Whirled pool
Sunday December 17th 2017, 12:16 am
Filed under: Life

I just spent some of my blog-writing time reading the owner’s manual of the Speed Queen washing machine which I do not yet own. I’m only interested in the mechanical-control models, despite the company’s heavy pushing of the electronic ones; one reviewer says rumors are that they want to discontinue the plain but enduring knob-only type. I’m thinking maybe I should simply go get mine while I can.

Washing machine sales are up 35% in five years and you know what? There’s a reason for that. Less competition, more corner-cutting, and a whole lot of unhappy customers, and the grandson of the Whirlpool founder in Congress (hello Rep. Upton in Michigan) is making himself richer with the push towards tariffs on other brands.

The American-made Speed Queens cost more up front but they cost a lot less over time. Plus our electricity bill would go down with the clothes needing a lot less time in the dryer, any dryer.

If our repairman doesn’t find a used motor soon to justify keeping our Whirlpool limping along, there’s no point in throwing more money at it, and maybe not even if he does if it means losing out on my chance to get something I know could last as long as either one of us.

For now, I can only do half loads spaced widely apart.

One big chunk of change and then done. It’ll probably have to happen soon.



When you hit a sewer spot
Friday December 15th 2017, 11:35 pm
Filed under: Life

(On the phone) Did I work for you before?

You fixed my hot water heater, yes.

Bernie came. Bernie worked hard. Bernie cut roots. Bernie opened up that sewer line and he had us flush the toilets a bunch of times, and then again, to prove things were as they should be now. But Bernie did not have time right now to look at that dripping tap because he had four solid days’ worth of customers waiting on him and some had Christmas guests coming–he needed to git.

He did not make a point of saying, but I squeezed you in because you couldn’t use any water and that stinks and the weekend is coming right at you. It was true, but he is not a man who needs to fish for compliments.

And in the time it took me to go across the house after he left, the laundry and the dishwasher were starting to catch up on their jobs.

I was never so happy to pay a plumber bill.



Old friends
Thursday December 14th 2017, 11:34 pm
Filed under: Family,Food,Friends,Life

I baked Phyl and Lee a chocolate torte yesterday and didn’t manage to finish glazing it with the ganache until just after they’d shown up at our doorstep last night–with a surprise gift from Prolific Oven with “Happy Birthday Alison” on it. What comes around…

We stopped by and visited Betty today, and if she didn’t remember who I was this time she sure didn’t let on. Fifteen or twenty minutes was enough, she was starting to fade, but she wished me a happy birthday and I wished her one, too, a few days before her 93d. Richard asked her her favorite Christmas carol and then sang it, with me coming in and out (mostly out) depending on whether I could remember the next lines or not–it wasn’t one I knew well. His was a voice of angelic intention.

Came home, started a half-load of laundry, all we dare do till that machine is repaired or replaced–and there was a gurgle in the bathtub. Did you hear that? He knew. It took me a moment longer.

It wasn’t just one bathroom, either. Don’t turn on that dishwasher.

We have to decide which plumber to call in the morning, fully aware that we were once given a $7000 estimate on ripping up the front yard for the complete sewer line do-over that has been coming for some time.

Yeah… But our daughter sent us video of the baby’s first crawling, we got to FaceTime with him yesterday and this time he knew exactly who those people on the screen talking to him were, we got to likewise see the grandkids in San Diego across the electrons and Parker, who is somehow already turning seven next week, proudly played Hark How The Bells for us (with two hands!) on the piano.

And life is pretty darn sweet.



Good and busy
Thursday December 14th 2017, 12:36 am
Filed under: Family,Food,Friends,Life

Good times, good friends, a good day, good night.



Senator Jones
Tuesday December 12th 2017, 11:35 pm
Filed under: History,Politics

Alabama voted for Democrat Doug Jones, a good and decent man, over the demented, angry child molester.

I really thought they would, but I’m still trying to take in the reality that they actually did it. They did it! They gave themselves a future to be proud of! (As one person aptly put it after looking over the vote totals, African-Americans, especially African-American women there, saved the white population from its worst self.)

I get to open more presents tomorrow, but that was already the best one.



Wholly cow
Monday December 11th 2017, 10:14 pm
Filed under: Family,Food,Life

It’s all Costco’s fault that we didn’t wait.

Richard actually went there on a Saturday in December, grocery list in hand. Brave man.

Boy did he come home with a grin. They’d goofed and forgotten to change the “fresh fryer legs” on the ticker thingy to the type of thick slab of beef that they slapped the next label on as they weighed it–nearly four pounds, yes, but under five dollars?

He asked at checkout to be sure because, um, hey guys, and the clerk called the manager over because that was the protocol but she already knew what the answer was: this was their mistake and his good luck.

Then she admitted that one had come through like that yesterday–and it was prime rib.

The mind, it boggles.

So. Back on Black Friday, we were at Sam’s house, of course, and she happened to have an Instant Pot, which has been the big fad of a kitchen gadget of the last year or two; I asked her what she thought of hers.

She LOVED her 6 quart. Uses it all the time.

Amazon was selling the 8 qt cheap for the day…

I looked at hers and we debated, bigger than that? No. Too big, too much counter space, there’s just the two of us at our house; it was a shame the one her size was at full price–but even that might be a bit much for us. I had no experience with them and I just didn’t know.

So she and Michelle drove me to Target so I could check out the 3 quart mini version in person (which they happened to have on sale, even if I didn’t want to schlep it through airports.) That I can definitely do, sure, I told them, looks good. It would be great for throwing dinner into while I drive off to get Richard from work in the evenings. I could time things and then have them kept warm if we ran late.

I fished through my purse on the very off chance that…

I did! I had them!

I’m in a lupus study at UCSF that once every year has me on the phone answering questions for about 75 minutes, and in response they’ve sent me small gift cards to Target the last two years. I’d never used them.

The upshot is that we ordered that Mini Instant Pot from them and it cost a grand total of $11 including shipping and taxes.

Sooo… Then the question was, when do we open it? What label do we put to this thing? Birthday? Christmas? And there it sat.

Till Richard came home with that roast today that would in no way fit into our suddenly-tiny toy. Well, alright then, and he whacked it in half and we can try two different recipes with it.

We read through the instructions. We prewashed the tub. We ran a steam cycle to test it like they say, and then we started that first pot roast.

Did I remember the part about putting the carrots and potatoes in at the last ten minutes? I did not. In with the seared meat they went.

Ten minutes later, the kitchen was already started to smell like the Sunday afternoons of my childhood.

Twenty-six minutes left. Not that I’m counting or anything. (I hopped up to check just now and Richard instantly wanted to know, too.)

Proofread post. Edit. Get up and check. Twelve minutes.

Oh wait–that should have been ten more minutes on that recipe oops I read it wrong, but we didn’t figure out how to add more time till after we’d already pronounced it good enough and dug in. And it was already tender enough, although next time it will be more so.

Yeah. I think we’re going to like this gadget. Band, meet wagon.



Fellow travelers
Monday December 11th 2017, 12:00 am
Filed under: Life

A plea was sent to our church from another one for help filling the requests of some recent refugees. There is a local drop-off point.

Reading through the items, so many of them so basic, reminded me of one of the Sonoma fire survivors describing being at the store in a daze: he needed nothing. He needed everything.

It is sobering how a list like that makes one realize just how much we have.

Usually one sees requests for money as the most effective way of getting people what they want (not to mention the autonomy of being allowed to make choices despite their poverty), but in this case they’d put out into the world what specifics they felt would be most helpful in their personal circumstances. The age and gender of each recipient was listed.

That pea coat that never quite was right on me color-wise and simply sat there unworn–it could warm someone who’s actually cold, and it was in the size requested. Those cotton sheets on closeout we never opened because they turned out not to be deep enough for the mattress–they’re brand new and could offer someone else a good night’s sleep. That boiled-wool sweater, unworn but too good for Goodwilling it and risking its going into a landfill. Someone could love it just as much as I’d once hoped I would. Stuff that was just stuff to us was actually needed just as much as we needed someone who would actually want it and here was a rare chance to know where to bring it.

When, really, one wants to simply throw the doors open and say take whatever you need and then let’s sit down to dinner together (teach me how to cook like you!) to celebrate our good fortune that we’ve found each other.

To life!



The fallout
Saturday December 09th 2017, 10:25 pm
Filed under: Family,Life

What I didn’t mention yesterday was that at one point as I helped hold the washing machine tilted back while Mike worked, my foot started to slip out from under me while his hand and the edge of his head were or at least had been underneath that thing. I gasped, “Watch out!” as I grabbed hard at it in horror.

At the time, I caught it, he caught it with his other hand, nothing happened and phew, that was close. So glad he was okay! Next time let’s prop it up with something, okay? That was too close.

It took me awhile to put that together with the consequences.

Now, I have a very mild case of scoliosis, I’ve been rear-ended four times, I know the exercises one does for one’s back and that sometimes it’s just going to hurt  for awhile.

But this was something altogether new. I tried to carefully get up this morning and found myself on the floor unable to move whatsoever.  Pain I could push through, but the muscles on the right utterly refused to support my weight and I was frozen on the floor just as I’d landed, immobile. Uncross the feet? Can’t. Crawl to where I could pull myself up, Mathias-style? Not possible. They were on strike.

Y’know, this could make for a very long day down here. Bathroom. Ileostomy dressing change morning. I don’t ask for much but those were non-negotiable no matter what I thought about it.

Richard heard me, woke up, and came immediately to the rescue.

Eight years ago, I took one single Tylenol and remember it. The big Crohn’s flare that January left lesions on my liver, so on general principles I don’t touch the stuff even though it’s the only painkiller I can take.

He offered me two, from a new bottle he’d recently bought just in case–he’d just had a feeling I might need them sometime after all–and I was very glad to have them. I’d had no idea we had any. He got me an icepack. He talked me into taking the nap that I needed after last night.

The day improved, definitely. But normal looks a long way off.

I figured I was allowed one good whine about it and this is it. Meantime, my husband’s a peach.



Let me get back to you on that
Friday December 08th 2017, 11:28 pm
Filed under: Family,Friends,Life

Mike-the-repairman came. First thing he did was he tried turning on the washing machine.

Dang if the thing didn’t turn right on. I was gobsmacked. I had tried… and I’d come back later and had tried again, and …!

He asked a few questions and since I was the one who’d been using it and the space in there was tight, Richard, who’s on vacation, went back across the house to what he was doing.

Mike got down and looked at it from underneath while he and I both held it up out of his way a bit. (I had emptied the water out earlier as best I could, cupful by cupful into about ten small-dyepot loads in case he had to pull the thing out. It was a surprisingly lot.)

The motor was not dead but it was on its way out. Do small loads, he said, don’t do them back to back like when it died, let the thing cool down. A new motor would cost a couple hundred–he was going to see if he could find us a used one.

And with that he left us with a machine working for now and refused to let us pay him anything yet.

Quite to my surprise my back went on full-on strike the next time I tried to bend over. I had a doctor’s appointment to get to. Richard offered to drive me, good man that he is, and he dropped me off and then went off to check on Betty. That had not been in today’s plans but it suddenly made sense, and that was worth a day’s muscle twinges for sure and it made it feel okay.

Meaning, as Rachel Remen writes (in one of my all-time favorite books), is the language of the soul.

And it has an alphabet all its own.



Betty
Thursday December 07th 2017, 11:50 pm
Filed under: Family,Food,Friends,Life,Lupus

The repairman will be here in the morning.

Meantime, a friend who’s turning 93 this month had a small stroke this week along with some cardiac funkiness and just returned to her assisted-living facility today from the hospital. She’s been blind from birth, her hearing’s going, and although she remembers Richard–he once worked for a company that developed the software that read her her longtime computer, and for years she would call him as a friend for help about it, which he was glad to do–but she no longer remembers me. So when we found there were no parking spaces for blocks around and that the long walk in the sun was going to be a hazard to my own health, Richard hopped out to go visit her while I drove over to the chocolate shop. It seemed the best thing to do at that point; in her disorientation, I wasn’t sure my presence would be a comfort anyway.

I’m glad he got there so soon after she was discharged: he was able to find out what bothered her. The AL staff had moved her bed while she’d been away, not enough that a seeing person would be bothered but she could no longer find her computer nor her things nor was she capable of walking to go search for them. He got the staff to let the bed be moved back. A few feet–and having time to listen–made all the difference to her.

The doctor came by, and quietly told him that everything he could say that could help her reconnect to her memories would help. Betty had lived in Alaska decades ago, so, Richard told her about our Thanksgiving in Anchorage with our baby grandson and got her reliving the days.

She worried whether her seeing-eye dog, naming one of the ones she’d had over the years, had been fed well enough while she’d been away.

He’s been gone for several years.

I, meantime, got to go see Timothy and Adams, both. It had been awhile and I had missed them and it was a comfort to see them. The 65% hot chocolate? Well, yeah, I’d missed that, too, sure.

Richard texted that he hoped I’d ordered him one, too.

I grinned at my phone. 85% dark, just how you like it, coming right up.

We waved to each other as he spotted the car across the street from the nursing home again and we discussed as we drove off how we could best help her next. From his description, I wasn’t sure how many more nexts there would be, and he wasn’t sure, either.

And yet.

“Betty’s a tough old bird,” I pronounced, and he agreed strongly. He told me then that she had wondered herself if things were coming to an end now.

He’d told her, “You’re here as long as you want to be, Betty. And we’re with you.”



No repairman yet
Thursday December 07th 2017, 12:06 am
Filed under: Family,Knit,LYS

Putting it off meant there were now 18 of them. That’s a lot of wool socks. I washed and rinsed them in the sink but there was no spinning them out–there was nothing for it but to squeeze each one long and hard away from the waiting ones. This after pushing myself to finish knitting that cabled hat whether my hands liked it or not (but I did it! No spoiler pictures for now.)

I asked him, Remember that conversation my mom said she had with her mom where Mom said she wished she had a live-in maid like Gram had had before the War, and Gram answered she’d have given her up in a second for a modern washing machine?

Someone young and strong to work that earlier contraption.

I told him, I want to upgrade to a ringer.

He chuckled. Then he asked about the hat: will it be warm enough?

It’s densely knit with overlapping cabled stitches knit on as small needles as as I could manage and it ate through a ton of yarn.

But Alaska. Will it be warm enough for him?

It would be if I lined it, and there’s room, I could, and that was the original intent, but even though I thought I bought extra I don’t have enough yarn left and the store in Anchorage is a bit too far to go back to. I don’t know if they ship. I do know I’m running out of time.

A contrasting color? he offered helpfully.

So what we had here was my husband working himself up to declaring that I must go to, most likely, Cottage Yarns in South San Francisco. (Whose site seems hacked at the moment so I’m not linking it.) They carry Juniper Moon Farms.

So maybe the other Christmas presents and the still-waiting afghan just got pushed further back and that hat isn’t quite so done after all.

Hopefully, having to hand wash and squeeze out every piece of clothing in the house soon will be.



Fried, and green tomatoes
Tuesday December 05th 2017, 11:02 pm
Filed under: Garden,Life

Early this morning I went outside with a paper bag and scissors in hand and snipped off all the clusters of larger and near-ripe tomatoes from the Sungold to ripen them inside. Just in case. There are easily this many more still out there, but they were small and best left to chance.

It’s 9:40 pm and forget the forecast of 41, it’s 35 already out there. I think I got these just in time.

Oh and. You know how we replaced the double oven recently because it sparked and arced and tried to burn the house down and the dishwasher because it got caught in the act of scorching the floor? We got a recall notice Saturday on the new Bosch: its cord catches on fire.

California doesn’t need any more fires, thankyouverymuch. All of you in SoCal–stay safe.

Today the washing machine died. Again. We’ve had its transmission replaced twice already; I’m guessing it just really doesn’t like my repeatedly putting individual hand-washed items in on spin-only. Tough beans. I’m going to do it anyway.

Just not tonight, clearly.



The mango perseveres
Monday December 04th 2017, 10:41 pm
Filed under: Mango tree

Well, so far I’ve only knocked one of these flowering tips off while covering/uncovering the mango tree against the nighttime temps (it hit 33F last night.) The whole thing, with all its buds. It was awful.

Which means I’ve been mentally inventing all kinds of ways of keeping the frost covers lifted slightly off the tree. Cut a hula-hoop and impale the halves on pairs of stakes?

I like that during the day we can just look out on an exceptionally pretty tree without the visual barrier of an expensive greenhouse (which would be wobbling on uncertain ground anyway.)

Twenty-one sets of buds with more likely to come later.

And then we can start talking about something like this to keep the squirrels out of the fruit.



Well that socks
Sunday December 03rd 2017, 11:10 pm
Filed under: Knit,Knitting a Gift

I knit the ribbing for the cuff of my son-in-law’s hat, then doubled every other stitch and hoped that would be enough. Cabling overlaps stitches and draws them in tight and you need a lot more of them to be able to get the thing on your head when you’re done. It sat there for days while I debated whether I needed to rip out and redo those first three rows above the ribbing or not, till I finally decided I had to move forward before I knew enough to decide to go backward. Or not. Try those first cables and see where it got me, but you can’t just sit there.

After all that angst it’s coming out just exactly right and I am very pleased with it. It’s slow going, given that I’m used to knitting lace with its holes and stretch and airspace, whereas this has (at least to some extent) wind-blocking density and a good solid warmth.

As I’ve been working it, the short straight cable needle with its points at each end bemuses me: for years and years, given that I’ve been doing cabled knitting since my teens, I wondered why on earth they sold them in sets of four or five when you only ever needed one.

Right?



Snow worthy
Saturday December 02nd 2017, 10:05 pm
Filed under: Family,Knit

The lightbulb flickered briefly as we were driving I forget where and before I could forget again I told him, “Remind me to block that cowl before Sunday that I knitted on the plane.” Not because he would remember but because I’d be more likely to by asking.

It hit me tonight, oh wait–the cowl! It’s Saturday night!

And so, after rinsing it to relax the lace and spinning it out in the washer, it is hanging close to the heating vents to dry; it’s aran weight yarn (nope–that particular color’s sold out) so unless I take the hairdryer to it, having it ready in the morning is a definite maybe. But I gave it a test run for a day in Alaska (I needed to) and it is definitely warm and cozy.

Mathias-approved, too. Can’t beat that.