Santa Fe

Since Lee and I only have six more months to be "just the two of us", we decided to spend a little QT (quality time) together and head out west to Santa Fe last weekend. I'll get to the rock on the left in a minute. Normally, I wouldn't include details of the flight to our destination, but this journey warrants a brief discussion. Since Southwest is having so many great deals, we flew to Albuquerque, NM. We were in Boarding Group B so we had decent seats (I was nestled between a nice old man who wanted to sleep and my hubby), but 30 minutes into our flight, we were told that due to a "strange noise", we would have to go back to the airport. I called "same seats" to the aircraft, but nobody listened to me. So we fly back, get off the plane, get onto another plane and Kevin Federline sits down next to me. Only this K-Fed wannabe smelled like a mix of bong water, armpits, beef jerky, and Corn Nuts. Well, who knows, the real K-Fed may smell like that too. Why me? Every time he moved, the smell wafted toward me and I had to choke down a little vomit. I wanted reenact the Jodie Foster Silence of the Lambs autopsy scene and stick some Vicks Vaporub under my nose to mask the smell, but I had none due to the liquids ban.

Eventually we made it there, rented a car and made our way to Santa Fe. We stayed at the Territorial Inn and Spa and ate dinner that night at Il Piatto. Great Italian food. The next morning, we did the tourist thing and saw St. Francis Cathedral, Loretto Chapel, and the Georgia O'Keefe Museum. We also hit some of the shops around Santa Fe Plaza and topped it off with lunch at The Shed. I was worn out, so that afternoon we just wondered around a little and then sat at the bar at the Inn of the Anasazi. That's where we had dinner that night.


On Saturday, we got up early and saw the cliff dwellings at Bandelier National Monument. It was pretty interesting, but I didn't climb up into any of the caves because I was afraid of falling off a ladder or something. Pregnancy has made me clumsy - I constantly drop things now. I was in CVS on Saturday and ran into two racks while trying to walk a straight line. Another strange side effect - when I try to hand people things, I let go too early and I wind up throwing it at them. It's really weird. So if I am handing you something, either 1) think fast or 2) duck. Back to my story... that afternoon, we went to Canyon Road where all of the art galleries are and there are a LOT. We found a Jamie Kirkland painting that we really liked, but we're still trying to decide if we want to take the jump. We had dinner that night at the Pink Adobe, a Santa Fe landmark. It was good for drinks (according to Lee), but dinner was blah.



On Sunday, we packed it up and headed back to Albuquerque because Lee wanted to see the Petroglyphs (or rocks as I like to call them). As we entered Petroglyph National Monument, I prepared myself to be underwhelmed. If you're unfamiliar with the PNM, as I was, it's a collection of "rock drawings" made by ancient peoples. However, upon inspection of the petroglyphs, I was uncertain that all of the drawings were made by ancient peoples since I'm pretty sure that neither the anarchy symbol nor a drawing of an extended middle finger were ancient symbols used by them. I'm sure some of them were legit, but you know what I say - you've seen one ancient dog petroglyph, you've seen them all. Just kidding, honey - I loved the rocks.

I'm almost ashamed to tell you what happened next. As many of you know, I've had the easiest pregnancy in history up to this point. I haven't been sick, I'm still teaching aerobics with great gusto, and I feel outstanding. We got to the airport, checked in for our flight two hours early, and for our efforts we were awarded Boarding Group C. Lee cannot deal with the news and has a meltdown at the ticket counter (sadly, this is not the embarrassing part of this story). Let's put it this way - Grey's Anatomy has McSteamy and McDreamy, and I have McPantiesinawad. McPantiesinawad and I go to the gate to await our Boarding Group C fate. At this point, McPantiesinawad says "I want you to try and fix this". I got up, walked up to to the agent at the gate, told her that I was having uncontrollable morning sickness and she handed me an early boarding card. When it came time to board, four people got on early: a 95 year-old woman in a wheelchair, an eight year-old traveling by herself, McPantiesinawad, and me. I've reached a new low point. Whoever said "getting there is half the fun" never traveled with us.

That was our Santa Fe trip.