The Burrow

Visibly more beautiful skin from a body wash by  Dove - sure, and I have ocean front property in Nevada I'd like to show you, too.  Your snarky reviewer read the email with more than a grain of salt. She's been burned before by products promising lustrous this and shining that and all within time frames that seemed impossible.  Visibly more beautiful skin after seven days?  Even I could follow through on a program like that. If it didn't work, I'd lost nothing; they were sending the product my way for free. The visible care toning container arrived at my doorstep a few weeks later.  The instructions for the reviewing program were simple.  Try it, take a picture, and write about what you thought. Free soap and a prompt.... I was on it in a flash.  The label was intriguing; the highest concentration of NutriumMoisture technology across the Dove portfolio.  I'm not sure what NutriumMoisture technology is, but there's a...

I'm watching it all on tv.  Big Cuter thinks we are hopelessly 20th century, sticking to the big screen in our living room. He watches in real time, on his telephone.  Honestly, even if I had more than a stupid phone (which I don't) I don't think I'd watch that way.  I just don't care that much. What I like are the stories and the spectacle and the momentary hush before the bell rings and the event begins.  I like the preparation coming down to that one instant for everyone, all at the same time.  The athletes, the time keepers, the bell ringers, the basket-ladies, the groundskeepers, the maintenance crews - it's all been about this moment in time.  They are all in it together, and I, sitting at home on Douglas, am there with them, too... and with the billion other people who watched the Opening Ceremonies last week.  Danny Boyd made a movie for the modern age, and he did it with style.  There was no over-the-top extravag...

It's my fault that G'ma's dentures have been rattling around in her mouth these last few months.  Apparently, the dentist has been waiting for us to make an appointment to have the bent clasp repaired.  That fact was mentioned to me at her last appointment, but it never made it into my permanent memory bank, let alone onto the calendar.  With the upcoming nuptials, "Preparing G'ma" has a place on the To Do List and fixing her teeth tops her section. The appointment was yesterday, at 4pm. I arrived at the pod-castle just after 3.  Her nap was over, Law'n was on the tube, and the Horace Mann blanket was covering her lap.  She was wearing one of my favorite blouses, the yellow one with the gathered bottom, and a pair of pants that looked like ones she bought for herself but which, upon closer inspection, belonged to another resident.  Laundry is fungible at the pod-castle; every month or so the worker bees scour the closets and dressers, returning misplaced...

Dear Aurora, Tucson sends you its love. The media reports specific numbers of killed and wounded, but we here in Tucson know that's only a part of the story. This happened to all of you, each and every one of you. We get it. Really, we do. Everybody has a story, or is one degree of separation from a story, that puts a loved one on the way to or passing by when or right across the parking lot . That is true here in our small-town-metropolis of just over 1 million; it must be even more true in yours, one third our size. Does it seem as if all the faces in town have the same glazed and dazed expression? Do you feel as if you are walking through a movie or a bad dream or any of the other banal explanations thrown your way? There's more than a little difficulty involved in realizing that this really did happen right there in your town.... where you shop and stroll and send your kids to the mall. It's just a regular town in a beautiful part of the country. We get it. Real...

Yes, that is what Little Cuter emailed me this morning: Throw out the artwork. Allow me to explain.  In preparation for her upcoming nuptials, hosted in our humble abode, I have been purging our personal spaces of detritus.  I have been cleansing with a vengeance. It's not cleaning, per se.  I am sweeping up major piles of dust and debris, but I'm saving the actual washing of the garage floor for Ernie and his big strong guys.  I'm old.  I'm achy.  I'm lazy.  I'll pay. But there are pieces of the task which cannot be accomplished by hired help.  Decisions must be made.  If I let TBG get involved, there will be nothing at all for my grandchildren to discover about their parents; he'd toss it all.  I'm closer to him than he thinks on this issue; what I save I save because I don't want the children to be angry if I dispose of a treasure they thought was safe at home. Big Cuter was horrified that the photo album I created after his G...

I have to write about it. I've tried avoiding it.  I've tried minimizing it.  I've tried ignoring it.  I've tried tuning it out.  I've skipped headlines and entire sections of the newspaper.  It's not working. Eighteen months ago I was one of those people... those regular, everyday people, those I just went to the movies people.... those people in the all-too-familiar hospital gowns with the silly ties that won't stay together.  I understand why they have those goofy grins on their faces; they've lived to tell the tale.  There is sorrow all around them, but they are here to lend an ear... or to be leant an ear themselves.  ***** Thirty minutes after the bullets stopped flying, I was sedated. I stayed that way until Mr. and Mrs. Obama came into my room and went right back down the rabbit hole again as soon as they left.  It wasn't until Thursday morning that I was fully awake. I think that is why it has taken me so long to tune i...

Thanks for the love and concern you've been sending my way as the sorrow in Aurora unfolds.  I was heavily sedated immediately after January 8, 2011, so this part brings back no personal memories for me. The loss, the devastation, only exacerbates what's always so close to my heart.  Time passes, and the wounds become less raw, less omnipresent, but never less painful.  I hope that those Coloradans are as enveloped in love as my family and I were; that's what got us through the darkness. ***** There's an interesting discussion on BlogHer  about purple backpacks and long division and the Lands End back to school catalog.  People are all over the map in their responses, but the tone of it all is civil and intelligent while "agreeing to disagree" through gritted teeth.  It's just what on-line conversations should be all about. **** While I'm on that subject, I tried raising gender neutral children and, except around the edges, I ...

Someone came running up to me at the gym this morning, her face alight with delight at my progress, or so she gushed all over me and anyone else who might have been listening. She proclaimed that she''d watched me walk across the room and there had been "none of that lurching from side to side" she'd grown used to seeing.  I liked having my efforts at proper ambulation recognized and rewarded.  I wasn't that crazy about the whole lurching from side to side image, but I had to admit that it was accurate, if painful to admit.  My goal has always been the same: a fluid gait .  The number of muscles and tendons and joints and ligaments and bony structures which have to work in unison in order for me to achieve that goal is unfathomable.  Not that one couldn't count it.  I am certain that Shannon , and Kyria and Becky  could figure it out, but the number would still be unfathomable.... deeper than deep.... to the bottom of the ocean and beyond....

G'ma and I went out for ice cream last week.  There were new glasses to be picked up from Dr. Le and hibiscus to be purchased at Rillito  and the weather was down to double digits.  The timing was right. I arrived at the pod-castle while the residents were finishing up their desserts.  Hot coffee and fresh baked cake; my mom could have been sitting at a diner, sharing a meal with friends.  But, the facts are that these friends replay the same conversations over and over again and she has no idea what their names might be or how she came to be sitting at the table with them.... and, the most important fact, she doesn't seem to mind. "Who are they?  Who knows?! They're pleasant company.... at least I don't remember them being unpleasant."  Such is the wonderfulness that is my maternal unit. She greeted me by name.  From then on, everything else was gravy, sauce on the sundae, the cherry on top.  The married couple wanted ...

I suppose if I had to choose someone to write my story for television, it would be Aaron Sorkin.  Even so, it was weird. I knew that the shootings were going to be featured on The Newsroom ; I'd heard a reference to it in the promos. Chronologically, it fit perfectly into the lull after the new year, when the Gulf Oil Spill had retreated to background noise and newsrooms around the country were searching for the next big thing,  I thought I was prepared. The story arc became very clear when TBG reminded me that Christina-Taylor's question, framed in my car on the way to meet Congresswoman Giffords, was about pollution and the destruction of the Gulf Coast.  That was the running motif to our domestic worries in early January of 2011.  I'll never forget it. Big Cuter, watching The Newsroom in San Francisco on a break from studying for the Bar Exam, was more startled than his parents.  He's usually the one with the calendar in his brain, keeping track of wha...

I seem to recall a time when Wolf Blitzer didn't annoy the hell out of me.  Whenever it was... and I just spent a minute or so trying to place it in context.... many years have past since then.  Now, his little face and little voice and little mouth make me want to scream. We all have our annoyances; I'm just sharing mine out loud. TBG likes listening to the talking heads of all descriptions.  We have this conversation periodically, when I open my ears and hear words strung together in vague approximation of sentences by bloviators on the left and the right.  I cannot argue with his response to my astonishment that he would spend time letting them into his ears let alone his brain. "Without being there myself, without seeing it in person, I can only gather as many facts and opinions as are out there and decide for myself what to believe." He spends his days thinking and comparing and groaning aloud.  This afternoon we watched Wolf and his reporter deconstr...

Monsoon is crashing over our heads.  Were I motivated to sit under the portico with a tripod and a remote switch I might have captured the lightning strike that bisected this scene moments before I took this picture. It's noisy and blustery and altogether wonderful. Though we might be a little crowded, scrunched inside if it happens during the wedding, the enormity and the beauty of it all will provide a wonderful distraction to any discomforts. And anyhow, I'm not allowing it to rain that evening. I've already sent the memo. ***** Remember that closet I had professionally organized?   Thirteen months ago I wrote this: Boxes of photographs and scrapbooking materials sit on the floor, taunting me but out of the way. Yesterday, I tackled those boxes. MOTG needed some photos of our bride-to-be, and they were all there, in labeled envelopes, for the most part, nestled amongst the negatives and the rolls of Kodachrome and the instant camera and...

....but it is heat nonetheless. Shannon, she of the miracle massage hands , has been torturing me with her photos of the California coastline this week. I awake to something like this every morning.  I'm glad she's having a good time... I just wish I could be there with her. I love my own pool in my own backyard, but there's nothing like running into the ocean and having a wave crash over your head to cool you off.  I'd much rather rub salt than chlorine out of my eyes.  The grittiness of the sand and the sharpness of the shells is more pleasant to my tootsies than the pool's pebbly surface.  And then, there's the smell. Driving from Tiburon to Stinson Beach, I'd roll down the windows as we turned the curve past the Mountain Home Inn, and the parking lot for the trails down to Muir Woods and the fire roads which led you higher up and the Alice Eastwood Campground, scene of several memorable Columbus Day overnights when the Cuters were young.  All ...

We are within 70 some days of marrying off our baby.  The plans have been made, deposits have been placed, attire has been purchased.  I am involved in on-going negotiations with the weather gods and goddesses.  TBG and I had the most fun ever tasting desserts, the post for which must wait until after the party so as not to reveal too much too soon.  Everything is in place and all I have to do is wait..... or so I thought until I looked at my containers. This used to be a geranium. I don't like their odor but this one had pretty flowers.... for a while.  This held vinca and the remnant of a Get Well gift's foliage.  The vinca surrounding the adenium (in its own pot, having its own watering needs) met a tragic end.  These zinnias which look like daisies have certainly seen better days.   Beth Hargrove, of Rillito Nursery, laughed as she saw me coming through the doorway. She'd posted on Facebook that locally grown hib...

I had trouble punctuating the title. Is the plural in the middle, like attorneys general?  Or is it, like lemon meringue pie, three words acting as one?  I fudged and used parentheses in an attempt to get around the rules by being cute. As TBG tells me quite often, it's a good thing that I am short.  Were I 5'11" with the same attitude I would rarely go a day without encountering someone who wanted to punch me in the face.  But, that persona in a small but sturdy body results in rueful head shakes or surprised laughter, much to his dismay.  I'm not obnoxious, I'm small. But, I digress. It doesn't matter, though, because that's what a good Girls' Night Out is all about - digressing.  Weekdays have a tendency to smoosh into one long blur of alarm clocks and bus schedules and elevators and errands.  Necessary but routine.  Glad to have the places to go and the life which needs tending but, for most of us, it's about the other more than about o...

There's something about boys out in the wild. They will find an adventure ten steps from the parking lot. This the the top of the secret place . Big Cuter wondered how I managed on Mt. Lemmon with Amster and her kids on Sunday. I told him that I was able to creep through the secret place with no problems. " The secret place?" he wondered. " You know, there are always secret places," said I. "Ahhhh, yes, I know," was his reply. For a moment, I think, he was back on Mt. Tam with his little sister and his mother on an adventure - hunting buffalo and tracking them silently with our Nature Explorer backpacks and our sticks. The buffalo were everywhere, just as Amsters' kids' imaginary terrors were stalking us this weekend. Up and over and under we went - or they went and I observed and photographed. "Will we be on the blog tomorrow? I like to know when I'm on the internet." That was the permission statem...

I was low on fuel and short on time. My neighborhood Applebee's fit the bill. I spend much too much time emailing and not enough time looking at the women who fill my world. A quick text, an update on Facebook, an e-card for a birthday or a heartfelt but still one-step-removed-from-a-real-hug get well card...they are useful and convenient and keep the flames of a relationship on simmer. But for a real dose, to reinforce all the reasons I love them in the first place, I felt the need for Girls' Night Out. Applebee's offered us a gift card if we'd have some fun and post about it here in The Burrow. The fact that they were also willing to pay me for writing this post was an extra added bonus. What a treat - right around the corner for Happy Hour at a place whose motto is "Life is Better Shared." Yes, the menu was in the shape of an apple...Applebee's, remember?...and it was good for a giggle or two while Crayola Mom and I waited for Miss Margo and ...