Personal Canned Oxygen, Stunning Sunsets and Swamp Coolers

I'm a Euro-Southern girl. What am I doing in the desert Southwest?

I’m working in Santa Fe this summer for an esteemed annual music festival, and the kind fest folks are putting me up in a nice casita about 6 or 7 blocks off the famous Santa Fe plaza. Good gig, right?

Yes, but I had to move my life from the literal east coast (Savannah, Georgia), madly packing for two weeks after finishing another intensive music festival job.

I then hauled my cookies across the country with a disabled brother and a travel-savvy but opinionated Chihuahua-mix named Peanut Butter Jackson in tow. What was left of my personal stuff after 4 moves in 3 years tailed me on the trip by a few days.

It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t fast. And it wasn’t cheap, although I did all the things you do on an extended drive to lighten the financial load. At one point I was so tired I just stopped eating.