The Burrow

It happens every year.  The acacias start it off as the yucca begin to sprout.  I was worried about my newly planted tree trying to draw water up from the parched soil and finding nothing of value. Would it bloom in its first season?  I'd been following instructions and gradually reducing the frequency of watering.   But I was worried.  It hasn't rained in a while.  I really didn't want it to fail. I wanted it to enjoy a yellow season of its own.  So,  I set the nozzle to flat spray and filled the low-tech slow irrigation system - two 10 gallon planters with small holes in the bottom. And it worked. These little buds appeared on tiny branchlettes (is that a word?). There are leaves on some of them and buds on others.  This feels unusual, but I'm not looking this gift horse in the mouth. His big brother in the back yard looks like this. I'm going to keep watering the little one and encourage more buds to appear.  It takes a while for...

We left this  and came home to this Life is good. 

We arrived early, because that's part of the fun. No rushing, no crowds, no hurrying to get seated before tip off, no anxiety at all. Since this was our first trip to a public event since Pandemica reared its ugly head, lessening anxiety was a paramount consideration.  The Chase Center is beautiful and easy to navigate. The escalators and elevators are conveniently located. Every surface was sparkling clean. There were worker bees strategically placed; they each had maps to help us locate our section.   We were in the 1st row of the 2nd tier, in line with the Arkansas basket. We could see the players' facial expressions and hear their feet pounding the floor.  There were a lot of Duke alums all around us, though we noted a UofA hat and some Gonzaga tee shirts, too. Deliriously happy fans screaming encouragement was the background noise all night. It was wonderful.  Being there in person let us feel the explosiveness of the game more viscerally than watching on T...

TBG did taxes one morning last week.  It's a task he dreads, one that takes a lot of internal dialogue before he can face The Organizer - the blueprint of what must be sent to the wonderful human who actually prepares our return every year. His goal has been to simplify the process, and over the years it has gotten less burdensome.  This year, it took about an hour, including collecting the documents and copying the exhibits. (TBG likes hard copies, and so hard copies he shall have.... another way to stay married for all these years.... I just copy and smile... and enjoy it when the mortgage guy is amazed that we have everything at TBG's fingertips, ready to be photographed and emailed.) And there we were, before 9am, taxes secure in a manila envelope, ready for me to weigh and process at the Automated Postal Center before dropping it in the box inside the post office.  He does the thinking, I do the grunt work.  We are both comfortable in our roles.  We deserve...

This greeted me when I went out to get the newspaper earlier this week. There were birds on the rosemary and up on the saguaros and perched among the palo verde branches and they all took flight when I opened the door I was more interested in the flower which had miraculously appeared in the soap yucca overnight.   .  I've always enjoyed the foliage.  I never imagined there would be a flower. The bright red exterior  peeled back over the next day, revealing white blossoms beneath the sticky exterior. I watched it change as I stood at the window, doing Pilates, using the desk as my barre.  The changes were slow but steady, several pieces opened up while I was doing my thing.  But then, everything stopped.  This is what it looked like 2 days later The white is whiter and each has a stamen and pistil inside. The red is sticky and has structural integrity.   The fronds are sharp and pointy and I poked myself trying to get closer for a better...

There have been women who have disappointed me.  There have been women who stunned me with their brash assurance that everything they did was perfectly perfect.  There have been liars and cheats, bullies and brats, self-absorbed walking pity parties whose presence darkened the mood of every room they entered.   To paraphrase Julia Roberts  Pretty Woman , the bad stuff is easier to remember .   Those people have taken up too much space in my brain over my seven decades on earth.  It's time for that to stop.  There are so many women who have been positive inspirations, who have set great examples, who have lived their lives intentionally, with purpose present every day. Well, maybe not every day.   I came to this epiphany - that I was focused on things that hold me back rather than those that  move me forward - while saying hello to Opal and Joey one afternoon last week.  I was fretting about something that was long in the past,...

We are off to collect our holiday present from Big Cuter and Queen T - a weekend of food and fun surrounding tickets to the NCAA's March Madness Elite Eight game on Saturday. We know what seats we have.  We don't know what time the game will begin.  And, since you have to win on Thursday to play on Saturday, and Thursday is tomorrow, we don't know who we'll be seeing.  It could be Duke and Gonzaga, which would be very cool.  Arkansas vs Texas Tech.... not so much.  The uncertainty is compounded by the fact that Arizona is in the South bracket, playing in San Antonio, and the game we are seeing in San Francisco is the West bracket.  It is possible that Arizona could be playing at the same time as what we will be seeing.... a fate too awful to contemplate.  We are hopeful that wiser minds prevail, and the television and advertising and NCAA gurus recognize that they can extend their audience by showing the games one after the other. At this time, there i...

Early this morning, TBG and I sat on the patio, listening to the birds, watching the yellow come out as the sweet acacia begins to bloom, doing nothing but being.   In some ways, I miss Pandemica's endless days of nothing.   He stared at me in wonder, his always on the go wife regretting that there were places to go and people to see and things to do.  But I found myself believing it.   I know that young parents had an entirely different experience - there was never enough time even as the days stretched on endlessly - but I was remembering reading the 23 Kate Shugak books, non-stop, moving only from the comfy chair to the couch.  I did it to pass the time, the 2 weeks of sheltering in place that we all thought would nip this disease in the bud.  Now, looking back on 2 years of restricted living,  I find myself resenting the fact that I know what day of the week it is. My calendar is booked up.  I have calls to return.  The HOA meet...

My bracket was busted immediately; I had Kentucky going all the way to the Final Four.  When they lost in the first round, I took it as the second sign that this was not going to be my year.  The first was when Big Cuter texted me that neither of his parental units had visible entries in our annual family pool, even though we certainly submitted them on time.   It's the dybbuk doing the dirty work. ***** Once I decided not to care, I began it enjoy it a lot more.  I had minor rooting interests in the teams remaining in my brackets, but mostly I could continue to watch the athleticism without living and dying at every play. Indiana lost early, but Notre Dame kept on winning.  That was unlikely and delightful for the starters, but I enjoyed the shirts on the boys on the sidelines, all of whom were wearing this:  ***** Big Cuter has a long standing pool with friends throughout the years.  Knowledge of basketball is not a requirement for participation...

I bought an Amazon Basics shredder.  15 pages at a time, 20 minutes to cool down, half the price of Google's Best Shredder. It has chompers for credit cards and cd's.  It came fully assembled except for the casters, and they were easy to shove into the legs.  It's light enough to push easily.  The bin opens and releases smoothly.  I had shredder oil already, and lubricated it after an afternoon of shredding. Two paper garbage bags (thank you, Whole Foods Delivery) were filled with material to be shredded.  It took several hours, and ended up filling two giant boxes: I'll be driving them to the Transfer Station, since the boxes don't fit in the recycling bin, and putting shredded paper in loosely seemed like a surefire way to blanket the neighborhood with small scraps.   The floor was covered in dust and some of those loose scraps.  I was forbidden to do any more work on this project until after the appraisal.  It was hard to disagree wit...

I know nothing of the origin of this holiday, nor why it became a festival of drinking.  I don't have to send a card or a gift; it's a low key celebration for me.  It was fun to stand on the Michigan Avenue bridge and watch the green dye spread up the Chicago River; but that was in graduate school and I've aged out of such proceedings. Instead, the holiday has always been special for Little Cuter and me.  We were the only two members of the family who liked corned beef and cabbage and boiled potatoes.  The boys probably had pizza; their dinner was not my responsibility.   Nope.  Little Cuter and I peeled and cut and boiled and sat down at the table with lots of napkins and our plates piled high.  We drank water; she was a child.  We did not use any cutlery.   Yes, denizens, my child and I ripped our cabbage to shreds with our bare hands.  We picked up slices of salty meat and ate them like somewhat less rigid hot dogs.  Th...

They sat on Lady Jane's bench, just inside her front door.     Her daughters wondered who would want them. I DO!!! And so they arrived in a big box, with their names emblazoned on the outside. I unpacked them and straightened their hair and hat and skirt and placed them on The Thing, inherited from my great-grandparents, and formerly a catchall for items coming and going in the garage. We see them every day.   I wanted to race inside and write a note to my friend, thanking her for her continuing presence in my life.  The thank you's to her daughters will have to be enough.  I don't know how to write to heaven. I miss her. Opal and Joey do, too.  

Please refer to yesterday's post for the details behind this one. I've survived one night and half a day of my commitment to No Piles Left Behind.  It's been a struggle. I heard husbandly laughter emanating from the kitchen, and then his announcement - Here's a pile!   He walked in carrying two clean items of clothing that somehow ended up on the kitchen counter instead of in the laundry basket.  How?  I can't say.   Obviously, I had them in hand and then went on to another chore which required two hands so I must have set them down and forgotten to return and reclaim them.  I noticed them a few times as I passed by; I did nothing about them.  Why?  I don't know. The learning curve is quite steep. This morning, after deciding on a resting place for the iPad he uses for Zoom spin class and we use for Facetime with the grandkids, he handed me the cord and plug.  Again, from the kitchen, I heard his laughter and another announcement - I f...

I can barely move.  Every body part announces its presence with authority.    On the other hand, I have never occupied a more organized space. There is not an item out of place.  The vases of fresh flowers do not compete with piles of crosswords and library books.   It's kind of terrifying. After the Best Cleaners EVER waved goodbye and closed the door, I stood in the kitchen, marveling.  There is no To Do pile in the corner of the kitchen counter.  There are no books about to be read, no knitting to pick up, no puzzles nor pen at hand.   I can appreciate the lack of clutter.  I am more relaxed in this space.  I can walk to the library and pick up the book I'm reading, or the crossword compilation from Little Cuter's crew, or to the front bedroom for my knitting, safely stored in the closet.  It's not that they are gone, it's just that they are not lying around in public, waiting to be used. Over the decades, TBG has been ...

I have boxes and boxes of photos.  I have boxes and boxes of scrapbooks to be filled.  Most of those scrapbooks are still in the original wrapping.  I have a large stack of blank pages.  I have stickers and decorative papers and embellishments of every size, shape, color, and dimension.   All of these have been stored in closet after closet until they were moved into the front bedroom of this house by Big Cuter during Queen T's attack on the office closet in December 2020.  They were happy there, resting under Not-Kathy's quilt, covered from prying eyes who might judge the mess.   There are so many other projects to tackle before putting old pictures into albums for humans who are accustomed to viewing them as pixels on a screen.  But the photos are archival at this point, so storing them in an old fashioned way doesn't seem too odd.   It's just time consuming and messy.  It was easy to put off. But we are refinancing our ...

Sister texted about a friend going off to Poland to help with refugee resettlement; he speaks Polish, so this makes sense. Niece the Eldest texted about friends on the ground in Ukraine.  She can send them money directly and they can use it to help others with immediate needs.  This makes sense, too - my donation won't be going to overhead.  Gas prices are inching up and I'm cutting back on driving and that makes sense, too.  I'm willing to pay more to ride around my safe town, doing normal things, not worrying about dumb bombs dropping on my head.   If women my age and older are taking up arms, paying more for my pleasures makes sense, too.                                                                                    nypost.com Joe Biden, former...

Everything was on time.  We had the extra leg room exit row seats on all four legs of the trip. All the flight attendants were delightful.  There was no turbulence.  The passengers next to me were small, masked, and silent.    The walk from the airport parking garage to the gate was long. I haven't taken a long walk since Pandemica began.  This was a hell of a way to begin again.   We trekked through mini-sized Tucson International Airport (you can go direct to Mexico) and from the very end of the outlying E Concourse at Dallas/Fort Worth's contribution to mega-projects to somewhere in the middle of DFW's D Concourse.  The monorail doesn't touch the E Concourse; there are escalators up and down at the end of the 2 sets of moving walkways after turning corner after corner after corner on foot and by the time the gate was in sight I was done. Have I mentioned that I haven't taken a long walk in quite a while?  I am really out of practice....

 Hi I am FlapJilly who is WRITING this right now. I am excited to be writing this. Yesterday me and grandma  wrote a book called GIBLET(logan) THE CLUMSY LION which everyone loved very much especially TBG(grandpa)  sorry there was a ghost on my butt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...

And it doesn't matter. I have effectively deposited all my winter clothes in two plastic buckets which live in a closet in the basement.  Every time we visit, I find new old clothes, items I'd forgotten I owned, stowed neatly beneath socks and underwear and my favorite t-shirt, the one that says Have No Fear - GRANDMA IS HERE. We stayed with the little ones while their parents went out to dinner, for the first time in a long time.  We watched Encanto  until Giblet decided that he needed to be in the playroom.  We built with giant cardboard blocks, tossed a soft ball around, and generally indulged the youngest member of our crew.   Bedtime was less fun for Giblet than it was for FlapJilly, who, after an hour or so of listening to his unhappiness, managed to calm her little brother down.  She has the magic touch.  She knew just what to say and how to say it.  She wouldn't let me interfere - Gramma, you stay here.  I'll go. But while he was wail...

After 7 months, we're with the grandkids. Yesterday was filled with air travel and hugs and more hugs and then Arizona basketball..... but no blogging.  I'll be back in on Monday. Right now I'm going to play with the babies!

The 5th graders and I went out to Grandma's Garden today.  Though the mandate is gone, most of the students were masked.  All of them stayed far enough away from me - they don't want me to get sick any more than I want to be sick.   We had much too much fun last week, laying bean seeds on wet paper toweling and sealing into a zip lock bag.  They watched and took notes every day as the seeds shed their coats,                                              opened just a touch,   split in half, revealing a little leaf near his thumb and sprouted roots and rootlets They germinated.  The kids watched as life began.  It may be that I was more impressed with that fact than were the students, but the way they cradled their treasures   showed me that something was going on. They cared about the seeds.... maybe because I told them to give th...

Looking around here, it sure seems that it is.  Masks are a rarity.  Restaurants are packed.  Plans are being made.  Festivals are being held. Festivals are the perfect super spreader events.  Lots of people, many of whom have traveled from other places to join the fun, congregating and talking and eating and being close.  Seems like the perfect kind of thing to avoid, right? But then there's the Tucson Festival of Books.   It's my favorite weekend of the year.  Hours and hours of talks and questions and famous people right there in the same room with me.  Books and ideas and those who love them mingle and mix in polite if sometimes disorderly crowds.  I run into people I haven't seen in forever; I was really looking forward to that after two years of seeing no one. I reserved tickets to see Billy Collins (twice) and Alexander Vindman and  Viet Thanh Nguyen .  I noted, with half my brain, the number of seats in the Ballroo...

Queen T is understandably upset.  With family and friends living in a war zone, she's glued to the news and the Twitter-verse and Facebook, translating the best from Ukranian or Russian to her solicitous husband, who is just as powerless as the rest of us. It's been awful for them. Last Sunday, we listened and offered love and comfort as Big Cuter wrapped her in his arms and then she interrupted the semi-effective cosseting we were offering and announced that there was a gathering at the Civic Center in support of Ukraine and she was going right now. Big Cuter went to put on going outside pants as we hung up the phone.  These photos arrived several hours later.   At this most difficult time, she found solace in the presence of strangers.  It's a small world, after all.