Eight Days, No Names, and Green Chile

Wee Hamner ought to be arriving soon. These days are spent imagining what life will be like with the baby around (the nickname for the baby throughout the pregnancy has been Ronan--gaelic for "little seal" and in the running for potential boy name). Speaking of names, we haven't been too quiet about our name ideas but feel as undecided as we did six months ago. Giving someone a name is a much more important and difficult task than I would have ever considered. We're still coming up with new ideas, but mostly we joke about names we would never give a child. Probably time to get serious. (Don't worry, Grandparents!)

In anticipation of the baby, we've been making lots of little adjustments and additions to our abode (nesting instinct, anyone?). We love living in the country and are taking full advantage of it. New Mexican summers are pretty incredible, with dry heat in the day and thunderstorms with rainshowers in the evening. Most of the time, the storms have only half passed by sunset, which makes the colors and light incredible. There are evenings when Pojoaque Valley (we're on the north end of it) glows a golden pink. It's totally surreal. Garret and I end up just sitting in the glow and staring at every little thing--dry grass, the mesas in the distance, the Cottonwoods--while Emma runs around chasing grasshoppers, of which there are a bazillion. Sometimes we'll have the deep glow and lightning simultaneously, which is really spectacular. I was sort of afraid of lightning when we first moved here, but I've come to really love it, especially when it comes big and close, streaking across the sky horizontally as well as vertically. Anyway, summer is a great time to be in northern New Mexico. And, it's chile season--the most anticipated time of the year by native New Mexicans. Bigger for some than Christmas, Easter, you name it... Green chiles are almost ready, and when you drive down the streets of Santa Fe during chile season, they fill with the smell of roasting green chiles. There are chile roasting stands all over, and families will buy a few big burlap bags full of green chiles, have them roasted, go home and peel them (chile peeling is a big family affair, I hear--almost like a party), then freeze them for use during the rest of the year. Green chile (a very simple sauce) is eaten alongside of pretty much anything. I hear you can even get it on your McDonald's hamburger at no extra cost.