Three years away, she had to reestablish herself as a local patient. Every officially first-time appointment takes longer. Today was the day three departments  wanted to see her, and a twist of fate was such that I got to drive her.

We had to be on the road by seven, then again in the early afternoon, and then, different city and rush hour, the last one, which we actually got to three minutes early. Yay.

The first one, um, tried.

The others were great.

It was a three-cookie-sheet-puzzle night with a side of spatula-ing.

I was still coughing, I didn’t want to infect anybody with this, and Tuesday’s doctor appointments start half an hour after sunrise, so I took it easy and watched church by Zoom again. Old dear friends were in town, it turned out, and I missed them, but I’m glad I didn’t pass anything on to them; they matter more than my getting to see them.

The fridge door wouldn’t close. There was nothing in the way. We finally tried leaning against it a moment and it thankfully stayed shut after that.

This had to be tracked down.

And so the lower drawers got pulled out, even though it’s hard to with that door not quite opening wide enough ever, and scrubbed and dried and re-organized.

You know those single-servings of guacamole that Costco sells?

Three had fallen behind the back of the drawer, pushing it forward. There’s your easy fix.

But look, Mom, she said: the glass shelf. It’s tilted. The supports are not even to each other anymore.

Oh well. It’s 32 years old.

It looked really great now and the door shut just fine. Call that one user error.

Still. If anyone has good things to say about any manufacturer whatsoever who actually responds to warranty complaints with integrity–but whose refrigerators seldom need such–I would dearly love to know.

Richard told me calling an ambulance was the next step if I couldn’t get fluids down after I said there was no way I could sit up, much less walk to the car for IV rehydration in Urgent Care. He took my blood pressure: 84/46.

It is a relief to be able to be up and slightly about again. Yay for sleep and for kids’ milk boxes with straws in the earthquake supplies–that’s about as no-effort fluids as you can get.

She came home last week. She saw Holly’s lemons on the table: not Meyers like our tree but the classic Eureka type. Cool! She called dibs. With a great big pretty please.

We had enough sweets around…

She really really wanted that lemon chiffon cake that had so many good memories wrapped around the thought.

Tonight we squinted through the copy of the copy of the copy that had the instructions part mostly cut off–she knew I would just know because I was such a baker all her childhood. I cheated: I compared it to my 1952 Betty Crocker to find out how long I should have it in the oven. And I substituted some of the water with the extra tablespoon of juice the lemon offered up.

I finally baked it for her. And I would brag and tell you how good it was except that we’re not cutting into it till breakfast, so all we’re doing right now is admiring its pretty face.

Call it a fruit omelet, yeah, that’s it.

Nope, it won’t let me save the photo, I’ll just have to hope the link still works.

A house by the same builder as ours has just sold. Most of theirs was in its original 1950s state, although the wood-panel walls in the master bathroom were replaced with tile: those did tend to rot.

I’m having flashbacks at how much of it is like what we saw when we walked in this place the first time, right down to the white kitchen tile. That bar across the entry to the kitchen hit Richard at forehead level and the woman across the room said into her phone, Oh, these people are not going to buy this house!

She and her husband were fixing it up for his parents to sell. They were Japanese and had changed the master shower to be nice and low. I was a little too tall for it at 5’5″. Richard was 6’8″. It was such a small stall that he couldn’t kneel down to get under the shower head because his legs were cut in half by the metal runners the door slid across on. The daughter-in-law knew whereof she spoke.

That showerhead was the first thing to go. The bar in the kitchen went when we remodeled seven years later.

Our kitchen cupboards were–this was the latest thing in the 1950s–pressboard on wooden runners: you don’t pull them open, you sliiiide across, lightweight and easy.

Except that after the Loma Prieta quake, if you tried to slide them they simply fell down on your head. That got old.

In that listing they’ve given the upper cabinet fronts hinges instead. They’ve put in a double oven. In the original, the oven was up high, singular, and so small that when I bought a Thanksgiving turkey the first year, I got it home and suddenly realized it might not fit in. Good thing it was a small one. And in ours, the kitchen had been painted sunflower yellow and avocado green.

I’m mostly typing this because our youngest was six when we started remodeling and I don’t know how much the kids remember of how it was. It’s fun to see it. We still have those hanging sphere lights; they’re great for telling if a sudden rumble is a new earthquake or not.

And that kitchen makes me really appreciate our oak cabinetry.

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.