She Did Something

The only stop we made between Pueblo, CO and Albuquerque, NM was Trinidad, CO. Every now and then Jim caves to my need to get off the highway and offers a side trip through an “Historic Downtown”. I think this is to keep me from sulking about casinos we pass, but Trinidad turned out to be worth it. Passing through the main street, I noticed a blue T-shirt in the window of an insurance office. The T-shirt said: “Got Duck?”. Figuring that Jim just had to have this to go with his duck, I made him stop. The T-shirts, along with a duck hat, were for sale as a Kiwanis Club fundraiser.  Of course, we bought a set.

We got into Albuquerque later than we planned, but I do remember Jim having very heated discussions with the GPS. He honestly believes she lies to him all the time and calls her the nastiest names possible even if I do tell him he’s not allowed to say that “F” word. I try to protect her feelings by putting her away, but Jim always asks me to get her back out just so he can scream at her some more. I did learn to spell Albuquerque after deleting it then re-adding it as a destination several times though. Jim is good for something.

Anyway, we got there kind of late and since I was worried that we would be keeping my niece Patti’s boys up late, we called her as soon as we got to the hotel and agreed to meet at an Applebees in 25 minutes. I’d never met Patti before but had seen photos and could see a strong family resemblance to me but she was really easy to pick out because of the red-headed twins, Brandon and Dylan. We took a few photos outside the restaurant while we waited for Patti’s mother, Carol, to arrive.

I never like pictures of myself, so look at that one. You probably won’t see many more. Please note that Patti and I have the same nose and similar eyes.

As is usual, Jim got along very well with the kids…well except for the pinching incident and we still aren’t sure who started that. Brandon was a little slow to warm up, but Dylan and Jim hit it off right from the start.

We had a good dinner and some great conversation while Jim riled up Dylan who was sitting next to him. Next time they can’t sit together. I swear Jim is a six year old in an old guy’s body. They had fun even though we were keeping them up late.

Meeting Carol was a good experience. I’d never met her when she was married to my brother but had seen letters she had sent to my mother with photos of the kids. I know the letters were important to my mother.

Since we were pretty tired and the boys were up late, we parted ways just after dinner with plans to spend Mother’s Day together. Jim and I headed to the hotel, Homewood Suites near the airport. I think I could very happily live at that hotel. For the price of an average hotel room, we had a living room, a bedroom and a full kitchen complete with dishwasher. This was by far my favorite hotel so far. The staff was very friendly and I promised Dale my blog would make him infamous famous. So, here you go, Dale…the picture with Jim’s duck and the duck hat!