The Burrow

MOM, Be Careful!!! They weren't happy that I was up one level. I was pretty pleased with myself, however.

And sometimes it seems as if she is looking into my soul. JPetersenPhotography.com

JPetersenPhotography.com

How about you, you, you? You can come too, too, too. Yes, we're going to the zoo, zoo, zoo. First, we had to finish breakfast, a plan facilitated by Grandpa's spooning the oatmeal into the face. Again with some help from Grandpa,  socks and shoes were added, with FlapJilly supervising. We drove to the zoo, paid our admission fee (their family membership requires a photo id), rode the little train around the periphery of the exhibits, and made straight for the goats and the alpacas  and the miniature donkeys. It took two quarters to release ten tiny pellets of appropriate food; FlapJilly had no fear of being bitten or otherwise touched.  She fed them until I ran out of money. Then we went to the playground in the zoo.  It had big slides and little slides and slides in the sunshine and slides in the shade.  One try on the big and sunny slide was quite enough for the grandkid.   "It's very hot there."   Calling Grandpa onc...

The least expensive way to get from our house to FlapJilly's house includes a ninety minute drive to Phoenix.  Allegiant Airlines flies out of Mesa Gateway Airport, off to the side of the megalopolis.  A one-way ticket takes a passenger directly to the tiny South Bend airport for as little as $72, if you catch the sale on the right day.  You pay extra for everything  - a reserved seat, a bag in the overhead bin, early boarding, soda or chips or pretzels or lunch - but the planes are new and the seats are comfy (if you aren't too wide or long), the flight attendants are helpful and friendly, and the planes are always on time. The down-side is that the planes fly between those two cities only on Monday and Friday, and the flight to South Bend leaves Mesa at 7:30 in the morning.  So, today, we set our alarms for 3:55am and were in the car by 4:15, TBG at the wheel.  I navigated us successfully to the parking lot, we found a great spot, shaded by a tree, and ...

I'm on my way to pay obeisance to the loudest Princess I know. courtesy of JPetersenPhotography I'll keep you posted on our adventures. If you need more verbiage, here's where I was three years ago , just before she was born.

Thanks, Little Cheese, for alerting me to the fact that this had yet to appear! I've tried to come up with an explanation, but I can't.   It's a question no one has asked. Believe me, between the New York Times and the Washington Post and the various  on-line  aggregators I bring to the table, and the televised talking heads of all descriptions who are TBG's companions most of the day, we hear and see it all.  What we miss generationally, Big Cuter is happy to provide. Still, I seem to be the only person who is wondering, and that makes me wonder why I'm wondering... and why they are not... and who are they, anyway. Obviously, Mr. Trump knew that he'd be seated next to Mrs. Abe; he brought a Japanese/English translator to the G-20 dinner at the center of the latest kerfuffle.  Didn't anyone wonder about the rest of the seating arrangements? Who decided that it would be a good idea to put Melania Trump next to Vladimir Putin? There ar...

This is a tale of a splinter, a pool, and a hip.   I decided to swim as my aerobic activity.  Sunscreen applied and soaked in, I wrapped my robe around myself and stepped onto the coir doormat.... and a pricker made itself at home in the sole of my right foot, the one that lives below the bullet holes. I hobbled over to the pool, descending gently on one and a half legs.  I soaked and poked and prodded and pulled but success eluded me.  So I swam my laps, got my heart racing, cooled down, and hobbled back and found my tweezers. http://www.kidsyogastories.com/fairy-yoga/ I sat down, crossed my leg, and confronted my lack of flexibility.  On the steps in the pool, in the water, I could bend enough to examine the situation.  On land, trying to open out into cobbler pose, I was an utter failure. On a chair, with my ankle resting on my other knee, I tried to look at my wound.  I failed.  I sighed.   I took a deep breath,...

I'm watching Republicans telling me that Obamacare is failing, that there are counties with no insurers, that premiums are predicted to rise 30 or 40 or 50 percent.  Our President is gleefully blaming the failure of the exchanges on his predecessor. There is so much duplicity, it's hard to know where to start. The iconic image of an Insurance Guy starts and ends with boring.  Actuaries love the predictable; they make money by betting on the likely outcome.  They factor in every teeny tiny variable before they decide that you ought to pay them $684 every month. Right?  No one disagrees thus far? So what happens when the Federal Government can't decide how much of the rug they are willing to pull out from under the system?  Insurers pick up their policies and go home. It's obvious.  Why can't they say so?  Is it because, after 7 years of complaining, they didn't have a plan to repeal and replace the ACA written and ready to go?  Seven year...

OFA  and Indivisible and Planned Parenthood all wanted me to visit Senator Flake's office to weigh in on health care.  Then I heard President Trump threaten to fund a campaign against my Junior Senator because he's not yet come out in favor of the BRCA.  I was ready. Under overcast skies, I drove down Oracle, put on my turn signal, and waited at the divide for the traffic to subside.  Waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and then I noticed a big guy in a bright yellow shirt standing in the middle of the entrance to the parking lot.  He was going to be smashed by The Uv unless he stepped out of the way. I checked and my turn signal was blinking away.  He had to know I was coming his way.. The traffic eased and I hit the gas.  He moved just enough for me to get through and raised his hand as I drove in.  I braked, rolled my window down just a bit, and heard him ask Can I help you? No, thank you,  I replied.  I didn't need help.  I...

A high school friend texted, wondering when we'd see one another again.  She's out on Long Island and I'm in the Sonoran Desert; it's not as if we can drive to the diner and catch up.  We have a stronger connection now than we did then, distance not-withstanding. We renewed our teenage friendship at our 40th high school reunion, eight years ago.  Bob Iger was there (he was voted Most Enthusiastic by our Senior Class, back in 1969) but none of the boys I cared about attended.  Not my 9th grade boyfriend, who ditched me when he invited Roomie to the Spring Dance.  Not my Senior Year Boyfriend, who slept around that summer, while I was in Europe.  Not My Best Friend, with whom I played Connect Four for hours on his bedroom floor, with whom I exchanged five page, hand-written letters all through college, whose wedding I attended, and who I haven't seen since. I have those memories stored at the top of my brain's Things To Think About box, directly below the...

I began to clear off my desk.  It is now possible to see the actual desktop... in some places, at any rate.  The remaining piles are a more neatly organized incarnation of the previous disaster site.  Everything that is out needs to be there, at least for now.  Trust me, it's true.  I know it may not look like it's true, but it's true. The pile of comics need to be framed; they won't get wrinkled sitting on top of that stack.  The crayons go to Prince Elementary School; they'll melt if I put them in the garage on the Prince Shelf, and if I put them in a drawer I'll forget about them.  The stack with the smiley faces is for FlapJilly's birthday, the save the date card and Paul Ryan's home address (700 St. Lawrence Ave, Janesville, WI 53545 if you want to drop him a line) are reminders of actions to be taken, and I'll admit that my excuses become a bit more feeble as you get further from my chair, but, as I said at the start, it's only a beginn...

Yesterday it was 30 degrees cooler than it had been the week before.... and it was still stinking hot. There is barely any traffic on the roads, so my eyes were free to wander. There are lots of churches along the routes I travel; their signage serves as both landmark and amusement. They are also sources of information. In case you think that is a typo on the screen, look at the permanent, stone markers below it. 10:31am I do love precision. I am tempted to take them up on their offer and check them out.

Remember DJT's 400 pound guy sitting on his couch?   The one who hacked the DNC emails and tampered with our elections? Maybe he wasn't made up out of the candidate's imagination after all Maybe The Donalds were sharing a laugh about the guy from the Miss Universe pageant who was offering up information on Hilary. As I type this, no one knows what The President knew and when he knew it. In this bizarro world, it's easy to believe that Rob Goldstone was exactly the character DJT had in mind. http://www.businessinsider.com/rob-goldstone-amazing-social-media-trump-russia-2017-7 .

It's that time of the year, again.  TBG arises before the sun and watches young men flying up and down mountains on quarter inch tires, their knees pumping efficiently, their fans cheering wildly.  It's the Tour de France, and he doesn't miss a moment. Do you know a cyclist?  Do you know a serious cyclist who has not had an accident?  Everyone we know who cycles outside has a story - the road rash kneecap that is permanently freckled with asphalt that cannot be removed, the tire track on her leg from the SUV that crashed into her tandem, 37 stitches repairing a face transformed into hamburger, fractured body parts ranging from the pelvis to the shoulder to the skull, and all those concussions.  That's just my immediate family and friends, and I'm sure I've forgotten some of them. Needless to say, TBG doesn't ride outside anymore.  We are not looking for any more surgeries, any more rehab, any more blooded people. He misses the speed and the scenery and ...

Miss Levine, my favorite kindergarten teacher, would tell unruly five year olds that everyone needs a moment, now and then  as she was escorting them to a seat in the hallway, with a book and a hug and a smile. I took my own moment this weekend.  I unplugged from everything except FlapJilly on Facetime.  I watched no talking heads. I read the newspaper, but only the light-hearted and personal pieces.  I caught up on the comics. I read a novel and did a crossword puzzle or two and I cooked with yummy veggies and fresh artisan bread. On Saturday, because Scarlett and I had agreed to watch  Sam Elliott's moustache  together, and on Sunday, because Brenda Starr and I had a date to play games and eat crepes in the morning, I left the house.   There were no prolonged good byes; it was too hot to stand in the parking lot. And so I spent a lovely weekend; the only problem I encountered was running out of lives on Candy Crush Saga.  I wrote no letter...

In June, amidst surgeries and heartaches, Scarlett and I spent two blissful hours each Thursday listening to snippets like this: You can listen to it the way her audiences did; just turn it on in your living room.  She preferred playing to small groups.  Close your eyes and imagine her fingers dancing over the keys, while Johannes Brahms sits in the corner, slyly smiling. wikipedia wikipedia Did you know he was such a good looking young man? Neither did I.  I'd only seen the scary old man pictures. Tannis Gibson, Dean of the College of Fine Arts at the UofA, showed me a side of the composer hitherto unknown and unconsidered.   She talked to us about the interpersonal and the technical, the instruments and the times, the performances and her own experiences.  It was a magical month. She shared her favorite performers, and sometimes I recognized the music: Listen past the scratchiness; it's from 1938. Imagine the fingers flo...

I haven't done this for a while.  There's a lot that's stored up.  Feel free to come back tomorrow if you don't want to spend the next few minutes being aggravated with me. ***** When did it become appropriate to take your foot off the gas and coast to the red light, even when that red light is three blocks ahead?  Being in the left lane (aka the FAST lane) only exacerbates the problem.  While you are saving a teaspoon of gas, I'm missing the opportunity to enter the left turn lane before the sensor goes off, thus missing my green arrow.  What you've saved in coasting, I've used in idling. Net net, we both lose. ***** How is it possible that members of the public mistook NPR's  line-by-line tweets of the Declaration of Independence as attacks on the President?    The line which drew the most outrage, according to Guns.com , was this: A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a...

I had a lazy day, read a book, swam, lifted weights, made a yummy dinner. What I didn't do was blog. Ooops. Hope your day was sparkly and wonderful! courtesy JPetersenPhototgraphy.com

(reprise edition... yes, you've read it before) The sky is pure blue,  "painted that way"  as G'ma said every time she looked up.  The occasional fluffy white cloud drifts by, and I'm hearing G'ma remark on that, too.  The flag in front of the house is swaying, the pole attached to one of the front columns with thin, silver wire.   It's an elegant solution to TBG's reluctance to put holes in his house;  I feel like Daddooooo every time I wrap another ring around the post.  Daddooooo was big on flags and the 4th of July.  We always went to the beach.  We always stopped at Custom Bakers in Long Beach on the way home, where the bakers always let us go back and stick our fingers in the vats of frosting.  We always went to the boardwalk as the sun was setting.  There were skeeball games and mechanical fortune tellers and the smell of the ocean, too black to be seen but too noisy to go unnoticed.   We practiced our  ooohs...

I saw this and I was disgusted. I saw this response tweet from Mika and I giggled. Then I remembered this and I realized that I, too, have been sucked into the morass. I miss the Obamas and their ideals. I'm going to try to live up to them. After all, this is my country, the land that I love. I won't participate in its denigration. I'll try to keep my head up, my thoughts positive, and my energy engaged. That's my plan, and I'm sticking to it. On this 4th of July Weekend, I'm rededicating myself to the inclusiveness that is My America. I'm off to buy more sweets from the Syrian ladies,  recent immigrants trying to establish themselves as bakers.   This is My America!