Back Again

HoneyBunny's little brother is expected to join the world this week.  Grandma came to help.

It was a lovely flight.  It left on time, arrived on time, and there was room in the overhead compartment for my roll-on bag.  The pilot pointed out the Grand Canyon and the Hoover Dam.  I noticed wind farms and solar panel installations and roads that travelled up into the mountains to connect to one house at the very top

For the longest time, I haven't traveled with anything larger than the bag that fits under the seat in front of me.  Packing was fun when I didn't have to worry if something would fit.  Of course,  that made lifting the suitcase into the overhead bin a formidable challenge.  I got it up there, but asked for help getting it out.  

I'm getting better at asking.  I felt old and feeble and very happy that I didn't have to struggle.  I have decided that it's a trade off worth making.

HoneyBunny wanted nothing to do with me for about five minutes.  Her parents were encouraging her to hug me, but I asked them to let it go.  Sure enough, she was grabbing my hand and showing me her books before I had my boots off.  

I was invited to watch but not touch the Magna Tiles.

NO is a big part of her vocabulary.  

So is Baba (Grandma) and Shark (Baby Shark Do Do Do Do DoDo) and E I E I O (Old MacDonald).  I'm learning her language the hard way; she is patient up to a point but when Baba can't figure out exactly what she wants there's hell to pay.

It's a good thing she's so cute.  

How Does This Happen?

The Lost and Found hooks had morphed into three big plastic tubs in the hallway of Prince Elementary School.  At Winter Break, a full van load of unclaimed items was donated to the district's Clothing Bank.

It is inconceivable to me that the jackets just sit there, the hats hang on pegs, the fancy lunch boxes on the window sill and in the buckets. 

Every student walks past it on their way to and from the Music Room.  The K-2 students and anyone visiting them pass it as they leave their classrooms...... and they leave their classrooms many times during the day.  

I worry about people who are living on the edge, yet don't search out missing sweaters and mittens and backpacks.  Is loss that familiar?  Is there so much on their plate that a missing cardigan hardly makes it to the table?  

On Wednesday, the whole situation took on a disturbing cast.  

I understand everything but the pants.

How is it possible that someone lost his pants and didn't care?

I add this to the growing number of signs that the Apocalypse is drawing nigh. 

Random Thoughts on Age

It is just a number.  

It's just that the number keeps getting larger.

*****

You look great! 

Oh, really.  Compared to what, I might ask.  

I think of myself with dark hair and and regular features.  The mirror shows me jowls and Daddooooo's eyebrows and G'ma's wrinkles around the mouth. Modern technologies could remedy all of that, but, as Ogden Nash said, 

 My face, I don't mind it

Because I'm behind it. 

 I'm not quite sure to do with the end of the poem, though.

It's the people out front that I jar.

Could it be that they are unsurprised to see this old woman's visage, merely reacting to the beauty within when they tell me I look great?  Am I really this old?

*****

When I was 25 years old and applying for employment, I remember writing 18 in the box next to age.  

Rechecking the information before handing it over, it took me a moment to recognize what was wrong.  It wasn't really incorrect, but it was wrong.  Wasn't I 18?  No, that was freshman year in college and you have a master's degree now.  i did the math, subtracting and realizing with a dull thud in my chest that I was, indeed, 25 years old.

*****

Old feels different at every stage of life, I guess.

The Prince scholars cannot comprehend how I can be so old, frequently reminding me that death is right around the corner, filling me in their grandparents' ages and infirmities, and marveling that life still exists within our crumbling structures.  

They, on the other hand, are quite proud with every added year.  I Am SIX!!!! is the happiest sound on the playground

*****

There will be more thoughts.  Like JES, I'm still trying to figure it out.

Silly Names

I'm feeling a little anxiety creeping in around the edges.  That toe I dipped into the news began to drag the whole foot and leg in behind it.  This is not good.

*****

To reset, I'll share the list of ridiculous college football bowl games that TBG and Big Cuter helped me collect over the turn of the year.

It started with the Scooter's Coffee Frisco Bowl.  Scooter has coffee?  Who knew?  Who's Scooter.  It went downhill from there.

Duke's Mayo Bowl?  Who's Duke?

The StaffDNA Cure Bowl. It felt awkward to laugh, but we couldn't help being bemused.

The Pop Tarts Bowl had pop tarts commercials and pop tarts costumed pop tarts just about everywhere you looked.  The Snoop Dogg Arizona Bowl..... the man is all over.

There were military bowls.   Lockheed Martin  Armed Forces Bowl, the Auto Zone Liberty Bowl, and my favorite, the Go Bowling Military Bowl.

The cities and states states had their own bowls - the Islet New Mexico Bowl, the Union Home Mortgage Gasparillla Bowl, the Birmingham Bowl - although one state had two - the Kinder Texas Bowl and the TaxSlayer Texas Bowl.

The Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl,  Allstate Sugar Bowl, VRBO Fiesta Bowl, Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl, Teams Perfect Music, ReliaQuest Bowl, and the ServPro First Responder Bowl all felt fine.  The corporations wanted to support a sporting event; I have no problem with that.

I did wonder how much it cost to name a bowl. Obviously, not everyone could manage it on their own:  Bad Boy Shake Calling Mowers Pinstripe Bowl.

The one my guys like the most, though was the SRS Distribution Las Vegas Bowl.  

This one has a verb in it!

*****

I feel a lot better.

Getting the News

I saw a reference to Virtue Signaling When Saying You're Off FaceBook so I won't mention that I haven't logged on to the site in several years.  That was where I was most visible on social media, and if now I'm tagged by someone else, it probably still is.  

I had a Twitter account but never posted.  I left there when it became X, for obvious reasons.  

I follow the young people I know on Instagram, watching their children grow.  I do like some photos, but I never use words.

For long form, I've given up my NYTimes and WaPo subscriptions in favor of following some of my favorite commentators and lawyers and authors on Substack. There is Mother Jones and ProPublica . 

MeidasTouch Network is reader supported, also tending left, and is like reading a daily paper.  That said, I do subscribe to the local newspaper, and always will.  Local journalists covering local news often break the biggest stories.  After all, Woodward and Bernstein were covering the DC night court when the Watergate plumbers were brought in.  

To find out what the mainstream is hearing, TBG listens to the first few moments of the NBC Nightly News.  

Now there is BlueSky, a left leaning on-line safe space, unlike Elon's sewer, that aims for a Twitter-like experience, with fewer trolls, and, at least for now, a carefully crafted algorithm that has kept cat videos off my feed.  The problem is size.  I hope that more content providers will migrate over from the dark side.  Right now, it's an echo chamber.

I don't feel that I'm missing anything, except maybe Nicolle Wallace in the afternoon.  These are the sources that don't have me screaming back at them.  There's no sane washing the craziness.  There's a fair amount of rubbernecking at the slow train wreck of our democracy, but it comes at me in small. manageable doses I can titrate myself.

I'm not willing to fully engage.  Heather Cox Richardson's contemporaneous history keeps  me up to date on what happened today, tying it into what's come before.  She gives the facts some heft.  

And that's enough for me. I've been paring down to this level since the election, adding and subtracting along the way.  

Recuperating

After ten days of family squeezing lovingly and snugly around dining tables and breakfast nooks and couches of all shapes and sizes and colors, our house feels quite empty.  

There are a variety of seating options, but none of them include a view of a grandkid being a grandkid.

No one has asked me to sing Baby Shark or Old MacDonald all day.

I have not covered anyone in a ball pit nor watched my son and granddaughter discuss fantasy novels.  

I've cooked for one instead of nine, and I knew exactly what and how much to make.

The travel was easy but the altitude continues to surprise us .  We're tired and content and just a little bit lonely.  I've got thoughts about cultural appropriation and BlueSky and what old means, but tonight I'm going to review the photos and the memories and pretend that they are all still right near by.

As he got off the plane 20 hours later than planned, Giblet's only comment was I don't like being far away from Baby HoneyBunny.   

Neither do I, kiddo.  Neither do I.

Stinson Beach Adventure

We took the kids to Stinson Beach on Monday, December 30th. They had never seen the ocean, so the views on Highway 1 were thrilling. 

We expected fog and cold and a ten minute dipping of toes in the water before we escaped to warmth and a mall. 

Instead we found an almost empty beach 

and crystal clear skies and water that could not be resisted. 

They swam and giggled and jumped and laughed.  They made a sand city with many roads and steps leading to a castle. 

The tide went out and they collected sand dollars and sea glass and shells.

We all agreed that it was a perfect day. 

My heart is full. 

Happy Birthday, TBG

75.

That's old. 

Surrounded by his family,  the birthday boy is happy.  

His littlest grandkid calls him Bapa.  

Happy Birthday, Bapa, from all of us.  

2025

Happy New Year!  

How was last night?  Was it filled with fireworks (surprisingly loud booms at 10pm... were Tucsonans celebrating for New Yorkers who can't legally purchase them in the grocery store?)?  

Did you watch hours of The Thin Man on TMC (we did!)?  

Were you snuggled in front of a fireplace, sipping mulled wine (what IS mulled wine?) and snuggling with a sweetie?  

Were you cleaning out closets or putting away decorations or were you in bed before midnight, nursing the sniffles?

Whatever it was, where ever it was, with whomever it was, I hope it was wonderful.

**** 

That was how I greeted 2018.

Facing 2025 feels different.  It's going to take more effort than usual to consider patience and the good in others, former resolutions I've managed to continue to think about.  Living in the moment without judgment may be impossible outside of a small slice of the world.  I was going to add a new resolution but I'm afraid of psychic overload.

It's going to be an interesting ride.  I'm glad you'll be along.

New Years Eve 12 Years Ago

First posted December 31, 2012.  I'm scheduling this on December 19th, and the fact that the second section could have been written today is just very sad.

It's finally cold enough to wear my bright yellow polar fleece vest.  The days may be getting longer, but it's still dark much earlier than I'd like.  The full moon woke us up, shining through the shades, and neither one of us was enthusiastic about leaving the warm covers to change the angle of the blinds.  

There's no snow, Elizibeth wore flip-flops on our hike today, and I walked comfortably and barefoot out to soak in the spa and consider the advisablility of planting gerberer daisies in the containers out back.  It's not the end of December as I knew it, but it's what I've got, so I'm going with the flow.

There is no traffic on the roads.  The parking lot at the trailhead had plenty of spots when we arrived at 10:15am.  Lines are non-existent in the grocery store and the mall lot is full only near the entrances to the movies.  I'm not sure where everyone has gone.  

It's winter in Tucson.

*****

There are hours to go before we fall off the fiscal cliff.  This is less imaginary than the Mayan-end-of-the-world-scenarios and yet only the talking heads seem to notice that it's going on. 

I take the temperature of the populace at the manicure palace and on line in the market.  The Mayans were the topic of conversation before during and after the end of the world; nobody's talking about how they'll manage when their take-home pay is drastically reduced.  

That, in and of itself, feels like the end of the world to me.

*****

The good news is that I hiked part of the Sweetwater Trail this morning.

The bad news is that I hiked part of the Sweetwater Trail this morning.

Every piece of connective tissue with even the most remote association to ambulation is announcing its presence with authority throughout my nervous system. I walked consciously, using my toes and ankles, holding myself up and out of my hip joint, taking big, bold steps and lifting my knees over uncertain terrain. My arms were swinging, my neck was long, my shoulders were secure.  I am paying for that precision now.  

It's a good kind of ache, a muscular, well-used exhaustion.  I'm trying to ignore the fact that it took a little over a mile and 100' of elevation change to do me in.

*****

All the laundry is done.  The groceries and wine are laid in.  Dessert fixings are waiting to surprise TBG as we spend New Year's Eve just the way we like it - at home, alone, with backgammon and gin rummy and a movie or two on the telly.  

Tomorrow is about resolutions and the future.  Tonight, I'm leading into the new year with the Beatles, the last lyric on their last album:

And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make..

Happy New Year's Eve, denizens!

Random Thoughts in December, 2013

 first posted December 17, 2013  

December should be cold and cloudy and snowy. It should make my nose freeze and fingers tingle and my toes go numb.  Driving should be hazardous and dressing should take a long, long time. Layers and gloves and scarves and hats and coats buttoned up to the neck and beyond are de rigeur.... if you live someplace other than the desert Southwest.

Here, we wear jeans and long sleeve shirts in the morning, rolling up the sleeves by mid-day, rolling down our windows and smiling at the cars in the next lane as we enjoy the wintry temperatures... in the 50's and 60's.... clement any place else but fairly frigid here.

Holding onto the holiday spirit when I'm wearing shorts takes effort.  I'm just sayin'...
*****
Chanukah decor is not on sale yet.  Tonight's the last night and I have high hopes that Bed Bath and Beyond will be marking down their candles and dreidles after sunrise tomorrow.  There aren't many places to find Jewish decorations here in Tucson; BB&B and Target are the only entities which recognize the presence of Chanukah shoppers in the community.

It's times like these that I truly miss Marin.  Meadowlark Gallery was my go-to, one-stop-shop for all things Judaica.  Menorahs and artistic dreidles and letterpress printed cards were available in many incarnations.

Here, we are reduced to flannel backed plastic tablecloths and paper Happy Hannukah banners.  It's something, but not enough to soothe my shopping soul.  Without FAMBB's now annual gifting, I'd be truly bereft.
*****
My local grocery store, Albertsons, has a new promotion.  I've been collecting stamps and trading them in for free Rachael Ray dinner ware. I have six plates and bowls in my trunk, and stamps for four more on the collection card in the car.  When the promotion ends, I'll take my goodies to Youth on Their Own, a local organization supporting high school graduation for teens living on their own.

Despite the fact that Elizibeth refuses to believe that 13 year olds are living on the streets here in Tucson, it's a fact.  YOTO provides mentors, counseling, a food pantry, a household goods closet, and a small residential facility.  Rhonda, my favorite cashier, has a nephew living with her who is involved in their program.  We both smiled when the customer in line ahead of me this afternoon turned and asked me if I was collecting the stamps; she'd done her month's shopping and twenty little orange stickers were mine when she was done.

Somehow, it makes spending money on groceries a fun thing to do.
*****
It's early for us, but I'm hankering for the smell of pine in my living room.  I think tomorrow is the day to bring the live tree home.  There are so many choices - Buckelew Farms is everywhere, on every busy corner I traverse.  The Lutheran Church youth program sells them in the parking lot next to the sanctuary, but you have to figure out when the kids are around to help.  Wally World has them for the best price, but somehow shopping around for a deal on a Christmas tree seems vaguely churlish.

I'm not sure why.
*****
The chair in Little Cuter's room, a chair in the breakfast nook, a suitcase in the garage... they hold the gifts which must be wrapped.  Since Little Cuter and SIR are doing the holiday in Illinois and Indiana this year, shipping is in order.  Big Cuter and TBG and I will celebrate here in Tucson.  Since they went with me to Dick's Sporting Goods and chose their own presents, it seems somewhat ridiculous to invest time and effort in boxing and wrapping their choices.

Yet, I will do so, because anything else seems Scrooge-like.
*****
The thank you emails and calls and letters have been pouring in from the Chanukah round of brownie list boxes I sent last month.  Cheetah stationary from friends who took a dream trip to Africa, a funny phone call from my grew-up-next-door first cousin, a sorry your mom is failing and thanks for the sweets call from his sister, a Facebook message from MTF, an email from another first cousin, thanking me for remembering that her little boy, my youngest cousin, doesn't eat nuts.... every time I think that this list is just waaaayyyyy toooooo looooong I remember all the love that comes back to me.
*****
The party season is starting this weekend with the Cornell Club of Southern Arizona's annual bash at a local country club.  We'll eat fine food and sing carols and, this year, host a representative from the University.  I'll be going alone, because TBG feels that he's fulfilled his Cornell Club obligations for 2013 by attending the Fall Picnic in September.

That's okay, because I like hanging out with Natalie.  She and I have sat next to one another for the last four or five of these events, and I've watched her grow from a kid who needed crayons and paper to keep still to a bright eyed girl who is interested in the world around her.  I don't know if she loves me as much as I love her, but it really doesn't matter.  This kind of relationship works as a one-way street.
*****
I have been searching for reindeer antlers for The Schnozz. I have large, unbreakable, outdoor balls to hang from the trees outside (as soon as I can find someone who wants to go up on a ladder and hang them). Patty cleaned the Chanukah detritus from the corners of the living room and it's all ready to bring in the next holiday.

I do so love this time of year.

Her First Time

We agreed to forego adoring the mailing containers. With no ribbons or wrapping paper to collect,  there was plenty of room for Big Cuter to assemble bookshelves and climbing structures. 

After lunch, there was napping to football,  followed by more football and more napping.  

By the time Honey Bunny woke up from her early nap (this kid goes from 100 to 0 in a nanosecond) all of Bedford Falls was gathered in George Bailey's foyer. 

The little one has no screen time beyond video chats with us, per the current literature.  But Grandma made the call - the last scene of It's A Wonderful Life demanded an exception.  

So we listened to people sharing love and joy.  Honey Bunny was as ensorcelled as we were. 

Now she can say that she's been watching that movie her whole life. 

Happy Hanukkah 5785

 חַג שָׂמֵחַ

Chag Sameach

Happy Holiday!

Wishing you dreidle rolls of Gimel and sufganiot galore,

jelly filled donut holes aka baby sufganiot

and eight days of light

and latkes

and love

and joy

HAPPY HANUKKAH !