The Burrow

Have you seen the hashtag? Moms Demand Action has been encouraging its members to stay away from Target, and to demonstrate that fact by photographing ourselves at competitors while displaying a #OffTarget sign.   Little Cuter has been bemoaning the fact that FlapJilly has no 0-3 month size outfits.  Everyone is buying big stuff ... because everyone knows that babies grow much too quickly for 0-3 month clothes to get much use.  I've tried to share this learned wisdom with her, but she is insistent.  She needs plain white onesies for my granddaughter and she is not to be dissuaded.   This errand conflated nicely with my desire to participate in the Moms Demand Action project, so, this morning, after Pilates and a shower, I drove to Buy Buy Baby to make my mark.    Usually, I do not allow myself to move off the carpet at the front of the store.  There are too many temptations within.  But I was on a specific mission, one that wou...

I went to a Quilting Bee Saturday afternoon. These ladies were the actual quilters. The rest of us  were there to create squares  Patrice and Alyssa's Peace and Love square. for the  Mother's Dream Quilt Project . We were assured that no skill was necessary. They assumed we could all use scissors. The rotary cutters were a different matter entirely. They are devilish tools with hidden safety locks and the ability to remove slices of a human finger with reckless abandon.  We saw the remains on a quilter's hand.  It would behoove us to take care. There's a reason I crochet blankets for babies - they always fit, despite my mistakes. Quilting requires a lot more precision. The lucite measuring square must be exactly positioned, and JannyLou's kinfolk couldn't keep their hands still long enough for me to take a picture.  There were cardboard templates to move around and help to center the square on the desired design el...

By the time it went live, yesterday's post was old news.  I tagged on a quick update before I went to bed, but I woke up thinking about it and then Megan commented and I have to revisit it. Not the why do you need to bring an assault rifle into a taco joint?  issue.  If we have to argue about the propriety of such behavior we are too far apart to agree on much of anything else. I'm not a defeatist, I'm a realist.   I'm thinking about the meta-issues, those that hover over the facts, providing context and nuance and a window into our world.   How about the undeniable influence that Moms Demand Action was able to assert?  Chipotle is a feel good, healthy, hot, fast dinner stop for a family shuttling between piano lessons, karate, and t-ball.  It's not the only choice, though, and without that organic, range-free chicken, no GMO's vibe... with, in fact, a decidedly anti-warm-and-fuzzy feeling... when it's linked in Mom's Decider Button to guys with...

I was waiting for a new friend on Saturday, and Starbucks across from Body Works made sense for both of us. Fortuitously, Moms Demand Action 's call to action for the weekend was to show up at Starbucks and thank Howard Schultz for taking a stand.  I'm obedient..... even if I wasn't terribly impressed or convinced.   Baby Steps , I keep reminding myself.   Baby Steps will get us where we need to be. Incrementalism has never been my cup of tea. I smiled about that as I ordered my passion fruit ice tea... my shaken  iced tea... on Saturday afternoon.  It was too precious for words, but that wasn't the barrista's fault (shouldn't he be a barristo?) so I took my attitude and my large and expensive and very pink drink outside. There was shade, a breeze, comfy steel tables and chairs, and sunshine, all conspiring to keep me smiling as I tried and failed and tried and failed and tried and failed to take a selfie that didn't send me screaming for a plastic surg...

Moms Demand Action has a fun crafts project for Independence Day.  Amster, her boys, and I spent a lovely Sunday morning creating our own American flags, replete with messages for our elected representatives. I've tried calling and emailing and snail mailing and signing petitions and posting on-line and I'm running out of venues.  Civic discourse is now being conducted through arts and crafts. I sigh and envisage the end of the world as I know it. I tried to engage the kids in a discussion about the colonies, and what people can do when, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them. They knew the colonies - like New Hampshire and Virginia -  and about the Boston Tea Party and the Stamp Act, but they weren't interested in listening to the r...

It was a lovely, sunny, Saturday morning at Ft. Lowell Park.  Daniel Hernandez and I were together two and a half years ago on a similar morning, he taking names at the registration table, Christina-Taylor Green and I chatting him up as she filled in the form.  I don't think there's been a cloudy Saturday since then.  I know that because I find myself saying "a day just like this one" more often than you'd imagine. This past Saturday, we were creating paper flowers as a reminder of that other Saturday, the one that took Christina from us and catapulted Daniel to national prominence.  It's easy to forget that he's only 23 years old; everyone from Mayors Against Illegal Guns to AIPAC has him on their short list of favored participants as he manages a position on a contentious school board here in town.  Mostly, he's a gentle giant of a man, who's always willing to hold a crying baby, or help a child fold and cut a paper flower. It was a "ki...