Yeah… There used to be a musician in our immediate neighborhood who grew up in this town and stayed (when he wasn’t on the road).

I used to see this guy out taking a walk sometimes, which I noticed because I did too, (y’know, wave slightly at the neighbor or nod a simple hi in passing if you’re on the same side of the street) and man did he look familiar. But I didn’t have a clue who he was.

There used to be another neighbor of ours down our street whom we knew pretty well, the retired chief of police, who complained to Richard about this hippy neighbor of his across the fence from him playing his music loud with his buddies but always staying *just* inside the noise ordinance; Ski was used to calling the shots, given the position he’d had, but he couldn’t touch the guy and he knew it.  Bugged the heck out of him.

His neighbor went on to design psychedelic ties.

And he went on to have a Ben and Jerry’s flavor named after him.

Which happens to be Richard’s favorite.

(I can just picture him and Ski, the Ungrateful Dude–all those free concerts he was treated to!–now that they’re both up there, with Ski going,  So, Jerry…  Teach me how to jam on that guitar of yours?)

Nor the raspberry sorbet that would go so well with that vanilla.

Just another row.

Go ice my hands.

Yeah I hear you guys yes I could use the calories but he shouldn’t. No I won’t sneak it past him; if I get some, he gets some. Fair’s fair.

Put icepack back. Ignore pleading freezer contents.

Do another row.

Raspberries are healthyyy.

I’m not *listening*!

Calcium is healthyyyyyy. Makes you grow big and–oh wait.  You’re right.  6′8″ might be enough.

Just another row.

Just another half a row while they thaw enough to serve–if I’m going to do anything painful on the hands it is not going to be serving up rigid calories. It can wait. *Sssssh, you guys.* This project can’t.

Another row just because I’m an addict that way.

Eat (and share).  Gotta build up my strength for these knitting marathons, y’know.

A young mom with two very small children, one of them barely old enough to walk. They were doing the charming wobbly meandering exploring of the great outside world that people of that size love to do, and she was keeping a bored but careful eye on them while letting them roam a bit.  The little boys stayed together, pretty much. I’m sure she was making sure they didn’t get too near that pool back there.

Which meant she was standing in the walkway between the gate I was stuck behind and across from that open door I was so fervently wanting to reach.  She was in.  I was out.  She saw me, then carefully turned and did the I’m-not-seeing-you pretense, glancing my way occasionally without quite making eye contact again.

If that gate was locked in my face it was obviously because I didn’t belong there.  Well then.

Now picture it, a potluck party going on in that clubhouse, and me, dressed in a skirt and silk blouse and what I think is one of the most elegant shawls I’ve knit, a chocolate torte held up in one hand and my artsy hand-carved sassafras wood cane in the other hand, justifying my wavering balance.  The Birkenstocks.

Quite the scary stranger stereotype.

I called out Evet’s name as Evet walked past that doorway. Waved that torte. The cane.

I wonder if, feeling guilty later, the young woman perhaps ventured to check whose name the clubhouse was reserved in for the evening.

All I needed her to have done was to step five steps sideways to poke a head in the door and ask, Is there an Evet here? Someone’s trying to get your attention.

To be fair, yes, small children change direction and speed fast and unexpectedly; she would have had to shepherd them in the same direction to keep them in her direct line of sight.

It was easier to just keep to her own business and pretend she didn’t know I was there.  And I, openly dissed, could not make myself ask her to do for me what she did not want to do for me. Because if she refused even that–I’m a mom too. I would not want one of my children to feel so much worse the way that making that choice would cause her to feel later.

I have often thought how true the words are of one of Rachel Remen’s cancer patients, who told Dr. Remen, I have found there are two kinds of people: those who love. And those who fear.

When we close down and deny the humanity in those we don’t know, we deny our own.

I’m looking at this from the standpoint of middle age, remembering the boredom and the hassles and the interrupted-sleep nights of when my children were little.  Of some of the things I might have done differently had I had enough rest and some time to myself to just sit and think.  Which, come to think of it, is why I took up handicrafts–sewing, then smocking, then went back to my love of knitting–when my children were small. It stayed done. It gave me a sense of creative accomplishment.

And it gave me time to center myself and think.

I like to think I left that woman with a life lesson she won’t forget.  I like to think she’ll choose differently next time, never again wanting to feel the sting of that regret.  Opening the gate for me, or asking the others first to make sure and then letting someone else there take the responsibility of doing so–it would have been so easy. I would have been so very grateful.  Hey, she’d have been invited in with her little boys for celebratory chocolate torte with the rest of us, first piece!

There are many ways to learn not to choose fear.

There’s still some leftover torte.

She sent me to bed. An hour later, she went too.

We all got up at dark o’clock for Oakland Airport across the Bay and the upper edge of the sun just started to appear over the eastern ridges a little before we got to our exit.

One very tired Michelle threw her arms around me with a fervent “I love you, Mom!” as I got out at the curb a moment for that.  It was so early.  The place was not crowded; Richard had pulled in at the end of the airline’s lineup, a bit of a distance from the skycaps, and as a matter of fact it looked like it was the only airline gathering passengers at that hour.

Michelle in her fatigue tried to get her three rolling suitcases going towards those skycaps. The littlest kept flipping on her.  Maybe she could stack them. Then she had twice the flipping.  This just isn’t working!  I said to Richard as I got back out again, You may have to circle around; he, affirming my choice, said, Sure.

The traffic control guy nodded his approval at my helping her in her struggle, I was told afterwards, and together we rolled those suitcases to where she needed them to go.  I turned, expecting to see the Prius gone, but no; there he was still.

She and we had been silently wished Godspeed on our way by a man wearing bright traffic stripes who knew travel.

Lisa, bless her, picked her up at the other end.

We got home in time to take a nap before that early meeting of his.

And on that quick note, I’ll go back to helping Michelle with her last-minute packing. Like covering up her lemon bars, finding her another shipping box, wrapping her cinnamon rolls carefully for eating on the way to the airport, finding another box, putting away her leftover baby bok choy tomato soup, helping her finish her homemade dark-chocolate nutella she wants me to have, making sure she has cocoa for her hot chocolate and don’t forget your mug, and picking and eating the first homegrown tomato (which needed another day or two but it was share it now or never), a little Durkees sauce on our three carefully carved pieces.

Go Blue! It’s going to be very, very quiet after tomorrow.  She made sure we wouldn’t starve.

I am all the more amazed they turned–just enough–for me when I desperately needed them to.

He commented that the brakes were new; yes, they were. That smoke I saw? Turns out it was a puff rising up from the tires coming off the freeway with the brakes in full blast yesterday.  The master cylinder was toast.

My regular mechanic is closed weekends.  Couldn’t ask him for advice.

This guy was open Saturdays.

The dealer is closed on weekends.

This guy couldn’t get a new master cylinder from the dealer till Monday. Would I like a rebuilt one, then?

I asked for an estimate while quietly googling ‘99 Chrysler Town and Country ones: list price was over $1500 just for the part.  That was about the Blue Book right there.

The rebuilt cylinder? With tax and labor, it rang up at $377.  Amazing how cheap that looked by then.

They finished it at closing time, we got way back down there to pick it up, and I got to go off at last to a long-anticipated party of peregrine volunteers.  I had my car and I would get to go after all! Good and late, but verily, them’s the brakes.

It was held at a condo clubhouse.

The gate (there being a pool behind it) was on autolock.

The door to the clubhouse was open and no farther away from me than the length of my living room, and I could see two people I knew in there through the glass walls.

I called out.  Nada.  I waved my cane above the gate. Nada.  I held up the chocolate torte I’d brought for it. Nada.  They were right there! I was right here! If just one person would glance up!  I tried calling them on my cellphone and found I didn’t have their numbers in it.  I stood there for ten minutes, sure that someone surely must…c’mon, guys!… And then, as I got back in my very own car (yay!) going back to my own home, I reminded myself how good it was that I could do that again.

I laughed at the sudden thought of, me, I may be fairly invisible, but good European dark chocolate?

Ah, well, tonight was just trying to make tomorrow look good, right?

(I got profuse apologies, but there was absolutely nothing to apologize for. They’d had it propped open and the prop-er had fallen.  Sometimes life just does what it does and you go on to the next.)

I’ve got my car back! And a little extra chocolate on the side. I’m sure I can find something to do with it.

Sure!

Which is why a more experienced driver was at the wheel and the other driver got to learn new things without having to make any decisions in the moment.

Heavy traffic, lots of braking ahead, I was slowing down–when suddenly the brakes felt dead. Boom just like that.  My car is old but well maintained but oh well.  I was sure I was going to slam into the guy up there ahead of me, but no, the brakes actually worked even if they didn’t feel like it while I was pushing as hard as I could. Thank heavens!

I was in the next-to-left lane and there was an exit just ahead. I managed to get over several lanes and the traffic just opened up for me when I turned on my signal, how in that mess, I don’t know, thank you everybody and somehow it worked without all the things that could have happened happening.

Off. I got far enough down the ramp to where there was, for whatever reason, a stretch of suddenly cleared-off pavement in the margin, not much longer than one car’s length. I took it.   Before and after that point, the breakdown lane was all covered in dry tinderbrush that believe me you do not want to touch with a hot car in a California summer.

And that’s when I saw the smoke.  Just a little, then pouring out from under the hood on the right.  Please don’t blow up on us.  Just please don’t blow up on us.  (I flashbacked: I once saw a car with its engine on fire shooting massive flames fifteen feet high and it was three blocks from my house: the driver had pulled over right under a very dried-out olive tree. In front of a gas station.  I thought, flashback, you are not helping me here.  Shut up. It shut up.)

Meantime, behind us, people were speeding and cutting over the line on the offramp, seeing us and veering back into their lane and I was glad for every inch away from them we had–and very glad to be off that freeway!

Where, while we waited for the tow, grateful for cellphones, we saw a fire truck and then an ambulance making their way forward as the traffic started to back up past that point.  Someone was having a way worse day than we were. Gratitude check there.

AAA towed us to the nearest AAA-approved garage.  While I gave the owner our contact information, the tow driver quietly said to Michelle, This is NOT a good end of town.  Would you like me to drop you two off at Denny’s to wait for your ride home?

I almost hugged the guy. I did hug Richard later.

A shout out to KatherineL, who offered to rescue us when we couldn’t reach Richard at first. Thank you *so* much.

Coming home, trying not to feel weird about leaving my car to an unknown fate in the hands of strangers, Richard had a doctor’s appointment he was only going to make to on time now if he could go in the carpool lane.  We swung by home, let Michelle mercifully out, and I went with him.  He told me I didn’t have to, he could risk it if I wanted to get out too; I told him, You rescued me; I rescue you. It’s only fair.

And I was so glad I had that little knitting project.  My coming grandson’s little hat finally got all but the decreasing done while I waited. I think I really needed that.

And yet–Michelle and I were talking afterwards and we were both saying, You know? For all that that could have been, that was as pleasant as it could possibly have been under the circumstances. The tow truck driver was a sweetheart, the garage owner seemed a decent type, KatherineL was ready to run right there, Richard enjoyed the pumpkin pie piece I bought him to go while waiting at Denny’s. It could all have been so much worse.  We got off easy, we really did.

At least someone’s going to be warmer because of that trip!

So I had another bright-eyed idea on that same endless project, with the result that I was late for Purlescence because I ended up frogging four rows x 434 stitches, tinking that last one carefully stitch by stitch back onto the needles.  Slow way no how was I going to leave that mess in the middle, stranded.

And then I had to leave Knit Night less than an hour later because I had to pick up my husband at the airport. But in between!

I’d brought the unrepentant wool with me and I never got to it. (Funny how that was probably going to happen anyway.) I got saved by Susan, if I heard her name right, from Abstract Fiber.

She was there with samples.  There were projects made–oh, man, were they gorgeous! And she had a large bag full of sample-size skeins.

“Take some!” Gigi and Jasmin and Pamela urged.

How much are they?

“They’re free!”

Since when… okay, why? Alright, I’ll take one. And I picked out a few and tried to decide which, while they explained that they’d already chosen a whole bunch and that Abstract Fiber does not sell skeins with knots: so if they come across one, snip right there, you’re out of here. Eventually they have enough of those that they give them away as samples.

I’ll take one. I assume it’s one per customer. (That got me a lot of, Nah…!)

They kept egging me on. I kept saying, but…! Here, you, did you get to see them yet? And you over there? I want you to pick out all you’d like, I don’t want to hog all the purples or the anythings.

Jasmin dumped the whole bag out for everyone so it would be easier to see. I was assured it was not the first time that evening; I’d just come in late.

The end result was, I said I was going to choose some and put the rest back, that this mound was embarrassing–and then I turned my head for one second after boxes of regular skeins went past, to go ask about those because I really really like Artfibers yarns, and Gigi madly and gleefully stuffed miniskeins in my knitting bag behind me. (There were way more than those still left, honest.)

I was stumped when they grinned, “So what are you going to do with them all?” Uhbuhduhbuhduh. I dunno, but I’m sure going to have fun finding out!

(Burnside Bridge. I LOVE their Burnside Bridge colorway, always have. Look what followed me home too!)

I have a ton of work to do to justify all that woolly greed. And if you too love Artfibers and are in the area, Purlescence in Sunnyvale stocks them.

Oh. Yes. Hubby is home (yay!)  I managed to wait a whole half hour after we walked in the door, showing that of course my priorities are straight, why would you ever wonder, before I went and balled up that first Burnside.

And one last thing, one non sequitur to top off the evening: Michelle is madly and suddenly in need of laptop shopping. She found one with lots of features, except for one: it’s apparently put out by a videogame company with their name emblazoned across the top, and as she put it, “I have my pride!”

I offered to knit it a tattoo to cover it over.

“Nice try, Mom.”

I guess it’s official: everybody’s into knitting now!

There’s been a goldfinch just outside my window putting on quite a display today:  it’s been holding its tail stretched open as wide as it can go, trying to cool off.  I’ve been watching it relax, go oh wait that’s right and stretch it back out–hold it right there–that’s better. Relax, flare out, hold. Repeat.

On the ground, the mourning doves are winging it in their own AC effort.

My hanging sugarpine cone was held to its string up there, I learned, by glue. It came unglued in the heat.  Smashing Sugarpines would make a great rock band name.

The suet cake is dripping slowly.

The squirrels are looking longingly through the window at my tomatoes that are grabbing at their chance to finally turn color–inside, out of reach of their greedy little thievery.

A house finch lands and spreads his tail in a wide V too as I type this.

I tell you. It’s feather-and-fan weather out there.