The Burrow

I wish I'd been there.  Monday's post will have a report from our National Correspondent, IntrepidCat, unless something fun comes up and she blows me off.  Til then, listen to John Stewart's speech at the Rally today.  If you don't want to listen to the whole thing, I excerpted my favorite sentences below the clip. Stay sane, denizens.  "We are in hard times - not end times" "We can have animus without being enemies." Our 24-hour-news-media-overload forces us into a situation where "we amplify everything and hear nothing." "....the exhausting effort it takes to hate." "The image of Americans reflected back at us by the media is false.... it's like looking in a fun house mirror." And if you only want a minute or two to get the feel of it, go to 8:48 and watch the cars merge as you listen to Stewart explain how "we work together every damn day."   It will make you feel better about America and Americ...

FROM MY BURROW TO YOURS! created with the help of Mr. 5 & Mr. 7 And now for one I didn't create, but which makes me laugh out loud. Would that I had the nerve thought to do this:  And finally, some interactive fun can be found at one of my favorite places on the web these days.  ENJOY THE WEEKEND!

Click here for the first post in this series.  I'm going to assume a certain knowledge of the facts for this post. Th e bills have stopped pouring in.  I've been filling in the credit card information in the little boxes printed on the back of the invoices and using the return envelopes with the little glassine windows and some of the Heifer International return address labels and my self-stick Forever Stamps.... all feeling vaguely 20th Century in this era of on-line banking.  I can't remember the last time I wrote a check for anything.   While the bills have stopped flooding the mailbox, the phone has been busily ringing.  Amidst the political robo-calls and surveys with obvious built-in biases today I received a call on behalf of the Billing Department of The Hospital .  Okay.... this bill has been in my house for 6 days.  Two of those days were Saturday and Sunday and for 3 of those days I was out of town.  They couldn't really think th...

The end of summer announces itself in a variety of ways here in Tucson.  Cars are driven with the windows lowered instead of with the air conditioning on high.  The gambel quail babies are now big enough to be seen foraging on their own, without their parents fore and aft, monitoring their brood.  School buses are everywhere, starting at 6:45 in the morning and stopping traffic until 5 or so in the evening.  Electioneering posters are crowded on every street corner, exhorting passersby to STOP something or RE-ELECT someone.  And phone books are delivered.  Lots and lots of phone books. We got 5 of them at our house.  Tucson Pages and DEX and Yellow Book (but not the Yellow Pages) and two others whose titles I've forgotten.  They are dropped off underneath the mail box or in the middle of the driveway or propped against my little courtyard's even littler front gate, wrapped in their plastic bags to protect them from the elements.  There's ...

A week went by since I'd had a chance to visit G'ma.  I'd meant to stop by on Thursday night before I left for Sedona, but life and laundry got in the way.  I could have gone over Sunday afternoon,but my hot tub and the end of the Lee Child thriller and a complete reluctance to get back in the car after 238 miles of travel kept me right here at home. I didn't feel guilty.  I knew she was safe and well cared for.  I knew she wasn't alone.  I knew she wouldn't remember how many days had passed.  That's the good and the bad part of her demented brain. Demented is a very strange word.  I hear the cackles of Bedlam Asylum and conjure up an image of Mr. Hyde's wild eyes and teeth and hair, nothing relating to any other part of the whole.  It's an untethered feeling with a lack of control.  Yet that doesn't resemble my lovely white haired mother at all.  She looks just fine.  She's not forgotten the social graces and she's still able ...

We're back from Sedona, Amster and I.  I'm not sure that we were influenced by the Birth Mother rock formation which loomed over our spa destination   but we are renewed, body and soul.  I'm in a quiet, reflective, at-one-with-nature place right now.  The sky seems bluer and my breath feels lighter.  I'm not saying that the presence of the vortex is with me, but something's sure going on. We drove up I-10 to I-17 and turned off at the Oak Creek/ Sedona exit and it was stunning.  Less than 100 yards from the exit the road turns and there they were red rocks (sedimentary formations filled with oxidizing iron ore which "rusts" and turns red) right in front of the road.  And to the left. And to the right.  And we could have stayed right there and been happy for an hour or so.  But we continued past the round-abouts and the galleries and the crystal shops and the psychic reading salons and, with the red rocks accompanying us, we wound our way...

I must apologize to those of you who use The Burrow to keep abreast of sports news. There's been a whole lot of baseball being played and I haven't told you anything at all about it.  That's probably because October is my favorite month of the year and I've been busy enjoying the sights and sounds of the great outdoors rather than hunkering down in front of a television watching other people play. But tonight is the 5th game of the NLCS and the Giants are one game away from going to The Series.  In non-sports-talk, the Giants, San Francisco's baseball team (which, unlike the New York Giants actually plays in its eponymous city) have won 3 out of the 7 games in the National League Championship Series which means that if they beat the Philadelphia Phillies tonight they will play against either the Yankees or the Texas Rangers in the 2010 World Series. This is a very big deal.  Like any good fair weather fan, I am enjoying jumping on the bandwagon of my once and f...

G'ma and I saw the Arizona Opera 's performance of The Pirates of Penzance on Sunday.  We're still humming the tunes and making ourselves laugh as I remember and remind her of that faithless woman, Ruth, of the lithe and supple policemen seeming to fly above the stage, of the wardrobe malfunction which revealed the faux-buns which created the sisters' bustles.  It was a marvelous, wonderful, totally enjoyable performance, even if the tickets did set us back nearly $250.  On the other hand, we were 6 rows from the stage, right in the middle.  We could make eye contact with the performers.  Some of them had very nice eyes. Getting places with G'ma and her assistive devices always makes me a little nervous.  Will there be stairs?  Will the handicapped spots still be available?  Will she be too nervous if I have to drop her off?  The parking lot was full an hour before the curtain went up, and I began to sweat.  But the attendant directed ...

In the interest of avoiding litigation, the insurer will be referred to only as N ameless I nsurance M achine - NIM The first Explanation of Benefits was for $10,051.38 of Hospital Services We have yet to see a bill from the hospital.  Perhaps that will explain what the individual services might be.  For now, we are looking at 8 pages with lines like these: an Amount Billed of $2,138.07 worth of generic Hospital Services with a concomitant Amount Allowed of $302.10.  Honestly, denizens, I just don't know where to start. How about those 7 cents?  Someone somewhere spent an awful lot of time and energy coming up with that number.  Is its specificity designed to reassure me?  Would I think less of this mess if the amounts were rounded off to the nearest dollar? There is no rhyme or reason that I can see between the Amount Billed and the Amount Allowed.  To make it simple, let's round off our numbers.  That $2100-and-change charge was reimbur...

That's my pal, Bunionella, hawking our friend's bunion-fixing device.  I have no first hand knowledge of the effectiveness of the device, but I can tell you that this video has been watched a gazillion times, mostly by males ages 14-17.  Why this is true I cannot say, but the device's creator has access to this kind of information and swears to its veracity. All I can tell you is that we've had a pretty good time laughing about the fact that she's gone viral amongst the pubertal set.  Is there an outbreak of bunions among our youth?  Hardly.  I think it's because Bunionella is one of the world's truly funny people.  She's like this day in and day out.  Listening to her tell stories is one of the great pleasures in my life.  She and her Ukranian Hunk of a Husband have been visiting our humble abode and I've been laughing myself silly.  Unfortunately, all this hysteria has not allowed time for a proper blogging experience.  So, for tod...

I have been paid for my writing. Let that sentence resonate for a while.  Imagine a background of french horns and cymbals and a timpani (I knew a timpanist in Marin... it came to mind) with wallpaper of a grinning woman.  A hugely grinning almost breaking her face woman dancing around the library, hooting and hollering and making a general nuisance of herself except that there was no one around to complain.  By the same token, there was no one around with whom she could share the joy.  Somehow, it didn't matter.  This was mine, all mine.  Someone with financial resources wanted to share her largesse with me, sitting alone at my keyboard, wondering what to write.  I'd dashed off a post I'd been considering but had not fully created and BlogHer chose that one, written straight from my heart onto the screen, that one earned money.  Cold hard cash for my own inner thoughts.  The things I wonder about, the issues that wend their ways inside m...

Click on over to Blogher.com where Is It Love has been syndicated and is on the first page of the Love and Sex tab. I'll be writing more on this for Monday... but, for now.... go and see how my work looks in syndication. I'm stunned.

No one wants to be (or be near) the cranky lady who's always moaning and groaning about her aches and pains.  No one is that interested in someone else's problems, unless, of course, there's a good story attached to the limp or the splint.  Even then, the listener is usually more enthralled with the circumstances of the onset rather than in what follows.  Other people's ailments are more gross than engrossing. ***** Is there anyone who could argue with that thesis?  I was a medical social worker and I really didn't enjoy listening to my patients' descriptions of procedures and wounds and treatments.  I sympathized and I consoled and I explained but I wasn't having a very good time at all.  Of course, as I was wont to tell my supervisees, " That's why they call it work ." ***** G'ma is my role model for dealing with pain.  She shows such grace under pressure.  When I compliment her on her forbearance she responds with incredulity.  ...

Grandpa used to sing a part of this song all the time. I can never remember the words, and it is pretty hard to Google two measures of a tune. But somehow it made its way to me today. Enjoy! This from IntrepidCat, niece and web-explorer-extraordinaire, on her Facebook page today.   She was the first person I knew who kept a web-log..... which seems to have contracted to become a blog.... and which is now kept by an old aunt instead of a high school niece.  The times, they are a-changin' That is true... but it's also false.  Some things don't ever change.  The memory of Grandpa singing a slightly naughty tune is old and new at the same time.  He's remembered in a different setting, with new people, by an older-and-wiser you.  He's there now as he was then.  YouTube helps you tell the story once more, and it's new again.  Were you sitting in the audience as the singer strummed?  Was Grandpa swaying in waltz time with you?  He wa...

Dah Rock Shop was every bit as wonderful as Mr. 5 had hoped.  There were 2 worker bees and we two shoppers and no one else for two hours of absolute bliss this afternoon.  Mr. 5 had his gemstone books and $10 and a big smile.  I had my backpack and nothing but time.  We were in heaven. Who knows why this little boy fell in love with gemstones?  He tells me that he has some crystals at home, but I've never seen them.  At Barnes and Noble with Amster last month he chose Gemstones as his purchase and he's spent the last 3 weeks finding mica inside the rubble around the playground at school.  He's a very good smasher of rocks; just ask him. Being a younger brother is a role fraught with peril.  As I type, Mr. 7 is sitting in time out for 7 minutes of rumination after deciding that kicking his younger sibling was an appropriate means of gaining his attention.  At his teacher conference last year, Mr. 5 was outstanding in every area save one - ...

I have a migraine.  My allergies have decided to announce their presence with authority.  I've taken all the OTC medications allowed for the day and I still feel miserable.  I'm achy.  I'm slow.  I'm sweaty. I'm a little bit anxious and a little bit nauseous. My throat is trying to be sore, though I am reminding it that it's only raspy because of the allergens and not because of a virus coursing through my system.  I had to come out of downward dog this morning and press my forehead into the mat in child's pose; the world had been spinning mightily before I got down to the ground.  In general, it's been a crappy day. I've been trying to keep a positive outlook in my glove compartment.  I took it out while stuck in construction traffic when I wanted to be prone on my comfy mattress at home.  I let it wash over my aches and pains and decided to smile at the car wash kid instead of screeching that my head hurt and I didn't want to hear about an...

It was busy downtown. Yes, this counts as a busy Saturday morning in the heart of downtown Tucson. Granted, the streets were closed off for the race, but there wasn't that much traffic to be diverted.  I managed to find an unmetered space on the street, right near the Art Museum and this little gem which I discovered as I was walking to the finish line The arrow points to a little ceramic house that's just sitting there, smiling. It reminded me of Tucson itself.  Understated, blending in with the scenery, not demanding very much but offering quite a lot if you take the time to notice. The event was supported by many of Tucson's healers,  who offered free massages in the sunshine and in the shade The Pilates Magic Circles were out in the Stretching Area. It looks ridiculous but I promise that it feels great. The fans were everywhere... although not all of them were interested in the race.   Tucson's Meet Yours...