US News and World Report came out with its high school rankings, I just happened to casually mention to him: Mine was #3 in the state.

He looked at me, knowing that that big grin meant his no longer scored higher.

#14!

He put on a face like Stephen Colbert about to mock a politician and said, Clearly, their information sources were incomplete and out-of-date.

#3! #3!

Hah!

But then, his having been built on an old cow farm, their mascot was The Mighty Moo. When you yell, Gooo, MOOOO at your sports teams you know that those were kids who could laugh at themselves and then get back to the books.

The plane was delayed. There was not a cab to be found at that hour. We went to plan B, rolled out of bed, marveled at how little traffic there was (duh), and got her home.

Later I found myself at Safeway staring at the locked cabinets that are a silent testament to The Great Big River Company’s lack of competence at policing the sale of stolen goods on their site.  Man has that part of living changed since I last bought this stuff when she was a teen.

Push This Button For Help.

I thought of all the reasons I had never had to do that before. Alright then.

A guy showed up with a key.

I told him, My daughter flew in at 3:30 this morning and realized, Mom, I need my contact stuff! (And she was on Eastern time.)

His face softened. In that moment, he was looking out for her, too, glad to play his part, and then walked off smiling.

It is amazing how much we give each other when we can see each other. Shop local, indeed.

Her plane is in the air, I can’t wait!

One of the things Whole Foods is good for is allergy-friendly food. I picked up a number of her favorites.

I found it. Yes! They had a dairy-free chocolate hazelnut spread. I debated on various cream substitutes for the rest of the ice cream batch I was plotting but realized I’d better let her tell me her preferences first.

You have to read every ingredient every time. Manufacturers make changes all the time.

The tired clerk looked like he was just counting the minutes till his shift was over and he could get out of there as he rang my stuff up.

I looked at the conveyer belt as he started to bag it up and told him, My daughter’s flying in from Boston tonight. So: all the chocolate!

He laughed and he looked at me with joy for my joy that I was going to get to see her. He was young but old enough to really know comings-home. It made his day, and that made mine: it was one of those moments that takes you by surprise and almost takes your breath away because all the sudden the love is right there, totally out in the open, we were strangers no more.

I told him Thank you! as I headed out of the store.

Richard’s reaction to the New York Times article about Andy’s farm turning into housing was the same as my initial one: Go. Go now. Everybody will want to.

I said, But I’m going tomorrow with Holly, but he and I both still felt it–Go! The place will be cleaned out.

I hopped right in the car and went.

She loves figs like I love peaches and the figs were on, along with the last of the nectarines and plums; from her house we are more than halfway to Andy’s and she wanted to see the place while it was still there. Her husband had a meeting in our town today. What’s an extra ninety minutes on the road at that point?

Cool, we’ll have a great time!

You never know though how plans will actually work out and they had a long drive ahead of them. I was standing in Andy’s farm store thinking about roasting figs and saving them in the freezer as an ingredient in winter, ready to go, and how good those have been to have. You never know. The figs will still be on next week, I’ll still be making my weekly trek. I don’t need a lot of them right now, I started to brush it away. One should be plenty for now. I’ll be right back tomorrow.

The thought persisted, hard, you never know.

So I brought home not one box for us but three: Exel, Tiger aka Panachee aka Panache depending on who’s doing the spelling, and Black Madeira. The descriptions of Black Madeira on the Fig Forum were so good that I actually bought a scion once but did not succeed at rooting it. I got a bit of leaf out of it before it died.

It was ten bucks. If I’d been serious about it I’d have bought a started tree but I knew I had no room for that.

So what actually happened: traffic was horrible and they were stuck in it for an extra hour and by the time she’d dropped him off across town, the idea of getting back in the car for another ninety, when we could just sit and talk and for me to be able to hear with no traffic noise…

And there were her figs all ready and waiting. Or mostly. One each of the Black Madeira and the Tiger had been sampled by then, because hey, we were going to go to Andy’s together the next afternoon. The one Delicioso plum she let me add to them hoped to make up for it.

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?

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.

No one was doing anything with water this afternoon when he heard the big gurgle sound and hurried to check it out.

The tub was filling with water. The bathroom floors were in Deep Splash mode and flowing out the doors, with ours flowing under our closet and soaking any clothes that touched clothes that touched the floor, and I am married to a tall man. I instantly knew what a huge job this was all about to be.

But everything had been fine a half hour earlier!

And if you mop it up with towels–I had this moment of oh I’m so glad we got that dryer in time! immediately followed by, wait… Water was pouring out of the laundry room too. With no machine in use all day.

At least it was clear. It was clear it was clear it was clear. Not that I’d trust it for that but at least it felt better.

Shortly after, a friend drove up with his shop vac as I was twisting out towels out front and told him I was watering the azaleas.

Dave pitched right in. We sent him home with Andy’s peaches and a pound of dried apricot slabs and he asked about how to take care of the apricot tree we gave him a few months ago; I showed him mine so he could see what his would look like at a year older, and at the difference in growth since he’d picked up his.

This city owns its own utilities and they answer to the voters, which I love because it means their emergency guy came out within minutes to check the city’s line to the house. He was actually apologetic that the problem wasn’t there so he couldn’t do anything about it; we sent him off with thanks and a peach.

We sent yesterday’s installers home with a small box of peaches each.

We’re hoping our favorite plumber can make it tomorrow.

And after that I’m going to have to go back and pick up more peaches at Andy’s because we’re going through them pretty fast.

Okay, it looked like we were back up, I tried to post, and everything went poof. As Richard put it, The blog was well and truly hacked.

Let’s see if I can retrieve it… There it is! And yay again for the resident geek! But my preview is gone and it’s late at this point and you’ll just have to take it with no editing work.

—

And the blog is back up! Yay for the resident geek!

After ten long months of hanging things to dry in the kids’ old bathroom overnight, with family coming soon that just wasn’t going to work anymore. Did Speed Queen owe me a working dryer under the warranty? Yes they did. Would they do it? No they refused. Did the seller go to bat for me with them? No. Speed Queen would only repair the old one, telling me they never replace, and the repairman said that that was a risk he wasn’t willing to take because the board sparking meant it was too much of a fire hazard. Nearly burning the house down once was enough.

He was clearly afraid I would sue them and he would be dragged into it and he was done with it. He wouldn’t come and they wouldn’t give. And so I got nowhere.

I fantasized about returning it to the seller’s doorstep but didn’t want to be charged with dumping.

I can now no longer prove to Speed Queen that their machine is as the guy told me: it is gone. The new one via Costco is a Frigidaire with good reviews and the delivery men were the best.

Two things I learned: companies seem to be cutting costs by getting rid of the interior light and by curving the top of the back dashboard inward at the sides so they can use less metal. Many reviews complained about clothes falling down behind in the gaps that created.

The Frigidaire is much closer to straight up and it has an interior light and it’s a classic front-entry like I wanted and by golly it works, it works and that’s all I ever wanted in a dryer. It cost about half what my Speed Queen did. Warm clothes that are softened in the process! No more burlap towels!

So: I opened the door to the delivery guy with the greeting, My hero! And explained it had been ten months without one. He laughed. 

There were two of them and they each got sent off with a box of peaches from Andy’s bought yesterday and napkins they were going to need for them. It was 4:30, they’d been working since 6 a.m., they were tired, but they both perked up at those peaches, more so than the tip.

The inaugural load has begun. At long, long last.

Coming to the dinner table tonight, he mentioned: I like your little sheep.

Me, grinning: You finally noticed it!

He was a little surprised when I told him it had been there since yesterday after the mail came.

B(w!)aaahhaahah…

Blame my friend Trish. She showed off hers. Five bucks.

Baaaaad news, I tell ya, and yeah, mine came today.

Waiting for a certain someone to notice.

Went out tonight, and turns out another couple was celebrating at the table next to us. Great food, good times, Flea Street Cafe has served us more of our anniversary dinners than anywhere else for a reason.

Till he got out of the car at home and went, in complete bewilderment, Wait–where’s…(checks inside car, checks under the car) my shoe??

We called. I headed back there and found myself following another car most of the way. Walked in.

They saw my returning face and went, Oh good, here it is.

And tried to hand me a credit card that I had never seen before. That’s not mine. I’d called because my husband has neuropathy and can’t feel his feet and he had somehow lost his shoe.

The woman who’d checked us in just a little earlier ran to retrieve the well-worn singleton for me–and laughed and laughed when I thanked her but added with a grin/shrug, I was kind of hoping it was lost forever and I could finally get him to wear a new pair, he loves these. Thank you!

Meantime, the driver of the car I’d followed had come in. It was her credit card. She was also the woman who’d been sitting at the next table and was delighted to see me again. She looked at the shoe in my hands and said she and her husband had been mystified why they’d seen a shoe sitting in the parking lot near the door on their way out–well, there you go!

We chatted like old friends, the way women tend to do.

It was their anniversary, too.

Forty-six.

Fifty-six!

Alright!

My dad’s not here to hear my latest anymore, so you’ll just have to suffer through it.

What does your fruit tree make when it’s a half-dozen years old?

Six fig-years.

Oh right. The blog. Was so busy talking and Facetiming with kids and grandkids that I suddenly realized that anything else will have to wait till tomorrow.

Which makes for a pretty great picture of his having had a happy Father’s Day, actually.

40″, past the part where I constantly have to think about how I’m going to do it next, on to the trees above the surf!

Meantime, there was a small dinner party tonight. At the end, people were to ask a question of a randomly-assigned other person in the group and they to them in return and then share with everyone.

I marveled at how, having known each other for decades, there was so much we didn’t really know as to what our back stories were about why we like what we do and why we do it. I shared a story that was old to me but not to them.

Mom, the woman your age in our ward is in awe of you and Dad at the trip you were willing to take with six kids and a camping trailer in a circle around the country and across Canada and down the West Coast (with a stop in Mexico) and back to Maryland for most of that summer where you taught me to knit. She has eight kids. She was going, And you were all in one car?! For two months?!

I said, And then in high school I found a sweater in my mom’s knitting magazine that I really really wanted and I asked Mom to knit it for me. She told me, Go make it yourself!

I wasn’t about to admit I didn’t remember how. I did have to ask to be reminded how to cast on–and then, playing snotty teenager, I went in my room and worked out how to do it myself.

Which means I do it totally different from how my mom does.

Which meant that when my lupus began and my arthritis was severe in my hands, I found I could knit–my way. Had it been the more elegant way my mom was taught I would never have been able to become anything of the knitter that I am now. Grab then drop the yarn in the right hand each stitch, and I can do it really fast, too (or thought I could, till I saw Stephanie Pearl-McPhee knitting in person. Wow.)

I asked C how she got into theater, and she said her dad was in a play when she was a little girl and someone had to watch her so he took her with him to rehearsals–where she quickly memorized every person’s lines and corrected them when they got it wrong.

And I laughed, thinking of trying to speed up a toddler’s bedtime story: they always know. You can’t get away with it.

I knew she’d grown up on a farm on the plains of Alberta and I had always wondered how on earth theater and she had found each other.

Clearly someone else out there, whoever they were, refused to not have theater in their lives and I wonder how many communities in how many places have benefited because that person kept doing what they loved doing no matter what ninety years ago. And roped C’s dad into it.

C has written plays, she has produced many, she has given so much to the community. She has definitely played it forward.