The Burrow

I went to get the mail tonight, just after sunset.  It was still and smelled of spring.   The rosemary had been filled with little yellow and red and brown things as I went through a Pilates barre routine on the other side of the window; tonight it was quite undisturbed.    The roses were astonishingly healthy, filled with new leaves and buds ready to burst.  Fertilizing really makes a difference.  Even the yucca which share their garden bed were perkier.  The javelina gnawed them down to nubs last year; I'm hoping that they are mature enough to be unattractive this time around.   There's a long mound behind my mailbox, right at the edge of the sidewalk.  Ground squirrels or rabbits or snakes or some other burrowing animal is very happily undisturbed out there at the edge of our property.  As long as they stay out of the house and the garage, I don't begrudge them their little slice of heaven. And heaven it most certainly was t...

I admitted it to the teacher in an email yesterday.  I got nuthin' . I'm never at a loss for things to do when we're in the garden.  Finding interactive projects for virtual garden club is more of a challenge.  We've been meeting since October, once a week for 30 minutes.  After photosynthesis and the parts of a plant and several adventures with seeds in red Solo cups, this week I came up empty. Searching for online garden activities for kids  introduced me to a wide variety of video games and apps to download !!!for free!!!!!  Virtual lesson plans were no more helpful.  I was up at 6:30, the sun hitting unfamiliar angles as I sat at the desk, hoping for an answer. In the end, I went with my strengths - words.  Favorite Poems Old and New selected for boys and girls   by Helen Ferris has been with me since elementary school.  The binding is collapsing, the cover was repaired while I volunteered in the kids' high school library, and that p...

I met my new physician today.  She's lovely.  The office was COVID protected in every way.  I left feeling secure in my future medical care. I also felt old. We talked about bone density, and my reluctance to take another medication. We talked about blood pressure, and my reluctance to take another medication. We talked about falling and low sodium diets. We talked about longevity and my end of life planning. It was a comprehensive review of all the ways my body could fail me.  It was sobering.  I've been coming to terms with the whole more-behind-me-than-in-front-of-me scenario for a while.  This afternoon, it was brought front and center.  I'm very glad to be here to have the conversation.  I'm not that glad to be thinking about all that has and could go wrong.  

Things were changing quickly.   Notices went up and were replaced by the time Little Cuter clicked over to check them out.  What I read in the newspaper over breakfast had changed by the time washed the dishes and logged on to look for my eBook.  As Allison asked in a comment yesterday, Where did you hear that? Long after Little Cuter's bedtime, the messages on the provider's website calmed down.  I thought that we were okay, but the wording was somewhat less than reassuring.  I shared the link with her to read when she woke up; and went to (fretful) sleep.   Her texted reply was waiting for my early morning bleary eyes.  Yes,  it seemed like he was okay, but call when they open to be sure.    And that's when anxiety turned to delight.  I was midway through the comics when terminal hold started speaking to me.  I closed the newspaper and turned up the volume to better pay attention to the friendly young man on the oth...

TBG was the first in the family to snag an appointment for the first dose of Moderna.  That was the first deep breath we took since Pandemica arrived; on February 25th at 10:20am he would be on his way to health and safety. Little Cuter and I manage to schedule two doses for me at Walgreens; TBG turned down my offer to schedule one for him there, too.  He had one appointment.  Why test fate by locking in an insurance bid? We were all set.  Our two doses would be finished in time for traveling in April.  The transmissibility results were encouraging.  We were gently treading from cautious optimism to actual hope. Climate change seems to have dashed those hopes.   Anyone who doesn't think that rashes of fires in the west and snowstorms in the south and floods all over the planet aren't a result of our disrespect for our planet needs to take a basic Earth Science course.  I still remember It's all connected  as one of the lessons I learned ...

This is how she looked when she met my father. This is how she looked when she lived in Tucson. I never knew the first woman.   I enjoyed meeting the second woman,  the one whose memory was failing but who always knew that I loved her.   Some things never changed.  There was always a straw in her Diet Sprite. Her purse was always over her shoulder (see blue strap, above).  She was cold, but never wore a hat -  "I don't look good in hats!" There were some things she never forgot.  Good grammar was imperative and bad grammar demanded correction.  Yellow was her favorite color and chocolate was her favorite food.   Wrinkled shirts and sagging hems were unacceptable; she made her opinions known even when she was no longer in charge of choosing the outfits herself. . Today would have been her 98th birthday. I'd have brought her a prune danish for breakfast, accompanied by a gardenia corsage on the tray.   I'd have taken he...

We drove to Casa Grande, 57 miles and 58 minutes away from home.  It was an overcast afternoon, with more traffic than we'd expected.  We were anxious, for no reason, but there it was. It was 50 miles on the highway and 7 miles on two lane roads past trailers and rusted wrecks and flea markets.  The Walgreens was on what we call a Rte 13 - the McDonalds, Denny's, motel, car wash and other traveler's needs road that bordered Ithaca.    We parked, double masked up, and entered a store together.  It was a moment - we haven't been in a store together since our last grocery outing on March 12th.  There was a short line waiting at the pharmacy; TBG took himself back to the car to stay safe.  I waited as the couple at the window filled out their paperwork (it was possible to do this before you arrived, thus saving everyone time and energy), and then as the lovely pharmacy clerk explained to the next customer, an Hispanic gentleman of indeterminate age wh...

Little Cuter and SIR helped FlapJilly enjoy her snow day today.  Their three day weekend was stretched to four, and nobody minded, not one bit. There was 8-10" of fresh powder outside and the sun was shining.  They concentrated really hard on e-learning in the morning so that they could go outside and play all afternoon.  Figure eights on the sled attached to Dad's tractor, following the path he shoveled for them on the big backyard, because the tractor can't go on snow.  He made jumps and bumps and then they built a tunnel with an igloo at the end.  They were very cold; Giblet brought Mama two pairs of socks for his feet.  We don't get snow days in Arizona.  We get gloomy, overcast mornings until the thick clouds break up a bit and some blue shines through.  The snow on the mountains has melted; there are tiny waterfalls on the lower hiking trails.  The roses are starting to sprout new growth, unbothered by the cooler nighttime temperatures....

History Channel's biography mini-series on the 12th and the 1st presidents kept us marginally interested this afternoon.  We're unable to listen to the political talking heads any longer.  They created Trump and they are still giving him a platform.  There is no reason to debate the calling of witnesses by the House Managers any longer.  Once again, the Democrats are eating their young.  The acquittal was inevitable.  The facts were obvious to everyone, but that didn't make a difference.  With a few notable exceptions, those who are in love with the former president are still holding a torch.   They are not alone.  There are members of my orbit who think it's all an antifa plot to besmirch the name of their fearless leader, who are cheering their victory.  They aren't hearing Mitch McConnell's after the fact, hypocritical,  pass the buck condemnation.  They feel like they won. What they won is debatable.  That they ar...

This is the 10th anniversary of this post. Mary Ball Washington gave birth to a boy child on February 22, 1732. Unlike many of the stories surrounding this man (think cherry trees and coins across the Potomac and standing up in an open boat as it crossed the Delaware) this is an indisputable fact. Mary was not in labor on the third Monday of February.  She produced her child on a specific day - the 22nd day of February.  His birthday didn't move around with the vagaries of the federal holiday calendar. Nancy Hanks Lincoln met her second son, Abraham, 217 years and 3 days ago.  Like Mrs. Washington before her, she was not in labor on an indeterminate day sometime in the middle of the month.  It occurred on a certain day, a day formerly commemorated by school children and mail carriers alike. Alas and alack, these fine gentlemen have been conflated into  Presidents  and their birthdays combined into a generic celebration designed primarily to afford employees...

After conniving (with love) to put Fast Eddie in the Presidency of our HOA Board, it felt only right that I agree when he asked if I'd be the Landscape Chair.  Although I vowed that I'd avoid HOA duties at all costs, this has turned out to be much less onerous than I feared.  A conversation with the maintenance crew, an email about a dead tree.... these are not big problems. Our Annual Meeting is coming up this month, if Zoom is allowable and accessible to all.  Cars parked overnight in driveways is the major hot button issue; much less consequential than Impeachment, but no less fraught with partisan rhetoric.  We will get through it and move on.  It may not be pleasant, but it will get done. Cornell's annual Leadership Conference is coming up this month, too.  I went last year at this time; Las Vegas was a ghost town as the pandemic ramped up and travel slowed down.  This year's event is, of course, virtual.  Even though the most enjoyable and u...

I got an appointment for both doses of the Moderna vaccine; the first one is this Saturday.  We'll be driving  about 45 minutes to Casa Grande, to a random Walgreens just off the highway.   Little Cuter was on it from the early morning, and recruited me to the search via text. The site was clunky and kept crashing and sending error messages and showing three blue dots bouncing at the top of the screen as the site stopped to think. But I managed to get through and answered a few questions and found that there were 9 appointments and 27 appointments and 24 appointments remaining on the first few days that popped up on the screen.   I might have squealed. I figured in the drive time and chose one date and then another, one month later.  I printed out my confirmation code and appointment details on two bright white sheets of paper.  I've been carrying them around all day. There is an end in sight for my total isolation from the world. You'd think...

The Twitterverse kept me up to date on the world's reaction to the charming boring moron and the angry boring moron representing the former social media personality who lives in Florida in front of what the boring one called a diverse group  of Senators. Castor, the charming one, supposedly changed his presentation on the fly because the prosecution's opening was so powerful.  What did they think was coming their way?   Schoen, the angry one, is a religious Jew.  He observes the Sabbath.   This is only important because, while standing at the podium in the well of the Senate, he seemed to be holding his comb-over in place with one hand as he tipped his head waaaay back to drink from his water bottle with the other. It was an odd moment.  The guy barely stops to breathe.  He's hard to follow.  Everything is said in the same harsh tone.  And then he's hanging onto his brains as he exposes his neck and, silently, sips. And then it ...

Little Cuter's weather has been Midwestern winter - sunny when it's not snowing, temperatures hovering just above zero,  the wind blowing ice crystals sharply into her face, slushy roads causing accidents all over the place. Here in Tucson it's a different story entirely.  This is what I saw from my desk this weekend.   Wishing I had a true telephoto lens, I watched the tiny yellow and black finches and the red breasted little brown things devouring the rosemary hedge. The dried crepe myrtle buds were another stop on their buffet.  It takes a lot of energy to migrate, and the bees from the saguaro seemed willing to share the bounty.   The cardinals perching on top of the saguaro surveyed the scene, swooping down to scare off the tinier birds every once in a while, just to remind everybody who was in charge.  It was a science filmstrip from 3rd grade come alive.  I was mesmerized as I followed all 46 minutes of a Pilates on Vimeo  barre ...

I used to refer to it as the Stupid Bowl, but FlapJilly told me that word is unacceptable, so I stopped. ***** I don't have anything invested in the NFL in general or these two teams in particular.  I know about  Brady (has a gazillion Super Bowl appearances) and Mahomes (youngest quarterback ever in the Super Bowl) and Gronkowski's emergence from retirement to play on a new team with his pal, Tom.  Beyond that, the only other player I know is Kelce, only because he's from Cleveland Heights, just like TBG. I'm here for the commercials. ***** Local commercials before half time included a farting dog.  . The CBS Sports Half Time Report introduced itself with cartoon lightning bolts and neon overlays. We agreed, after some discussion, that we are obviously not the target audience. ***** Thinking abut the actual Half Time Report itself, after watching SNL last night, I can't stop laughing at James Brown.   He's only doing his job, and I'm giggling. ***** The We...

At the risk of sounding whiny, aieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. I slept well and exercised and made hot cereal for breakfast and opened the paper to find that, separate and apart from the Arizona Department of Health Services' and the Pima County Health Department's vaccine registration/invitation sites, pharmacies at Fry's and Safeway were getting and injecting vaccine into the arms of people who were reading the Arizona Star. I left the oatmeal cooling in the bowl.  I opened the websites and registered myself and cursed at having to do this all over again for TBG as I clicked through the speedy and easy to follow pages to find that, of course, there were no available dates. I registered TBG before I went to the Safeway site and had the same experience.   I spent the rest of today in a funk.  I logged on randomly during the day, but nothing changed,.  Before I made dinner, I called the local Fry's pharmacy and asked the lovely lady (who ans...

I accomplished nothing today. I had a list half a mile long, but none of it happened. The kitchen and the floors and the bathrooms are in a sorry state.  No progress was made on cleaning closets or the pantry or pruning the roses.  I wrote no letters nor created the birthday video I owe.  I did manage to bring in the mail; opening it never happened. TBG and I spent a few hours on the phone with our kids, though, and that fills my soul. I did 30 minutes of Virtual Garden Club with the 5th grade this morning, and that garners me some Accomplishment Points, I suppose, but after that I parked myself in a chair and I read.  I finished book one in the Morgan Dane series by Melinda Leigh on the computer, since Kindle Unlimited was free for 2 months and that particular volume was not available in my local library.  But volumes 2 through the end of the series were waiting for me on the counter, and I've taken a break from the middle of that trade paperback to write to yo...

Giblet got promoted.   That's what happens when you start being just on the edge of naughty in the Room for Twos.  He'll stand on the tile at the very edge of the rug he's supposed to be occupying, smiling coyly through his eyelashes, knowing he's disobeying and enjoying every minute of it.   Of course, once the teacher stops hiding her smile (the kid is a charmer) and puts on her serious face, he joins his friends on the rug; he doesn't like it when Miss Paige told me NO .  He's testing, he's two, and he's ready to move on. So, on Monday, Little Cuter dropped him at the entrance to the big kids' building.  The classroom was different but the teachers were familiar, having rotated through his space since he was a baby.  And, of course, there were his friends who were there already. The kids at Perfect Day Care  are the others who fill his life.  Every day, they play and sing and paint and nap and eat and go outside together.  There ...

I've been down in the political weeds since Hilary vs The Donald.   I've spent much too much time considering the minutiae of the judicial system.   I've delved into the differences between rural and urban areas in states I've never visited.  And now I know about Reconciliation and Organizing resolutions. It's disgusting.   The back and forth in public.  The space laser.  The Senate Minority Leader commenting on his House counterpart.  The fact that people who were cowering in fear three weeks ago are now denying that anything of consequence really happened. I was happier when I was ignoring the whole thing over the holidays.   Little Cuter keeps reminding me that it's been less than 2 weeks  and that  now there's a plan  but I live in a world where I can access any book I want at any time of day, where Amazon brings me vitamins and cleaning supplies tomorrow, and where there is no vaccine available so I am regis...

They tried.  I have to give them credit for that.   The production values were excellent.  For the most part, the transitions were seamless, with hardly anyone forgetting that they were still muted.  Cornelliana festooned the backdrops and other surroundings of those who trying their best to make us feel as if we were there. Where?  Anywhere.  Last year we were in Las Vegas, just as the reality of Pandemica was beginning to creep in.  Most of us stayed within the confines of the ballrooms of the hotel; hardly anyone ventured out to the art at the Bellagio or to a show anywhere else.  The airport was deserted when the cab dropped me off; there were no fares waiting for him.   Inside the conference there was laughter and conversation.  Ideas were exchanged.  New people spoke to me, and I spoke to them.  There was none of that in the virtual experience. We were lectured to by speakers who could not gauge their audience's...

Let's focus, Gramma. She's serious; we haven't placed a piece in our jigsaw puzzle in an alarming number of seconds.   She takes her finger and thumb into a prayerful circle beside her closed eyes, breathes deeply as she  lifts her eyebrows to the sky, and allows just the touch of a smile to reach the edges of her perfect little mouth. If those eyes open and I'm not assuming the same position she will wonder why, so I follow her lead and find that I'm centered, and smiling, and so is she. We didn't improve our piece/time ratio, but it did wonders for our attitude. Good job, Grams!  That was a hard one!  Way to go!!! The kid's life is filled with affirmations, coming in and going out.  She's the embodiment of one of Deepak Chopra's meditation mantras: Today, and every day, I give that which I want to receive.   She's delighted that I am delighted to be complimented.  She shares my joy, which compounds as I look at her face on the screen, beami...