The Burrow

When I was nursing Big Cuter, I couldn't concentrate on anything more intense than a catalog.  This was 34 years ago, denizens, before Amazon and Ebay and Etsy.  I had stacks of colorful booklets piled on the floor and the tables and the night stands.  He sucked, I shopped. The problem was that I never remembered to bring my wallet to the chair before the kid and I settled in for a long afternoon's guzzle.  I was left with dog-eared pages marking items I would never buy because I didn't have a credit card near to hand.  The solution was obvious - I memorized my American Express card number and expiration date. Years passed.  The number stayed in my head, brought out for purchases as needed.  Everything was fine until the night TBG and I realized we were headed out and had no cash to leave the sitter for the pizza we'd promised the kids.  "Don't worry, Mommy.  Big Cuter and I know the numbers - 3782, 3909...... They'd heard it so often...

When I started earning babysitting money, G'ma and Daddooooo took me to their local branch of a major bank and introduced me to a banker.  Once I had an account, replete with a small book to record my deposits, I began a relationship with Miss Sincerbow. She was usually in the window on the end.  She was young and happy and she never made me feel like anything other than her most valued customer.  TBG and I opened our Wedding Account with her a decade or so later, after she herself was married and had changed her name.  To me, she's always Miss Sincerbow. When Little Cuter earned some money, I took her to the local branch of a major bank and introduced her to a banker.  That woman struck up a conversation with my daughter, gathering all the information she needed without my having to volunteer a word.  When I complimented her on treating my kid with respect, she said "Someday she'll want a car loan, a home loan, a college loan.  We hope she'll reme...

It was a mess. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.) Scarlett and I had a leisurely ladies lunch at our most recent default restaurant, Culinary Dropout.   It's not Sam Fox's best effort, but it seems to be where we are when we're hungry in the middle of our adventures.  The food was good, the service even better, and my parking space was both close and in the shade.  There was hardly any traffic, we parked easily in the free-on-weekends lot, and strolled to Centennial Hall.  The sky was blue, the air was sweet, the temperature was in the upper 60's, and the company was good.  Scarlett, the least likely terrorist suspect on the planet, stood watching her purse undergo the most rigorous inspection of any bag ever inspected by any inspector. I'm big on security.  This was ridiculous. Our seats were 10 rows up on the aisle.  They were perfect until the players took the stage; we couldn't see half the chorus.  Part of the allure for me was the presen...

I went to the gym.  It's my New Year's Resolution - 15 minutes, 3 times each week, on the step machine - and I'm trying to stick to it. Unfortunately, on Saturday I got a replacement phone for my Moto Droid.  I installed the apps I wanted, including the LAFitness one that held my membership card.  I didn't have the card number any more; I'd thrown it away once I loaded it into my phone.  No worries, thought I.  They will have it at the desk. They did.  I entered it, along with my universal User Name and Password.  Nothing good happened. The app told me that an account with that number already existed.  Duh.  I knew that,  That's why I plugged in those numbers and that name and password.  Unfortunately, the app didn't offer me any alternatives. I turned off the phone and restarted it.  I deleted the app and reentered the number.  I received a new number and started the whole procedure again, from deleting and reinst...

Today was the first day of school.  There wasn't any reading to be done; Professor Alfie took three 50 minute blocks of time to introduce us to The Calamitous Fourteenth Century. The 1300's saw the Avignon Papacy and the war for supremacy between Church and State, The 100 Years War (which actually lasted 117 years), and the Black Plague. The Mini-Ice Age of the early 1300's killed crops and weakened humans, setting the stage for The Black Plague.  Carried by the fleas which were ubiquitous in medieval life, Yersinia Pestis  traveled with Genghis Khan, leaving in its wake a mortality rate somewhere between one half to two thirds of those infected. Boccaccio was one who survived. It's no wonder, then, that he upended the conventional wisdom of the time, that Pain is redemptive and Pleasure requires punishment.  His Decameron is bawdy  but not obscene ,  obscenity  being a cultural concept, derived form the Latin - that which should not be spoken....

I woke up from a nap to find that the Democrats are, once again, believing Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump. According to  CNN , The House and the Senate voted Monday to end the government s hutdown , extending funding for three weeks, following a deal being reached between Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell regarding assurances related to immigration. Jeff Flake tried to sell that same story to voters in Arizona last time they were on the brink.  I wonder how New Yorkers will feel when the promises are not kept, when the President refuses to sign what a co-equal branch of government sends him? My guess is that they won't be as forgiving.  After all, Mr. Flake isn't running for anything (other than President) anymore. I, meanwhile, am still feeling the pain of the worthy young people who are existing in DACA-Hell right now.  The sins of their fathers are being visited upon their heads....... it's a little Old Test...

The garden sits at the corner of the walkway from the cafeteria and playground.   The students line up, quietly, against its southern wall before they are allowed to play. The fence is low enough to clamber over; it's not to be touched. In comes Grandma, with soil and trowels and excitement. It's hard to contradict the playground aides, but I really did give these girls permission to climb on and over and on the bench where, with sandpaper and a delicate touch they cleaned out decades of dirt from a sign that lived in G'ma's garden.   Bigger kids with longer reaches soon joined the party. We set to work, amending the beds. There were starter flowers, newly planted but lacking love and attention. We had lots of that. After scraping away the random detritus, (" No, you don't need gloves.  Get dirty.  It'll feel good.") they spread a top coat of organic planting mix  from edge to edge....

You can tell at a glance, can't you. There were Yes, Grandma  and Why Can't I? kinds of kids. There was the hose that attacked the gardener. There are those who are thrilled and the one who's not quite sure. Self selected, they are as gender and racially balanced as the school itself. Together, we planted alyssum and basil, dusting the existing soil with newer, fresher, organic planting mix before we raked in our teeny tiny seeds.  Then, with the world's smallest watering can filled at the world's slowest drinking fountain, we sprayed the beds with water, focusing special attention on the plants another class had installed.  Watching them perk up with just a little bit of love and attention was an immediate object lesson ... on so many levels. ***** Somewhere in the phone that's more of a compendium of my life's work than a device on which I can talk to my friends, the phone whose replacement is on the hall table, the phone that has eaten m...

I have edited photographs for today's blog. I have verbiage at the ready. All this exists on my phone, the phone which sent me to the Don't call me a technician; they only train us so  much  fellow at the Verizon Store this afternoon, the phone which is having serious issues with my pictures. He changed my SIM card.  My photos were still playing hide and seek. He ordered me a new phone, which will arrive tomorrow before 8pm. He told me to bring it back and they'd set it up for me, while assuring me that none of this would cost me any money. So, there's a great picture post of me planting with the bigger kids in the garden today..... and as soon as I can retrieve it you'll be able to read it.

I played my last hand of cards for 10 weeks this afternoon.  I'm changing my Pilates schedule next week.  The courses I chose are beginning; my free time is now full of pdf's downloaded to The Box. 10 weeks seems like forever, but it's really only until the middle of April.  There's a week of vacation in mid-March (coinciding with the Tucson Festival of Books , in case you are planning a trip), but I said good-bye to the Happy Ladies who would be returning to their northern full-time homes when their snowbirding season ended, well before April. Time has a way of smooshing itself together into a lump when you're retired and have no kids at home.  School reimposes a sense of order.  It also keeps me from reading for pleasure until I've finished my assignment.  TBG is a good scold ( "Did you do your homework this week?") and the material is engaging, but Boccacio is not James Patterson.  He requires a bit more thought and concentration.  I'm raci...

Amster and I agreed to meet for a slow hike  (my terms) Sunday morning. We ended up at the Sweetwater Wetlands; it was the first result on my hikes near I-10 and Orange Grove  search.  I wanted to walk around Silverbell Lake, but I was distracted by The Google and forgot to read the description before Amster's SIRI-With-A-British-Accent directed us to the parking lot around a corner on a street we'd never seen before to a place I hadn't intended to be. It's a lovely spot, and I would have taken pictures, but early morning is apparently a prime time for birders.  Birders are solitary, quiet folk.  Amster and I were neither of those things; every time we rounded a bend and saw binoculars pinned to eyeballs we shut up, turned around, and walked the other way, trying not to disturb anyone. I was trying to keep up the pace; pausing for a photo felt not only intrusive, but lazy. We saw the parking lot several times; the third time was the charm and we drove ho...

Enjoy the day. Perhaps, perform an act of kindness. artofmere.com

"Can that possibly be true?" That was Anderson Cooper's question after reports that people in the White House don't think DJT's shithole countries comment was a problem. While laughing and wondering my mind began wandering to the only Norwegian we know, the Golden Gopher, who spent his working career resettling refugees.  In all the years, in all the trips to all the camps and all the centers, in all the stories he told, I never heard him mention resettling a fellow Norwegian. I don't know if that means anything.  It just made me smile.

Pete Souza, the Chief Official White House Photographer for Presidents Reagan and Obama.  The one who shadowed and recorded the precious moments, able to bring you back in one glance to a moment in time, a moment worth remembering.  I wanted someone to do that for me, today. I spent two hours having those moments and they were all camera-ready.  Unfortunately, I travel alone and am rarely able to take anything but a posed picture; I wasn't about to leave three 5 year olds with a pointed metal trowel while I stood back to capture the scene.  So, you'll just have to imagine thirty or forty little faces peering over the low fence, trying as hard as they could to keep their feet on the ground and not on the lower railing.  They're trying to get a look at Grandma's hands, the ones holding the roots up for inspection, standing in the garden they so desperately wanted to stand in, too.  But rules are rules and the garden rules have yet to be codified.  ...

It hit me today, like a ton of bricks. 8am found The Pilates Diva and me marveling at how far I'd come, given that 7 years ago at that very moment I was bleeding internally, drugged insensate, and expected to live .  She's known me Before and After, she has very high expectations, and she's a mom and a wife and a daughter.  She understands when I say that yesterday should be the best day of my life, because it's the day I didn't die.  And then we stopped nodding our heads and sighed.... because, of course, there is so much more. I should have gone to Prince after that, and I didn't. True, it was raining and the plan was to plant, but I could have made it happen, if I'd tried. But I didn't want to put a smile on my face as my hip hurt and my heart ached.  I wasn't in the mood to be cosseted.  I was in full wallowing mode. I went to a Mindfulness and Meditation session instead.  All that mental calmness and reminders not to judge, but to observ...

I stopped at the garden store  for pots and plates and soil, then drove to the scene of the crime and and had a good cry.   There were some local news cameras and a radio reporter and an odd truck proclaiming the need to Reunify America in red white and blue paint.  I declined to talk on camera, hugged and reminisced with the Store Manager and her Assistant, both of whom had been there that day.  After we admired the store's small and perfect memorial, I was off to do some good. I read The Lorax to every kindergarten classroom last Fall. Today, we began to plant and to care. In each and every classroom, we smelled and patted and poked and watered and hugged. It was exactly what I needed.   The students were oblivious to the significance of the day.  Grandma was in their room and they were happy  The teachers gave me extra special hugs and smiles, and understood when I told them at recess that I was coming into their classrooms th...

The event. That day. What happened. When I got shot. I know exactly what I was doing on January 7, 2011 and on January 8, 2011.... right up until about 10:15 in the morning when I began to fade in and out... talking to CTG.... though I'd left her behind on the cold sidewalk. I talk to her a lot, with less sadness as the years go by, but with the same amount of longing.  She'd be a pistol at 16, driving to school and to practices and to good deeds and to games, where she'd wave to me in the stands as she warmed up.  There's a hole in the world, now that she's gone. TBG noticed that I'm not hiking my hip quite as much these days; my gait is approaching real walking.  Catching up on the phone today, Heidi and I marveled at the passage of time since she was my Suzi-Sitter, driving us everywhere, though she was terrified by the traffic on Tucson's surface streets.  Has it really been 7 years?   It feels like yesterday and it feels like history a...

That's why I started the Stroll and Roll 6 years ago.   My idea was to have Each One Take One - every grown up grabbing a youngster and ambling along CTG's path.  I envisioned school kids and Assisted Living residents and middle school bands creating lively chaos on Tucson's northwest side. For the most part, except for the bands, that's what happened. I was a committee of one until the day of the event, when GRIN volunteers and participants in Cornell Cares Day stepped up to the occasion and gave out shirts and chalk and hugs.   It was an exhausting process, but one that helped to bind my anxiety as I struggled with the oncoming anniversary of the worst day of my life. As long as I was busy, I wasn't dwelling in the sadness.. But then the busy overtook the sadness, and became a crushing weight of its own. The permitting, the arranging, the gathering, the sorting, the signage, the publicity.... I'm sweating just typing it out for you here ...

I ordered 4 new Cutco knives as my holiday present to myself this year.  The delightful salesman, the brochures, the instruction pamphlets, my own mouth all warned everyone that the knives were new and very very sharp.   BE CAREFUL we all repeated. So, I should not have been as surprised as I was this morning as the new extra long slicer went through the bagel much faster than its predecessor, the old bread knife, had ever done.  Unfortunately, my thumb was in the way of the blade as it found its way, seamlessly,, flawlessly, sharply, and swiftly to the other side.  It got there much faster than I'd planned for. I need a band aid!  led to Do I need stitches? led to this A+ job of bandaging by TBG: The wound is contained, the pain is gone, and I think I've gotten out of doing the dishes for the foreseeable future.  Life is good.

This is a weird week for me, the days between The End of The Holidays and The Day I Got Shot.  I'm never quite sure what to make of it. I remember snippets of those days, some of them vividly.  I remember everything about the morning leading up to my intersection with bullets.  Frames from the movie run randomly through my head every day; it's not uncomfortable, it's just there. And that's where I get stuck.  Some piece of me wants to go back and change something and make it all go away. Not that I regret anything that I did; I'd do it all over again tomorrow.  It was a civics lesson with a happy child on a sunny, weekend morning.  We were on top of our game, CTG and I.  We looked good, and we knew it.  We were doing something worthwhile, and we knew it.  She was angling for treats and she knew that she'd get them and then there was a photographer and thoughts of an autographed picture and then there were bullets. I'm still surprised....

I had that conversation with my holiday decorations last year.  I was ruthless.  Nothing that was chipped or in need of glue/a pin/a stitch or two made the cut.  A friend rifled through and culled what she felt was salvageable; the rest made a merry crashing sound as they hit the bottom of the trash can. This year's decor took about an hour to install; I opened one box, filled enough of my house to satisfy myself, and only occasionally wished I had unearthed a certain platter.  The dining room table was Package Central, and still retains the look of Santa's Workshop on the 26th of December, but the rest of the house is cozy and bright, with pillows and candlesticks and treasures everywhere I look. I don't want to take it down.  It makes me happy.  On the other hand, I'll have help cleaning the house tomorrow, with someone else around to lift and carry what I cannot.   Also, it's TBG's birthday, and he'd love to have his pristine, unclutter...

Happy New Year!  Was it wonderful?  Was it filled with fireworks (surprisingly loud booms at 10pm... were Tucsonans celebrating for New Yorkers who can't legally purchase them in the grocery store?)?  Did you watch hours of The Thin Man on TMC (we did!)?  Were you snuggled in front of a fireplace, sipping mulled wine (what IS mulled wine?) and snuggling with a sweetie?  Were you cleaning out closets or putting away decorations or were you in bed before midnight, nursing the sniffles? Whatever it was, where ever it was, with whomever it was, I hope it was wonderful. Your final gift for my Twelve Days of the Holiday Celebration Tour: