The after dinner Nautilus mini puzzles: if you choose a bigger one you’re stuck till it’s all done but if you do one (now two or three) of the 50-ish piece ones (that you’ve come to know well and can do quickly), you can quit at any time for the night. A little together time.

We avoid buying ones in the older Classic cut. We have one: sunflowers, a butterfly, what was not to love, right?

It quickly came to be a joke about how strong is our marriage. Wooden pieces don’t exactly snap together anyway but this one acts like north/south magnets repelling each other. It’s easier to just choose a different one.

I picked up a small stack tonight and as the bottom slid out of the lowest I realized what I had done. The broken Corelle of puzzles, everything everywhere, and it was the sunflower one.

So then we had to do it to make sure I’d found it all.

It’s missing this connector, he says. I go looking and to my surprise there it was over there, he was right.

Some frustration later, okay, I go looking again. The emergency Go bag by the door–all its crevices. The wheels of the long-unused wheelchair. Afghans, shaken out. The immovable cushion on the futon chair coughed up two pieces of Lincoln Logs that had missed their given-away date by twenty years.

Four pieces.

That didn’t do it.

One last piece. A corner piece. (And I’m thinking, so that means we don’t ever have to do this one again, if we’re lucky.)

We could say a prayer, he said helpfully.

I laughed and asked him: Could you think of a less important thing to ask G_d to help with? But maybe He would enjoy the joke, so I did, telling Him, This is not important and it doesn’t matter if we don’t but if You want us to find this silly thing we would love it. If You want; it doesn’t matter.

Then we both laughed.

I put a note in the box with the problem and date and now we can actually avoid the darn thing in good conscience because maybe we’ll actually find it and this was just another sneaky way to get me to spruce up that part of the house better, which it is now.

The problem is, until we do find it, how does one vacuum that room?

Finally feeling this again.

Add a little more color to the rock in the water near the beach. Start some tree roots near the edge of the hilltop, not nice and neat but gripping tightly against the winds sweeping inland. Like that. Yes.

That’s what the coastal afghan had needed to get me really going again after a week on sewer cleanup: new parts, new colors, new interest. The dark green merino for the branches arrived a few days ago and is ready for me.

I can just hear it: Kids! Didn’t I tell you not to slam the door!

I just hope when they were building this place that the contractors didn’t put all the boxes of things for the bathrooms in one place as they worked on other rooms.

Because you know what they say: people in glass houses shouldn’t stow thrones.

I love my stoneware from Mel and Kris. But I also use small white Corningware plates all the time for all the little things. Good for carrying peach pits to the compost bin and all that.

No matter that they’re never loaded to touch anything in the dishwasher, sometimes an old one will come out with a tiny chip or round divot, which is a good time to let them retire.

I was unloading the machine this morning when suddenly there was this tiny emphatic stabbing of broken glass. Too tiny to see but wow did that thing have a bite to it, there was no question what that was.

I had one of those rare flashes of brilliance: I stepped around the corner to where the heavy-duty clear shipping tape was. I cut off a small piece, wrapped it around my finger and kind of kneaded it just for good measure, hoping I wasn’t pushing the thing further in.

Then I held the tape up to the skylight.

There it was. A round speck possibly smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. There was a tiny drop of blood on my finger, a few minutes more of ouchie while my finger whined at me, and then that was that. It was gone.

So I thought I’d mention it in case anyone else ever needs to know.

Scene: Church. Russ speaking.

Of the purpose of our gathering together: Of learning to serve one another and love one another, fully, completely, as we are Loved, every one of us.

One young dad when it was his turn spoke of the joy of waiting for their firstborn last month, of finally getting to meet her–and of his forever gratefulness for the prayers sent her way as she spent a week in the NICU fighting for her life.

His new daughter is safe and sound and home now. It doesn’t turn out that way for everyone, he said, and he knew that, and he knew he didn’t understand why that was so and he was all the more grateful that for them it got to turn out how they had so hoped.

What he didn’t know yet but I do is that that will see him through so many moments to come of her growing up: this is the child they almost lost. This is the child that G_d meant to have be here, after everything her birth could throw at her, and she is alright. She will be all right. No matter the individual moments along the way.

Teenagerhood ain’t got nuthin’ on the memories held by a parent who nearly lost that child. Gratitude rules.

The Dollaradio place I linked to yesterday was as I mentioned a radio and telegraph relay station built by a man born in 1844 and Richard Byrd’s Antarctic expedition posted its updates through it. And here I thought it was some ’60’s hippy commune built with whatever came to hand.

It turns out two men added a kitchen and turned it into their home right after WWII, trying to keep the historical details, and in 1977 some guy bought it despite his wife really having issues with that. Understandably. But she ran an animal rescue and it had plenty of room for their dogs and cats and it worked out.

So it was a ham shack! was Richard’s reaction, pleased.

He got his ham radio license after the Loma Prieta quake, when his aunt was a half mile from the epicenter and we couldn’t reach them that first day. Hams work where phones don’t.

And then he volunteered with the Red Cross and municipal disaster services for years and did the annual Field Day, where you try to connect with fellow hams around the world in testing the system. Byrd’s ghost would be pleased with that.

But as for that real estate listing, I doubt you’d be able to get an occupancy permit now unless your name is Neptune.