Currently: February

Currently living/working in: Still property caretaking Fenton Ranch in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico … the environmental education program starts up here at the end of March.

Current mood: Enjoying one more month of peace and quiet before our life gets crazy and busy teaching kids nonstop again! 

Currently excited about: Announcing our grand summer plans! Stay tuned this week!!!

Currently not excited about: Ugh doing taxes. 

Currently worried about: Health insurance. Period. 

Currently thankful for: It’s been 4 months since Justin’s surgery and I think he can honestly say he is feeling better. His spine infection is still present, but has diminished so much that his infectious disease doctor took him off all his antibiotics to let his body do the work now. He still has many other random issues (i.e., sleeping) and his Crohn’s/ileostomy is still part of his life, but overall, there is improvement. He is doing WAY more activity and eating better although he won’t put on much more weight than what he is now.

It is alarming when your husband weighs less than you do! 

Currently proud of: 23 submissions to publishers for my Te Araroa book! I wrote in detail about the publisher-seeking process here, but overall, I’m proud of all my efforts thus far and still hopeful I will score a book deal! It is a discouraging and slow process, but I’m not giving up!!!!!!

Currently regretting: Still no wildlife!! But they are taunting us! Every new snow, we see prints and scat. Come out, come out wherever you are!

Currently amazed by: Puppy sitting. Oh my. Almost as exhausting as babysitting. 

Meet Umbra (Heart of a Shadow), an 8-week-old Australian Shephard, owned by one of the rangers at Fenton Lake State Park (which is less than 2 miles from us).

The cat was less than happy about this situation. 

Current confession:  I love the winter, I do, but I am glad our days of constant shoveling snow are mostly behind us. Not to say we aren’t getting more snow (and I probably jinxed us for a big one), but I am glad we aren’t getting the back-to-back masses of snow we had in January. Nowadays, we chop ice and push snow from the roof of the big house. Not much better, but it still doesn’t feel as hard as everyday shoveling!  

Current guilty pleasure: A new camera! I’ve been talking about it for years, and I finally upgraded to a DSL camera. I bought a used Canon Rebel T3 EOS. I’m slowly reading, practicing outside of Auto mode and trying to understand the impact of shutter speed, exposure, aperture and ISO. It’s going to take some time to master, but so far, I’m happy with my choice! 

Currently reading: Still on a reading roll, although the book I am reading is 350+ pages, so it will probably take me the whole month. 

Paths of Glory by Jeffrey Archer: I am not a fiction person, but this historical fiction book is based on George Mallory’s life. There is great mystery surrounding Mallory because he died while climbing Everest in 1924. No one knows if he died on his way to the summit, or the way down. The latter would make him the first person to successfully climb the highest point. However, without ever knowing the truth, the credit goes to Sir Edmund Hillary. 

I thought I’d list J’s books too. He’s reading two simultaneously: 

Born To Run by Bruce Springsteen 

Energy Leadership by Bruce Schneider 

Currently watching on Netflix: We have gotten ourselves hooked on “The Wire” TV series. Of course we are still on the DVD program, so we are moving ever so slowly through the first season. We also have a great DVD lending program in the small community of 3-4 neighbors up here in our neck of the woods, so we decided to borrow “Breaking Bad” to watch again. Because when in New Mexico …