The Burrow

Sitting at LAX, relaxing in the super-sized wheelchair which toted me from Gate 3 to Gate 5 in style, trying to stay calm as our connecting flight to San Francisco is delayed and delayed and delayed once again.  Sure, we could change to an earlier flight, but our bag is checked and we'd have to return to retrieve it or pay to have it delivered to our hotel.  Apparently, the contract between the airlines and the passengers is weighted in the carrier's favor.  Apparently, I am the only one on the planet who is surprised by this. I love to fly.  I love taking off and watching the ground drop away.  I like holding TBG's hand and squeezing as we leave the earth.  I like the free drinks and the little bags of pretzels and I like the fact that sitting still brings me closer to those I love.  I'm not nervous about crashing and I'm little enough that I'm rarely uncomfortable in the much too small seats.    My fellow travelers, however, are a dif...

I think that recycling this Memorial Day post has officially become a tradition. Here it is, again, updated for 2013.   Happy Three Day Weekend, denizens!! ***** 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 hated anklets. I wore them because they said you couldn't march without them and marching was too cool to pass up, but the shame............ All the school bands marched too, and 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. It was great. In Marin, the Memorial Day parade was always good for a  controversy  or two. Or three. Should the anti-war protesters walk alphabetically in the main march, or have their own ma...

If one more person asks me how I am doing I think that I will scream. Loudly.  For a prolonged period of time.  With gusto. There won't be any rage attached to my shrieking.  The questioner always has love in her heart and compassion in his tone.  There's a sense of trying to bridge the gap between us, between those who wonder and those to whom it  was done.  Whatever it is.  Establishing the connection helps to explain the inexplicable, I think.  If I can tell you how it feels, then you'll know and you won't have to worry because the social conventions dictate that I tell you that I am doing fine. Little Cuter calls this the teflon answer. When it was only my physical condition which aroused curiosity I had a set piece to pull out when the question was raised.  Healing took time.  My pain was lessening.  I looked forward to a complete recovery. I was delusional.  There is no doubt about it.  Despite having ...

I never gave much thought to sitting.  I didn't even need a chair.  If I got tired I hit the floor, or the couch, or the overstuffed tiger, and made myself at ease.  I didn't much like backless benches, but not much else made me uncomfortable. My body knew just how to get down there. The right parts bent at the right times and there I was, snug as a bug in a rug.  There wasn't anything conscious about it.  It just happened. Kind of like getting shot.  It just happened. Well, not really the same except for the piece about it not being something I thought about.  I walked.  I stood.  I sat.  Those things happened and didn't require space in my brain.  I felt safe and unworried on January 8th and I didn't need to spend a moment wondering if mayhem was in my future.  There was no reason to devote an iota of brain space to the notion of bullets and my body occupying the same place at the same time.   I saw a chair...

Slow and steady wins the race. You are so much quicker/stronger/more flexible than you were before. Can you carry that?  Let me do that?  Okay, Okay, Okay.... but be careful That's what I hear.  From everyone.  Strangers and loved ones and loving strangers and strange loved ones all agree - my progress is remarkable, I am an inspiration, I look great. The problem is, I don't see that person when I look in the mirror.  Nor, for that matter, when I think about sitting down or contemplate walking through the aisles of Wally-World or consider anything at all that will require movement.  I'm becoming G'ma, whose idea of exercise is moving her index finger up and down.  Need more investment on her part?  She'll wiggle both pointers and laugh in your face.  She's doing what she feels like and if you're unhappy about it you can just go away. I'm beginning to see her point. Marcus the Master Manipulator sent me home last week with a work-out tha...

I can't imagine it.  One minute the sun is shining and the next minute you're under a mattress in your bathtub as debris from your town blows overhead.  The noise is outrageous and the only thing louder is your beating heart.  You're not in control. You are not sure what your next move should be. You are doing the only thing you can do - you are staying still and hoping. Just as you say that you can't imagine me, holding Christina's hand one sunny morning, laughing and then screaming in an instant, living through a tornado is beyond my ability to fathom.   I lived through a hurricane on Long Island when I was 8 or 9.  Arnie's house flooded because the storm drain was clogged and a tree or two lost some limbs, but mostly it just rained a lot, or so I remember.  I wasn't scared.  I was thrilled.  School had closed at noon and Sam had come home with me to play cards because his parents were no where to be found.   Life was simpler befor...

Our president's gutsy call in Abbottabad renewed my faith in the man for whom I had voted.  Laying back and watching the Republicans shoot themselves in the foot on the budget and the debt ceiling and social safety nets was an effective if boring strategy. I was looking for bold leadership, a stroke of genius, a monumental shift in the cosmos.   Turns out I was looking in all the wrong places.   Then, again, I can't really fault myself.  The world's intelligence community had OBL in a cave in Afghanistan (I'm not sure why we're there any more... can we come home now?) so how can I feel foolish if I thought that domestic issues were where President Obama would make his stand.   A digression : Have you noticed that this president doesn't have an acronym, like IKE or JFK?   Carter, Bush, Clinton, Obama.... aren't headline writers tired of writing it all out all the time?  Are we so puerile as a nation that BO in bold on the front page of the NYTim...

Is anybody else out there enjoying watching the Republicans squirm?  Please please please tell me I'm not alone here.  I'm having so much fun; it seems a shame to keep it all to myself. Poor Ahhhhnold, he'd "gone about as fer as (he) could go" (and if you've never seen Lawrence Welk this is worth a look) Term limited into oblivion, he'd peaked and he knew it. It's not that he won't have a good life; it's just that it probably won't be in politics any more.  I can't be the only one who has given up defending him.  He's toast. The Trump-meister has gone back to worrying over the future of MeatLoaf and surveying his shining towers in the sky.  He didn't like being the butt of the President's humor at the Correspondent's Dinner. The whole 5+ mins is great, but for my purposes, start at 3:11 into Mr. Obama's remarks. And that was before we knew what had been keeping the President up at night.     I love this im...

A lot of women are very very angry with Ahhhnold right now.  I am one of them.  I can't seem to get off the topic.  I cannot leave it alone.   Big Cuter calls and tells me that he is disappointed but not surprised at the news.  He'd always thought of Ahhhnold that way.  " Were you really surprised, Mom?  Didn't you know?" Well, no, honey, in fact I didn't.  In fact, I bet that Maria didn't know either.  She may have suspected and endured wondering eyes from her friends who loved her enough to worry but knew enough to keep still.  She wanted to love him, she loved her family, her religion must have figured in there, too..... it doesn't have to make sense to her because she wants to believe him.  So she does.   I watched a friend's marriage implode as she and I marveled at the fact that we seemed to be the only two people on the planet who thought that he had been faithful to her.  In retrospect, it was absurd. And ...

I was just getting used to liking politicians again.  Our President's gutsy call in Abbottabad, Jan Brewer actually vetoing two of the more egregious bills sent to her by the Legislature.... well, I've been sitting here for a few minutes and that's all that I can come up with but you get my drift.  Things were looking up for the ones I admire and those I do not were at least not digging themselves deeper holes.   Personally, I was feeling kinda sorta sorry for myself (see last week's posts as evidence).  I needed to put on a game face.  I needed intensity and concentration and devotion to specific goals.  My physical therapist took me at my word and loaded me up with exercises.  There was nothing else to do - I had to reread Education of a Body Builder. I needed Arnold's encouragement to reach my goals.  I needed to immerse myself in the body I wanted to create.  I had to stay focused and strong and use my strengths to overcome my weakn...

I couldn't carry very much.  I had to plan ahead and bundle my errands.  I had to keep track of everything and remember not to leave anything behind because I really didn't want to have to walk any further than necessary.  But I managed to limp around with my cane and my equipment and my plants and my gloves and I spent three or four lovely hours in the sunny and breezy afternoon.  At the end,  everything I'd purchased at Rillito was in the ground and irrigated.  I even have the pictures to prove it. One basket carried my two trowels and the delicious basil which almost ended up in the front courtyard but didn't. See the cool walking stick?  Created by Daddooooo for our first Chanukah in Marin, I've decided that it is the perfect tool for this next stage of getting well.  It's really and truly mine: There's my S in brass studs.  The petunias are holding their own in the heat, though I imagine that they will be replaced b...