Slip sliding away
Saturday April 11th 2015, 11:04 pm
Filed under: Family,Life,Non-Knitting

A knock at the door. The old dishwasher was wheeled away with our dolly while the other worker stood there with the new one up on his shoulder (!!!) waiting to get by to bring it inside for us. That was at 2 pm and then we spent the next seven hours on the installation.

Even he didn’t see any way to get those two top screws into that box that’s supposed to go against the wall under the sink, not with the disposal in the way. He was suddenly glad he’d bought a tube of caulking during the run to the hardware store for the right screws and a level (after an hour of both of us looking for his level)–he would just basically glue it to the wall. We had the two lower screws in, the most important ones, so, hey, that would do it. As he caulked while wedged in at an impossible angle he casually mentioned that I was now going to have to hold it in place there for ten minutes while it set.

Blink. Dude. I can barely even reach, much less…

But wait, I think, there’s more than one way–and so I turned around, laid my back on the floor, and put one foot up against that thing. There you go. Easy peasie. Staring at the skylight straight above, watching the seagull kiting on the breeze.

Except that before I could congratulate myself my posterior was already starting to slide across the kitchen and I had to tell him to grab that box quick. I readjusted. I ended up spending the ten minutes holding tight to the cabinet door, still far easier than the alternative.

Does this thing come out? (The third rack at the very top for putting silverware and spatulas and the like into. There’s a silverware tray at the bottom like every other brand, but this was to give you more flexibility with big stuff.) Surely it comes further forward than this?

Huh. Let me go check.

I googled Bosch 500 series dishwasher. Turns out we’d bought a new model. Their own site doesn’t even show that third rack open on that one, but I found a photo somewhere else with it pulled all the way like one would expect. Nothing in the manual. Meantime, he simply called customer service–and they didn’t know either at that hour on a weekend. In the end we simply loaded the front third of that third rack because that was all we could reach of it.

(Turning it on at long, long last) What’s this 2:30 thing? Our model doesn’t count down to when the load is finished.

No, it doesn’t.

Actually, turned out, yes it does.

And so we have it going with the ultimate test one could throw at a new dishwasher: can it clean a pan that an angel food cake was baked in that was not presoaked and scrubbed before throwing it in there? No dishwasher I’ve ever had has been able to do that. Time (current reading: 14 minutes left) will tell.

And it’s a beautiful, beautiful dishwasher. So far so good.

Oh and? Even the floor looked scorched where the heating element of the Maytag had been. We so lucked out. So close.

(Okay, now I’m just stalling, waiting for that Bosch to hurry up and finish.)

And… (It’s past our bedtime but we both want to know.)

The angel food cake pan is absolutely spotless.



Soclose
Tuesday March 31st 2015, 10:42 pm
Filed under: History,Life,Non-Knitting

Trying to place the name, he asked me, Who’s Chris Hadfield?

I started singing Ground Control to Major Tom (I LOVE this video! It’s someone’s repost of the one that was seen 22 million times but only had a one-year license to stay up) and he instantly got it. If you haven’t read Stephanie’s post, please, do, her post is way more fun than mine!

Meantime, here, I turned the dishwasher on at 11:00 last night and we were off to bed. At nine a.m. I went to grab my hot cocoa mug out of it–and the door wasn’t quite hot enough to burn my hand but it was getting close and the thing smelled of burning plastic.

In disbelief I pulled it open and the white plastic at the bottom below the heating element was scorched.

This is a dishwasher that had previously been serviced under a recall for having burned houses down. I immediately unplugged it.

Maytag, bless them, when I called, duly noted that we had bought it according to their records in 2007 so of course it was long out of warranty. I expected an argument but instead they immediately offered to send someone out to repair it: the service call and the labor would be on them–they hoped I wouldn’t mind if we paid for the parts that might be needed?

Sounded quite fair to me. Although: I will have a tab open on the computer with their own price list/suggested retail for such showing when the guy comes. One can only hope he says it’s repairable.

So we came thisclose to burning our house down last night, and when I mentioned it on Facebook my friend India from our Warm Hats Not Hot Heads campaign (where we and others knit hundreds of hats to create a sense of community among members of Congress) said her neighbor actually did get burned out of their house a few nights ago by their dishwasher.

Mine is model MDBH945AWB (that last B for black). In case you want to go check yours. It might be a good idea.



So much for easy
Wednesday March 25th 2015, 9:53 pm
Filed under: Family,Life,Non-Knitting

Yeah, that talk about getting the taxes done so fast?

Turbotax e-files the federal form for free but charges $24.95 to e-file the state one, after all they charge for the software. For twenty-five bucks I can make a trip to the post office, thanks, since I was going there anyway.

One checks every page first, of course…

Hearts. And smiley faces? I stared. And here’s another one. Hearts?! Smiley faces?! Turbopunked? Emoticonned?

Nah, said he later, probably came from when I got the printer to finally work with the new computers. Must still be a glitch in there somewhere.

And it only shows up when we’re doing that one little task, think I. Great.

Michelle dropped by and she and I spent some time going through what was missing and what was mutilated and trying to reprint what was needed.

No more emoticons but some pages still stayed inexplicably vanished.

That was one of the more irritably spent $24.95 ever. But now (unless we hear back to the contrary from Sacramento and the Feds) we are really and truly *done* for this year. Let’s just assume the pristine view we saw on the screen was what they received.

You just really don’t want the tax collector’s face to do what mine did when I first saw those printouts.



It’s a new day
Thursday January 22nd 2015, 9:49 am
Filed under: Non-Knitting

Testing testing 1 2 3

My blog broke last night. The resident geek took a look. Turned out that when I’d been hitting Delete Spam of late, it was simply squirrelling it away like a six-year-old hoarding last year’s rotten Halloween candy in the closet. Thousands of pages of spam and no room for anything more.

He did his best and we gave it up and went to bed.

And look! My Preview and Publish buttons are back and I think this post won’t vanish into the ether like the attempts last night.

1, 2, 3… GO!



Traypsing through the woods
Monday September 01st 2014, 10:58 pm
Filed under: Family,Friends,Life,Lupus,Non-Knitting

If you get to Kings Mountain Art Fair a half hour before they close, there’s not much sun getting past those redwoods to worry about and you can park close in. (And you’d better, because you won’t have any time at all to sit around and wait for their shuttle bus.)

And yet people were still arriving, not just me.

All weekend, Mel and Kris had wondered where I was and if I were coming.

There’s a short video on that link of Mel creating a bowl like mine. I love it and I love what they create and best of all I love them to–oh wait. To pieces is exactly not the phrase to use here, never mind.

I had long wanted a serving tray in their pottery; they had two left. I bought a few more mugs, since we had found ourselves running low or out while the kids were visiting. A bowl, a gift for a friend.

Ohmygoodness. They had toddler mugs. Almost all gone.  Oh if only. I had just seen Parker handling one of the regular mugs in person just fine. Mel and Kris had previously told me this could be so, that their boys hadn’t broken things, and I’d answered, But they were raised by potters.

Parker raised my faith in the possibilities after all.

At the last, I decided I would wait till I see Mel and Kris again at a show in November so I can pick out one set all together. I think I’d still get doubles of each because, y’know, toddlers. That means I’d need six. Let the budget breathe a moment first and besides, they didn’t have that many that late in the show.

I intend to see them at the next one early rather than late. It’ll be indoors.



Mechanical failure
Tuesday April 01st 2014, 8:59 pm
Filed under: Life,Non-Knitting

Okay, I’m being growly surely for the fact that I just did a faceplant at my own front door (oh hello new neighbors across the street coming out just then! Hi!) and I had to ice my wrist for the second time today. I am a klutz. (And the grapes I just bought right before Costco closed turned out to be rotten below the top layer in the large box.  Such a hard life.)

But. The brake warning light came on in the car last night in the dark in the rain and there was only one place that thing was going and that was straight to the mechanic.

And since we’d just had the big 45k mile checkup two thousand miles ago, we took it to the Toyota dealer where that had been done.

Apparently if they’d found something it would have been covered under warranty. Apparently if they had found something our rental car for the day would have been covered too. And I do believe in paying someone for labor done.

But I’m trying to wrap my brain around shelling out $200 to be told they didn’t find anything so they simply reset the warning light and bring it back if it comes on again, ‘k, ‘bye.

And if it comes on again in several months rather than sooner, do I shell that out again?

Does your mechanic charge you if they don’t find anything to fix? My old one didn’t–and I used to argue with him that I owed him for his time.

Well what does that tell me.



No morcellation
Saturday March 22nd 2014, 11:13 pm
Filed under: Family,Life,Non-Knitting

Stumbled across an article in the New York Times vitally, and I use that word literally, important to women dealing with potential surgery for fibroids or more.

There are quite a few comments there by Hooman Noorchashm, the doctor who started the raising of the alarm. He is facing losing his 41-year-old wife, also a doctor, the mother of their six children, because her OB/GYN did what has become a standard surgery in that specialty: laparoscopy with morcellation of the fibroid. Far faster recovery, tiny little scar, back to work much sooner, what’s not to love.

But.

Dr. Noorchashm, a surgeon himself, points out that morcellation is not done by any other surgeons in any other specialty–and for good reason: it not only breaks up the offending tissue and sucks it out, but it also spews it widely within the abdomen, and if there is any cancer lurking in those cells it’s suddenly everywhere and in the bloodstream.

Which is what happened to his wife. Her fibroids could have been removed intact and sent to pathology and instead she was suddenly an instant Stage IV leiomyosarcoma patient.

Leiomyosarcoma, he points out, is incurable and a fast death.

It is also what my mother-in-law died of a year ago. She was told that maybe when they did her hysterectomy years ago they missed a few cells which turned into ovarian cancer, but they found that that wasn’t quite what she had.

Going by the commenters on that article, it is believed in the leiomyosarcoma community that that misdiagnosis as ovarian accounts for quite a few of the cases of what MomH had, which our family was told was a highly rare disease.

Maybe not so much. Dr. Noorchashm says it’s one in 400 to 1000 of the fibroid cases that go to surgery and that every one of those cases could be treated by intact removal. Or have it go like his wife’s case. The cells might lay dormant for years and then suddenly go wild or they might get right to it, but either way it is not treatable at that point and invariably fatal. He is agitating, with good cause, for morcellation to simply cease to be done. Size of incision is not the purpose of surgery, he points out.

There’s a lot more in there about the economics of the device manufacturers and of some hospitals’ requirements that doctors do so many to keep their privileges to use those machines. There is even a morcellation procedure that encases the tissue but it is much less often done.

Patients are typically not told that the surgeon intends to do morcellation during their procedure nor what it means. A patient commented that it was not on their Informed Consent list. Patients need to know. If the doctors aren’t changing their methods to keep up with the new information, the patients need to stand up for themselves and ask and then tell them no.

And to think two or three years ago I was in an OB/GYN’s office debating whether to have fibroid surgery. We decided to see if a little more aging would take care of it, and it did. I had no desire to have my abdomen opened up yet again even a little bit and the gynecologist wasn’t pushing it.

I had no idea….

I’m trying to help get the word out to make sure that others do.



Sew what? Of corset was
Saturday March 15th 2014, 10:03 pm
Filed under: Non-Knitting

The first actual blueberries of the year! (And yes that’s an empty suet cage that somehow was left on the side of the pot when John was arranging the netting over the blueberries. So there it stays for now.)

I figured I ought to put the peer pressure of having a blog to work for me to induce me to start that long-thought-of-but-not-done baby sweater. And so I went looking for my go-to site for child measurements.

Back when I used to sew a lot–we’re talking 25 and more years ago–sewing patterns had not changed sizing the way the ready-made garment industry had been doing, and ready-mades have changed even more since then. When my kids were little I bought a skirt pattern with three sizes offered and remember having had to sew the largest, grumbling that I just was not a 14 thankyouverymuch.

Which I’m only mentioning not out of misplaced pride but surprise. Because I stumbled across that particular pattern a week or two ago, long saved only because I always did really like that style. Still do. Flipped it over to look at the chart on the back out of curiosity.

And this: when I went to Bev’s Country Cottage’s size chart, there’s an adorable picture of her and her grandson by way of illustration with his measurements at five and a half years old.

I stared at her page.

“Twenty-four inches around his tummy.”

At five and a half years old. Judging by her chart, he was on the small side for his age.

A twenty-four inch waist is what that sewing pattern claimed was the standard size for a full-grown woman wearing a size 10. Blink.

I used to think the clothing industry had participated in intense size deflation in order to stroke egos and boost sales, and certainly that didn’t hurt the trend, but,  my stars. Expecting a small-to-average woman not to be the same around as a typical four-to-five-year-old seems pretty darn normal to me.

(Ed. to add, I have started the sweater for Hudson’s first birthday and so far the knitting seems to be coming in right on target at 21″ around. It feels great to finally have that thing going. Thank you all, and you didn’t even know you were helping out.)



Happy to share
Monday March 10th 2014, 11:17 pm
Filed under: Friends,Life,Non-Knitting

From Books Inc last Thursday to literally, knitterally, books inc: they increased.

There is a monthly Friends of the Library sale and the Monday after there is often a books giveaway to clear out the leftovers. Notice is posted on freecycle.org.

I hadn’t seen those notices in awhile. Were they waiting for the time change and more daylight? I have no idea.

I forwarded it to our ward’s chat list, and lo and behold: the daddy and daughter who were just inside the door last night receiving chocolate torte were just inside door #2 tonight at the former high school as I came in through it. They were quite happy to have heard about this. They were just on their way out and glad to get a chance to say thank you on the spot.

Bring boxes and bags, the notice had said.

No need, thought I, I’m only going to get one or two books, max, I can certainly handle that in my knitting bag.

Right.

One twist in that plan was the staff person who was disappointed that a handful was all I was taking: the thing was about to end and please, she pleaded, couldn’t I take more? There are some good ones here if you’d like cooking. Knitting? Crafts, right here.

They don’t say it, but from what I understand the majority of never-claimed books end up in the landfill. One can understand a bibliophile’s plea that they be rescued.

The books vs cane was–well, I didn’t hit anyone all those times I dropped them–and I put the first batch in my car and dove back in. Hardcover James Herriott! Wallace Stegner–still here! And I got there after people were loading up full pickup loads on my way in. A photographic expedition of a river in West Virginia that Debbie would surely love to have (it’s yours, Debbie). Another by someone who boated down the Merrimack River, which runs behind our old neighborhood, and the writing seems to be good enough to spend more time on.

The second trip to the car made it seventeen books and at six minutes to closing, arms aching, I decided I’d better give it a rest.

There will be more Cooking With Fruit happening around here shortly, no doubt.



The Maine idea?
Friday February 28th 2014, 11:42 pm
Filed under: Non-Knitting

Anybody else own these? Anybody else with any experience who can weigh in? Or know anybody?

It’s not just the fact that the bottoms are white, which is a new thing to me. And one would notice that part more because of that. They do come a little far forward from the rest of the shoe compared to my other Birks and I’m afraid of tripping over them–so far, I’ve only tried them on so I don’t know.

I bought them via Amazon and Amazon directly and not a third-party seller; I noted that the promise on their page of free returns vanished after I’d placed the order. Huh. Note to self: save a screenshot. Who knew I would need to.

The price was $107 off so clearly they were someone else’s return, and I don’t mind because they seem to be the real thing and brand new. (Not to mention the price jumped right back to retail after they arrived.) But after trying them on, I went Googling for images to see if mine were an anomaly? After a quick glance, they don’t seem to be.

They’re growing on me–I do need a pair of closed-heel shoes, unlike all my other Birkenstocks, and these will do quite nicely. And they do need to be Birkenstocks: the shaping across the bottom of the foot steadies my shaky balance.

It’s just–I’ve never had a pair of shoes before with buck teeth.



Batteries, part two
Wednesday February 19th 2014, 11:52 pm
Filed under: Family,Non-Knitting

While the second peach tree blooms merrily…

The doorbell rang and I didn’t even have to sign for the box as I saw the FedEx guy on his way back to his truck. I opened the door and yelled, ‘Thank you!” and he called back over his shoulder a cheerful, “You’re welcome!”

We got the first exploded battery out of the scooter’s case two days ago, but the second was well wedged in there. We put on rubber gloves to avoid any leaking anything and pulled. And pulled again, putting our whole bodies into the effort to get those things apart.  Released and reassessed. Carefully avoiding damaging the case, kind of holding our breath, he gave it another try thisaway while I said a silent prayer and I imagine he did too but whatever, about a minute later it came free from the case and the industrial-strength velcro holding it tight. Nothing broken and neither of us ricocheting into the walls.

He connected up the new batteries and I screwed the case back together and plugged the thing in.

About an hour later, Richard said to give it a try.

It’s too soon, isn’t it?

Just try turning it on. What color is the indicator?

Well, from this angle it’s green, from that it’s yellow.

Just try.

Nada. Dead. I unplugged the thing and brought the case back over to him.

“Oh wait,” I suddenly said, turning back around and disentangling cords, not having realized that someone had put a second one on the scooter at some point probably thinking it went with it, “It helps if you plug in the right one.” But I had no idea now which one had been and which hadn’t. (Edited to add later, of course we had had the right one plugged in–that indicator had been on.)

Richard unscrewed the case again–no small job–and tested the batteries, but one being dead didn’t mean anything if it wasn’t ever charged up to begin with.

It is plugged in again, only this time we’re sure it really is plugged in. Putting the key in gets you zero on the indicator still. Waiting, hoping hard…

If nothing else, the local Fry’s Electronics has a pair of lead-acids in the right size. Hopefully not expired. So there is at least a backup plan.

(Update: zero volts, one, 13.3 on the other.)



Gone
Sunday February 16th 2014, 12:23 am
Filed under: Family,Non-Knitting

Watched Olympics at Michelle’s tonight till late.

And somehow in the course of the evening discovered that my Iphone 4s had

zero

as in 0

contacts.

Nada. Everybody has packed up and gone home. No idea why. Every address, every phone number, every email addy, poof. I’m hoping we can recover the info at Verizon on Monday but we won’t know till then. Has anyone else ever had this happen?

And–and this is definitely not being typed in order of importance but it’s late and I’m too tired to edit… My mom’s big brother, my Uncle David passed away yesterday, and the mathematician in him I imagine would have loved the 02142014 of the date as he slipped quietly into the beyond, well loved.



This old house
Friday December 06th 2013, 12:17 am
Filed under: Friends,Knit,Life,Non-Knitting

A whole lot of living packed into one day. You see that picture? It did not rain today.

Diana was my excuse to make split pea soup, thick in veggies and ham and warm goodness for lunch on a bitterly cold day. She came by with her square and to get the scarf, since the two squares that were to come to her place didn’t arrive in the mail till after she got home so we couldn’t put all three on together after all. It’s okay, she’s got them now and is sending the scarf right out to the next group of knitters in the morning.

We had a great time. We hadn’t seen each other in far too long. We vowed not to let that kind of time lapse happen again. She raved over the soup, over walking into the house with the smell of it cooking, over sharing a good meal with us (Richard’s on vacation.) For me it was a rare treat too because I can only eat small quantities of it at a time; it’s not a low-fiber food, and to have her enjoy it so much and to get to enjoy her so much added so much to my day.

Then she had an appointment at 2:00 and I had one to go visit Don.

Don gives his thanks for all the well wishes sent his way. He loves to tell a good story as much as the next blogger and was a little discouraged that it made him breathless for a moment to talk very long. Been there… I understand…but he did manage to tell me more about his beloved late Amalie. I hope I didn’t stay too long, but we were both very glad I’d come. And I gotta tell you, he looked a whole lot more chipper than his roommate. He’s trying to get it set up so that he can read his email where he’s staying. He’s a trooper.

Coming home, cleaning up a bit, I went outside a moment to toss something in the recycling bin–and did a doubletake. Wait–when did it rain? I know water pools on the flat part of the roof, but. Richard? Did a pipe burst? (It was 29, five degrees warmer than Anchorage, Alaska and on its way down when we went to bed last night. And yet we forgot to leave the kitchen tap dripping. You always, always…)

He groaned. He got up and went out there (brrr) and looked–and came back in and said, Call a plumber. Try Joe and see if he does that kind of work, but, call a plumber.

And of course it was 5:04, ie officially after hours now but oh well. We had a full-blown waterfall at the downspout.

Joe didn’t pick up right away, the next guy was swamped, the next guy was, too–but he threw me for a millisecond by saying something about our solar re those pipes.

I was delighted, and then so was he. This was a guy who came out for a job for me maybe as long as two years ago, where his equipment wasn’t quite long enough to help me so he refused to charge me for coming out. Even though he’d given me valuable, helpful information along the way. So I knitted a hat and mailed it off to the address I found for his business. He chuckled when I exclaimed that he remembered us just from seeing our phone number show up!? Cool.

And finally we got someone we’d never hired before but who–give him a minute to call right back–yes, he could come right out. (I could just picture him explaining to his kids that it would be bonus Christmas money if they didn’t mind his being late for dinner, and people needed his help.)

Yes please.

Very nice guy, very thorough as he checked for possible second leaks in the dark and the wet and the cold with his headlamp and flashlight. He mentioned that the people who had installed the water lines (this would be the same ones as did the heating work Joe just replaced) had not done a good job of it.

Were we surprised? Still, though, we’re the ones who forgot to let the tap drip during the freeze, so, hey.

And then I went off to Purlescence. Where I got to meet Carrie of Alpenglow Yarn, owner of a small mill. I loved that her Big Fat ball bands tell you the names of the individual alpacas, and Paul Cezanne and Mozart? My dad’s influence and my mom’s. Perfect.

And. Always another and. I finally remembered to run in the ends and drop off the long-awaiting hat at the Halos of Hope box for chemo caps for those in underserved areas. The yarn had come from a swap at the shop: freely given, freely given back.

The funky design? I could just picture a newly bald someone missing the familiar feel of the bounce of her ponytail at the back of her head, so I braided the last of the yarn in the ball, braided the braids, and ran the ends in by sewing the braids together for good measure.

Cezanne and Mozart will help me knit another soft warm hat.

I think, hopefully, tomorrow will be a day for simply putting my feet up, sitting still, eating a bit of leftover soup, catching my breath, needing no contractors however nice people they may be…and knitting. Got that big deadline coming up, y’know? *collapse*



Prologue
Sunday November 24th 2013, 9:35 pm
Filed under: Life,Non-Knitting

I gained a greater appreciation for the phrase “it dawned on me,” after I woke up with the light this morning with the clarity of the thought.

That there is even more to the story of the bank teller.

In September I had together in front of me three checks as I filled out the deposit slip to take to that credit union. Two small, one big, this amount, this amount, and this amount, all nicely tallied and ready to just hand over, done. I delivered these in person.

I didn’t notice for days that my deposit receipt had not included just over a thousand dollars in the expected total–and in disbelief, I went looking everywhere, checking various places and accounts, and found that somehow I had dropped that one big check on the desk and it had been left home; there it was. All innocent-like. I was mystified as to how that could have happened and just kicked myself for not noticing that the one at the bottom of the pile had been left behind.

But I was coming down with the flu by that point and a second trip over there wasn’t happening. I could tell you stories on our mail service, but that alone tells you all you need to hear about that.

Family came from out of town, airline tickets already paid for, staying at our aunt’s because I was still sick. (And surely the added carbon monoxide from turning up the heat while I was didn’t help–this was before the space heaters. I’m so glad the in-laws didn’t stay here, now that we know.)

During those weeks, at some point the thing got moved to a safe place so I could get to it when I got better and of course it became instantly lost.

It plainly needed to be here–the big check, specifically–till that new teller got that job so that I would have sufficient incentive to drive over there again for just the one and so would go have that conversation. And perhaps so that she herself would by that point have the information she needed on her friend to do what she needed to do with what she learned from me.

It was never all about the money.  But there was no way to know that till later. And with my visual memory damage that I know that I have and know that I have to work around, I almost missed seeing the hugeness of the blessing and how it came to be, in my ordinary frustration with my own shortcomings.



Fiji or not Fiji
Sunday November 17th 2013, 11:07 pm
Filed under: Food,Friends,Life,Non-Knitting

I’m debating typing this. I don’t want to sound like I’m patting myself on the back. But then, actually, it started with what seemed for a long time like a mistake on my part, and more of one as I held doggedly on to it.

I saw a jacket–on sale, a very good price, lined and good and warm. And it was a deep blue teal, just subdued enough, the short-shearling-type lining a slightly greener teal and lining the hood, too. Gorgeous. I seriously coveted it. It was too big for me, but my daughter needed a jacket and there you go, decorating a daughter is even better than decorating yourself and so I bought it.

She, however, was a teenager at the time and the kiss of death at that age is to have your mother go bonkers over an article of clothing she expects you to wear. (Hey, I did it to my mom, too, I get it.) She did humor me enough to try it on once and as far as I remember that was that.

Both girls are a lot taller than I am, and no matter how much I liked it, the sleeves especially were just ridiculous on me.

And yet over the years as various things have come and gone, that jacket has stayed right there in that closet, with me unwilling to let it go. I gave a coat to a shelter, knowing it was much needed. The jacket, though, for whatever unfathomable reason, stayed. Out of sheer stubbornness. Or something. Someone had to like it as much as I did, darnit.

For the last few weeks, I’ve thought, y’know, I really should take that to church (but kept simply forgetting it, good intentions or no good intentions)…

…Instead, finally, that part of church that I kept thinking about came here.

We got a phone call in the middle of all-the-everything that’s been the furnace stuff: making sure that we remembered that on the monthly calendar we had signed up to serve dinner to the Mormon sister missionaries tonight. We had utterly forgotten. Had it been just one more day, had we known when we signed up, we could have had the whole house nice and warm for them, but oh well.

One of them is from the States and one of them is from Fiji. I had some very good coconut-curry sauce (thank you Costco) unopened in the fridge and hey, cook some raw shrimp in that, a few minutes stirring on the stove, done. To make the beautiful young woman with the slightly English accent feel at home, and she was ecstatic. (That wasn’t the only dish, but it was the most successful one.)

Richard had pulled one of the space heaters into the dining area as we’d sat down to eat  and we’d explained about the no furnace. Between it and the cooking, though, we had it reasonably comfortable in there.

We visited awhile, and at the end, I asked her: I had this jacket. It’s been cold. She was from a warm climate. She was taller than I; would she be willing to try it on and see if she liked it?

Her face lit up in surprise and hope and I ran and got it.

It fit! She LOVED it. “It’s *warm*!” (And boy did I relate to that sense of endless cold right now with having had to open windows to air the carbon monoxide out and all that.) She loved everything about it as much as I had, and just kind of danced around a moment in it holding it tight to her for sheer joy, the other sister missionary as happy for her as anyone could ever have asked for.

Turns out my instincts had been right–our tropical friend had been shivering and I should have done this long since, way back at the start of the cold, but at least here we now finally were. She had been going to go take the hit on her funds at long last (and I can’t imagine what that would have been for her at American prices) and just go and buy a jacket tomorrow. Tomorrow.

And now she didn’t have to. This was everything she needed. It fit. And she loved it.

It had been waiting for her for a long time.