The sender of the less-consequential package sent me a new tracking number in response to my heads-up. Richard thinks that means they never actually mailed the original, or they’re simply resending it. So my friend who loves getting fun colorful wool socks for her Aug. 2 birthday will finally have happy feet.

I went to USPS’s site to try again on my gerdan. I got this:

As outlined in the Terms & Conditions, the postal carrier has the final discretion to leave your package at this address.”

Wait–what? Okay, I can see why there might be circumstances they need to say that for, but given our mailman’s history of keeping the neighbors in touch with each other, that was funny. (I did NOT want Paul down the street’s property tax bill along with my own, thanks.)

Okay, try again. I signed up for all updates on its tracking number. It has now left southern California. In transit. Who knows, I might even get it this week!

Meantime, it turns out flu shots are hard to come by here at the moment and appointments are required but I found one CVS and only one locally that got us a slot for tonight, while all the others said not for at least a week. So if I sleep through tomorrow that’s why.

I put off getting that shot (or finding out that I couldn’t yet, as it turned out) because I didn’t want to miss the mailman ringing the doorbell for a signature for my package from Ukraine when he was originally expected to come.

They got that package moving alright.

It’s now 370 miles south of here.

Oleksandra noticed that before I did and instantly sent me a heads-up, telling me she’d wondered if she’d written my name or address down wrong or something and had checked but no, she’d gotten it right.

I found that the business card I’d been given had the official email as well as the phone number of that postal supervisor, so the documented trail of messages (no response so far) has begun.

Her fourth sale on Etsy. She told me it would take a few weeks to get made, and I, picturing one woman holding down everything while a frickin’ war is going on around her, told her I was in no hurry: in whatever time worked for her was good for me.

She was very pleased when that went out and after a long wait in Kiev, noted when it continued on.

The package (we won’t blame the gerdan inside) landed in San Francisco, got taken to my town, decided it liked the bar code scene better up in The City and hijacked a mail truck to get back to drinking in the view at its favorite hangout, got caught, and got brought back down here.

Where it sat in timeout.

And sat.

And sat.

While this good woman who’d spent so much time creating sunflowers of her own design out of Czech beads sent me an agonized note: she’d been following the tracking and had begun to believe it might never come. (She didn’t say, we got it past the war here, what on earth is up with the American postal service?)

She may have been afraid that I would make her make another one at no pay to make good on the order, but I’ve been following that tracking just as much as she has and I know she did that work and this is not her fault.

I assured her that if it didn’t come today I was going to drive to that post office with the tracking number in hand.

Usually the mail comes after dinner. Today it came in the afternoon. It was not there–but for once I knew what the status was for the day before the place closed. I kept my promise and drove over.

I told the kind and concerned clerk my story: this vendor in Ukraine had created this for me and was distraught that it might be lost. Could you help me help her feel a whole lot better about this one thing that she’d put heart and soul into?

I actually had another package of no particular importance that had been sitting there for a month, per the tracking, and could they find that, too.

She spent a long time in back while I read the latest Ukraine war updates on my phone, silently cheering their successes. I thought about Oleksandra, whose brother is in the army and for whom I had mobilized in my own little way because at least it was something I could do.

She finally came back. The tracking number for the other package didn’t exist, she told me. (I notified that vendor that they were going to have to go after them.) This one–pointing at the number with UA for Ukraine in it–was delivered this morning.

I assure you it was not, I told her. The mail came but it was not in it. (And if someone ever tells you I ever get mail in the morning other than during Christmas rush they are outright lying to you, I decided not to say out loud. We are at the end of their route.)

She gave me the supervisor’s business card so I would have that phone number and assured me they were being notified.

The hope is that it is still on the truck and that it will come tomorrow.

But either way, I have Oleksandra‘s back and that’s what matters.

You know, I should have had one last yarn over at the top of that dandelion. I’ve been thinking of ways to avoid that jog where the trunks go inwards a stitch at each side on their way up. You can’t see the seven rows of branching under that curl of fabric, but they’re there and (measuring tape out) I probably should have ignored my earlier calculations and started that part sooner.

There are always things you can do better the next time and it’s fine this way this time.

Meantime, we have a new young couple at church and they were asked to give today’s talks. They were funny, spiritually grounded, clearly thought the world of each other, and I look forward to getting to know them better.

The man’s mom and grandmother came.

The grandmother was taking in my blouse, this blue one, so my friend Phyllis explained that I buy them from Ukraine to help out there.

Turns out there’s an adopted grandchild in that family from Ukraine and those two women were highly interested to know where one could find such things. They’d had no idea one could.

Now they do.

After a bright but dark-ish blue noon cloud cover that looked like it might even rain, the wind blew the local headlines this way and it was definitely a fire sky now. We’re far from the flames, but people we care about aren’t.

After dinner, I went out to take a look, and instead of being one solid mass like earlier, there was a definite formation within, scattering out a bit in spots into the distance–

–let me step back a bit to see–

yeah, that way, but when you have to replicate a sense of balance by where the ground is and feels, taking a few steps backwards while looking upwards and touching anything unexpected means your brain suddenly doesn’t know where the ground is at all nor which way that idea of up ran off to.

Which I suddenly wasn’t.

I knew my personal five minute rule, but I also knew sprains hurt more the next day and I ought to take care of that, so I iced my wrists awhile.

Which was boring.

So I sat down and figured out the branches stage of the afghan that had been impatiently waiting for me to get on with it, and got on with it. Sheer orneriness isn’t the motivation I would have been looking for to kick the knitting back into gear but hey, whatever works.

Thirty-eight years later, I think I finally got my answer.

My dad was an art dealer and spent his career trying to help talented French artists find an international audience. I grew up with paintings on the walls and tapestries that took a month per square yard to create. Our living room’s cathedral ceiling and wall of windows looking out on the woods made for the perfect lighting in beautiful scenery.

When my husband and I bought our first house, I couldn’t quite put my finger on it but something was missing, like it wasn’t quite a real home yet–despite the fact that we had picked out the model and the lot and watched it being built in a then-boom town in New Hampshire and every thing in it was something we had chosen.

Our second child was born seven months later.

My folks drove up from Maryland to help out for a week.

And then.

Dad opened the big trunk of their car and started pulling out paintings, thoroughly enjoying how surprised and thrilled I was. THAT’S what it had been missing! Art on the walls! Now it could finally feel like home!

One of those paintings had always been a little bit of a mystery to me and now it was mine. Oh, that’s Deer Island, Maine, I was told, like that should settle it.

Okay–but why? I’ve long wondered. Why did someone travel way out there to paint that out in the middle of absolutely nowhere?

The Washington Post just published one of their reporters’ traveling to meet the people and place of the favorite haunt of his favorite author a little more personally.

Now, when I was maybe ten I got a thick heavy book for Christmas full of horse stories. My kind of thing at the time. The further you got into it, though, the darker a turn the stories took. John Steinbeck’s “The Red Pony” is not something I’d give a ten year old, but it was in there.

And then in high school I read “The Pearl.”

That was it. I was done with Steinbeck.

So I was surprised to read that not only was he a favorite writer of this Post reporter, but that rereading him inspired the guy to pack a bag and go learn for himself what the people and place were like where his hero began his “Travels With Charlie” from.

Deer Island, Maine.

The painter was a Steinbeck fan. Clearly.

And I feel like a decades-long mystery has been solved, and not only that, I actually am looking forward to reading that Steinbeck book. Who knew.

At 8:15 a.m. we were next on the list for the omicron shots.

At 8:20 a.m. we were doing the required sit-and-observe aftermath.

A dad came in holding a baby almost old enough to walk. The baby wasn’t too sure about being in this strange place at a strange hour with strange people around.

Man, it felt good to be able to offer a handknit Peruvian finger puppet just like the before times and delight the guy. The baby was pretty cool with it, too.

Then a couple with two girls of about two and four came in, and those parents approved of the unexpected distraction, too. Their little ones instantly went to town having a grand game of make believe with each other.

A few minutes in, two suddenly very shy little girls found themselves encouraged to walk ever so hesitantly to where I was sitting. They were not the least bit sure of this. Maybe I might make them give them back? What would I do? I had said Happy Birthday, but the older one knew it was not a birthday and the uncertainty was grabbing at her ankles like a monster under the bed.

“Thank you,” she said in a suddenly very small voice, both of them studying my eyes intensely, wanting to know what would happen next.

I gave them my best, biggest, grandmotherliest smile behind my required face mask (they had them on, too) and told her and her sister, “You’re very welcome!”

They RAN back to their mom and dad, joyfully this time. Yay!!

And with that our time was up and we waved goodbye, easily as grateful to them as they were to us.

(Woke up to a second power failure but it cleared up quickly.)

The CDC had a list by zip code of providers of the new covid vaccine. (Lots of helpful links there.) I started trying yesterday, but the one local entity’s site refused to load, and when I asked Richard about going to Santa Rosa for another provider his reaction was that with our having driven three hours to Antioch in traffic and two hours back for his first covid shot, going even further was not enthralling.

Today, still not able to get through online, I called the local one even though their site said not to.

They said yeah they were scheduling but it was going to be weeks, possibly months before they had any more openings–they were booked.

I realized afterward, well, they are the closest off-campus pharmacy to Stanford Hospital.

Which is also I’m sure why the CDC got it to them first around here.

There had to be…

Today the CDC added CVS: one store in one location and they had openings for one single day, so I grabbed them. But I was still hoping for something sooner.

I checked our clinic’s site and got nowhere, so I called them, too. Oh! They do! But they said you could only schedule the covid shots by phone–just like last year’s first shot in the first weeks.

Turns out you had to wait while someone asked you all your ID information and all the health questions and dutifully entered them in while everybody else waited on hold, with him playing a human buffer in the scheduling that would keep all but the most determined self-screened out for now while the supplies are scarce. The on-hold robot voice kept urging me to hang up and schedule most appointments online, which I knew would just shove me to the back of the line on the phone again and nevertheless I persisted and knit and knit and knit, glad for hold music loud enough for even me to be able to put the phone down.

I got in!

You want them–this week?? Uhhh, let me see…

(I’d figured it didn’t hurt to ask.)

CVS is now canceled, he let me jump through the hoops for the both of us, and we are getting our Omicron boosters in the morning. And our flu shots.

(Edit in the morning: CVS was going to do both shots, but the clinic was only doing the Covid. One down, one to go.)

I had a mouthful of toothpaste last night when everything suddenly went very dark.

Spit.

So did that mean that when the Flex Alert said to wait till after 9:00 pm to do your laundry everybody started theirs at the same time? Along with turning on the dishwasher for the night? (Guilty.)

Earthquake readiness says we’re supposed to have flashlights by our sides of the bed. He found his. Mine was AWOL. Of all the things not to be prepared about after all the warnings re the power and the heat, I was apologizing to him that I… Oh there it is. I gave him his back.

He called to report the outage and it turned out no one else in our neighborhood had. What? They were saying 12,000 out, not quite reaching to our street (but it did.) Was everybody else in bed at 10:30? Seems like it.

We read to each other, like we do every night, and doing it by flashlight was kind of fun, like when you read under the covers as a kid and tried not to get caught not going to sleep.

Then we tried to turn off the lights in the dark.

But you know those dimming/brightening switches with the flat rectangular panel rather than a small black piece sticking out? How do you turn one of those off when the power’s out? I asked him. So it doesn’t flip all the lights back on in our faces in the middle of the night?

He confessed he did not know, which sounded to me like, Face it, honey, we’re hosed.

And yet. Turns out the bedroom lights were the ones that didn’t. It was the ones in the closet and the hallway, the ones with the flip-it switches that I’d missed because I hadn’t known which ones to turn off, and, well, we know who the light sleeper is who took care of that.

Let’s not do that again. Which is why breakfast and dinner were both baked at 7:30 this morning, side by side, 25 minutes and off fast, just in time for the dentist to call and ask me, Could you come in a few hours early this morning?

I am writing this several hours earlier than my usual. I’m trying to beat the next outage. And probably so was the dentist.

Oh, and one other thing to add: Happy Birthday to my late Grandmother J and Happy 100th Anniversary to my Grandparents B.

Not just roots joining into the bases of the trees: gotta have a redwood in the forest that’s partly hollowed at the bottom by a fire ages ago–creating room to climb up in there and even to sit down in the cool of its trunk. One looks up and marvels at the immensity.

Little by little, it’s getting there. Don’t tell the recipients it looks in this shot like the trees have a frilly skirt–they might have a boy.

(P.S. It hit 103F today. I am exceedingly grateful for air conditioning. I certainly wouldn’t have touched this if we didn’t have that.)

If you ever wanted a brain exercise for word retrieval, and the official New York Times Wordle only lets you play once a day–which it does–fear not. The colors are brighter on HelloWordl anyway, and you can play it as many times as you want. Even use it to warm up the brain before going on to the official  version where your wins are recorded and tabulated. No pressure.

I have never been addicted to computer games but this one actually has a bit of self-justification to it: when you’ve got a TBI, anything that helps.

But what I want to know is, wait. How much is this doggy in the Window?

Part of me wants to ask, How is it only this far along? and part of me is going, Go go go keep going you’re getting there!

There’s the ocean, the waves on the beach, the stair into the hillside and to either side and, away from where the humans would climb, the tracks of shorebirds. There’s the seed stitch (so much seed stitch is there anyone who loves knitting seed stitch I do not love knitting seed stitch) for the roughness of the cliffs facing the water, and then back a bit from there is, at long last, where the redwoods begin.

I had all kinds of ideas of how they were going to go but ripped a little out: the very trees themselves keep it simple.

There were going to be ice plants, but the gauge is wrong for that and the daisy stitch came out as random bits of rocks on the beach for climbing over. And that fits.

The little stick figure of a dandelion because there has to be a poofball for their little one to blow on to watch the little pieces all rise up into the air.

Maybe as high as a redwood!

I bought a vyshyvanka for my granddaughter Maddy, who’ll turn eight at Christmas, and it came today with the surprise of a beaded bracelet and beaded head covering with ribbons to tie it on with, because Nataliya is wonderful like that.

And there was this. Made of wood. It could be a small sunflower coaster, sure, and definitely a symbol for a country that grows most of the sunflower oil in the world, but all those little holes are begging for laceweight or beading thread or something and to be used as a tool.

What kind and how, though, I am guessing at because I have no idea.

For that matter you could loop yarn through one of the petals and wear it as a large necklace of about the size of all those VW emblems that were being stolen off cars right and left in the ’80’s. (I’d forgotten about the Beastie Boys and VW offering a free emblem to anyone who asked in order to save their customers’ cars and their future sales figures.)

No but seriously, if anyone’s seen one of these before, what is this? I feel like I should know.

Random thought: pansies, with their big beautiful colorful soft wings of petals, are the butterflies of the flower world.

Meantime, I sent this picture and asked a question because clothing is such a personal thing: Christmas is coming up and these can take as much as three months to arrive, although usually it’s more like two. The rush towards December has surely begun and I imagine there are only so many people (most likely women) available to run the post office in Kiev. And everything seems to route through Kiev.

So now the talented and wonderful Sola Kvitkova (I’m wearing that one, sized up to a large to be sure) has a new order to fill on Etsy, in red as requested.

And once again I am thrilled that I can do that, that I can do my part to support–well, everybody in all of Ukraine, in my heart–and am hoping she and hers stay safe, now and always. That would be the greatest gift.