The Burrow

Get rid of the f'ing mags.  They're not here to hurt me .  (Trump on his comfort level with the weaponry carried by the Jan 6th rally attendees) Mark, you need to pay attention to this. (Cassidy Hutchinson, aide to the Chief of Staff, after telling him that those armed Trumpies were about to storm the Capitol) Anything else?  (Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, from his office couch, without looking up) He doesn't think they're doing anything wrong.  (Meadows on Trump's opinion of the above) It was un-patriotic.  It was un-American. (Hutchinson on the above) THAT'S MY COUCH (Mick Mulvaney on Meadow's perch while glued to his phone during the above) Only the last one made me laugh.  We came so very close to losing it all.

Somehow, on the phone with the delightful woman from the Social Security this afternoon, the conversation turned to women's rights. We sighed in the same way, recognizing a kindred spirit.   I told her that TBG wants to apologize to her, and to every other woman on the planet, for being a white man in America today.  His people are an embarrassment.  She laughed out loud, said Please tell him I accept ... and thank him, so I put him on speaker phone and  we all smiled and laughed with tears in our voices. It's not that abortion will disappear.  It's that women will die.  For the two of us on the phone today, it was sharing a moment, an unfathomable reality, that we were fighting this fight again.   The call ended and I found TBG fulminating, stewing, going over it and over it and coming to the same place he always lands.  He presents it as so obvious that anyone not seeing it is not paying attention.  Briefly, it's two parts:  ...

Pregnancy Adjacent  -    a term I'm coining for anyone who knows anyone who's needed to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, or anyone who's contributed to the unwanted pregnancy itself.   ***** I am having a hard time believing that party-hearty-frat-boy Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh has never been Pregnancy Adjacent.   I am having a hard time believing that he spent his teens and twenties and thirties celibate;  he married in 2004 -  when he was 39 years old.  In all those years was there never a failure of contraception?  A failure of reticence?  A surprise?   Then again, he was 8 years old when Roe was decided.  (Gorsuch was 6 , Roberts was 18.) When I went off to college in 1969, contraceptive prescriptions for unmarried women were hard to get. There was no gynecologist on staff at the health clinic, but there was Planned Parenthood just downhill from campus and their services were price friendly and open...

That's what TBG told me to do this afternoon. I was walking past him, going no where in particular, when he bade me stop and assess my stance.  His grin was larger than usual.  I've gotten used to that oversized reaction to the fact that I ambulate without lurching, but this was different.   Those who haven't seen me since my surgery are awestruck and silent before they begin to beam.  Look at YOU!  could be my new name.  Walking has become a non-event for me, something mundane, something pedestrian (sorry about that).  But it still impresses the outside world and, apparently, my inside world, too. He's watched me every day since the operation.  He's seen the drama unfold.  But something about my posture struck him today - and he wanted to share. You are taller, slimmer, happier.  Go, look, enjoy. And so I did.  I walked up to the full length mirror in our bathroom and I stood on one leg and I walked backward and sashayed a bit...

Humidity is thick.   Overheated air is thick.   Thick air is hard to breathe.  It makes its presence known as you're walking to the only tree shaded spot left at the grocery store. ***** The trees love the extra moisture in the air.  Their pods are dropping.  Their leaves are greener.  But it cannot be said that they are thriving.  These intense, ten minute rainstorms don't penetrate deep into the soil, the way a long, slow soak can do. It can be raining in the back yard and not in the front.   The house can be in the eye of the storm; I can watch it rain on the mountains while I sit in the sunshine. ***** The sunsets are uniformly fabulous.  They are accented by dozens of bats feasting on dozens of flying insect swarms.   It's more fun to watch it from inside.  Being dive bombed by bats is even less fun than being consumed by infinitely small beasties. ***** I can't wait until the afternoon do do my daily swim....

The Kibbitzer has been a vegetarian for a few decades.  Yet, every once in a while, a hamburger can tempt him.  I use this to bolster my supposition that at some point or other everyone craves a burger.   Great fries, of course, are an extra added bonus, but that's another post. (Spoiler alert: the answer is Nathan's.)  I can say, though, that the crispy, skinny, just enough skin on some to remind you it's a potato fries that sat next to the perfect burger were of exceptional quality.  And quantity, as attested by Delightful Delaney: I just kept watching him pour them on the plate. Taos Bubbe ordered the BLT on gluten-free bread, which led to a spirited discussion of the misnomer.  Gluten holds the bread together.  Without it, as evidenced by her plate as she ate, it's only a matter of time before the crumbs no longer stick together.  There is no longer any structural integrity to your meal.   My burger was topped with three small h...

I'm obsessed.  I'll admit it.  I'm organizing my week around it.  I'm furiously crocheting as I sit in front of the television for hours, watching the attempted destruction of our democracy.  I'm yelling at the screen,  I'm weeping, I'm fantasizing about DJT answering for his crimes. Yes, crimes.  He's on tape.  He tweeted.  Objectively speaking, he did bad things and he must be punished.   But we don't live in an objective world.  We live in a world where strangers can bust into a grandma's house looking for an election official and a volunteer - her daughter and granddaughter - to make a citizens' arrest.  The President of the United States had convinced them that the two women had conspired to steal the election.  The USB drive that they supposedly shared?  Listen to the daughter:  This is a ginger mint.   The Committee is drawing a direct line, at every turn, to the former President of the United St...

Do you have a favorite one?  Is there a carousel from your childhood that came instantly to mind when you read the title of this post?  Do you tell people absolutely must ride it when they are in town?   It's a lovely sign of his maturity that Giblet no longer screams in fury because his mom will only let him ride the lion one time per visit to the zoo.  They love the animals and the (ridiculous) small train ride and  feeding the little animals pellets taken softly from their hands, but the merry go round sits right in front of the entrance/exit/gift shop and that's just a lot to handle when you're small. It took me a while to get used to riding the horses at Nunley's.  I was happy sitting in the throne that was firmly anchored to the moving platform, much to the dismay of everyone else.  When I finally mustered the courage to get on a horse that went up and down, once I finally figured out that no one fell off this thing, I became fearless, stret...

Not for very long, and not that intensely, but it definitely rained yesterday. I deep watered Tree and the lemon tree the day before; as newbies, they need help when it's dry and windy and very hot.  Just like Daddooooo putting away the sleds could make it snow (once, in May), there was another few gallons, free of charge.  I laughed and wondered how often this rain dance would work, and remembered that the paper told me to expect a wet monsoon. That got me thinking about collecting rainwater and using it for irrigation, at home and at the school garden, and then I just had to stop and smile.   Such big projects were not even at the edge of my consciousness before I had my hip replaced (with titanium and a stem down my femur......that's still kinda creepy to think about, let alone type right out there in the open.... my bionic self, revealed). It's my third try at life, this one starting not from loss but from gain.   The loss is there, of course, now and a...

The Committee members repeated it, over and over again.  Donald Trump knew  that Mike Pence could not refuse to certify the electors.  Donald Trump knew that there was no credible evidence that the tally was rigged. I don't think so. I think it's true to say that the information was conveyed to him.  I think it is true that the words were said and read to him many times.  I don't believe that he was capable of internalizing them, much less acting upon them. I don't think he's capable of considering the fact that he lost, and that he lost so publicly.  Mary Trump's expose of their family dynamics says it all in the title:   Too Much and Never Enough .  Failure is just not an option in TrumpWorld, especially in the brain of Donald J Trump himself.   That's not an excuse for his behavior, past and present.  I'm totally diagnosing him from afar.  But I've said all along that you can't fix crazy, and these delusions are just t...

I swept out of the parking lot and waved to the volunteer behind the Admissions Counter as I walked through the gate and into the park, up one lane and down another and around and around the I-never-remember-which-path-to-take route to Outdoor Yoga.  It was a trip which took no time at all, which required no rest stops, which left me bemoaning my lack of endurance but otherwise unencumbered with negativity.   Nothing hurt. When Taos Bubbe and I were doing this last winter, the trek was an obstacle.  Today, my yogi didn't recognize me until I was close enough for her to see my face.  From a distance, my gait had not identified me.  I wasn't galumphing; I was walking. We hugged and admired my newfound abilities and thanked science and then I strolled into the event space and unrolled my mat.  I was careful to avoid bending in half, but getting organized was simple and easy and felt great.  We started standing up, going through variations of warrior ...

Amber Heard was part of the NBC Nightly News teaser.  Apparently, she's quite upset about the jury verdict last week.  There was a picture of Johnny Depp that made me sad - he's puffy and exudes an aura of disrepute that's more tawdry than adventurous.   Beyond that, I have no facts.  Kim Kardashian and Kanye West and Pete Davidson were the subject of an otherwise unintelligible article in this month's Vanity Fair.   The article highlighted late night tv's scandal jokes.  I knew nothing. It's not that I don't read the news.  I can tell you the most minute details of the January 6th hearings, of the Watergate hearings in the 1970's  (50 years ago.... but that's another post), of the debate surrounding Arizona's redistricting map.  I have no trouble remembering the characters and their characteristics. I can keep a timeline in my head.  I care. But these two scandals, which are in the paper and on the news, which are brought up in con...

Parts of this have appeared in some form or other in The Burrow already. I've always liked Flag Day.  No parades, no speeches, just my flag outside my front door. ***** This is the weekend, in 2017, when Little Cuter and I helped Gabby celebrate the Commissioning of the USS Gabrielle Giffords.   It was a girls' trip to Galveston, a time to feel good about America, sunny days and balmy nights filled with liquid refreshments and many desserts, Jon Bon Jovi and my first experience of Mark Kelly's ability to command a room. They don't choose just anyone to command a  Space Shuttle,  whispered the distinguished gentleman standing behind me in his be-ribboned Navy Whites. ***** Gabby was gorgeous and happily wind-blown that weekend, leaning against her handsome husband. I know the effort behind each one of the steps she took, from the bow to the stern.  She knew we were watching, and she didn't want to let us down. She marched on, smiling, unwavering, determined....

That's a lot of degrees. There's the moment you touch the door handle of the sub shop and pull your hand away, quickly, before you leave skin on the metal. There's entering your car after a lovely, leisurely lunch, smiling happily until you are overwhelmed but the super-heated air inside. There are the sad and drooping native trees, adapted to this sort of thing so there's nothing to worry about, but still letting you know that they are stressed.  TBG keeps checking the palo verde just over the back wall; the branches are sagging, the pods are hanging lifelessly, and he's worried. I remind him that the leaves on these species curl in upon themselves, minimizing the loss of water by offering a smaller surface for transpiration.  They are not in danger.  They just look awful. So do most of the humans I pass.  We are entering the  as long as your parts are covered you meet our dress code  stage of dining.  Minimal is the new black when summer temps hit Tu...

That's how Comcast's Guide  function identifies tonight's Select Committee hearing.  There are going to be a bunch of them.  The first one was great tv and real history and if Officer Caroline Edwards' testimony didn't leave you in tears then maybe you needed to be in a life and death situation like that to feel how honest, how raw, how necessary it was for her to tell that story. Over and over again, she'll tell that story.  Over time, I hope, it will fade into the background, although I know full well how hard it is to contain everything associated with encountering those who wish to do you bodily harm.  The reluctant film maker, dressed in formal Casual Friday, was at the front of he-didn't-know-what when he found himself filming the mob assaulting Capitol Police Officer Edwards. The Committee laid the ground work, presented catchy videos (cf Bill Barr calling bullshit, Ivanka saying Daddy was wrong), and then hit us in the gut, in the heartstrings, in th...

Two school administrators chatting at a social event.   And she went on and on and on.  Worried beyond worried.  What was I going to do? All this over a report card?  A parent had taken a report card issue out of the classroom and all the way up to the District Office?   Furious with me, that I didn't share her outrage over those grades.  All I could do was sit and listen and nod. And then, the clincher: He's 8 years old.  Second grade.  

A Hard Day's Night  came on as I swam laps this morning. It took no time at all for me to be transported to Lake George, the sun setting one day on our yearly weeklong vacation to a cottage in the woods.  The parents were scurrying around, and the kids were wondering what all the hullabaloo was about. Secrets were never easy in my family.  Daddooooo couldn't contain himself - we were going to the movies to see THE BEATLES MOVIE .  It's in capital letters because that's how he said it and that's how I received it.  I was 12.  The Beatles were everything. The movie had been released that day.  There wouldn't be a line at the small town movie theatre. It didn't matter to me that my parents and my little brother and sister would be there with me.  It didn't matter that I had no friends along to share the immediate wonderfulness of it all.  When I got back to town, I'd have SEEN IT.   At that moment in time, I had the coolest parents on ...

JannyLou and Fast Eddie drove down from Tempe last night.  She had a doctor's appointment or two here in Tucson today and it's really too much for them to do a round trip in one day. That was really good news for us. Our guest bedroom was all prepared for guests.  Fresh towels; clean sheets; a comfy light blanket for a room that, for some reason, seems to be unusually warm no matter what the thermostat tells it to be were all there.  All that was needed was a quick check on the soap and shampoo situation and a light dusting.   I spent the early afternoon making stuffed cabbages and a totally dairy-free lemon tart so that lactose intolerant JannyLou could enjoy more than a nibble of one of my usual brownies.  I was done in plenty of time to finish my latest Harlan Coben mystery; I love it when I read the last page just as a We're at the I-10 exit  text appears on my phone. They nudged their lots-of-metal-between-us-and-the-road, filled-with-safety-featu...

It happened again this afternoon.   Taos Bubbe saw me bounce out of the booth and walk across the restaurant and her eyes grew wider... almost as wide as her smile.  I'm so happy for you!, she said.  And I was reminded once again that those who loved me hated to see me limping around. I'd gotten used to the grunting and the crunching and the serious sensations (okay, the pain).  For the most part,  I'd managed to divorce my gait from the event that wrecked it.  It didn't always remind me of CTG and lying on the sidewalk; mostly it annoyed me without pushing open the lid of that box. Early on in this adventure, TBG asked me what it would feel like when no one knew who I was.  How much of my identity was wrapped up in getting shot, he wondered.  Would I miss it when it was gone. Nope.  I can tell you (and him) that it's nice to blend into the crowd.  It's wonderful to experience the world without my aching hip defining the moment....

Take a stand.  Stake out a position.  Declare that you're taking sides. Wear Orange  day/weekend starts now.   Put on that old orange t-shirt to remember a 9 year old who loved drawing butterflies. Find an orange scrunchie or polo shirt and show your solidarity with those of us who, by some miracle, lived to see the sunrise. And above all - VOTE.  Tell your friends and family that this is not a one-off thing, that they can make this their line in the sand.   You can quote President Biden: “I believe the majority of you will act and turn your outrage into making this issue central to your vote. Enough, enough, enough.”

Where did you imagine this post was going to take you?   To Texas, where the police were afraid to go into an active shooter situation because the active shooter had an actual firearm?  To Johnny Depp and Amber Heard and its effect on the MeToo movement?  To inflation or the Russian invasion of Ukraine or Biden's plummeting poll numbers?   Nope.  None of that serious stuff for me.  It's all out of my control.  I'm looking closer to home.  There are plants in my yard which annoy me.  Animals pooped out brittle brush and jumping cholla and palo verde starters and sure enough, without any help from me or my yard guys, they have thrived. Unfortunately, the droppings were not made in consultation with the homeowner.  The animals just did their business and moved on.  The plants grew and grew and grew and now they are impinging and blocking and generally making a nuisance of themselves. In and of themselves, they are beautiful....

I made it out of the house today - at 3 in the afternoon. I spent the morning and reading dystopian near-future science fiction, took a break for lunch, then decided to finish the damn book even though I wasn't enjoying it at all.  I couldn't keep the characters straight, and it really didn't seem to affect my understanding of the plot, what plot there was.   By the time I read the last page, I was in a funk.   Going to the library didn't help.  I spent too much time wondering if I'd read the books I was choosing.  Still, I put them in my book bag and brought them home.  The authors are old friends - Harlan Coban and John Lescroart - so I know I won't be disappointed.  But I want to be transported, and that's not going to happen if I've been there, read that already. Whole Foods didn't make me any happier.  The smell of fresh peaches and nectarines was intoxicating, but the bakery was out of all the loaves I like.  I wasn't tempted...