They don’t stay little…

My cousins John and Dan and Dan’s wife Leslie and their boys came from out of town to stop by for a few hours on their way further south. It is amazing how fast other people’s kids grow up, and it was wonderful to see them. “Richard (the younger) has a baby?!”

Leslie’s mom is an avid knitter?  Who knew? I told her my friend Gunilla Leavitt just bought  The Golden Fleece in Santa Cruz and I bet her mom knows her. I sent them off with a copy of “Wrapped in Comfort” for her mom; family gets extra privileges and all that.

We listened to Conference, good put-up-your-feet-and-knit time. Almost finished that Sea Silk.  Smiled remembering that as a teenager I used to babysit the kids of one of the speakers on the occasional Friday evening back in Maryland; they were good kids. He’s a good and kind and loving man.

The wildlife: this morning when the other squirrels left, my little injured one came out of wherever she’d been, I saw her, she caught the nut deftly in her mouth and immediately did her funny sideways lope to her new hiding place, tucked that conspicuous tail remnant away and disappeared so completely that it surprised me all over again. The others came back; the others left; only then did she appear again, getting seconds and ducking  immediately away under the patio again and safely out of sight. She’s got it all figured out.

Costco, later: I quite enjoyed getting people to smile back.

Meantime: a sample table. People waiting their turn, when, this time it was an old Russian woman who saw that the little paper cups of food in the meat department were going to be all gone by the time it was her turn and she simply shoved her way through the crowd to get to the front.

Given what happened two weeks ago, when she shoved him–“Wait,” I asked Richard afterward, I having stepped away to go get the milk and having completely missed the scene, “some little old lady shoved YOU? You’re a pretty formidable target!”–she did, he said, she shoved him out of her way. By taking him by surprise from behind, I’m sure.

He immediately firmly told her (and the man is not soft spoken) that she was being rude, that all these other people were waiting their turn and she could go back to the back of the line like she was supposed to and wait her turn too.

She was astonished. Nobody had ever told her no like that before, apparently. She responded in a thick Russian accent but clearly she’d understood what he’d said.

“So did she go to the back of the line?” I asked.

She did not, but she did at least wait till he’d gotten his and turned aside.

It’s a start.