Desert Magnolia

Rain Love the rain until the arroyos fill up and Volkswagen beetles are spotted floating downstream. Sun Love the sun while it's delivering much needed Vitamin D, warming the skin and generally imparting a sense of well being to body and garden. Begin to not love it when first signs of sun damage appear in mid-thirties, and the fight is on to correct and prevent further evidence of sunworship in early twenties while wearing little string bikinis and olive oil. Sometimes just olive oil. Snow Love the snow as it's replenishing the snowpack and ensuring a healthy water table and river flow for the spring and summer to follow. Hate the snow when it accompanies an electrical outage that spans over a million people...a million...and downs trees and generally wreaks havoc once more on the Northeast. Son is fine, warm, safe, but damn, it's cold and every.one is sick and tired of the white stuff. And the stuff that follows the white stuff..the squishy, icky, brownish subst...

Saturday morning. Our house. After a most intense week. (I know, lately they've all been intense, but that seems to be the way of things these days.) Sun shines in the living room. My feet are on the coffee table (I could use a  pedicure, I notice), my laptop propped on my lap. Terminator Salvation plays on the TV. Hubby loves the Terminator movies, and Netflix delivered. Daughter joins us for breakfast, then dashes off to work. She's excited at the prospect of actually making some cash for the first time since her surgery, but kind of dreading standing on concrete floors at the restaurant all day. Son calls and asks me to check my email to see if an attachment came through. He sent a paper in yesterday and the TA is claiming the attachment wasn't...attached.  Attachment came through for me, so something jicky is going on with the other email he sent. I text son back and confirm email worked for me, that he should resend the original to the TA to show the time s...

This one gets 7 on a scale of 10. It has it all for me - romance, comedy, cons, and a great cast. Mark Ruffalo, Adrian Brody, Rachel Weisz and Robby Coltraine star, but the entire cast works. The characters are quirky, human, and while any one of them could be cynical and jaded for various reasons, they instead come off as endearing and simply flawed, intelligent, interesting people. My favorite quote (Rachel Weisz' character says this to Adrian Brody' character during a private conversation about life where Brody is steeping in a bit of self pity...) Penelope Stamp : I think you're constipated, in your fucking soul... I think you might have a really big load of grumpy petrified poop up your soul's ass.  It was classic, a little shocking coming out of her mouth, and very effective. I highly recommend this movie. Its IMDB plot summary reads as follows: The Brothers Bloom are the best con men in the world, swindling millionaires with complex scenarios of ...

Have you ever noticed how, following an intensely focused and productive period in your life you slip off the wagon and have to just 'be' for a little bit? I think I'm there. The past three weeks at work have been ridiculously intense, very interesting and we've made our choice--we've chosen a great PR firm to represent us. Which is awesome! But somehow I'm in a bit of a stall, with a head cold raging (by the way whoever invented this affliction must have been really pissed at someone or some circumstances because WHAT is up with the stuffy head/drippy nose/sore throat/low energy thing anyway???), a To Do list that's deceptively short, but actually layers and layers deep, and I am so not into it. Not right now. But really, maybe it averages out. Because if I had kept on at the pace I'd been going, well, I probably just would have spontaneously combusted anyway. And that wouldn't have been good for the long-term.

I'm brain dead right now. I've just spent the last two weeks requesting, reviewing, and winnowing PR proposals for a big project at work. When I'm done, and that should be soon, we'll have a PR firm promoting the hell out of one of our offerings, and life, well, will be busier than it has been and hopefully fun as well since schmoozing with the media will be on the agenda. My agenda. It turns out, I'm an extrovert. And I love to converse with people. A lot. Which may explain why I'm in communications. Actually, I've always liked to converse, but finally found a way to use my school/training/propensity for bullshitting in my career. Good day, that was, when I actually started to be compensated for having a big mouth. But today, I'm fried. I've been pitched by two sophisticated NYC firms. They're energetic. They're focused. They're driven. They're desperate for business because when times get tough the PR folks are the first...

The day when Daughter signs. Her National Letter of Intent. For Providence College. (Yes, the Providence in Rhode Island.) It's happening. At last.  So soon. After all the dust has settled. The lump in my throat? It's about pride and happiness for Daughter; it's about love and following dreams and being absolutely fearless on the outside even if you're trembling on the inside. The lump has absolutely nothing to do with anything but that. Ok, maybe there's a little 'Holy crap, this is real. It's happening. Baby is all grown up, has created a dream that led to an opportunity and she's following her heart. And she's going to be leaving...' Maybe there's a little of that. But mostly, it's about the Daughter.