The Burrow

Nothing political to see here, folks.  It's my annual rant about school starting in the middle of summer. Local school districts begin classes on August 1st and then every few days after that.  Our district's first day is August 7th, which means I'll be delivering sweet treats to all the buildings one week from today, August 6th. It's just not right.   There are all the practical reasons, like cutting into summer camp time and resorts not having worker bees because the kids are all in school before Labor Day.  But my reasons are personal, though I imagine if people gave it any thought they just might be universal truths. I like to take a walk on a hot and still August afternoon, going nowhere, slowly, feeling time moving slowly, too.  It's summer at its ripest.  Responsibilities exist out there on the horizon, but nothing requires immediate attention except keeping myself and those around me alive.  I feel stress oozing down and out through my sho...

When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall And down will come baby, cradle and all   It's a pleasant tune, at least.  The words are a different matter entirely.  Not if  the bough breaks, but when  it and its precious cargo come tumbling down.  How is this comforting?   Why has it taken me until my third grandchild to recognize this?  I attribute it to the bicultural environment in which she's being raised.  Her English only, Marin County daddy and her Russian speaking, Ukrainian raised mommy bring an interesting mix to her brain.  Mommy doesn't know all our rhymes and songs and stories; she has her own folklore to share. Since I heard Queen T reading Pushkin to HoneyBunny (in Russian, of course.... yes,, Pushkin for children) I've been hyper aware of what Americans offer to our children. Ring Around the Rosy  is fun to sing.  Just don't mention that it's about bubonic plague and its rosy rash and the posies that supposed...

Double digits have arrived.  FlapJilly was a happy baby and she's a happy girl.  She was a beautiful baby and she's a beautiful girl. She's a good person, inside and out.  Like her mother, she understands friendship and kindness.  She is capable of finding joy wherever she goes.   She's a reader and a softball player and the world's most wonderful big sister.   She still eats the little jelly packets when we go out for breakfast, graduating from the finger she used as a baby to a spoon now that she's grown up. Grown up..... these ten years have flown by and taken forever at the same time.  She's the same person I've always taken for ice cream, only now she can reach the add-ons all by herself.  I'm afraid to find out that she is now taller than I am. Happy Birthday, FlapJilly.  May all the double digits ahead treat you splendidly.  

I was tired last night, readjusting to the altitude.  I remembered the comments telling me to take care of myself,  so I took today off to watch the Olympic athletes sail down the Seine and to regroup.  Happy last weekend in July.  It's nice to be able to breathe again, isn't it?

I remember when I noticed that Daddooooo was an old man.  It was sudden.  It was startling.  It was very sad.  I had that same feeling tonight watching our President on television. COVID takes it out of you,  as I know from personal experience.  He looked like he was still feeling the effects.  The worst part was missing the sparkle in his eyes.  He's always seemed to relish the moment.  Whatever the circumstances, he looked like he was enjoying himself.  Not so much tonight.   He was dim. He was quiet. He was reading from the teleprompter,  not looking at me through the camera.  His talk was short.  He took on the Lying Liar with some of his old verve,  but it was Joe Light, heavy on the pauses, not so much on the punch lines.  For the first time since the debate,  I agreed with those who encouraged him to step down.  I spent my tv time watching Kamala's recent greatest hits; she's come a lon...

Miss Nancy and I were hiking 20-25 miles a week together before I ditched her to move to Tucson.   Luckily, she doesn't hold a grudge.  Today she and I braved the heat and took what was supposed to be a 3.1 mile hike in Novato.  It was hot driving up there, hot when we started out, and hot every time we took a water break.  It was mostly shady,  but that didn't make a difference.  I would have taken pictures,  but the effort of turning the fanny pack around to get to the phone was more than I could bear.  I was thinking that the activity was more torture than delight when Miss Nancy stopped ahead of me and announced that she was very hot. I said that I wouldn't mind if we turned around and the next thing I knew she changed directions and passed me going downhill.  You know you're good hiking buddies when the discomfort is shared.   We zoomed downhill and drove to eat tacos with the air conditioning on full blast and the windows...

I spent today with a big smile on my face.  A black woman will choose a vice presidential nominee.  Her choices include another woman, Gretchen Whitman, a gay man, Secretary Pete, a Jew, Josh Shapiro, and a person I know and who knows me, Mark Kelly.  I never imagined this.  It gives me hope for America. I'm sleeping better now. 

While Little Cuter was growing up, she and I had a standing date on Sunday mornings.  Before breakfast, we'd drive through the underpass in the middle of Frank Lloyd Wright's Main Civic Center,  find a parking space, and enter our happy place.  The fresh lemonade lady was always glad to see us.  The little man selling  very sweet oranges, navel, offering  one for you, two for me made us giggle. We ate Aidells chicken apple sausages with fresh salsa. We bought lettuce mix from a plastic baby pool filled with what G'ma referred to as  garden clippings.   Those are some of my finest memories of our time in Marin.  Today,  I started making some more.  We ended up with bagel sandwiches.  The lemonade lady was gone, and I couldn't find the orange salesman.  It didn't matter.  HunnyBunny did lots of people watching.  Queen T and I bought veggies and fruits, admired th...

I read  After Annie  today.  A review I read once said that you don't just read about Anna Quindlan's characters, you inhabit them.  Or maybe it was that they inhabit you.  It doesn't matter; they're both true. I could smell their dinners and hear their sobs.  I was as bewildered, as lost, as uncertain as they were.  After all, Annie dies on the first page.  Where is this book possibly going to go that won't rip my heart out and leave it on the sidewalk to fry?  The reason Anna Quindlan won a Pulitzer is that she is able to find that space between the unbearable and the alarm clock.  Her gift is presenting the life that must go on, the quotidian details like laundry and hamster food, side by side with the inescapable reality.   She's covered every possible relationship.  Immediate family, in-laws' families, replacement people for estranged families all bump up against one another as life goes on.  Nothing very unusual...

I learned from my mother.  Her mother sewed, Daddooooo's mother crocheted.  I don't think there's a story behind that, but I wanted to share the data anyway. Knitting was G'ma's go-to craft, and we had the handmade ski sweaters to prove it.  Unfortunately, she used scratchy wools that no one who's been alive since acrylics hit the scene would ever put. on their bodies again.  I gave them all away, heartbreaking though it was.  I like to think of a cold un-housed human being comforted by her stitches. I have a closet full of yarns that I really did think would become a project when I bought them.  Somehow, shopping was more fun than creating and now the skeins sit, taking up closet space, waiting to be put to use. Taos Bubbe texted me today, wondering if I would teach her granddaughter to crochet.  We have a date on Friday.  Green is her color, and I certainly have enough of it to get her started.   I've always had a problem finding the l...

Weighted inflatable ball with hand pump and foot rest. American flag quilt by Not-Kathy. It seemed simpler than it's turned out to be. Balancing while typing requires two sets of brain functions, both of which are used to being the only one in charge in any given moment.  It's a challenge to stay balanced and think deep thoughts. Initially, it was too soft.  I was too low to the keyboard and didn't feel enough support from below.  My feeble attempts at inflating it did nothing to improve the situation.  TBG didn't think he accomplished anything after he tried, but he was wrong. At this moment,  I am precariously balanced atop a rather unforgiving and ever changing surface.  Weighted to exist in a state of almost-stationary-but-not-quite, staying in one place requires constant motion by the sitter.   Yes, it's counterintuitive.  But it's true.  One deep breath and the whole thing reacts.... usually just as one of those deep th...

The chyron below the Copa America last night gave a running commentary on the storm we were watching from our windows.  A tornado warning right in our neighborhood.  Flash flood warnings for all the creeks and washes surrounding our house.  The winds were rearranging our outdoor furniture with reckless abandon.  The power flickered and I collected the flashlights and TBG worried but our domicile was good shelter and the only damage we had to clean up was the layer of leaves on the patio. In the morning, I drove to Pilates and surveyed the damage.  Some streets were untouched.  My route was ravaged. This sad saguaro was on the ground across of this tilted giant. The root balls don't send enough deep tendrils to hold the tall trees in place.  This makes sense since our limited water supply rarely seeps down into the soil, but it's not much help when the winds start whirling. Limbs the size of my thigh broke off and tilted the trees along with them. Not a...

I tried several titles on for size.  None of them fit recent events... or else they were not fit to print.   There's a lot I might say aloud, but I'm reluctant to write most of it down.  I'm following Daddooooo's advice:  Don't do anything you don't want published on the front page of the New York Times.   I've spent this afternoon curating my remarks.  These are the few that passed muster. Where are the pundits calling out the crisis actors who created this scene?  Those pundits were noisy about the bullets flying around me, and that was certainly a blatant (if insane) political act. I smile when I read gun safety advocates' posts holding the victims in their hearts and sending prayers.  I really hope that is all those poor souls need right now.   And finally, rail all you want at immigrants and people of color, but it was a young white American man with a legally purchased firearm who tried to take your head off, Donald. ...

I strolled through the aisles at WallyWorld late this afternoon.  I found some of what I was looking for and, of course, lots of things that I wasn't looking for but which were tempting, if only for a glance or two.   But then there were these: sitting right below SEASONAL MERCHANDISE SALE  sign which said 90% OFF!  NO EXCEPTIONS! Math is not my long suit, but I can calculate 10% of anything and then multiply it by, in this case, 9.  Suddenly, the I'll-never-spend-$5.98-on-these pinwheels became put-three-of-those-58.9cent-babies-in-the-cart brilliant purchases. Smiling about the garden scholars' reaction to these huge decorations, I rang them up first.   They registered at $1.49. Not trusting my math, I googled 90% off $5.98.  Then I pressed Call for help  and showed my screen to the helper.  She said I paid $1.49 for them yesterday.  That's the price.  I begged to differ, showed her the screen again, and watched as she o...

The Lying Liar hasn't been seen in 11 days.  Where's the media on that? The Republican Party is set to nominate a convicted felon as its standard bearer.  Where's the media on that? Why, they are covering the spectacle that is the Democratic Party once again stepping on a chance to save democracy and preserve The American Way..... ensuring instead of limiting rights, caring instead of denying, participating in a free and fair way. There's a damn fine message waiting to be delivered.  There are people who will listen.  They are  not my young friend from yesterday , not the MAGA diehards, nor those convinced that Joe is too old and Kamala is weak.  They are the women who will go to the polls in Arizona to enshrine the right to reproductive care in our Constitution.  They are the voters who will not vote for a felon.  They might be the voters driving across a new bridge paid for by the Democrats and Joe Biden's infrastructure bill. And, of course, th...

I had all the talking points.  I had the statistics on my phone.  We sat, just the two of us, at a quiet table, painting ceramic flowers. We spent two hours talking about what's at stake in the upcoming election.   He couldn't get past the fact that Joe Biden is old, and garbles his words, and he has the videos to back it up.  He just can't vote for someone's who has dementia, whose brain doesn't work.  He can't have someone who cannot think clearly leading the nation. He thinks the indictments will all go away because they are flawed.  Does he think it's okay to remove Top Secret/Eyes Only documents and store them in your bathroom?  Haven't you ever broken the rules? The seriousness of exposing our allies' wartime capabilities was beyond him.  Joe Biden is old. Serial, unrepentant sexual abuser..... convicted of business fraud in service of trying to steal an election..... find me 11,000 some odd votes......  he had nothing to say to an...

I am so tired of the Democrats eating their young. Joe Biden is no older today than he was last year at this time, if you look at it from a percentage-of-life-lived perspective.  If people were outraged and fearful then, they certainly kept their mouths shut, even thought President Biden was abysmally behind in the polls. Now, when the polling numbers are moving in Biden's direction, instead of rallying around their leader, the Democrats are looking to score points, to move up in the pecking order, to lust without seeming to yearn. The President raised unprecedented amounts of money in the days after the debate, some of it from TBG and me.  I was sending a message that the situation is okay with me, given the alternative. Would I rather have had this conversation 18 months ago?  Sure, but nobody asked me. I'd have liked President Biden to choose to go out the door with the economy on an upswing and the Bi-Partisan Infrastructure Bill (which deserves to be capitalized just...

2025 - The Conservative Promise.  That's the official title of the publication everyone is talking about, and which I've read so that you don't have to.  You can thank me later.   Reading the Mueller Report was riveting, a binge-worthy true story of fantastically evil characters, horrifying, and anything but boring.  This thing is a screed written by those evil characters and is equally horrifying.  It was boring, repetitious, and lie filled.  Its terrifying specificity repelled me.  I wanted to stop, and, eventually, I did.  We really must win this election. The lies (well, a few of them... you'll see where this goes pretty easily) The Federal Bureau of Investigation, knowing that claims of collusion with Russia were false, collaborated with Democratic operatives to inject the story into the 2016 election through strategic media leaks, falsified Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant applications, and lied to Congress. I'll spa...

I have an annual post that usually goes here on Independence Day.  I'm not feeling very celebratory this year.   Apparently, we have an all powerful President with few limits on his powers.  That's why the Declaration of Independence listed all the things that the King did to force his subjects to dissent. We have no way to make that bold a statement right now..... we have to wait until November and hope that the rest of the voting public sees the danger the same way we do. November is a long way off.  A convicted felon is a major party candidate.  The Supreme Court is corrupted by partisan politics and unethical conduct.  My blood pressure is 157 over 92. This is not good.   I'm making a commitment to register every citizen I encounter; I'm going to get the forms and carry them around in my purse. I'm going to write Get Out The Vote postcards for every campaign I can.  I'll send dollars when I'm able.   I'm just not going to w...

This is   reworked, revised, revisited...yes, you've read parts of this before.  I'll have the 2024 version of this for your reading pleasure tomorrow.  It's not quite as joyous. 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 wedged between the base and the capital of one of the front columns, secured with thin, silver, crafting 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 ingenious remedies to intractable problems.  He was also big on flags and the 4th of July.  We always went to the beach.  We always stopped at Custom Bakers on the way home, where the owners always let us go back and stick our fingers in the vats of fro...

I've heard of a food desert, and donated dollars and fresh fruit and veggies when I've been asked to help.  I think of myself as relatively blessed when it comes to having what I need when I need it.  The essentials are ready at hand, or available at the end of a telephone line or a short ride in the car.  We turned our backs on buying a beautiful home half way up Mt Tam in Marin because what if we forgot that we needed milk  and we had to drive all the way down the twisty road i the dark. We chose Tucson for many reasons.  Among those reasons was the obvious proliferation of the various arms of the medical profession.  Every main artery had clusters of doctors in little attached houses, side by side for miles at a time.  We figured this was a prime space for doctors to practice; the population skews older and God knows old people need doctors.   While it is still true that old people need doctors, there don't seem to be very many of them wil...

He can do anything he wants, as long as the justices he installs says he can. It's too bad Joe Biden is an honorable man. Right now, he could order the assassination of the Lying Liar for fomenting an insurrection,  pardon the killers, and no one could say him nay. I dissent. I had my annual check up today.  My blood pressure was 160 over 80, 150 over 80 after an enjoyable conversation with my doctor. Was I exercising?  Was I overindulging in evil foods?  No,  I caught 10 minutes of Nicolle Wallace before I drove over to her office and yes, I could feel my blood pressure going up. Her advice?  Don't watch the news before a blood pressure check...... and keep track of the numbers for the next few days to help her help me feel better.   So, for my mental health, I am not going to think about this any more.

It's despair that I'm feeling.  It's not a place I like to go.  I've reverted to November, 2019, right after the election, when I could not listen to the news.  I've asked TBG to change the channel, and until he finds something else to watch my innards are in turmoil.   I cannot do this to myself. If all this does is confirm that Joe is an old man then I'd say no harm, no foul.  And then I would add this: When your wife is in the hospital, dying of sepsis, after being denied basic medical care, you're not going to care that Joe Biden is old. Anyone who believes that a convicted felon should be president cannot be influenced.  The rest of us should focus on policy and implementation and those pesky down ballot races. That's where I'm going to start with Mr. 21.   It's time to start studying  Project 2025  and scaring the shit out of those young non-voters who have absolutely no idea what is in store for them.   And I can do...