It was not pretty when I got done. (The pictures embiggen.) I was pretty sure I wasn’t done, but the bin was full.

The forecast was off that day in February and it froze that night.

They say in mango forums to leave the tree alone, give it a chance to make a comeback wherever it will after the weather warms up, especially if it’s past those first few tender years.

So I waited. And wished. The top half of the tree looked utterly dead and what was below didn’t look happy at all.

Saturday it had been warm enough long enough. I went out there with the clippers: no sense in letting the injured parts kill off the rest, and besides, all those dead leaves were shadowing whatever might be underneath, and oh look there’s fungal disease on that one and that one and that one. Out!

Mangos meander. You don’t get a single trunk growing upwards, you get a kid twisting their hair in their fingers endlessly.

I found just a few places where there was blackened branch but still some green above it and those I left alone. Then I watered the tree and hoped. All those years I’d taken such good care of it, one week of warning weather that I didn’t pay much attention to because it wasn’t going to freeze and then it did and I could have avoided all that damage if I’d taken it seriously…

I had needed for some time to take out the old line of incandescent Christmas bulbs draped on it for heat and put in a new set where they all worked but I hadn’t been able to follow the line and see nor reach what I was doing in that thick growth.

I can now.

With Constance headed for home after a great visit, I went back out there this evening. There were some larger branches that everything coming off of them had been brittle and very much dead and were now gone but I’d left the main part just because, because…it all was so much and so hard to do after babying this tree for ten years.

That big V-shaped line in the foreground of the first photo had, it turned out, the tiniest new bits of green at quite a few nodes. Those were not there yesterday. There may well be more tomorrow.

This is one of the smaller branches that still had leaves despite the freezer-burning. The fact that it’s growing from a circle of leaves rather than a single one means that it will be a cluster of new branches from there.

Look and look and look! There are more sprouts all over the sun-facing side of the tree!

All it had needed was the deadened parts cleared out of its way so it could grow again.

Speaking of which, there’s another pro-democracy protest this Saturday across the nation.

We’ve been badly burned but our ideals live on. We can honor the sacrifices of our fathers. We can demand our leaders protect democracy, free speech, equal protection under the law, the right to be heard in a court of law, the rule of law itself that makes all that is America great or at least potentially great. Those are ours and we claim them for the good of all. Go team go!

An old friend needed a place to crash for a night to break up an eight hour round trip and we’ve been having a great time catching up. Years ago I lined up her little kids’ books by height to look pretty for the real estate photos, thus aiding and abetting with mixed emotions her move to California’s Gold Country: happy for her, sad for me. I’m so glad we’ve kept in touch.

One of the things mentioned over dinner was that during remodeling some of the much older houses out there, the owners have found gold embedded in the walls.

Huh. Who knew. Makes sense I guess if you’re in the 1800s and want to put it where no one can find it nor steal it.

I wondered, if I say that out loud will people show up at real estate open houses there with metal detectors?

Of course if that were to become a thing, the owners themselves would give it a go.

(Never did take an updated picture.)

You know those times when you really really hope someone is as knit-worthy as you expect them to be?

I found Hayley. First, I totally threw her with the question, Are you allergic to wool?

That was so far away from anything she expected to be asked that it took her a moment to say she wasn’t.

I told her that most people hand me back my phone and say they can’t make that closed-caption app work–that she was the first person to immediately get it and not only that, that was the first time I’d ever felt fully included in any of those group out-loud chats.

She caught her breath as she almost cried.

And I wanted to express how grateful I was…

Is that a scarf?!!

An infinity scarf, yes, I tried to match your skirt from last week.

I got the biggest hug.

But then, I’d already gotten one when she did that for me.

People like her are how a knitter decides to knit for the next person like that.

Butter Chicken Naan Bites, said the box from Costco that we’d both thought, okay, we could try that.

So here it was, looking like a good thing for throwing a last-minute dinner together after a day of trying to get ready for a house guest. I considered the thing and the country whose cuisine it came from and thought of how we’d ordered Indian take-out and Himalayan the last two times we’d visited my mom. (Three?) It’s a favorite.

And said, Y’know. There are vegetarians.

And there are naanagenerians.

To which he responded with his favorite little head shake and grin: You’re very strange.

A sudden guffaw at the dinner table.

What??

I just remembered what kept me awake last night: can raccoons bend their tails over their heads like squirrels? They can’t, right? But why not, or why would they. Wouldn’t they want all that fluff keeping them warm in winter when they’re asleep?

Off to Dr. Google. The AI summary that is the first thing that pops up these days (it used to be Wikipedia with Google supporting it and should still be if you ask me, but anyway) said that squirrels use their tails to control their falls and raccoons don’t fall so they don’t need it so no they can’t.

Remove the squirrels from the question and the AI said they could. They just often don’t.

Alright, let’s try to find the info where those are plagiarizing from and maybe we can get the real story.

(Too many minutes later) Or maybe not. Still: clearly, it’s not really a thing for them.

Oh look. Calvin Coolidge got sent a raccoon for Thanksgiving dinner (say what?!) and wound up naming it Rebecca and turning it into a pet.

Can you just see that trash panda roaming the White House. Wait till it finds the kitchen.

Although, they do have a high degree of intelligence. You wouldn’t catch one of them, say, *cough* cutting off the lunchtime food source of their young in rural areas.

(Spent a lot of time today counting stitches in patterns and mind’s-eye patterns and doing math and finding there just won’t be room for every detail I want to put in. Richard said, Well then you have to cut half out.

Not half. And the raccoon stays. I just have to knit it first.)

Rush hour. Carpool lanes. A blood test two cities away. Sure, glad to.

He needed me to drive this time. Oh okay.

That was quickly dealt with; next was Costco. Ours? Or the one a few blocks from here? Does it have an Optical Center?

Dunno, never looked for one.

Me neither.

But we needed one. My Sibley’s Guide to the Birds is heavy enough that last night when it landed on my falling glasses, not only did the frames twist but a lens popped halfway out. I was making do with an old pair because those were pure funhouse mirror views, but at least I had backup.

He didn’t.

Surely they did–and yes, they did, just past the entrance and in the opposite direction from where most people coming in would be heading towards.

It was a quiet afternoon for that particular crew. Richard was over at one end having them fix his glasses–he’d sat on his in solidarity or something like that–and I was at the other with a patient man who sighed in spite of himself as he got out the tiny screwdriver and simply took the whole thing apart and slowly put it back together again, testing the straightness again and again. It was a chore and it took awhile but at least no one else was waiting.

Then a mom and a teenage boy walked towards me. Hispanic. His jeans were stylishly tight–the problem being that they were apparently not comfortable. He tugged at them in a place you don’t tug in public and his eye caught mine right then.

I instantly flashed back to a man about eight years ago who’d nailed my white privilege surprise when he told me he’d grown up in that neighborhood and that if any Hispanic kids like him wandered into the town next door the cops would be all over them. And were.

For just walking around?! Or driving on a public road?!

Oh yes. He was gratified that I was so horrified but he wasn’t surprised that I never would have guessed.

That Costco is in an industrial area surrounded by one of the poorer neighborhoods around, which in turn borders what is often listed as the richest zip code in the country. Tech CEOs live there, well-paid sports figures. The former CEO of Hewlett-Packard. The current CEO of Apple. The kicker is that part of that is because the lots are big, and the lots are big because a hundred years ago they had to be for the leach fields because that town couldn’t afford to create a sewer system. Hah. Look at it now.

So. This kid sees me seeing him at the most embarrassing moment and he instantly puts on his best defiant rough tough swagger face, trying to look nobody-messes-with-me.

He was no match for someone who’d raised four teenagers who’d towered over me.

Deflection. Standard tactic. I gestured towards the huge boxes about the size of a subcompact car stacked in big pallets with the third group all the way up to the rafters and said with a smile, I wouldn’t want to be near those in an earthquake.

Totally threw him. What? He looked where I was pointing. I said it again. His eyes went big. He suddenly went total little kid, you know, that sense of oh wow! discovery when you think of something you’ve never thought of before–he had to tell his mom, and when he did, the warmth in her smile would melt anyone.

I was not what he’d thought I would be. He was not what some would make him out to be.

They walked off just as Richard was done and came over to me. My optician offered me my glasses back. I thanked him and put them on. Richard helpfully grabbed their little stand mirror so I could see how I looked and I mimicked my best supermodel self to it a moment and grinned, Now all I need is a haircut.

The optician, who till then had looked so tired, guffawed and said Well maybe we can find some scissors around here, making as if to search over here and over there. He was smiling as we left.

We are all in this life thing together. Wouldn’t have it any other way.

It’s not every day you read a story in the Washington Post about a protest at a town hall meeting and suddenly, while scrolling down, realize the person holding the poster in that picture is your best friend from high school.

Go Karen!!

But then, being a person who was willing to stand up without hesitation for what she knew to be right is why we became close in the first place all those years ago. And still are.

There were five two-hour sessions of the General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints this past weekend, all of them watched from home.

Which means I could knit.

And boy did I have something I wanted to knit. I’d spent all week sure I had a particular yarn but completely unable to find it, not in the place it was supposed to be and not in the places it wasn’t supposed to be and I just couldn’t knit anything else till I’d gotten it out of my head and made real on my needles. Which wasn’t happening.

Till Friday night. At which point the little hide-and-seeker jumped out yelling PEEKABOO! It had fallen behind. I cast on and did the first row to get the chore part of it done so that in the morning it would just be the good part.

Because.

Sunday a week ago, they’d decided at church that with new people moving in, people needed to get to know each other. So they’d set up chairs in circles of about a dozen and handed everybody a sheet of paper with a list of questions to ask each other. There were two sets.

I groaned to myself because this is the kind of thing where it’s all white noise to me. Lots of people in the room talking at once means that the weak-to-me higher pitches of the consonants are obliterated by the decibel level of the rest.

Hmm. How’s that battery…not too bad… I pulled up the app on my phone and asked Haylee next to me if she’d be willing and explained how to use it: for it to pick up what you say, it can do it in this noisy environment but you have to put it right to your face and you have to keep this button pressed while you talk.

I didn’t say, and if you let go of the button and then push it again it erases everything.

I had become a tad reluctant to ask people to use it. They don’t get it. They let go of the button. They hold the phone at the distance they want to. It stares back at them with its initial little prompt unchanged and then they think it doesn’t work.

Haylee, whom I barely know, immediately grokked the whole thing–and not only how to use the app but how the situation was for me. She not only used it to help me hear her, she used it to tell me what everybody else in the group was saying, repeating softly rightupclosetoit.

I took careful note of the colors in the pattern on her skirt. I knew I had that in Rios. I had just finished the afghan and I couldn’t wait to do this next.

Five days. But finally I found it.

So: Conference. (Which had given me a week’s grace period on this.) GO!

I cast off during the last session.

Even the ends are run in now.

Note to myself, and anyone else potentially following this later should know that I am an exceedingly loose knitter: 90 st, US 6, two half-repeats of 10-stitch fern lace, then an M1 in the single stitch dividing them, two more half-repeats, another M1 and then continue from there. Probably should have done it again and taken it from 1 to 4, but it was all a doodle anyway. Maybe next time. I just didn’t want to make it floppy-wide at the bottom, but I don’t think I needed to worry.

It sits in ever-larger folds down the front, not too tight at the bottom nor too loose at the top and I really really like how it came out. I cannot wait to surprise her with it.

She laughed and laughed when I told her I’d set a timer for heading out and the gadget had heard wrong and apparently thought I was going to a farmer’s market: it displayed a tall basket of vegetables with the kale on top in the place of honor. Go see kale! Huzzah! Music and tossing veggies at the bell!

Because Gail is moving away and found herself with a party thrown in her honor. Several men lifted her wheelchair up the two steps to the door. She doesn’t weigh much anymore.

I finally got to meet her daughter who’d knitted her that gorgeous top-down sweater with the lace-leaf yoke–and Gail was wearing it tonight. Ruth’s sweater was gorgeous, too, and when she found out I was a knitter too we were instant friends.

The resident dog, a spaniel, walked through the crowd with a gentle wag of its tail but not eager to pick out one stranger from many for it to pay attention to.

Richard brought her a plate of strawberries per her request.

Gail lost her husband decades ago (to a terrible medical mistake that should never have happened) and I found myself saying to Ruth, I remember your dad.

That’s all I needed to say. She was so grateful.

Her mom, about the age of my own, will now be in walking distance so she can keep a good eye on her care rather than from a two hour flight away.

It was so good to see them and to get a chance to say goodbye. I snapped a picture.

And looked at it. And showed it to Gail. And then offered a do-over and she laughed and laughed again because that’s Gail and said thank you and meant it and yes please let’s and leaned back towards Aly and we got her a better send-off that time.

My phone number’s going to be the same, she made sure I knew.

My email’s on the card I wrote, I told her.

A hug and then another for safekeeping and Richard and I stepped away into the night, knowing just how badly we were going to miss her.

I asked him what he thought was the most memorable moment from the church conference talks today.

“President Neilsen begging everybody to be more charitable.”

So since I couldn’t join the Hands Off! protest for the sun exposure, I watched the Saturday sessions of the LDS Church’s semi-annual conference in real time rather than later. (Link is to Sunday’s.)

I was struck by how again and again the talks were pleas for compassion and humility, reminding us at this Easter season how the enormity of the Atonement was in Jesus’s compassion for every single one of us, more than we can ever know. “Love one another as I have loved you.” One speaker even said to ‘never let your party or’ (as he quickly added I forget what else, I was too busy being surprised) ‘be greater than your love of God’–given that they never, ever talk politics from the pulpit. I’m quite sorry it needed to be said and very glad he said it.

Afterward, I checked the reports: well done, everybody! Look at all those crowds–yay!!! Look at DC. Wow. Of course WaPo reported it: they had to. Wow. You did it. You spoke up for the least of these and for all of us–and for me, on a personal scale in my disability. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

They say the last person who was qualified for the position Trump hired them for was Stormy Daniels. (Credit to an anonymous Washington Post commenter, a little long for a placard.) How about, Overthrow the money changers in the temple of our government! (Still long. Taking suggestions.)

Saturday is the day: April 5 and the Hands Off! protests across the country. Or as I think of it, the Restore Hope Again declaration of We the People to demand a reinstatement of that which functions well in our government, to reclaim our democracy, to reclaim the Rule of Law as the ideal our country has been striving towards since its founding, to reclaim all that is good about democracy, which our fathers put their lives on the line to fight for. We refuse to be ruled by fascists. We refuse to allow our government to kidnap people off the streets by people who offer no names nor warrants, and any law enforcement officer of any kind who has participated in that should be held accountable before a court himself. All those who have been so disappeared must be allowed to appear before an American court and the innocent set free. And yes foreign grad students are allowed to write op-eds in their school paper that some might disagree with. But Americans are not afraid of free speech.

We can do all these things if we speak up.

The Post just lost Eugene Robinson to Bezos’ clampdown on any editorial writing that he and his Rupert Murdoch henchman don’t like. The Post claims that news reporters are not interfered with.

Well, then show it. Let’s see if the protests are covered at WaPo. But Politico, the Contrarian, BBC news, the Guardian, and I know our scrappy little small town paper here will all be snapping pictures and interviewing and hoping people know how important supporting reporters is because they’re the ones holding government figures accountable to us and their work is not easy right now.

Re Trump throwing tariffs at a penguin-only island: bullies hate being made fun of. How about a placard of an indignant penguin holding a placard.

Go team go!

Our house guests last fall (hi, Amy!) left behind a jar of Skippy peanut butter that wouldn’t go in their carry-ons. Actually, it was labeled peanut spread: roasted peanuts, palm oil, and salt.

It had never been opened. There was a layer of oil at the top, just like the natural peanut butter it almost attained the definition of. It was time to figure out what to do with it. (And an excuse–I’d been craving a good cookie.)

I found this recipe, although it’s only partly what I did. I figured if the Washington Post was linking to it that’s a decent recommendation.

I used the peanut butter without stirring the oils in; some flowed to the bottom as I scooped, but I figured a cookie recipe with no other fat in it has to have what it can from what was there.

I started to type out all the other changes I made and thought, nah, just type the thing out.

So.

One cup old-fashioned rolled oats. In retrospect, quick-cooking would have done just fine.

1 tsp baking powder, not the specified baking soda which I really don’t care for at all

a pinch of salt that may have been as much as 1/2 tsp but probably not but definitely more than the 1/8th they said

2 large eggs, not quite straight out of the fridge but almost (such a rebel)

1 c natural peanut butter (well, it tried to be)

1 tsp vanilla. Given that the president just slapped his big tariffs even on an island inhabited only by penguins, can you imagine what replacing that bottle of the second most expensive spice in the world is going to cost? Two teaspoons for that much batter? Nah, one’s fine. It was.

Whisk eggs, add 2/3 c packed dark brown sugar from Trader Joe’s that may have been turbinado type, add peanut butter and vanilla and then the oats+baking powder.

I had a small handful of salted caramel chips and one of chocolate chips ready on a small plate and worked several of each into each cookie. Nowhere near the amount they called for, we’re old farts, we don’t need that much extra sugar.

They say refrigerate the dough so they won’t spread. Yeah, you do for normal chocolate chip cookies with flour and butter but I didn’t see the point with these, I just put them straight in at 350F for 14-15 minutes. They barely spread.

They were great. Seriously good. I have found my new go-to cookies.

I told Richard as we munched, Y’know, these are your daily oatmeal but with peanut butter and eggs and chips added. Extra protein.

So I guess the question in the morning is going to be, Crunch? Or slime?

—

(Ed. to add: they were very crunchy last night coming out of the oven. After a night of San Francisco fog and being left on the counter, they were not, they were a soft cookie. Use an airtight container if you want yours to stay crisp.)

I was standing just past the top of the stairs at the entrance to the museum, chatting with the security guard. I was waiting for my friend Jean: the last time I’d seen her, we were in high school.

He told me about meeting up with old friends from high school; some you do, some, it just never seems to happen, but the friends you made are friends forever.

I very much agreed  with that last part.

Then he said he’d graduated five years ago. I smiled and told him, I’m 66.

And wondered out loud if I would recognize her. I’d given her a description of what I was wearing just in case, but that was all silliness because of course the moment we saw each other I exclaimed to the guard, There she is!

The smile on his face for us was as big as our own.

Her brother was with her and he toured the museum while we found a cozy spot and caught up on things. There was nobody else in that room but the echoes of our words and our memories.

Favorite teachers. Classmates gone now, ones still here, who had I seen, whom had she seen. Katherine: yes! Both of us got to see Katherine, one of the most fearless people I know, a USAID worker willing to go into any country any time.

Who thankfully was stateside visiting her mom when that entity got broadsided by a proverbial Cybertruck with no brakes, but anyway.

Such a good time. We took pictures. We stood in front of a sculpture in bright yellow of two letters: depending on which side you stood, they cheerfully called out, YO! Or… oy.

Needs a J, I said, as her brother raised his camera.

My grandmother was a very proper woman whom I never heard speak ill of anyone.

Except once.

Her husband was a Republican Senator who kept for posterity his thank you letter from Martin Luther King Jr. for voting for the Civil Rights Act.

Strom Thurmond, on the other hand… One of my older cousins asked her how he’d done his historic 24 hour filibuster and Gram did a sharp sniff, took a deep breath, and told us kids, “Well! He had a catheter installed under his pants.” The disdain in her voice was something so unexpected coming from her that I’ve never forgotten it.

(I debated saying contempt, but Merriam-Webster says disdain means considering someone as being beneath one’s notice or dignity and that captures it perfectly. Like I say, she was a proper woman.)

Today I watched now and then and then all of the last 45 minutes of Cory Booker’s speech before Congress. Senator Booker, with enough African heritage to know what it is to be a Black man in America today, was determined  to best the record of a man who had agitated for segregation and the snatching away of rights of people who looked like him. Booker was speaking up for the rule of law, the sanctity of the courts, and the rights of all of us. For us to reclaim all that is good in us as Americans and in our government.

And he did it. He did it. And he kept going, just for good measure, long enough to get past that 24 hour 18 mark to a solid 25-plus so that his number and Thurmond’s would never be the same. Beat the old bastard once and for all. It was a declaration that the old racist fascist in the White House is going to lose out to the judgments of history, too.

Gram’s reaction was never about the catheter. It was just the closest she could come to saying how p***-poor  Thurmond’s ideas had been and what kind of a person would go to so much effort towards damaging the lives of so many others.

Cory Booker stood there, for 25 hours on his feet straight he stood up for every single one of us and I am so proud and so grateful.

And thank you, Wisconsin!