The Burrow

The family I watched grow from elementary school through high school moved away at the beginning of the month, and the new people came right on their heels.  Actually, their repair and installation and other contracting people showed up and got right to work.  It was hard to tell if the new owners belonged to any of the vehicles.    There was a partial lull in the proceedings this week, and the garbage cans were out for collection in front of their house yesterday (and Monday, too, because they are new and didn't realize that the holiday pushes our pick up days back).  Those were clues enough, I baked and wrapped and left brownies on the packages stacked up at their front door; the only response to the doorbell came from two delighted to see me dogs. She called to thank me this morning, and we visited in her semi-furnished new home for just enough time.  Once again, I found a neighbor who loves to cook, and whose interest in an herb garden led to talk of a ...

Sometimes the ticker along the bottom is a much fun as the game. I can hear her squeaking, can't you? (BTW, it was a great game with Notre Dame winning the Men's NCAA Lacrosse Championship.  There was no squeaking.)

   First posted in 2008.   I used to march in the Memorial Day parade. I was dressed in my Brownie uniform, and then in my Girl Scout uniform - replete with those embarrassing anklets. I wore them because the troop leader said we couldn't march without them, they were part of our official uniform.  Marching was too cool to pass up.  I wore them and bore the scorn. All the school bands marched too, and the moms on Benjamin Road provided the materials and the labor to make the capes the high school kids wore. There must have been a military presence there, but I didn't pay enough attention to notice. I was marching and I knew that, all over America, other kids were being Americans and marching, too. I belonged to something bigger than my family, my school, my town.   Belonging means different things in different places. In Marin, the Memorial Day parade was always good for a  controversy  or two. Or three. Should the anti-war protesters wa...

Flipping through channels, TBG landed on a local station, announcing its 70 years of service to Southern Arizona. He looked at me with horror. I am older than tv. ***** Little Cuter's children are used to being photographed .  They understand posing and smiling and saying cheese.   They are also, at times, total goof balls. ***** And what would the weekend be without a photo of the littlest addition to our family?   Just thinking about her lowers my blood pressure.  Have a wonderful three day weekend, if your life admits such things.  

School's out for the summer.  I have no scholars begging for my attention, sidling up for a quick hug, screeching HELLO!!  across the playground.   It's been many months since Lady Jane shed this mortal coil; I miss her every time I drive past her house.  I could count on her for lunch or an adventure every week.  I didn't have to plan them.  She did the work.  All I had to do was show up. Scarlett is seriously under the weather and in no condition to amuse me three times a week with mah jong and long stories.  I miss her little dog racing like a crazy person whenever you come to the door .  There are certain smiles on the faces of certain friends that will live in my heart forever; Scarlett's joy in her pooch's love for me is certainly on the list.  JannyLou is long gone to her retirement community; a good move for her but a big loss for me.  She was always up for a quick lunch or a long chat, without any notice at all.  ...

The judge told the defendant that he'd be in big trouble if he opened his mouth, and made him say out loud that he understood and that he didn't have any other questions. The defendant's own lawyers agreed that there was no question about infringement of the defendant's First Amendment right to make a fool of himself on a national stage.  He just can't put others in danger while doing so.   The talking heads were straining to come up with different ways to say As if. Zero to none; hard to imagine; highly improbable ; total lack of impulse control ( cf E. Jean Carroll remarks in New Hampshire) makes this not if but when.  We changed the channel when they started giggling and calling him a petulant child. He's in trouble in courts all over the country.  He's being challenged by others calling themselves Republicans but acting more like theocratic fascists than small government isolationists while trying to get to the right of a man with no ideas or ideals or a...

I planted sunflower seeds in February, and promptly forgot all about them.   Once they arrived at the nursery , I filled my basket-on-the-post container and the 2 little make-the-post-look-less-awkward pots beneath it with purple and yellow  pansies and violas and verbena and calibrocha and the remains of an osteospermum which never quite took off no matter where I relocated it until it began to thrive atop the post.  It was a lovely, if static, arrangement, requiring little maintenance, doing nothing, just sitting there, looking lovely.  And then, large leaves began to appear in one of the little pots.  I'd distributed all kinds of seeds quite liberally over the season; I wasn't sure what would develop. I found out soon enough.  Those seeds were powerful stuff, producing clusters of blooms and soon-to-be-blooms and thinking-about-it blooms all the way up, at every juncture of leaf and stem.  There are a lot of nodes getting ready to sprout; that'...

There are some people who really do make the world a better place, just by existing within it. There are some people whose presence brightens the room, the party, the meeting.   There are some people who elicit Oh, thank God she's here! when a team is formed. I'm lucky enough to have birthed one of them. People gravitate to my daughter; in first grade the girls made a rotating list to keep track of who could sit next to her at lunchtime.  She was nonplussed by the drama.  She just wanted to be. In 6th grade she wondered why the girls all fight with one another.  Don't they realize that if you don't fight with anyone you can sit anywhere you want at lunch? Recruited to participate in Peter Pan, she won the part of Nana and wagged her tail into 5th grade history.  She's not one to push herself into the limelight; that giant dog costume was the perfect foil.   But when she has a good idea and feels that it's being ignored, she raises her voice and ma...

Back in the Fall of 1968, I was seriously considering applying to New College.  The Charter Class  graduated, in 1967; the thought of being in on the start of something new was thrilling.   At that time, individual majors were encouraged, and hands-on learning was part and parcel of the experience. Best of all, there were no grades.  With a faculty/student ratio of 10-1, faculty-student contracts were used to monitor progress.  This had great appeal to me. I wanted to understand what Mr. Rudolph was teaching in Math 12X.  I wanted to learn, but I was being graded by what I could take in and reproduce before I fully grasped it.  If we'd had a contract, I'd have set my own goal, a much less lofty one than the District demanded, and I would have relished the opportunity to take my time and figured it out.   That's not something you can do in a big school.  The intimacy appealed to me.  G'ma put the kibosh on it pretty quickly....

Remember that word, coined by FlapJilly and embraced by her grandmother with pride and glee?  It's a portmanteau of disaster and catastrophe, and it's exactly how I feel right now. I went for my Annual Check Up this morning, but we never got around to any of those questions.  Apparently, my presenting symptoms were much more interesting.   My doctor was late, a rarity in that office.  She sits with me for as long as I need her, so I assumed that she was doing the same for some other unfortunate soul.  I nursed my weeping eye patiently in the waiting room.  I had no place else to go and nothing else to do for hours; sitting quietly felt like exactly what I needed. When it was my turn to enter the portal, they took care of the basics.  My weight was within the range I can handle.  My O2 sats and pulse raised no alarms.  My blood pressure, however, was delightfully low. I've been medicating since Pandemica, but the numbers never budged from...

Part One - Monday My right contact was bothering me, but I was holding the baby and wasn't giving her up.   Big mistake.  By the time I convinced myself to deal with the offending object,  the damage was done. There was (and is) an ouchie on my eyeball. Or maybe it's on my inner eye lid.  It doesn't really matter.  It's there and I can't ignore it.   More than just the worry that it will never go away, there's the whole drainage thing. The eye is tearing at an alarming rate.  I have a kiddie pool of eye drool sitting on my face.   Every once in a while it overflows, and I have to dab with a tissue.  Sometimes the tissue rushes to my nose, sometimes to my cheek,  but always the tissue is rushing ..... somewhere.  Part Two - Tuesday  Closing my eye felt good, but it's not a great idea to have closed eyes while traveling through airports. Seeking relief, I was asleep, with my eyes closed, under a blanket next to TBG...

TSA Precheck saved us an hour of waiting at Oakland Airport just now.  It's 4:45 in the morning and thousands of travelers are waiting on lines that stretch forever; we cruised right to the front of the TSA line and were whisked through the total body scanner (our pesky repaired joints are not compatible with the first level screening technologies) and on to the gate with no delays.   5:30am is a lot earlier than I usually join the world.  A 4:15am alarm is also unusual. Saying goodbye to the little one and the big ones never gets easier.   Air travel has become very democratic.  All sorts of people surround us at the gate.  People who've never flown Southwest and are flummoxed by the boarding procedure wander aimlessly.  Business people make important phone calls at the top of their lungs.  Teens are glued to their phones.  Anxious travelers are lined up 15 minutes before the gate crew announces that it's time to do so.  There...

The thing about babies is that they are all consuming.  Honestly,  how could you look anywhere else when this is in the room? That's my only excuse for the delay in posting this morning.   She sleeps and eats and needs her diaper changed. She's not much of a conversationalist. She has no sporting achievements about which to brag. And yet,  she is infinitely fascinating.  Asleep or awake everything is new. I have spent hours watching her watching the black and white checkerboard, wondering what she makes of it all.  We leave tomorrow morning.  My brain will be filled with New College and Ja Morant and all the other mundane nonsense that grown ups think about.   My heart,  though,  will be carrying her closer than close,  no matter how far away she is. 

Not-Kathy and I got pedicures,  then our husbands met us for Mexican food.  A large margarita made the thought of watching CNN's Town Hall with the lying liar somewhat palatable. I lasted for one question.  That the audience was stacked with his supporters only made it worse.  The applause for his predictable responses (I saw clips all day long) made me cringe.  Free media for a sexual predator in exchange for a ratings bump - they have no shame. It's somewhat heartening to hear a few Republicans saying they won't support him.  We'll see how long that lasts.  What I can't get over is that this one trick pony has no new material. He's pushing the same story,  with the same tired tropes, and the same folks are nodding along. Fingers crossed that there is a different outcome in 2024.

I succumbed to the pressure.   Grandma Suzi, is the water warm enough today?  I'd been using the excuse that it was too cold outside to turn on the hose, but the details were apparently unclear to my young listeners.  But the sun was out and they were so eager..... I'm a sucker for a hug and a pleading voice. They line up outside the garden fence, holding JannyLou's colorful Dollar Store watering cans, as I stand on the other side of the fence, hose in hand, trying to avoid their feet and their t-shirts and their faces as they jostle for position. Always willing to pause to pose,  the regulars in the garden were eager to get to the real work at hand. There were weeds  plants growing along the garden wall which obviously needed some love.   Not everyone was into the water.  I've enlisted the garden scholars in digging a deep and wide hole to house a new citrus tree.  Dumping the soil that's been excavated is an issue, but the little wheel...

It only took the jury 3 hours to call the lying liar out.  After two weeks of swimming in that muck, they determined the truth and went home.  I hope they treated themselves to nice, long showers.   Hoisted by his own petard, his deposition damned him as he played golf in Scotland.   His whining that he was precluded from testifying was laid to waste when the no-nonsense judge told him to show up or shut up.   The jury awarded her money, even though she made no specific request.   How brave of her to take him on, to share her secret with the world.  How horrifying that the judge had to suggest that the jurors continue to remain anonymous.   ***** Why is CNN giving the lying liar free media time?   This is the same idiocy that propelled him to office in the first place.  Searching for ratings, unable to compete with MSNBC for the liberal crowd, perhaps sensing some weakness on the Fox front, CNN is once again...

I wonder if it has some deep psychological meaning.  There's not an age group nor a gender distinction that I can discern. Grandma's Garden hosts cool kids and lonely kids and popular kids and odd kids and quiet kids, science kids and culinary kids and the occasional gardening kid, but they are all, each and every one of them, digging kids. Look at that face.  He's doing nothing but making holes in the ground with a plastic trowel. He is the essence of joy.   So is he.  It's not a planned activity.  In fact, many of the holes have to be filled in because they are in the middle of the path where people walk   and I don't want anyone to trip and fall.   Somehow, that's just as much fun. They dig them,  they stick prickerless cactus pads into them,  I tell them they are placed dangerously,  and back to work they go.  There are lots of places to dig and plant.  ...

My son arrived on Mother's Day,  sunny-side up, eyes wide open, wondering what he'd missed during his trip through the birth canal. There isn't much that he's missed along the next 40 years.  It takes him a while to get around to doing it, but when he does it, he does it very well.     He never toddled; he ran. He never read on his own for pleasure until the end of 3rd grade when necessity forced him to finish Edgar Rice Burroughs's John Carter series all by himself.  He takes his time when meeting new people; his friends are his friends for life.  He goes deep over a broad range of topics.  He sets high standards when accepting new information, so his recommendation of the smart person I listen to on this is always worth a look.  We don't always agree.  I've tried, but I still think the whole 538 /Obama Boys/ Pod Save America  situation is puerile and self-referential and not worth the effort of waiting for the occasional nugget of...

It took me 11 years and 4 months to arrive at the out patient surgery center for a hip replacement. Pandemica stalled any progress I might have made.  Age and the general deterioration that accompanied the trip from 58 to 70 left me lurching and aching and a gentle emotional nudge from Big Cuter made the decision easy.   As the physiatrist told me early on,  you'll know when you know. I knew.  And now, 365 days later,  I'm back doing the things I used to do before bullets upended my life.  I'm not doing them the same way; 71 is very different from 58 and there's only so much I can do about that.   But I don't hurt any more than anyone else I know.  That's something I haven't been able to say in a long,  long time. Yay Science!

Little Cuter stayed home from work on Monday, sleeping until mid-morning and napping in the afternoon.  Tuesday was an  I sound worse than I feel  day, her symptoms manageable with medication. Although the additional pill she took that morning had left her extra thirsty, it gave her immune system the extra boost it needed.     You take that with the meds you take every day?  You can add them together? Her laughing Yes  was feeble, probably because she didn't want to annoy that tickle in the back of her throat, the one that should have alerted me to the fact that my disease was actually allergies. Apparently, no harm has come to my child in her quest to survive her allergies  I'm not supposed to have allergies in the desert, but, somehow, I do.  I put those facts together with the overriding sense of love and affection and trust I feel for my youngest child and drove straight home to take all the medicines the PA suggested. I'm not being ...

All those beautiful big blue and white coupons - useless. No longer will I be able to spread holiday cheer as I wander through the aisles, bestowing coupons on unsuspecting shoppers, saving them 20% and $5 and $10, enough coupons to cover whatever was in their basket.   No, the coupons don't expire..... or they didn't expire as long as the store existed. But, nothing lasts forever.... all good things must come to an end..... here today, gone tomorrow -- I refuse to accept it.  Bed Bath and Beyond is gone. The stores are in receivership.  There are no refunds, no coupons, no exchanges.  The signage is down inside the store, at least the one I peered into this morning, 90 minutes before they opened their doors.  TBG wants some softer, thicker hand towels; he didn't get any today. I don't think he'll get them tomorrow, either.  There was nothing enticing about the store this morning.  And there's been nothing enticing inside the store for...

I stopped at a new-to-Tucson restaurant for lunch today. We are a World Gastronomic City.  Good food is easy to come by.  New restaurants pop up and disappear with alarming regularity.  Getting to all of them before they vanish is a challenge.  I was hungry for food and not kid-comfort, so I skipped Grandma's Garden and went to Flower Child instead.  Flower Child caters to vegetarian and vegan lifestyles with healthy made-from-scratch salads, bowls and wraps read one review and the menu bore that out.  The chickens had no anti-biotics and a lovely lifestyle before being slaughtered.  There was lots of quinoa and beets and pickled peppers of all color and description.  There was one lonely steak wrap hiding in the bottom right corner of the flashing-too-quickly-to-be-read billboard menu above the counter.   I can't remember what I ordered.  It had the largest combination of ingredients I don't actively despise.  I thought I ask...

I didn't have to bring a book when I went to meet Honey Bunny.  Her daddy's library always has something I will enjoy.  I always let him choose.  He rarely steers me wrong.   Ilium  lived up to his over the top review as he handed me his well-read copy.  Mostly, he kept repeating you'll love it  with the glint of recognition over our shared passions - those ancient Greeks and gods and goddesses whose stories we try our best to keep straight but the fact that they are pretty much all incestuously related to one another it's hard to tell where motherhood and sisterhood diverge.   He did not lead me astray. I was hooked by the end of the first page, a mashup of Homer's Iliad and Dan Simmons's interplanetary imagination, with paragraphs so dense that they took more than one reading to absorb.  I'm sure I missed many allusions, but I took great joy in the many I recognized.  The book can be enjoyed without a familiarity with the Tro...