The Burrow

I'm hopeless when it comes to holiday shopping.  I am incapable of exercising restraint.  I see it. I want it. I buy it. I wrap it. I give it. I smile.  I like every single one of those steps.  The thought of holiday shopping starts a special kind of adrenaline coursing through my veins.  I miss it when I have to stop.  Let's parse each section, shall we? I see it.   The whole shopping experience has been bifurcated into going shopping and doing my shopping .  The first requires leaving home and interacting with live humans in public spaces.  The second requires electricity and connectivity and the ability to retype a credit card number and remember a security code.  I decided to go shopping this morning when the cleaning ladies arrived an hour early thereby cutting into my brownie baking time slot.  Tucson Mall is huge and confusing and noisy.  The parking lot has sneaky areas which are accessible by making a series of lef...

with many thanks to Little Cuter for the photos. Back and forth to Tucson International Airport, no direction lasting more than 25 minutes.  Another reason to love living here. ***** We stayed close to home, avoiding the big stores... except for Costco.  Suitcases and vodka and sparkling water, a wreath and 2 huge poinsettias and a strong son to put them into and take them out of the cart and the car.  I knew there was a reason I had children. ***** Vibram Five Finger Shoes were purchased (Happy Hanukah) for Big Cuter and hiking shoes selected and paid for and given to TBG for a perfect surprise Christmas present for me.  We toured the outdoor mall in the upscale suburb which was supposed to house a Bloomingdales or Nordstrom's or Neiman Marcus but which, predictably, now houses a Wal-Mart, while TBG visited the dentist.  Athletic gear at Dick's and GrandDog toys at Petco and shoes and shoes and more shoes at DSW and then a lovely lunch at Wildflower. Having ...

Son to Mother and Sister who are still cooking dinner: "Dad was going to take something to the trash so I followed him because I thought he was going to sit at the table.  So I sat at the table and then he saw me sitting at the table so he joined me at the table.  We're really not rushing you girls at all." No, you're just munching on the cheese and putting your napkins in your laps and waiting... and waiting... and of course I'm feeling rushed.  But they are smiling and laughing and most of all they are HERE so I don't mind.  I just try to will the carrots to caramelize. ***** Said after watching Little Cuter and me in the kitchen, cooking up a storm for Wednesday night dinner while he and his father lay on the couch watching ball games:   "Do you girls mind this gender specific role division?" I know that my personal feminist revolution has been won if my son acknowledges such inequities.  Of course, they kept watching and we kept cooking, but we...

The Tucson airport has got to be the quietest place in the USofA this morning, the day before Thanksgiving.  There are about 15 people waiting in the lovely lobby for arriving passengers.  There was not another car on the approach road to the airport, not was there a line to grab a parking ticket.  I found a space in the front row, right next to the hashmarked crosswalk. Walking to the terminal, I encountered the only other moving car in the lot - whose driver decided it would be a good idea to drive right through the walkway even though an elderly couple and I were already in it.  Ah, Tucson when the snowbirds return.  Ah, old people who shouldn't be behind the wheel.  But it's Thanksgiving and I'm in a mellow mood so I laughed instead of pounding on his trunk, and commiserated with my fellow travelers about the poor driving habits of the interlopers.  And we knew he was an interloper - he had Wisconsin license plate. TIA has a cool arrivals board -...

The holiday season is officially underway.  We are beginning our trips to the airport to collect our offspring.  The refrigerators are filling up with cranberries and oranges and whipping cream and a 23 pound turkey that had better offer more left-overs than last year's model managed.  The lines in the grocery stores are longer than usual, and the shoppers all have lists.  I'm not adding anything else to my To Do Lists - they are long enough already.  I am just trying to accomplish 3 or 4 "extras" every day - making the labels for the brownies, collecting the #4 Priority Mail boxes in which they will be shipped, filling the pantry with unsweetened chocolate squares and almond extract and King Arthur Flour, finding just the right no-show socks for the Cuters' stockings, rummaging through my Secret Hiding Place to see what kind of house-gifts are still waiting to be given to those who invite me to share libations and sweets over the next few weeks.  There's n...

And it really wasn't that hard at all.   No, seriously, it wasn't.  I didn't have anyone to argue with me about the finer points of retiring at 68 or 70, no one screaming in my ear that this first generation of black millionaires ought to be able to establish their own dynasties, free of the burden of estate taxes.  I was not lobbied by irate octogenarians railing at me to keep my hands off their medicare/social security/disability checks.  No baleful 20-somethings wandered through my thoughts, wondering when their government would be ready to deal with their needs and their futures.  Amster and her fellow medical malpractice attorneys were no where to be found, apparently busy seeking financial compensation for their clients' disastrous outcomes at the hands of (a very few but I still want to know who they are) inept practitioners.  There were 16 pundits allowed onto the monitor since they were linked to the original puzzle, but that was it. I tried...

Today's post was supposed to be about solving the country's deficit woes.  I'll get to that tomorrow.  I promise.  But right now I'm having trouble focusing on military spending and foreign aid and taxes because every time I get going I am confronted by a fact that I've been shoveling to the back of my brain's mulch pile. Elliot died last Thursday night. He gets to use his real name, because I never got around to telling you about him in a Burrow blogonym.  Two L's, one T..... it's something I could never remember, even though I tried really hard to do so because the fact that no one could remember really annoyed his wife.  Then again, lots of thing really annoy his wife, and, knowing that, I was able to laugh at myself each and every time I had to go to my address book and check on the spelling for a holiday card or an invitation.  I knew she'd appreciate the effort.  I never knew if Elliot cared or not. There have been lots of those notes and le...

I am going to try to reduce the deficit and fix the budget of the United States of America this weekend. When I'm done, I am going to put my money where my mouth is.  I'm going to publish my ideas where my persona is on display, here in The Burrow, and I'm going to post my solution on the New York Times Magazine's website.   I love the puzzles in the Sunday New York Times Magazine.  I always finish the crossword (or come real close) and sometimes the other puzzle on the page.  I like the thought of an anonymous competition with really smart people all over the globe.  I do them in ink, and I don't use the dictionary.  Human life-lines are acceptable (TBG feigns aggravation if too many quarters of football go by without my interrupting to wonder about the identity of the 1953 AL Cy Young winner) but for the most part it's me vs the boxes, one clue at a time.   Thanks to Ronni Bennett over at Time Goes By I came to a different kind of puzzle...

I'm feeling particularly blessed these days, and it really has nothing at all to do with the fact that Hallmark reminds me to remember that fact every November.   Friends and family have sick children and spouses and parents without any more money or memory of who they are.  Friends have lost their jobs and been disheartened by second chances and panicked about future employment in a depressed economy as they relocate for love or prepare to finish their education.  A new dad is re-enlisting.   And then, there's The Catcher , who took Tuesday off from work.  He never takes Tuesday off, but this week he did.  So, when the guy with the gun came in and asked where he was, he wasn't there.  The guy with the gun shot the girl who was there instead.  It was a little bullet so it didn't kill her but still...... I'm telling you, things are getting stranger and stranger out there.  Mr. 7 s having trouble sitting still in class and Mr. 5 ca...

  Everything in italics is taken verbatim from Marion Jones's interview on The Daily Show Even if no one will say it aloud, Marion Jones cheated.   I go into this post needing to make my position clear.  There is no doubt in anyone's mind, least of all hers, that she took performance enhancing drugs. She plead guilty to lying to Congress about using them and spent 6 months in prison.   It was awful.   D'uh. John Stewart interviewed her on The Daily Show this week and every single thing I've ever thought about her was there, in full view, begging me once again to feel those feelings.  So, here I am, back with another hero with feet of clay. And that's the saddest part, because her feet were really the wings of Hermes.  She flew over the ground, her feet barely touching the earth before springing forward with grace and elegance and speed.  Oh, yes, she was fast.  And she told John Stewart that she had always had this gift,...

I have arrived at a conclusion today.  I have altered my perspective and I'm wondering how it will all play out.  It's not that I received any new information, nor did I experience a major life changing event.  I was driving north and south on local streets, making all the lights and thinking deep thoughts as the miles flew by.  I was alone with my parcels and my dry cleaning and the novel I borrowed in Phoenix rattling around on the front seat, where G'ma should have been sitting if she were ever in the mood to keep me company as I did my errands.  NPR was blathering on about itself, and I wasn't in the mood for their self-indulgent crap, so I turned off the radio, rolled down the windows, opened the sun-roof and breathed deep. I was alone.  All by myself.  Listening to no one.  Unbothered by anyone.  It was heaven. My thoughts went to the Cuters (of course) and the Big Cuter's telling me last week that he had not left his apartment for an...

The Cornell Club of Southern Arizona has a checkered history when it comes to event planning.  When The Big Red was involved in basketball's March Madness last year there were some well attended "watch parties" at a sports bar which drew new members and classmates who were looking for others who might be cheering for a team from the Ivy League.  But typically our events are attended by Board Members and their devoted spouses and reluctant children, with the occasional "maybe I'll see her there" hopeful newbie.  Luncheons, picnics, holiday parties.... we've tried them all.  Those who attend have a fine time, but we already know and love one another and Cornell.  We haven't been doing a very good job of attracting anyone else. Saturday was a different kettle of fish entirely.  One of our younger alumni has secured a job at the Reid Park Zoo here in Tucson, and she kindly offered to share her back-stage access with us.  The Crayola Kids agreed to keep...

When did I become old enough that typing that phrase doesn't raise gasps amongst my readers?  When my 6th grade crush was killed by a speeding car there was no precedent for our emotions.  We didn't know how to feel so we pretended it had never happened.  When Debbie Goodman starved herself to death  in the 9th grade, we all learned about anorexia as we hid behind a facade of it can never happen to me .  When Marian Lubart died in one of those awful too-many-counselors-in-an-out-of-control-car summer camp nightmares she was just 16 and our parents used her as a cautionary tale.  She'd been my friend since we were very little, but her death was a learning experience, not an opportunity to grieve.  When I heard that Roomie's twin brother had met a similar fate some years later I felt, ever so briefly, my own mortality.  Boys had gone to Viet Nam, after all, boys I'd sat next to in class or at the movies.  But they were still felt at a distance...