Deming

New content was promised, so new content you shall have!

Mommy is on vacation. Yes friends, I have hung up my frilly apron and feather duster and blown out of town for some alone time. I have been wanting to write more, and the literal and mental clutter of the household were stunting my progress, so here I am, in Deming, New Mexico. Alone with my thoughts and my laptop.

Before you imagine creepy banjo music playing and put out a missing persons ad for the Mom that disappeared in the desert, you should know I’m only 12 miles outside of town and being looked after by my AirB&B hosts, Harold and Linda. I have my own cabin on their twenty acre property, where they rescue and care for older horses, donkeys, and chickens. The hens used to lay eggs in the big leagues, but are now semi-retired, as are the other animals. They are cared for like beloved pets, along with three enormous and terrifying dogs and at least one cat I’ve seen skittering around. There are snakes, but I haven’t seen any, and they are unwelcome. Harold has promised to “dispatch” anything I find unsavory, but assures me the stomping donkeys keep them far from the house.

My hosts live in a double-wide adjacent to my cabin, which also appears to be a prefabricated building. It’s very practical, since they are twelve miles from Deming, which is an hour from Las Cruces, so ordering Italian marble and designer flooring would be a nightmare. Harold and Linda custom designed the interior of their home, and then it was made and shipped from Oklahoma to their land here outside Deming.

The decor in my cabin reflects their taste for wild west

adventure, and Harold is an avid historian. His interest in Native American history, the railroad and the resulting ghost towns in its wake, and bandits like our local Billy the Kid, are chronicled in detail on his website. After a successful career as a cardiologist, he and Linda retired to the desert to give rescue animals a better life. Both are hard-working, and extremely kind.

My time in the desert has been peaceful, save for one rooster whose mental alarm clock

is broken, causing him to crow all day long. His heart isn’t in it, though, so he’s not very loud. The other animals are curious about me, but just take a sniff and move on. One of the chickens got a little uppity when I tried to take a picture and kicked dirt at me, but we’ve put that unpleasantness behind us. My hosts have offered their advice, help, and history knowledge but respect that I came for the emptiness of the desert and have let me be. They’ve had many artists and writers come stay in the cabin, and know the value of the solitude their property offers.

The hours I’ve spent here have been fruitful, with no one to care for but myself. It’s always hard to leave my three boys, and I miss them terribly, but being alone makes it easier to focus on the task at hand: writing. No racing against the clock to finish a post before I need to get dinner in the oven, no stopping mid-thought because someone pooped (not Hubs, he generally doesn’t need my

help). And so, I wrote.

The bulk of my time was spent on a chapter in a book I’m putting together, which will mostly be a compilation of my better blog posts (no, not the one where I recommend a good moisturizer), some of which will be expanded, with some original chapters like the one I’ve written while in Deming. It’s a

love letter to the Southwest, and I really hope you like it when you READ MY BOOK, which you must do as my faithful readers. No publishing date is set, but I will keep you updated on my progress. I don’t often set goals for myself because I’m anxious about the toll failure would take on my soul, but I’ve decided I want a book that I have written to hold in my hand someday, and this is it. If there’s more after this, that would

be wonderful. If no one reads it but my Mother, my always faithful editor (sometimes it’s good to have a critical mother! Love you Mom, please still edit for me), it will be worth the work to me to just hold the finished product in my hands. A book I can hold and say “I wrote this. I did this for me”.

My trip to Deming has not been the typical Mom-cation of manicures and cocktails,

which makes me proud to be the woman that I am today. I would definitely go on that vacation, but that’s really for a different woman. I am stomping around in the desert (hopefully scaring away the rattlesnakes?) and pouring my soul into a book that’s written just for me. And even if I own the only copy, that’s just fine.  Though, if I finish by Christmas, my family are all getting copies in lieu of gifts. I hope they act surprised.

I have another post coming soon about El Paso, but for now I’ll leave you with some photos I’ve taken on my little writer’s retreat. Also, someone please remind me to bring my fancy camera lens next time I travel. I’m hopeless.