One of my husband’s co-workers saved a New York Times article a week ago and sent it home with him, wondering what we would think of it.  Front and center was all about what their food writer had declared to be Mormon cooking.  There was a big picture captioned “updated funeral potatoes,” a take on that classic dish for feeding a big crowd that was a novelty to the co-worker but not so much to us.

No I do not cook with canned cream of anything soup myself. Go for the classic au gratin here if anything, thanks. The writer would have you believe that means we’re a generation removed from living in Utah.

Actually, that part is true.

Meantime, a lot of life suddenly got squeezed into the last two days, too much. I hereby request a breather for a few, I thought earlier today.

And then I got exactly that. I got to meet DebbieR; she’s a peach. She was in the area briefly and we met up at Purlescence.

I opened that door, she was two steps away on the other side of it, she came towards me recognizing my face from the blog and told me she was Debbie and I instantly felt in the presence of a true friend. Everything there confirmed it totally. I feel so blessed.

She was traveling with some friends who were very good about waiting for us as we caught up as if we’d always known each other.

After they all left, I knitted quietly for awhile on a baby hat, getting my Sandi-Nathania-Kaye fix, and then excused myself: I needed to go home to babysit the phone I could hear on and my PC’s inbox.

I had gotten a message from Sam earlier: with ITP and lupus, there are episodes where you just hold your breath and pray real hard.  The last message we got sounded better; we’re hoping she gets a new med approved and that it will work because honey right now nothing else does.

Debbie had offered her to knit her fingerless gloves in her choice of color. Sam was thrilled. Debbie asked me if a lace pattern would allow too much UV exposure. Debbie is thoughtful and careful in addition to being generous with her time.

How do you thank someone who looks out for your child  and takes her into her heart as if she were her own? A shoutout to DebbieR: Thank you. It doesn’t begin to say it.

And yesterday.

My friend Andrea asked me a few weeks ago to make two chocolate tortes for her; sure. She brought me some of the ingredients, the most important to me being the manufacturing cream, because it is sold in an open-air store that has sun exposure issues for me.

So I had the rest of that half gallon of cream afterwards.  You can’t just leave it there. I baked. A spare torte ended up in the freezer.

Every time I asked Richard if he’d like it for xyz, for this group or that, for us to munch on or… ?, he would answer, not yet. No, let’s wait. No, let’s leave it in there for now. I thought I had good reasons to share it and free up the space; he just didn’t feel…

Okay, no problem. There was no rush.

Yesterday that co-worker’s wife got a call in the morning: her father had passed. She went off to work: where she was told she was being laid off after 27 years. She went to the doctor: she got told that yes, that was probably basal cell cancer.

She has a bandaid now for the part they could fix.

Richard asked his co-worker today to be sure. Then he asked me.

Oh honey absolutely yes.

And that is how the chocolate torte that Andrea made to come to be became a gift of friendship and community at the moment it was most needed.  Without my even having to go out in the sun to make it for them–I know how much that couple likes those tortes. It was something I could do. Did do, all ready.

They stood there in the dark in front of their house this evening, holding it gratefully, inhaling the thawing chocolate.

I thanked them for saving the article. We joked wryly over funeral potatoes. I told them chocolate torte was my real Mormon cooking.

This evening the phone rang and we were talking with our daughter Sam, then we were Skyping with our grandson Parker and his family and the phone rang and the doorbell did too and a friend was there and a little while later another call and then the first friend left and then the phone rang and another friend rang the doorbell and it was all crazy-busy in a wonderful way and I wondered if I was going to have to skip the blog tonight.

And in the midst of all that was a request from my sister: she had started a blog and wanted to link to a post of mine; would it be okay?

Blog, this is my sister Marian. I think you’ll like her.

And Blog, this is my daughter Sam. I think you’ll like her too. If you ever wanted to know (or ever wanted to be able to tell someone) what questions to ask, what things to do or say or not do or say to someone who’s been given a major diagnosis, she’s got posts in two parts, last Sunday and the one before, that I wish I’d had when I was new at this lupus thing. Medical jargon translated? There you go.

Not to mention great recipes at the beginning of what she thought was going to stay a cooking blog.

Enjoy. I’m quite proud of them.

I almost could have sworn that was Richard’s dad in the other room: the voice. The cadences.  The chuckles. The song of it.

The words themselves were completely lost to me at that distance, though they did seem more garbled than my hearing might account for and I wondered if the speaker had had a small stroke I didn’t know about.

Was that his grandfather on the reel-to-reel, I asked? I actually would have guessed his father if it hadn’t been for the distortion; it sounded that much like his dad.

No–it was Richard’s great grandfather, recorded in 1957 or ’58 by his grandfather, who also recorded his mother-in-law during a trip back to where he grew up; her voice was next.

I tried to grok how a man whose father had been preached to by Joseph Smith in 1834, a man who had lived his life on a farm in Idaho, could sound so much across the years like how his grandson, who grew up surrounded by all that is official Washington DC, does now in 2012. That easy-going easily-laughing voice. Twins.

The generations are closer together than we know.

First there were the tapes. Family voices from long ago that Richard digitally transcribed for his mom for Christmas. She was absolutely thrilled that she could now share them with her brothers and sister and children rather than having them sit in a drawer. Most. Successful. Present. Ever.

That having worked out so well, a box from his dad showed up two days ago despite our saying we had no such player. Reel-to-reel tapes. Now there’s a reely current technology.

Could we would we?

Uh…

A check of Ebay revealed non-working machines and one listed in the hundreds; Richard remarked that there’s a rubber part that wears out, and at the ages of these…

But the box was here.

Oh and. His dad mentioned that Uncle R had had a machine and had donated it to a tech museum and it was in our town! Maybe we could ask to borrow it back?

Uh…

So I put a note on our ward chat list, feeling like that was our last chance. Someone from church responded almost immediately, saying her husband was determined to hold onto one of every technology that might have family recordings on it, and so, yes, they had a reel-to-reel; would we like to borrow it?

Blessings on Sue and Ken, the problem is solved and now we just have to get started.

(Anyone get that Rose Mary Woods reference in the title?)

p.s. Watched my first Republican debate tonight, transfixed by the political theater. Gingrich wants a lunar colony with hopes for it to be the 51st state by his second term. Really. Maybe they could just aim that $99 billion railroad at the sky.

Thanks to Skype, we got to see Parker taking his first steps on his birthday, but he was good and fast at crawling and he was just not interested in slowing down to try this walk-and-tumble thing much for awhile.

Till now, when he’s ready to go straight to running, just like his daddy did. I hope you enjoy this as much as we do. Baby giggles are the best.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FctKbc5yFqs&feature=youtu.be

The alarm rang at 4:28 this morning. There was a moment of mild panic when the printer refused to print her boarding pass.

Richard had the presence of mind at that hour to tell her she could present it on her new phone at the gate, getting it to come up for her so it would be ready.

Did you hear about the TSA recently confiscating someone’s cupcake because of the “gel-like substance” on top? Our citrus sponge cake went unadorned last night. I cut a big chunk at 4:45 to supplement her two-flight airline pretzel supply, ziplocked it, and off she went, returning to the land where water comes in white in the winter.

We were back from the airport while it was still the dark of the night and fell back into bed while we could.

Just for fun: the snowboarding bird. The size, beak and use of a tool look like the crow/jay family, but I’m not quite sure what it is. Anyone?

Granny Smith apple crisp. Fresh-squeezed lemons from the tree with orange juice (to make up the shortfall) sponge cake: Betty Crocker circa 1952, substituting the juice for the boiling milk, adding zest from the lemons and using almond oil, no butter for Michelle…

There was a baking binge tonight, topped off with Michelle’s addition of raspberry almond bars after I got done with the oven. Sweet baked with sour, sugar with tang. Thirteen by nine three times over, with some of those cookies to be delivered to her friends.

Someone we love is leaving tomorrow, can you tell? Here. Eggs, oats, ground almonds, fruit, flour–food to nourish and see her off with. And for her to show up with.

The anti-tumor-necrosis-factor drug that saved my life in ’03 blocks one of the body’s ways of fighting off cancer cells.

I’ve had nearly nine years since then. I’ve spent the last three days considering how good a tradeoff that risk was and how glad I am that that drug gave me that time.  While expecting more: remembering the time we passed a flock of newly-sheared sheep along Highway 5 on our way to southern Cal, when our youngest whined unexpectedly into the quiet of the car, “We’re not STOPPING, M o o o o o mmmmm!”

Hang onto that thought.

Tuesday, in OB-GYN, I guess the doctor felt I was being a little too blithe about the whole thing and had to make sure I understood that this…was what was normal and this…was what the ultrasound had showed. She did a biopsy, and wanting to be sure she had enough cells, did it again. She remarked that I had a high pain threshold.

Breathe deep.

I went home and read up on endometrial cancer and the studies on the survival-rate effectiveness (not!) of lymphadenectomy with clinically-observed and the most-common stage 1. Etc.

They told me I would get the results in a week and I was thinking better to wait less than you thought you’d have to than longer, right? And so I hoped it would turn out to be sooner than that ohpleaseohplease.

I got an email this morning asking me to sign into the clinic’s online site. Already? Oh good. I think. Took a deep breath, knowing it would either say what I hoped or else it would ask me to come in to be told the news in person.

Signed in. Went to my inbox there. Slow, slow motion, as if the whole thing were echoing the endless, dragging last three days.

Not even the doctor, just a note from her nurse. No cancer cells. No precancerous cells. No sign.

NO CANCER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It’s a good thing Richard was still home so I had someone to dance with.

Michelle flies home from school tonight for her friend’s wedding. There is serious celebration to be had.

(Ed. to add: that drug was Remicade, and I was put back on it 8 months later for awhile, then three years ago Humira, an improved variant.)

When our kids were little, a trip to Urgent Care or the ER meant a stop at Rick’s Rather Rich on the way home for some of my husband’s patented Emergency Room Medicine, daddy style: made-on-the-premises ice cream, a special treat. There’s a wooden placard inside the little shop declaring, “Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first.”

A million miles from Rick’s, our child with ITP ended up in emergency a few days ago.

And a friend there, having no idea we used to do that…showed up later in the day with ice cream to try to make things a little better.

(Ed. to add: my forever thanks to all those who can donate blood and do. You’re a life saver.)

I emailed that pharmacy last night and we went over first thing. They did still have Richard’s med and the pharmacist told us I was supposed to have been asked to verify the birthdate.

And then she looked and went, “Oh–but even the birthdate is very similar!” I was watching the clerk’s face yesterday and I didn’t hear or see it and I don’t think they did ask, but if they did, Richard pointed out, my hearing was an issue.

She very carefully marked both patient files so that staff would know next time. She thanked us for coming back and was about to send us on our way when I stopped her with, “Wait a minute–when they rang me up yesterday, I asked them, ‘Are you sure?’ I was thinking, that’s not enough, is it?”

And then I looked at the new bottle in my hand and told her how much we still owed her.

She thanked me yet again and told us again, as that got rung up, how glad she was that we’d come in. I imagine so.

But she really wanted to ask questions the moment Richard mentioned my hearing, and that delay seemed to have broken the ice for her: did I have any experience with Meniere’s? Yes I did. With rotational vertigo?  Yes, years ago.  Any other cause…? Yes.  Clearly she wanted to talk to someone else who knew what it was like to go through those kinds of symptoms; Richard gave her a twirling-room description with arms flailing that had her laughing.

And clearly she wanted to meet someone else about her own age who already wore hearing aids to reassure herself it would be okay to start considering them.

You know that I feel that if you need help hearing, get tested and get the help; it’s easier to start younger than older to retrain the brain to pick out voices from a crowd and sounds out of noise again. And it’s so much better just to be able to understand why things sound the way they do–you lose your high frequencies first so you lose the consonants but not the vowels.  Making no sense of speech makes sense once you know. So fix it.

I wonder if the other person mixing those bottles up was all part of a Plan unseen to help get her where she needs to be. Curious.

Picked up the hubby’s new prescription at the drug store. He got home, looked at it, did a doubletake and went, wait–that’s not the… then he read the super-fine print I hadn’t even seen.

Written in the very tiniest letters used only for that, there it was: wrong home address. Right name, wrong person, wrong med. And of course the place was closed by now. Who knows if the other guy came in too? If he did, he didn’t notice in time for the pharmacy to call us; I really hope he reads his prescription bottle and doesn’t just take something that may be very wrong for him. Egads.

Puts a new twist on the old Sandra Boynton birthday card: HIIPA birdies, two you’s.

Meantime, I finally got that hat mailed today and took pictures of it with my new Iphone. I love that the phone offers instructions as you go when it’s new, and I wonder if it keeps doing that after you’ve gone through those steps a few times?

Up a little past midnight, all of us. The alarm went off a little before 5:30. I knew I would be too tired to drive, Richard had an early meeting at work and needed the speed of the carpool lane even at that hour, so we did what we all really wanted to anyway and got to spend a little last time together.

John has safely arrived in Texas and we got home from the Oakland airport just before the sun was up.

Looking at my needles, today was simply a day for playing with yawn instead.

(One more Parker birthday photo.)

John stayed healthy, no sign of my germs, for which we thank the heavens. And so it’s safe for him to pack to go give his grandparents a two-day hug before heading back to school. (Staying at his aunt’s just to be sure.)

Tonight I got a chance to talk a bit with him and one of his friends whom I hadn’t seen since probably their high school graduation five years ago, and it intrigued me how important it felt: there is nothing in the world like a little face time to make someone feel like, no matter how few the moments of time scattered over however long, we are forever important to one another and that’s just simply the way it is.  A good lesson for a young man. Heck, me, too.

Michelle’s already back to class.

It’s going to be too quiet. I’ll get busy with planting some new jumbo (they’ll be huge!) amaryllis bulbs, Richard’s Christmas gift, and when I inquired of (company deleted later) what they wanted me to do with the wrong ones they sent me they told me to consider them a gift: the ones that were supposed to be in that box are now going into a new one on its way.

They grow and they blossom and they never stay quite the same.

Parker two weeks ago at his birthday party, teaching his new alligator about a long-tail cast-on; clearly, the kid is a natural-born knitter.

We were told he adored pull toys now but  he’d still rather crawl because he can go so fast the way he knows he’s good at going. This one’s made from rubberwood trees that are no longer producing; it puts their trunks to good use. (Wait, shouldn’t there be an elephant model, too, then?)

And of course he showed everybody just how cheerfully fast he could demolish a birthday cupcake.

Life is sweet.

Richard said, reasonably enough, that I shouldn’t buy a phone I haven’t tried to actually hear on.

And so John and I went to the local Verizon store. The manager set up an Iphone 4S at full volume and I called home.

Standing in a noisy room full of people, I heard every word. It helped that I was talking to my husband and knew his voice well, but still–had it been my current phone, I would not have been able to make out a thing, even in speakerphone mode. Wow. Sold.

The manager came back over and chatted us up a bit. Can you turn Siri up louder too? No, he was sorry, you could not. John mentioned that we were going to buy online and the guy said that unless something said internet exclusive, he could match anything there. Double data on the droids? Sure.

Hey. We went home and grabbed Richard.

The process took hours, it was crazy, but it’s done. (Well, almost, the Iphones were on backorder and will be mailed.)

Annnnnd… There being rung up too and waiting for the system to do its belabored thing was a dad with a toddler being very well behaved but very bored at the very long process.

Lo and behold: a hand sanitizer dispenser to my left–thank you Verizon!–before I reached into my purse and found, you guessed it, a little banana-chomping monkey handknit finger puppet to entertain the little boy with and his older sister who suddenly appeared next to her daddy when there was something interesting to investigate. Sharing commenced and they were actually happy about it.

The dad went from tired to glowing. It was worth going in just to see that.