The blossoms continue upwards and my sour cherry tree is dancing for joy in a hoop skirt.

Meantime, my old friends Ron and Theresa at thebuffalowoolco.com have been selling the last of their bison/silk socks. They’re my husband’s One True Sock and we stocked up when they announced the cost of silk now is ending those and when they’re gone they’re gone.

But then the mill, using up the rest of the yarn, made a few more pairs.

The catch was that they were seconds.

Ron and Theresa and crew personally went over every single pair to make sure they were okay, and they were, but seconds are seconds and they knocked a chunk off the price.

When Richard opened the package yesterday (I got him something else too because socks for your birthday is officially a That Doesn’t Count gift no matter how much he likes them) it took me about a heartbeat. And then another.

Why they were seconds.

Their socks have a little bison motif knit across the toes and that motif is color-coded by size.

The XLs were yellow.

My mediums are yellow. His are supposed to be orange. It really speeds up the sock-sorting by a lot and I’ve always thought it was a nice touch on their part.

Ron confirmed it when I asked: someone at the mill had forgotten to change that yarn during the knitting.

I told him I’d laughed, because, of all the problems in the world right now? There’s more than one way to eyeball a sock size.

And I told him that surprising us with an extra pair that was bison/merino was very generous–and brilliant. Because someday my hubby will need more socks. And now he has a way to learn in advance that their other ones are great, too. But that was so unexpected and so cool to find tucked in there.

See? Socks *can* be a real gift!

Long long ago in a job far far away…

He was trying to remember the guy’s name. No, the one before that, what was it. I said do you really want to remember it. No not really. So anyway.

And then he told me a story I’d never heard in full before. He said it was the one where he’d really learned that you have to listen to the other guy even when they’re blatantly wrong and not just try to say what you think.

He had a boss, and this boss had a vision of what he wanted the big project to be and told his minions to get to it.

But there was a problem: that software he wanted them to create and that hardware he wanted to put it into–wouldn’t work. Would break.

This was back when what you now carry around in your phone took a whole room full of computer equipment running on hamster wheels.

Me: Was this the job where the boss was trying to break the laws of physics?

Him: No, no, that was someone else.

The guy wouldn’t listen to anybody trying to tell him anything: you have your assignments, just go do them. You heard me!

This went on for over a year.

One of Richard’s co-workers was our neighbor down the street and quietly told him that the boss had commanded him, presumably at the peril of his job, not to talk to Richard. Why? Because he knew too much and wasn’t afraid to speak up.

People on the team were frustrated and angry and all that did was make things with the boss worse. They wondered how upper management was letting this waste of the company’s resources and their time go on.

Finally, my peacemaker sweetie went Ghandhi on the guy: he quietly talked to everybody and said, Listen: as long as we keep fighting him we’re giving him a shield to hide behind for *his* boss and he can blame us. If we all stop arguing so he’s got no one to push against, maybe that will finally make the difference.

So they did.

(And here’s where I was picturing the protests I’ve seen at Tesla, where everybody is having their say on their signs while loving being in each other’s company and having a good time together.)

The guy’s boss came into town to sit down with him and hear him out on how this big project was going.

The perfect chance to expound on his lofty ideas.

His boss listened to him in disbelief: but you can’t do that with that, you have to have this first to do that and you don’t.

Me: So what happened?

Him: The guy got transferred overseas. To a job with far less authority, about as far away as they could send him from us.

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.

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.”

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.)

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! 

Casting off in purl stitch from a wrong-side row to end a seed stitch border gives it such a polished finish. Love it.

Meantime.

A fun bit of amateur theater at church this evening. For me, a four year old stole the show: all dressed up as a mouse, she had a tail. A long tail. A tail she could twirl. A tail she could wrap around her waist in a hug. And again. A tail she could flip up and down, lasso or yo-yo, all the things, but she did, she had a magical tail and it would soon be all over and she was not going to miss one moment of it.

She was adorable.

We needed a grocery stop on the way home. Richard said he’d sit in the car and read his book while I ran into Trader Joe’s; I invited him to join me, but something felt cheerfully like he had the right idea.

When I came back to the car, the first words out of his mouth were, Well that was weird.

What was weird.

A guy knocked on the window. He had a little kid, and said the younger one had fallen asleep in the car and he didn’t want to wake him up and if he gave Richard his phone number so he could call immediately if there was any problem whatsoever, could he leave Richard keeping an eye on his little one while he ran in real quick?

And you let him?! (I said as my brain jerked back decades before to a local baby who had been snatched when a parent ran in a store ‘for just a moment.’)

He, on the other hand, had had the immediate reaction that I had to think my way past my knee-jerkiness to: he remembered what it was like and how hard it was at that stage of parenthood. He had a clear line of sight to the kiddo. It was a compliment to be taken for the kind grandpa that he is and that the guy had instinctively trusted him to be. He lived up to that trust by not taking his eyes off the kid till the dad got back. Three, four minutes at most, he told me, he was fast.

I said, That WAS fast–they’re in the middle of rearranging the store right now like they occasionally do and everything’s moved out of place. It took me forever to find anything that wasn’t in the dairy case. But I bet his wife wouldn’t be thrilled if she knew, though.

Maybe.

Did he thank you when he came back out? (He was already gone by the time I did.)

Oh yes. Richard added that he’d seen it as a chance to make the world a little better place for one overwhelmed dad in this one place at this one time, to be a neighbor. And who wouldn’t want that?

Twenty rows on the bottom edging, not 13, 13 was the number of edge stitches. Darn. Of course. Fourteen done now, six to go.

Those long rows are giving me a little more time to plan the next one in my head as well as on paper.

I had had a particular yarn all set to go for the next project, but…

I finally messaged my little sister. I told her I had asked Mom her take on it and that she’d thought the same way I had, that Anne has all the pictures she could ever want in her house and with my turn to give to her next Christmas, I should knit her a monochrome afghan to play as quiet backdrop to all her gorgeous watercolors.

And I sent her a picture of the yarn that it was purportedly going to be made from, making clear that that was an offer, not a requirement.

By this time my siblings are on to me: Carolyn got her picture of her house right down to the tire swing with the scuffed grass below it, the one that started all this, Morgan got the moose and the river and forest and strawberry farm from our childhood memories.

I want one with a story! she texted back.

She wanted me to give it my all like I had with them. She was really hoping for a picture, too.

Part of me felt a near-giddy sense of having been set free. Intarsia is where my knitting soul is right now. But also–a story? Which story, out of a lifetime? How on earth do you choose?

And so my brain has been (mostly) glad to have all those long tedious seed stitch rows in order to leave it rummaging through its drawers these past two days. I poked around on Ravelry this afternoon to see if there were any already-invented wheels on some ideas.

Ooh, look at… And… I could tweak… Yeah….!

Now to make them all come out to scale to each other and to the afghan’s overall size. And how much of that green did I use up last time. Okay then. Let me just finish this last little tiny bit….

(Photos coming.) We decided to make it one last day of yarn-shop hopping for the official Crawl. We might actually pull off a Bingo on our cards that they stamped each time we walked into a new one–and we did.

I packed the snacks. Nina drove. Again. Patterns and all that.

Having wished again and again during the afghan that I hadn’t used up all of this shade or that previously, I had my eye out for the ones I’d wanted to replace.

When we called it a day after Royal Bee, our husbands met up with us on the coast for dinner. They asked us, So: did you buy any yarn? with both of them cracking up, like, oh, no, they would never do such a thing in such a place.

My answer was, it averaged out to a skein per shop. It was fun to find colors I loved in the yarn I wanted–but the point was to spend time with Nina.

She laughed as she was nodding yes to that.

We were at Barbara’s Fishtrap. Nina and I had compared memories of Ivar’s in Seattle so I had to try a small bowl of the clam chowder to see if it was as good as theirs. The answer is, I’d have to try them side by side to tell because Barbara’s was very very very good, too, enough to make it all that I’d want to order the next time. It’s a tie. Best I’ve ever had, both of them.

There were surfers in the famous Mavericks surf whom we passed coming and going, there was the point of land stretching around the cove behind us (if you click on their link and scroll down, we were by that window in the center of the building), and at the top of that hill was a bulbous–

–I said, “Looks like a baby rattle.”

They did a double take at the water tower off in the distance and cracked up.

Edited to add: the note on the sign says, “If you are Grouchy, Sullen, Ornery, Moody, or Just Plain Mean, There is a $20 surcharge for having to put up with you.”

Nope, didn’t feel the quake, wouldn’t have known it had happened if I hadn’t glanced at a headline in my inbox just now. A 3.9 on the East Bay tonight is how we like them: for entertainment purposes only.

I was busy in the kitchen with fond memories of my in-laws visiting from Maryland thirty-odd years ago. I’d said to my MIL, Remember that Hot Milk Sponge Cake that you and my mom both used to make from the 1950s Betty Crocker cookbook (and that I’d found a pristine copy of at a garage sale my senior year of high school–score!)

Yeah?

Well, I substitute fresh-squeezed lemon juice for 2/3 of the milk.

Her next words were diplomatic but her face was in utter disbelief at such a use of such an expensive ingredient: Why would you do that?

I laughed and gestured: Because I have a tree!

And because it makes almost a lemon curd effect across the top by the next day, if the cake somehow lasts that long with kids in the house.

So. There’s that almond orange muffin recipe I experimented my way towards and that Nina thoroughly approved of during our yarn crawl last week. We are going again. There must be more snacks.

But my freezer is now empty of that puree and my mandarins need another month and it would be a crime to pick them too early.

The Meyer lemons, on the other hand…

But their piths are famously bitter. You boil seedless oranges for 20 minutes to make the orange puree (discard the water they’re boiled in) to get rid of any bitterness. Okay, I made it 25 min with the Meyers just to be sure. I drained them. I cut them open and spent awhile picking out every single seed.

My Cuisinart bowl being in the dishwasher, I threw them and the juice that had come out of them into the blender and let it run for awhile.

It came out the texture of the most fabulous lemon mousse you ever saw. I measured out 2/3 of a cup and then put the rest in silicone molds in the freezer for next time.

So here’s how I tweaked the recipe:

Lemon Almond muffins (gluten free, wheat free)

2 c. almond flour

1 tsp baking powder

about, ummm, that much salt, I dunno, half a teaspoon-ish?

a hair under 3/4 c sugar, which is a lot, but these are lemons we’re talking about. When I’m making this with oranges I use 1/3 to 1/2 c; my husband’s sweet tooth prefers the 1/2 c.

a generous 1/4 c melted butter, ie that’s what it was meant to be but it measured out closer to 1/3 and I’m okay with that and remind me not to grab the Costco butter that’s all one pound lumps next time

3 eggs (I know, living like kings here. Eggs!)

and the 2/3 c pureed boiled lemon into the mixer at the last.

12 muffins, 350F, 23 minutes in my oven. Will be on the pale side when the toothpick is clean. As always, almond flour muffins hold together better if you wait till they’re completely cool to eat. I use paper liners in the pan to counteract any early stick-and-crumble factor.

Definitely, definitely making these again.

Yesterday’s yarn purchases. I don’t usually buy chunky, but when you have a granddaughter whose favorite outfit is, to quote her mother, “rainbow leopard sparkle” and you find some Urth yarn like the one on the left, well there you go.

Just got back from celebrating the anniversary of old friends of ours. Their kids flew into town, we got to catch up with them all–I went to college with one of them–and I took the youngest aside and told him,

You changed everything.

I what?

I told him, I argued with that feeling that I should knit for you, going, I can’t knit for everybody who ever compliments my stuff, there’s only one of me and there would be no end of it, I mean, c’mon!

The feeling was so insistent (and he knew the end of that story. It was a vest. A Kaffe Fassett vest, with him at 15 picking out all the colors for it in disbelief as I egged him on to choose more because I knew he wanted to) and his reaction had been so intensely grateful that I’d wanted to be a part of that again. I wanted to knit for other people again. You did that, I said. I’d kept a running list for awhile of the people I had knit for after that and at 182 went, That’s not what it’s about–ditch this. And that had been about 20 years ago.

I thanked him again for changing my life.

His foster/adoptive parents were celebrating their 70th anniversary. Good folks.

I’m heading out with Nina in the morning to play first day of the Bay Area Yarn Crawl. (Had I ever been to this LYS in Morgan Hill? No. This other one in San Carlos? Never heard of it somehow. Well then we will discover them.)

But first I wound the skein of green Manos Silk Blend that she brought me back from Uruguay last month as, y’know, kind of a yarn vaccine–and because I owe it to her to have it ready to cast on. Pretty stuff.

But I promise you we will succumb to the wool fumes just the same.

I took photos of two dye lot numbers to see if I can match them–you know how doubtful that is, but it has happened before and hey, you never know.

As I sit here remembering back in the days of random phone calls from investor types dialing into our area code and not having the least clue that it was in a time zone three hours off from theirs. …The email I’d sent off to a LYS, including my number. To make it easier for them? To make the inquiry feel more legitimate a reason for them to spend their time looking at all those little yarn tags? I can only guess now.

And my husband waking groggily up at dark o’clock, shoving the phone across that I had not in my sleep heard ringing, and going, “It’s your boiler-room yarn pushers in New York City. They want you to know they don’t have your dye lot.”

It’s been a running joke here ever since.

They were calling before opening the store in order to catch me before I might head off to work. It was very kind of them. They could simply have ignored me, but they were trying to be as helpful as they could as fast as they could and get that info to me so I would know to keep trying.

So let me see what I can do tomorrow.

If I don’t find it, maybe they have more of that Rios in New York City.

Plant a tree, bake a pie. (Some time may need to elapse in between.) English Morello tart cherry.

Happy Birthday to my youngest!