Desert Magnolia

Nobody sleeps during a full moon. During Cosmo's moon, there was sex. During harvest moons, there is, well, celebration of harvest. And during this crazy moon we've been experiencing over the last few days? Planets are aligning in ways they haven't in 70 years, nobody seems to be getting any sleep, and boy is there energy to spare in the air. It's Summer Solstice 2016, and boy it's a doozy. It's so hot, so energetic, that we've all just kind of given in and are hoping we can make it through to a calmer and cooler place, hopefully soon. I saw some clouds today above the Sangre De Cristos. I wanted to get out of my car, shimmy around and do a really happy, very provocative rain dance. Provocative to the rain, that is. I'm pretty much too damned hot and too damned stressed to get jiggy with it in a Bahamian, let's drink some rum and celebrate life like hedonists, ok? kind of way. Just sayin'. Stay cool, get jiggy if it works for y...

I spent years writing copy. Marketing copy. PR copy. Website content. Collateral copy. Social media copy. There were times when I had to dig deeply to produce words that did their jobs, granted, but mostly I could just remember my basic premise/goals/objectives and something would percolate up. Lately I've been stymied here. I've been waiting for my muse to sprinkle magic idea dust on me that will then compel me to rush to my laptop and share with you. The muse has been messin' with me, so I've decided to resort to plumbing my own depths and motivation and see what I can come up with. First, why am I doing this in the first place? When I began Desert Magnolia I desperately needed a venue for my own thoughts. Spending my career spinning and generating ideas for commercial purposes had exhausted me in some ways but offered no outlet for my creativity or my own voice. So, I started this blog. Second, once the initial euphoria of having an actual, dedicated venue o...

Hard to believe the Summer is nearly gone. Hard to believe that this weekend is Labor Day, after which we'll refrain from wearing white ..shoes, pants, hats, etc. Or maybe not. As summers go, this one has been good, but mostly uneventful, which is ok. We've gotten rain for the first time in years (lots of it), which has been good. We've had fires everywhere, which is not so good. Son is back in the UAE, which is good, but means he's far away and if it's possible to miss someone more because they're further away? I do. He's working like a dog, but says he loves it, so we're happy about that. Not the dog part, the happy part. Daughter is playing soccer, and has begun her senior year of college, after which many possibilities exist, but no real plans yet there. We'll see. We just want her to have some fun, have a good season, and kick butt her final year of college. We are doing what we do. GG is settling back into the school routine again. I...

Hot hot hot, that's what July has been so far. Fortunately our monsoons are beginning, which means some days we're fortunate enough to feel raindrops fall from the sky, wash the dust from the air and cool us down a bit. Some days, though,  those monsoons get a little carried away and stuff starts to wash away... One time when I was a little girl, maybe 10 or so, I saw a VW Bug floating down an arroyo...just bobbing along. Apparently they'd tried to cross running water that was deceptively shallow looking in a dip in the road, but in which the water was surging with enormous force and speed.... Everything turned out ok. Nobody was hurt, but that was a strange sight and represents the kind of weirdness that happens when heavy rains fall in a desert like ours. Anyway, it's hot. This summer has been a blur of activity, mostly good, but some not so good. A litany follows.... -Daughter came home to visit  (as I've already mentioned in an earlier post but stil...