Holiday Cheer in NM

Have Car. Will Travel.

Celebrating the holidays was going to look a bit different this year. I did have some decorations because I love Christmas and couldn’t go without anything. While I enjoyed the glow of some twinkly lights and my Christmas countdown calendar, I made some plans.

I found a farm-to-table dinner hosted by Big Jim Farms as a part of their Winter of Enchantment holiday location off of Montano Road, and I booked that for December 28. I also found that the Albuquerque Zoo had a holiday light display, River of Lights, that was highly reviewed from prior years, so I booked that for Saturday night. Then I found a book club at the Taylor Ranch branch of the Albuquerque library on Saturday at 2.

I wish I would’ve taken a single picture at the dinner, but – alas – I did not. In addition to dinner, there was also a wine pairing with each round. The food was delightful, and I would say the soup course was my favorite dish. But the best part of dinner was the company.

I’ve never been to one of these types of dinners alone, so – at best – I thought it’d be a bunch of strangers, sitting down together and making awkward conversation. Perhaps it was because my expectations were so low or because almost everyone who showed up that night was in good spirits, but I had a wonderful time. When I first sat down, I immediately found a kindred spirit, and we started to chat. Unfortunately, we had to move when a family of five showed up. Since we were the only singles, we had to adjust.

I ended up near the family of five, two adult couples and their Mom. I was also by another young couple. The conversations ranged from work to family to adventures to school to where we grew up to why we’d moved to pets to the holidays. It was a beautiful reminder of how strangers can come together and just be open to conversation and laughter.

My well-booked Saturday also included a trip to the laundromat. Even though the RV park had laundry, it was a bit too fancy for me and required an app. I just wanted to use my plethora of quarters in a traditional laundromat, so I found one of those with good reviews, which was not as easy as it sounds. The Corrales Laundromat was clean, everyone was kind, and my laundry got clean. Perfect.

So, I only just finished The Girl on the Train before the bookclub at the library. It was a lively discussion with a bunch of folks from all walks of life. We ended up talking a lot about alcoholism and co-dependent behavior, and people were really comfortable revealing quite a bit about themselves – whether they meant to or not. The leader of the group was just fantastic at leading a bunch of different people around a complicated plot with a variety of characters as well as the book. 😉

I’ll let the River of Lights speak for itself. It was beautiful, and they had hot chocolate with Baileys.

Were there Mishaps? Of course there were.

A reminder of the Mishap Scale >>> (🍫 = minor; 🍫🍫 = ordinary; 🍫🍫🍫 = embarrassing; 🍫🍫🍫🍫 = terrible; 🍫🍫🍫🍫🍫 = not enough chocolate in the RV to recover)

• So, remember how excited I was to use my stockpile of quarters? Yea, I forgot them when I went to the laundromat. 🍫🍫
• Also, I treated myself to some Starbucks on the way to do laundry, and I got oatmeal with brown sugar, blueberries, and nuts – my fav. I was going to enjoy this while doing my laundry but, sadly, there was no spoon. 🍫 I honestly thought I should bring a spoon just in case, but I didn’t.
• It did get a bit colder this weekend, and my rental’s tires did not love that, so I did end up at a gas station and refilled the tires. 🍫

Key Takeaway

I don’t know if living alone in the van since mid-November was kinda starting to get to me or what, but that dinner was a glorious reminder that I do enjoy talking with people, and that – surprisingly – people like talking with me, too. Somehow, it felt like the art of conversation had left me but nah – it was just on a holiday until I decided to live in an RV and travel across the country and meet stranger after stranger.