The Burrow

The County is turning our 2-lanes-no-shoulder cross street into a 6-lanes-with-amenities major thoroughfare.  As I've told you before, this makes me both happy and sad. Since they started earlier this summer, there has been an explosion of caution cones and yellow earth moving equipment in and around our neighborhood.  This is not an entirely bad thing.  The trucks are an interesting combination of enormity and delicacy.  They pick up exactly the chunk of concrete they are intending to grab and they deposit it on a pile of debris which is scooped and dumped and carted away by vehicles whose tires are taller than The Schnozz. They don't drive those machines slowly.  Watching a tractor trailering a water truck easily half a football field long zoom across the road in front of your bumper, swaying and bouncing and careening is not something you forget.  Trust me.   There are a variety of private companies working on this project.  There are ...

There's no Monday Night Football tonight.  Are all the men watching Bachelor Pad? ***** Karina Bland writes a wonderful column for the Arizona Republic.  This past Sunday she wrote about Christina's mom.  If you have a box of tissues nearby, click here . ***** Did you know that installing a dance floor over an in-ground swimming pool involves scaffolding?  Neither did I, until this morning. ***** Planning my garden for perfection-a-year-from-now involves trees and pruning today to see what it will look like a month from now and plotting the angle of the sun.  It is so much fun; I almost always have a smile on my face.  I just wish Little Cuter and MOTG   were here too.  As LC's email demanded this afternoon: Be Closer! ***** We got a lesson in not putting all our eggs in one basket this morning when Comcast went out.   The land line  and the internet and the television - gone.  Comcast comped us two days of service and resto...

"Hang on. I'll get her." There were outlets already in the walls.  The one I saw first is on the corner, right where you turn to get anywhere else in their new house.  The kids had no idea what it was. "It's for your home phone," was perfectly clear to me but was met with blank stares by Messers 6 and 8.   "You attach a phone.... um... a big plastic box with a cord that's attached...."  and they were gone, off to use their computers, devices which fit in the palm of their hands and could be purchased by the careful hoarding of allowances and birthday gifts.  A box with a cord... not in their world. I started to say "When I was 8..." but by then only Elizabeth was interested in my reminiscences.  She's a kind-hearted child and has yet to grow tired of my stories.  I worry about over-talking her but she promises to tell me when I become boring so I share what it was like when I was a girl. I guess if I want to be a grandmo...

Nannie taught me well: If you see something perfect you should buy it, even if the event (birthday, wedding, Christmas) is months away.   One year, when the Cuters were young, I had finished my entire holiday shopping by the Sunday after Thanksgiving.  I spent a blissful December wrapping and baking and shipping and not shopping.  But that was only one out of 5 decades of holiday seasons which have left me in a frenzy, creating and locating up until the very last possible moment.   This year I began even before the MOMA Holiday Catalog  arrived.  There is nothing contained within those pages which would disappoint me.  It's hard for me to shop anywhere else once I've looked through it.   But even the NYC marketers must think that August is just too soon for Santa.  I am the only one who's focusing in that direction right now.  Or so it seems. Take last week, for example.  I followed link after link, being amused and amazed....

If you click here  the interweb will take you to BlogHer where you can ready my in depth review of Tana French's mystery, Faithful Place.   Today's main post is my personal backstory; the book is profound and fun and quick and well written.   Click over and see for yourself.

BlogHer has sent me many books to review .  I've been disappointed with most of them.  Chick-Lit has never been my genre of choice and, perhaps because we are a network of women, the selections from Penguin have all had a decidedly female bent. Except for The Kid , they ones I've read have had women protagonists. Even then, I could argue that his mother's presence is palpable on every page and that they are, together, the heroes of the story. And The Kid is a story about family and love and acceptance and if those aren't women's themes then I don't know what are. For the most part, the books have happy endings, though happy is a relative term.  There's just enough angst to make them fodder for book clubs; some of them even had questions at the end.  They purported to inform me about the quality of relationships and the lessons to be learned from those against whom we lean or bump.  There are lessons, and they are about redemption, and everyone fee...

She's right up there in my pantheon of "if I weren't me I'd be..." women. Right up there with Sally Ride and Sandra Day O'Connor, women who did what they wanted to do even if it was really a boy's game.  Millenials may have no interest in hearing about Title IX, but it changed the landscape of after school activities forever  All of a sudden, tall girls with hops had someplace to go.  And when they grew up and still wanted to play they could apply to the University of Tennessee and hope that Pat Summitt would take them under her wing. It wasn't a very comfortable wing for most of the time.  There were high expectations and compliments were few and far between.  She'd grown up with a tough father, a hard to please man whose standards redefined impossible to meet.  There was a lot of him in her coaching style, it seemed.  But if a real problem arose, if there was a need, if help were required, Pat Summitt was there.  Her style -focused and d...

My pantry was organized this morning.  MaryLynne organized and designed  and lifted and cleaned.  She sorted and categorized and stacked.  She wondered what I thought about this or that, and, for the most part, we agreed. Then she picked up the silver ice bucket.  The ice bucket that has nooks and crannies and creases and which never really shines, no matter how much silver polish and elbow grease is applied.  The ice bucket with the lid that has never closed all the way for as long as I can remember.  The ice bucket which sat in the corner of the dry sink in G'ma and Daddooooo's foyer for a long long time, until it was moved to the hutch, covered in saran wrap to keep it from tarnishing. That never made much sense to me, either.  Akin to Aunt Lilly's plastic covered couches, it told me in no uncertain terms that this was an item that was waiting for an Important Occasion before it would be unwrapped, but that it was too impressive an item to ...

We've been checking in with one another fairly regularly, my pity party partners and I. Maybe it's the time of year, fresh with the scent of the first days of school.  Our daughters and our friends' daughters and our grand-daughters are all headed out the door with new backpacks and freshly straightened hair while we sit back and nurse our wounds.  It was good to be young and carefree.  It was good not to worry about bullets or cancer. There are legs which won't cross and binders which cannot be removed and there's that radiation rash that makes any movement at all an issue to consider wisely.  We are get-up-and-go girls when we're not being ravaged by disease or disability.  Finding our energy sapped, our nerves fraying, we're living embodiments of the fact that it has, in fact, got-up-and-went. Not every day, of course.  We have our moments on the tennis court or at the Convention Center or walking the hallways in the mall.  There are times whe...

In our family, we celebrate birthday weeks or months.  One day is just insufficient to share the love.  When I turned 50 I had a year-long birthday celebration tour; the occasion seemed to demand it. So what to do for my adopted home town, which celebrates the 236th anniversary of the founding of the Presidio de Tucson on Saturday?  Nerthus organized us into a Blog Carnival so that we can each celebrate in our own special way.  I'm just having a hard time figuring out what my way should be. 1775 is an arbitrary starting place, since there have been inhabitants here for over 4000 years.  But the Spaniards brought documentation and a written history began to take shape and suddenly there was a town in the desert.  Saturday is its birthday. One wonders what possessed those first settlers to choose this dusty part of the country as their home. Willa Cather's My Antonia  has the best description of this, which I could find if I looked for it but which...

Do you remember the conversation at IntrepidCat's Bat Mitzvah? We were standing in the hallway, waiting for Daddooooo to be found for the family picture.  Not a surprise, waiting for my Dad.  The world's most easily distractable human, it wasn't unusual that he was missing.  The picture had been his idea, but that, of course, made no difference. He was lost, not where he should be, having an adventure someplace other than where we were waiting.  G'ma was stewing and steaming and looking for him.  It was strangely comforting to have this little domestic dispute at the end of a lovely family gathering. His absence gave you all time to realize that every one of his grandchildren was standing in the same place. We couldn't come up with the last time that had happened.  There was the mid-1990's, when Daddooooo was going in for brain surgery and all but the California cousins - my kids - were gathered in Oceanside for a "Bye Bye Brain" party.  One or t...

From Facebook, an update from a high school friend : Fun day with my nephew and 4 year old great-nephew ..... a ride on the original Nunley's Carousel. In a flash, I was a kid and I was there, waiting not that patiently for the previous ride to stop spinning so that I could get onto the black horse, the best horse, the one with the hot pink rose and the flaring nostrils.  The one reared on her hind legs, fierce and proud and gorgeous.  The one on the outside, in front of the bench on which I used to sit, paralyzed with fear, until the black horse spoke to me. C'mon, denizens..... I was 8 and tiny for my age.  Those stirrups were at my eye level for a very long time.  Imagine how high up the saddle seemed.  It took some courage for me to mount the steed. I can feel the concrete of the pavilion beneath my feet and hear the bells clanging on the skeeball games because that was always where I stood to wait for the previous ride to end.  It was quieter b...

It's mid-August and the kids have been in school for a week already. Summer vacation as we knew it is long gone, just like a phone that plugs into a wall socket and needs a cord in more places than most students today have ever seen before. School used to end around my brother's birthday, June 22, and it always started on the Wednesday after Labor Day. That gave families time to get home from the long weekend or the whole summer, do a load of laundry and lay out school clothes before the year began. Now, resorts can't find college-age staff to work after August 5th and it doesn't really matter because there aren't any school-age kids romping in the pool anyway. They are all dripping sweat as they walk from the bus to the classroom; air conditioning has a tough time competing with 250 little bodies opening and closing doors as rapidly as their schedules demand. . I brought treats to the staff at Prince Elementary for a 1st Day of School LoveFest; I had to sh...

Acupuncture was suggested by Marcus the Master Manipulator. Acupuncture was not something I'd ever longed to do.. or have done. Pinging needles in my ear and my hip just didn't float my boat, excite me, fill me with enthusiasm.... nope, I wasn't looking forward to it at all.  I went in a skeptic and I left a believer. Explaining that her goal was to move my Qi (my favorite Wordscraper trick, pronounced chee , the life force or energy) more freely through my body. Since I've been describing my hip as being stuck and bunched up this sounded like a good plan. I just closed my eyes and tried to breathe through the sensation of a tiny prick in my ear... and then another... and then another and then I just decided to go with the flow and before I knew it there really was a flow. . Serena added some Reiki energy work and if you promise not to laugh at me I'll tell you that I could really feel stuff moving around inside and outside my self. It was tangible. Th...

It took me 3 long lights to go one short block this afternoon. I wasn't in a hurry and NPR was blathering about Democrats and Republicans but I really don't care any more so I turned it off and put The Schnozz in neutral and watched the sky. The clouds were building up over the Catalinas and they were much more interesting to me than the decline and fall of the global economy. The minor intersection just outside our neighborhood is being transformed into a jug-handle/dedicated right turn/4 lanes and a median strip extravaganza. There's a mobile cement factory at one end of the project, and every single caution cone and paddle-on-a-base in the state of Arizona is lined up left and right of what used to be my street sign and a stop sign.  Now, that peaceful corner is a construction site Yesterday, there were mounds of dirt 15 feet high at the peak lined up like mini-pyramids to my left.  Today, there's a dirt road. Granted, it's...

There may be something to living a clutter free life. I do feel calmer when I walk into the closet which was organized and has managed to stay so. My desk is the antithesis of the closet. Let's see..... call the dentist for G'ma's dentures change the doctor appointment write a check covering the co-pay for G'ma's visit to the ER reserve those books from the library call the artist who offered to help with my logo and that's just what's right in front of my nose. No wonder I can't think creatively. My life is interfering with my thought processes. The saddest part about this situation is that I wrote the previous paragraphs several weeks ago and they are even more true today than they were back then.  I am certainly not part of the solution.  I am definitely part of the problem.  In fact, I can tell you that in this one rare instance, I have no one to blame but myself for the state of affairs that lies in front of me. It takes remark...

Walking is possible when I am motivated. Marcus the Master Manipulator is correct when he says that the insert in my heel will straighten my gait. I trekked and I wobbled but mostly I got where I was going without too much discomfort. I learned to engage my deep belly and butt musculature and to release my quads and to relax. Well, maybe I didn't learn to relax but I began to consider the concept in relationship to clenching of muscles in my walking apparatus. It's a start. TSA checks are superficial at best. My 3.5 ounce tube of Arnicare went through without a hitch, although it was buried in my suitcase and not encased in a clear plastic bag which I'd removed from the rest of my belongings. My lap top was removed from the case in which it had traveled unimpeded through that same checkpoint just months before. Signage was negligible and attitudes were indifferent and smiles were hard to come by. I learned to smile through it, focusing on the fun ahead and lettin...

Yes, I am dancing with a Scrubbing Bubble. Yes, I am leaning on the world's largest toilet. (Did you know that Charmin now has a Strong variety? I don't really want to think about that right now.) Yes, I am exchanging thumbs up with a Dole banana after acquiring an Egglands Best reusable grocery bag. And yes, that would be my hand in the grasp - or what approximates a grasp - from a can of Pringles. He was the only one with visible air holes in his outfit.  The rest of us were really really warm. Claudia Potamkin is my most thoughtful interviewer since Brian Williams.  She got it  without being maudlin.  As always with a good questioner, I learned more about myself than I knew before I began. And this is Laurel House , whose red panties were only part of the fun as we talked about Benefits from Bummers.    And if that's not the best way to describe my life since January 8th I invite you to try your own hand in the comments section below.  La...

Little Cuter and I hobnobbed with the best of them this weekend. We found a girl for her brother (you know who you are!) and spent hours surrounded by a host of women who completely got it , whatever it was at the moment. We were inspired and uplifted and heartbroken and loved. It was just about perfect. I wished that Christina had recovered from her wound and was able to join me. She'd have loved the hoopla and the attention and most of all she'd have loved the swag. I mean, really, what's not to love about cow pants: There were, as always when you travel, some pieces that didn't go just right, but it was hard to complain when the temperatures were in the 70's and the sun was shining and the breeze was blowing and those crispy white fish street tacos were on the table in front of us. Everything was very very very very very... well, you get the picture, far away from everything else. Kinda sorta like we used to say that everything at Cornell was uphi...

Little Cuter and I are in San Diego, along with 3000 other bloggers and assorted hangers-on, for BlogHer '11. BlogHer is the network that brings you the suggestions for other posts in my sidebar. It's the network that sends me books to review . And it's the network that supported Little Cuter after she posted Tough , the post which blasted me to mini-stardom. Suddenly, my readership was through the roof. More important to my family, though, was the love that came from BlogHer itself. Lisa and Elisa and Jory were there for her, offering themselves as resources for whatever she needed. It was an indication of things to come. Gabby went home from the rehab hospital and BlogHer asked for my thoughts... thoughts for which they were willing to pay me. Financial compensation for my efforts - BlogHer was certainly following through on its promise to empower me. I walked on a cloud for a week. I don't know what the algorithm is which brings me Meg and Jo and all ...

I have a headache from the sound of the keys clacking. I had to flee the sound of the carts clicking over the concrete outside Wally-World this morning. I am becoming my father....... and I really need to become my mother. I've been saying that I should take lessons from G'ma on aging with grace; perhaps this is one of them. I am wearing bi-lateral hearing aids. From the front and the side they are basically invisible.  I'm not concerned about a change in my appearance. From the back, I think they blend into my hair quite nicely. They have a handy dandy silver travel case, and the UofA Audiology Clinic set me up with a few weeks of extra 312 size batteries. Apparently, batteries have numbers as well as letters. Who knew? Did I mention that my camera makes all kinds of interesting clicks and whirrs and beeps that I noticed for the first time just now when I took that picture of my ear? Let me be quick to reassure you: there are some definite upsides to these...