Alpaca Crack

Went to New Mexico for my birthday. It was a mixed bag emotionally, we put Naughtius down the morning I left, and his memory carried over through the trip.

People in New Mexico freeze when I am not there..in my reality anyways. It always takes a while to let time catch up from when I last left.

Jadira is amazing. I can not believe the beautiful and wise woman she is becoming. I met her boyfriends children and they were cool kids.

Cippers is in college, and doesn't live at home any more. This was the hardest part to adapt to this trip. Jadira has always been an independent spirit, Cippers has always been glued to my side. We would stay up late at night in her room and talk about creepy things, or watch movies, then curl up and go to sleep.

Mom's house is built on an old Catholic cemetery and there is an even older Native American pueblo underneath that. To say her house gives you the willies sometimes is an understatement.

Now...doing what I do, this is normally not a big deal..but I miss having my sidekick to adventure in the nether realms with...and doing banishings at 3 a.m. with. Life changes, people grow.

Cippers did decide to stay at mom's a few of the nights. We decided to look at LOL cats for a good giggle. At one point, Cippers jaw dropped as she was staring at the wall across from the computer and she said "What the hell is that?!"

Normally, I would expect to turn around and see something with either glowing red eyes or a misty nebulous malevolent shape in the corner (this is my mom's house after all!) Instead, I see a REALLY HUGE ugly as sin bug hanging out on the wall.

We crept closer. The thing had, I swear, at least 20 pairs of legs, all arched like spiders legs. No visible head, a flat body, and 2 long sweeping antennae. I have never seen a more thoroughly disgusting bug in my entire life.

Cippers told me to smack it with something..and this is where my dirty secret came out. I am mortally afraid of big bugs. Mortally. I told her I would do no such thing. We looked for somethign for her to smack it with, when the thought occurred to me...what if this is a member of the centipede family? It did have an awful lot of legs after all. I told her to go get her dad.

My step dad Jerry is a very patient soul, who would do anything for the daughters he adores. He came up to her room, sleepy eyed with a plastic cup. He would not kill the bug, just re-locate it. It's just who he is and part of why he is so awesome.

He attempted to trap the bug just as it scurried to a corner, and the cup knocked it to the floor.

We searched EVERYTHING in her room and never found it. I didn't sleep well the rest of the week.

We did get on the internet again though to see if we could figure out what the heinous thing was..and here it is:

I would only wish an encounter with this thing on my worst enemies.

Halloween night we went to Jadira's to decorate cavaleras. After making them the night before, I could barely stand to smell them, or the frosting. They were fun to decorate though. Apparently the Aztec used to eat them in honor of the dead. There is enough sugar in one of these babies that I would probably most certainly be dead if I ate one. Mom gave me some souvenier Day of the Dead buttons too.

I had dinner at my dad's. My step mom made a turkey dinner since everyone would be gone for Thanksgiving. Strike that..she had the turkey made, along with the trimmings. It was pretty tasty. It was nice to have everyone together. Dad showed me the work he has been doing since retirement...a bathroom fit for the 1st class on the Titanic, and a stair case he laid himself, indcluding the walnut trim he made from a felled tree. Now I know where I get my urges to do things like grow flax from seed and turn it in to linen fabric. Got some nifty things as presents, including a set of square dpns to try out.

My sister Jadira set aside some spending money for me. She knows how broke we have been with me on disability and the medical bills piling up. I am amazed at her generosity and spirit. I have some cash burning a hole in my pocket so of course I had to go to Village Wools. If you are ever in Albuquerque, stop in and see them...some of the best yarns, spinning fibers and everythign in between. They have extremely fair prices and the women that work there know a lot about anything to do with yarn and fiber. I had a wonderful chat with one of the spinners who works there about hand combs, and some new fleeces they had in stock.

I ended up buying about 4.5 oz white kid mohair, a flax strick, and some dyed Colonial top..gorgeous colors from blues, greens, burgundies and a trace of yellow. Very soft.

While I was shopping around, mom bought me a birthday present; In Sheep's Clothing. This is THE book on fleece buying, and it contains a whopping amount of useful information. Mom said it didn't look all that interesting. Not so...these pages are worth gold to me. Thanks mom!

The rest of the week was spent mostly gambling, eating a LOT of chile, drinking a LOT of coffee (it helps when your little sister works in the coolest coffee joint in town) and I tried to teach my mom's school kids some NLP stuff. Morning kids were great and totally got in to it. I walked out on the afternoon kids because they were being little assholes.

My mom and company celebrated my birthday on Thursday. Jadira and Joseph baked me the MOST awesome cake from scratch..even the frosting. Seriously..I can still taste it and it was divine. The not so much a kid anymore Jadira amazed me yet again.

We had planned to go to Las Vegas (New Mexico, not Nevada) at the end of the week. I hadn't seen my brother's house, and there were some cool sites in town and just outside of it..including a weaving shop and New Mexico's largest Alpaca ranch.

It seems everyone in the town knows my brother. He is the Director of Communications for Highlands University. He is also a kick ass photographer and journalist. He had done some favors for the manager of the Plaza Hotel, and we got our room free because of it. When we checked in, the manager said he was upgrading us a premium suite. Mom asked why, and he responded "Because I can."

We were in for a treat...the room was luxurious in all of it's victorian glory. And bonus..the hotel was rumored to be haunted. The manager took us to the room that the activity centers around, and said that they have women guests fleeing from that room with their suitcases, in naught more than their night gowns.

Our room was great, in the picture, it is the upper left 3 windows. The room looked out over the plaza and shopping area, and had it's own separate sitting room, fridge and microwave, and 14 foot ceilings. The majority of the hotel is furnished in antique furniture and has a wonderful ambience. We settled our stuff in and decided to walk the plaza before dinner.

Most of Las Vegas closes before 6 p.m., so I was happily suprised that the weaving shop was still open. If you ever pass through, I highly recommend stopping in for a visit. Tapetes De Lana carries just about every size of loom, a decent supply of locally produced spinning fibers, hand woven stuff for sale and yarn. The back of the store is a pastry counter and coffe shop. I noticed some bags of fleece on the floor and decided to chat with the woman standing there about them.

She was running a work shop on spinning/weaving and the fleeces were for demontstration. I asked if she was willing to sell and she was.

After rummaging through several bags of excellent quality wool, I found THE bag...an entire fleece of suri alpaca.

She said she knew it was worth more than regular alpaca, and told me to make an offer. I suck at this. I went back to the coffee shop where my mom and brother were sitting and hemmed and hawed over it. My mom clinched the deal by offering the woman a check for the entire fleece on the spot, and it was accepted...at a steal. Hooray fleece!

The next morning, my brother took the top off his jeep and we drove out to Mora. Now, I grew up in New Mexico, and am used to the stunning views that you can only see there. I have never seen the road to Mora, and it is one of the most stunning and beautiful drives in northern New Mexico. Sometimes it really is better to take the road less traveled.

We stopped at a church for my mom. My brother had photographed this church for his recent art opening in Las Vegas. There was a graveyard nearby as well. Unfortunatley it was locked and we couldn't explore. It looked pretty old though, and I was bummed that I couldn't get in to see closer.

We finally arrived at our destination. Victory Ranch Alpaca farm. If you like spinning alpaca, or knitting/crocheting/weaving with alpaca yarn, this place is heaven. The store has a HUGE selection of yarns, rovings, clothing, blankets..you name it..all made out of buttery soft alpaca. They also had some decently priced fat skeins of buffalo yarn, and camel down yarn made from the camels at the Albuquerque zoo.

As we were wandering through, the woman in the shop told us we could feed the alpacas for $3. Deal! I signed up to feed them. Sean came along to take pictures, mom opted to stay on the front porch of the store and snooze in the warm autumn sun coming over the mountains.

I have seen alpacas behind fences before....but I have never been in the middle of a herd of them. As our guide walked us out to the enclosure, the alpacas seemed to alert to the big red coffee can he was holding.

As far as I can tell to this day, that coffee can contained alpaca crack....and these guys were jonesing for a fix of it. The minute we stepped through the gate, we were swarmed by some rather pushy alpacas. He had a coffee can full, I had a small plastic cup full. Apparently alpacas don't reason all that well..they left the guy with the big coffee can full of crack and swarmed around the obvious new girl with a tiny little cup of the stuff.

Alpacas don't have upper teeth, just a few on the bottom. You don't have to feed them flat palmed like you would a horse. Their upper lip is split, and they use the 2 halves like dexterous little fingers to scoop the food/ crack out of your hand. If you put your palm face up, and take the first 2 fingers of your other hand and make a runninig motion with your fingers on top of your palm, you will get a good idea of what it feels like to feed them minus the fuzzy whiskers. Pretty cool.

I did panick a bit when they all started crowding in. They are very gentle animals, and pretty small..but even small animals can do heinous things when in large numbers. I was to find out how true this was later. I hope I never meet an irritated alpaca ever again.

I was happy that my brother had experience interviewing people for news stories. He kept the guide yakking and answering questions while I happily fed the alpacas and retreated in to my own anti-social little world. They made cute little grunting noises as they were crowding in for the food..the closest thing I can think to describe it is like one of those dog toys with the farting sound rather than the squeaker, but more extended. They have enormous bambi like eyes, and will look at you with wide unblinking innocence. It's a lie I tell you. Some of them are malicious spiteful beings..just waiting for their opening.

One alpaca was being a bit more pushy than the others. She was beautiful, brown and white pied and a bit bigger than all the others. If I walked over to feed a different group, she followed and edged her way in. She even edged in when I was feeding the blind alpaca. It felt a bit like being stalked, and I would turn around each time she butted in and say "Oh, its YOU again. Apparently she found my comments rude after a while and decided she was going to show me a taste of alpaca vengence. As I was turning away to fill my hand up with more alpaca crack, I heard what sounded like a sneeze, followed by shrapnel and the most FOUL smell I have ever smelled.

Now, those who know me know I have a stomach of steel. I watch autopsy shows while eating, the foulest smells from infected wounds doesn't bother me. I have been puked on, peed on, pooped on by humans and animals. I thought myself impervious to grossing out and barfing, but that is exactly what I wanted to do right now.

The guide laughed and told me that was a "warning shot". If she had really wanted to show me, I would have been covered in thick goo as well as the shrapnel from unchewed alpaca crack.

I would have rather been within 2 feet of a spraying skunk than ever smell this again. It is truly the most foul thing I have ever experienced. I was a little more careful about turning away after that, as apparently that is what set off the spitting explosion.

We finished up and got back in the jeep to get some lunch. The smell of alpaca spit kept wafting through, and I was glad the top of the jeep was off or we all most certainly would have perished from the stink. As we were driving to the restaurant, I even found shrapnel in my hair and glasses.

We get in to the restaurant and I am starving but don't want to eat at the same time. Apparently mom and Sean can't smell it as much, but I am bathed in it. And it smells..did I mention that? The lunch was good, inspite of my smelly misery. For the rest of that day, evening and up to 2 showers later, the smell of alpaca spit would haunt me. We loaded back in to the jeep and headed back to Las Vegas. The ride back was freezing cold. We were all pretty numb by the time we got back to my brothers house. Mom and I got back in our car and drove back to Albuquerque, heater cranked up.

It was a wonderful trip, much needed after the stress of the last few months. It is always good to come home again. Jace had baked me a suprise cake that said "welcome home" (he figured I had enough of the "happy birthday" variety, and had rented a movie for us to watch. The house is quite a bit sadder without Max in it, and I can definitely see the loss on Rosie's face. We will have some time to hang out together while I spin up all my fiber finds from New Mexico and work through our sorrows on some nice long walks through the park. Speaking of which, it is time to do that now. I will be posting pictures of my spinning on a future blog.