An official letter was read to the congregation today: a reminder that the Church is officially neutral on all things political, but asking that members consider the words and teachings and example of Jesus Himself: to seek for those who try to live by His message of love and empathy towards all others, be that office-seeker of whatever or no religion they may.

(And then get out there and do right by your fellow citizens and VOTE.)

I will add here that, Utah notwithstanding, the actual stance of the Mormon Church on abortion is that although it is highly discouraged in cases that are not medically necessary, it is ultimately rightfully only the choice of the woman, her doctor, and her God.

We did something way better than going to San Francisco for chocolate: we visited our friend in the hospital and chatted and cheered and swapped hospital-food stories and left her and her husband with smiles on their faces–and ours, too.

I somehow left out of yesterday’s long list (I thought it was in there, but no) that our elderly friend Walt had died that morning. That I got an email from a mutual friend asking if I could help out, that when I answered, Sure, what do you need, expecting it to be about Walt’s wife in a nursing home because of course you’d expect that, the answer I got was a clear phishing expedition. “I’ll pay you back when I get back in town…” As if. He’d been hacked. On that day of all days.

I can’t hear our new widow on the phone and she can’t type to me and I don’t feel mobile enough yet to risk driving. Aargh.

Today a fake-Amazon spammer called every two or three minutes and one can only wonder if I got put on a list of suckers who’ll respond. The same recording. For hours. It makes no sense; I mean, who ever caves and believes their lie after hanging up the first twenty times?

What finally stopped it is when I let it go to the answering machine several times in a row. I should have done that sooner, except that the machine is where Richard’s working.

I just got a note: the friend who’s been in the ICU had canceled the phone number I’d been texting messages to.  That’s why she hadn’t answered. Okay, got the right one now.

And I think I found the right yarn. But it is 600m and it is not wound yet and my back said, listen, buddy, I’m working with you on this and you gotta admit I’m getting there but you have to meet me halfway and that is not it.

So it is still a hank.

I started in on Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s autobiography instead.

Today was a day that refuses to stuff itself into a neat little package. There was the Jan 6 Committee, the evidence, the videos, the emotions, the finding out a friend has been in the ICU but may go home by Sunday and she was going to answer our question about visitors when her doctor walked in and that was that, the joy of another friend in her photos with her new baby after they’d been trying for years, my being able to do my full 20 minute race walking for the first time in nearly two weeks although some of it was slow walking as muscles threatened but still, I did it and I read in a book that seeds sewn by birds flying around after eating are seriously called craplings when they sprout and I didn’t get any knitting done because the yarn I’d picked just wasn’t the one and I don’t know which is and the pumpkin that’s vanished from the market because people are using it to get pills down their dogs and that’s apparently a really big thing right now and I finally found some on back order a few weeks ago and it was even actually Libby’s which is real pumpkin and not butternut like most canned stuff and I’d forgotten about it and it showed up today and then I had to get a dozen heavy cans in that box over the doorstep and I should have sliced the box open and taken them over the threshold one by one and I should simply have called Richard from the other room to help and I didn’t want to stand in the sun that long and got the whole thing lifted over the doorjamb and scooted over with my foot and my back yelled WhatdoyouthinkyoureDOING when it had been doing better than that at least and I’m icing it right now again too but I got my walk time in and I made pumpkin almond muffins and put chocolate chips in a bunch for Richard and I got everything done and nothing done at all it feels like

and it was just that kind of a day.

The Jan. 6 Committee announced a hearing today for tomorrow, Thursday, at 1:00 pm Eastern, 10:00 a.m. our time.

I am in sudden need of replenishing my brainless-knitting-project inventory.

I have a cousin with a twin sister–who looks like their oldest sister, while she herself looks like sister #2, as if there should have been two sets of identical twins but the universe got it all mixed up.

In between are their two brothers.

They’re all married with kids but out of all that family, none were a match. There was the elation of finally going on the kidney transplant list to cure her congenital disease vs the knowledge that it could take years to find one.

But they did, they found one quite quickly. And he’s offered to be a living donor. They’re a match.

It’s her husband.

The surgery is next Tuesday. Hers will be quite long because they cannot do the usual leave the old ones in and just add in the new; the old ones have to go.

Heather and Nate, and I’m praying hard from here.

Y’know, about 90% of the posts on NextDoor have me wondering why I’m still on Nextdoor. But just, just often enough you find out something that really is actually relevant to the neighborhood that you’d kind of want to know about.

Not that this was one of them, but dang did it grab the attention. Per the conversation there:

There’s a hiking path up in the hills alongside the San Andreas fault line, park land because you’re not about to build on that. (Actually, on the east side of the Bay they did exactly that in the 1950’s because it was the cheap land and every hospital on that side is within something like 100 yards if not feet of their fault. Yow.)

So. There’s a contractor who either followed his surely-infallible GPS or skimmed rather than read the map. Or entered things wrong. Maybe we could even blame autocorrect! Didn’t notice that there were two monte-something names.

It appears he did not stop when what he expected to be a road quickly became a path cut into the hillside that might have room for two joggers to pass each other if they’re careful but most certainly not his big vehicle.

There was a spot just downhill from that track where there was a depression area created by the San Andreas.

He nailed it. He rolled his company’s new big work truck right over into it, fitting neatly upside down into the spot per those who have seen it up close. The only way it can come out is to be lifted vertically, and as he’s already demonstrated, there is no room for the machinery to do that in.

The scuttlebutt was that it’s been there for several months and the county or park service has decided to make it a training exercise: dangerous rescues and all that. Although on the human level, thankfully, there’s a door that is slid open so it looks like he got out just fine.

I imagine they’re waiting for the rain so they don’t set the whole hill on fire when they do it.

But dude. That is not the way to ask your boss for a raise.

Our entire bishopric was sick or out of town today, so leaders from the stake filled in.

The one who was to lead the service was sitting in his car beforehand going through a few notes before getting out, when he saw the woman.

She was elderly, she was stooped, she wore a headscarf and walked slowly with a cane, but on crossing the small side street and coming onto the sidewalk in front of the church, she removed her scarf, bowed her head, and clasped her hands together in prayerful reverence.

And then she saw him seeing her in her quiet moment. He was afraid he’d interrupted her reverie and felt like a bit of an intruder.

She waved to him. Hail fellow well met.

He waved back, and felt in that moment like he’d found a friend. Lovely woman, and he wanted to share that moment with the rest of us: there is so much love out there in the world to be blessed by, and for us to remember to offer.

Richard and I had seen her, too, a few minutes later as we drove up, but by then someone younger had joined her and was looking out for her so as not to fall as they headed slowly and carefully in the direction of the house two doors right nearby where our son’s old soccer coach lives.

I took the man aside afterwards. I told him that that coach has taken in several families of Ukrainian refugees and that I thought she might well have been one of them.

The speaker was someone who had helped me get the Ukrainian flag hats to the Consul General and his American friend, and I knew how much that would mean to him. And it did.

Her mother told her lovingly but firmly, No, you don’t put a marble in your mouth. Here, you put it on this and watch it roll down.

It was a child’s assemble-it-yourself marble maze. The host had had it all ready for her.

We were at a friend’s for dinner, and the young mom got distracted by the conversation because the dinner was for her. I got down on the floor and took a turn with her baby, who was old enough to run but too young to talk.

We rolled that marble down those chutes.

The rest of them had gone into a covered tin labeled Marbles.

She shook it at me, her eyes questioning, but I did not open it for her. Her mother had narrowed it to just the one and I wasn’t about to mess with that.

RollrollrollPLUNK!

She picked it up from the bottom piece and looked at me with big eyes and…moved that marble slowly up in front of her mouth. Testing whether the rules applied across multiple grownups and when Mom wasn’t looking.

I shook my head no.

Oh. They do. Okay then.

She put it back on the (oh what’s the name of that toy) and let it take its path and never tried to eat it again.

Anne gets the thanks for this one. A note from her got me looking: Ukraine is of course known for its sunflowers and as a large producer of sunflower oil.

What happens when you grow lots and lots of big bright yellow flowers?

You get lots and lots of honeybees.

I had no idea that Ukraine produces 10% of the world’s honey, although of course they do; it’s just that most of it never makes it over the ocean to here.

In the US, Congress has allowed corporations to adulterate both olive oil and honey and to sell deliberately mislabeled blends as the real thing. If you’re allergic to corn like a nephew of mine, that’s kind of a big deal on both counts. Can we please vote in people who care about people?

Which is why it’s wonderful to find a company that tracks its sources down to the individual farmers and verifies that what they’re passing on to their customers is nothing but true pure honey. (Re the olive oil: California’s law requiring Californian-grown organic extra virgin olive oil to only be that has been grandfathered in. That one you can trust.)

So. Anne found a jar of Ukrainian sunflower honey from a company that not only does that source tracing but is donating 100% of profits for it to World Food Kitchen and to Medical Teams International’s efforts on behalf of Ukrainian refugees in Moldova.

Even with the FedEx shipping, that sixpack of bottles comes to $12.50 per two-pound jar. The local stuff I’ve been buying is a dollar an ounce.

Do you have friends who need Ukrainian sunflowers in a jar for Christmas? Some of mine suddenly do. And it’s already here on our side of the ocean. While the money heads over there where it’s so badly needed.

The weird thing is, it’s not just that the back twinges–it’s that it suddenly refuses to hold me up and I find myself on the floor. If I can hold myself up with my arms (I learned in the shower this morning) I can breathe through it and it lets go before I have to.

This gives new meaning to the word backpack. Just ordered one. It should help a lot.

In between dealing with all that, I’m a good way through reading “Dearest Ones” by Rosemary Norwalk. Highly recommended. She was a Californian who ran a Red Cross outfit at a port in England during WWII, offering coffee and doughnuts and a smile to every single soldier whose boat came in or left from where she and a few other women were stationed, be it 4 a.m. or 11 p.m. the same day.

There was a big fuss made when the millionth such soldier arrived. And again at the two millionth. Red Cross headquarters: You want HOW many more pounds of flour?? They didn’t believe it. They had to come see for themselves. And then they sent more women to help out as well as supplies.

I have a friend who was born just after his father went off to serve–who never so much as contacted his wife and son after the war was over but vanished into some other life. Rosemary described friends who hadn’t seen their spouses in four years falling in love with people they served with every day in spite of themselves.

She was not going to become serious about anyone till after the war was over and she could see them in their normal lives, not this temporary circumstance that by its nature tended to make people feel close as the Nazis changed from bombs you could hear incoming to ones you could not. Not her, no sir, just here to do her job and serve.

She wrote many a letter home, signed, Love, Roses, and asked her folks to save them all–while writing in her journal the extra details she didn’t want to tell them yet.

And those became this book and a glimpse into the world of her youth.

Don’t tell me if she ended up marrying Bob, clearly she did but I’m not there yet. (There are at least three Bobs so that’s not a spoiler. Mostly.)

It’s always the most innocuous thing that finally nabs you after all the warning signs: all I did was lean down to put two small Corelle plates in the bottom of the dishwasher.

…And give an almost-four-year-old two piggy back rides two weeks ago. A sleepless night last night probably clinched it.

Ice, stretching exercises, more ice, along with consciously relaxing the muscles that want to seize up, and hopefully tomorrow will be better. Realistically, it will be a process.

I knew I should have kept doing those exercises this past week.

Sometimes when you order something internationally on Etsy they don’t show more than the country the item is coming from until it’s got a tracking number attached to it.

And sometimes, under the circumstances, shipping doesn’t happen immediately.

There’s a vendor in Ukraine who’s been selling embroidered clothes, but also a few printed t-shirts and totes with the colors of the Ukrainian flag, of their national trident symbol, and of celebrating the sinking of the Moskva warship.

I ordered an embroidered toddler dress from them. Pretty flowers for Lillian.

Turns out that vendor was in occupied territory. It isn’t, as of the past few days, but it was then. I was gobsmacked.

The courage of the Ukrainians in standing up for their rights and their freedom of speech! We should all treasure what we’re blessed to have like they fight to keep it.

Post #2 for the night: Richard just found and fixed the other problem with my email and it is apparently now throwing out everything that it’s been telling me it sent but it didn’t for the last ten days? Two weeks?  Anyway, if you get something from me that seems weirdly old, it is, and my email works again. Thanks.

This is a little bit out on a limb–and yet.

I’ve mentioned how I was instantly smitten with a beaded sunflower necklace designed by Oleksandra in Ukraine. I waited several weeks before ordering it to see if its effect on me would wear off; the lower sunflower in particular is really big and I don’t naturally tend towards the ostentatious.

And yet. Those flower halves lifted as wings to the sky, the inner petals below curled as if caught up in the velocity above: it spoke to strength, resilience, survival. It reminded my eyes of peregrine flight, if you remember my volunteer remote-cam work towards their recovery. Yes, I could wear that. Thinking of strangers’ eyes lighting up on seeing me wearing a vyshyvanka: I would. For them.

It somehow felt a compelling part of the historical moment that I wanted to bear witness to. My father would have loved the art of it as well and I missed him, and that was somehow wrapped up in it, too. My little sister and I were with him on the plaza in Santa Fe when he fell in love with a shadowbox turquoise necklace and spent a long time talking to the artist about how her creation had come to be and about her work; he’d bought it for Mom, just like his dad had once picked out a large turquoise and a setting type and had watched another Navajo artist create a ring to surprise Dad’s mother.

That ring was big. It was almost ostentatious. And I treasure it. I’m the granddaughter who got to inherit it.

And so, wondering which granddaughter’s this would someday be, I bought that gerdan in July, back when there was only one, and I’ve written here of the long international back-and-forth wanderings that thing has been taken along on ever since.

My longtime mailman rang the doorbell Friday and I said quite gladly, You’re back!

He enjoyed that.

He’d been away when the post office had been unable to figure out where to send that gerdan. I knew he wouldn’t have had a problem with it.

Meantime, Oleksandra had been avidly following that tracking every day, even though for me it hasn’t changed since September 17.  She sent me a note a couple of days ago to let me know what the American postal service hadn’t been able to say: it had arrived back in Kiev! She was going to go retrieve it, repackage, and re-send it. She had made another two of those necklaces anyway even though I had told her that if it never showed up to please consider it a donation and not to worry about it.

But she was determined, and luck turned her way, and so, one way or another, there are strung-glass sunflowers coming my way shortly. Maybe it will spend the usual month or two waiting in Kiev to leave the country again; maybe it won’t.

And here’s where part of me can’t say/part of me can’t not say it so I’m just going to put it out there:

I was woken up very early this morning, October 3, by a dream that stayed vivid and still is, which is not a usual thing for me: that, however long it might take this time, I was once again at my front door opening it to our longtime guy and he was handing me a package. It was, it was my long-hoped-for necklace from Oleksandra, my personal connection to a family with a loved one defending their country there.

And as he handed me that package from Ukraine it totally capped off the day for both of us as we found out that we had both heard the news:

The war had ended that day.

Ukraine had won.

I know that all the fiercely wanting it to be so does not make it so. I know a dream does not require reality to bend to it. And yet the wild irrational hope holds on hard and it utterly refuses to let go, and all I can do is pray hard in grief and love and longing.

All I can say is, we shall see.

And that I wish that there could be overnight delivery on that thing.