I was off at a luncheon with some friends (thank you Mary Ellen!) and he was waiting for me to get home.

Okay. Let’s see, the parts are about this much, Costco’s having a sale to just replace the thing altogether for close enough to the same, the work involved is about the same…

And so we played plumber today. A do-it-yourself video was conferred with just to be sure. Richard, on his back under the kitchen sink, glad for that gel mat under him, trying to unscrew going one way while I tried to hold on from the top to keep the faucet parts from moving: his grip vs mine, on and on and endlessly on. It’s a good thing I knit a lot, although more regular piano practice on my part of late would have helped there, too. We tried to trade places at one point, but I simply couldn’t reach high enough. He managed not to break into a chorus of “Short People.”

“Get me an (XYZ) wrench!”

“Which one is an (XYZ) wrench? Where would I find it?” (Digging through his tool stashes. The occasional stifled heavy sigh from the man under there who wouldn’t know a merino yarn from a mink–we do understand each other. )

The assembly was rusted in, but between us we finally got it out of there. It took us all afternoon.

After much resting, pumpkin pie for dinner just because we’d earned it and our mommies weren’t watching, some knitting time for me with some sweet baby alpaca telling my hands, There there, I went over to him on impulse and said, “So between us we’re stronger than steel?”

Took him by surprise. His whole face turned into a not-quite-out-loud laugh, and he shook his head with puckered lips, “No.”

“But it made you laugh!”

We ARE stronger than steel.

Our ladder walked off on its own at some point in the past we know not of. I put out a plea and I do mean plea to our ward chat list; Glenn responded near-instantly. We ran very gratefully off with his ladder and Richard climbed up on our roof, relieved to finally be able to get at that furnace.

It’s working now.

My knitting, not so much. The poor guy spent several hours this evening (and that was only half of it) listening to me muttering under my breath from across the room, “But this makes no *sense*!” I counted, I recounted, I “dear could you SIXTY EIGHT SIXTY NINE SEVENTY oh sorry, dear” knitted, I frogged, I wondered who on earth ever thought I knew how to do this. A designer? Are you kidding me?

I could have fudged that one stitch there. I refuse to fudge. Ripped! I can now tell you that the new Findley yarn from Juniper Moon Farm is not only super soft and deliciously shiny, but it holds up to being frogged and reknitted five times–and it will be again if I have to to get this to come out as perfect as it deserves. I know exactly how I want this pattern to look. A bunch of silly string is not going to defeat me!

I guess we got our heat back…

(Hastening back to the computer to add, he was a total sweetheart about it and I was trying to be. All it needed was for me to stop fussing over it and go do my treadmill time to clear my head. That seems to have done it. Tomorrow I should be able to just sit down, relax totally, and knit.)

There was a larger crowd than usual tonight. People turned out; I think we all had an extra need for that sense of community. I got to hold a two-week-old baby wearing the tiniest, finest little handknit socks, to see (among others) a friend who’s been away at grad school, another who’s almost done with her cancer therapy whose presence I have so keenly missed.

She was wearing a pretty handdyed hat knitted by Kelli. Kelli hasn’t been able to knit for I think a year due to severe inflammation in her hands. But. She wanted to do that for her anyway, and so there it was.

Richard explained a little more today about yesterday’s having been weird: there had been reverse-911 robocalls to the Cupertino/Sunnyvale area, so the daycares knew before the school officials had arrived to find out; thus there were a lot of them that simply shut down before the workday started. (Note: the man was found this morning, and he died in a shootout with the police without the loss of any more lives other than his own.)

And so, in the midst of the grief and scare and loss of the day, small children were at the office doing small-child type things: being cute, running around, playing, finding joy in each other’s company and charming everybody while keeping Important Things from getting done, no doubt. New things to explore! New faces to meet! Cool!

And then tonight at Purlescence, surrounded by my friends, I got to hold one of the newest of the new.

I had an obstetrician a goodly while ago who had a poster set prominently in his waiting room, so that it was the first thing you saw when you entered his office suite: “A baby is God’s opinion that the world should go on.”

The next vote on funding CIRM again is soon, the ten years are almost up. So much has been done, so much needs more time.

———

“Wait–so you drove right into that!?”

“Well, not in…”

“That’s in. Mathilda goes to that part of Cupertino. If I’d known that’s where it was, I’d have called you. If I’d known that’s where you were going to be…” He shuddered, blaming himself, which he totally didn’t deserve. With everything else going on, he’d forgotten today was the day and he’d had no idea where the place was.

“I didn’t know till I got home. There was a helicopter right above me, I’ve never seen one that looked like that before.”

“That was it. They were looking.” And not just with one helicopter.

——–

Today was the day the Parkinson’s Research Institute in Sunnyvale held an openhouse re its stem cell work; I got a personal invitation from Chris Stiehl (whom I met at a Lupus Research Institute day),  the man in charge of patient advocacy within the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the taxpayer-funded initiative to entice top researchers to work in California to potentially find cures for many diseases.

And I have a childhood friend with young-onset Parkinson’s.

Many of the attendees were a large group of high school students on a field trip. There were tables, displays, passionate people ready to show and answer and inspire.

The director of the project answered any and all questions, including mine. She told me in an aside of her great hope to spark a desire in these kids to go into research, to foster a love for science so that they could go out and change the world. There was so much that was so close; we so badly needed more scientists. She said she herself had stayed here expressly because of CIRM.

I told her that one of my children had had a high school biology teacher who had inspired her to follow in her footsteps, and thus her doctoral thesis in viral crystallography was recently published in (and she recognized the prestigious journal.)

The woman was very pleased. We talked about how good it was that finally, finally, research is beginning to be made available not just to those who subscribe to the terribly expensive periodicals; she explained to another woman with us, while I nodded yes, that it could cost $30 just to read one article online.

I didn’t wait for the walk through the lab, though I’d have liked to have seen it; I’d been on my feet for awhile and decided I’d gotten what I’d come for and headed for home.

Where there was that large helicopter flying fairly low over the freeway and then off towards the foothills. Didn’t seem to be monitoring road traffic. I had no idea.

Richard, meantime, came to work to find people in the parking lot talking about the man not far from there who’d shot his co-workers early this morning and fled, shooting and carjacking others in his path, as it turned out. Their kids’ schools were on lockdown. What do you do, what do you do. (And no they haven’t caught the guy yet as I type this.)

Then he told me the other reason it was a very very hard and weird day at work, terribly hard for everybody.

That Steve Jobs had passed.

My heart goes out to all those families.

I remember when Steve cold-called my husband and tried to armwrestle him into coming to work for him at NeXT. Richard didn’t take him up on it; a good friend did accept an offer there, though. Silicon Valley is a small place. It is a measure of Steve’s quest for perfection that being asked to work for him was the highest compliment one could offer an engineer.

Rest in peace, Lehigh Plant workers. Rest in peace, Steve. Thank you for being passionate about making things that worked with utter clarity, simplicity, and grace. Every person who has ever touched a computer since the first time you did owes you: you changed the electronic world and demanded to the end that it be made better.

I can only imagine what your kids will accomplish. Maybe someday one of them will be the one to find a cure for pancreatic cancer.

If only there had been one already. Let’s get that research funded and let’s get it going.

When I got up this morning, there was an upturned finch just outside the sliding glass door. I waited for her to scramble around and get on her way.

I puttered about while every now and then checking on her; mostly, she seemed to sleep, a good response when you need it. Still breathing.

A few hours later I scrounged up a small stick outside the front door, trying not to alarm her, and then returned to the back one, remembering what the peregrine folks taught about birds having a reflex to grab on with their feet; I tentatively held it just above hers, but that was as far as I was going to risk it: first, do no harm.

Nope. Not going to straighten out that way.

The morning gave way to noon when the female Cooper’s decided it was time and swooped in as if to land on the back of the patio chair–whereupon the aggressive gray squirrel stood up high and chased her off his territory! She swooped left, he charged at her (from the ground again, while I was going, As if!), then right again, and then the much-larger hawk went oh forget it and hauled off into the trees, where she disappeared as if becoming one with the branches.

About an hour later I finally made out a large wing as someone preened in there. Different spot. The squirrel was still grazing fallen seed below the chair.

Wait, said Richard later, you got the squirrel to go away by feeding it? Isn’t that, like, broken? I did, though, I threw some nuts out there to make it have too many and want to go hide them, but that was so much something it didn’t expect out of me that it didn’t see but the one that landed right at his nose. So I opened the door again and threw more, and again till he finally got the hint and grabbed the loot and ran.

I was afraid I’d scared the hawk by intruding into its outside space, if only with my arm. It held back.

Finally, the finch woke up and tried hard to roll itself over and finally get away.

That did it. Incoming!

It was the male. Coopernicus landed on the far side of the patio from me and eyed me warily.

I was ten feet from the finch, inside of course. I held very very still.

We proceeded to have a game of Mother May I. He hopped one step sideways. Sideways? Sideways.

Doves copy my blinking patterns, I’ve learned, it seems birds are clearly attuned to eyes: I closed mine just long enough not to be a challenge to his authority (I hoped).  He hopped one step sideways closer.

And, with a gait like a kindergartner learning to skip, raising his wings ever so slightly with each bounce, once more.

The finch saw it and its tail bent over hard, trying: Penelope Pitstop on the train tracks. (My dad’s old Army buddy, whom we met once in Carmel when the folks were here, was a Hanna-Barbara…producer, if I remember right.)

Another sideways hop. Stopped. Eyes steadily on mine. Mother May I?

Yes.

One or two more like that and suddenly, Got it! His huge wings spread wide right in front of me and he flew with it in his feet to the fence.

Nope, too many squirrels here. Exit: stage right!

I was never one of those moms who could come up with great creative Halloween costumes out of random things at hand. Year after year, we winged it. And it was never in the budget to spend $50 times four kids on storebought flimsy plastic ones they could wear for one night to beg for candy and outgrow by the next year and then stomp their feet over and refuse to be what Older Sibling was last year.

Etc.

So why is it that now, when the pressure is totally gone, I look at the piece of plastic that Costco links juice bottles with, finally wrestle the darn thing off, look at it and go Wait–cool! Harry Potter’s professor’s eyeglasses! (Give me a second, give me a second, what was her name…) Just add pipecleaner temples at the sides and you’re good to go! Or, or, make it gold somehow: Steampunk!

Someone lend me a kid, quick, my grandson’s not big enough yet.

(p.s. Just to clarify: I see this as good for decorating a pumpkin’s face and to get some ideas going.)

Listened to Conference today again; it’s a two-day multi-session thing. (The Sea Silk project got finished.)

Quentin Cook, one of the last speakers, started to tell a story.

Okay, back up: he first made the point that bad things happen to good and bad people alike and those who would judge the ones that bad things happen to, just don’t get it.

But it is amazing how all the personal tributaries that flow into the Mississipi River of the lives of all of us eddy and tumble together. As soon as he started into his tale, I knew exactly who he was talking about: I’d read the biography by the man’s son about his father. Then he named the name. Yup.

There were six young Mormon missionaries nearly 100 years ago whose missions to Great Britain were ending at the same time and they were going to return to the US together. With much hype going on about the world’s greatest ship, the fellow named Alma booked passage for them all on that one.

And then one missionary simply could not make it that day and was going to have to ship out a day later alone. The chance at a trip of a lifetime, gone.

Alma said no way no how are we leaving you doing that long trip by yourself; you’re going with us. We’re just going to have to re-book our tickets and that’s that.

But, but!

No buts, we’re going together.

Which is why they weren’t on the Titanic.

Which is why, nearly 100 years later… I have the best daughter-in-law anybody could ever ask for and an adorable little grandson who has totally stolen our hearts.

Alma, Kim’s great-grandfather, was generous to the one who was disappointed.

Small choices matter.

They don’t stay little…

My cousins John and Dan and Dan’s wife Leslie and their boys came from out of town to stop by for a few hours on their way further south. It is amazing how fast other people’s kids grow up, and it was wonderful to see them. “Richard (the younger) has a baby?!”

Leslie’s mom is an avid knitter?  Who knew? I told her my friend Gunilla Leavitt just bought  The Golden Fleece in Santa Cruz and I bet her mom knows her. I sent them off with a copy of “Wrapped in Comfort” for her mom; family gets extra privileges and all that.

We listened to Conference, good put-up-your-feet-and-knit time. Almost finished that Sea Silk.  Smiled remembering that as a teenager I used to babysit the kids of one of the speakers on the occasional Friday evening back in Maryland; they were good kids. He’s a good and kind and loving man.

The wildlife: this morning when the other squirrels left, my little injured one came out of wherever she’d been, I saw her, she caught the nut deftly in her mouth and immediately did her funny sideways lope to her new hiding place, tucked that conspicuous tail remnant away and disappeared so completely that it surprised me all over again. The others came back; the others left; only then did she appear again, getting seconds and ducking  immediately away under the patio again and safely out of sight. She’s got it all figured out.

Costco, later: I quite enjoyed getting people to smile back.

Meantime: a sample table. People waiting their turn, when, this time it was an old Russian woman who saw that the little paper cups of food in the meat department were going to be all gone by the time it was her turn and she simply shoved her way through the crowd to get to the front.

Given what happened two weeks ago, when she shoved him–“Wait,” I asked Richard afterward, I having stepped away to go get the milk and having completely missed the scene, “some little old lady shoved YOU? You’re a pretty formidable target!”–she did, he said, she shoved him out of her way. By taking him by surprise from behind, I’m sure.

He immediately firmly told her (and the man is not soft spoken) that she was being rude, that all these other people were waiting their turn and she could go back to the back of the line like she was supposed to and wait her turn too.

She was astonished. Nobody had ever told her no like that before, apparently. She responded in a thick Russian accent but clearly she’d understood what he’d said.

“So did she go to the back of the line?” I asked.

She did not, but she did at least wait till he’d gotten his and turned aside.

It’s a start.

In our built-up city… A week or so ago our school district backed off and said they weren’t going to interfere with the developer’s plans for putting ten (at least it wasn’t 23 anymore) houses on the daycare site next to our street.  A subject on which I have gone on and on.

Tonight, they announced at the school board meeting that not only were they interested in buying it, they had entered into a formal agreement towards doing exactly that. From the developer–a little late, but hey.

Let the soccer games on the suddenly-available field begin. Our grandchildren will have room to run after all.

(There’s a meeting set for public debate before the offer is to be formally signed.)

People spoke up, people showed up, and people kept speaking and kept coming, and the city finally heard.

I had an errand to run. It didn’t even walk, much less run (sorry, Cheryl, hopefully tomorrow). I was glad instead for large swaths that can no longer be inflamed.  It was a good day for putting up my feet and knitting, 5985 stitches’ worth.

I have a shawl that I made a few years ago that was different from anything else I’d done, in a way that I wasn’t sure at first I liked; it simply was different, that’s all. I threw it in a ziploc, I threw it in a corner, I didn’t remember what I hadn’t written down and my notes were a total mishmash that I guess made sense at the time. Sort of. I guess it was one of those I’ll get back to it that, till now, I didn’t.

I started it again last Wednesday night. I got the first 20″ worth figured out, written down, tested, knit, and the last of that part done today. It all came out exactly right and written down exactly so now. I am very pleased.

But what was in my notes after that point had no connection to reality–clearly, I’d tried it, chucked it, and riffed. I puzzled over the original while thinking, this shouldn’t be so hard; can we defuzz the brain a bit here? At least I hadn’t let myself give the thing away, knowing somewhere down deep that it was the only representative I had of what, now, I think is a really cool idea.

I took a break, I answered some email, and that’s when it hit me–I knew suddenly how I’d done what I’d done. I grabbed the older shawl again, grateful for its wooly presence, and after swatching, checking, writing, knitting, checking, correcting, knitting knitting knitting–

–I’ve got it. I wanted to enough finally that finally I’ve got it. I am terribly pleased with myself and with it. I can’t wait till the day I get to show Lisa Souza what her sapphire baby alpaca laceweight is now.

Another 5985 stitches and I’ll be casting off.

You only get to turn 80 once and yesterday was a milestone day for my mother-in-law.  So I’m going to say it out loud here, too: Happy Birthday, MomH!

The Cooper’s hawk caught my attention this morning with a successful hunt. This time he (she?) took its kill up to a tree and disappeared just below the center of that first picture there (no, that’s a leaf, he’s behind there), the occasional small bit of fluff floating down in the breeze.

He swooped through again about three hours later, highly unusual in the middle of the day and it was a hot one at that. He perched in the olive tree (second picture), fanning out his feathers and turning to catch a breeze between them just so. That’s his tail below the limb. I did not see a second hawk at the time, although it sure looks like it from the camera–if it is, it’s standing behind the chopped end of that big limb and leaning left and up towards its mate.

And a few hours after that, one zoomed in a half circle around the first birdfeeder, straightened, immediately did a right-angle turn and swooped its 31″ wingspan within the 10′ foot-wide foot-of-the-L part of the covered patio and around Kim’s feeder just perfectly so and back out to a tree. And then, before even two minutes were up, he did it again! With a pause somehow at the end of that last circle, as if he were trying to scare a squirrel out from hiding. (And there is one that darts under the barbecue smoker over there. Clearly, it’s not fooling anybody.) But wow, what an air show!

My first thought was, now come on, you know no prey flew in there in between; are you really that impatient and hungry?

But the next time Coopernicus dropped all pretense of stealth: he flew to the most exposed branch jutting out into the yard from up high, the sun radiating off his chestnut front, as if to proclaim to all the world–

–and that’s when I finally got it.

Glenn Stewart of UC Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group has mentioned that at fall equinox, birds display some of the same behaviors they do at spring equinox, and that the peregrine falcons, specifically, make a particular show of guarding and announcing their established territory.

My yard was being announced as off limits to all comers.

And they’d been challenged on it yesterday. Yesterday, I had a small crowd of crows fly overhead for the first time in a long time and the Cooper’s pounced on prey in front of me not long after. Those crows will attack hawk young in the nest in the spring–so today I guess they’re not taking any chances: not of the crows and definitely not of any other hawks. From that king-of-the-mountain limb, something overhead bothered him and he flew off after it and over my head, not at hunting speed; that flight definitely felt different. Just don’t get in his way.

Dinnertime, a little later–and there, a Cooper’s, yet again, and away to the left. And again and to the right! Swoop! Swoop!

I had a shawl I’d knitted out of random baby alpaca laceweight a few years ago that I’d lost some of my notes for and some of what I did find was fairly scrambled, definitely not the copy meant for keeps. I’d been wanting to reknit it, definitely writing the pattern down and writing it right this time. It was going to be a lot of work. I’ve avoided it all this time.

Today I sat down with my birdwatching and my Lisa Souza baby alpaca laceweight in Sapphire, gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous, in the color of the deepening sky well before the dark, and worked that pattern out.  I have written it. I am knitting it to test it. I’ve got it.

An “if only I’d had the Flip camera…” moment.

There’s a difference in how all the birds hanging around the feeder flit away in the triviality of nothing at all,  just because someone else did, and then amble right back a moment later, vs when it’s for real.  When they move that fast in a straight line, they’re all about the intense escape attempt.

That kind of movement caught my eye and I turned to see: the squirrel in the tree leaped away just in time and the Cooper’s, which had to have been right there all along unseen by it or me, apparently decided to go after something on my single-story roof above my head.

It swept out of that tree, not even paying attention to the bushytail that was trying so hard to get away, and swooped down low for stealth, then pulled up right before the awning to snatch whatever it was going after, all of it in an instant.

But what that means is that I glanced up just in time to see a brilliantly lit up, beautiful big hawk as it burst into the sunshine from the trees–and then it was heading right straight towards my face!  Till the last second. I got to see at warp speed my Cooper’s from a flying angle totally new to me and to see its determination eye directly to eye as a squirrel would for the last time.

I froze in utter awe at the force of Nature that it is. I felt quite the empathy for those squirrels. I hope it was a great meal.

————

p.s. (Photo from August.) There is nothing in the world like a Skype chat with Parker and his parents now that he’s old enough to remember us and to break into gigglefits when we smile and to wave back at us. Love it. Love him. Our daughter-in-law and son are doing a great job.

Saturday night, at about dusk when the UV wouldn’t be an issue, my husband and I wandered around downtown.

Meandered into the crowded Apple store. Inwardly chuckled at the (possibly Indian?) fellow who suddenly found himself at belly button level with my sweetie and jerked his head way up to see just how far to the ceiling this guy goes! Didn’t hear a friend trying to shout hi across to us as we were leaving, and he couldn’t run fast through all those people; he had to wait till today to tell us.

Applauded the apps and the Apple and walked away, for now, our wallets intact. I told our friend that and he laughed and said his, not so much.

Bought gelato from the cheerful (I have no idea what he was saying, but he was having a great time of it) older guy with “Croatia” embroidered on his polo shirt, with a fairly garish painted mural (was that supposed to be Venice?) on the wall behind him, a street musician at the front of his little shop asking for song suggestions from his foot-tapping audience.

Went into the still-breathing Borders bookstore. Everything must go. Including the Borders gift card my husband had long forgotten he had in that wallet he didn’t take out at Apple, well, will you look at that! Hey! Seeing the size and the weight of the bag he came out of there with, we decided it was a good thing we’d gone in there last.

But it wasn’t.  I nearly walked on by but Richard turned at the sound, beckoning/inviting me too, and it was like a baby boomer’s Narnia moment: we found ourselves coming down a beautiful new-ish walkway opening suddenly out to a courtyard where a band was totally rocking the most joyful rendition of Stevie Wonder’s “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing.”

And I came home thinking…

And then today. I’ve met her, but whether I’ve ever heard her name I’m not sure; I sure don’t see her often. I think she’s older than my parents. But I saw her today, and she motioned to me and pulled me aside and reached out her aged hand to hold mine: she just wanted to tell me she love love loved my hair! She said it again. She just loved it. She wanted me to know that.  I was very surprised. (I did not by any means have great hair before that moment, but I’m easily persuaded.)

And I came home knowing…

All those years of wishing to be able to get back to my old pre-lupus life and the way things were? Really? I’m there.

Okay, Constance started this over at FB.

“Dick and I are playing this game, since we like puns, where you think of an occupation, and then add a word with a negative prefix that pertains. So, the Duke was disgraced. The seismologist defaulted. Etc.” Then she added, “The tanner who was dis-suaded. The hair stylist who was dis-tressed. The judge who was ex-honor-ated.

So, the gambler was deluxe doesn’t quite do it. The appliance salesman was deranged; that’s better. The English professor was denounced and (oh who cares about rules when there are puns to be had) de-vowel-you’d–my family would approve.

It seems to be easier to come up with the punchline and take it back-word from there.  Anyone else want to try? So far I’ve come up with:

The chef was served with a deflammation suit.

The campers were given detention.

The math homework (blame the dog) was dissolved and the professor was outnumbered.

(This one is NOT political, it’s all wordplay.) The det o’ nation was way overblown.

The writer was in-dis-pens-able.

They tried to talk about their ancestors, but it just de-gen-irate’d from there. Which leads to,

Oedipus said it’s true, you can’t go home again; it’s dilapidated now.

And on a totally different note, they’re not my pictures and I respect copyright so I’ll just link to them, but my cousin Kathryn’s daughter waited till the moment of a family photoshoot to give her mom the big news. Happy day!

If one were to drop a painting in the washing machine, now that I can finally use mine again (yay!), I have a strong Impressionist would create a laundered Monet trail.

Ahem.

I got a gift in the mail today from Karin, owner of The Periwinkle Sheep, the friend who, three years ago, drove all the way from Albany NY to Burlington, VT when I was there visiting my daughter, so that we could finally get to meet in person. So. She dyed some deep turquoise fingering-weight merino and decided to mail a skein for me to play with, gorgeous, just because; she told me something was coming but I knew no more than that.

I’ll add a picture in the daylight. Sitting where I could hear the doorbell ring, wondering who the strangers were going to be who would come, it was a great comfort and a scrumptious yarn. I am listening to it to see what it wants to be.

We got up early this morning and drove to Oakland Airport across rush hour and hugged Michelle and let her go.

My dentist’s office called yesterday and asked if I could bump my 1:30 appointment up a half hour? The plumber then called me back and asked if he could come at 3:00 Thursday?

Wow. That perfect timing came in handy!

Lee Kratzer came, he tried, his snake was too short. He refused to charge me for the 45 minutes he was here. Instead, he handed me the phone number of the man who had trained him years ago and told me, He’s good, he’s honest, and he’s very reasonable, and he’s got a lot of guys working for him so one should be available.

Joshua, the new guy, got here within an hour.

First he listened to my brief summary. Then, he turned on the water in two places. Observed. Went out to the street. Heard it, saw it–it’s coming out. The first guy had dislodged the stuff enough, even if he hadn’t known it.

Well, but I didn’t want to have to call him right back in a week or a month… True! We discussed the tree, what I’d seen on the six-month-ago-plumber’s camera of that root and what that guy had said about it.

He went after it.  He had a long enough snake, but he could not get that root to give way past a certain width–just like all the previous attempts. We discussed options for a long-term cure of a longtime problem so that it doesn’t become a sudden severe emergency someday.

And then he handed me my bill.

I was stunned. “Are you sure?” I had never seen a plumber who broke it down to a quarter hour and didn’t round it up to a full extra one.  I had never seen one whose rate was that reasonable. He did the job quickly, he did it well, and he did it with a minimal amount of disruption or stress. He was a nice guy, on top of that. That made it the second time in one day that I let a plumber know he wasn’t charging me enough.  Wow.

And his grandmother and I think he said it was his mom are avid knitters and his wife an avid writer. I sent him home with encouragement for his wife and a copy of my book to share with the knitters he loves. He had earned it. He loved it! He flipped through the pages, looking at the patterns, saying all the right things, making my day right back at me.

And then I went hunting for my last ball-and-a-bit of soft, handdyed Malabrigo Rios merino and cast on a hat for Lee, the plumber who had helped me out but wouldn’t let me pay him at all.