HOME....AT LAST...IN NEW MEXICO.

When I left you, we had arrived at our new home and Bear had vanished in a gray flash.

There was nothing we could do at the moment about Bear; we just had to hope he would decide to get over his snit and come home.

Exhausted by this time, we wearily went in to explore our new home. It hadn't been lived in for about three months, but it was clean and welcoming...and we were very pleased with it. The only thing we objected to were the two uninvited guests that greeted us right inside, to the right of the front door: two very large black widow spiders. They had to go, first thing...sorry, ladies! Once they were dispatched, we continued to explore.

One story, and deceptively small-looking from the outside, it surprised us once we entered. It contained three large bedrooms...and the garage had been turned into a fourth. It was the biggest bedroom, and I took that one...1 1/2 baths, a huge kitchen and dining room, huge living room, and a wonderful sun room/den that quickly became our favorite room. It had 8 large windows and a wood burning stove that, in that room, was the only source of heat. It had obviously been added on after the house was built, but not included in the central air system. The air conditioning was a swamp-cooler located on the roof....typical for that area, and very efficient because of the dry climate. For those of you who are not familiar with that type of cooler: it's an evaporative system with a large fan blower contained in a large, square apparatus which has straw filters on the sides and a small copper tube that comes from a water source at the ground level. The water continuously comes up the tube, fills the bottom of the cooler and wets the straw filters, and then the cooled air blows into the house with quite a bit of force when you turn it on high. (There were medium and low speeds, too, but we liked it high on hot days.)

There was no basement in the house...also typical of most of the houses of this type in the Southwestern part of the U.S.

There was a good-sized laundry room as well. In the sun room, there was a back door that led out to the backyard and patio, which were wonderfully private. There was also a side yard that contained a small storage shed.

The front, side and back yards all needed a lot of attention...it was obvious that the previous tenants had been yardwork-challenged...but the front yard contained a wonderful nectarine tree, and a lovely cactus garden along side the driveway, the side had two beautiful flowering plum trees, and, in the backyard, was the most gorgeously prolific sweet Bing cherry tree, right outside the back door! (Both the nectarine and cherry trees provided us with such delicious fruit for all the years we lived there, though it was a battle with the birds for the cherries!)

As I said, the garage had been turned into a bedroom so there was only a carport with room for one car. One thing we loved was the fact that the house was in a cul-de-sac right off a not-too-busy side street. This was good since we had a three year old.

After exploring all the rooms, we began unloading the van, car and U-Haul trailer. By that evening, we were pretty much settled in, and, after some fast food for dinner, fell into bed exhausted....(well, my daughter and grandson fell into their beds...I had an air mattress...which was surprisingly comfortable. It was about 6 months before I could afford a bed.)

The next day, we began the job searches.

Time to say good-bye again. I leave you at 3:05 p.m. on Wednesday, August 6, 2008. Blog hits are now at 363.