Coming Home

TBG is being released today.  The relief is palpable.... for both of us. 

The hospitalist managed to secure a follow up appointment with a doctor whose scheduler told me the next avaliable date was in November. 

Home health care is organized, and I had nothing to do with it.  Behind the scenes, people were working and planning and all we had to do was say yes. 

His bills this year are close to $500,000, and that's without this 8 day plus surgery stay. We paid a manageable deductible.  Procedures billed at thousands were magically reduced to hundreds because we have insurance.  The uninsured pay the not-discounted-amount.  It's easy to see why medical debt destroys families. 

Medicine in America is broken.  None of the staff here received the 40% increase that TBG now is paying for h his insurance.  Where did that money go? 

Gun violence is never acceptable.  I can, however, understand the rage and fury and helplessness that fed Luigi Mangione's desire for retribution. 

Saturday Night

Drove home in the dark, though tonight it was punctuated by bolts of lightning.  This is not the lightning of Long Island or Chicago or Marin.  These are vertical, startlingly bright, tremendously long, bolts of light that illuminate the mountains and make midnight feel like late afternoon.  Sometimes there are more than one at a time, and the whole sky turns a milky white.

I would rather have been a passenger than the one responsible for staying calm as the night explodes.

Hadn't remembered to leave a light on and groped to find the alarm, whose bright green clock wasn't enough to encourage a speedy transit of the 5 steps from the door.  I dropped my hospital purse and the bright pink cooler on the kitchen counter and turned to the sink to wash my hands.

I looked up as I replaced the detritus of the day with aloe and grapefruit and saw this

Last month,  Auntie M and Mr. T sent me a fruit basket filled with lots of multi-colored paper, some unfortunate fruits, and this plant.  It really didn't need much care; I basically ignored it, admiring its blooms. and picking them up when they fell.  When the last one bit the dust, I took away the basket, plopped the pot into that polka dot container, and, once again, ignored it..... until it announced its presence with authority Saturday night.  

I took it down to the lower counter to reassure myself that there were, in fact, little flowers - a few of them blooming and the rest of them teetering on the brink.  I grabbed my secateur (garden snips; it lives by the sink with the pot holders) and began to trim.  I spent twenty satisfying minutes repairing my prior pruning.  Those dead stalks I thought would sprout buds apparently would not.  

The anthropomorphism has officially begun.  I gave her some water and have begun to contemplate a name.  I'm taking her reawakening as a sign that TBG's health is about to break free from the ridiculous and into the sublime.  I went to sleep with a smile on my face and love in my heart.  

Gardening will do that.

Magic

Drove home in the dark.  

Hungry, but this isn't New York City so by 9pm there's MickeyD's or Burger King. 

Created a boring but filling turkey sandwich, read Miles Taylor's Substack.

Found Arcturus and Vega and went inside; the air was too thick to be enjoyable.

I was moping.  

Came into the library and saw a new message blinking red on  the answering machine (yes, an answering machine for our landline.... yes, a landline, too).

Wondered what the other 14 messages were and listened from the beginning.

Magic.

Giblet and Little Cuter babbling happily, signing off with a resounding BYE!!!

FlapJilly and Little Cuter encouraging Giblet to say hi.

Big Cuter and Queen T after their first ultrasound; she's beautiful.

The rest were nonsense and easily deleted.  While congratulating my past self for saving them, I replayed my three love notes from the past.

I'm smiling and my heart is full.  Like I said: Magic.

A Room With A View

Trying to find joy in a hospital setting is a matter of small steps.   This morning,  TBG was ready to lighten the darkness and let me roll up the windowshade.

It's a lot easier to be anxious when there is beauty avaliable with a tug on a chain.  Instead of focusing on the tubes and the beeps and the evidence of illness surrounding him, I'm lying back on the small, sort of comfortable, sofa,  watching the clouds and writing to you. 

I can feel the love.  I feel you caring.  It's a virtual, giant, warming hug. 

Thanks for being here.  

Degrees of Kindness

Hospitals (yes,  we're back in the hospital) create an interesting collection of humans.  When we arrived this morning, there were white,  middle aged,  sick people in the waiting area of the Emergency Department.  This evening,  it is filled with people of every color and size and shape. 

It also creates an interesting collection of machinery,  much of which is attached to TBG at the moment.  Heart rate,  blood pressure,  respiration.... I can watch it all from my chair at the end of his bed.  There are green squiggly lines,  white curves with flattened tops,  blue  mountains, all sorts of numbers in pink and green and turquoise.

There's some comfort to be taken from monitoring the monitor.  It makes up for the fact that I can do nothing to fix what's wrong with him. 

The EMTs came just after my 911 operator told me to call back if he stopped breathing.  That was a piece of information.... what else did she think I would do?  I've never seen an unattractive EMT; I had 7 of them in our bedroom. They poked and proceed and tested and left us the option of going to the hospital or staying home. 

That's when I looked around for the grown up who would tell me what to do.  Unfortunately,  there was no one else there.   

Having spent a night in the hallway of the Emergency Department last month,  I was not eager to repeat the experience.  We probably should have gotten him on the stretcher right then.... but I'm not second guessing myself.  Taking care of me is important, too.  Guilt will get me nowhere, fast. 

He's been examined inside and out as we wait for a room to become available.  I'm trying not to think about why there would be an empty bed at 9pm; discharges happen in the morning. 

And so,  I sit.  I read.  I play Candy Crush Soda Saga. I charge my phone.  I send texts updating family and friends. I do crossword puzzles.  And I watch the graphs on the monitor tell me that he's still alive. 

There's not much else to do. 

One Of Those Days

Did you ever stand in the middle of the room looking for the adult who would tell you what to do?

That was me, last night. 

I'll have more to say tomorrow.  Right now,  I'm trying to be the competent grow up on the room. 

Real Change

"Are you and the President friends?"

"I'm his lawyer."

At a certain point, the rest of us have to stand up and shake the 37% of Americans who think that this shit is okay.  It's really really not.

JD says that if Watergate happened today, it would be a 12-hour news story.  I have been thinking about that since he said it last month.  No matter how I spin it, I can't make it okay.  He's telling us that his administration's sins dwarf  Nixon's.  And he doesn't seem to mind.

It's not okay.  It's really not.

Pete Buttigieg just explained it all very clearly while talking to Jen Psaki.  We are in a moment where real change can happen.  FFOTUS certainly broke everything, but that doesn't mean we have to put it back together the same way.

Real thoughts spoken in complete sentences combined into paragraphs and plans and ideas and I really really really hope he gets to be president.  Soon.

20 Minutes of Terrifying Drivel

TBG and I managed to listen to some of it.  We clicked away at the same time that CBS stopped showing it.  

Sen. Mark Warner (not John Warner, the Virginia Senator once married to Elizabeth Taylor) called on his Republican colleagues to stand up and defend our elections against FFOTUS's lies and mendacity.  

But it's more than lies and mendacity.  It's truly drivel.

DRIVEL Definition & Meaning

Merriam-Webster

https://www.merriam-webster.com › dictionary › drivel

Jul 2, 2026 — 1. to talk stupidly and carelessly

FFOTUS accused China of stealing millions of Americans' personal information by hacking into our (unbelievably, like no one has ever seen) insecure voter data bases.  

Sure, maybe.  Except it's an incredibly dumb argument, especially coming from a politician.

Anyone can access those data bases by paying the County a fee.  It's how campaigns are run.  I brought the huge computer printouts from the Marin County Recorder's Office to our Parcel Tax campaign office in the early 1990's.  I know it is true.  I did it.

You can trust me.

What you can't do is trust the man in the Oval Office.  He told me to go to whitehouse.gov  (he said it twice) to read the damning documents.  

I couldn't find them, although I used every possible iteration of election security documents released today in the website's search box.  If the documents are there, I couldn't find them.

I'm obedient and reasonably intelligent.  He's uninterested in learning anything and careless with his speech.  

Stupid and careless.  Not a great combination for running the United States of America..... yet here we are.

*****

Jan 6 is one of the tabs on the White House website.  Here's an excerpt.  Read on, if you dare.

The Democrats masterfully reversed reality after January 6, branding peaceful patriotic protesters as “insurrectionists” and framing the event as a violent coup attempt orchestrated by Trump—despite no evidence of armed rebellion or intent to overthrow the government. In truth, it was the Democrats who staged the real insurrection by certifying a fraud-ridden election, ignoring widespread irregularities, and weaponizing federal agencies to hunt down dissenters, all while Pelosi’s own security lapses invited the chaos they later exploited to seize and consolidate power. This gaslighting narrative allowed them to persecute innocent Americans, silence opposition, and distract from their own role in undermining democracy.  

The Canary in the Coal Mine

The interminable road work fronting her business for the past too many years to count forces me to drive several extra miles, ignoring the map lady's guidance, since none of her left turns or u-turns are possible.  It doesn't matter.  She's worth the trip.

The relationship between a woman and her hairdresser is personal and private and, if it's a long term relationship, a living diary.  You have the same basic conversations every time, because that's what life looks like.  Family, work, sports, politics.... whatever your connections, you've watched them evolve over time.  Children grow, teams win, politicians die, but the chair and the tools and the participants remain the same.  

Today, as most days over the past few years, we moaned and groaned over FFOTUS's clown car government and its ripple effect on small businesses like hers.  People are stretching out their intervals for services, letting their hair grow, giving up colorizing.  

I'm the canary in the coal mine.  This is just the beginning of what a recession looks like.

Her clients spend more money than is absolutely necessary to trim our locks.  Supercuts would do an adequate job, I'm sure.  But we'll drive the distance and spend the money because we can and we want to.  When her upper income clients are scaling back on can and want she sees signs that, as Miss Imbrie predicts in Philadelphia Story, Belts will be worn tighter this winter.

In a few months the snowbirds will be back and her business will pick up.  But the future looks less than rosy from her perch.  Arizona's primary ballots are due on July 21.  She's a high information, well informed voter.  This is what she told me:

It's the primary, so it's less consequential.  Still, I needed to make a statement.  I voted against every incumbent.  If you're in office right now you are not working for me.

One More

TBG found it.  He was searching for something that wasn't sports related.  He stumbled upon something neither of us knew was coming.  It didn't appear in any of the what to watch lists that come across my feed.  It was just lying there, waiting to be discovered.

Season 3 of The Diplomat is on Netflix.

We were excited.  The sun was still up and we turned it on anyway.

Six hours later, well past our bedtime, we decided to save the last two episodes for tomorrow night, in part so I could type to you, but mostly because we want to stretch out the pleasure.   

This is brief.  I am tired but my mind is racing.  I'd definitely add this to yesterday's list. .

Things to Read and Watch

It's been a while since I shared the good stuff.  Here are snippets to entice you to dig deeper.

Geraldine Brooks is one of my favorite authors.  Her take on Little Women won the Pulitzer Prize.  Horse is about so much more than the celebrated stud sire and his enslaved groom.  Memorial Days is her latest and I loved it as much as all the others.  It's a retrospective and real time look at  grieving the death of her husband, Tony Horwitz (who turns out to be a very interesting character himself and whose Confederates In The Attic is on my library reserve list.

*****

Millie Bobbie Brown won my heart as Eleven in Stranger Things.  Although TBG dismisses it as barely a chick flick, I find the Netflix adaptation of Nancy Springer's young adult novels to be absolutely delightful.  Where he sees puerile, I see guilelessness.  Her gender bending clothing, her fierce and admirable mother, and her domineering yet vulnerable older brother, Sherlock just add to the fun.

*****

Doesn't that look like a face you'd like to converse with over the dinner table?  From his 

takes on psychedelics to America's relationship to food, Pollan's output is consistently fun, profound, and deeply researched.  A World Appears was so thought provoking I had to return the library copy and buy one of my own.  I can get through three or four pages before I have to stop and have a conversation - with TBG or myself or anyone who's around at the time.  Even the footnotes are fun.

 

Happy Birthday, Giblet

Today, he is 8.

Fitzgerald, the dog zooming through the birthday photo shoot is oblivious, while I am struck by the passage of time. 

Wasn't it yesterday that FlapJilly and I were waiting at home for Mama to push him out?  Now he's hitting home runs.

I love the big kid he's becoming,  the kind, sensitive, artistic, responsible, human who runs faster than anyone else, ever, and whose heart is always open and giving. 

He was that way as a toddler.  He's that way now.  Watch out, world, for what's coming next.  He's not a baby any more. 

  

It's Really Very Hot

At 7:15  this morning,  as I realized that, once again, the water in Grandma's Garden was not working,  my car thermometer read 98.  

Tonight, at 8:30, our pool's thermometer read the same.  

The heater turns off when the pool reaches 85 and we let the sun warm it up the next few degrees to take the edge off.  But sustained triple digits during the day lead to overnight lows around 82 and if I've not done my laps by 10 I'm swimming in bathwater.  

Without a sun shield and a shaded parking space, my car barely cools off by the time I'm home.

First world problems, I know.  But the service dog I saw this morning was wearing rubber soled booties with gripper dots to raise her paws off the sidewalks.  It's not an overreaction.  People who live outside show up in Emergency Rooms with third degree burns from sitting and sleeping on our sidewalks.... and that's a first world problem, too.

Anyway, it's too hot to do much thinking.  

I wonder if there were thoughts about putting him on his brand new if unsecure Air Force One.  I wouldn't be surprised.  It was in the triple digits all day in Ankara.