We spent the night at Los Poblanos in Albuquerque's North Valley the other day. Had dinner and breakfast at their restaurant Campo. I drove there and back, and walked around the grounds with a stick instead of my walker. I'm paying for it now with sore muscles and joints, but damn it was a treat.
And snow. We've had a very light winter, hardly any snow but much rain. California style. But while we were at Los Poblanos, a storm was coming in, and sure enough, snow fell, big fat flakes, and it was magical. Well, for us. Others were a little annoyed. Maybe three inches or so fell in total, but the air was warm enough to melt most of it by noonish.
We saw a magnificent peacock at breakfast and before that as we headed to dinner. And there was a fat orange farm cat that came in our room and asked for cream out of the refrigerator. Sadly, that didn't happen. No, kitty had to beg from others.
I feel like we were more than 24 hours away, but really it was only from the evening of the 16th to the morning of the 17th. For St. Patrick's Day we wore our greens and that led to much hoo and hah in the restaurant as most people either forgot or didn't want to wear green. I think we might have even made some new friends as Ms. Ché got to meet a would-be poetess, and promoted her upcoming publication of poetry and a workshop/retreat with Jimmy Santiago Baca coming up in June. And we learned about an Irish poet we'd never heard of before.
I usually have to explain when I do or put on Irish stuff that I'm only a quarter Irish. My father was half, my mother was mostly Scottish I've realized recently. She thought she was English, French and whatnot, but the record and DNA evidence is that no, she was mostly Scottish on both sides of her ancestry.
So I guess that makes me pretty much Celtic by ancestry. My father was half German, but for some reason the German part of my ancestry didn't show up in my DNA profile at all. Yet my father's maternal grandparents were immigrants from Germany, had papers and everything, and one of them never learned English and spoke only German. Then suddenly, my DNA profile acknowledged a 9% German contribution. My. my, my. The rest, Scottish, Irish, and English. Hm.
Anyway, I don't give much credence to it. Europeans are notoriously mixed, and there is no way to sort them into easy genetic categories. The thing is, people travel, they go places, sometimes settling for a while before moving on. Anyone who says they have German or French or Belgian ancestry may know about it because they have German or French or Belgian immigrant ancestors, but their DNA may not reveal any of it, and if it does, it may be very attenuated.
Well, we went for a brief stay-cation (only 50-60 miles away from home) and it was remarkably refreshing. Just what we needed. I may be a little sore now because of it, but as we say, this too will pass.
We're thinking of a little longer stay in Taos next month. There are a couple of exhibits I'd like to see: Buck Dunton at the Harwood, and Gene Kloss at the Couse-Sharp Historic Site. We're thinking we need to revisit Mabel's Place since we haven't been there for years. And there's a literary event that would be good for Ms. to attend as she's one of the area's favorite poets.
Getting away from it all for a while really helps physical and mental health, doesn't it?
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