The Burrow

TBG has no energy.  I have no oomph. It's hard to get motivated to do anything at all.  Except when the grandkids arrive.  Suddenly, TBG's playing hide and seek from the couch. I hopped out of bed when I heard high pitched giggling... despite the fact that it was 6:15 and we'd stayed up past 11 to watch the first 3 episodes of Reacher. Oatmeal for the masses. Mandarin oranges for snacks.  Chasing a stuffed smile around the couch.  Searching for Cinderella's missing glass slipper. Jumping on Grandpa's bed.  Giving and getting hugs.       Suddenly,  neither of us is tired. 

For years, asking a clerk or a salesperson or a nurse or a friend for something got you No Problem for a response. It annoyed me, implying that I had asked for something difficult, that the listener would handle the situation, that it was not a problem at all.  But I usually didn't think that my request might be a bother.   May I have ice tea to drink?  Could you hold the door for me?  Can you reach that item on the top shelf? Those are requests.  If I thought they might create an issue I wouldn't have asked.  I didn't want to make a tumult, cause an issue, initiate a problem.  No problem  assumes an issue, one I didn't see, anticipate, or intend to bring to the situation. Spending most of last month sitting with TBG in the hospital, I began to notice a change.  Instead of No problem  people were saying Of course. That's so much nicer, isn't it?  Instead of assuming a problem needed to be swept away, there's an acknowledgement ...

Of late, TBG has not been hungry.  There's no telling from day to day what will work.  Today, cold milk (and sometimes the accompanying Cheerios) was what he craved.  Yesterday, it was flautas from our Mexican restaurant .  He keeps sending me to Dairy Queen for a small chocolate milkshake.  His taste buds never get the message from his brain that says I love this! Drink me!  Instead, two spoonsful in his nose wrinkles in disgust. It's too bad I don't like chocolate... or maybe that's a good thing.  I've been well fed by eating what tastes terrible after two bites.  It makes meal planning very simple. I'm thinking about this because, in bringing out the toys for HoneyBunny and The IVth's visit this week, I came across Junior Kindergarten Recipes For Your Holiday Entertainment.  Created by Little Cuter's class of 5 and 6 year olds in the late 1980's, it's full of gems.  As I ease back into the swing of things, I'm taking a shortcut and sh...

I've been absent of late because sometimes life asserts itself quite forcefully. I'm going to take the rest of the week off and allow catastrophe to take a back seat for a while.   I'll be back, with recharged batteries, on Monday. 

Sometimes it's all just too much. Michael Pollan's  A World Appears  has broken my brain.  I can't let my mind run free; I'm constantly wondering if I am thinking the thoughts before they are verbalized in my head.   Is it my neurons firing or is it me , whatever that means.  Do I exist outside of the chemical and electrical impulses in my head?  Pollan notes that this problem is, in some ways, unsolvable since we cannot extricate ourselves from ourselves and observe ourselves from the outside. See what I mean?  Thinking like that can really tie your brain in knots. A kinesthesiologist chimed in on the subject this morning, giving me a very complex description of what goes on in my brain when I think or move.  Pollan calls this materialism  or physicalism , the need for something quantifiable as an explanation. But Pollan dabbles in psychedelics.  He meditates.  He spends time on silent retreats.   Do plants have cons...

The presumptive Attorney General of the United States thinks he is the man's lawyer, not the country's lawyer.  L'etat, c'est moi  seems to be the governing principal in DC these days, so his (misplaced) loyalty shouldn't be such a surprise. But, it is. John Cornyn is happy to let FFOTUS and family off the IRS hook now that he has a signed declaration that the pay-me-because-I-desecrated-the-Capitol fun is kaput.  I see no indication that Todd Blanche won't implement something similar once he's confirmed, nor do I foresee any such protection from tax audits for me and mine. My favorite crooked AG is John Mitchell, Nixon's cohort and someone who actually spent time in prison (19 months for conspiracy, perjury, and obstruction of justice).  Does hiding and lying about the Epstein files in order to protect his client, the guy in the gilded Oval Office, count as conspiracy, perjury, and obstruction of justice? I'm not a lawyer, and my personal legal eagl...

Appliances that were inserted to treat him are going to be removed tomorrow, along with the offending irritant.   This comes as a surprise, although not an unwelcome one.  The hospitalist managed to squeeze us into the surgeon's schedule. Once again, I'll be driving to the hospital, parking with the valet, and waiting. I've spent most of this summer in the hospital, waiting. Getting old is not for sissies.

FlapJilly's birthday was July 29th.  Her mother called us so that we could sing happy birthday to her.  Usually, we make that phone call on our own.  That happens when I decide that it is July 29th. Unfortunately, I spent all day Wednesday knowing it was the 28th. How does this happen to me?   Without a school or work schedule to follow, I end up at Pilates on Monday when I'm scheduled for Tuesday.... or I miss my eldest grandchild's birthday. Spending days in the hospital added to the problem, especially when they don't update the day/date white board in the patient's room. As G'ma said when asked for the day and date during her mental status exam - Do you have a newspaper?  That information is in the top right corner. If only the print edition of the local paper weren't $90 a month......

Costco's aisles were filled with backpacks and lunch boxes this afternoon.   Monday was New Teachers First Day. School starts in one week - Wednesday, August 6th. My desk is covered in planning for the year.  A planting calendar, the school year calendar, Back to School Love Feast..... my brain is not prepared for this. It's July.  It's the middle of the summer.  I should be planning a trip to the ocean, not deciding which seeds to plant in Grandma's Garden.   I don't understand why the school year is structured the way it is.   Tucson Unified School District is floating the idea of year-round school, or 4 days/10 hour weeks.  (Parents have been asked to weigh in;  this woman's analysis is worth reading) .  The Cuters' school in Chicago was on trimesters; we loved it.  Having vacation time when everyone else was in school made ski slopes uncrowded and theme parks deserted.  We made good use of the time. I'm not just c...

TBG is being released today.  The relief is palpable.... for both of us.  The hospitalist managed to secure a follow up appointment with a doctor whose scheduler told me the next avaliable date was in November.  Home health care is organized, and I had nothing to do with it.  Behind the scenes, people were working and planning and all we had to do was say yes.  His bills this year are close to $500,000, and that's without this 8 day plus surgery stay. We paid a manageable deductible.  Procedures billed at thousands were magically reduced to hundreds because we have insurance.  The uninsured pay the not-discounted-amount.  It's easy to see why medical debt destroys families.  Medicine in America is broken.  None of the staff here received the 40% increase that TBG now is paying for h his insurance.  Where did that money go?  Gun violence is never acceptable.  I can, however, understand the rage and fury and helplessness tha...

Drove home in the dark, though tonight it was punctuated by bolts of lightning.  This is not the lightning of Long Island or Chicago or Marin.  These are vertical, startlingly bright, tremendously long, bolts of light that illuminate the mountains and make midnight feel like late afternoon.  Sometimes there are more than one at a time, and the whole sky turns a milky white. I would rather have been a passenger than the one responsible for staying calm as the night explodes. Hadn't remembered to leave a light on and groped to find the alarm, whose bright green clock wasn't enough to encourage a speedy transit of the 5 steps from the door.  I dropped my hospital purse and the bright pink cooler on the kitchen counter and turned to the sink to wash my hands. I looked up as I replaced the detritus of the day with aloe and grapefruit and saw this Last month,  Auntie M and Mr. T sent me a fruit basket filled with lots of multi-colored paper, some unfortuna...

Drove home in the dark.   Hungry, but this isn't New York City so by 9pm there's MickeyD's or Burger King.  Created a boring but filling turkey sandwich, read Miles Taylor's Substack . Found Arcturus and Vega and went inside; the air was too thick to be enjoyable. I was moping.   Came into the library and saw a new message blinking red on  the answering machine (yes, an answering machine for our landline.... yes, a landline, too). Wondered what the other 14 messages were and listened from the beginning. Magic. Giblet and Little Cuter babbling happily, signing off with a resounding BYE!!! FlapJilly and Little Cuter encouraging Giblet to say hi. Big Cuter and Queen T after their first ultrasound; she's beautiful. The rest were nonsense and easily deleted.  While congratulating my past self for saving them, I replayed my three love notes from the past. I'm smiling and my heart is full.  Like I said: Magic.

Trying to find joy in a hospital setting is a matter of small steps.   This morning,  TBG was ready to lighten the darkness and let me roll up the windowshade. It's a lot easier to be anxious when there is beauty avaliable with a tug on a chain.  Instead of focusing on the tubes and the beeps and the evidence of illness surrounding him, I'm lying back on the small, sort of comfortable, sofa,  watching the clouds and writing to you.  I can feel the love.  I feel you caring.  It's a virtual, giant, warming hug.  Thanks for being here.  

Hospitals (yes,  we're back in the hospital) create an interesting collection of humans.  When we arrived this morning, there were white,  middle aged,  sick people in the waiting area of the Emergency Department.  This evening,  it is filled with people of every color and size and shape.  It also creates an interesting collection of machinery,  much of which is attached to TBG at the moment.  Heart rate,  blood pressure,  respiration.... I can watch it all from my chair at the end of his bed.  There are green squiggly lines,  white curves with flattened tops,  blue  mountains, all sorts of numbers in pink and green and turquoise. There's some comfort to be taken from monitoring the monitor.  It makes up for the fact that I can do nothing to fix what's wrong with him.  The EMTs came just after my 911 operator told me to call back if he stopped breathing.  That was a piece of information.... what el...

Did you ever stand in the middle of the room looking for the adult who would tell you what to do? That was me, last night.  I'll have more to say tomorrow.  Right now,  I'm trying to be the competent grow up on the room. 

"Are you and the President friends?" "I'm his lawyer." At a certain point, the rest of us have to stand up and shake the 37% of Americans who think that this shit is okay.  It's really really not. JD says that if Watergate happened today, it would be a 12-hour news story .  I have been thinking about that since he said it last month.  No matter how I spin it, I can't make it okay.  He's telling us that his administration's sins dwarf  Nixon's.  And he doesn't seem to mind. It's not okay.  It's really not. Pete Buttigieg just explained it all very clearly while talking to Jen Psaki.  We are in a moment where real change can happen.  FFOTUS certainly broke everything, but that doesn't mean we have to put it back together the same way. Real thoughts spoken in complete sentences combined into paragraphs and plans and ideas and I really really really hope he gets to be president.  Soon.

TBG and I managed to listen to some of it.  We clicked away at the same time that CBS stopped showing it.   Sen. Mark Warner (not John Warner, the Virginia Senator once married to Elizabeth Taylor) called on his Republican colleagues to stand up and defend our elections against FFOTUS's lies and mendacity.   But it's more than lies and mendacity.  It's truly drivel. DRIVEL Definition & Meaning Merriam-Webster https://www.merriam-webster.com › dictionary › d rivel Jul 2, 2026 — 1. to talk stupidly and carelessly FFOTUS accused China of stealing millions of Americans' personal information by hacking into our (unbelievably, like no one has ever seen) insecure voter data bases.   Sure, maybe.  Except it's an incredibly dumb argument, especially coming from a politician. Anyone can access those data bases by paying the County a fee.  It's how campaigns are run.  I brought the huge computer printouts from the Marin County Recorder's...

The interminable road work fronting her business for the past too many years to count forces me to drive several extra miles, ignoring the map lady's guidance, since none of her left turns or u-turns are possible.  It doesn't matter.  She's worth the trip. The relationship between a woman and her hairdresser is personal and private and, if it's a long term relationship, a living diary.  You have the same basic conversations every time, because that's what life looks like.  Family, work, sports, politics.... whatever your connections, you've watched them evolve over time.  Children grow, teams win, politicians die, but the chair and the tools and the participants remain the same.   Today, as most days over the past few years, we moaned and groaned over FFOTUS's clown car government and its ripple effect on small businesses like hers.  People are stretching out their intervals for services, letting their hair grow, giving up colorizing.   ...

TBG found it.  He was searching for something that wasn't sports related.  He stumbled upon something neither of us knew was coming.  It didn't appear in any of the what to watch  lists that come across my feed.  It was just lying there, waiting to be discovered. Season 3 of The Diplomat  is on Netflix. We were excited.  The sun was still up and we turned it on anyway. Six hours later, well past our bedtime, we decided to save the last two episodes for tomorrow night, in part so I could type to you, but mostly because we want to stretch out the pleasure.    This is brief.  I am tired but my mind is racing.  I'd definitely add this to  yesterday's list. .

It's been a while since I shared the good stuff.  Here are snippets to entice you to dig deeper. Geraldine Brooks is one of my favorite authors.  Her take on Little Women  won the Pulitzer Prize.   Horse  is about so much more than the celebrated stud sire and his enslaved groom.  Memorial Days  is her latest and I loved it as much as all the others.  It's a retrospective and real time look at  grieving the death of her husband, Tony Horwitz  (who turns out to be a very interesting character himself and whose Confederates In The Attic  is on my library reserve list. ***** Millie Bobbie Brown won my heart as Eleven in Stranger Things.  Although TBG dismisses it as barely a chick flick, I find the Netflix adaptation of Nancy Springer's young adult novels  to be absolutely delightful.  Where he sees puerile, I see guilelessness.  Her gender bending clothing, her fierce and admirable mother, and her domineering ...