The Burrow

Vexed Voter (By Little Cuter, with a special appearance by FlapJilly) Ordinarily, I’d love to spend a chilly Thursday afternoon strolling around our three-story mall, smiling at the kids in costume on parade and window shopping and perchance happening upon a mid-season sale at Baby GAP. However, this afternoon I was incensed, and in the midst of my healthy rage I called the one person I knew who would commiserate: “Hi Mama! Oh boy do I have a blog post for YOU!”  You see, it was all planned perfectly. I had done my research on the dates and times early voting was available,(taken directly from this website :)   and timed our departure perfectly to coincide with the end of FlapJilly’s morning nap so that we could arrive right when the polls opened at 10am. Heck, I’d even picked out a specially crocheted hat from G’mu for her to wear for the occasion. With my little bean strapped to me in a wrap, we made our way to the Aurora Public Library, taking the ...

Hospice sent me a flyer last week, suggesting that I examine my heart for An Anniversary Reaction as the day G'ma died draws near. I had no idea that this was on the agenda. I'm not feeling particularly nostalgic for the last months and weeks of my mother's life. I miss her all day every day, but I'm trying to put the end of her life out of my mind as I concentrate on the long ago memories, the ones which are less painful, which are more Mommy to me. Hospice has no such agenda. Apparently,their involvement with G'ma's demise did not stop when she did. I have been invited to groups, to seminars, to conversations, to individual sessions, in all too numerous to remember. I've attended none of them.   I don't think I'm denying my sorrow. I don't think I am avoiding the issue. I don't think I need help managing my feelings. All of that might have been useful while G'ma was still alive and demanding my attention. The ambivalence ...

They.... you know who they are... they are the ones who disagree with you.  Doesn't matter what that topic is, they are on the other side.  You try to get along with them, but it's hard because they are so obviously, fundamentally, incontrovertibly wrong.  For this post, they are men who want to control women's bodies.  I'm reading Classic Tragi-Comedies for my Humanities Seminar this semester.  We started with Plautus's Amphytrion .  Jupiter impersonates the husband, impregnates the unknowing, already-pregnant-by-her-husband wife, convinces the returned-from-the-war husband that it is a great honor to have his offspring share the womb with the child of a god, and the fact that he didn't trust his wife when she swore she had been true is never dealt with to my satisfaction. The husband's honor was restored.  The god had the sex he desired.  The woman, carrying her rapist's child, is merely a foil to the men's wants and desires.  S...

It's one of those posts, again, denizens.  One of those whiny, why-can't-I-do-better, my life is a mess posts.  Blame it on Ernie.  I am.  My desk is, once again, an untenable place for creative thought.  My mind, barely linear in the best of times, is distracted by coupons for 17 bonus prints per month and a half finished Merle Reagle Thursday crossword and the notice of Meg Wolitzer's appearance at the Literary & Prologue Society of the Southwest which reminds me that I have to pick up the book which reminds me that it is one of the very few novels I put down and never picked up again and there I am at the end of a languid conversation with myself but nowhere near where I wanted to be, post-wise. Every time I clean it p I vow that it will never be this messy again.  I am at an inflection point right now; I can still see the desktop peeking through the detritus.  A quick glance reveals paper itineraries for trips already take, paper bills whi...

I received the invitation verbally, 18 hours before the hearing.  Would I write an email in support of the January 8th Memorial Foundation's request for a bond to support the project?  Would I ask my Tucson-email-list to do the same... as long as they could do it before 8am the next day?  Would I be free tomorrow to attend the hearing, lending my physical as well as written presence to the process?  Sure, sure and sure... as long as I could leave in time for Pilates at 10. I typed an email from my account and one from TBG's account and thanked Amster for the work she'd done in a similar vein for The Fire Chief, and herself.  I encouraged Elizibeth to write one, too; it's her history as much as it is mine or her parents'.  My email list was polled early Friday morning; some were actually awake and able to send a sentence or two themselves.  I put on my Fall-in-the-desert-go-to-meeting dress (cotton, sleeveless, dark brown in deference to the se...

A group of women, sitting seaside, dining on shellfish and salads. Shared experiences long ago have brought them together, with another, visiting for the weekend. Out of a comfortable silence, one asks of all of them and none of them and of herself as well: Is anyone else friends with SoAndSo on Facebook?  The silence was suddenly less amiable.  Eyes were raised, shoulders shrugged, heads nodded. Then, she asked the question that stumped us all. Does anyone know who she is?

Granted, it's not like Pennsylvania in 1865.  There is only a war of words, not bullets and bayonets. No one is dying, except, perhaps, a small piece of myself... the piece that believes in the process.  Right now, the process stinks. Martha McSally, the Republican, Tea Party supported candidate for the seat once held by Gabby Giffords, is using our former congresswoman's name and image in her ads.  There is a little old lady saying that "Gabby was independent ... and so is Martha ... and that's where my vote will be cast."  There are three sheriffs who appeared in an ad for Gabby's last run, who are now voting for McSally because the incumbent, Gabby's former director of community relations and her hand picked candidate in 2012, "is no Gabby Giffords."  A third ad reminds me that "Gabby Giffords supported border security measures," before it goes off on a rampage against our current Congressman. I scream every time one of those ads...

I'm trying.  I really am trying.  I'm just not having very much success. I took many lovely pictures of my weekend in Santa Monica.  I walked the depth of the beach, from the boardwalk  to the ocean.   I saw the original Hotel California and Muscle Beach and the Boardwalk.  I'd love to share more of the photographs, but technology is getting in my way.   Lenore the Lenovo Laptop served me admirably on my trip.  She was perfect for blogging in a comfy chair along the staircase at my hotel. Now that I am home and trying to do more than email, now I am having issues.    The salesman in Best Buy told me that Lenovo was IBM in the way that Acer swallowed up what was the remains of Gateway.  I took a moment while he was ringing up my purchase to mourn the demise of those cow boxes, and then moved on.  There was some minor instruction about shifting the screens and revealing other screens but ...

As I began to tell you last week, The Happy Ladies Garden Club went to The Birthplace of Tucson. This is the view from Sentinel Peak, a high spot over the location of the Presidio the white settlers established.  Now it is the home of the University of Arizona's giant A, and a hiking and sightseeing destination I followed the Happy Ladies around the garden's surrounding adobe brick wall and through this gate. The produce the garden creates was on a table to our left, but we were not allowed to look. Our guide led us into the recreation of what used to be.  The Santa Cruz River ran year 'round up until the 1600's. Greenery was everywhere. If you can grow a bigger sunflower in your backyard, post us a picture in the comments. Personally, I'm going with "this is the biggest thing I've ever seen." The goose neck squash we saw were the second blossoms of the season. They were in the Three Sisters Garden. Corn, beans, a...

The conservative Attorney General of the State of Arizona has given up the fight.  No longer willing to tilt against the prevailing tide of judicial and public opinion, he agreed that the Circuit Court's ruling on laws similar to Arizona's left him with no choice - same sex marriage will now be legal in my state. That's a statement which brings a smile to my face, given how I spent the beginning of my vacation. There were simple centerpieces  and there was carrot cake  because the blonde bride loves carrot cake. Little Cuter told me that. They've been friends since they were 8.  Their friendship spanned six or seven soccer teams. It included tennis camps and camping trips and family ski vacations. There are inside jokes - Little Cuter telling us to SHUT UP I'M SLEEPING when her snoring was the reason the rest of us in the tent were awake - and fond memories of pumpkin patching on the first Saturday in October for years and year...

Resting in the arms of her father, her hands making patterns which make sense to her alone, she smiles. Noticing her mother's return, she turns her head and smiles. Sneezing, surprising herself, she smiles. Staring intently into my daughter's face, a face which is inches from her own, a face with a tongue sticking out and then drawing back in, she smiles. Bouncing on the therapy ball, in anyone's arms, she smiles. With a dry diaper and a full tummy, lying on her back and waving her feet, she smiles. Her grandmother smiles all the time. In fact, she is so busy smiling that she has no time left to type to you. Instead, I'll give you a photo so that you can smile, too.

I was up at 5:45 a.m.  It was dark in my friends' house, too dark to walk safely down the hallway or the stairs.  Really, it was too dark to be awake.  . I had no choice in the matter.  My physiatrist at the Rehabilitation Institute had invited me to speak to the students and residents under his tutelage.  He's been wonderful to me; it was my pleasure to return the favor. I only wish that his rounds weren't at 7 in the morning. I stood under the canopy of a still green tree, sheltered from the drizzle, watching the early morning dog walkers in their raingear.  I, of course, was coat-less and hat-less, having believed the internet's weather forecast which promised 60's and sunshine. Uber got me from their neighborhood to the hospital with ease, and the trip qualified me as a full-fledged member of the 21st Century. Little Cuter is quite impressed with her trendy mother. I sat on a high backed stool in the front of a small auditorium, fifty or so f...

There's something really wonderful about old friends. There's an ease, a comfort, a space which time and circumstances have created. It's a privilege to be there. I attended a wedding over the weekend. Sixty-some revelers watched and smiled and cried and drank and ate and danced the night away. Children-turned-to-adults, looking nothing at all as they did when I knew them at the beginning of the century. For them, it's been an eternity. For me, it's only a blip on the screen of my life. Yet the memories we shared are fresh in all of our minds. The groomsman and his mother who shared the evening of the Winter Formal with Little Cuter and her then-best-friend were every bit as delightful on Saturday night as they were in the 1990's. That mother was the one who told the dressed-in-their-finery-and-feeling-their-oats ninth graders that the pictures we wanted to take were just as important to us as the entire evening was to them. “Stand in front...

(I'm traveling. Having too much fun to stop and tell you all about it. Instead, I'm saying Happy Birthday to my much loved, if very confusing, father, once again.) It was always very confusing - was his birthday the 12th or the 14th of October?  One of them was Columbus Day and the other was Herb's Day and to this moment I still have to stop and think.... and it's gotten harder since the bureaucrats moved Chris's Day to the generic.... how can something have occurred on "the second Monday of the month" every year? But he was around me in spirit at the wedding, and he's not having an easy time returning to his life on the other side. Yes, I am much happier blaming him for intruding than wondering why I am conversing with dead people. We're not so much conversing as he is hovering and I am feeling nudged.  I misplaced the hiking pole I've been using to keep me balanced and symmetrical.... for a change... if it's not the pole it's ...

It's one of those weekends, denizens.  One of those weekends when my heart is exploding, wondering if it can contain all the love. The sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, I have a comfy chair in the shade and the ocean's roar in my ears.  There are children playing Marco Polo in the pool and lots of very fit men responding to DAD!  and PAPA! with smiles and dry t-shirts and a wave of the go-back-and-play-with-your-friends hand, a command which is happily followed.  They are happy to get up and watch me hold my breath under water , and they are smiling even when she's down there and can't see him.  The smile is not for her or for me or for anyone but himself.  He's easing himself into the pool to have fun with the only female in his life right now, and Papa's face is barely big enough for his grin. There are late teen children communing with their parents, and there's nary an electronic device in sight.  I had breakfast on the plaza this mor...

The Happy Ladies Club took us to the Birthplace of Tucson today.   Located on land which has been continuously cultivated for 4100 years, its focus is on restoring the native crops to their original home. This Three Sisters Garden (Corn, Beans, Squash) deserves a paragraph all its own. These lime trees, which froze back to mere stubs last winter, require an ode to "the right plant in the right place" all their own. The signage itself is worthy of a post Sadly, I have not the time and Picasa has not the will to allow me to create verbiage worthy of the experience.   I will try over the weekend, and you will see the results. For now, trying to make Evernote talk to Blogger or Picasa or even my phone seems to be more than I can handle.

This is what I saw while waiting to go through the intersection and pick up Mr. 9 after school.  It was an ugly scene on the roads in Tucson today. People here do not know how to drive when it's wet. They slow down to zero before turning, or they speed up and slide around the corners.   It's a small town with a few main through streets, so it wasn't totally surprising that the teenager chatting me up in the doctor's waiting room had seen the same accident I'd passed on my way in.  The driver of the crushed vehicle was in a neck brace, surrounded by paramedics and flashing lights, but turning her head and talking from the driver's seat as I inched by.  It was an intimate glimpse into what must be the worst day she's had in a long time; it felt intrusive, and yet I couldn't look away.   Mr. 9 chimed in, wondering if there was blood, because I had blood when I was in the hospital, did I remember that?  Yes, I did, and I remembered that he...

I like an eclectic mix of music, but jazz has never been a big part of it.  My kids know musicals and light opera and rock and roll, but if they've ever heard of the gentlemen in the title of this post it's not through any fault of my own. And yet, in high school, I dated boys who knew all about the inner workings of jazz. One after another they came through my living room, introduced to my parents with the added bit of information that "He loves Stan Getz," or "His parents saw Dave Brubeck," or some other bit of trivia that would get my father engaged on a subject about which he could speak.  Left to his own devices, I never knew what he'd throw at my date; it was always safer to have a conversation in mind before the doorbell rang. smittycars.BlogSpot.com In college, the first male friend I made took me to all the live venues in Ithaca.  He was a senior to my freshman, he drove a blue Kharmann Ghia (though his didn't have those very cool wh...

We spend May and June and July inside.  There are few outdoor events of note, and those that do exist begin after the sun sets, or just as it rises.  Like January in the Northeast, the outdoors is there to be examined but not explored. Then, with the cooling monsoon and the start of a new school year, performers begin to wend their way to our little corner of the desert.  As the fruits ripen, a day trip to Apple Annie's Orchard is called for.  There's wine country to the north and to the south, but I've tasted Arizona wines and ..... My yard is showing the effects of neglect; I'm still trying to work out the kinks in the irrigation schedule and the dessicated little leaf cordia reproaches my efforts as I drive by each morning.  I seem to drown it or starve it, and fertilization only seemed to make it worse.  I've decided to ignore it until the winter time, when it will be cool enough for the snakes to disappear.  ...