The Burrow

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I could write about Nicolle Wallace's reaction to three Fox faces trashing the motivations of Lt. Col. Alexander Vinman (she called them Chickenshit .... yup, right there on MSNBC, in the middle of the afternoon, and she was unapologetic). I could write about the irony of the Trump kids' annoyance at the Biden kid's job-by-nepotism. I could write about the USPS's inability to restart my mail after I cancelled and rescheduled the Hold Mail Request on-line, received a confirmation of the cancellation and new dates, went to the Post Office itself to make the request in person (and to pick up the accumulated mail) and which has stil not resulted in my mail ending up in my mailbox today. I could, but I won't. The sun is out, there's not a cloud in the sky, I drove with my windows down and made every light coming home. My Wells Fargo adviser called me up and saved me $100 a year in fees.... just like that. I wound my way through a new-to-me neighborhood as...

We've spent the last 5 Halloweens with Little Cuter and her family.  No one in our neighborhood decorates.  Only Christina-Taylor came to trick or treat.  There was no reason to stick around.  Instead, we went to a completely decorated, kid infested, flat community, where every house was welcoming costumed beggars.  I trekked with FlapJilly the first two years; after that she ran faster than I could keep up.  I stayed at the kids' house, toasting my tootsies on the portable fire pit, dispensing candy and resting my rehabbing joints. They moved to Indiana, and we followed them there. Their new neighborhood is just as wonderful as their old one; the plan is still the same.  We were all ready to join them this year, when illness caused us to reassess the situation. We woke up two days before the flight, feeling as if every bug we'd ever encountered had invaded our bodies.  I was 12 hours ahead of TBG in all the symptoms, and they kept coming....

It was busy last Wednesday in Grandma's Garden. There was, as always, watering to be done.  The tomatoes are very satisfying to water; the leaves perk right up.  Raking, as always, was a prized activity.  The notion of the rake as an outdoor broom, the shovel as a dustpan, and the green barrow as the trash can has established deep roots in a dedicated group of gardeners, who take great pride in their work. The main event was refurbishing The Hanging Gardens of Prince.  The baskets were filled with soil, and your hands and your arms and your bracelet got very very dirty and you just couldn't stop giggling because Grandma Suzi wants you to feel the soil that will nurture your seeds so being dirty was just fine.  The seeds were very different, and had different needs.  The hollyhocks were flat and round and black and tan and just needed a gentle push into the soil The nasturtiuim seeds, on the other hand, were bigger and went in deeper.... 1...

It's the verbiage that gets me.  Coupled with the bad grammar, it's another indication of how this President has let the country devolve into stupidity and chaos. The Medicare Part B (Medical Insurance) premium amount for 2020 wasn't available in time to include with this bill .  You're being billed the current 2019 premium rate for January 2020.  Your next bill will reflect the new rate for 2020 and any difference in the amount due for January 2020. That was printed at the top of the insert in the billing envelope.  If there were ever a sign that the world has gone to hell in a hand-basket, that's it.  How that is possible is beyond me.  There are government employees who are supposed to be on top of this issue.   Recognizing that, I called my Congresswoman.  The lovely young man who answered the phone thought he might be able to help me with a Medicare question, but, alas, he did not have a ready answer at the tip of his fingers....

I hate it when Doing The Right Thing gets in the way of Doing What I Want. When I wore stockings, the Gentlemen Prefer Hanes  ad campaign forced me to write a sternly feminist letter to the company, forswearing their brand forever.   Unfortunately, they were the hose that fit me most perfectly, at a price point I could afford (especially on sale at Macy's), with a look and feel that I loved.  I kept up my outward disgust while sporting the product.  I laughed at myself as I shopped. Then, there were grapes. I was appalled that my supposedly woke sister and her friends were happily munching on anti-labor grapes.  They'd never heard of Cesar Chavez; they spit out the seeds and moved on to watermelon.  Lettuce was a little harder to enforce, because the labeling was uncertain. I'm sure that we figured something out about the roughage, though I can't remember exactly what it was.  I know for a fact that those were the last grapes bought that s...

...... or was it? I love the jams and aiolis from Stonewall Kitchen  (like Soldier Field, there's only one of them).  The fruit spreads are natural and seasonal (I'm opening the strawberry rhubarb right now).  The savory spreads are made with oil instead of mayonnaise; it feels somehow less decadent to lick the spoon clean because of that. I could only find them at our local Breadsmith  , and their selection varied.  So, swallowing my desire to shop local, I went on-line.  It was lovely.  The site was easy to navigate, I found it simple to meet the minimum for free shipping.  I have emergency house gifts available if I need one before I need the contents myself.  I was content. And then the package arrived.  It was filled with those problematic white poofy peanuts, the ones you never send to a young mother with a toddler and a dog, especially if they are coddling gifts wrapped in glittery tissue paper. It also contained this se...

I haven’t seen her in months.  Today, she arrived at the neighborhood bbq as TBG and I were making new friends. I hesitated, but only for a moment. I walked over as she wrote her name tag, smiling at her son as I drew near. I hugged her, pressing my face gently into her hair as she continued to look down. Hi, it’s good to see you , or some such banalities were exchanged and then I walked away, collected TBG and our folding chairs, and left. It’s all I can do for her. I can still smell her shampoo.  That has to be enough.

We ate.  We walked.  We swam. We talked.  A lot. We did a 15 minute meditation, then we ate some more. And now it's way past my bedtime and we're still at it. I'll be back after the weekend. Right now, I'm needed on the couch. I'm having too much fun to create coherent sentences.

There are some people who fill the holes in your life so perfectly that it seems like magic.  Two of them are coming to us this afternoon.  They are in a rental car driving down from Sky Harbor Airport, and I am ready. I have the provisions they requested; it's so easy to shop when instead of coffee  she tells me Whole Foods Allegro .  It took two stops and some searching, but almost everything they need is here.  I cannot be blamed for adverse agricultural conditions devastating the mini-cucumber crop; the English cucumbers will have to suffice.  Otherwise, I have a wide selection from the categories she suggested, and the exact items when specified. Every step down every aisle of every store gave me joy.  In class yesterday, the professor discussed the Russian concept of the Hearth Angel; that's just what I felt like today. I straightened and prettified and fluffed and plumped.  I rearranged and reconfigured and tested it all.... which led t...

I've been walking around in a grumpus mood for the last few days.  I have a heavy weight on my heart.  Everyone I love is relatively healthy and relatively happy; I have no new complaints in the personal department.  That means I am in one of those rare moments when all is at peace, and I should be too, except, I'm not. It's Donald Trump's fault. I open the paper (yes, the physical paper, delivered to my driveway every morning before sunup) to the local news about the roads, skipping past the front page battle over Tucson as a Sanctuary City.  I smile at the comics I find after purposely avoiding the second section, the one with the National and International news.  Those are headlines I need to avoid if I want to stay moderately sane. I told TBG this afternoon that I was sad for the Kurds.   And I am.  But I'm sadder for America, for what we have become, for who we are as seen by the rest of the world.  Russian soldiers patrolling ab...

That's the blend of ground beef I buy.  That's also the balance between recovery and disability I face.  On the surface, that's a very, very good thing.  I remember when I couldn't bend over to empty the bottom rack of the dishwasher.  Picking up a plate down there- let alone a stack of three or four of them - was impossible.  Once the plates were out of the machine, turning and walking the two or three steps to the cabinet was excruciating.  It was much easier to concentrate on the top rack and let TBG bother with the bottom.  It's our division of labor even now, almost none years later.  When I'm alone, I can.  When he's there, why should I? That's the dilemma of 85/15.  A physiatrist, looking at my Activities of Daily Living, would be delighted.  I can hear it now:  At my age.... with my injuries.... 85% is wonderful. That last 15% though, that's all the fun stuff. I gardened,   Getting up and down off ...

A somewhat altered version of a previous post or two. 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'm still not sure, especially since the bureaucrats moved Chris's Day to the generic second Monday. He was a confusing person, so this is not surprising.  I never knew if I wanted to hug him or throttle him. Deaf-as-a-door-nail, hearing aid batteries constantly squealing or dying or resting comfortably in the breast pocket of his plaid wash-and-wear shirt, he monopolized conversations so that he would know what was going on. That works well until your audience hits second grade or so; after that, it becomes a full fledged "Herb Attack." I know this because I have been guilty of them, myself. His tales were fascinating.  If the facts weren't really facts, well, they should have been.  He went to City College with Richard Feynman.  He lived d...

No matter what else is offered, bugs always entice them. Under the tutelage of a Garden Leader, the soil around the onions was gently disturbed,    with fingers rather than the blue plastic tool,  the cosmos seeds were placed 3 by 3, covered by replacing the disturbed soil,  the cosmos seeds were placed 3 by 3, covered by replacing the disturbed soil, and then, ever so gently, they were watered in.  The wrens' wooden houses are a constant source of amusement.   The fact that examining them requires climbing the tree may have something to do with this. There is only one hose, and it sprung another leak this week.   The watering cans are just as much fun.  The rakes are also a big hit, especially because collecting the detritus allows the shovels to be put to a Grandma Approved use.  The rakes create dust, which settled on our tomato plants, so the answer was "YES!"  when she asked if she coul...

I was going to share my gardening adventures in today's post.   We had a lot of fun. But then this happened, and I just had to share.   After school, I had a meeting with The Garden Guru and his Irrigation Guru to discuss the 5th Grade Garden Project.  It was busy in the lobby where I waited;  Teacher Conference week brought students and parents and siblings who were coming and going in every direction. I received many many many hugs. I was introduced to many grandmas and mommies and aunties and daddies and sisters.  And then I heard one 5th grader say What is THIS? This?????  I replied. THIS is a telephone. You can't take pictures with it. You can't type on it. You can only talk. A moment of reflection, followed by How do you use it though?  How do you dial? So, I showed him the buttons with numbers on them. I picked up the receiver and showed him where to talk and where to listen. And when you're do...

Allow me to vent my spleen.  I've already called my Senators about the Kurds (apparently, Sen. McSally has no opinion on her President leaving our comrades-in-arms in the lurch) and the House bills on gun safety, and on impeachment..... and it's only Tuesday afternoon. So, I'm moving on to freedom of speech, if you don't mind indulging my rant. I began the day fuming over the fact that the Democrats are seriously considering shielding the whistleblowers' names from their Republican counterparts.  What have we come to as a country when fear that the President's rhetoric will inspire violence causes one half of a Committee to distrust the other to that extent? Are they over-reacting?  Consider the fact that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford moved four times..... for her own safety. A friend of Little Cuter's called out flagrant cheating in an SAT exam room.  There are still those who harbor ill-will toward this righteous young woman for outing her peers.  How ...

Prep and Pastry moved from a small space to a bigger space.  The number of available parking spaces, though, remains the same.  This was the logistical nightmare that confronted The Bookseller and me as our cars were facing one another at one entrance to the much too small lot.  I backed out, she continued forward, and we drove down one block, turned right, and parked in the middle of a lovely residential neighborhood. I cannot imagine that those people are happy to have their tucked away quietude disturbed by hungry restaurant-goers.  But we had no choice.  I'm looking out my front window at the property across the street, now an under-developed 13 acres, but proposed to be covered with 65 houses.  I know it's unrealistic to expect things to stay the same, but I like my peaceful street and I'm glad that there won't be an entrance to the new homes anywhere near our older homes.  They found another street to annoy.  I wished that I could h...

You woke up earlier than I did.  You read it before I realized that the photo of Beto wasn't there.  If you don't want to click back, here it is: Have a great day! I love you all!

And you know that as soon as I saw the notice, I RSVP'ed.  He's the first Democratic candidate to visit our town, having reached out to the UofA's Young Democrats to gauge their interest. Not-Kathy and Dr. K and I arrived 45 minutes before the doors were to open and walked past several hundred humans who'd gotten there before us until we found the end of the line. It seems that there was interest.  There were voter registration helpers and there were name and address collectors and there were lots of people wearing red Moms Demand Action t-shirts, just like I was.  A young mom with two in a double stroller wore one as she pulled in behind us.  A few minutes later, she pulled us out of line with her; the Moms Demand Action Lead had texted the membership to come to the VIP entrance. So, with friends in tow, with our leader pulling those similarly attired out of line to join our merry band, we walked past everyone and into the venue because they want to make a spl...

Yesterday, Eli was asked to leave Grandma's Garden.  He threw dirt.  He wounded someone with a shovel (a very small shovel and a very small wound).  He kicked up dust into his classmates' faces.  By the third infraction, I'd had enough. You can come back next week, with better behavior  I told him as he raced out the Garden gate. Those injured by his behavior were glad to see him go.  I wondered what had upset him.  His name is called out for reprimands more frequently than most; at 5, that tells me that life is not treating him well.  Today, on the playground at Kindergarten's lunch recess, I played Monster  - I growl and wriggle my outstretched claws and the kids run away.  It's an easy way for me to get fully onto the playground without tripping over little ones ready to hug me.  They run away, they run back, they squeal and run away again over and over until I get to the shady bench and plop myself down. It's easier to t...

There was a lot of work to do in Grandma's Garden today. As always, the rakes were popular.   After weeks of working together, the gardeners have discovered that a rake is, indeed, an outdoor broom AND they have bought into the notion that a clean, well-tended garden is thing of beauty and a joy forever.    Three heroes of the rake and trowel filled in the hole created by their younger colleagues earlier in the day.   Why the littles thought that digging a hole which might undermine the stability of a giant boulder remains a mystery.  The bigs emptied the green wheelbarrow into the ditch, smoothed the soil, then stomped it down. The stomping was the most fun.  And, as always, there was weeding. The rakes smoothed the soil in the second raised bed.  Stones sectioned the irrigated section from the half in need of repair. Red and white onions were twisted into the soil, pointy end up, and then the watering began....

Miss Sincerbeau was my teller at Manny Hanny while I lived with my parents.  Manufacturers Hanover Trust was its full name, but it was our bank so we were able to be on familiar terms.   Every Friday, all summer long,  I'd take my meager paycheck to her window.  In exchange, I received a stamp in my bank book and some conversation from a grown-up to whom I wasn't related by work or blood. I was her customer, a regular.  She knew my most intimate secret - how much money I had.  There was a bond there. ***** In Marin, I had a terrible time finding a bank that was user friendly.  My first one refused to accept a check I presented for deposit.  It was a business check. I had an established account.  I didn't want the cash, I wanted to get the paper out of my purse and the money into my account.  Somehow, they weren't able to accommodate me. The next one, on the other side of the street, had a convenient ATM.  I don't remember...