The Burrow

A friend is recovering from a scary, awful surgery.  There's treatment to follow and the possibility of even more ugliness down the road. The test results, which will put those fears to rest, are months away. It's enough to try the patience of even the Zen of humans.  MTF is not very Zen at all. She's a doer, a problem solver, a great believer in facts.  If there are routines to be followed, she's got them mastered and incorporated into her daily regime.  These are admirable traits in every day life; they are less than salubrious while playing a waiting game. There is nothing to be done to speed things along. She has all the information which is currently available. There are no problems to be solved because there may not be a problem at all.... or there might be and that's pretty frightening to contemplate.  It's a quandary, one she is resolving in a most unusual fashion. She's looking at the glass of her life as half full.  She's concent...

Helicopter Parent. Rocky was describing herself that way last night as she worried about her senior in college with a 3.8 GPA and no job prospects. She knows she's powerless. She knows it's his issue. She knows he's a grown-up and he has to take responsibility for his own future. She knows all this and yet she's panic stricken because his life is unsettled and insecure. She needs to fix it and she knows that she shouldn't and, worse than that, she knows that she can't. These thoughts co-exist uneasily. Princess Myrtle is headed to Yemen for a month, after promising the only parent she was brave enough to tell that she wouldn't leave the capital city. Apparently, working during the day and taking Arabic at night while living in an apartment in Cairo wasn't enough of an immersion program. I've asked her to let me worry. MTF's daughter's plan to visit 50 states and 50 countries by the time she's 50 has taken her to hotels where you ...

There's too much to consolidate into just one post, so this will stretch out until it's finished. Along the way we'll touch on New York City, friendship, air travel, fine food of all descriptions and sizes, apologies, artwork, politics, sports, history and love. The Reunion is just the framework. Chapter 1 - The Preliminaries Wednesday This is usually my favorite time of day. Errands are finished. Dinner's planned. The sun's painting pictures right outside my window on the Pusch Ridge and I'm writing to you. Today's different, though, because I have to be on the road in 12 hours to make my plane to fly me to NYC for the Reunion. And I still haven't packed. Things are in purposeful piles, but those piles are scattered around the house. These are not procrastination piles. They are working piles. I just wish they'd work themselves into the suitcase. I'm tired. Neurasthetic. I wish I were there already, and unpacking . Not that I'm wishing...