking idiots, and it will have genuinely harmful consequences.

Anyway, enough of that. Back to my story. I had slapped on those election magnets and then sort of forgotten about them, because I’m not used to having bumper stickers. So when people in other cars on the freeway would wave and pump their fists in solidarity, I would just frown at them in puzzlement! I would figure it out a moment too late, and smile or wave the instant after they turned back to the road. It was hilarious. I’m such a dork sometimes, just too slow on the uptake!

It wasn’t long before I had made it to Truth or Consequences. It was a quirky Airbnb to match the quirky town. The decor was quite fun, and I got there early enough to enjoy it.

This is the interior taken from the front door. The full kitchen is in the back, through the open door.

Living room:

There were many cool and quirky handmade things. On the lower right of this next photo, you can see what looks like a lamp perched on old suitcases, but it was actually a lamp made out of old suitcases; the suitcases were part of the base of the lamp.

Dining area:

I was traveling with food on ice packs and the instructions said to use the freezer in the barn. This sounded dubious. But it turned out to be fine. The barn is that quaint wooden building as seen through the back door out of the kitchen in this next photo. Inside it was like a modern garage, clean and well-lit. No hale bales, pitch forks or manure.

This is the beautifully sunny retro kitchen.

It was genuine retro, with all the quirks and nuisances of old things. It was completely clean, but the drawers didn’t slide smoothly, and the gas stove didn’t have an electric sparker and need lit with a lighter.

This is the genuine retro refrigerator.

There actually is a little icebox inside it that would have worked fine to refreeze my blue ice packets, but it was frosted shut. In my opinion, all they needed was a little sign instructing people to close the refrigerator door fully, by pushing firmly near the handle rather than up on the corner. That would keep the ice box from frosting up. Instead, they had a little sign saying not to use the freezer and to use the one in the barn.

Making sure the door sealed when you closed it seemed like a no-brainer to me, but sure enough, the previous occupants had closed the refrigerator door wrong, so there was no seal, so frost built up around the ice box. Maybe only old people know these things.

Here’s the back side of the casita, taken from standing near the barn-garage:

The “barn” is actually a nice garage. The overhead garage doors on the other side, not shown in this photo. Sorry about that camera lens light scatter, I didn’t realize it at the time and didn’t take a second photo.

There was also a large front yard with a friendly resident cat to keep me company.

The next morning I drove the rest of the way to Albuquerque in plenty of time for the early-afternoon wedding. Miriam and Casey had a Quaker wedding, and those are the best weddings! You would imagine a Quaker wedding would be stuffy and boring, but it’s the opposite. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a more genuine, heartfelt, REAL wedding. There was laughing and weeping and candor all kinds of joyful closeness.

They also managed to successfully do a hybrid Zoom and in-person gathering, and still keep it real and spontaneous and wonderful. The hybrid part almost didn’t go off as planned because, when the volunteers arrived earlier in the morning to get set up, they discovered there was no internet! It was out for some unknown reason. The internet company was just about exactly as non-helpful as you would imagine. They had no estimate of when the internet would be working again.

What to do now? Half the wedding attendees were planning on attending by Zoom! Then one of the volunteers thought to call a young member of the meeting who had been helpful once before with a technical issue. He told her not to worry, he’d get it working.

The young guy (whose name I don’t remember) went out and purchased a subscription to a cellular hot spot line, purchased the hardware, set it up at the meetinghouse, and made sure all the computers and devices could connect to it. Problem solved.

The hot spot was more than adequate, and everything worked great. I continue to wonder (as I’ve mentioned before) why any of us (including John and I) are still dealing with internet companies – at least those of us with good local cell coverage, which is most people nowadays. It’s cheaper to add a hot spot line to your existing cell phone coverage. Just saying. Not that John and I have bothered yet, but we will, one of these days.

Anyway, technicalities aside, it was a beautiful wedding, and I’m so glad I went out to Albuquerque to be there. Here is Casey in the bow tie on the left and Miriam in a dress on the right. Their joy was inspirational!

After the wedding I stayed with my friend Tara and her three cats, which was very nice and I was quite grateful. Her guest room has a fun Florida theme.

Mark and Steve’s casita wasn’t available on my first night because it was the last day of the balloon fiesta. During the balloon fiesta everyone’s casita (and guest room, basement, attic, barn, garage, shed, RV, couch, tent-in-the-backyard) fills up during the fiesta, when the population approximately doubles for two weeks. I was lucky to be able to stay with Tara, and we had a lot of fun. Sleepover!

The next morning Tara and I went to the Rio Grande Art Show, which happens twice a year, both times in the fall, once during the balloon fiesta and once later in the fall for holiday shopping. I’ve gone many times in years past, and it’s where I get a lot of my artwork. It’s the biggest art show I’ve ever attended (maybe that’s not saying much) but it is truly huge without being impossibly crowded.

There’s hundreds of vendors, but still plenty of room to move around and actually get a good look at all the art for sale. I always buy something. It’s a great way to purchase quality regional art directly from the artists. There’s so much to choose from that I’m always exhausted by the time I’m done.

I took a lot of pictures of the art in order to send them to John, to get his opinion. I figure if it’s going to hang on the walls, we should both like it. We bought the small painting in the lower right of this next photo.

I liked this movable wire art, which would have been great in the Truth of Consequences Airbnb, but didn’t match our own house, so I didn’t buy any. If you turn the crank, the bow goes back and forth on the fiddle.

Fun but they definitely would be dust collectors.

After the art show, Tara and I took a break for lunch and then headed down for an afternoon show at Popejoy, the UNM campus theater. The show was called Sugar Skull and it was quite cute. The intent was to explain the tradition of having an ofrenda for Día de Muertos.

The main character was a resentful teenager who initially thought the old traditions were stupid. This simple plot allowed the audience to learn about the tradition themselves and also be won over, right along with the protagonist, without the show being patronizing. It was a lot of fun and I learned more about Dia de Muertos and the importance of having an ofrenda, which I’ve always thought was a meaningful tradition. Certainly more meaningful than our Halloween tradition of trying to scare each other.

After hanging out with Tara, I went to stay in Mark and Steve’s casita, which was now available, with the balloon fiesta having finished up the day before. That next morning, I met my friend, Debbie, for a walk and lunch. The casita is just a short walk to the acequias, which are beautiful for walking. I’ve posted pictures of them before. The locals mostly just call them ditches. So Debbie came over to walk the ditches with me. The very beautiful ditches.

Next up: Halloween and Día de Muertos, and the election, and Callan’s visit, and a car show, and Thanksgiving…I’m pretty far behind, aren’t I? You can all take bets. Will Kristina finish the year’s posts before the end of the year, or will it be Christmas in February? Stay tuned to find out!

To send me a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

My version of Pico de Gallo has significantly less onion than what you usually find in the US supermarket versions. I also like the slight sweetness of a bit of fruit – it balances the heat of the pepper and sour of the lime – but fruit is not a traditional addition. What is traditional, however, is making this fresh relish with whatever the cook has on hand and feels like throwing in.

• 2 large tomatoes or 3-4 roma tomatoes, chopped
• 1 firm fruit (such as an apple, greenish nectarine, fuyu persimmon, or grapes), chopped
• 1 bell pepper, chopped (any color, I used red bell pepper in the batch in these photos)
• ½ fresh jalapeño pepper, finely chopped (can substitute other fresh hot pepper)
• 1 TBS red onion, finely chopped
• 1 green onion, finely chopped
• 1 TBS fresh cilantro, chopped
• Juice of 1 lime (approx 1 TBS)
• Salt to taste

Hot tip: don’t handle jalapeño with your bare hands and then wipe your eyes 🥵. Use gloves. Or if you’re lazy like me, just put a piece of paper towel between your fingers and the pepper while cutting it. Then don’t forget to wash your hands!

Serve chilled with chips, or as a salad topping, or on top of eggs or any Mexican dish such as burritos, enchiladas, tamales, etc. I recommend pairing with cottage cheese or sour cream or queso fresco (fresh cheese).

I like it in an omelette, but I think my favorite is to put it on rice cakes with cream cheese.

Language note: Pico de Gallo is a weird phrase. Pico translates literally as a small amount, or a peck or a bird beak. De Gallo means “of rooster”. There are several explanations on the internet having to do with idioms like “a pinch of” being similar to how a rooster’s beak pinches a small amount. The explanation that made most sense to me is to think of how chickens peck the ground, foraging little bits of this and that with their beak. Pico de Gallo is little bits of this and that. By the way, the words gallina and gallo generally refer to live hens and roosters, and the word pollo generally means chicken meat. So this isn’t little bits of chicken meat. This is yummy little chopped fresh bits to eat – like what a rooster would love to eat. And us too! (Except not the bugs, lol, nope.)

To send me a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Life Coaching for Neurodiverse Professionals

This post is by my sister Emily. Most of you know, she is an emergency room doctor and a mom of 4 young girls (Emily is nearly two decades younger than me). Here is her story about hatching baby ducklings.

I speciality ordered the duck eggs from a farm in Tennessee because I wanted this particular breed, dual purpose ducks that are calm and good with kids.

Duck eggs on arrival:

14 eggs arrived! Two were broken in transit, so 12 made it into my new incubator. 

Then after 10 days, you shine a light into the eggs called “candling” to see if they were fertilized. Only 7/12 were fertilized..no point incubating an unfertilized egg, so the rest were composted.

Then I started prepping their homemade brooder, this is iteration number three I think.

Here we go, this is the final DIY brooder.

I check frequently to make sure they are still growing.

Then I mark their air cell to make sure I have them positioned correctly for hatching.

You can see the little duck embryo moving inside! It’s called an internal pip where it breaks through into the inside air cell and starts to breathe before it breaks through the shell.

After it internally pips it only has 24 hours before it runs out of air and needs to break the external shell. I read that a lot of ducklings die this way if they aren’t able to do that first break, so at 18 hours I started making little safety holes in the eggs so none of them suffocated.

Only three of the seven had managed to break through the shell called the external pip.

24 hours later one of my eggs still hadn’t broken through the air cell.

I thought perhaps it had died, but then when I came home from work at midnight on Monday I saw a big bruise on the egg. I turned it over and saw that it managed to break through, but from the wrong side! It was completely upside down. And because of that it managed to break one of its own blood vessels and bleed everywhere. Duckie number one was going to become my patient.

The others all start to break through their top with my help.

You can see their little beaks breathing and chirping but they are not ready yet! They have to finish absorbing their yolk and the blood vessels need to recede so they can break out.

Rotating inside to get ready to push out:

Trying to break out:

At this point it is 2:00 am and I’m sitting in a chair in my nightgown in my bathroom.

He did it! Sometime around 4 am his peeping got louder because he was able to get his head free, and then he pushed himself out. 

This was the first ducky, number eight, and the remaining five healthy ones followed suit over the next 8 hours or so.

He’s trying to help.

And pretty soon it’s duckie mayhem in the incubator.

A couple still seem a little stuck, so I gently help those out too.

The first six are ready to go in their brooder!

And ducky number one got a very careful safety hole so I can watch his beak breathe, but I couldn’t make it bigger or he would bleed.

Number one still hasn’t made much progress.

I take a little shell off to check his yolk sac and blood vessels. Even though he’s now 12 hours behind the others, he’s still not ready yet. So I turn the incubator into his personal little hospital room.

Extra shell to protect the end I opened. 

Resting on a clean baby sock.

His breathing started to get really shallow. I decided to gently untwine his head so his breathing improved, but he still wasn’t ready to come out, so he gets a little hospital bed out of a plastic baby doorknob protector, and the sock is his pillow. This is probably at around 2:00 am last night, 24 hours since the first duckling fully hatched. 

Then I hear some louder peeping! He’s gotten himself out a few hours later. 

He’s really weak so I give him a little watermelon juice and water mixture for some sugar and electrolytes to try and perk him up.

I finally put him in the brooder with the others, and he’s in the back, snuggled up in the middle of the duck pile. 

Now I just have to make sure that this guy doesn’t get into my ducklings!

A couple of weeks ago he brought a robin in and eviscerated and defeathered it in my living room. 

So proud of his handiwork.

Turns out my nanny had accidentally left my door open so that’s how it happened. I had such a surprise when I came home from work.

Don’t worry, the duckies are protected behind three doors and a wire cage. I would lose my mind if the cat got the ducklings. They will be in the house for a while. And when they’re outside they’ll be fully penned/cooped because raccoons, foxes, coyotes and hawks could all take them out.

To send me a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Life Coaching for Neurodiverse Professionals

In my ignorance, I imagined the LDS church as being very patriarchal and not likely to vote for a female president. But in my ignorance, I could be wrong. Although I am not a Mormon myself, the following quotes recently hit my inbox and considering the source, I am confident of its authenticity:

“…the Worldwide Leadership of the Church, known as the First Presidency, offers the following guidance to its members…We urge Latter-day Saints to be active citizens . . . exercising their right to vote, and . . . always demonstrating Christlike love and civility in political discourse….We urge you to . . . study candidates carefully and vote for those who have demonstrated integrity, compassion, and service to others, regardless of party affiliation. Merely voting a straight ticket or voting based on “tradition” without careful study of candidates and their positions on important issues is a threat to democracy and inconsistent with revealed standards (see Doctrine and Covenants 98:10).” First Presidency Statement June 1, 2023.”

They don’t name a candidate, but it’s not hard to read between the lines. I applaud their flexibility and courage to cross party lines in service of their deeper values. The Mormons are a strong influence in all of the Intermountain West swing states like my own. In the past I have noted Mitt Romney’s courage (even though I don’t agree with him on many issues). Now I’m wondering if like-minded people right here in my own state could make or break this election.

On a related note, I think I’ve mentioned this group before, https://www.arizonarepublicanswhobelieve.org/

Thank you to all the courageous Republicans out there, willing to set aside tradition and habit and vote Democrat this time – for the good of our country. You are my heroes this year. And then hopefully the Republican party can pull itself away from the brink and offer some thoughtful candidates with integrity in the years to come. And maybe someday we can return the favor. Because we all are in this together.

To send me a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Life Coaching for Neurodiverse Professionals

Happy October! Today is also, I learned this morning, Rosh Hashanah. The internet says, “Literally meaning “Head of the Year,” Rosh Hashanah marks the beginning of the Jewish calendar. It begins a 10-day period of repentance and prayer which ends on Yom Kippur. We celebrate the holiday with services and apples dipped in honey to symbolize the hope for a sweet year to come.” I was told that it is not only the beginning of the year, but also celebrates the beginning of the universe. Well, that’s cool. Big Bang Day!

We are having record breaking heat in Tucson, so despite what the calendar says, it is still very much summertime here. I finally have a chance to sit down and blog a bit, because I had an unexpected cancellation of plans. Callan and Guen’s dog, Blue, is quite ill, so Callan was not able to fly down here to go backpacking with John and I this weekend. John and I have had a lot going on ourselves lately, so instead of going backpacking without Callan, we are rescheduling until next month. Hopefully it will still be warm enough to sleep on the ground in the beginning of November. Even Arizona gets cold in the mountains in the winter.

Now I have a whole weekend free to blog! Except not – I am rapidly filling my weekend. For example, just this morning my friend Dana invited me to go to a college volleyball game tomorrow. Not something I’d usually do – which is exactly why I decided to go. A new experience! I’m not much into sports usually, but I believe Dana went to Purdue on a volleyball scholarship, and was once a volleyball coach. So at least I’ll be going to see the game with an expert.

Then on Saturday I’m hoping to get a fountain installed in our backyard – we’ll see if John has time. Sunday it might be nice to drive into the mountains to hike, since we’re missing our backpacking trip. It is still too hot here to hike in the Tucson foothills – unless you like getting up earlier than I like to in the morning.

Although I missed quite a show early this morning at Sabino Canyon! Dana and her friends saw literally 20 or 30 coatis wander by. At first they saw one, and then two, and then they kept coming and kept coming! Big ones and little ones, all scampering by one or two at a time. They are fairly common here, but I haven’t seen one yet.

This movie may show up as just a blue or black square, but hit the play button anyway. It should show three little scampering coatis, first the mom, then a young one, then…wait…another youngster.

The internet says, “Females and their young form bands of 20 individuals or more, while adult males are solitary.” So the band that Dana saw this morning would be the moms and their young.

Looks like it was a beautiful trail too. It’s called Bluff Trail. I’ll have to check that one out!

To send me a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Life Coaching for Neurodiverse Professionals