The Burrow

I find swimming laps to be unbearably boring.  There's nothing to read and, while my head is submerged, there's nothing to hear.  There are just my thoughts and me.  When I'm not thinking about using my muscles appropriately, I'm running ideas for The Burrow or wondering about my offspring and their offspring or the memories the songs on the speakers evoke. Slow dancing in the twilight at 6th grade graduation parties.  Standing in the cafeteria line for breakfast during my freshman year in college.  The Beatles. The Stones. Grace Slick in all her configurations.  They each bring something to the party. But yesterday I was flummoxed.  I ran the conversation over and over in my head until they played a song I didn't like and I got out of the pool and enlisted TBG in solving the problem.  He laughed, of course he knew what was what, and then he proceeded to stumble over it all just as I was.  So, for your confusion/edification/delight, here's th...

There are times when I feel like a hero, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Today, I'm looking askance at curbstones. I'll be back tomorrow, with thoughts. I'm not in a position to have many of those right now. 

I'm too worn out for original thought, though everything is going just as planned (for once).  Instead,  I'm giving you a link to why I think Mayor Pete's Sunday appearance with Joanna Mendoza here in Tucson was abruptly cancelled this afternoon.   TBG and I planned to attend, had signed up on line, were waiting for the exact location to be revealed.  Instead, we received a this event is cancelled  email with no explanation at all. Later on, I opened Substack and read this, by my favorite Mayor and Presidential Candidate:           A Terrible Thing Happened to My Family by Pete Buttigieg Even in today's climate, there should be one fundamental principle everyone respects: whatever you think about someone in politics, you leave their kids alone. Someone decided to hurt our family this week. I’m furious, and I want to share what happened. Read on Substack .  There's the link.  There's no paywall.  You don't need a...

I cannot believe that I watched it.  I was enthralled, captivated, drawn in the way a good movie draws you in - slowly, the anticipation growing then the climax and then it starts all over again.  It's usually a dull, boring, repetitive process.   Not this year.  This year I recognized most of the players.  This year I remembered the Iowa State games and the Houston games and how Arizona's Wildcats fared against them.  I had opinions on scoring and defense and attitude. I could take issue with the talking heads about who should go one or two.  Lacking knowledge of the NBA teams' particular needs, I relied on TBG's somewhat greater insight, although he warned me that his information came solely from other talking heads.  Was Burries too short for .... where is Koa Peat..... Veesaar as one of Jay Bilas's prime picks halfway through the first round? Tommy Lloyd's recruiting progeny are strewn over the college landscape, as NIL and the transfer p...

For those of you who were otherwise engaged in more substantive pursuits, allow me to share the highlights of the hours it streamed on my laptop as I watched the NBA Finals unfold.   I tuned in after the right section of the scaffolding had been erected.  The work resumed after a lengthy rain delay, and those minions on the left are handing the metal rods onward and upwrd. They got higher and the night got muggier and anyone who has ever had the misfortune to be in the District in the summer knows that the air is thick even when it's not between storms. The moisture in the air must have made the support beams quite slippery.  I beame concerned when the workers got up to the piano keys. Fortunately, most of them were tethered, as the arrows indicate.  But what about this guy out on the beam, way at the top on the right?  There wee no tarps covering the material that's being lifted, and the humidity was intense, yet he's hanging out on a board above concrete ...

And we're home and life is much better. A hospitalist listened and questioned and followed him from the hallway to the private room ( Be very grateful about this!)  spending all the time needed to figure out what came next.  She was the first person to consider the why, to share the lab results and what they might and eventually did reveal, and to help us create a viable plan going forward. There are still so many floating pieces, so many appointments and tests and treatments to schedule.  There's so much to understand.  We have insurance and the means to pay for it (and all its hefty deductible and co-pays).  We have no work or child care obligations.  We have smart and supportive family and friends, and we're not afraid to abuse them.  I am comfortable dealing with the system. I've spent all day watching soccer and swimming and cooking and recognizing that I live a very privileged life.  A change in any one of those pieces would throw everything...

We arrived at the Emergency Room yesterday about 2pm. TBG's pain and nausea were treated well and efficiently..... in the hall.  There were 50+ patients waiting for beds in the hospital.  We were seated in the hallway  ****** That was the start of Friday's post, written Thursday afternoon, on my phone, still in the hallway. the patient no longer seated but able to lie down on a stretcher in a screen-divided, open to all passersby cubby. Those hours, all eighteen of them in the Emergency Room hallways before a room became available, revealed the open wound that is America's health care system.  Without a curtain separating us from our fellow captives, we saw and heard it all. Sir, are you living outside?  The strong smell of urine as the bedraggled man struggled by us on his way to the restroom; and the lengthy clean up afterwards. The EMT's from car accidents all over the county and beyond.  The Yuma EMT who explained their four hour drive to his gurney rid...

It happened on our lawn. Not only was it tacky.  Not only did the grift include paying the fighters in the felon's personal crypto.  Not only were the military personnel (fit and clean shaven) used (illegally) for political capital.  Not only did the fly over shake buildings in DC and delay flights out of National Airport (without prior notification of the airlines, passengers, or air traffic control).  Not only were the lights bright enough to cause a pilot to file an incident report (because he couldn't see) with the FAA. Nope, that's not all.  At the end, the winner decided to opine on Michelle Obama's gender.  The head of the UFC smiled.  There were cheers.   All of this happened in front of the people's house.  A president created a situation that allowed (and appreciated) a foul remark about a woman to go unchallenged.  That woman lived for eight (exemplary) years in that house.  It was her lawn.   On FFOTU...

The World Cup was barely on my radar.   Then it started.  Suddenly I'm cheering for Uruguay and searching for the exact location of Cape Verde (which is now Cabo Verde and has always been about 350 miles off the coast of Guinea Bissau).   I can type during hydration breaks and half times.  Otherwise, I'm mesmerized. Almost like I was mesmerized on Friday night, watching the scaffolding, and the rain, and the workers outside The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.   But that's a post for another day. The Iranians and the Kiwis are about to go at it again.   Gotta go.

Big Cuter learned about MJ in preschool.  He was a devoted fan until Jordan's last (championship) game with the Bulls in 1998.  His loyalty never transferred to the team. We were living in Marin by then, and the 1990's Warriors were uninspiring, to say the least.  The 49'ers, on the other hand, were the winningest NFL team of the decade, and his fandom stretched to cover every aspect of his life except, perhaps, his underwear.   He moved to the East Coast and took his 9'ers gear with him.  He was a regular at the neighborhood sports bar which showed their games.  He dragged us to one here in Tucson in what he said was a crucial situation.  Sunday game times were sacrosanct; call only if you wanted to talk football.  We knew that Queen T was the one  when he shared a photo of them hiking while his team was on tv.  Granted, they weren't playing that well and being disappointed had dampened his affections just a bit, but still.... thes...

He did it often.  It was commonplace.  Others of his species appreciated it and were willing to join in his enjoyment.  More than once.  It amazed me that he could find something new to see or feel. There were times I could identify what was on the screen before entering the room.  Not always from the announcers' voices, but from TBG's moans, groans, and cheers of delight.  Watching and re-watching and re-re-re-re-watching certain sporting events made him inordinately happy.   I didn't really understand it until now.  But I spent the better part of last night watching and re-watching the Knicks come from behind, erase a 29 point deficit, and triumph with 30 seconds of exceptional basketball to end the game.  It made me in ordinately happy. This morning I watched rabid Knicks fan Stephen A Smith tear up recounting his experience on his couch with his kids.  I never watch him willingly; today I awaited him anxiously.  Michael Wil...

And that sports post is still awaiting ... lurking... hiding in the shadows of my draft  folder and seemingly unable to escape.  There's another game tonight and another game tomorrow night (basketball then hockey... yes, hockey) so it will still be relevant if I ever finish writing it. But it's hard to focus on The Burrow when I'm just feeling sad and overwhelmed and angry at the world. FFOTUS doesn't think Stephen A Smith has the brainpower to be President.   Rolling Stone  attibutes this to racism.  I think it's a doddering old man's go to response when he has no idea what he's talking about.  Whether the Orange Menace's presence at the 3rd game of the NBA Finals caused the Knicks to lose is debatable.  The fact that he fell asleep during the game is just unacceptable. TBG's medical regime creates unbelievable tiredness and dizziness. This gets in the way of most everything he (or I or we) want to do.  Part of the reason my posting ha...

Are you with me here? The next lyric describes it all - can't trust that day.  I slept until 9:30. I did the puzzles,  and the 30 minutes of doomscrolling i allow myself each morning, and there were house chores and laundry and a drug store run and suddenly it was 2pm and I had yet to swim (self care for today: 45 minutes in the pool and garden) orshower before TBG's appointment.  Somewhere in there i was supposed to put the finishing touches on today's post.  That will now appear tomorrow. 

  Explicatory Bloviating The Big Cuter thinks I should divulge more of myself because, in this medium (" New Media, Gasp" said Princess Myrtle one day) bloviating is encouraged. The Little Cuter is my first follower. It's nice to be loved and supported and mentored by those you've loved and supported and mentored yourself. Maybe that's what G'ma means when she thanks me these days. Ashleigh Burroughs has been with me since college, when I realized that I was never going to write the great American novel but that, perhaps, Ashleigh would. It's good to have dreams and it's awful when your dreams make your reality seem paltry in comparison - especially when your reality is a good one. Giving Ashleigh her own persona cured that problem lickety-split. Like her namesake from Gone With the Wind , her intentions are stronger than her actions. But that's ok. She's been waiting for just this occasion to shine. The Edgar Rice Burroughs Martian series  kep...

Looking back to the very beginning, in April, 2009, I made a promise to post every week day.  Almost all of the 4,463 of them since then have kept to that standard. Age and caregiving have caught up with me.  I've been sloppy lately.  The Little Cheese has stopped emailing that my screed hasn't posted today; she understands all too well how hard it is now to fit everything into a day that used to have large gaps of empty spaces. I'm not berating myself.  What has to be done has to be done and it's really not that difficult at all.  It's the always  piece that's tearing at the edges of my life.  I'm lucky to be taking care of a person I love.  We have the resources, financial and familial, to withstand everything they've thrown at us so far.  I have the brains and the bandwidth to coordinate the pills and appointments and protein intake and all the rest of it. I stop every day and wonder what those without are doing right now.  It didn't ...

He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2021.  That would be enough to scare me off had Theft  not been sitting on the Large Type shelf (so I could read it under improper lighting, ie my living room), in paperback (so it's not too heavy to hold), with an engaging picture on the front cover.   I'm still working out the deeper meaning(s) behind the title.  The obvious one is obvious, obviously. (Sorry, I couldn't resist)   The others have something to do with love and loss and betrayal and mostly hope and confidence and a generally upbeat sense that life has a purpose and a meaning even as reality tries to smother it. It's an easy read, even if he's left off the quotation marks.  If I were starting out, I'd create a series of family trees to help me remember who did what to whom, and when, because the prose is so inviting that I read so quickly to see what was coming next that the plot got lost in the rhythm.   It's a glimpse into modern d...

Today is Sister's last birthday before she enters the decade her brother and I have inhabited for a while.  She's never stopped reminding us of the fact that she's the spring chicken in the family.  She claims to have stopped enumerating the years after she turned 39.  You're only as old as you feel  makes a lot of sense to me.  It's how I've tried to live my life - hanging on (with my fingertips, at times) to the energy and enthusiasm, tempering it with the comforting knowledge and experience garnered over the years.     Act as if you are 17 again  just makes me anxious.  I have no interest in going back to my teenage years.  I'm happy to have left the angst and uncertainty and insecurities far behind me.  Adulthood has suited me just fine. Sister, on the other hand, has had a harder time.  I'm sure 17 feels relatively uncomplicated for her.... if anything in her life can be said to be or have been uncomplicated.  Sh...

Gas prices keep going up and up.  I miss the Prince scholars, but I'm not unhappy saving the twelve miles of traffic to get there.  I've been filling up at Costco, whose membership fee has already paid for itself.  Twenty cents a gallon times twelve gallons times twice a month and we're talking real money here.   Fabletics adds an individualized tariff expense  to each item.  I have no choice but to pay it.  Those tariffs were/are illegal and the money will be refunded. To me?  The one who explicitly paid it?  Hardly.  If it goes anywhere at all it will flow straight to the companies.  Will they then replace the money in my account?  Probably not. Mexican restaurants all over town are suffering as the price of tomatoes rises.   I'm no longer blanching as I put Egglands Best eggs into my grocery cart; $7 feels reasonable these days.  I fill my basket with all the fruits and melons and berries that appeal to me eve...