Went to Cottage Yarns yesterday. Wound some stash yarn today. Considered patterns again. Looked at some old projects to give myself a pep talk. Counted stitches on the ocean afghan that was my big pandemic project, since it’ll be the same yarn. Considered the sketch I’d sketched and what else it should have had in it.

The hardest part is getting the needles started when you know that by the time it’s all done you’ll have learned what you needed to know before you started it to make it what it could be. But I don’t yet.

So all I can do is take the yarn and let it run wherever it wants to go.

Haven’t found the one I was looking for yet, where Division 1 (that would include Stanford) men tried to mimic Simone Biles–but this is better. Fred Richards, a fellow Olympian: the two of them trying to mimic each other’s moves and clearly having the time of their lives.

James Beard wrote, in a cookbook that was given to us as a wedding present so that gives you some idea of how long ago, that the only way to eat a mango was in private in the bathtub.

I’m not sure I’d ever seen a fresh mango at that point so that description stayed with me.

Fast forward. I didn’t have a box the right size to put four of Andy’s peaches into nice and upright and you can’t stack those, so I took a small paper bag, put them in in a line and  held the thing shut with one hand and supported the weight with the other after texting my neighbor.

Her teenage son met me halfway and carried those balls of fruity juiciness just as carefully. He knew.

I knew they didn’t have enough bathtubs but they could make do. Most definitely.

Our resident desert lizard must have found another, because I got to see a tiny one flitting across the patio. And here I had worried about the first one getting eaten. Given that it took over thirty years to see one at our house down in the flatlands at all, that was not an unreasonable assumption.

We will continue to get to see them, then. It quite made my day.

While I knit… (I think the yarn is Malabrigo Washted, not Mecha, in which case the London Sky tag in the bag was indeed the wrong one.)

We have a shed divided in two parts that was added onto the house maybe before we were even born. The near side had built-in shelving on both sides, the other side nearer the street was open space for a trash can, lawn mower, that sort of thing, with a concrete floor.

Which got jackhammered out when we had to remove the redwood root up to the house five years ago.

That involved my hauling out a good hundred pounds’ worth of wet rainy redwood needle droppings that, over time, had broken through the very aged plastic roof out there. Everything else got moved to the other side of the shed wall.

The near shed had accumulated construction stuff over the years, now-rusty paint can remainders, tangled hoses etc etc and made worse by that sudden extra, and with that broken roof, very little of it was in good shape.

We didn’t replace the roof because we wanted to replace the whole structure and you can’t anymore because of updated fire codes and we wanted to have that shed so it all just sat there.

I got quoted $1500 for clearing everything out. Then a grand. Money that was easy not to spend since you couldn’t see any of this unless you went past two gates on that side of the yard. It was hard to let go of the thought of getting it done ourselves, to acknowledge our bodies had aged out of the task (although those wet needles had definitely made the point.)

The fence guy of two weeks ago offered at $400. Not including the broken roofing, but we can do that, we just needed the heavy and tangled stuff dealt with and those crazy long pipes one contractor inexplicably stuffed up at the top out of there.

They came today. They transformed the place. The condition the shelving was in was threatening to pull the whole structure down, but the shelves are gone now as well as everything that was on them and the structure looks the most sound it has in many years. It just might last after all.

Time for metal freestanding ones to go in there.

On their way out, the two men asked if I wanted to keep the spade with the handle that would rip your skin off. No.

The blue –? I’m not sure they knew what that thing was; it sure didn’t look useful for anything they could think of.

I laughed and explained that the day our moving van came, the neighbor across the street had come over and said, I saw them take a snow shovel off the truck. What do you think you need THAT for?!

I told him we’d rent it out for $75/hr if it ever snowed here.

Good old Mr. Seedlock, long gone. I thought of him and how it would make him laugh and told the men, It stays.

You wanted to see the colorway. The tag in the bag says London Sky, but it could be the wrong one? It’s mainly on the brown side of purple, but that could be my cataracts talking.

Knitting intentions aside, it turned out to be a day for running around getting things done. Including a two-hour  trip to Andy’s.

Searching for Lorings, the great peaches of my childhood, is how I discovered Andy Mariani and his orchard I don’t know how many years ago now and it was a treat to bring some home. My family used to drive out to an orchard in West Virginia well after the peaches had been harvested: all the tiniest hardest rocks of fruit left behind would, by the time the farmer called Dad, have had the entire resources of the trees to themselves and by the time we six kids climbed the trees to get to them they were huge. How often do you get to eat a 24 oz peach that streams juices through your hands as you do? And that taste that good?

I did not believe there could be a better peach. Andy gently let me know in those initial emails way back when that, in fact, there is. And proved it when I tasted his Kit Connells and Baby Crawfords.

They’re not on yet and Lorings and happy memories would definitely do for today.

On a side note, I don’t know if you can buy a tree of it yet, but if you ever want the perfect nectarine, the Raspberry Red variety that Andy developed is the best I have ever tasted.

A new-to-me colorway. A doctor appointment a dozen miles up the freeway at rush hour, so best leave quite early because every five minutes later is ten more minutes spent on the road, right?

And that is how I fell in love with knitting all over again today.

So some of the Republicans have been saying loudly that Biden should quit, be 25thed if need be, because clearly his decision not to seek reelection means he’s too old and feeble to continue in office. They’re claiming the Democrats are covering up his decrepitude.

The lies get tiresome, don’t they. But hear me out on why they’re pushing that.

It’s because if Biden did leave now, Harris would be President and would need to pick a vice president. Which both the House and the Senate would then have to approve by simple majority vote, per section 2 of the 25th Amendment.

Mike Johnson would be a single heartbeat away from the Presidency, and Mike Johnson would be the one whose job it would be to call a vote in the House to vote on that VP pick.

Is there anyone in the world who doesn’t think he would McConnell that vote?

A refusal to vote on a nominee should be legally considered a de facto confirmation. Make the members of Congress do their jobs and put their names to their votes. That should be one of the first reforms come January; democracy demands it.

Got so caught up in doing the Two Sides of the Sea puzzle again that the time caught us by surprise. G’night.

Scene: pharmacy. Picking up for the both of us.

Waiting in line, the guy who had pulled in next to my car got out of his black mustang with the vivid yellow duct tape pretending to be painted racing stripes–applied in very careful lines, but the ends looked like they were flapping just ever so much in the wind now–and very cheerfully made a scene asking for the keys to the bathroom. The clerk seemed to recognize him. She smiled. Bless her.

Tall, a little high or a little drunk (hey you stagger too lady writing this what are you talking about) or maybe this was just the way he was, with a vivid yellow wildly printed shirt I took to be of the shiny nylon that was all the rage for about a month when I was fifteen that I’d worked so hard to talk my mom into letting me have. Mine was silver. (And then we Maryland kids were dying in the heat and swore off that particular fashion and blamed it on California, where we decided they didn’t know a thing about humidity and clothes needing to breathe. That shirt and that guilt over not wearing it so as to thank Mom but but but it was so hot! were exactly what got me sworn to natural fabrics. But I digress.)

Eventually he reappeared and ambled around and then got in line behind me.

Meantime, the clerk had found my meds and my husband’s and put them on her side of the counter and said something behind her mask that I told her I couldn’t hear–then, after rummaging around the shelf some more, she disappeared.

I stood there. Our meds sat there. No clerk.

Eventually I heard the guy talking again, but that seemed to be what he liked to do best and I ignored him till he got loud enough to be clear he meant me.

Excuse me, ma’am? Excuse me? Are you picking up your meds?

I told him I was, but I explained I hadn’t been rung up yet so I couldn’t walk off with them, and, *shrug*.

He said something else I didn’t quite get, but he was cheerful and friendly and happily boisterous and entertaining, so, okay, whatever.

I was wearing a vyshyvanka with embroidered flowers on the puffy sleeves and a beaded gerdan with dandelions, so clearly I was a fellow hippy traveler and he was happy to meet me. He was happy to meet anyone. Life was fabulous.

Two clerks came out and went searching together. Turns out an extra med had been declared pick-up-able today  and neither could find it, but the pharmacist said no it’s out there, and the whole thing took so long that there were now a whole bunch of people waiting.

At last they got done and as I turned to leave, Mr. 1970 screaming-yell0w-zonkers shirt told me, Peace out! Have a blessed day! and I wished him one, too.

Getting back in my car, I glanced over at the license plate on his. It seemed to be an area code and then HE double hockey sticks and since when does the DMV let that through–they used to be really strict on such things. But I guess a younger generation is running the show there now. Okay, cool.

Got home, and out of sheer curiosity looked up where that area code referred to.

Richard heard me guffaw hard from the next room and I had to explain.

It was the specific area code assigned to a college campus. Utah State.

You always meet the interesting people, he told me.

I do think he would have won. But passing the torch and letting the next generation shine to the world was absolutely the right thing to do. The Presidency ages one as it is and the telomeres were growing short.

Never since George Washington have we had a President who felt he could win the next election but chose not to run in it for the sake of the country’s well-being. My late Republican Senator Uncle Bob was right: Joseph Biden is a very good man.

I was glad when Kamala Harris ran for California Attorney General, ie finally a statewide office so I could  vote for her, and I have every chance since.

I’m really, really curious who the new VP candidate will be!

Nothing like seeing a breaking news banner with a story of a wildfire near my mom at an hour when it’s too late to call her since she’s far enough away from it anyway that I shouldn’t worry. But how close is that to my aunt. Breathe. Okay, so, this is what I was intending to write about:

We did a Trader Joe’s run. Saturday evening, lots of customers, lots of clerks, busy.

I’d never seen the one at my line before. Clearly she was new; my guess is that she’s a student on a summer job. She was trying to do it well–don’t smash the crushables, bananas go on top–but it didn’t come automatically yet, she had to pay attention to each task, and twice she rearranged an item to make sure it would get home safely.

She did a good job. I didn’t care that she took a little longer than some might. Everybody starts off young and new.

But clearly others had taken it out on her because she looked like if one more person said one more thing she was going to burst into tears. Still, she was gamely trying to greet customers pleasantly, as required, even if she couldn’t quite look at them right then.

Somehow there was nobody in line behind us yet as she handed me the receipt so a moment’s distraction wasn’t going to hurt. I told her, For customers with a crying kid? Or for whatever–happy birthday! as I handed her a hand knit brightly striped toucan finger puppet with a long black beak and crossed eyes.

Oh that’s so cute, she said, in a tone that felt to me like her pain exhaling away into the wind as she examined its tiny details while we wheeled the loaded cart and away.

That, that, I could do.

This one was the ugly duckling: it sprouted last year but a heat wave while we were out of town and that was that. My two inch tree. And yet somehow it lived.

This is also the one that had thrips eating the juices to all its attempts at new growth this spring. I squished them between my fingers every night till none came back and looked at my poor sorry little apricot wannabe and wondered: of the five, why was only that one attacked? Is it sweeter? Or just scrawnier and easier to get at? Does it mean that’s the one I should want to put to ground, does it mean I shouldn’t?

It gave itself hopeful little pep talks all spring but there wasn’t a lot to see.

Then almost suddenly, a month into summer, it has the best form and the most abundant growth of them all. All that stuff it went through, it turns out, pruned and prepped it well. This is really only its first year, and look at that!

Someone is going to love this tree over its lifetime. Might even be me.

The doorbell rang yesterday.

On the other side was a younger woman who was there to ask us a question.

The houses around here were built in the 1950s with radiant heat, and time and several mild and one big earthquake later, those inefficient old systems are falling apart. People who grew up with it have told me they love it and I’ve long wondered how it would be to wake up to a warm floor, and we even once looked into taking our house back to it. We were quickly talked out of it. It would require jackhammering the entire length of the house to replace the pipes under the slab.

Doesn’t every foundation need weak points in a quake?

So. The woman and her husband had just bought a house in the next block. They needed to replace the heat. They could see that we have an HVAC unit on our roof and wanted to know, were we happy with it?

She clearly had a lot riding on our answer: she wanted what we have, very much. Her husband was convinced it would make the house shake every time it came on.

The thought had never occurred to me. Yeah, you can hear it running quietly in the background, sure. But shaking the house? No.

Richard chimed in.

I told her how a dual unit had been nearly the same price as a simple furnace, so that for $100 we got whole-house air conditioning, and you can’t do that with radiant heat. I gave her Joe Lerma’s name at A-Z Techs Mechanical and said, Joe really knows his stuff, he’s good, his prices are good, and he’s very honest. I think you’d be very happy with him; we have been. We found him when he was recommended by the roofing company.

She was tapping into her phone and his name and number were already there. Got it.

She left looking hopeful. You could just see her telling her husband, this being right after a record-breaking heat wave: Air conditioning, too!

I’m really hoping for them.

They came. They took me to the other side of the fence. They saw. I saw. They said Why isn’t there a marked line where the fence should actually be? Measuring from stakes is not how it’s done.

And so we continue.

Meantime, in proof that yellow visually dominates any colorway it touches, this is what I ordered awhile back. Merino/silk/cashmere.

And this vivid little thing for I have no idea who is what it’s turning into. I had to go look for the original picture because it’s so, um, different.

Thumper’s Admonition says someone out there will love it. Intuition says this was the time when it was supposed to come to be so keep going, but that’s all I know so far.