The Burrow

America couldn't throw itself a birthday party.  Everyone seemed to lose interest once it became all about FFOTUS.   There was no bunting.   There were no American flags put out for the occasion (except ours, because he doesn't get to take that memory away from me).   There were no 250th Birthday Sales.  Our Mexican restaurant  did offer me a $6 margarita (which I happily accepted) and volunteered to change the tv channel (is that even a thing anymore?) so that we could both watch the soccer with ease.  We didn't inconvenience anyone; we were the only patrons. For some reason known only to himself, TBG turned our television to Fox and invited FFOTUS into our living room.  God, Communism, and your beautiful 2nd Amendment  later, he began introducing very old veterans who were to salute very old flags and then take their very old selves off FFOTUS's stage.   Some of them didn't get the memo and seemed to overstay their ...

This is how I feel about America right now - droopy.  But there was a time when I felt hopeful, even enthusiastic about our standing in the world.  That's when I originally wrote the post I'm reprinting below the sad flag.  I'm going to let those memories take me back in time for the 4th of July. And it turns out that I will put on our country's colors and not give in to the despair I feel.  I cannot let him take this away from me, too. 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 ingeni...

Here, once again, is my somewhat annual rant about President's Day.  Just like last year, I didn't realize it was President's Day.  I was too wrapped up in the terrifying notion that the former guy might be the next guy to pay attention.  Here in Arizona, we have Rodeo Weekend this Thursday and Friday so schools remained open.  It may have been a Legal Holiday, but my trash was picked up right on schedule. I'm not the only sentient being who is struck by the strangeness of it all.  NPR told me that February 22nd had been a Federal Holiday from 1879 all the way through until 1968 when Congress standardized almost  all the Federal Holidays and George ended up with the 3rd Monday in February.... which will always be before his actual date of birth... and, as long as I'm ranting, will always be after Abe's on the 12th. I'm all for celebrating your Birthday Month, but that's just plain ridiculous.   Here's the rest of the rant, reprinted and slightly e...

What does this license plate say to you?     M C H U G H 1 I suppose that it's really someone's name, y'know like Jim McHugh. But all I (and Little Cuter when I ran it by her from the car) could see was Yiddish - meshugah. ***** It's the year 5783, according the calendar I learned about in Hebrew School.  A friend of ours was born in 5700.  Rosh Hashana (The New Year) is how we remember his age. It's a time for casting last year's woes and baggage into the sea Tashlik at Baker Beach 2023 and for apples and honey for a sweet new year.   This is the rare Jewish holiday that isn't They tried to kill us, they failed, let's eat  centric.  This is about taking some time to evaluate where you've been and where you're going and taking responsibility for it all.  It was also when I got my new dress up clothes, when Daddooooo took endless photos and 8mm movies, when I sang the same tunes my great-grandparents sang.  It was the past and the presen...

This is a day when no one should work.  Laborers should be celebrating and celebrated.   When I expressed dismay about her having to work today, my favorite Penzey's lady smiled and said Time and a Half! When I similarly commiserated with the cashier-just-a-little-younger-than-I as she helped me navigate the self-checkout at Safeway this morning, she gave me the same response.   Then she shrugged and said What else would I do?  I moved here and I love it but it's hard to meet people.  One very full, very large, very well insulated grocery tote later, she was thanking me for the link to The Happy Ladies Club. Tomorrow I have many things to do.  Today, I am going to lie back and enjoy the fruits of my labors. And to all those who cannot share in my plan, I hope life gives you time and a half today.

    Here's my Labor Day post, recycled and improved every year since 2012. ***** My  Zaydeh  was a paperhanger. So was my uncle,  his son, . They belonged to the Paperhanger's Union. When he retired, my Zaydeh got a lapel pin and a photograph of himself. The also-retiring Union Rep got a pension and health insurance. No one knows if he got a copy of the photograph, too. It was that kind of complicated relationship to Labor, with a capital L, that dominated my growing up years. Daddooooo's father owned a business. G'ma's father was a worker. In the same way that her parents' accented speech and his parents' religious devotion were cudgels in their relationship, management/labor spent a lot of time bruising the edges. I sat on Zaydeh's shoulders, bouncing around the living room to his enthusiastic rendition of  Zum Gali Gali , a Zionist/Socialist work song.  When I needed a biography for a book report in second grade, his daughter, my mother, suggested E...

Parts of this have appeared before. June 14th is Linda-from-Kindergarten's mother's birthday, a fact which I remember for no reason at all.  It's also Flag Day, although you'd hardly know it by looking around.  No parades, no speeches, just my flag outside my front door. It's one of my favorite holidays.  Just me and my flag.  And Linda's mother. ***** Back in 1970 or '71,  Daddooooo was quite annoyed at the American flag patch on my jeans shorts, . He felt that using the flag to cover my tush was the height of disrespect. Of course he was right; the Flag Code prohibits such behavior. Then again, it also prohibits all the machinations the NFL puts the flag through in the name of patriotism. I wonder what he'd say about that. Back in 2015, though, I wondered how he'd react to soccer fans, with their flag clothes and their flag faces ***** The Smithsonian Channel tried to convince me that Betsy Ross did not design and or sew the American Flag.   I...

   First posted in 2008.   I used to march in the Memorial Day parade. I was dressed in my Brownie uniform, and then in my Girl Scout uniform - replete with those embarrassing anklets. I wore them because the troop leader said we couldn't march without them, they were part of our official uniform.  Marching was too cool to pass up.  I wore them and bore the scorn. All the school bands marched too, and the moms on Benjamin Road provided the materials and the labor to make the capes the high school kids wore. There must have been a military presence there, but I didn't pay enough attention to notice. I was marching and I knew that, all over America, other kids were being Americans and marching, too. I belonged to something bigger than my family, my school, my town.   Belonging means different things in different places. In Marin, the Memorial Day parade was always good for a  controversy  or two. Or three. Should the anti-war protesters wa...

I know nothing about the origins of the holiday.  I do know that once the boys made it clear that corned beef and cabbage and boiled potatoes did not hold a candle to pizza, Little Cuter and I began a delicious tradition of eating, ravenously, voraciously, turning to our fingers when that bite  eluded the fork.   I've missed her every March 15th since she went to college.   Her brother in law brines his own meat, creating three huge trays, each with a different recipe, enough for the family and friends that filled his house.  I'm jealous of the food, but not the public setting.  Part of the joy I take is in the messiness, the pure hedonism, the lack of propriety or respect for anything except getting the tastes into my mouth as efficiently as I can. I usually use a dish towel instead of a paper napkin. I am slovenly and unapologetic. So, for whatever reason we celebrate you, thank you St. Patrick for having a day. ****** Yes, of course, now I'll d...

slightly updated from 2018.     Hearts are everywhere, and not only today. There's the heart Yogi Mary found in nature.  There's the heart the Mesa Mavens drew for me at the first Stroll and Roll. There's the heart that bereft parents look at and cry. And there's the one I send to you, denizens, filled with everything wonderful and beautiful. https://tinyurl.com/y73dvqqd Happy Happy Valentines Day to the people who make my fingers fly over the keyboard every day.  Thanks for being here, for commenting, for reading, for caring. Without your presence, there would be no Burrow.  

It started in Chicago.  I bought large, round, glass containers with white and red and yellow lids at Crate and Barrel, filled them with homemade brownies, and dropped them off at 5 or 6 houses. Fast forward 40 years, and I'm no longer shopping at Crate and Barrel for brownie packaging.  It's no longer half a dozen close friends who are on the receiving end of my baking. The list now stretches to three pages.  There are 80 some entries, and not all of them are households.  I bring plates of treats to the garden store  and the Pilates studio .  Prince Elementary School has many recipients, yet only occupies one line on the spreadsheet. It's a labor of love, albeit a messy one.  Chocolate ends up everywhere; this morning's first batch sent it right to the floor. It's not really my fault - the bowl was too small.  I usually used my large glass mixing bowl, but that broke, after many years of dedicated service, sometime this past year.  I tr...

 

    Here's my Labor Day post, recycled and improved every year since 2012. ***** My  Zaydeh  was a paperhanger. So was my uncle,  his son, . They belonged to the Paperhanger's Union. When he retired, my Zaydeh got a lapel pin and a photograph of himself. The also-retiring Union Rep got a pension and health insurance. No one knows if he got a copy of the photograph, too. It was that kind of complicated relationship to Labor, with a capital L, that dominated my growing up years. Daddooooo's father owned a business. G'ma's father was a worker. In the same way that her parents' accented speech and his parents' religious devotion were cudgels in their relationship, management/labor, spent a lot of time bruising the edges of their relationship. LABOR:  I sat on Zaydeh's shoulders, bouncing around the living room to his enthusiastic rendition of  Zum Gali Gali , a Zionist/Socialist work song.  When I needed a biography for a book report in second grade, ...

I took this picture on August 21st. I took this one on August 24th. August. Not even September. August. It's one thing to have school start on August 4th, instead of the Wednesday after Labor Day. It's another thing entirely to have Halloween decor and treats greeting me at the grocery store when it's triple digits outside.   What's the damn rush?  

  Happy 4th of July   reworked, revised, revisited...yes, you've read parts of this before 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 frosting. We always went to the Boardwalk in Long Beach, arriving as the sun was setting.  Skeeb...

Parts of this have appeared in some form or other in The Burrow already. I've always liked Flag Day.  No parades, no speeches, just my flag outside my front door. ***** This is the weekend, in 2017, when Little Cuter and I helped Gabby celebrate the Commissioning of the USS Gabrielle Giffords.   It was a girls' trip to Galveston, a time to feel good about America, sunny days and balmy nights filled with liquid refreshments and many desserts, Jon Bon Jovi and my first experience of Mark Kelly's ability to command a room. They don't choose just anyone to command a  Space Shuttle,  whispered the distinguished gentleman standing behind me in his be-ribboned Navy Whites. ***** Gabby was gorgeous and happily wind-blown that weekend, leaning against her handsome husband. I know the effort behind each one of the steps she took, from the bow to the stern.  She knew we were watching, and she didn't want to let us down. She marched on, smiling, unwavering, determined....

💘  That arrow has always puzzled me.  I know it is Cupid's arrow.  I know it's supposed to shoot love into one's heart.  It just hurts me to look at it. 💓 That's a beating heart, which sends me straight to the emergency room, my heart palpitating out of control. 💗 That's two hearts in one, a kind of suffocating love that terrifies me. 💞 Circling hearts, chasing one another and never catching up - that's not my idea of love. 💕 Resting on one another, one supporting the other, one leaning into the other - that looks like love to me. 💖 Sometimes you are lucky enough to have stars in your heart, that fluttery feeling when everything is going just right. Those are all the hearts that Blogger has to offer.  From mine to yours, I'm sending love and hugs and big smiles your way.  Happy Valentines Day, denizens.

Amster and I hosted the Recurring Hanukkah Party last night.  We can't remember when we did the first one.  We know we skipped last year (COVID) and one other year (didn't feel like it), so calling it Annual is unseemly.  Still, it seems to happen (almost) every year, and people seem to like to attend, and we really enjoy the prep and the party (the cleaning up, not so much), and we are still doing it now that the oldest kids are in college - it deserves a special title. The program is always the same.  My stash of dreidels and pennies are displayed in every Hanukkah dish and plate I owned..... owned because one of the perks of the party is that Amster stores all the stuff I've accumulated over the years.  All I have to do is show up with latkes and jelly doughnuts (thank you Dunkin' for 75 donut holes on 2 hours notice) and the story - she and her boys have done all the set up by the time I arrive. After a brief explanation, the youngest guests gambled with pen...

The scotch broom is shedding its white fluff, covering the pool and the patio and ourselves with allergens.  The yellow season detritus is prettier and less sneeze-inducing.  Both turn the pool to bracken. The weather is cooling down to the 70's from the 90's, although the 80's still make an appearance, for old times sake, I guess.  The roses are blooming, the bougainvillea refuse to wilt, and the ants are deflowering the nandina (Heavenly Bamboo) with industry and dedication. Fall and Thanksgiving decor is now back in boxes.  Chanukah is on display.  Two menorahs, a few pretty dreidels, a pot holder and a towel is all the effort I can make this year.  My tiny pillows annoy TBG, so the sparkly menorah and Happy Hanukkah pillows are resting comfortably in their storage container.   If we had company, I'd do more.  But this holiday is fast on the heels of Thanksgiving, with hardly any breathing space between them.  I haven't mustered my ho...

I have plans for real posts this week, honest, I do.  But I've spent today cleaning house for Big Cuter and Queen T's arrival tonight - dusting and sweeping and linens changed, bathrooms spruced up and groceries purchased.  Mostly, though, I've been organizing for the first shipment of The Brownie List. I know where the list is located on the computer (in Google Docs.... it only took me an hour of screaming last year to remember that).  I have ink for the printer so that labels can be created.  Amazon delivered lovely Hanukkah cellophane bags. The pots and bowls and spatulas from the first three pans are in the dishwasher.  This is what the wrapping station will look like this year: This is what gets wrapped: Time to get back to work!