The Burrow

Lunch at Cafe 54  is delicious in so many ways.  The food is fabulous, the atmosphere is light and lively, and The Editor is always good company. We were breaking bread and sharing stories before she leaves for Maine, and it looked like we'd end up kvelling about our children, once again. At least, that was the plan.  Then The Author walked in. She's a member of the writer's group  at The Clubhouse next door.  It's a safe place where those dealing with mental illness can have a cup of coffee, play a game of cards, read a book, learn a skill, take a class.  Cafe 54 is run as a Clubhouse project staffed by members; the customers are an eclectic mix of jurors on lunch break and downtown office workers and students and those involved in Clubhouse programs.  It looks like very other busy Tucson cafe at lunch time; the difference is evident only in the fact that you pay no tax at a not-for-profit venture.  It's a guided step back into the real world...

Answers are so hard to come by.  Questions are easy, because I believe what they taught my children: The only stupid question is the one you do not ask.  Answers, on the other hand, seem to be in short supply recently.  Is the Santa Barbara shooter mentally ill or a bad seed?  Would stronger legislation or better training for first responders or stiffer penalties or a fully armed populace make us safer?  Does a rallying cry take the place of real action? Is that the purpose of a shout-able, repeat-able, quotable slogan?  Is raising consciousness a worthy goal in and of itself?    I've been torturing my brain with these and other thoughts all weekend long.  It started at the quilting bee ; it got worse when I returned home to find TBG glued to the news reports from SoCal.  Rain's comments  to my post on the subject, and our subsequent conversation, just fanned the flames.    I want to know why. I want to...

Six are dead.  Thirteen are wounded. Again. Those are the numbers we heard in Tucson.  Dory and Judge Roll and Gabe and Christina-Taylor and Dot and Phyllis are long forgotten, though.  Too much time has passed.  CNN's retrospective on mass shootings in America listed the last ten.... in the last two years.... and Tucson was too long ago to be mentioned.  Our event is ancient history, it seems. Yet, it is exactly the same story.... a preventable story... a story that will resonate for a while and then vanish into the collective unconscious.... unless I keep nagging about it, I guess.  So...... Another disturbed 20-something white boy, this one with parents and therapists and an academic career to go along with his legally obtained weaponry, shot up a peaceful college town.  His family warned the police; he deluded the officers with politeness and his whiteness, I'm sure.  His written manifesto mentions his glee that they did not search his...

I went to a Quilting Bee Saturday afternoon. These ladies were the actual quilters. The rest of us  were there to create squares  Patrice and Alyssa's Peace and Love square. for the  Mother's Dream Quilt Project . We were assured that no skill was necessary. They assumed we could all use scissors. The rotary cutters were a different matter entirely. They are devilish tools with hidden safety locks and the ability to remove slices of a human finger with reckless abandon.  We saw the remains on a quilter's hand.  It would behoove us to take care. There's a reason I crochet blankets for babies - they always fit, despite my mistakes. Quilting requires a lot more precision. The lucite measuring square must be exactly positioned, and JannyLou's kinfolk couldn't keep their hands still long enough for me to take a picture.  There were cardboard templates to move around and help to center the square on the desired design el...

She broke her engagement. " I pulled the band aid off." She wants marriage and children and a family like the one she still cherishes, her parents and her brother, loving and concerned and moving in the same direction. The fiancé seemed less interested in them and more interested in his own road. She looked for a long time, and was so glad when she thought she'd found him.   But, she's neither stupid nor unaware, and she could recognize the incongruities and so she's sending back the ring. She feels better than she has in a long time. ***** She decided where to send her daughter to high school. Yes, the daughter had an opinion.  That opinion made the decision an issue. She struggled to define her reactions, to consider the options, to investigate her reasoning.  She loves her child, respects her style, admires her tremendously and knows where the power lies -- with the grown up. She did what she knows is best, what her daughter, relu...

I sent her furniture for the baby's room as her birthday gift. I think I forgot to get TBG to sign the card I remembered to mail. This morning, her email to me wondered what it meant that she kept forgetting that her birthday was approaching.   Is it weird?   Yes, sweetie, it's very weird.  It's not unusual, but it's weird. She's getting to the point where the individual years blur together. I remember it well.  She went to a 1980's theme party; I was bemused. I missed the 1980's; being pregnant and parenting little ones was as far as I could see. My musical tastes ran to Raffi and lullabies, my reading material centered on Margaret Wise Brown, and forget about fashion or lifestyle trends. Were I to be invited to that theme party, I'd have worn sweatpants. My birthdays came and went and I was happy to buy my own strawberry shortcake and take a long bubble bath and be done with it all.  I had decade-celebratory parties for TBG, but I wasn't ...

By the time it went live, yesterday's post was old news.  I tagged on a quick update before I went to bed, but I woke up thinking about it and then Megan commented and I have to revisit it. Not the why do you need to bring an assault rifle into a taco joint?  issue.  If we have to argue about the propriety of such behavior we are too far apart to agree on much of anything else. I'm not a defeatist, I'm a realist.   I'm thinking about the meta-issues, those that hover over the facts, providing context and nuance and a window into our world.   How about the undeniable influence that Moms Demand Action was able to assert?  Chipotle is a feel good, healthy, hot, fast dinner stop for a family shuttling between piano lessons, karate, and t-ball.  It's not the only choice, though, and without that organic, range-free chicken, no GMO's vibe... with, in fact, a decidedly anti-warm-and-fuzzy feeling... when it's linked in Mom's Decider Button to guys with...

I was shot standing ten feet from my Congressswoman, on a sunny Saturday morning, in front of a grocery store. My little friend, Christina-Taylor Green, died while holding my hand.  A licensed, legally carried weapon was used. Today, I opened Facebook and saw these guys Yes, those are the round trash holes and marginally comfortable stools you find at every Chipotle in America. I stand in line at Chipotle at Foothills Mall about once a week.  There's lots of glass,lots of people milling about, and no reason on God's green earth for an AK47 to join me. I wonder if the Chipotle's in Dallas, where this photo was taken, are somehow less secure. I'm wondering just how strong the fellow on the right thinks he is.  That weapon he's holding has quite a kick.  It also shoots more than one bullet at a time.  Should his spindly arms get tired while he's aiming at the bad guy, those bullets might just stray and spray the families sharing guacamole nearby....

Brenda Starr and I are in training.  There's a 5K through the pecan groves near her house next November, and we've paid for the t-shirts and the number and the snacks.  There's no avoiding it - we'll be the slowest participants in the race but we'll be participants, nonetheless. Her husband is in charge of our logo, a riff on my constant references to the fact that we galumph instead of glide as we cover ground.  There'll be a Jabberwocky (Jabberwalky?) connection because Lewis Carroll got there before I did, but I'm taking credit for the original idea.  We are many things when we walk; graceful is not one of them. We are determined  We are purposeful.  We concentrate.  We correct one another.  We try not to list too heavily to one side or the other.... especially when our listing leads to our shoulders connecting.  Turning around is a sight to behold; we take up a lot more room than you'd imagine. Still, we are doing it.  One...

We should hit triple digits this weekend. The petunias were spent. There were pretty flowers at the tips of long, bare, yellow stalks. I snipped them off. I was ruthless, as you must be when changing seasonal containers. This one was never attached to the irrigation system. It did just fine until I went to Chicago just as the thermometer and  the wind picked up. It was hard to cut down the dead gladiolus; I felt guilty about abandoning them. Properly watered, they shine on 4' stems like these. It's too bad the hibiscus (the deep green foliage on the right) wasn't in flower. The bright red blossoms are a nice counterpoint to the white and yellow. This rose is resting comfortably in its container, but there are no blooms.  Nor are there buds. Instead, the leaves are a sickly yellowing green. I was motivated to fertilize everything by this fellow's distress. On the other side of the backyard, this rose is just about ready to pop. ...

That's Chicago's motto. They live up to it.... big time. I had an hour between dropping Little Cuter at work and meeting old friends for lunch, so I walked. (Feel free to bask in that sentence.) I didn't hurt, the weather was warm, the sun was out, and Michigan Avenue beckoned. Not the stores.... the avenue itself. The trees are planted in planter boxes. affording comfy resting places  for weary travelers.  Newspaper boxes are interspersed with floral decor. Staring across the street, debating whether to go into Cartier and drool I couldn't get past the tulips. There were lots of tulips. Lots and lots of tulips.  They were planted in stages so that new ones will bloom as the older ones fade. There were random decorative items in planters, and Wet Paint signs on the railings.  They may not be able to fix the pot holes in the streets, but the wrought iron is beautifully maintained. Gardeners were planti...

That was the theme yesterday. I tried to leave Chicago.  Really, I did.  The Realtor was to meet me for breakfast and her usual "take me to the airport because then we have an hour to ourselves" run.  I had B55 as a Southwest Boarding Pass and three hours between our meeting and my plane's departure.  Life was good. Without cash, with a new car, without the desire to see that car driven by a young valet to a remote parking lot, she disappeared from view just after I spied her through the window.  That was fine; she's been blowing in almost-but-not-quite-late for the 31 years of our relationship.  I sipped my odd green tea mixture and waited happily.  There were two under-two-year-olds at the next table I stared and dreamed. Safely parking her new car, she tried twice before her egg whites were to her satisfaction.  My oatmeal was as odd as the green tea, filled with honey and something creamy with totally tasteless granola on top. ...

A thunderstorm is on its way.   I'm watching the edge of the weather system creep over the neighbor's house and, as the words appear on the screen the first few drops are hitting the windows.  Little Cuter's plants are either closing up or opening their blooms to the water.  She has dahlias and lantana and geraniums and chrysanthemums and the most astonishing collection of ranunculus MOTG and I have ever seen. Planted to celebrate the season and look gorgeous for her house party on Saturday, they survived a late freeze and are now simply beautiful. My little girl never evinced an interest in gardening.  The young woman she's become is fixated on growing things.  Is it homeownership which created the change?  She seems to think so.  Personally, I think it's G'ma's influence from above. Today's humidity and cooler temperatures and rain are just what they need and, again, I'm thanking my own mother for her Mothers' Day gift. Thomas-the-Wo...

I spent a lot of my childhood in the backyard.  We had the swing set, the sandbox, the big tree for home plate, and no fence between ourselves and our uncle and aunt next door.  It was kid heaven.... proven by the doorbell every evening.... the neighborhood kids asking if we could come out and play.... or just asking if they could play in the yard. I often thought that my yard was more popular than I was. I spent Mothers' Day weekend with the kids in Illinois.  SIR's sister was celebrating her birthday on Saturday, and she and her husband brought their three little boys from Indiana to share the joy.  Her parents, Big Bob and MOTG, rounded out the party. Every bed in the house was occupied, and still there was a need for more.  Little Cuter, channeling her inner child, recreated a fort-bed on the downstairs couch for the kids.  There were so many, many choices, between the long piece and the middle piece and the one that was headed into the middle of ...

Recovering from illness takes its toll.  I've cancelled Pilates and a dinner meeting.  I have less energy than usual, and piles are accumulating where they lie because I am too tired to move them and put them away.  I managed to do laundry, but only because I am traveling this weekend and don't want to go naked.  We've been eating plain turkey on rye bread for dinner; vegetables made my stomach leap. It's better than lying on the bed and suffering, but nearly as frustrating. ***** I crocheted a sweater for FlapJilly, my in utero grandchild.  The pattern called for 28 rows of this and 23 rows of that and I bet that the whole thing would have looked better had I matched my gauge to that of the instructions.   Instead, when the pattern called for sewing the side seams together, I couldn't find them.  Worked from the bottom up, the sleeves were perfect, the neck divine, but the body was short.  Very, very short.   TBG and I pondered ...

.... I was enormous.  Gigantic.  The size of a house.... or, at least, a double wide trailer.  I'd gained 47 pounds, and though my plan was for a 10 pound baby and a 30 pound placenta, leaving me 7 pounds to lose I was beginning to believe that, perhaps, I was mistaken. .... it was a balmy, easy Saturday spent waiting for a baby to arrive.  I knew exactly when I became pregnant, but no one could be precise to that same degree of certitude when it came to the number of days it took to grow a fully formed human..... so we waited..... ... and when we got tired of waiting  we drove west on Wrightwood, the bumpiest, most pot-holed street in town.  TBG was determined to shake this baby loose.... ... and when that didn't work we tried to scare him out with a hot dog covered in hot peppers.... which did seem to have an effect on him.  I doubled over in the parking lot, and, no, I was not trying to tie my shoes.  I hadn't done that in months.   ...