Colder days

Well I am working in the OR at the local hospital now. It's going pretty well, except for the part where I have to get up at 5 in the morning. The first week I was totally brain dead, this week is a little better. I work with really nice people, I like them. It's a small OR, 4 rooms, most days we're done pretty early. I've been working a lot (for me anyway) to try to catch up money wise. I'm not as happy as I am when I get enough sleep, but I'm pretty happy.
It snowed here the other day, not on the mesa but in the Mountains. Pretty. The Earthship is doing fine. Still quite comfy, and I love being off the grid still. And underground- it's cool being underground. They are calling for a "wet" winter here, which is good for me because it will be pretty and I'll have water. I'm keeping my eyes open for a cheap used 4 wheel drive vehicle. It's the way to roll out here in the winter.
Oh- you wanna know what has happened? It's this weird, disgusting kind of karma I have. Do y'all remember when that possum crawled under the house in Moncure and died, and then it happened again when Katie lived there? Well something has managed to crawl into the heater fan of the Corolla, get itself chopped up, and is now putrifying and when I run the heater a loud noise and nauseating odor blows out, along with the heat. I say it's karma because there have been other things too- once I was mad at a boyfriend I had and I came real close to smashing his head in with my clock radio but instead I just slammed it against the bedside table, well it got a crack in it and a bug crawled in it and died, and you could see the bug inside it, it was lodged in the high end of the radio dial. It got in but there was no getting it out. And another time when I was a kid I got a brand new nice pair of sneakers and a mouse crawled in them and died. (the mouse was trying to get away from the cat) It's unfortunate and very unpleasant but it only happens every so many years and I suppose for the most part I have been blessed many times over so- I can deal with it. I just hope whatever it is in the heater is small and does it's thing pretty quickly, and I pray it isn't a hanta virus mouse, blowing hanta virus at me. Now obviously I am not running the heater even though it's cold as a witches tit in the morning now, but I can still smell it.

I never thought these stories were real, until one day.....

Oh peeps peeps peeps. What I wouldn't give to have one of you with me today. I had something funny happen. I only wish I was a better storyteller, but here goes. Today was a little cloudy and on the cool side so I went down to the hot springs for a warm soak. I went to the Manby hot springs which are at the bottom of the Rio Grande gorge, a few pools beside the cold river, it's really nice. I'm lying there soaking and looking up at the rocks when a dude gets in the pool next to mine, naked. That isn't unusual because the hot springs are clothing optional. I had on my bathing suit. So we start talking, introducing ourselves and a couple of other ladies show up and he says they are his friends and they are tantra instructors. It's just dificult sometimes not to make a joke. What I wanted to do was imitate the classic porn music, but whenever I try to do that it comes out sounding like the theme from Sanford and Son. And I wasn't sure if they would get it. Then I thought maybe they would get it too well, if you know what I mean. It just seemed like the perfect set up. "These are my friends, they are tantra instructors" Then the girls got in the hot springs naked as the day they were born and started rubbing mud all over each other. One of them turned to me and said, "Excuse us, we're very touchy feely. Capitol T capitol F" (again, cue porn music)
Turns out they were in town to do a workshop on tantra which got my interest because for some reason I was sort of naively thinking about tantric energy, because I'm studying energy- I mean yeah I know it's about sex but I was imagining a workshop where I could show up with pen and paper, listen to a lecture about tantra and then maybe do some breathing exercises and concentrate on opening the heart chakra, or getting the sacral chakra spinning at the right speed. Later when I reflected back on the conversation I think maybe they were going to do dirty stuff. Some of the things they said about it, like "No one has to do anything they don't want to do" and "we get pretty intimate" at the time didn't sound unusual because I was still thinking about a group of people that may just be there to learn these concepts, and maybe some folks would feel uncomfortable talking about certain things but wouldn't have to if they didn't want to. They offered to give me a discount to come to the workshop. But I don't think I'm ready for something like that. I tried to read a book about tantra once and got embarrassed by the pictures of the "cobra kiss" which isn't even as dirty as it sounds. They were really lovely poeple and all. I enjoyed meeting them. And I'm down with the tantric stuff for sure. I mean I have Saturn in the 8th house so I really should be learning about it.
Once they found out I lived in an Earthship they wanted to hear all about that. They had driven by the community and said they had been wondering what kind of poeple lived in Earthships. As if going around the country hosting orgies is perfectly normal. Just Kiddding. I loved them. I love New Mexico.

On Break

This morning Mark, the owner of the THC (Taos House of Coffee), told me some of the jokes about dating in Taos. What they say about getting a woman is: your odds are good, but the goods are odd.
Here are some Taos statistics:
Males: 2,159 (45.9%), Females: 2,541 (54.1%)
The other joke was: be nice to your friend's girlfriend, she might be yours next week.
Small town, a bit incestuous. I'd heard this from a few different people. One former resident who was back visiting from a teaching job in Japan told me that there is a lot of "hostility" in the social scene here...hmm.
When I first moved to town I met a woman who told me, "Women come to Taos to find their power, men come here to smoke pot." When I told the folks at the coffeeshop that the guys irately pointed out that they smoked pot BEFORE they came to Taos.
Those statistics are actually deceiving though, they don't include the Pueblo. When you do it by county it's pretty even, men to women. Or rather it's 49% men, 51% women, which is even really. In fact, in my experience of living in different towns, the 49:51 male:female ratio will feel like there are way more men than women. Seattle was like that. Lots of lonely guys in that town. Here are Chapel Hill's statistics:
Males: 21,961 (45.1%), Females: 26,754 (54.9%)
Similar in percentages but Taos is a much smaller town, plus being Southwestern, the energy is completely different. We talk about "energy" a lot out here.
They do say you can't get a man in Taos though. That's what they say. The conversation started because a girl was telling us that she had been "down South" and met a boy who had sworn off Taos girls because they are crazy. She said she thinks the reason Taos girls have trouble with their mens is because a lot of men come to Taos to take a break from girls. Maybe that's true, but I think it's more like Mark said, people come to Taos in general to take a break from life. We're all on break here. Which explains a lot.