The Burrow

I haven't examined the lint in my navel for quite some time.  I have noticed this dearth of introspective posts with a wry kind of amusement.  It seems that I've even begun to bore myself with my story. The last few days have rearranged my thoughts, though.  It feels appropriate to work it all out here in The Burrow.  As I've said before, typing to you is great therapy. I've been engaged with a new physical therapist for the past two months, and for the first time in a long time I am beginning to see some real results.  TBG had been after me for a long time to get back into the weight room at the gym and, of course, he was absolutely right.  I am weak.  That weakness can be corrected only with consistent exercise and constant attention to form.  The re-construction of my hip is not the issue; Dr. Boaz was a fine carpenter.  The absence of muscle, the reliance on compensatory patterns, the fear factor ...... it's all on me. So, I hav...

All the parental units attached to this little person were at work yesterday.  That's really saying something, since there are four of them involved in his life right now and two of them do shift work. There's usually somebody around when he bounds off the bus.  But Wednesdays are proving particularly difficult this semester, what with his  "early out" release and their overtime making meeting him at 1:45pm a challenge.  Sure, I'm glad to help.  I know the security code to open the garage door and Amster's dining room table is a lovely spot on which to type.  The dogs are in the backyard and require no attention at all.  His brother didn't feel well and went to rest at work with mom. It was just the two of us.  I was stoked. Listening to Mr. 8 is like having the grade school Big Cuter back in my life all over again.  Curious, serious, thoughtful and smart, there's nothing like a latency age boy to make my heart soar.  And soar i...

Kate Winslett doesn’t look like this    and she’s not afraid to say so: “I do not look like that and more importantly I don't desire to look like that.  I am proud, you know.”  The editorial staff of the British edition of GQ back in 2003 decided that she didn’t look quite right enough for their cover so they took to  Photoshop and got to work.  By the time that they were finished, Ms. Winslettt was considerably thinner…..smaller….less womanly.  It’s a beautiful picture, it’s just not Kate Winslettt. Titanic’s been re-released, and that must be why this story about her body gracing GQ’s cover has been all over Facebook of late.  I remember watching the movie with Little Cuter and her girlfriends, over and over and over again.  Kate gets naked and Leo draws her and her curves are lying there on the couch, Rubenesque in their fleshy wonderfulness.  For the first time in a long time, I didn’t need to interrupt their viewing wit...

Do you know how happy you make me, denizens?  Do you have any idea how powerful a force you are in my everyday life?  Life Well Lived asked me to write about how blogging increases my happiness quotient; I couldn't have asked for a better prompt. I'm sitting in the living room of the Arizona Inn, typing to you from a big red leather armchair.  There's a game table with 8" chess pieces on an inlaid board and a glass fronted library case with leather sets of the classics.  Each seating area has its own Tiffany style lamp shining brightness to match the scorching sun outside. I've never been so glad to have read the Wall Street Journal as I am this morning.   Alina Dizik wrote a piece last week   extolling the virtues of the hotel lobby as public office space.  Hoteliers seem to like the buzz that locals create and the locals enjoy the environs, several steps above a metal table at Starbucks.  Since I had a meeting across the street a...

Ellen Marie thinks she's too young to be so full of aches and pains.  Her cortisone shot didn't do much good and she's tired of asking her hiking buddies to slow down and wait for her.  A hip replacement at 48?  How can this be happening. She's the second 40-something I know with replaceable hips.  Was it something in the air during the years they were growing up?  Their mothers were girls in 1945.  Could it be an effect of the bombing of Hiroshima? Alaskans are finding volleyballs and soccer(foot)balls on their shores as flotsom from the last year's tsunami makes its way from Japan; who's to say that I'm not seeing the tip of an iceberg here in Tucson?  ***** Our favorite restaurant changed its menu.  Our favorite dishes are gone, replaced by almost-kinda-sorta-adequate substitutes.  The waiters and waitresses and busboys and hostesses continue to have the flattest butts in town, but that's all that remains of our go-to esta...

I spent Saturday watching other people's children play sports. I felt as though I were in an advertisement for Mrs. Obama's Let's Move initiative.   Though the temperatures were flirting with triple digits, there were hundreds of people at La Cima Middle School, watching and playing soccer. Only the parents of the players were sheltering under umbrellas, immobile in the heat of the noontime sun.  Everyone else was kicking a ball or playing tag or stretching before flag football.  Best of all, everyone was smiling. I was reminded of the benefits of team sports as I watched Mr. 6's fellow first graders pass the ball up the field.  They are still working on scoring and aiming is apparently a higher level task than they have mastered as yet, but it was far from the herd-ball I'd seen at the first game.  The defense moved up in concert with the front line, the "far" kids stayed far and the "near" kids stayed near and I watched in amazement as they h...

Our icons are dropping like flies.  One minute I'm watching the world's oldest teenager recover from a stroke and then I turn around and he's died.  Laughing about "the most feared words in the English language" in a totally different context last week and all of a sudden Mike Wallace is no longer here to see me. I, who usually will eschew televised celebrity obituaries, found myself fascinated by the coverage of these deaths.  I sat, enraptured, as Brian Williams and 30 Rock took me back in time to American Bandstand and my parents' Magnavox console tv.  I was back there on the carpet in front of the set, in full lotus (I thought that was "real Indian style"), wishing that I lived in Philadelphia so that I could dance on the show, too.  I didn't realize that Dick Clark was a gazillionaire.  I never paid much attention to how he spent his time between New Year's Eve and $25,000 Pyramid.  Did you know that he hosted shows on all three maj...

I was 30 and pregnant.  I'd been passed over for a promotion and my career was stalled so I paid some attention to the ticking of my biological clock.  The baby grew, the job became more frustrating, and then TBG received his compensation package. He was moving up the ranks at Goldman, Sachs (back when that was respectable thing to say).  The financial services industry paid their employees on a scale unheard of in the social services sector of the economy then as it does now.  I've written about dollars vs praise  as incentives for performance before, and my point still stands.  The words are nice; the dollars pay the bills. We sat at the dining room table that night, for the first time truly thinking about whether or not I should return to work following the birth of our child.  My job was secure; I could take maternity leave and return without missing a beat.  The search for a full-time nanny would be stressful, but it could be done. This w...

Kathleen started Reach Out after I was shot.  Combining the human resources of The Happy Ladies Club with her own (self-described)  natural talent for finding and promoting projects, there have been blood drives and food bank visits and today there was Ben's Bells. Founded by Jeannette Mare and her family after the death of her nearly 3 year old son, Ben, the project promotes kindness in the community as a way of returning the kindnesses the family was shown after Ben's illness and death. Jeannette is the warmest, funniest, most interesting leader of a non-profit I've ever met.  Her blonde curls announce her presence; her dazzling smile draws you into her heart.  When she thanks you for coming and helping you know that the sentiment originates from deep within her. What she's created is the most satisfying good deed in town. Open 5 days a week in a donated building (which housed a saloon during Tucson's formative years), there is no charge to partici...

Who knew?  I certainly did not.  For six long, hot years we have been living in the desert.  If I wanted to see water I headed to the coasts.  When water comprises only 0.35% of the area within our state's boundaries, it never occurred to me to look closer at hand.  The pool in our backyard sufficed. But Margo checked out Silverbell Lake at Christopher Columbus Park here in Tucson last week and invited me to join her on a circumnavigation.  She promised a smooth track and lots of water.  She was right on both counts. Do you see the fish on the welcome sign?   This lake is stocked every other week with  channel catfish ....delivered all the way from fish farms in Arkansas, rainbow trout ...grown and delivered from sources in Colorado, and sunfish ....from farms in Arkansas, according to the Urban Fishing Fact Sheet .  Who knew? Apparently these folks did. I know.  I know.  This photograph does not look...

It rained yesterday morning and the flora are enjoying the drink.  The cacti are bulging, having soaked up as much as their expansive innards will allow.  Walking out to get the paper was pure joy.  There was enough breeze to warrant a light jacket; I wrapped myself in a friend's gift while I was lying on Douglas last year - a stretchy hoodie that reminded me of how far I'd come.  Walking down the driveway last year was cause for celebration and alerting the media.  Seriously.... there are several national news outlets that ran B-roll of me hobbling to my mailbox.  Apparently, American needed to know. The paper was filled with Rio Nuevo related financial shenanigans.  As I recall, when we moved here in 2006 the headlines were much the same.  Closed door meetings, secret plans and no clear line of accountability were true then and were true this week, if the Arizona Star is to be believed.  And what an embarrassing mess it was; " We don...

I sat on the patio in the backyard yesterday, drinking Proseco and gossiping with the girls. We ate hulled strawberries and shifted around so that the sun didn't burn any of our parts more than the others.  There were shared memories and new stories and much advice was given.  We wore no makeup and our shorts were the ones lying atop the laundry pile; we were there for one another, not trying to impress. Sparkling wine as dinner..... I could get used to this. ***** There's a distinct change in the breeze and the air quality here in the desert Southwest.  April is nearly half-way gone, and most all of the snowbirds have fled to cooler climes.  Those of us who are planning to stick it out through the summer share a certain glee, a glint in our eyes, a reluctance to admit that we love baking in triple digit temperatures. I can't speak for anyone else, but, for me, it's self-preservation.  I don't want Tucson to be winter-crowded all year long. ***** Justifi...

TBG says it all the time - to whom can a parent point a child seeking a hero? I might have started with religious leaders, but there's all that mess in the Catholic Church.  As a girl, I used to like to listen to Rabbi Hillel Hyman.  Daddooooo thought he was the smartest Rabbi he'd ever met; I just thought he was cool.  Young, hip, and quick-witted, he listened as well as he spoke.  I never felt small or ignorant or foolish; I rose to his level.  In today's climate, I'm not sure that G'ma would be comfortable with me spending time alone in an office with him. I'm watching the Bobby Petrino mess erupt all over the news.  Petrino, who left his Louisville football team mid-season for the NFL's Atlanta Falcons, who he left with 3 games left in the season for Arkansas, has just been fired by the University for lying about his inappropriate relationship with a 25 year old member of his staff.  He probably shouldn't have said that he was alone on the...