The Burrow

Do we really have to shop every day of the year?  Is it necessary to leave home and exchange cash for goods on Thanksgiving? Can't we take one day away from the hustle and the bustle and the need to accumulate? ***** Did the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders, performing with a pop singer I did not know, need to shake their butts and caress their breasts, in close ups, at 5 o'clock on Thanksgiving afternoon?  Elvis appalled the 1950's with his pelvic gyrations.  I wonder what my grandparents would have to say about what we're seeing today. ***** Does the dog have to bark furiously just as the baby is falling asleep?  How does he know? ***** Do football players have to perform self-congratulatory dances after making routine catches and tackles?  I don't remember attacks of terpsichory after a particularly effective social work interview. ***** Did I really need to eat the third helping of turkey and stuffing this afternoon?  Was the berry pi...

Sitting on the couch, snuggling with FlapJilly, as Little Cuter dices and slices and purees. Looking down the couch at my boy and my husband discussing football and basketball and Ferguson.  San Francisco living has transformed my somewhere-to-the-right-of-Attila-the-Hun son into a left-wing-nut.... and I love it.  His father is bemused. Smelling sweet potatoes baking, salivating and fantasizing about casseroles and mash-ables and slice-ables and dip-ables.  Listening to cooing and squealing, feeling tiny toes and fingers squirming. Remembering Daddoo and G'ma and Nannie and G'paw and Thanksgiving dinners past... laughing about burnt rolls and too much creamed spinach and after dinner walks in the snow. Feeling thankful for all of you reading The Burrow, for Gabby Giffords' strength and inspiration, for the Prince Elementary School Mustangs' enthusiasm and love, for those who GRIN with me and walk with me and learn with me. Today is a good day - the...

I just don't know.  Michael Brown terrorized a store owner. Michael Brown was a very large man.  Michael Brown is dead.  Those are facts.  I saw the video from the convenience store. Darren Wilson, did not.  Darren Wilson is also a very large man, though many pounds lighter than the young man he shot.  Darren Wilson carried a badge and a gun and the full weight of authority behind his actions. The Grand Jury deliberated, discussed, reviewed and decided. They interviewed witnesses.  After 200 hours, at least nine of them agreed that Officer Wilson was not responding inappropriately. They declined to indict him. Those are the facts that I can pull from the reporting.  Having been the subject of many interviews, having seen my own story publicized without any input from those who were there, having found the New York Times telling the world that I was older than I am, that I was perforated more than I was, I know that reportage is a...

My G'mu  (GrandMaternalUnit) is quite busy with me this week.  Mom (Little Cuter to you) is taking lots of photos with her very fancy camera.   I'm rolling over and standing on people's laps with only minimal assistance. G'pu is quite impressed with my core strength.   He's named me the first Sub-Cuter.   I'm wearing Hoosier gear, sent from The Cheeses, to cheer on IU in football and basketball. I watch with fascination.  I'm not that interested in stories on tv, but teams in bright colors are quite interesting.   I'm quite chatty, especially in the mornings.  Mom (aka Little Cuter) is taking great pains to teach me several new words each day. I've been on the planet for seventeen week, and that's a lot of words.   I drool and I eat and I squeal with delight  G'mu appreciates your loyalty and thinks kindly of you every day, However, I'm quite an attractive nuisance..... as you can se...

The Burrow is a personal blog.   That seems to be the current catch-all for those of us who don't concentrate on politics or fashion or giving advice.  I started writing in April, 2009, at the suggestion of my then 20-something son, Big Cuter.  He told me to write because he liked reading my words.  He thought others would like them too; "You are much hipper than you think you are, Mom." That was my favorite compliment for many years.  I write what I like to think about.  I adhere to Dooce 's primary blogging rule: I don't write about anyone whose feelings would be injured by my words.  There have been some marvelously snarky unwritten posts over the years.  They rattle around in my brain, tempting me with an apt phrase or description that perfectly captures the absurdity I'm not posting for you.  There are some mournful posts which touch on the lives of others in a way that might be intrusive; those, too, live only in my brain.  T...

Warning to Parents: Do not make random promises to your children.  You will be expected to adhere to them.    Long, long ago, in a house far, far away, I told Little Cuter that when she had children she could host the holidays. Until then, she'd have to travel to her parents.  I said it.... I'm sure I did.... it sounds like me.... I'm not disputing the evidence.... I'm just whining about the consequences of a one-off remark made to quiet a kid who didn't want to travel.   TBG and I are packing our polar fleece and our heavy socks and our turtlenecks this week as a result of that conversation.  We'll be joining the throngs at O'Hare on Saturday, leaving the sunshine and 70's, arriving to rain and 40's.... then snow.... then 30's and 20's and clouds...lots and lots of clouds.    Only the presence of a granddaughter could induce me to get on a plane right now.    My house is a disaster; the library and the kids' roo...

Brother and Intrepid Cat are in Israel.  They were in Jordan last week.  Brother thinks everyone should take a sabbatical once every 60 years.  Intrepid Cat notices no women on the streets of Petra.  I sit at home and worry about incoming rocket fire. ***** Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature this year. I enjoyed The Secret History , a tale of academia gone mad, so I was happy to download it to the Kindle. This was a switch from my usual practice. Honored books frighten me, ever since I tried and failed with Thomas Pynchon.  I have a master's degree; I should be able to understand a book written in English.  I've read Ulysses once a decade since my 30's and I'll continue to enjoy it through my 100's, I hope.  But books with awards tend to be overly precious or inscrutable or more complex than they need to be... or so it's seemed... until The Goldfinch . It's a fabulous tale, a well-written character study (or ...

I cleaned out a piece of my desktop just now.  Not a big piece, or an intrusive piece, just a piece that has been nudging the edges of my consciousness every time I go to the Blogger Dashboard (the handy dandy place for all things The Burrow).  I'm mourning the losses. The Dashboard is also the site for my Blog Roll Reading List.  Snippets of the most recent posts by the bloggers I follow show up right beneath the working buttons (new post, view blog, post list).  I'm always interested in what Ronni Bennett has to say over at Time Goes By , but I rarely saw her posts.  Instead, I was bombarded by daily, sometimes twice daily, pictures and references and verbiage from someone who no longer interested me at all.  There's no reason to share the blog's URL; you might really like it and then wonder what's wrong with me.  It wasn't offensive or poorly written.  I was just done with it.  Once I figured out how to hide it from the feed, I was a...

"It's time!  It's time!  It's TIME TO START!" The young man in front of me was anxious to get going. He'd been staring at his watch since I entered the music room. As the minute hand on the wall clock moved inexorably toward the full, upright, position, he leaned over his own time piece, willing it to move faster, tapping it lightly to help it along   And then, it was time to start.   Ian, teacher to young and old alike, announced to the audience  that although he had 35 students in total, none of the adults were willing to perform.  Instead, a handful of his younger pupils would present works ranging from pieces in their beginner books all the way to Brahms, with some original music thrown in for good measure.    He told us it would last 45 minutes. If I'm going to be watching other people's kids perform, it's nice to know how long I'll have to sit.   The little ones' feet didn't reach the floor,...

Little Cuter and SIR had the most beautiful wedding at our house.  The front and the back were decorated with light, and not much more.  There were strings of little bulbs hung in the trees surrounding the enclosing walls in the backyard and there were globes with electric bulbs scattered through the trees in the front. Neighbors complimented us for weeks following the event.  The house looked stunning, elegant, delightfully mysterious, festive.... I loved collecting the kudos.  Time passed, the images didn't fade, TBG was on board with the idea - I began to search for a way to make it a more permanent part of our landscaping.  We paid thousands to have professionally installed up-lighting on the foliage; we saved thousands by opting to leave the actual house in shadows.  It's a nice enough structure, but it didn't need to be floodlit like the Taj Mahal. We were looking for highlights, not advertising our status. That's a problem with lighting th...

The loaded pellet gun was in a glass-fronted cabinet.  The 12 year olds had access, so the security must have been pretty thin.  One picked up the rifle, one walked in front of him, and the evening ended in the emergency room. No one is dead.  No one is in jail. I'm disturbed. Is there a person on this planet who believes that unsupervised tweens should be holding an ammo-filled weapon at 2:30 in the morning?  The most trouble my kids got into at a sleep-over was calling the most popular boy in the 6th grade and hanging up .... over and over and over until it was Little Cuter's turn and his mother answered, asked who was calling, and my child gave her name... her real name.... which led to a phone call to me and a phone call to the poorly supervised party's hostess and notes of apology written the next morning.  It never occurred to me to worry about loaded rifles in unsecured cabinetry.  It never seemed likely that a 12 year old would e...

Saturday will mark 46 months since I intersected with bullets.  As anniversaries draw near, I fight an on-going battle with the dark side.  48 months ago Christina-Taylor and her family joined G'ma and my family around our dining room table for Thanksgiving dinner.  As I begin to gather my cold weather gear for this year's trek to Little Cuter and the Polar Vortex, my heart goes back to that Thursday afternoon when CTG was 9, and full of promise.  She and G'ma discussed the utility of various silver serving pieces. Plate and sterling.... G'ma describing the differences and CTG listening and absorbing and then choosing the fanciest ones for the mashed potatoes and the string bean casserole and the kugel and the stuffing.  G'ma, perched on the seat of her walker, wondering who that beautiful little girl might be, wondering why she was asking so many questions, wondering what we were celebrating.  I miss those girls. Little Cuter and I were discussing he...

This one was TBG's idea entirely.  Anyone who knows him is now blinking in astonishment; the man does not do big gatherings unless his daughter is being married or his wife has planned the event.  In the latter case, he leaves early.  I'm not judging, I'm merely relaying the facts.  But Friday night found us dressed in our Tucson casual best, driving on newly paved roads to a newly created development and into a brand new church auditorium.  He was smiling before we got there, a fact which brought joy to my heart and whetted my anticipation.  The friends we were meeting were his friends, members of a loose-knit crowd of older adults who frequent the spin classes at our gym.  The men share photos of their grandchildren, which warms the cockles of My Yogi 's heart at the two classes a week she leads.  The women chime in on sports talk.  They are boisterous and reserved, liberal and reactionary, competitive and lackadaisical on the bikes....

    My Yogi spreads the love in gyms and retirement communities and community colleges all over town.  She Zumbas and cycles on stationary bikes and brings her sense of awe and joy and wonder to them all.  Her fans are people of all ages and backgrounds, bound together by one thing - we all think that she is wonderful. She's always asked to donate her time or her hand crafted jewelry or her expertise.  She's learned how to say no with grace and dignity.  She's adopted one charity here in Tucson, and she's sticking to it.  Rather than dilute her efforts, she's put it all into one place, a group started by another yogi, her dear friend Sherri Romanoski. Bag It! supports newly diagnosed cancer patients by providing information and a notebook and a bag to carry it all around.  Rather than leaving the physician's office with only despair and anguish and a thousand questions, Bag It! fights the fear by providing timely, sensitive, thorough fac...

Brenda Starr brought it up months ago.  She decided, with some prompting by Jon-Her-PT, that we needed to set a goal.  Watching the pedometer would take us only so far; an achievable but ambitious point on the horizon would sharpen our focus and demand that we perform.  The Pecan Festival in her small town outside Tucson was sponsoring a Nut Run, 5 kilometers through the mature pecan orchard.  Didn't I think that we could train our way up to that?  We had months to prepare... it would be fun.... Basil St. John would make t-shirts.... we'd have a team name. Brenda Starr is quite persuasive. This should not continue to surprise me; her job requires that she have real opinions and be able to express them clearly.  Her perseverance, her refusal to take a step backwards, her smiley Of course we can do it , are qualities I admire and respect even though they end with me waking up at 6am to walk further than I'd walked since bullets perforated my hip ...

That was a very cool Subject in an email I sent to an old friend this morning.  Very cool, indeed. It was true, as my email went on, that I was eating lunch with her. The Literary Society of the Southwest, my favorite organization with the most pretentious name, hosted The Interestings 's author at our first luncheon of the year. Scarlet, newly arrived from New York City (Murray Hill, to be precise), and my guest for the afternoon, said that she was a front row kind of girl , and since I am, too, we took two seats at the author's table.  The author walked in, alone, pinning her name tag to her outfit, saying "Hi, I'm Meg," as she distributed herself and her materials into and around her chair.  "Yes, you are," I replied, inanely, but she smiled and we all introduced ourselves and we chatted, just the way women all over America are chatting today.  I wondered which town on Long Island she ascribed to Jules; it reminded me of mine, Oceanside, but n...

That's the only way to describe how I feel today.... disconnected.  It's an awkward, uncomfortable, unhappy place to be. I love Arizona.  Even though I almost died here, I love Arizona.  It's a Wild West culture, where Stetson clad sheriffs tote imposing side arms. It's the home of "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice" ... although I think that 1968's ultra-conservative Barry Goldwater would be considered too liberal by the Tea Partiers who've taken over his Republican Party.  It's where the streets of Tombstone are boardwalks and dust, just as they were in the late 1800's.  The aura in Sedona is life-changing.  It's unlike anyplace I've ever lived, which may account for the sense of dislocation I'm feeling today. The election results are in.  They do not reflect my ballot.... not hardly at all.  The bond to build an animal shelter passed, as I'd hoped it would.  The Budget Override for the Amphi School District passe...

.... at least not the raucous, back of the throat, ear splitting cackle that emanated from Tom Magliozzi every Saturday and Sunday morning in my car. Little girls, and then bigger girls, would groan when I switched the radio from Backstreet Boys to NPR's Car Talk, two men talking about auto repair.  Little Cuter's reassurance went a long way toward calming them down.  "Just listen.  They are really really really funny. Just listen." And so they did.  They sat in the back seat of my Audi station wagon as I ferried them to Ukiah and Sebastopol and Rohnert Park to play soccer, to stop at In-and-Out Burger, and then to drive home.  All day, both days, every weekend for years and years and years, I spent surrounded by high pitched girl squealing and low pitched men's laughter.  Those are some of my favorite memories. Little Cuter and I spent an hour or so in the offices of Car Talk in Cambridge, or  our fair city as the Magliozzi brothers ...

Halloween is gone.... kind of.  It has moved from places of honor on chairs and ledges and door knobs to a pile on the kitchen table to a brand new Crate and Barrel box.  The box remains unsealed.  There are always outliers, figurines hiding on bookshelves, candle holders near the courtyard containers, a ceramic pumpkin fallen behind a vase.  One sure way to make hidden decorations appear is to seal the storage box.  I'm not making that mistake again this year.  This year, I am going to repurpose the three, beautiful, white, unblemished shipping boxes which contained outdoor, solar powered, hanging globe lights.  Halloween is being wrapped in brand new bubble wrap (which C&B tells me can be punctured and recycled ... and I want to meet the woman who has time to poke holes in three boxes of bubble wrap) which is an extraordinarily pleasurable experience. I'm cheap.  Others may say frugal or conservative or a recycling fiend, but t...