The Burrow

We're traveling, leaving before the crack of dawn and changing planes in Denver. Wearing masks for hours because everyone has gotten COVID and we have not. Going from LaGuardia to Brooklyn during rush hour; listening, no doubt, to TBG extoll the virtues of living anyplace other than New York City. But once we arrive at the hotel, the adventure begins.  We will set out on a pilgrimage.  Pizza;  pastrami on real rye bread; and bagels - all those foods that New York City's exceptional water make so much better will be sought out and consumed.   My special undergarment will be sorely taxed to keep all that deliciousness from popping my close fitting dress out to when are you due  proportions.  And I won't care.   I'll be surrounded by love and chaos and people I ought to see much more often than I do.  There will be fine dining and excellent clothing, fascinating conversations and ridiculous situations.  There is potential for awkwardne...

The doorbell rang during dinner last night.  A skinny, middle aged, white guy in shorts and a funny cap stood a respectful distance from the open door.  He was representing  Your Vote Your Voice .  He wanted to be certain that TBG and I (reading our full names off his phone) had received our mail in ballots and that we knew that yesterday was the last day to mail them in. Yes to everything, said I.  Did he know where the nearest ballot drop off box was located?  He fumbled with his phone for a while as I wondered why he wasn't prepared with that crucial information before he rang my bell.  Eventually, I told him that I'd look it up myself, I thanked him for his efforts, and I went back in to finish my dinner. It was a valiant effort.  It just didn't add much to my voting experience.   The County Recorder's website is new and improved with a just-elected young woman running the show.  It's flashy and happy and it took me waaaaaay lon...

Niece is getting married.  The family drama surrounding the event is worthy of a telenovella.  This one isn't talking to that one.  That one cannot be in the same room with those ones.  These are angry because others won't be there.  Others are angry because those will be and you can't be the only one not peeved.  It just wouldn't be right. She's managing as best she can.  Her fiance is a true mensch, supportive and loving and understanding.  But all those and that and this and others are up in her face more often than they need to be.   Planning a wedding is stressful enough without your family deciding that you must accommodate their whims.  Fortunately, my edge of the family has no whims. And so, she calls me.   She's always called during times of crisis.  I have always loved being the one to advise.  This is no exception.  Her choices are based in logic, reason, emotion, and despair.  It's a small a...

Remember the decapitated saguaro?  It stands about 5' tall now,  so taking a photo of the severed top was a challenge for me. It's intricate and hard and crusty and spiky. And, poking out from the pleats,   right at the edge of the cut, breaking the skin apart with surprising strength some looking sadder than others but most of them are full and thick and happy Each one will be an arm. This is going to be a very interesting plant. Or, as TBG said, que saguaro, saguaro.

Nothing lasts forever, despite the Liberty Mutual ads' claims to the contrary.  My house proved this to be true over the weekend. The pool is dead.  The entire control panel is dark.  There's no filtering, no heating (not that we need it when the temperature is triple digits boiling melting sweat dripping hot), and no circulation.  The detritus blown in by the ferocious storm last night is drifting lazily on the surface.  There's no gentle current from the machinery to waft it all toward the filter.   TBG says it's not safe to swim - bugs and disease and stuff - and while I disagree with his assessment of the situation, I'm staying inside in the air conditioning because it's just too damn hot out there, even for swimming. One of the overhead outdoor ceiling lights shed its cover.  There were pieces of cross-hatched glass all over the ground when I went out with the laundry and the drying rack.  The light is still in the fixture, uncovered but...

When he was little, Mr. 17 and I spent a lot of time painting ceramic flowers at Ben's Bells .  They are put together into hanging bells - some for sale, like this one gifted to me by Beautiful Annie after I was shot, and which has lived on the fireplace's gas key in the living room ever since and some bigger ones that are left in random places for passersby to find and cherish.   I once got to place one.  I put it on the short iron fence at an outdoor cafe, then watched people walk by without noticing it.  The woman who found it thought it was lost, but the attached tag reassured her that it was hers to keep and treasure. Her face just glowed.  Today we painted and chatted.  College and girls and siblings and careers and general nothingness helped us pass the time as he and his mother and I sat at a small table and put dots and lines and smiley faces on shapes that had already been painted with solid colors.   It's nice to know that things we did...

It's not really a good deed, but I am being punished. Swimming is great exercise, but it doesn't do much to strengthen my stair climbing musculature.  So, after 35 minutes of laps, I decided to use the pool steps to work on that.  Silver Sneakers suggested using the pool steps after hip replacement ("be sure to stay out of the way of others using those steps") because if you fall you just land in the water.  That made sense to me, especially since we don't have a handrail. Up I went, surgerized leg first, supporting all my weight until my left leg met it on the same step.  Repeat twice more, each time getting more difficult as less of my body was buoyed by the water.  I used my hand on my quadricep for balance, but my legs powered me up. It was a major accomplishment, another first time since 2011 experience.  It felt great.  I smiled.  I bragged about it.  I did it again the next day, this time skipping the matching foot on the step.  T...

Europe is on fire. Here in Tucson, it's only the sky that is burning. This was the first night. And then there was this the next might. The yellow lights are the torchieres and the chandelier, but the rest is attributable to God. That lavender is something I haven't seen in anywhere else. We may have lost the race to combat climate change. I'm looking for anything to make that a more palatable situation. These sunsets fit the bill.  

First of all, dereliction is a lovely word. Vocabulary.com was concise:   a word for neglecting responsibilities. Oxford Learner's Dictionary gave me this:  the fact of deliberately not doing what you ought to do, especially when it is part of your job. Merriam Webster came a bit closer to what I had in mind with this:    intentional or conscious neglect. Bu t my favorite, the one that resonated most with me, came straight up from Google:  the shameful failure to fulfill one's obligations. Emphasis on the shameful, if the man could feel shame.   Duty, something else our former President has taken great pains to avoid (cf Pvt. Bone Spur), is  a moral or legal obligation; a responsibility; a task or action that someone is required to perform, according to Google. The moral obligation part is what's missing from DJT, because, as far as I can tell, he has no morals (cf. the Access Hollywood tape).   Cambridge  English Dictionary pu...

FlapJilly is a voracious reader.  Her library card is a cherished possession.  Barnes and Noble gift cards make her swoon.  Little Cuter turns off her light and removes the books from her bed after she's fallen asleep; she can't bring herself to say "Stop reading, it's late!" Graphic novels and chapter books.  Dog Man  - a man/beast combo - replaced the unicorn princess books which followed the other, easier to read ones, until she hit her stride.  In a switch that brought a smile to my face and my brain, she picked up one of her mother's favorite series - The Baby Sitters Club. The books I bought Little Cuter in Barnes and Noble in Corte Madera, all the way in the back of the store, were pink.  Now they are much more than that.  They are full color graphic novels .   Because the kid is an avid reader, I'm not fretting too much over the need to turn literature into a comic book.  I've always been of the opinion that as long as they ...

It starts with the clouds.  They are high and numerous and cumulus and they move rapidly.  Some are higher and some are denser but they're all up there, competing for the same space, and when they crash into one another there's a very big bang. It's fun to watch the thunder happen.   The lightning strikes are horizontal and vertical and ginormous.  Were I a person with patience I'd sit outside with the camera on the tripod and wait for the most propitious moment to click.  I'm not, so you must use your imagination.   After the clouds comes the wind.  It comes from the east as well as the west, with gusts from the south moving the plant detritus in wonderful patterns, leaving piles of mulch conveniently under the the trees that dropped the pods.   I planned to include a picture of that right here,  but now it's raining.  This is not the rain you see back East, or in Chicago, or in Marin.  This is firehose stuff, drops ...

There was a time when I could drink in the afternoon. After receiving our masters' degrees, my fellow graduates and I spent a bleary afternoon and evening together, drinking all the champagne that the caterers had abandoned at the official reception.  The festivities included no naps. On vacation, a beer in the afternoon was a prelude to the forthcoming activities, if not an integral part of them.  I don't remember being energetically impaired. Today, TBG and I drove just west of downtown so that he could eat the best hamburger ever.   It was 3pm.  He had an late breakfast, I had a small late morning snack.  We were both hungry. Was it lunch?  Dinner?  Lunner?  Linch?  It didn't matter.  It was, he agreed, the best hamburger ever.   It was also huge.   I also ordered a margarita. Perhaps I'm just a lightweight, but there was a lot more tequila and a lot less margarita in the glass before me.  I tried my level bes...

This was all of yesterday's mail. Only one of the candidates identifies with a party (Democrat).  Planned Parenthood is highlighted (a good thing) but other than that there are just buzz words to consider. There are alliances forged on walking neighborhoods and knocking on doors together.  Does liking one of those candidates mean I should lean toward the others?   Do I vote for my young friend, who will answer the phone if I call, or do I vote for a more traditionally seasoned candidate who might be perceived as more competent? I have strong feelings for some races, and no idea at all about others.  The Voter's Guide is my go-to bathroom reading; it's as good a place as any to ponder.  The statements aren't that interesting, but they are a good place to start for the basics.   The number of Republican candidates railing against woke investments (whatever they are; our socially responsible portfolio has outperformed the market for several years now...

That's what I saw on the dashboard after my hearing check-up.  That's a lot of 1's adding up to a lot of degrees.  One hundred and eleven of them.  It was too hot to sit there and take a picture.  One hundred and eleven degrees to walk through.  One hundred and eleven degrees heating up the inside of my car, despite the sun shield.   Plants require supplemental watering in the afternoon.  So do humans.  I'm carting around the extra large Camelback water bottle, and refilling it more than once. Our pool deck is usually cool to the touch.  This morning, it was hot enough to make me dance as I was skimming the surface.  The water bugs were paddling happily until they weren't and but I left most of the leaves on the bottom.  Close enough for government work,  as a favorite instructor assured me.   The sun is out, the clouds are high and fluffy and few and far between.  It looks beautiful, but no one sits outside...

Except during Pandemica, I have always resisted watching tv during the day.  I spent Saturday watching all of this: All The Kings Men Heaven Can Wait Bonnie and Clyde Blow Up High Tide . I tried to read, but my brain kept wandering to a broken 8 year old.   Lauren Groff usually draws me in, but even her love letter to Marie de France, Matrix , left room around the edges.  Perhaps James Patterson would have been a better choice, but the library was all out of fun reads. It matched my mood exactly. I swam, but images of that little boy and his twin brother wouldn't leave me alone. I started to cook dinner, but ignoring my incipient sore throat was taking more energy than I could muster.  All day long, the feeling that something was creeping around inside of me, trying to make me feel sicker than I wanted to feel, had been winning.   Which came first - the sickness of the spirit or the body?   I thought today would be better.  I read the Sunday ...

They met young.  Both with dark hair and blue eyes, they had individually decided, early in life, to marry someone with those same characteristics.  After all, it was such a win in the genetic lottery it deserved to be treasured and passed along.   The fact that they were both smart and thoughtful and funny and driven might have had something to do with their successful union over the years, but I've always clung to the dark hair and blue eyes theory.  It makes me smile whenever I think of it. We were friends when our kids were young and we were all in Chicagoland.  They lived near Michael Jordan, so there was usually a good story or two to be told.  He and TBG were Goldman Sachs colleagues and she and I were happy to find one another amongst the wives. She was a prosecutor who wore a pager on her belt.  She left parties to assist the police in securing bad guys.  Her voice on the phone was precise and commanding as she grabbed her coat and p...

Betsy West ,  Julie Cohen , and a cast of a dozen or so producers and techies and shleppers came to our backyard last spring, masked and socially distant, to film me telling my version of what happened on January 8, 2011. They offered me makeup (I shouldn't have turned it down) and hair styling suggestions (I went with Little Cuter's idea) but that took up almost no time.  Mostly, they worked on the lighting and the sound and although nothing but my face fills the screen I know that they were conscious of the foliage behind me.   They let me talk and they asked pointed questions and they requested that I use Christina-Taylor's name instead of a little girl, a friend, a neighbor.   She was the hook for so much of the story at the time, after all. The process was fun and surprising and interesting and informative and special.  These women sat with RBG and now they were sitting in my backyard.  This is a movie that will play on CNN and will open in movie ...

My Yogi is taking the week off, so I could sleep in instead of setting the alarm for outdoor yoga this morning.   TBG kissed me goodbye before he left for spin class, and I rolled over for another hour or so.   That was the last unencumbered moment I had. When I really woke up, I reached for my phone to see what was on my calendar for today.  The phone wasn't on my nightstand.  It wasn't on my bathroom counter (often forgotten there when I'm getting ready for bed) nor on the library desk nor the pull out tray for the keyboard (another favorite hiding place).  It wasn't plugged in in the kitchen, it wasn't in my purse, and it wasn't on any visible countertop. The search was on. I called the thing, but it went straight to voice mail without ringing even once.  From past experience, I knew that meant the battery was dead.  Ever hopeful, I called Big Cuter, interrupting a business meeting (I do love him working from home and multi-tasking his mot...

He doesn't know what made him decide not to join his fellow realtors.  He told his wife that it just didn't feel right.   So he stayed home and didn't ride on the float in the parade.   So he wasn't one block away, laughing with his colleagues and waving to the crowds, when another skinny white boy with too much firepower and not enough brains began killing people.   I heard the news on the radio and called their house.  I can't remember ever feeling so glad to hear their voices.   It was a glimpse into what my friends must have felt back in 2011.   So I went home and watched the Police Chief and the Mayor and the Governor and the Senator say all the things that all the Police Chiefs and Mayors and Governors and Senators say every time .... every single time....   According to NPR there were bodies and body parts  on the streets of Highland Park. When is enough enough?

  Happy 4th of July   reworked, revised, revisited...yes, you've read parts of this before The sky is pure blue,  "painted that way  as G'ma said every time she looked up.  The occasional fluffy white cloud drifts by, and I'm hearing G'ma remark on that, too.  The flag in front of the house is swaying, the pole wedged between the base and the capital of one of the front columns, secured with thin, silver, crafting wire.   It's an elegant solution to TBG's reluctance to put holes in his house;  I feel like Daddooooo every time I wrap another ring around the post. Daddooooo was big on ingenious remedies to intractable problems.  He was also big on flags and the 4th of July.  We always went to the beach.  We always stopped at Custom Bakers on the way home, where the owners always let us go back and stick our fingers in the vats of frosting. We always went to the Boardwalk in Long Beach, arriving as the sun was setting.  Skeeb...

I really needed something to cheer me up this morning.   The world's going to hell in a handbasket and I am not enjoying the ride.   We are tearing down instead of building up.   The future is uncertain but feels bleak. Nothing is going the way it ought to. And then I turned into the driveway and saw this: Before The Yard Guys gave it a drastic pruning, my Texas Ranger ( Leucophyllum frutescens) was dying from the inside out.  After its haircut, with the innards exposed to sunlight, the main plant seemed to be doing just fine.   Last week I noticed a few green sprigs at the bottom.  Somehow, without my paying attention, they turned into a lovely little bush of their own. Maybe that's an answer.   Cut out the rot.   Expose the old and withered, hanging on for dear life, willing to kill the plant in order to survive.  Let nature take its course.   If only the political world were as easy to manipulate as ...