The Burrow

It started in Chicago.  I bought large, round, glass containers with white and red and yellow lids at Crate and Barrel, filled them with homemade brownies, and dropped them off at 5 or 6 houses. Fast forward 40 years, and I'm no longer shopping at Crate and Barrel for brownie packaging.  It's no longer half a dozen close friends who are on the receiving end of my baking. The list now stretches to three pages.  There are 80 some entries, and not all of them are households.  I bring plates of treats to the garden store  and the Pilates studio .  Prince Elementary School has many recipients, yet only occupies one line on the spreadsheet. It's a labor of love, albeit a messy one.  Chocolate ends up everywhere; this morning's first batch sent it right to the floor. It's not really my fault - the bowl was too small.  I usually used my large glass mixing bowl, but that broke, after many years of dedicated service, sometime this past year.  I tr...

TBG and I bought our first house in the mid-1980's.  Neither of us was particularly skilled in homeownership.  Daddooooo, however, was a true pro.  Upon entering the building for the first time, he headed straight for the basement and then the garage, taking note of the furnace and the water line and the circuit breakers and the insulation and whatever else was important. Unfortunately, we paid very little attention to those details, which led to my frantic phone call several months later, crying that my basement was covered in a foot of water and the hose from the washing machine was doing a crazy dance against the wall.   He told me where to go to turn off the water.  He never scolded me for my inattention to the important things.  He recommended several solutions to dispose of the water (using it as a kiddie pool for his grandchildren was his first choice) and wished me luck. I wish he had told me to write down the location of that valve for future ...

All the vendors were local.  Not all of the were as snazzy as she was. There were blocks and blocks of them, on both sides of the street, in parking lots and enclosed spaces and undeveloped parcels.  There was lots of street parking within a block or two, and street parking is free on the weekends (and after 5pm every day.... another reason to love living here).   Taos Bubbe and I had planned a lovely day of breakfast and shopping, but her tummy ache got in the way.  I found out about the change of plans as I was putting gas in my car, a block away from Not-Kathy and Dr. K.  A phone call and a quick change of sweatshirts and Not-Kathy was in The UV with me. This was a fortuitous turn of events.  Grandma's Garden was right on the way.  I used my special key,  we examined the bench that needs shoring up, I locked up the gate and we continued downtown.  The GPS got us through the construction and luck gave us a parking space one...

 

The Loop  is beautifully paved and marked and signed. B efore Pandemica,  Brenda Starr and I walked some of it, section by section, gradually increasing our speed and endurance.  We went from barely making it from the parking lot to the trailhead to climbing gentle rises.  We weren't fast, but we were faithful.   This morning, Taos Bubbe and I covered three and a half miles in little over an hour, out and back from Brandi Fenton Park (which has a lot of parking lots, all of which I drove through, looking for her, before I settled into a space and hoped for the best) to the ramp up to the Swan Bridge ..... the other side of the bridge where Brenda Starr and I started our last walk.   I had forgotten how wonderful it is to move outdoors.  Except for a lot near the wash where two gigantic excavators were maneuvering, loudly, around yards of huge boulders, there was no extraneous noise.   Sneakers and bike tires provided the background ...

This is the time of year when we start all our phone calls with a weather report.  While my grandchildren are throwing snowballs in Indiana, I am wearing shorts and wondering what to plant in my containers.  They are having a wonderful time, and I don't begrudge them a moment's pleasure.  But in my 8th decade, the warmth and sunny skies make November a much more palatable month. We do have our own opportunities for leaf peeping.  These two crepe myrtles were planted at exactly the same time, and share the same exposure.  Why one is orange and the other is red, remains a mystery . The  Pedilanthus bracteatus (Tall Slipper Plant) on the left lives in a 4' tall planter, mostly shaded from the sun.  The yellow branches need to be trimmed, another sign of fall.  Once it's cleaned up, there will be tiny red flowers sprouting f rom the most unlikely places.  They set off the little red and white Santa faces I hook onto their stalks. Yes, we have Ame...

The medium size kids broke up the clots and added the contents of the compost and seed cover bags Guy the Groundskeeping Guru found for us.  There was much discussion over the amount of smoothness necessary to make Grandma happy. The bigger kids came.  There was a 30 pound bag of soil that had to move from one end of the garden to the other. She was bound and determined to do it all by herself. Once she arrived, there was the problem of getting into the heavy plastic to the potting soil inside.  Again, she wanted no help. We shared in her joy as she dumped her treasure into the bed. And then there was combining and mixing and comingling and all the other words for smooshing it all together When it was smooth as could be, we laid the irrigation tubing  before they had to return to class.  I turned it on, and found that the emitter remaining after the tube popped itself off  was sending a jet stream right into our mandarin orange tree. I turned off the statio...

I'm checking in with myself, six months after my hip replacement, nearly thirteen years after a young man with an untreated mental illness, who didn't know to use his words, thought a gun would solve his problems. That's how I describe my trauma to the Prince scholar gardeners.  Saying the words used to bring me right back to lying on the sidewalk outside the Safeway, holding Christina-Taylor's hand.  These days, they don't touch my heart at all.  That's progress. I am able to look at the faces and judge the lesson learned without feeling the bullet wounds.  I can have conversations like  why did they let someone like that have a gun, anyway ? and steer them to voting and using your voice and talking to your grown ups about how you feel... and, by the way, I think you are absolutely right. Not hurting has a lot to do with it, I'm sure.  I'm up and down, sitting on the edge of the raised beds, leaning over, standing up without pushing myself off the groun...

The irrigation in Grandma's Garden at Prince Elementary School was on the fritz.  The scholar gardeners had never heard that expression, one that I heard in my house anytime anything went awry. I pulled up the tubing so that the gardeners could till the soil.  Without the need to be careful of the irrigation!! they could trowel and dig and mix with impunity.  They did a wonderful job.  The soil in the first bed was almost loamy; if love were a nutrient the seeds would have sprouted already. We re-laid the lines, burying them beneath the reconstituted soil.  I went to the control box to manually activate the system.  I had explained it to the kids; I wanted them to see the water in action.   Unfortunately, the system did not cooperate.  Nothing happened.  Thankfully, the whistle blew and they were off to class, leaving me alone with the dysfunction.  I checked all the connections.  I made sure the water was running from the mai...

The next time Comcast/Xfinity decides that our monthly bill isn't high enough,  I'll remind them of their failure to perform.  It's like the being football's extra point kicker. You have only one job.  It's the same job every time.  It's what you are supposed to be good at doing.  Screwing it up shouldn't be an option.  In this case,  losing service twice in 8 days definitely counts as screwing up.  Especially when it means I have to use my phone as a mobile hot spot to post this.   I'm happy that the phone can connect to the internet (although now that Arizona's elections are decided it's not really necessary). I'm proud that I figured out how to create my mobile hot spot.  I wish I didn't have to be so clever.  More tomorrow when (if????) the problem is resolved. 

DeShaun Watson, a talented quarterback, is ready to begin practicing with his new team, the Cleveland Browns.   He's also been accused of sexual assault by 24 women, massage therapists for his former team.  He's not been convicted, and the old team settled lawsuits with most of the women, facts which some use to cast doubt upon his culpability.  And I get that athletes are prey to these kinds of accusations.   But two dozen times?  Even the NFL couldn't look past it. They decided that missing 11 games and getting therapy was punishment enough.     Oh, yes, there was a financial penalty as well, a $5,000,000 fine and $ 690,000 in lost salary.   Of course, he has already received a   $44,965 million signing bonus, and he  has a f ully guaranteed, five-year, $230 million contract.  Is there that much difference in living on 275 or 270 million dollars for the next five years?  I'll never know. What I do know is that ...

I really am. Americans believed Joe Biden when he said that this was a battle for the soul of America.   Americans stood up to a Supreme Court which obviously does not represent the will of the people. Young people who grew up with Active Shooter Drills used their power to elect gun safety legislators. And Mark Finchem, the insurrectionist election denying Trump acolyte, was the only clear cut loser among all the MAGA Republicans running for state wide executive offices.  It seems that most Arizona voters want their votes to be counted and certified the old fashioned way - honestly, reflecting the will of the voters and not that of the Secretary of State. We still don't know who will be our Governor or our Representative; they're still counting.  And counting is what they should be doing.  They are verifying and curing and counting.... hundreds of thousands of mail in ballots which dropped off on Election Day.... and it's so much fun listening to the talking hea...

Apparently, Steve Kornacki was right and I was wrong .  I misunderstood the Secretary of State's website and went to sleep with a false sense of optimism.  This morning I woke up to find that there are 200,000ish votes left to count in Maricopa County alone, and that while Mark Kelly's 85,000ish vote lead is good, it's not great. Katie Hobbs is holding on to the Governor's race by the tippy tip tips of her fingers.  My Congressperson has yet to be determined; as of 4:59pm today(Thursday) with 69%  reporting.  I highlight that to make the point that there is no indication of what whole 69% is part of.  I'm a careful reader; this lack of precision is just adding to the craziness. I slept well last night, and I've been content all day. Democracy survived.  There are still many too many people who don't believe the nose on their face, even when looking in the mirror.  But there are also those who recognize real threats, and who are willing to go to th...

I want it to be over.  I do not like living on the edge.   That's what I typed 20 minutes ago.  Since then, the Secretary of State's fantastic website  has updated itself to 100% of precincts reporting.  It's still not officially declared, but this looks like the results. The margins in some of the races are very slim - House (9,482); Governor (4,083);  Attorney General (3,732) - with 100% of the precincts reporting.  The numbers are constantly being updated, but the changes are small... 7,  10,  13.  MSNBC has Joy Reid reporting that only 77% of the precincts are in; I'm sorry if you were provided incorrect facts by the mainstream media.  I promise, you can trust me, at least.   The MAGA candidate for Gabby's seat, Democratic since our arrival in 2006, and his counterpart for Attorney General are the probable winners over two very qualified women, and I'm disappointed.   My little slice of the world is now ...

The Burrow was disconnected.  Cut off from the world.  No way out.  No way in unless you knew my phone number and could text me. It was exhilarating, for a while.  There was nothing I could do.  It was not my problem to solve.  I never turn on the tv when I am at home, so I wasn't as unhappy as TBG, who missed his talking heads and Perry Mason.   Anyway, the recorded voice told me that it would be fixed by 11:15.  I did some holiday shopping, sewed on a button for Amster, gardened with Prince scholars, and drove home to find that 11:15 had come and gone and that the recording now projected a 5pm fix. Were I conspiracy minded, I'd go down a rabbit hole of losing-the-internet-and-tv-on-election-day, but I'm already on the edge of complete freak out so I closed off that door. 5 o'clock came and went.  Our internet stayed where it was, blocked in the ether, stuck in the fiber optic cable, magically vanishing without saying goodbye.  The...

After Guy, our Groundskeeping Guru, told me he'd salvaged bags of soil for the garden, it was simply a matter of toting them to the raised beds.  Between the two of us and a wheeled cart we brought enough soil and compost and mixtures of the two to refurbish our planting medium.   It was a good thing that so many scholars were willing to get dirty. First came removing the remaining plants, stunted vestiges of what they might once have been, had COVID not intervened.   Not everyone was on board with killing what, to my eye, were weeds. Thankfully, the girl whose dad told her that what I thought was a small white carrot was, in fact, ginger, stepped right in to make it feel okay.   After collecting several small specimens and displaying them on the edge of the bed, she chose to pose like this: The searching and the wondering -  is this a gingerbread? -  and the presentation of the treasure to our resident expert was a delightful distraction fro...

It was a sunny Fall Sunday in Tucson, where no one was confused about the time because we never change our clocks.  Not-Kathy and I walked on  the multi-use path  for 2 miles before we began to shop.  It might sound counter-intuitive to get hungry before looking at groceries, but these were such healthy groceries, and the walk was the second in my Early New Year's Revolution (sic FlapJilly) of walking at least a mile, outside, every single day, so the Market at the end of the road seemed like a lovely congratulations from the world. Plus, there were lots of tables and chairs for resting and for eating, and the black clad young man on the left kept putting out more and more of them. As at all Farmers' Markets, there were plants. I won't dwell on the paucity of the vegetables available; this is the desert, after all.  But in addition to the few tables of onions and potatoes and squash, there was this display of mushrooms. Not-Ka...

The cashier at lunch  asked if we wanted to eat outside. Inside!  Please!  We live here.  It's cccccold out there.   She nodded in agreement :  I need my winter coat. But the cooler temperatures (low 60's with clouds and drizzle) perk up the greenery and release all kinds of enticing odors.  I'd been inside all morning; I took a stroll around my driveway when we got home.   The concept of the nurse tree  is nicely illustrated here. Shielding the saguaro's new growth, it allows for lots and lots of new arms.  The arrows just point out one side of the connection.  New things pop up in the most unexpected places, too.  I went to get a closer look at something and almost stepped  on these guys. Someone pooped out something that found a happy space and is propagating like the begats.  I usually attribute these to birds, but I may have to rethink that.  My walk included this remarkable series of small, symmet...

We returned before we were expected.   A last minute hiccup in our plans combined with a no-change-fee-fare brought us to our own bed two days early.  I was looking forward to sleeping in and being quiet.  After all, it was a day without expectations or plans or friends waiting to have lunch.  It really was free , a bonus day. I thought I'd be tired from traveling.  I thought I'd spend the day lounging on the couch or the patio, doing the Wordle and Spelling Bee and the Mini Crossword.  It sounded like heaven. Apparently that lack of oomph only happens to my husband.   After a restless night I was totally awake at 9am.... which should have felt like 6am because I should still be on Eastern Time.... but there I was, bright eyed and bushy tailed as G'ma would've said.  I wasn't tired or achy at all.  I was totally energized. I cleaned the whole house, and I'm not just talking about dusting.  From the fronts of the stainless stee...

It's a travel day.   Lyft to the train station.  Get off the train and take an excursion bus for 20 minutes to get back on the train.  Track repairs added that step.  Up the steps to find a taxi, operated by possibly the slowest driver in the Northern Hemisphere.  Spend several delightful hours with Dr. P, a playgroup mom,  reliving old times and trying not to despair over current events.  Add in a short walk for lunch (where she and TBG sat on wet cushions which led to wet tushes and a quick trip to the dryer for their pants and underwear) and then we were in her car on the way to the L. Took an elevator down to the platform and the elevated train to the airport and the moving walkway through terminals until we collapsed at a restaurant.  Now we wait for the plane to depart,  then Lyft home.  Well,  the plan left on time and landed 30 minutes early.... but the Lyftc would take 35 minutes to arrive and there were no taxis at al...

Decorating cookies is an integral part of Halloween.  Little Cuter had every add on imaginable available for her independent cookie creators,  and they did a fine job.  The sprinkles took a detour, to what may be my favorite Halloween picture of all time: I hope you had a wonderful and spooky day!