The Burrow

!!!!! HAPPY HALLOWEEN !!!!!

Chapter 2 - Reuning Clad in my $200 jeans and my butterfly boots, beside a similarly stylin' MTF, old friends were just a taxi ride away. A long, motion-sickness-inducing taxi ride, then through the 3 story lobby, past more mailboxes than there were students in the Cuters' high school, and up almost all the way to the top. Tucson's one-story adobe homes felt very far away. Rang the bell and fell headfirst into my past. There was my very first date - he'd escorted me to a bowling party in the 6th grade. Gallantly, he claimed to remember the entire event. Thankfully, he'd forgotten the orange and white stretch pants I'd worn. My memory was crystal clear : I'd left my front door with a smile on my face, loving my new clothes...... and then he asked me why I was wearing pajamas. A lot of the fun of dating was lost for me that evening. The look on his face when I told my story was the first indication I had that something was going to be different about this we...

There's too much to consolidate into just one post, so this will stretch out until it's finished. Along the way we'll touch on New York City, friendship, air travel, fine food of all descriptions and sizes, apologies, artwork, politics, sports, history and love. The Reunion is just the framework. Chapter 1 - The Preliminaries Wednesday This is usually my favorite time of day. Errands are finished. Dinner's planned. The sun's painting pictures right outside my window on the Pusch Ridge and I'm writing to you. Today's different, though, because I have to be on the road in 12 hours to make my plane to fly me to NYC for the Reunion. And I still haven't packed. Things are in purposeful piles, but those piles are scattered around the house. These are not procrastination piles. They are working piles. I just wish they'd work themselves into the suitcase. I'm tired. Neurasthetic. I wish I were there already, and unpacking . Not that I'm wishing...

(The "real" reunion post will show up tomorrow. This is a quickie, written while in The City, in a windowless cubicle in the basement of The Park South Hotel .) OK, I suppose it wasn't as big a deal as the Northwest pilots who were surfing the web while flying over Minnesota , but we had our own travel snafu in NYC on Monday. We'd wandered down to South Street Seaport , munching on hot pretzels and Sabrett hot dogs along the way. We'd shopped and looked at Trinity Church's graveyard and the hole in the ground that used to be the World Trade Center and we were ready to be reminded that Manhattan is really an island - we needed to see the water. Watching the river flow, drinking a beer, listening to a high school band play music from the 1940's..... we were definitely in New York. Exhausted, we opted for the subway instead of walking back to the hotel. Found the station and asked the MTA men behind their bullet-proof windows for the proper train to take. It ...

Allow myself to introduce… myself. (and let that be a lesson to ANYONE who uses “myself” erroneously. When in doubt, use a different pronoun). I am known around these parts as “the big cuter”. I go by a nick-name in the real world, so, given the tendency towards pseudonyms in this blog I’ll comfortably hide behind that moniker. As an aside, Ashleigh has done a good job of discussing her thoughts on pen names, and if I’m ever called on again for a guest post I’ll happily share mine. Until that time, myself’s (wink, wink) name will be “the big cuter”. A little bit about me, at least as is relevant to this post: I’m an avid, nay, rabid football fan. I care way too much about the success of my beloved San Francisco 49 ers . I jokingly, but with far too much seriousness, state that half of my t-shirts are 9 ers (the other half are Georgetown). I’ ve created detailed booklets** explaining the basics and not-so-basics of football to initiate the uninitiated into the game. I’m currently ret...

I've lived in suburbs and cities and had a fine time in both. But there's something about a town that's just a little bit different. I grew up in the Town of Hempstead. That was more a political distinction than a home-town. Oceanside was where I lived, and it was definitely a town. We had our own schools and Memorial Day parade and scout councils and Little League. There was just one public high school, and hardly anybody left it to go to a private one. Football was played on Friday nights, and there were always as many residents as students in the stands. Until I was in middle school, summer nights were spent at Nathan's where each day of the week had its own theme and performers. We heard Josh White, Jr one Friday Folk Night, and square danced every Thursday, and went to the Jazz and Orchestra programs, too. Scampering was encouraged because nobody ever got lost. The whole town was there to be sure you were safe while you were having fun. I never thought much about...

As regular readers know, I am in NYC with MTF, enjoying an elongated Reunion-related weekend. Posting while playing just doesn't work for me, and writing posts in anticipation of my trip left me brain-weary and aggravated. Then my business manager/Little Cuter told me about "guest posting" and I turned it right back at her and here is the result: (The language has been cleaned up with ****'s because I try to run a family-friendly blog here, kiddo!) On A**holes and Writer’s Block When the idea was proposed that I provide a guest blog for The Burrow, my stomach dropped, my shoulders slouched, my pulse quickened, a bead of sweat undermined my cool façade. Sure, I write… I write chapter titles and flush them out with inane stories of my upbringing and off-color things that people have told me along the way. I wrote hundreds of essays in high school and college. Some even got published, and not once during those years did I have this intense nervous response. Could it hav...

Hi there Burrow faithful, Victoria here. I would like to extend an apology for the delay in Ashleigh's post today. It would appear that Ashleigh's impending high school reunion has rendered her without the ability to tell time, and thus she scheduled today's Thursdays in the Garden to run at 6 PM instead of 6 AM. Regularly scheduled posting will resume tomorrow (trust me- I double checked!).

It's a sad, sorry state of affairs in the garden these days. I'm not taking it personally, though it's been a struggle. The first winter we were here there was a hundred years frost . That is exactly what you think it is - you only see temperatures this low every hundred years or so. And it stayed cold for 5 days. Everything died. I was in New York, moving G'ma out of her house, and TBG was no-way-no-how going out in the dark and the cold to throw sheets over the precious flora. And then take them off before the sun got too high in the sky. Every night. For 5 nights. No, Ma'am. He was bitter enough that it had snowed on him when he took out the recycling cart. This was, after all, " the f'ing desert for crying out loud." This summer's monsoon was a total disappointment. There just wasn't enough rain during the time when the plants are most stressed and most in need. As if that weren't enough, we had 5 or 6 days in a row where the temperatu...

The blogosphere is an interactive space. That's what I was trying to get at with yesterday's post. Comment on the ideas of a newspaper columnist, and you have to get your letter through the editor before others can share in your brilliance. Commenting on the inanities in the blogosphere requires only the confidence to type in your thoughts. This unmediated medium, as I've written before, demands the participation of the reader to fully maximize its potential. I could write my thoughts in a diary, but I don't. Keeping a record of myself for myself always seemed self-indulgent. Talking to you through the Burrow is more connected, and more rewarding, than Dear Me, could ever be. In doing so, I'm trying to take on my piece of the process in other places in the 'sphere. I've been commenting and reading the other blogs posted by Blogher in my sidebar (except for the cat people ..... sorry, but even I have my limits.....) and following my favorites. And that'...

From a FaceBook message thread: I .... worry that since I'm too shy to write public comments back that it creates a very one sided friendship -- I know you and your thoughts so much more .... but here I am, hunkering down in the cold north with nothing but bulbs to plant and unsure how to or if I should respond to the thought provoking things you say. From a phone call: " You should have guest posts when you're out of town." "Why don't you write one?" "I'm not ready to share." ******* The immediacy of the blogosphere is intimidating, it's true. Put it out and there it stays, to be read by anyone and everyone whether you know them or not. Probably not. No, most definitely not. 77 people read the Burrow last week - do you know 76 others who've been here? (Of course, if you tell them how wonderful it is, then maybe you will, but for now, I'm dealing in reality.) I've been commenting on other blogs for the last few weeks. Actu...

It was brought to my attention that the previous post left some (ok, 1 ) reader with the need for a final photo. If you've read the post already, scroll down and see what you missed the first time through.

Who knew? Apparently, everyone but Amster and I did. But now we are initiated, and I wonder if we will ever go back. Here's how it started: 18 months ago, TBG was recruited to be on a mock jury for one of Amster's trials. He spent a marvelous full day listening to arguments and then participating in deliberations with a real cross-section of Tucson's population. At the end, he was rewarded with many thanks and a crisp, new $50 bill. He came home to my Harriet Housewife incarnation : chairs were on tables, rugs were rolled up, ottomans were resting on couches as the floor was being mopped to within an inch of its life. The kitchen counters were sparkling, the stainless steel appliances had nary a hand print nor a streak, the fallen french fries had been removed from the oven's floor, the bed linens were fresh and the bathrooms were gleaming. I had been busy, and I looked it. Bedraggled and sweaty, my manicure destroyed, I leaned on the mop handle and said "Hi"...

How dressed up are you getting for the reunion itself? I bet you went to a lot of other places in your mind before you got to clothes for the party , didn't you? Well, I didn't. In fact, I'm just back from checking to see whether my Yearbook will fit into the purse I've tentatively decided upon. It does. What with President Obama being awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace when Arizona State University didn't think he deserved an honorary degree last spring, I wonder that anything could surprise you. So I hope that you won't think me trivial when I say that this is, in fact, an important question. It is also a question that everyone is reluctant to ask. I, however, have no boundaries between my brain and my mouth, so I've been asking everyone. " How dressed up are you getting?" is how I phrase it, and the responses have been uniform - everyone laughs. Giggles on the phone and LOL on Facebook messages and behind every smile I am also detecting (project...

After shopping at both Tohono Chul and Greg Starr's nursery , I spent a few days planting. I remembered to keep things watered, and I covered the exposed area with a nice pine bark mulch. The weather's cooled off enough that I don't worry (too much) about serpents slithering as I'm kneeling in the mid-day sun. There was so much to do, and life was pressing, so much of the planting took place as the sun was setting. There's a peacefulness that comes over the garden as the sun sits low in the sky. I could feel the earth relaxing as I carved out new homes for my treasures. There were lots of snake holes, especially around the space I'd reserved for the Rhyolite bush, but I decided that I wasn't going to worry about that. I'd consider them participants in the project as they aerated the soil through which the Crossosoma bigelovii could shoot its roots. The two yuccas - schottii and torreyi - are guarding the walkway to the little garden gate. They are a nice...

There is really nothing to watch on the boob-tube (or, Daddoooo used to call it, the idiot box) these days. Channel surfing is frustrating and depressing. We really do have 57 channels and nothin's on. So, when I landed on Mythbusters TBG couldn't really protest. Once again, my inner nerd had triumphed. Turns out that the Big Cuter was watching the same episode, so there was also the bonding piece. And it was fun . There were two myths tested, one silly and one profound. I loved them both. Kari and Grant and Tory tried to see if they could "knock your socks off" in a series of more and more absurd experiments culminating in 500 pounds of explosives blowing mannequin legs to smithereens. In fact, you cannot get blown out of your socks and live to tell the tale. "OMG there's a foot in it" was only one of Kari's finds after the test. Adam and Jamie, on the other hand, aimed to devise an experiment that would prove that two bullets, one dropped and one...

I'm off on an adventure with Amster in Flagstaff. I'll tell you all about it when I return, but til then, I thought you might like to read some of the other fabulous stuff that's out there in the blogosphere. I've added my commentary, in case you only have time for a snippet and you trust me to guide you along your path, grasshopper. One more cute kid and a dog story. Short and sweet and perfect. http://www.dooce.com/2008/05/01/teamwork Exactly how I feel about gardening. Beautiful photos: http://mizmell.blogspot.com/2009/09/my-immortal-grandmother.html This is real writing. I try my best and I aim to please, but Laurie White is an artist. This one is a bit longer than the other two, and requires your brain to be engaged. Go for it; you'll be glad you did: http://indieink.org/2009/09/24/stones/ Hope you liked them. Leave a comment and let me (and them) know what you thought. That is, after all, one of the pleasant distinctions between blogging and newspaper-column...

Today, October 12, is Columbus Day. Not Amerigo Vespucci Day. Not Leif Ericson Day. Columbus Day. It really is Columbus Day. Chris and his fleet landed at a place he named San Salvador on October 12, 1492. Of course, that was according to the Julian Calendar. In 1582, a papal bull (and what an image that conjures in the brain) restructured the concept of the leap year and named the new calendar after the Pope himself. Suddenly, La Nina and La Pinta and La Santa Maria had landed 9 days later, on October 21st, Gregorian time. Adding 3 days every 4 centuries doesn't seem like a big difference, but try telling that to Columbus. Someone must have agreed with me on this, since we celebrate his arrival on the Julian date. I love it when things that shouldn't change don't change. And that's why I'm smiling about today being Columbus Day. Because, in actuality, Columbus Day is now celebrated on the 2nd Monday of October, regardless of the date. That's just wrong. To...

President Obama is doing a lot of thinking about Afghanistan this week. To prove it, NBC Nightly News just ran a picture of him sitting at the head of a long table, in his shirtsleeves, surrounded by Cabinet members and the Veep and lots of paper. There wasn't a laptop in sight. The President was the youngest person in the shot by a bunch of years. He's drinking a bottle of water; Hillary's a Coke girl. Not Diet Coke. Regular, full strength classic Coca-Cola. That's one of the few things I think she gets right. I really hope they recycle at the White House. Otherwise, they're setting a very bad example for our nation. In another conversation on Afghanistan this afternoon, Campbell Brown couldn't believe that the President was " considering separating the Taliban and al Quaeda. I mean, can you do that ?" Um.... yes, Campbell. One is a repressive, hateful-to-women political force with no ambitions beyond its own borders. The other is a terror...

Meet Jay. That's J-A-Y. He was one of the many happy shoppers at the Tohono Chul Members Only Plant Sale this afternoon. We began lining up before 2. I'm not sure how much before 2, but I was fifth in line. Apparently, the beautiful woman in the straw hat has been first for as many years as the others in line could remember. I was pretty impressed with 5th. Jay is a very talented man. He created the perfect cart for shopping the narrow aisles of the plant sale. Look at the size of those C-Clamps. There is also an excellent collection of bungee cords, just waiting to secure many wonderful specimens. Jay was about 10th in line. I'm trying a new approach to landscaping this year - I am actually going to plan ahead, stick to a color scheme, and think about the plant's ultimate size before I stick it in the ground. I'm digging holes exactly the right size (just as deep and twice as wide as the root ball), setting the plants down on undisturbed soil, and protecting the mo...