Pumpkin massacre

We got out today (always a miracle)! Christine invited Lazarus and me over to help her and Jai carve a pumpkin -- she and I did most of the work, but the little guys definitely did their part:

Jai loved scooping...


whereas Laz just wanted to get his hands on the pumpkin guts...


uh-oh, here comes mama...


Yes, that's Lazarus -- supposedly the calm one -- with pumpkin guts all over his pants. He was totally engrossed in the texture and kept picking up handsful of the stuff to examine more closely. He particularly liked the globs with lots of seeds clinging to the stringy goo. Jai just watched him, transfixed. They're gonna be a pair when they get older... Jai (the energetic, impulsive one) will lead them toward trouble, and then Laz (the steady, straight-ahead one) will get them both really deep into it.

No, not really. They're both angels and will always stay that way.

First frost

The inevitable happened on Saturday: a cold front blew through and swept summer away, and frost in the night put most gardens to rest for the winter. We've fired up the wood stove and are scoping out drafty windows and other heat leaks, and all the winter clothing is unpacked, washed, and ready to wear.

The Magdalena mountains, visible from most windows in our house, have given us a few weeks of subtle orange and yellow shading as aspens, oaks, and a few other deciduous species turn, and now will soon be covered with snow. My pitiful garden is just about gone -- only a few pepper plants (bearing half-green, half-red peppers I've been waiting for for months) and most of the lettuce made it through the frost, and once they're gone I can clear it all away, cover the soil with horse manure and pine needles, and dream about next year's bounty.

I still don't feel ready for winter. Seven years in southern California almost felt like a jail sentence except for those marvelous mild winters. I got a taste of winter last year in Denver, and another taste this weekend, and, well... I guess I'll adapt. But just as I was lamenting the descent of winter here, I heard about the southern California wildfires -- oh yeah, it's fire season there, and this year seems particularly awful. As I bring wood inside and light our first fires, they're battling 90+ degree temperatures and furnace-blast winds and, now, fire and smoke. I guess I'd rather have a nice docile fire inside my slightly chilly house than one right outside the window....

This picture amazed and appalled me:

Smoke almost entirely covers most of the LA basin (the middle of the three major smoke plumes), and I can only imagine how awful the air quality must be. And how scared people living anywhere near mountains and foothills must be.

Some after-dinner fun

We got great news the other day: the new baby looks fine (amnio results were normal), and it's a girl!!! So Lazarus will be a big brother sometime next March... and I'll be done being pregnant and can get on with my life! Babies are awesome, but being pregnant kinda sucks. Just had to say that. Before I got pregnant with this one, I was thinking, maybe three or four kids. Now -- uh-uh. It was enough being pregnant by itself; doing it with a toddler is just... not fun, for me or for him. I am starting to feel a lot better, finally, so it's not as hard as it was a month ago, but still.

I can't wait to meet our little Maggie! Magdalena, we'll call her... not sure on the middle name yet, and the first name might even change. We'll see.

I haven't taken pictures of Laz lately, but here are two oldies from about a year ago -- first time sitting up (though hardly first time blowing bubbles!), and first time eating. I still can't believe how much he's grown and changed. I don't see it day-to-day yet hardly recognize him in the old pictures.

No pictures today -- just suspicion...

Many, many condolences to my California friends who lost their state last week to "the gubernator" and the republican demagogues who engineered the whole recall charade. I have no doubt that this happened so that the energy barons who terrorized and robbed the state a few years back during the electricity "crisis" they engineered could get off the $9-billion hook Davis had them on. So the economic crisis continues, and California taxpayers will never see the money they were robbed of at, essentially, gunpoint.

I remember that "crisis" well -- pleas for citizens to turn off their Christmas lights, do fewer loads of laundry and at night, save save save, and I also remember the occasional chaos of blinking traffic lights at busy intersections duing the "rolling blackouts" that hit when available supplies ran low because the barons were keeping crucial generating plants offline for bogus reasons, so they could run up prices. I remember my electric bill doubling in one month. I remember thinking something was definitely UP if this was happening in the winter -- the barons were priming us for a big fat kill come the sultry summer months when demand would be even greater.

I remember this shit, and so I'm appalled but not surprised that the right wing engineered a way to oust the man who was trying his best (such as it was, I know) to reveal the truth and get the barons to pay reparations. I wouldn't be in the least surprised if the rumors floating around that the election itself was rigged (since the republicans have had plenty of practice by now) turned out to be true. One source (scroll down the page to bottom entry) suggests that Diebold voting machines used in certain Calif. counties were rigged to siphon votes from top candidates to low-ranked, no-chance-of-winning candidates, which would be a less obvious way of making sure the targeted candidates lose but the desired winner doesn't win by too noticeable a margin.

I've been trying to comfort myself by saying how glad I am we don't live in Calif. anymore, but that's bogus -- what happens there, or in any part of our "democracy" for that matter, happens to all of us. And whether we choose to remain blindfolded and blissfully ignorant or let the truth hit us raw in the brain, we lose a bit more of our voices and our rights and our freedoms every time this shit happens. How many times have I read of elections in other, "less civilized" nations being declared invalid (in name or just spirit) because of rampant irregularities? Some despot gets himself and his cronies elected because he has the power to make it so regardless of the will of the people he pretends to "govern." How backwards and unfortunate those poor people are.

That could never happen here.

Lazarus the outdoorsman (redux)

In between rainy days (!!!) we've had some amazing but typical New Mexico fall days. Lazarus loves being outside, especially now that he has real boots. Lucy loves the company, too.

Baby the second

We went up to Albuquerque for an ultrasound and amniocentesis yesterday, and here's what we saw:





And the gender is... undetermined. Babe was too squirmy for us to figure it out -- doc said chances are it's a girl because (during the half-millisecond the babe gave us any clear view at all) she didn't see any evidence to the contrary, but don't get out that pink yarn yet, mom. We'll find out for sure when the amnio results come back, late next week. All the other baby parts look to be in place, and the heart was beating well, so things look good so far.

Lazarus watched the ultrasound on screen, too, but I don't think he connected the grainy, liquid black-and-white image with a "baby." He does love patting my growing belly, though. Can't wait to see what he thinks of it in another few months.

Yeah, yeah, it's been a while...

I've been busy -- what can I say. So let's dispense with the rants and commentary and all that and just put the important stuff -- the baby pictures -- up, in chronological order.

Lazarus at the beach (Atlantic ocean, for the first time) in mid-September: