I ran some errands yesterday and the post office was high on that to-do list but I utterly forgot. Got some great Malabrigo at Cottage Yarns, though!

Which is a bit of a trek. Got back home, put my feet up a moment and had a bite, looked at the clock and suddenly realized what I’d forgotten, sighed at the rush hour traffic I could nearly have dodged but wouldn’t now, and headed back out to do that one last errand.

They say that in the last twelve years we’ve had the equivalent of ten cities the size of ours superimposed over the Bay Area.

But going back out again when I did means I happened to be right there when my neighbor was and she was clearly in a bad way. I stopped the car and asked how she was doing. (Another neighbor had seen her fallen in her yard a week ago and had helped her to her feet.)

“Not well,” she told me.

Turns out what she most needed right then was a ride to the car dealership to replace the key for her car. It was right on my way. She hadn’t been about to ask, but I definitely offered and not having to make that long walk right now was clearly a huge relief to her. Neither one of us thought she would have been able to, although neither one of us quite said that.

I’d never seen her using a walker before.

“I can’t take any painkillers,” she happened to mention.

“I can’t take any NSAIDs, my deafness is from an aspirin allergy,” I nodded. I knew what it was like to have to go without. As I put her walker in my back seat I mentioned that mine was in the trunk (even if I haven’t had to use it for quite awhile now.)

“You’ve been through everything.” She said it like it meant I was someone she could say stuff to who could hear it and not flinch. She wasn’t liking this instant little old lady stuff but she was trying to be at her best. She said it again. She was trying to keep her pain from turning her inward, as pain always wants to do.

I dropped her off, did my post office run, swung back on by and picked her up again and brought her home and made sure she was good as best I could. “Alright, my dear,” she smiled, waving me on.

Then into my own driveway.

And was so very very glad that earlier in the day I’d forgotten to run the one errand I’d had to do most. Or that I’d thought was the most important.

The leaves producing food for it vs the tree producing food for us: it’s a race. There’s one last fig.

Glued to the election returns, glad there will be some checking and balancing–always a good thing.

Meantime, the heat is working in the mango tree’s enclosure but, um, not so much in ours. Brrr. Hoping I can reach our HVAC guy in the morning.

So I thought I’d chill out by posting a bunch of tropical-tree pictures so Dani could see how what he instigated into being four years ago is doing. (Don’t worry about that dusting of cinnamon, that’s just anti-ant.)

I need to ask: are you supposed to let them ripen on the tree? (Why the traditional store-it-in-camel-dung method? All my camel comes in yarn form only.) I know pears have to be picked unripe or they’ll go mushy first, and every reference to Alphonso mangoes I’ve found (that would probably be two) said to let them ripen in warm temps, picked. How do you know it’s time to?

I love that I finally get to need to ask.

Going over the voters guide, newspaper articles, etc tonight. Again. To be absolutely sure on each choice.

VOTE!

Spencer got his afghan and a matching hat yesterday.

Every child needs their favorite blankie. A hat, maybe not so much near the southern border, but then that means it’s the one warm hat he’ll have should he need it.

His cousin in Alaska could show him how it’s done.

Just as soon as he learns that putting on his mom’s boots doesn’t substitute for putting on pants in order to go play in the snow.

I can just picture the two together someday and the San Diego cousin going, You mean you get cold on purpose??

Introducing Spencer.

Maddy made me promise to come back. I promised.

Needed to be at the audiologist’s by 4:00 and didn’t want to go through all that rush hour traffic.

So I left a little after two. Green Planet yarns just happens to be down that way, and it was Friday afternoon knitting group. That definitely worked out.

After the baking binge.

They came, they saw, and to my surprise they lifted before I even finished writing an Alice’s Restaurant-style note on the door for any stragglers.

Walk right in, come around to the back, just a half a mile from the railroad track…

It was getting dark but they did it.

And then I sent Peter, James, Krys+Sterling, Eric, and Nathaniel off with a chocolate torte each plus one for Bo who really meant to come but was still busy helping a very elderly and quite handicapped woman move out of her home to go to an assisted living facility near her son down south.

Bo had definitely earned his torte.