Los Animalitos de El Salvador

 

Only a small sampling of the creatures that we came across in our most recent adventure. These are from both the mountains and the coastal regions.

 

Beautiful yellow finch.

 

 These funky chickens had no feathers around their neck. It is a common breed in El Salvador. No, it wasn't disease, though I did ask "are you sure?" more than once. There were also chickens with plenty of neck plumes.

 

Do you see the baby chick sitting on it's mama's back. So sweet.

 

I don't know what's on the other side of this window, but it's gotta be something good. This iguana came and went out of this window all week long.

 

 Oh this poor little lizard was caught by Azalea. He had no chance.

 

 No, she didn't actually eat it. But she had a lot of fun pretending like she was going to.

 

 The only reason this sign tells you not to drink the water is because it was outside a hotel. You can pretty much confirm that all water you see is not drinkable... even if it comes out of a tap.

 

 I almost stepped on these things walking down the street. Tails of lizards that were lined up and left in the street. Fresh pulls as you can see from the bright red on the black and grey tail.

 

 A little crab found by the ocean.

 

 You can't tell from this picture, but this horse was one of the tiniest full grown horses I've ever seen. Is there such thing as a pygmy horse? This would be it.

 

 Vacas, vacas y mas vacas.

Cows are everywhere.

 

 Yes, and they were getting intimate with Tigo and his salty skin.

 

Vultures, circling everywhere. But it was a little creepy with them waiting outside the cemetery.

 

 

 Turkeys.

 

A little tiny hermit crab, that made Azalea cry like the end of the world when he crawled out of his shell and died. So sad.

 

I almost forgot to post a picture of a stray dog wandering the streets. There are so many of these everywhere, that they are almost unremarkable in their presence. Oh the dogs there give me such a different view of the canine world. Wild and domestic at the same time. But that is how El Salvador is. Domestically wild, and living on the brink.

Fitting in vs Belonging

‎12 year old wisdom on fitting-in vs. belonging: "If I get to be me, I belong. If I have to be like you, it's fitting in." Amen.

Above is a Facebook post that Brene' Brown posted this morning. A quote that came from the mouth of a tween I know not, but the actions that flow in and out of our house, echo with that sentiment.

It all started about four and half years ago while my family was hanging out with my cousin and her family. Her great husband, who at that time only had sons, suggested to my then 7 year old daughter that her hair would look super cool if she put some funky red streaks in it, or maybe colored the bottom half of it. Really? Thanks a lot, Adam.

No, it didn't really start four and half years ago, it started the day she was born. She is her own person, she always has been and she wants to reflect that, and their conversation was merely a catalyst for an idea in motion. (But doesn't it feel good to have someone to blame when they aren't around to defend themselves.)

So now she is in middle school.

Sometimes I feel like that's all I need to say and we all (all of us who are past middle school, and not in it's midst) will collectively understand. We will all simultaneously roll our eyes, cringe from memories we try to block and sigh, "yeah, that's tough." And the conversation can be over.... except when you have a 12 year old daughter living it, and therefore, the escape exit is locked.

Today is picture day in seventh grade.

I completely expected today to have a fun before and after post of the hair dying party that we did last night. Through the process, I was so nervous I kept asking... What if you don't like how it turns out? It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. And so it goes, the only outcome we had not discussed, is the one that happened.

Or didn't happen. (By the way, it mattered).

My girl has stick straight, shiny lustrous dark brown hair. The kind you can sell on the streets. Strangers ask if they can touch it (for real). Everyone loves it, except the girl who is growing it out of her head. She is always asking to color it, change it, color it, style it, color it, braid it, color it, curl it, color it.... you get the idea.

One of my big griefs with her coloring her hair (so I argue) is the chemicals. Mostly those involving striping her hair of the dark color so that the other color of choice (RED in this case) can be added. I felt like we came to a great compromise. No stripping, and we would use Henna hair dye. More natural, less chemicals, hopefully the same effect.

When I took her to the store to get it, she thanked me about nine million times. She skipped through the aisles.  We went home, did home work and then the serious business of following small print directions and dying hair began. (I mean really, color your hair before 7th grade picture day starting at a new school where you don't know more than a handful of people... who is that risky?)

I will spare you many of the details, but let you know she had a plan. Only the bangs and the under half of her hair was addressed, there was a style to it, we followed the instructions and let it sit (an hour probably wasn't enough) we washed the henna out of her hair, blew her hair dry to confirm.... and it was..... exactly the same color. Not the same color as on the container, the same color hair as when we started.

"I just wanted to do something different."

The quiet mourning began. The somber effect and let down of trying to express yourself and it not working out.

So here we are, still, trying to figure out what it means to be yourself. What it means to stand out but not for the sake of standing out. Learning to be different for different's sake is something that has always bothered me with passing fashions. But being different because your soul wants to stand out and say "I am not the same as you."

Can hair do that? Can hair make your soul tell another person that you are different? That you belong because you are yourself, and not the same as someone else. You belong, not because you fit in to be accepted.  But to be accepted for who you are. This is a hard courage to walk along side of. Coming of age and becoming yourself is a fine line.

The beginning.... these were the photos that were supposed to show before and afters...

The Red Henna as we were just getting started.
(you know, I didn't think it looked that red either...)

I'm so happy, right now.

Jeez, look at my face. I'm a little confused, scared, worried (grossed out).

Vasoline on the ears to avoid staining. Wouldn't that have been awful if the hair didn't change, but her ears did! Ack!

 

Mucky, muck, muck. Still doesn't look red to me... should it? I'm new at this.

You can see my technique has skills to be desired.

And the last photo before we forgot, left the kitchen, did some homework, blow drying, eventually washing, and then quiet mourning....

 



So what's next?

Ch ch ch changes....

From riding the train to Santa Fe to lunch roundevous in Madrid, NM, to saying goodbye to friends in Albuquerque, to holding on tight to a house we weren't sure what it meant to us to spending three long and terribly short weeks traveling across the country, visiting 10 states before coming to our temporary - temporary home, to coming to our temporary home in Virginia, where we are now. And not even including the additional tours to Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. And of course revisiting some old local haunts in Virginia. DC... just wait, you'll see us plenty.

I am slightly overwhelmed right now with how I should proceed here with the information I've got on my hands. It's the last two months worth of crazy that I have stored up in visual form, either on my little camera or my little phone camera. There is so much that has occured, I'm not sure I can do it all chronologically. And since it's so "out of date" with regards to real time blogging... well, you'll just have to deal. Sorry. I'll put dates for when they fun or crazy occurred, but it won't be the dates of the blog post. So get ready to be jealous of all the fun we had. Or maybe you'll just say oh my stinkin' heck, I am so glad I am not that person. And maybe just for kicks I'll throw some real time info in, until I get back into the world slightly less angled than I am now.

1 husband, 2 dogs, 3 kids, and way too much stuff!!

This world is turning.

Ring of Fire

It turned out to be a pretty mystical experience.Those once in a life time things that we remember. Quite literally. The day started with us being removed from our house, for an open house. I had high hopes for the stars alignment to fall favor on us too. But I feel like I've been lacking in the karma department.

Note to self: work much harder and giving out good... but not just to receive the good... to give the good.

So we headed up to Sandia Peak. I didn't quite realized there would be so many people there. As in from all over the country and world. Europeans, Asians, Eastern Europeans. For New Mexico, that's a pretty big deal.

So we passed all the huge telescopes and headed down the path to walk for a bit.

Oh but not too far. Too many distractions. Furthermore there were humming birds to check out.

As the visitor center, gift shop, snack bar placey there is a spot where the hummingbirds come and will land on you. Who woulda thought that would even be possible. Taking a picture of it is close to impossible though. But thanks to digital cameras, I was able to try about 10,000 times before getting one that was decent.

But the day progressed and we headed back to the valley. Over to the fields in our neighborhood to watch the eclipse with friends and neighbors. We went to the middle of the fields, but in the back of this photo you can see a really abnormal number of people lined up along the edge to get a glimse of the coming eclipse.

 Oh I simply love this picture of my sweet Lola. It just seems right.

 Here, she is doning the eclipse glasses, trying to navigate when wearing them causes essentially complete darkenss unless staring at the sun.

 Azalea found her crawdad remains in the mini-ditch.

 It was sometimes hard to focus on the eclipse when there were perfectly good toads and lizards to catch. (and release)

 Here is one view of the birding telescope that was set up to capture the eclipse on the cardboard box set up behind it.

 And with my eclipse glasses in front of my camera, I was able to capture some pretty awesome pictures of what was going on.

 I was also able to capture some crazy kids.

 And capturing the toad. The kids were thrilled with their joint effort in having it.

 Here is the other side of the said birding/eclipse scope for viewing the eclipse with out looking at it. Cool.

 Oh the air. The light. Everything got eirily dark and spooky. Like a dream was happening. Like you didn't know what to expect, and it would all be ok. Like there was a mystery about to be solved. It really did feel like the stars were aligning.

 And the community. Everyone was in absolute awe. More than the overused Awesome. Simply complete awe.

 Again the light in the sky. The eclipse in full effect, with out the glasses over the camera. A little tricky to take this photo since I couldn't really look in the camera either.

 Burn, burn, burn. The ring of fire.

 She even noticed it.

 On the projector.

 Blue belly skink "in paradise", no not the after life, paradise, the either playing dead or euphoria paradise. He ran away moments later into the fields.

 It's not just about the eclipse.

It's searching for something unknown and mysterious and amazing and loving every moment of it.

Active Art in Albuquerque

I was waiting for my yoga class to begin and had some weird in between time that I didn't want to waste, but I wanted to fill and wanted to use it. I brought my computer and pulled up to see if I could get some Wifi. Probably should have been able to, but I can't get my stupid settings to work.  Anyhow, I had driven past a wooden picket fence.

But it wasn't an ordinary wooden picket fence. Each piece was painted a different color.

 And then I looked up and I saw a mural that I had noticed before and I spun my head around.

There, surrounding me, noticed yet very unappreciated was active art in my city.

Not active in that it was in motion, but active in that it was displayed in broad public places for all to see. You did not have to go into a museum or a studio to view.

I decided to quickly circle the 2 city blocks near downtown albuquerque that encompass my yoga class.

I was quite amazed at the murals.

And the tile work on the sides of buildings.

There was detail on shops.

There was even a sad billboard in the mix. (I feel I have to put it in for truth's sake)

I had my Iphone with me, so as you noticed, I started snapping pictures.

I couldn't get to all of the murals.

Then there was this blank brick wall. It was an old wall no doubt. But it began to look oddly artistic in it's non-painted way. 

Even in alley ways. (This one is harder to see. But it is of two ravens, the one on the far side is upside down.)

There were so many. I was truly impressed with the art and the positive messages that were being displayed throught the artwork on the sides of buildings.

All before my first vinyasa of the day.