Seventy-seven thousand people including all of UC Santa Cruz have been evacuated along the coast, where the nightly fog that’s supposed to keep the forest floor and the roots of the redwoods damp has gone missing, and who knows how many more folks inland had time to pack before they had to get out of there. The unheard-of August lightning storms? There are more in the forecast.

Yesterday it was smokey at Andy’s Orchard but it wasn’t terrible. Today the high school across the street from him had become the evacuation center and the area was marked Evacuation Warning: be packed, be ready.

I am so glad I went when I did.

The phone rang this morning, but the person was breaking up so badly that neither one of us could make heads nor tails. So they just came. The doorbell rang a few hours later: it was the mattress people. It was not Saturday.

I had told them that if the fires got worse we’d be happy to wait because their safety was the most important thing, to please check first. They appreciated that–and instead decided, okay, we need to get this done NOW. I wondered if they’d been driving since before dawn.

They put the new cover on the new mattress. We were supposed to have to do that part per the seller and watching them, I’m not sure we could have.

They got everything set up. I followed them outside to say where I wanted the old one to go till we could hire someone to come pick it up.

They knew that we had just missed the city’s semi-annual cleanup date when it would have been done for free.

They used the lift to get the old one onto the truck. No worries, they said, we’ll take care of it.

I was not expecting that at all.

When I told the one guy I’d bought the peaches at a farm yesterday, and how things were there today, his eyes got wide and he really, really appreciated it (and probably was really really glad they hadn’t waited till tomorrow) and headed outside to the truck to share with his co-worker. They waved thanks, I waved thanks, and they were out of here while the routes back out were still safe.

Last year the last of Andy’s peaches were done at the end of August,  earlier than previous years, and after eating a generic one that had come with my weekly produce bag and what a disappointment it was compared to what Andy grows, I wanted to go.

The air here had improved, but the fire map showed one blaze southeast of Morgan Hill as well as the ones on the coast.

I called.

“Yes, we’re open. It’s smokey, though.”

Coming through San Jose it started to sting the eyes even in the car and by the time I turned off the freeway, there was a plume behind the mountains on the coastal side. Eastward nearer Andy’s it was gray but without anything specific.

All I could do was say a silent prayer for all those in it, all those who don’t want to find themselves in it, and all those fighting those fires for the rest of us.

I got two flats of CalReds and some cherry-sized, exquisitely flavored green gage plums, and the similar mirabelle plums out of curiosity. Heirloom tomatoes. A bottle of poison oak honey (the very best). Slab dried apricots, not the prettiest but the ones that had been at peak ripeness so they went smush when pitted. Fresh-picked cobs of corn from his neighbor.

I was basically trying to pack all the Andy’s-ing I could into one trip because I felt I could take nothing for granted.

And then the fun part is I got home and emailed the friend who always wants a case of peaches whenever I go there and told her she had first crack at that second one.

Last time I’d gone they hadn’t had a second case that wasn’t already spoken for so I hadn’t been able to offer.

She was surprised I’d gone out in this, ecstatic for the peaches, and her husband picked them up almost immediately. They won’t end up pureed in my freezer for the winter but that’s okay, there’s still more August and I’ll just have to go back next week.

The mattress we ordered is supposed to finally arrive Saturday. I guess it has been sufficiently quarantined from its New Jersey origins now.

The trucker’s route is sending him north from LA, and I just sent him a note asking him to please check the fire situation before coming: the fires are in the mountains, but there was a brush fire alongside the main freeway down in the valley a few towns south of us yesterday.

I wanted him to know that his safety is the priority.

Friends have been evacuated from their homes, we haven’t heard back yet from Richard’s aunt but the red zone on the map is thankfully not close to her and she is clearly peachy fine. The Salinas fire does not seem to be near her daughter’s.

The air was yellow today, the light reflections inside were weirdly orange, and you walk outside and your nose says, hey, you need some marshmallows to go with the graham crackers and chocolate in the pantry. Just hold the skewer out…thataway.

One picture in the news made it clear that Richard could have seen the rising mushroom of smoke from the other side of the mountains from his office, if not for covid and working from home. (Do NOT take the scenic route up the coast!)

But at least we got a slight break on the heat.

My prayers for the firefighters and those in the path.

We were FaceTiming with the Washington grands Sunday and Lillian was walking easily across the rug from parent to parent, giggling.

But when she got to the tile floor she slipped and tumbled and nuts to this and crawled to get where she wanted to go.

Back to the rug.

Her brother was on the couch and mostly out of reach.

She grabbed for his toes. He didn’t mind. She peered over the edge. Okay, the walking’s cool but what she really wanted now was to be able to get up there and find out what he was so interested in and be a part of it. She wanted to climb. It was just too high and there was no foothold to be found.

The previous week it was the walking she’d wanted so bad to be able to do.

Yesterday the kids sent us a video: Lillian, in bare feet this time, walking on that tile floor. Everybody clapped so she stopped and clapped, too.

Hey. This time clapping didn’t make her fall down–and she was on the tile. She noticed. She was hesitant as to how to safely start up again, though.

“Mathias, do you want to help your sister?”

Mathias appeared from around the kitchen island and reached for her hand and as soon as she could touch his she was off again and around to the other side.

It wasn’t that he was doing anything to hold her up physically, it’s that she knew he was there and he loved her. And that made it so she could see that she could do this herself after all.

Wait–new pictures today. Look at her go! Okay, got the shoes off.

Those toes! And she’s practicing the climbing thing–she’s motivated.

I’ve mentioned Cottage Yarns in South San Francisco from time to time.

I got a Buy 3 Get 1 Free! email from Kathryn.

She’s only doing curbside because her county doesn’t allow customers to touch anything inside the store. You can’t pick up a book. You can’t squish and gauge which merino is softest. You have to know what you want.

Well I do. So I called and ordered fourteen skeins of Rios in Ravelry Red, with a conversation with my friend Afton to the side and headed on up there.

I asked Kathryn how it was going.

She said that while the county had everything completely shut down for two months, her landlord was only willing to cut the rent by 25%–while knowing her sales were zero for that time. After that, no breaks, no nothing, pay in full or you’re out.

So she is scrambling to make that rent.

You walk in her store (back when you could) to find cubbies along the walls on up to the ceiling, narrow aisles with more cubbies and more yarn above your head. Yarn yarn yarn. It’s a small space with a huge inventory. She doesn’t just sell Malabrigo, but that’s what I come for the most and she has more of it than anyone I know.

She’s not tech savvy and doesn’t have an online shop, but she will mail if you know what you want. She told me people have come to her after being able to find only a skein or two online elsewhere of something–whereas she’ll have a full bag or even two, enough to actually do a big project.

I showed her my ocean afghan so far. Most of it came from her. She was quite pleased.

I almost, almost bought the two bags of Rios in the Jupiter reds and browns colorway, but I was already picking up that red for a future afghan and had a request in for Matisse Blue to make another ocean afghan because a family member preferred that as the background; she’s checking to see if her yarn rep has it.

I texted Afton from the curb about that bag of Cian she had–my ocean’s background color, and got an enthusiastic, YES!

And so between the two of us we were able to help Kathryn out a bit and cheer her on. And, selfishly, to help keep my favorite yarn source going.

And then I went to the post office to mail Afton’s off to her.

Last week, the place was just deserted.

Today, the parking lot was full right after me. People were wearing masks and social distancing at the blue marks on the floor in a line that went from the two clerks (there used to be at least three if not four during the day, this being the main one in a major city in Silicon Valley) clear across the long room past all the post office boxes to the far window. They were not walking back out to try UPS because it might be shorter–they were walking in, seeing how it was, visibly taking it in stride one after another and putting that commitment of their time into this.

There was an outcry when, along with banning overtime and removing thousands of sorting machines, post office boxes in poor neighborhoods where people might vote were being removed last week–so Trump’s Postmaster General donor buddy had them stop doing that: instead, they put big red plastic locks on so no mail could go in.

We can fight back.

I paid for Priority and for insurance on not what I paid but what it would cost me to replace those ten skeins at full price plus pay for shipping and insurance again. More than I had to. Because I wanted to. They offered, as always, stamps, and I considered, but I’d just bought them twice and I wanted to look forward to an excuse for a next time. And frankly, I didn’t want them to run out for the day because, man, they just might.

All those patient-looking people behind me with that long long long wait were surely in it with the same determination.

The Post Office is under attack. Long live the post office.

Mail yarn. Make stuff with it, and mail that, too.

A restless night of not much sleep, not registering that there was a big storm going on out there, and I gave up and got up at a time when it just happened to be quiet out there.

I was washing my hands standing under the skylight when a flash of light startled me into glancing towards the light switch, not fathoming, just as the BOOM!!! hit and the power went out.

Found out later that one of the many lightning strikes had hit a few blocks over.

Thunderstorms?! In the Bay Area? In August? Rain? In AUGUST? A hundredth of an inch, as it turned out, but hey, that’s enough to sprout the fall weed seeds.

More and more house-rattling. I had been planning to go pick the one fig that should have been ripe first thing this morning. There was no going out there.

And then it seemed to settle down and all the booms stopped.

I really wanted that fig. I thought maybe I might chance it.

It wasn’t really raining (oh! Well, not enough for me to have heard from inside), just the slightest sprinkle.

For all that the fig, it turned out, had not finished ripening in the night and I left it there to be stolen later by the squirrels (which it was.)

Ten steps back to the door, I was halfway there, when out of the gray-not-blue, another BOOM! skittered me inside so fast! I could just picture the obituary: Lost Grandma because she just couldn’t bear to give up that one single piece of fruit to the rodents, but it was not the fig that got roasted.

They say we may have a repeat tonight of either yesterday’s PG&E shutdown or another weird storm and a third power outage, so dinner was the fastest thing I could cook so we wouldn’t be stuck with half-raw chicken and a fridge we couldn’t open.

Edited to add: I’m guessing that one of the biggest fire tornados ever may have helped create the atmospheric conditions that led to that storm.

Been too long.

You never know when someone else’s diet might change or something, so to be on the safe side I called before showing up.

I hadn’t seen Nina since before the pandemic started.

I put the ziplocked loaf of cranberry pumpkin sourdough down on her doorstep (that one recipe is totally worth the price of the book) rang the bell, and stepped back.

Our masks in place and with the sun low for the day’s heat blast to calm down some we continued the conversation outside that had begun on the phone. Life. Kids. Grandkids. Work.

There was such an intensity of joy in something so ordinary.

They made French toast with some of that bread after I left and I got exclamation marks!!! texted to me. Now she knew why I liked that recipe so much!

Any time, hon, any time.

That’s still around? He hasn’t used that in…huh, long enough that the seam of the can had started to rust. Wonder why he didn’t just toss it–maybe confusion over whether spray cans can be recycled or not. It’s empty, right?

Well, no, it wasn’t, and that’s why that bit of hefting felt so surprising. The little squirt in the same motion to make sure that it was exploded the stuff outwards like elementary school kids out the door at the sound of the recess bell pre-Covid.

Holy cow.

I was suddenly reliving the moment years ago when the trash men had dropped a small bottle of fabric paint out of the garbage can onto my driveway, my car hit it, and it exploded bright red paint droplets across the front of my house. My holly bush was suddenly female with berries. At least this wasn’t paint.

That shaving cream REEKED.

That’s why he hadn’t used it. And now the wall stank, and the floor, and several skirts in my closet, and that shirt? It was time for it to go to Goodwill anyway, that’s as good a reason as any. (I washed it.) My hands. Dang.

It was bad, man, it was bad, so bad that I was afraid our food would taste of it even though I washed my hands repeatedly before cooking dinner. I couldn’t get away from it.

And then I found more blue splurts of the stuff.

Some manufacturer thought that smell would bring on the girls, the fine restaurants, cool cars and the good life?

You know there were no women in that boardroom.

Into the trash. Thankfully, these days they have us put the cans out to the curb ourselves.

It doesn’t quite live up to the original, but, a Monster Mash sendup amused me.

After checking ahead, some friends stopped by after dinner. I pulled three chairs out of the kitchen and we set them up under the elm tree and visited outside, socially distanced and masked, the weather perfect with just the right breeze ruffling the many small leaves bowing down towards us.

Man did it feel good.

I hope we all treasure each other and our time together after this is all over as much as we do right now.

And I can only wonder if all my friends of normal hearing are learning more keenly how to read eyes for their expressions, to be more attuned to the emotions of those they’re in conversations with coming out of this?

Because with the masks on, everybody is visually as deaf as me. And a little muffled. One has to pay attention.

As these two ever have anyway, I’m just idly wondering.

I sent them home with two each of Andy’s perfect peaches.

In my mother’s day it was, But can she type?

My grandmother was a member and later president of the Congressional Wives’ Club back when the idea of a woman running for the Senate was considered unthinkable, when the wives were to wear proper white gloves and hats when calling upon one another and to support their important husbands.

Before their landlord priced them out during the first high tech boom, I used to drive to the biggest yarn store around, Straw Into Gold, in the western, flat part of Berkeley near the freeway, not far from the Oakland line. They had everything: spinning wheels, looms, classes, yarn in cones or skeins, and they were the American distributor for all things Ashford of wheel and loom fame.

Except parking. That could be a problem.

There was another warehouse-type building across the broken up alley from them that looked like it had been converted into housing, how legally so one could only guess. (This is not far from where the too-flammable Ghost Ship later came to be.) On its wall facing Straw, someone had written an angry warning, Do not pee against this wall because there are cameras and we will report you if you do.

This was not an incentive to spend too long around there once you walked out their door.

And that is the area around where Kamala Harris grew up, with UC Berkeley, where her mother was a researcher, up the road a bit.

And look where she is now.

I had two candidates I was undecided between and glad I didn’t have to make the final call–but when my daughter texted me to say it was Harris, something in me went YES!!! I knew. I just knew. Yes! She was the right choice and we will be well served having her as Vice President. I can’t wait.

(This was supposed to be posted Monday night, sorry for the delay.)

Now that it’s done I can feel comfortable saying it.

I asked the place our car got towed to to put one of those protective plates over our catalytic converter, and to either inscribe or if it was the only option to Sharpie our name and VIN number on it. They didn’t get back to me.

When I went to pick it up after 4:00 on Friday, that’s when they said, Oh, no, we don’t do any of that–but here’s who we recommend.

Like I could get that done before the weekend at that hour? It was going to be a long weekend: those thieves know where to go once that car’s back in the driveway.

So we set up as best a security system as we could kludge pointed at the car from inside the window and hoped.

Saturday we picked up groceries. The car ran quietly.

Sunday I turned it on and waited long enough for the motor to engage. Phew.

Today I called my own mechanic, who immediately ordered the part, called me back a few hours later and said, we’ll be ready at three.

Unlike the other guy, he had a waiting room I could knit in and they said I was welcome to same as I ever had–masks required now, of course.

What I didn’t know is, the metal plate came with a sticker to put on the car announcing what was now under the car: Cat Shield Protector, with a cat head logo.

Mike said he usually puts it in the lower corner of the window. I wanted it where people would see it when they look at the back of my car in the dark with the street light overhead without having to get out of their car–the see and scram method.

For a couple that doesn’t do bumper stickers, it’s a bit startling to have this prominent blue square to the left of the license plate but you do what you have to do.

The neighbors across the street knocked on the door. They had heard. What day had it happened?

Well, we didn’t drive the car Monday or Tuesday, and Wednesday we knew.

They checked their security footage: the first time this happened to us they could find nothing, their camera was aimed at their driveway not ours, but this time, it was Wednesday, 12:23 a.m., a white or silver car, the headlights were beamed towards their cameras and whited out the license plate, but the thieves were there and they were out of here three minutes later.

They have the video. It’s not all it could be, but it’s something.

The police were quite happy to know that.

I got the large wide flat boxes from my Dad maneuvered between the wheels and out from under the bed and was trying, including using a broom handle, to reach all the stuff that had fallen between the headboard and the mattress.

Note that a startup company a few miles away, years ago, decided to make a competitor to the then-popular Palm Pilot with more features, like a camera–and decided at the last second that it might have an even bigger market if they added a phone. Rumor is that they almost didn’t but smarter heads prevailed. There was an early version of text messaging.

And that is how the Sidekick came to be. All the cool people in Hollywood had one, all the tech nerds wrote about it. Not that that’s something I would normally know or care about in the slightest, and not that I normally aspired to own the latest electronics. But Richard’s co-worker camped out in front of the store to get one of the very first ones to be sold, showed it off at work, and then my hubby went straight there at 5:00 pm to buy one, too.

The moment he showed it to me I said, And did you get two? Because this is a deaf person’s phone and I need it more than you do.

It was extra cool that the young handsome face on the box clearly living the happy life with this perfect new gadget just waiting for you inside! happened to be our daughter’s high school classmate. Hey, I didn’t know Dan modeled! (Probably his mom worked there, and she knows a good-looking kid when she sees one.)

Richard went back.

And that is how the smartphone craze got started: a company called, don’t ask me why, Danger.

Can I…reach that… I snagged it!

Out it came from under the head of the bed.

An empty box for a Palm Travel Kit. Had a charging cord and everything, it said!

I stared at the thing, trying to grok it. That’s like a leash to go take my pet dodo bird for a walk.

She called this afternoon. Could we come pick up our car?

Blink. No almost-three-week wait this time? Sure!

The rental people had said I could leave the car there and they’d get it; Richard was talking to them while I was hurrying off to get ours.

I paid the deductible, but they were closing early because that was their last task of the day, and I asked, “How do I get the key back to Enterprise?”

“You give it to me,” said a by-now familiar voice as he walked in behind me.

I joked to her, “I’ll see you next week,” and she, knowing what we’d gone through twice now, half-joked, “I don’t ever want to see you again.”