Barbecue tongs for getting the laundry out, a hairband scooted under the bridge of my glasses so I can rescue them from the floor. Pushing your back flat if possible when you cough.

And stay upright as long as you can to keep the crud out of your chest (having just spent three and a half days essentially asleep.)

Four days down, ten to go?

At least I’m pretty sure it was.

I knit three hats and part of a cowl on that trip. Two hats had a spiral pattern, one was plain–but the yarn! Gorgeous. Mecha in Indonesia.

The wheelchair pusher and I were starting down the hallway to baggage and I exclaimed in delight, They’ve finally enclosed that!

A few yards later–Oh. No they haven’t.

Why they built that walkway with a chain link wall open to the nighttime temps I do not know. One thing I do know, that young woman got the prettiest hat of all because it was also the warmest.

Her favorite part and mine: I spent awhile pushing Lillian on the platform swing. It was wet and a bit heavy from that water, it was covered in needles, I swept it off with my hands as best I could but this is what she wanted to do and she wasn’t about to let any of that stop her.

It’s hanging from a limb of a huge old Western Red cedar tree.

Someone walking her dog on the other side of the fence got the biggest grin as she saw these little feet coming up again and again while a five-year-old voice giggled and counted off the numbers with her grandmother: 20! 20! 21! 21! 22! 22! (I think she skipped 23, but I wasn’t going to quibble.)

That swing kept wanting to go just a bit sideways on its way back and there was a scratchy bush there that had grown somewhat in its way this past season, with the angle of the cedar limb aiming for it; I found myself catching the thing again and again and saying, Reset! (Hold high in the air, shift to the left a foot or so, resume count.) Go!

Reset!

24! 24!

I don’t remember how many rounds of 24 we got to. She was absolutely adorable, and I got a real workout.

How much I didn’t know.

Later, I moved her brother who was climbing on her to the other side of me as I cheerfully put myself between them, as one does when little kids are too caught up in their own momentum to do what they should. Reset!

Man, that suitcase was sure heavier and more awkward leaving than it had been coming. Surely those gift bars of chocolate didn’t make that much of a difference.

I’m now doing 10-20 minutes of back stretches every hour or two. My goal is to be able to pick something off the floor without joining it. I will be more mindful of my limitations next time–but I’m almost (almost. Do you hear me reminding myself here) glad I wasn’t these past few days; we had a great time!

Next time, though, (I don’t think she was ever in actual danger of scratching herself on that bush anyway from where she was sitting,) no resets.

We had a great trip. More later. It wasn’t till the drive back to their airport that we suddenly started to feel the germ they’d been getting over when we came (knowing full well and deciding to come anyway.)

We wore masks while traveling. Would have anyway.

Mix that with waking up with my back giving way on me this morning if I tried to stand up, it was a bit of a day and not what I want to be writing about. Lots of back stretches on the floor. Managed to sit up for the first time for half of my Zoom knitting meeting. Finally got some soft food down at 6 pm and that seems to have helped everything.

But we were fine while we were there and got to love on everybody and that’s what I care about.

Past midnight. Made it home. Even though the Uber driver as he pulled out of the airport explained that the reason I couldn’t find my seatbelt was that there wasn’t one.

Holy cow.

Wishing everybody a very Happy Thanksgiving.

A year ago, we were delayed after boarding, it was raining, there were accidents on the freeway coming from the airport, and we finally pulled off at an exit and went looking for a food establishment, any food establishment.

We found an ice cream shop. Richard hesitated a moment and I said, Calories. I didn’t care what kind at that point, just, we needed to get something in us fast and get back out on the road. The app said that under current conditions we had an hour to go.

There was a young couple waiting while our order was coned up trying to manage two small children, and the usual finger puppets came out for a happy distraction.

I mentioned that other than airline pretzels we hadn’t eaten since 11:00 a.m.

The dad’s eyes went big: nine hours, if I remember correctly. I could just picture him imagining trying to get through that with his kids as he went, Oh wow.

So. Not doing that again.

It’s easy to find small packages of junk food, but I was hoping for at least some protein. There’s a brand of Korean barbecue jerky that doesn’t use nitrates or nitrites nor is it tough (usually). Costco sells it in mega-packages. I wanted single serving.

There they are, they do exist!

It came today. Amazon said so, with a picture as proof.

I picked up the small package that had USA added to my address, wondering, what on earth? Who is this from? Why?

I just hope the person who ordered the zipped hardshell book holder wristlet with an inner compartment for a wallet substitute (that’s all I can figure this thing is) isn’t being a horrified vegetarian right now.

Baked my own answer to the dilemma. Now I just have to figure out how to get my cranberry/orange/almond flour muffins onboard (like I have enough space for that?) without having them fall apart. Probably way healthier anyway.

And the answer: not cancer. No worries.

And then I got so caught up in looking at my children’s Christmas wish lists that I forgot to post this last night. ‘Tis the season. Happy Thanksgiving!

The New York Times had an article on how to talk at Thanksgiving to people that you want to get to know better–basically, that you want to hear something positive from. Mercifully, it did not directly reference Nov. 5th.

One could ask things like, Who is someone you only ever saw once who made a difference?

It was a year ago, wasn’t it? We were flying into Seattle. The woman next to me was studying my hands as I knit, every motion–affirming when I caught her eye that she had long wanted to learn how.

She lived in San Diego. Her son, an adult now, lived in Seattle. She was so proud of him; she missed him so much.

She admitted late in the flight that he had offered to take her the next day to shop for a hat. It was going to be quite cold and she simply didn’t own one. She’d gotten the jacket in time at least.

Which matched the hat on my needles. I scrambled to finish it and work the ends in before we landed and I did it. I did it. They could enjoy their time together without having to work through crowds and cashiers and all that if they didn’t want to.

She is the one who made so much of a difference to me.

Every time I see the Mecha skeins in the store now, I think of her deep appreciation and want the next person to be that thrilled. With the colors, with the soft wool, with being thought of and found knitworthy.

I want to ask her if she ever took those knitting lessons, to revel in her successes. I hope that she gets to experience from someone else how she had blessed me.

A week ago, needing a new carry-around project now that the baby blanket was too big for that, what landed on my needles was yet another boring old plain washable wool Mecha hat. It’s like type O- blood: the universal donor.

I finished knitting it a few minutes ago and I’m about to start another. Even around here, a warm hat on a cold day can make all the difference to someone.

Maybe she’ll fly to see her son this year, too.

We saw the truck a few days ago: not the classic moving van, but bigger than, say, an Amazon truck, so who knows if it was a washing machine or a household.

Their cars arrived and the lights came on. Hey.

You don’t get in someone’s way on moving day. Or the day after, or after, but, but… A few minutes the Saturday after that might do?

The husband opened the door. I was certainly not expecting blond, and I don’t know what he was expecting but it clearly wasn’t a white-haired woman holding out a bag, but we got past that quickly.

I’d misheard in that brief moment meeting his wife in the dark on the sidewalk last month: the baby is actually two now, and he is adorable. There is no smile that melts a person like a toddler’s who is running towards you.

I told the little guy’s mom that if she’d prefer a shawl I had two more skeins and the dye lot was almostalmostalmost a total match to the baby blanket.

The husband grew up about 150 miles from where we did.

And she’s a knitter! Oh my heart. We DID get the most perfect neighbors!

Appointment: Monday. Yay.

Meantime, I was thumbing through the city’s Adult Ed class brochure they sent everybody today. Knitting classes! Meant for beginners and the more advanced alike, the latter being asked to bring their projects to work on. Fee: $160.

Now that’s called paying for a compliment.

Cooking classes. Learn to make Belgian chocolates? How to temper on a slab of marble? Sounds like fun, but I could fund a lot of trips to Dandelion in San Francisco for that much, and I already make my own actual chocolate bars. Sometimes. (Flips page.)

Python cooking.

Staggered doubletake.

Python CODING.

While Richard is already grinning, Yeah, you have to fillet it yourself.

Where could you even lay out 18 feet of such a thing. I know! You could wrap it around the kitchen. Avoid Florida-ted water. Don’t forget the Everglaze.

I remember as a kid being warned to put sunscreen on or I’d get skin cancer–at a time when nobody I knew actually wore it and getting a tan, which I could never have pulled off even if my freckles had decided to unionize, was something of a social requirement.

Sunblock was not even the word yet.

Whatever anyone said to me about sun exposure hazards at the time, I remember a mixture of inability to believe in it because being actually old enough for that to happen was beyond my imagination, and of feeling a little bit indignant at this vision of a future me I’d never met who was old. Which I most emphatically was not.

But who would want to hold me accountable for what I was doing as a kid, ie, running around and playing outside. As one does. How could I ever be her? And who was she to boss me around? Or to make me feel guilty?

Granted, Sandy down the street liked to sunbathe on that vinyl chaise-lounge by her mom’s rose patch and I knew all I would do is fry and hurt if I tried that. Not to mention I was not one to hold still. Hiking in the woods was my favorite thing.

I wonder if this would have worked better: laughing at pictures of how funny future me could look like. Still with my hair below my shoulders (go me!) but with this scar at the top of my scalp, imprinted like a baby’s fontanelle. (Here, feel that. Like a thumbprint!) And what it does is, any remaining hair there starting a new round of growing shoots straight up into the sky. Which looks really weird while the rest is mildly curly. Finally, months later, it gets long enough to flop over but it still wants to go left instead of right.

I happen to be sporting the hedgehog look just now, conditioner additions notwithstanding.

The photos of me holding Parker as a newborn nearly 14 years ago show that that basal-cell was present nine months before I finally let Richard talk me into taking seriously this spot that wasn’t going away, and got it looked at. I’d thought it was discoid lupus. I lost a fair amount of hair to that procrastination.

Two weeks ago, I found myself scratching at night at maybe a mosquito bite on the side of my head.

Today I finally asked Richard to look at it for me and take a picture (nah, you don’t want to see it.)

I’m sure the thing my dermatologist most wanted to do during the countdown to T-day was squeeze in one more patient appointment and a surgery when she just saw me last month.

Last time it rained as much as it’s supposed to tomorrow, a year ago, I had an appointment with her but the roads were closed and the floods were high and there was no way to get there.

I’m getting ahead of myself. She has to see the message first.

All I can do is wait. (As my brother waits for his melanoma recovery to attain five-year status. One of my children had it at 29 and is fine. Nah, mine’s just going to be basal again if anything. Looks the same as last time.)

It had not occurred to me that this was a thing you could buy (thank you random Etsy prompts): cane socks. Or, how to be a walking yarnbombing project.

Meantime, I stumbled across Gene Weingarten’s essay on Katherine Graham, who was the owner of the Washington Post for years; her children sold it to Bezos long after her death, after he promised them he would not interfere with the paper.

The second half of the piece is about Bezos’s refusal to let the editorial department publish their endorsement of Harris, old and regretted news at this point.

But the first half. I had not known–or possibly had long forgotten–that when faced with the lawyers saying which of the staff would go to jail if the Post published the Pentagon Papers, Graham said then send them to my house. Make me personally responsible for exposing what they’re doing, not you.

I read that and thought, integrity and courage. The one word repeats the other.

It was going to bug me till I did it, so I did it. I went to the cast-on row, picked up the first stitch, then the second, slipped the first over the second, pick up cast on cast off across, and so reinforced the beginning of the baby afghan.

Little hands do hard pulls. It needed to be ready.

A little potato chip knitting for the day. Arroyo yarn, a dk washable merino from Malabrigo, needles US 6. Started out as 10 st per repeat, now 11, may become 12 for the last third if I feel like it.