Riding the Bull

Well this past week was full of new adventures. First was the beginning of Natalie Goldberg's memoir class on tuesday in Santa Fe. There were 22 people in the class and I'm sure we all hung on her every word. She was much more down to earth than I expected, showed up in class in an old sweater and pair of sweat pants. We started the class with a ten minute meditation with her reminding us that memory comes from stillness, the ability to quiet the mind so that images, thoughts, experiences can come forward. We did two in-class writing assignments - one was entitled, "what I remember" and the other was "what I don't remember". She stressed the importance at looking at opposites so that the hidden shadow side can be prompted to come out. It was obvious that there are many talented writers in the class, a bit intimidating...

And of course the BIG trip on Friday am - from Albuquerque to Dallas and then onto Nashville. A little excitement with messages/texts back and forth about a tornado warning in the area and a stressed phone call from my youngest sister, Gretchen, who arrived early in Nashville and was weathering the sirens, storm warnings, torrential rains by herself on the 19th floor of the Renaissance Hotel in downtown. By the time my middle sister, Marianne, and I got to Nashville all had blown over and we were ready to hit the town. After walking around in circles for a bit we discovered the main drag, Broadway Street, and its assortments of bars, restaurants and honky tonk shops - replete with cowboy hats for $5 and cowboy boots. We vowed to get matching cowboy hats for Easter brunch but somehow we never managed to pull that off. After a quick dinner of nachos and chix fingers, we scouted the bars on both sides of Broadway and began our drinking adventures. Each seemed to have live country music and as the everning wore on, more and more dancing. I spurlged and had several drinks, even half of one shot of tequila. This earned me the disdain of my sisters - though - because they told me that sipping shots was definitely a "no-no". Gretchen proved to be the wildest of the three and at the end of the night with a sufficient amount of alcohol consumed we found the bar that advertised the "meanest mechanical bull" in town and she rode it! Actually she did quite well and managed to stay on for quite a while - longer than some of the men we watched.
This was on her "bucket list" - along with completing a half marathon of 13 miles in March.

The wedding was anticlimactic after that night. My nephew, Michael, and his new bridge, Candance seemed very happy and on Monday they flew off to their honeymoon in the Bahamas. As the wedding offered no alcoholic libations there were many creative disguises used by family members to "smuggle" some in to the reception. Nips, flasks and water bottles were the weapons of choice. All went well and there were no conflicts, debaucles or disgraces...

Flew back on sunday afternoon and spent most of yesterday recovering - went to the gym but only had the energy to use the steam room and hot tub...