Hell’s Half Acre

Jamie has taken over many of my chores since he got back from the US (in May) and is finding the budget aspect to be a challenge. After spending the thousands we did to bring Michael back, I instituted a strict budget and part of the budget is a limit of $600 a month on food. He gets another $50 a month for household items. Until recently, he figured he could just steal money from other budgeted items. That might have worked in other months, but $200+ in unexpected medicines (for ProstaQ, etc.) blew that fail-safe out of the water. It took a little “discussion” but I think he understands the idea of a budget now and how it should work. But I think he could really use some encouragement from you internets. He is coming very close to using his entire $600 allottment of food already but I think he can make it if he stays away from meat. And frankly, with the hormone, antibiotic and steriod laden meat in the US, I’m not so sure that is a bad thing. Michael, who LOVES meat is so aghast at the prospect of limited to no meat, that he is using his food stamp money to buy meat. So, if you’re so inclined, and even if you’re not, but could be pursuaded to become so inclined, drop him a little line at jamie.s.jam@gmail.com and give him some support. I think he can make the money stretch to the end of the month but he’ll need some encouragement.

The thriftstore here in town (Ft. Davis) is a little gem. I have purchased 6-7 pairs of shorts (good, heavy, cargo style) for the boys, swimsuits for both of the boys, a skirt and skort for sissy, skort for ellen, at least 5-6 shirts for the girls and am still under $20. Yesterday I found two Corelle plates (I’m trying to get rid of all our plastic without going to stoneware; stonewear in the trailer is simply Not A Good Thing but it does make for good crushed stone).

The other day we headed out to Davis Mountain Resort, which sounds like it should be a lovely, manicured lawn type of place with tennis courts and multiple swimming pools, but is actually an enormous ranch which has been subdivided. It is about 10-15 miles west of Ft. Davis making it even more remote than Marfa or Alpine or Ft. Davis (what I am now calling the “tri-cities area”, which is something of a joke since the largest town of the three is Alpine, weighing in with a whopping population of SIX THOUSAND). But wait, there’s more! After driving out into lovely valleys and mountains and through 396 acre ranch after 396-acre ranch, you’ll find the the DMR. The plethora of mailboxes on the road are an indication. The grading equipment along the 5-7 miles of dirt road approaching the DMR are another. This is no typical “resort”. Many of the roads in the “resort” are 4WD only, and while we scoffed at that designation from the safety of our trailer in Ft. Davis, once we got to the resort and started up some of the roads, we realized why they were designated as such. Many of the non-4WD roads were rutted where the rains had carved out their own pathways. Once our massive van reached the 4WD roads we decided to keep to the “good” roads before we got terribly stuck. Jamie wanted to check out a trailer and 7 acres of property but since the road was 4WD only, we gave up and just decided to enjoy the ride. Jamie has been scouting the idea of starting a bike shop in Alpine as he is finding there might be a good market for it. I’m not so excited about settling down, but the kids are ready for a home-base of some kind. This really is a very lovely area of Texas, but it is still Texas, and I’m not yet able to drop the stereotype I have of Texas, especially after reading about some of the folk inhabiting the DMR. Shiver.

So, send Jamie some support (Michael right now is trying to get him to take him into town to the store so he can spend money…) and love. We’ll leave here on Monday and head up to Santa Fe. Michael wants to go through Section 52 (Roswell) but that takes us out of our planned way and we had planned to stop in El Paso for supplies. We’ll see. Our destination for the immediate future is Albuquerque for Sept 6-10 and the Live and Learn Conference .