Happy Holidays

Holiday Greetings from the Nagans
It's that time of year again: sleigh bells ring, children sing, holiday music plays in all the stores. Whoops, I'm in a time warp! There's been no snow in our parts recently and with no kids or grand kids in the vicinity we haven't heard any school groups singing and as for the stores? Well, the whole holiday spirit seems to have disappeared.
But the holidays are certainly here -  you can tell from the way everyone bustles about with circles under their eyes and a dazed look that says "hey there aren't enough hours in the day for what I have to do!"
But we're taking a page out of Winnie's book this year - and just laying back and enjoying the best parts of the holiday: seeing nearby friends and family, having lengthy conversations with friends and family far away and listening to good music while we enjoy the glow of the tree lights and, of course, eating good food.
For those in the family who have criticized me for referring to my dog rather than my granddaughters as "princess" or "best girl"  I would like to relieve their minds and set the record straight. Winnie is  henceforth nicknamed my "best bitch." Argue that one!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving visit with my sister and brother-in-law, Beth and Gene. Even enjoyed the 21 hour trip in each direction, listening to good books on tape as we drove.  The weather in Alabama was fabulous: sunny and around 80 every day till the day we left, when the thermometer dipped  into the 30s,  preparing us for the colder northern climate. We enjoyed one (poorly played) round of golf and had delicious meals prepared by Beth.
While we were there, I was even inspired, or maybe insane, to go the the 5:00am Walmart electronics sale. I couldn't believe I was really getting out of bed at 4 in the  morning just to  buy a Christmas present. I had such a good time that when I arrived home with Doug's gift, Beth and I went back for more. By the end of the day we'd wracked up two new computers, two new printers and a new kitchen overhead light. (The latter out of necessity).
The trip to Alabama was the only one Doug and I took together this year but in May I went to Santa Fe for a 50th reunion with four of my WPHS friends. We had a blast and got to know each other all over again.
(For more about that trip read my previous blogs).
This is the time of year to catch everyone up on family doings. Our children are well and busy with work and families. And our four granddaughters are growing up remarkably fast. 

Hannah is now 13, very much a teenager and in her last year of middle school. She is an excellent musician who plays the upright Bass, and is currently very involved with dance lessons.

Sophie is 11 and rapidly changing from girl to teen; guess she's a tween. Sophie is a competitive swimmer and medal winner. She is also taking dance this year and plays the saxophone. I have to say that in both cases the instruments seem almost as big as the girls.

The Danish contingent is also growing up fast: Molli Malou is now six and Maddie Marie just turned two. Who would believe these girls both started out as preemies!


Doug and I wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a very happy and healthy New Year!

Getting to Know You - Again

As I said at some point earlier, the main thread of this trip for me was to get to know the other girls (women now, but always girls to me).

 And in this respect I made progress. I wish I'd known them all better in high school but later is better than never. And here they are, from left to right: Diana, Ann, Elly and Cecile.
Diana is the artist - very creative, able to put together exciting combinations, whether they be food, fabric or a canvass. Diana is very outgoing and attracts attention in whatever she does.
Ann is quiet and thoughtful, but with a wonderful sense of humor. She is a humanitarian to the nth degree and is well known around Santa Fe, which we discovered as we walked around town and every other person we ran into seemed to know her. She is a great hostess,, letting her guests go their own way or going with them if she and they want that. She opened her home to four of us and would have had more if they could come, yet she let us do our own thing in her home and was very relaxed the whole time. Don't think I could be that laid back.
Elly is also a humanitarian. In fact, in the year just after college, Ann and Elly traveled around the world together to places young women rarely went to in those days. Elly is the most analytical of the group, looking at everything from all directions. She is unquestionably the thread that held this group together because she has always kept track of and cared about all her friends. Without her, we would never have had this trip or at least it would have been made up of other people. But Elly is also a worrier and second guesses herself too much, causing herself great pain I think.  Although she has a great sense of humor.
One night she backed the car up and ended up with the  rear tire hanging over the edge of a rock wall. We had to call AAA to get it hauled back onto the driveway. The next day she bought a card with a picture of a truck in a tree and made copies of it for all of us as a memento!
Elly and I met in junior high and were close friends for the next six years. We've stayed in touch through the years since then but while she's stayed in touch with many of our classmates, I've let most of those friendships slip, which is why Elly was my entree to this trip.

Cecile revealed more of herself with each day and by the end of the week had us all helping her with a secret assignment. She won my respect because while she had a real estate deal going back home, which an associate was handling for her, she was able to refrain from either talking to or emailing her associate to find out how the deal was going. I think I would have bitten off 10 fingernails, maybe even the fingers with them and been checking emails constantly. Cecile is a striking woman, with the kind of high cheekbones we all covet and a real sense of style.
Okay, so that's the group. But there was one other  member I haven't mentioned: a male named Monty. We were all in love with Monty!

Santa Fe, Part II

This is getting harder as the days go by and the trip recedes further from my memory. But the things that come to mind have more to do with the individuals than with our activities.
For instance, one of the things that stands out in my mind is that when Ellie and I finally were up and dressed and wandered the 100 yards to the main house, Diana was the only one awake and she was happily preparing a big breakfast for everyone! She was at the stove making pancakes and already had put together a huge fruit salad: it was clear we wouldn't starve with Diana in the kitchen!
You can see that even the dog sticks around when Diana is in the kitchen!

Even with the daily notes I took, it's hard to refresh my mind on all the details of the trip. Especially since I've procrastinated writing this for so long that I've forgotten everything.


Here's a picture of the five of us, taken the day we went to Taos. One of the waiters was kind enough to take the picture so we could all be in it.
It was a wonderful day and, if you look at the photos in the blog entry below this one (which was sort of a mistake because I was trying to figure out how to put pictures into the blog) you'll see the photos I took on the way back to Santa Fe.
We had a wonderful day in Taos, which was not exactly what I expected but quite lovely.  Following are some photos of the town. On the left is a view looking away from the town toward the mountains. On the right is a view looking toward the Mall restaurant where we had lunch. And with that I'll end this entry.

Pictures of Santa Fe

These are pictures I took on the way from Taos to Santa FE. Some of them are from the house in Sanata Fe. Isn't the sky beautiful

This wasn't what I had in mind when I started out today but I am learning how to work this blog very, very slowly. I think I am going to quit for now and if anyone tunes into this blog, they will see some pretty pictures of the sky. One of these days I'll figure out a better way to put pictures in.

Santa Fe - Part I

Background information

Little did I know when I attended my high school 50th reunion last fall that I would run to old acquaintances who would become new friends? I have not been good at retaining bonds with old buddies, whether they be old school friends or friends I've left behind as we moved from one city to another. I have always envied those people who retain those ties. One of those people happens to be one of only two good friends I've kept in touch with since high school. Elly persuaded me to attend the reunion, which I did reluctantly. Surprising myself, I actually had a good time at the reunion but it was a small reunion the next day that really changed things.
Four of us got together for breakfast: my friend Elly, Ann, Katie and myself. After talking for hours for Ann, who I had last seen at our high school graduation, invited us to come visit her this spring at her home in Santa Fe. What an offer! I hadn't had a vacation in years, and never took one with friends - only with my husband. As it turned out Katie couldn't come but two other high school friends, still in touch with Ann and Ellie, were invited to join us. I had had some contact with one, Diana, but absolutely none with Cecile, the other woman to join us.
So here I was, booked to go on vacation with one friend and three relative strangers. How would that turn out? There was supposed to be a sixth member of our group, Susan, who lives on the West Coast and planned to meet us in Santa Fe, but illness kept her away at the last minute. So how would five women work out? Would we pair off? Would there be cliques? Would we all get along? I was particularly worried because I was the one most out of touch with the others.
I needn't have worried. There was never a problem. Nobody paired off, every one got along. We worked well as a group and sometimes split off into smaller combinations, but always happily.

Day One
Travel day. My husband drove me from our home in Connecticut to LaGuardia airport where I was to meet Cecile, Diana and Elly. Because I live so far from the airport we left extra early so I arrived an hour ahead of the others. Here I encountered the one catastrophe of the trip. I had packed two small bags - didn't want to be burdened with a big bag - one to check and one to carry on board, the latter of which has a handle and wheels. However I'd stuffed it so full, I had to check it and ended up having to carry the other - very heavy - bag with no wheels. It was a painful part of the trip to have to traipse through airports carrying this bag.
There was an accident on the highway I learned from a phone call my husband made on the way home and I was convinced my friends would not make it - but they did.
And there they were – heading toward the gate – three women; not high school girls, but definitely older, NOT old women. The stand out was Diana, who always had a flair, dressed in pink and orange and wearing a hot pink cowboy hat. She was flanked by Cecile and Ellie who were attired conservatively in grey, black and blue. They obviously didn’t spot me until I started waving my arms like a lunatic but once they spotted me there were hugs and kisses all around.
We chatted incessantly on the plane and were good friends by the time everyone had helped me schlep my heavy bag through the Dallas, Ft. Worth airport and onto the second leg of our trip. By the time we landed at Albuquerque, many long hours later, I was so sick of my heavy bag I was ready to ditch it. Instead we spotted a wheelchair and, hoping nobody was looking, we put the suitcase in it and were on our way.
We picked up our rental car and Elly drove us from Albuquerque to Santa Fe, up a steep and curving road to Ann's house and guest house. Elly and I were quartered in the Guest house and the others were in the main house.

In the photo are Cecile, Elly and Diana.





Getting to know you, Saturday, May 22.

At breakfast our first morning, the talk turned to our shared past, shared of course, only as much as we wanted to share it at that time. Now we could get at the heart and really get to know each other. Diana had the biggest story to tell. She and her husband got married our senior year and were the first high school couple to be married in the history of the school. And that marriage is, amazingly, still together.

view from Ann's guesthouse

Diana is flamboyant in every way – the way she dresses in the most colorful of clothes, the way she speaks in superlatives and the way she does – always on the move. I didn’t know this Diana in High School, other than that she was artistic and I didn’t even remember she’d been the art director of the high school year book. Diana and I found we had a love of cooking in common and enjoyed shopping for our dinners together at the farmers market and Whole Foods later that day. Agreeably, Ellie offered to be our sous chef and Cecile said she loved to do clean up. A marriage made in heaven for the cooks, who agreed they didn’t like the clean up part.

I realized at breakfast that I still didn’t know much about Cecile, who I’d known the least in high school, so I made an effort to ask her questions and learn more about her. Learned where she’d gone to college and who she’d married and that she’d been in real estate for the last 40 years, an accomplishment only a fellow realtor (me for 4 years) could comprehend. Cecile wanted to lay low this day so she stayed home while the rest of us piled into the car and headed to downtown Santa Fe to the Farmers Market,

where we were too late to find much that was good but did manage to bag (literally) a bunch of fresh romaine and arugala leaves. Like the bag in the wheelchair, this bag of greens became our joke of the day, as we carried it in with us wherever we went so it would not wilt in the car.

We saw a group doing African dancing that was spectacular. We all wanted to get up and dance with them. Ann told us she had taken the class with the woman who led the group and used to participate in this and I think we all would have loved to see her do the dancing.

It took us all afternoon to shop and do a few errands that alone we could have accomplished in an hour easily, but it wouldn’t have been as much fun. We did go to an artist’s market where we all purchased pottery items from one of the stalls. I bought a beautiful bowl, and worried over the $27 it cost me but thought it was so pretty I didn’t mind too much. When I got home I was about to place it on the table and it slipped out of my hands and fell one or two inches to the table top where it broke into many pieces. We are going to try and track the artist down to see if we can replace the bowl. I’m really pissed, as he demonstrated how this dishes would not break. NOT!

Back home, it was my turn to cook dinner, which, by the time we got home I regretted, because I was tired and because I cook for other people every day in my job and I wanted a break. I made an old favorite of mine - a pasta dish with shrimp. lots of garlic and feta cheese and Greek olives. Everyone seemed to enjoy it and the best part was that I didn’t need to clean up.

We had a birthday celebration for Ann's husband including a yummy chocolate cake Ann picked up at Whole Foods. Richard is a photographer and his beautiful work is displayed all around their beautiful Santa Fe home, which has a view that must reach 100 miles.

Personalities are beginning to emerge. Diana is definitely the most verbal and most dramatic. Ellie is very talkative also but her manner is more conservative – she doesn’t move as quickly or react as quickly. But she is the most true blue of us all and definitely the glue that brought us all together.

Ann is the humanitarian. Her whole life is made up of kind deeds. She’s a retired doctor, who worked in the Pueblos and, Doctors without borders. She is involved in all kinds of volunteer work, she never judges and is accepting of everyone.

Cecile is the least talkative and needs to be drawn out. She has not been well and needed more time than the rest of us to recover from the traveling. She felt better tonight after a restful day.