I’m not sure if this is a request for you all to tell me it’s hopeless and to stop or whether that last one might have had any effect.

She parrots far-right talking points that don’t stand up to logic nor good sense and that even Fox has started to back away from. No you don’t build up carbon dioxide from wearing masks and wearing one won’t make you pass out.

I’ve never heard of a surgeon fainting on the job, I said. (Much less every single one every single day, you’d think word would get out, right?)

But I do not want her nor her family to be injured nor die of Covid, which she seems to have dismissed at this point as mostly a far-left conspiracy. It can’t happen to them, is the subtext again and again and again. If she pronounces it loudly and publicly and often enough it has to be true.

It is wearying and worrying but at the same time I don’t want her to try to prove herself right by giving her anything from me to be defiant against.

I do not know how to help.

Masks are useless, the CDC said they were unnecessary, people are dupes for wearing them. (Translation: people will see me and ridicule me.)

Never mind what the CDC is saying now about how important they are. Much less the attempt by a Trump appointee in the earlier pronouncement to save them for medical personnel because the Administration had totally bollixed up the supply inventory–it was a face-saving, jaw-dropping falsehood to anyone with any experience with compromised immunity and they backed away from it later.

A new day, a new post. She railed against them yet again.

Sometimes you have to distill it to its essence and you have to make it personal and relatable.

I answered simply this: Would you rather be coughed on by someone who’s wearing a mask or someone who isn’t?

Got all kinds of things done that needed to get done–laundry, cleaning, Milk Pail pickup, the weekly hour forty-five spent watering all the trees, there’s sourdough bread rising, even got a little knitting in but nowhere near what I should have.

But in the back of my mind the whole time was the errands I would be running if I could be running them and someday this pandemic will pass and I’ll get to really see the world outside again and my friends in person and man I can’t wait.

My phone buzzed.

It was a video of Lillian. Somehow she is nearly ten months. In it she pulled herself up below a window, bouncing and vocalizing for joy, patting the wall and then grabbing the windowsill, bouncybouncybounce delighted with herself that she could do this now and turning and grinning at the camera.

She could almost, almost make herself tall enough to see straight out that window, but looking up makes her happy.  Right now, no waiting.

I stumbled across an old photo while looking for something else: four years ago with the late, much-missed Coopernicus, the people-semi-friendly Cooper’s hawk.

Several weedy-looking trees were taken out two years before because they were starting to damage the fence, and although they were not the most glorious looking they did offer greenery and it felt bald and bare with them gone. If you click on that link (scroll down, the first picture is from my visit to my sister in Atlanta) that’s where the mango went in a year later.

The hawk’s spot now: for nearly thirty years those coffeeberry bushes had stayed small; I thought it was just the variety they were. But once the sun became unobstructed and they had the root space all to themselves (I got rid of that I think buckthorn upstart in the foreground, too), look at it now.

Two years ago a friend gave me a miniature hydrangea from a florist so I planted it in a spot beyond the coffeeberries, and now they shade it. It has naturalized and blooms freely all summer just the same.

And to their left, the tart cherry, which for three years refused to grow higher than my waist as I fought off Japanese beetles and it fought off old olive roots, has finally come into its own and has in the last month topped the fence. Its flowers fed the white-crowned sparrows, its fruit has been feeding us.

Things are looking up.

I forgot to start in on time on the jointed back half of the first back leg and will have to either skip it for both or duplicate-stitch that part in over the blue on the first one later.

Maybe I should give the turtle a side view to match the fish. Yeah probably. I’d love to hear your ideas. 

It’s small, even if it looked big sketched on the page. So if I do make rolling waves at the top, should this be a baby sea turtle coming away from the beach? Meaning, do I change which direction I’d envisioned the tide and rolling waves coming in to? Two years of envisioning this makes that feel so, so, backwards, which I know is completely silly. I’ve been teasing myself about still being an East Coast girl at heart: the sun is supposed to *rise* at the shore. The turtle called it.

And for later: do dolphins leap near the surf or only further out? In the direction of, crossing the direction of, what do they seek out and what do they avoid re the waves breaking and yes I’m totally overthinking it to the point of silliness. Again.

Slow going, but slowly getting there.

Why I resorted to the Kaffe Fassett method of color work: no bobbins, no tangles of balls, just a strand as long as you think you can handle, weave in the ends and do another when you need to. So much easier to just grab one at a time and pull it clear of the mess.

What my Anya apricot seedlings get to be when they grow up! When they’re not about three inches tall.

This Blenheim was a housewarming present, before I’d even heard of Anyas, and every year Jennifer sends me a picture to show me how it’s coming along. (Looking at the date on that old post–wow, this is only its third year.)

“So many apricots,” the email said. She asked for ideas on using them all up and I sent her my two favorite fruit cobbler recipes; her kids are going to love all the extra desserts.

She does indeed have sourdough starter and I told her we’d finished off that recipe tonight and were quite sorry to have it all be gone.

I thought it was pretty, and I could always use more fish inspiration so I ordered one.

It came smelling of Fabreze, not strongly so but when I put it right up to my face I knew there was no way.

I said to the seller, who confirmed that that’s what it was, that I’d never gotten that smell out of anything: not with detergents, not with sun exposure, and it’s a shame because I liked her mask so much.

She said she sprayed each one with a bit of it before sending it off and she’d never thought of how it might affect asthmatics; she offered to send me a second one free. I told her thank you.

This is someone who was only allowing herself a few hours’ sleep in order to sew as many as possible because people need them, they need good ones that fit comfortably and cover well and they need ones that cheer them up.

Meantime, I washed the sweet little mask a second time, letting it soak a goodly while in my unscented detergent–and that time it actually came out very nearly free of it. Close enough that I had it on when the kid putting my Milk Pail groceries in my car chose to stop a moment to compliment it.

And then the second one arrived that afternoon. No Fabreze, as promised. There was the faintest whiff of tobacco to it, which I had assumed all along was the reason why, especially given the deep-South return address, and I immediately soaked it in a soapy sink as I had the first. And it was fine.

It felt grossly unfair to her. She’d been trying to get it right and she’d chosen to do right by me.

I found my Etsy order and sent her a note: I said a little about the Fabreze one to jog her memory as to who I was with all the orders she’s been filling, said I was going to be able to use both after all and what was the best way to pay her for the second?

She, it turns out, was in a mad dash with a major storm bearing down right her way in Louisiana and misread me and apologized again for the Fabreze.

I clarified: You made this, you earned this, it’s perfect, I love it, I want to pay for it.

The response I got left me feeling like that right then was just what she’d needed: to be told how much I appreciated what she’d done well, to be noticed at this time when we’re all so cut off from each other, to feel she mattered. She in turn made me feel like I mattered to her.

Just a tiny spritz of unwanted Fabreze: who knew that that of all things could make such a difference?

And on the subject of why yes, I am still baking too much, we present…

…drumroll…

…how to use up sourdough starter when you’ve grown too much of it, a pint of blueberries, a half pint of raspberries, and the dozen or so newly ripe tart cherries off the tree. After Richard tasted one and puckered and went Wow that IS sour! I chopped the rest a bit, sprinkled on a spoonful of sugar, and let them soak it in for about ten minutes before adding to the berries.

It was a great way to use up a full cup of that starter, but since it’s all about the fruit, I would probably either double the fruit or halve the biscuit part of it next time. As is, it fit perfectly in my new deep-dish Mel and Kris pie pan. (With thanks to Anne for getting that to me from them.)

But if you ever need to make just biscuits from that recipe I’m going to say add a few spoonfuls of sugar to the dough. Here, they’re sprinkled on top.

Oh, and completely randomly but in case you missed it, the new sidewalk panels strengthening the Golden Gate have turned the bridge into, as the headline says, a giant kazoo. One that be heard across San Francisco.

I’m sure you’ve heard of the lovely, lovely, Rahul Dubey–an immigrant, one who believes strongly in the ideals of America–who threw open his doors in DC and took in dozens of peaceful protesters who were in great danger from the armed angry mob attacking them that was a mixture of police, Bureau of Prisons riot guards, National Guard, and Border patrol officers. Who tried to get in his door, too.

“Literally I can hear skulls being cracked,” Dubey said. 

I was a stranger, and ye took me in. Now who said that?

As Stephen Colbert pointed out, the government does that when they’re afraid of us. For having the moral authority of our being in the right, and being many voices together.

There was also this one-man protest Friday, a Marine standing in the heat with his sign and “I can’t breathe” taped across his mouth at Utah’s Capitol, standing, alone, at attention, saluting the dead, standing, standing, bearing witness in his dark uniform.

As his shoes melted.

I bought a sea tortoise pattern–actually a loggerhead turtle, I think, though not labeled as such–on Ravelry the other day.

Except it’s upright and I wanted mine sideways, and since knitting stitches aren’t squares on charts but rectangles I couldn’t just tilt it; I had to use their picture to try my own sketches on knitting graph paper, but at least it gave me something to work from. Also, I’m trying to shrink it down by about a third, so, following their zig zag lines but adapting where they should go.

Why did that first try bother me so bad.

It suddenly hit me.

It looked like a tick.

Sing it with me: You put the Lyme in the coconut and knit it all up you put the Lyme in the coconut (husk color).  (Who knew the Muppets did that one?!)

…Let’s fix the head on that thing, shall we? Enough of the tick talk.

Meantime, I just have to point out this crocheted aquarium I just stumbled across. Wow. Just, wow.

The city lifted what was going to be an eleven day curfew after two because the protesters have been relentlessly peaceful.

That let’s call it an anthias fish up at the top there that should have started an inch later but it wanted to be where it is and I let it boss me around like that.

My last two KitchenAid mixers did this, too: as they got old, the on-off switch stopped being reliable. You could turn the darn thing off and it would simply keep going till it ran out of steam.

I found this out with the first one years ago when I had my hand down in the bowl and it must have been just enough movement that it toggled itself on and gave my wrist a compression fracture.

This one, as always a 5 qt size because at the time that was the biggest home-kitchen one they made (and because at this point I have all these extra bowls for that size), has been at that stage for about a year now. But it still runs, and it still turns off, if reluctantly, and I can always unplug it if need be. Haven’t needed to yet. I’ve been thinking for awhile now how replacing it would be a lot of yarn money.

I am typing this carefully. It was the top of the dough hook this time below my thumb. I knew better, that’s the thing, it was sheer stupidity on my part.

I figure if it’s broken I’ll know for sure tomorrow because it will hurt more then, but right now we’re on 8:30 pm curfew for ten days, Urgent Care is closed, and the ER is just not where anybody wants to be during a pandemic even if they’re separating suspected covid cases at triage, which they are. And I seem to be able to manage.

When Richard said by way of comforting that he really enjoyed that sourdough, it helped. A lot.

Edited to add in the morning: the pain is not more localized and it’s not sharper so it’s likely just bruising. Carry on!

The Washington Post compiled quotes from people who had been on the scene in Lafayette Square when Trump, wanting to look like a tough guy in charge, had the peaceful protesters attacked. Tear gas, rubber bullets, pepper balls, shields hitting the unresisting disbelieving faces of people trying to get away when it wasn’t even curfew time and they had every right to be there assembling peacefully. Which is what they were doing. The article doesn’t even mention the medevac helicopter with the Red Cross insignia that buzzed them, sending tree limbs flying at them and besmirching the name of the Red Cross much less the military.

George W. Bush’s old CIA director couldn’t believe his eyes.

Note how conveniently the Reverend Fisher had been decoyed away from St. Johns so as to be unable to object and mess up that photo op.

A former Under Secretary of Defense, until today on Defense Secretary Espy’s Defense Science Board, firmly resigned effective immediately and made his letter public in order to clarify to the country what is at stake and to empower any colleagues who might be dithering to face up to the wrongs done vs our immediate, obvious, beloved, Constitutional rights.

Biden broke quarantine to get out and talk to protesters and to advocate for peacemaking–and I imagine to protect them, as well, which was sorely needed today in too many places.

In Wichita, on the other hand, the cops and the protesters held a cookout together and talked.

Me, after feeling overwhelmed at 45’s mendacities today, I think I’m going to go post the plum tree my kids planted for me. And this peach.

When a citrus tree is new and vulnerable it sends out thorns to protect itself; once it’s grown, oranges generally don’t have any.

The rootstock on my Page mandarin started taking over and sending up stabbiness and later than I should have, I cut those branches off to protect the health of my tree.

And let me tell you, they are sharp.

The peaches were getting bigger and beginning to be targets and those thorns suddenly showed me why I’d let them grow.