Desert Magnolia

Euphemisms play a role in  life, particularly if you're dealing with the human body, with foibles of its own. Case in point? Our human body of note of late, my daughter's. Specific part, her knee. Yep, the bad one. Yep, the one she 'tweaked' several weeks back. 'Tweak' in this case means 'broke off a dime sized piece of cartilage that's now free floating in the knee and causing no end of pain, swelling, general angst..but it's hard to say for sure because it's cartilage and doesn't really show up well on an MRI.' The really nasty part about this, though, is the REASON for the cartilage breaking off. See, the ACL, the one they ALREADY REPLACED not quite three years ago...has stretched. Which is bad if you're an ACL is your sole job in life is to support my daughter's knee so she can play the game she loves loves loves and finish college while she's at it. Because if you're stretched, and you're that ACL? You let unn...

I have a very long bucket list. On said list are a multitude of international locations, some predictably so, some for more personal reasons like 'wanting to visit the homeland of my people' and that sort of thing. Some are on there for no apparent reason but a whim. Of all the types of locations, for all the reasons they appear upon my list, Abu Dhabi remained absent up until a month ago, when it not only was added, it was placed in the top two spot. Let me explain. Son is working over in the land of many sandstorms and camels and plentiful oil reserves and indoor ski slopes and where the bright shiny present crashes into the 5th century. Everywhere you look, I'm told. He said we should come visit, and that we should do it when the daily temps are somewhere below interior of the sun levels, which means in the winter. It should be around 80 degrees most days. At first we couldn't fathom a trip of that magnitude right now, but then we realized he was probably n...

G.G.'s avid about hiking, has been for years, and has recently stepped up the whole effort by going every weekend for pretty much the entire summer. The only time he hasn't gone was when he and the Daughter were on the great national park tour and soccer tournament of 2011, and they hiked then, too. Did I mention that G.G. is a coach? And is all about encouraging others to enjoy what he enjoys? And he's pretty much relentless when he decides his cause is worth sharing? Are you figuring out where this is going yet? He recruited me. Me, the trail walker/jogger/part time yogi/stair walker wife. How did he do this? Boots, of course. He bought me boots. My old ones were fine, but heavy, and old, and mostly weren't the more modern form fitted design that bodes well for funky rocky surfaces and such. New Boots that GG bought me so I'd join his hiking club. But the lite version of the club, not the 21 miles along the Crest trail club. Because when you'...

My new running shoes? Are killing me. My knees, my hips, it's ridiculous. As much as I loved their cousins, the single wave Mizunos, I don't love these, the double wave Mizunos. Which kind of sucks because: 1. The store I bought them from has a 30 day return policy, and it's been twice that. 2. I spent half again as much on a stepped up model assuming that extra technology would be twice as good for me and my runs and it turns out I was dead wrong. 3. My knees hurt. My hips hurt. I have a bad attitude that will probably go away by tomorrow when I don my old versions of the waves and go for a walk that feels just fine thankyouverymuch. But I see Advil in my future this afternoon. This isn't bad for other reasons including: 1. I may not have to give up running entirely, but I definitely need to give up the double waves. 2. I am not crazy. When I stopped wearing the shoes for a week? The pain went away. Completely. But I didn't make the connection betwe...

You may recall how excited I became when pondering shoe choices for a trip to NY back in the Spring. One of the reasons I became excited? Vince Camuto. A little bit about my feet. [Note: Feel free to exit this post now if the whole foot detail piece is going too far outside of your comfort zone and/or you simply do.not.care about my tootsies. Seriously. I get that you may not care, and am totally ok with that. It's my blog, though, so here I go.] I am 5'8" tall, have long arms, long legs, and teeny tiny hands and smallish, square feet. Most would expect my fingers to be like a concert pianist's, and my toes to be the toe equivalent. But not so much. Apparently the same Middle Eastern genes that kicked in and gave me green eyes decided I needed to have feet just like my Grandma Alice. Who was 4'11". And tiny. Seriously. I was looking at her feet one day, as happens in lengthy, relaxed conversations with a person you're sitting next to on a couch. An...

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...

But I'm ok with that. How do I know this about myself? I recently bought these. I'm pretty sure you can't be buying and wearing these unless you're at least 25% hippie. Also, they're not my first pair. I have two others. Purchased within a year of each other. Brown, and black. But I bought them a really long time ago. And they never wear out. They're like the Volvo of shoes. Really, you can't tell that there's an entire DECADE of wear on them. So I got a little bored, went shopping, and found these bad boys. Apparently, that's how I roll.