Me, walking almost in the door from Trader Joe’s: I found it!!

Him, meeting me at the door to open it for me (but that’s not where I was heading yet.) You found it!

Last Monday I did some grocery shopping. Wednesday something in the car seemed…off. I remembered a news story some years back of someone who bought a new car, had some raw chicken roll under a seat, didn’t use the car for two weeks and when they found it their insurance company paid for all kinds of remedies before giving up and totaling out the car. Brand new. Replaced. For a chicken.

Thursday I opened the hood and cleared out all kinds of stray leaves, trying to find just where this stupid dead mouse or whatever it was was. Friday I searched the inside of the car yet again. Saturday I gave my friend who’s blind in one eye–oh wait, I thought I wrote about that here, guess I didn’t–a ride home but first apologized that the car had this, uh, problem, and we’d been trying, and I was so sorry.

Well if you don’t find it come back to me and I’ll find it for you guys! he promised.

Sunday parking the car at church we hoped nobody could smell it from outside the car.

Monday we didn’t go anywhere probably because we really didn’t want to. We promised ourselves we would finally find it once the sun got low enough for me to help in the search again. We forgot. And then you don’t go looking for decaying squishy things in the dark, I mean…

He never was sure it smelled mousy, though. I wasn’t either but it was definitely dead.

The next thing I said to him this evening at that doorway was, Remember that bag of greens in cream and garlic sauce that fell out of the freezer in the garage and didn’t get found for two days?

Yeah?

I bought another to replace it so we could finally try that stuff once, at least. I only discovered where it landed because I had a bag break just now and the trajectories led me to this–where I know I looked again and again and again. But there it was. I found it!

Clearly we are not meant to touch that dish, he said as I held it at arm’s length heading towards the garbage bin past the gate, exit, stage right.

He didn’t have to add, So please don’t ever buy it again.

…I went to go title this “At least it didn’t explode” and suddenly…

I told Richard, “As far as I know”…

And put on a jacket, was glad to see it’s not raining yet, and opened the car just to be sure.

It is much, much, much, much better.

It was on their back patio right by the sliding door, protected by the awning, but still: relegated to outside and out of the way because they just were not using it any more at all. That’s when I knew it really was okay to accept it from them.

Ruth traded me that treadmill for a chocolate torte. Which I baked and then froze before we made the roughly two hour drive to her house near UC Davis so that it would be safe on arrival. She fed us lunch, we had a great visit, her puppy was cute, and then we used a wheelchair ramp to roll the treadmill into our minivan and drove it home.

I used it pretty much every single day for eleven years.

Then the belt jammed. Richard tested it recently and said the motor was slow now, too.

I was used to my walking time and I was going to get my walking time and since I can’t be in the sun I started simply pacing around the house for it–and doubled my time because now I wasn’t afraid of falling off that thing (once was enough.)

Maybe we could get a new belt.

Belts cost $99 for that old model, and quite possibly it still wouldn’t work.

Our city has twice a year Clean Up Days, where the usual one-tiny-can garbage restriction is lifted and you can put up to so much of things of this size, this size, this type and/or that.

Tomorrow is that day. We had talked about this for awhile, reluctantly.

But it took up so much space.

We both have temperamental backs and neither of us wanted to have to deal with it.

Yeah but I also had determination, so it started with me trying and failing and then him helping and then me wheeling it down the walkway once he got it past that doorway rise thingamagummy down there.

Gone. (Wait, I probably shouldn’t say that till the morning’s truck leaves.)

A little icing of the back, a bit of time doing stretches, and a whole lot of hope that tomorrow we’ll be fine, but man, it feels good to see that space empty. I expect the garbage folks will lift it with the truck’s mechanical arm, and wouldn’t the two year old next door have fun watching that?

It was a great gift and greatly appreciated and always will be and was much used. But it was its time. It is good to see its metals and plastics sent back into the recycle stream.

It’s not anywhere near as hard as when the childhood home in Maryland was sold.

Mom and Dad were visiting Salt Lake, where Mom grew up, when an old and dear friend told them they had to come see this unit in her building that was on the market. They had no intention of moving after 40 years, but to make her happy they said okay–and walked out of there going, Heyyy. Never shovel snow again. (Where’s that ambulance story around here.) The light rail line a block away to get to the grocery store without driving, free concerts every week just down the hill, grandkids an hour away, a master suite at each end so live-in help when we get really old could have their privacy and space…

No furniture. The previous owner’s kitchen wallpaper that Mom and Dad were always going to get rid of is finally gone. (Yay!) So different. Wiped of any sign of memories and ready for new ones.

The walkway between the kitchen to the back door is set up for a small laundry area, but each floor has its own laundry room so the folks took theirs out and put in a freezer instead. Not sure what the agent was thinking when they snapped a picture of that freezer in that narrow space and labeled it the kitchen! But anyway.

Mom’s place went on the market today. All those closets are a knitter’s stash’s dream.

There was a grandchild on the way at the time and I went to Cottage Yarns to get some Malabrigo Rios for a baby blanket.

What leaped out at me was a bag of the thicker Mecha in their Anniversario colorway. It demanded to be bought, it demanded to be knit, and I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it because it wasn’t what I was planning on at all. Meantime, the Rios got bought and the baby blanket happened–but this did, too.

It was really too heavy for a future toddler to drag around as their blankie, and the thick loosely spun yarn wasn’t really made for what a baby would do to it anyway.

So it went into a ziplock bag and waited its turn. Every now and then I pulled it out and tried to get it to tell me who it was for. I wondered/expected that the day would probably come suddenly all at once.

That it did.

As I wrote to my sister’s son and daughter-in-law: Malabrigo began when Antonio, whom I’ve met a number of times at Stitches, had a flock of very fine-haired sheep but felt, Can’t anyone make something pretty out of my wool?

So he started dyeing it himself. He grew a business that was just starting to really take off–and then his mill burned down.

I told them, my local LYS was upset with them because suddenly their orders were unfilled and there was no response to their emails. They had no idea.

Antonio and his sister and brother-in-law, good, good people, not only rebuilt the mill, they went solar, and they’ve done so well that they’ve revived the sheepherding industry in their part of the world. For awhile there it cost more to pay the shearer than what the farmers could get for their wool; Malabrigo’s promise was, sell us the good stuff and you’ll get a good price for it. Not by the pound (coarser hairs weigh more) but by the micron count.

SO soft.

At their tenth anniversary they celebrated by throwing all the colors at once into a new colorway: Anniversario.

I told them, my son-in-law drove us up a mountain above Anchorage a few years ago in hopes of showing us the northern lights. We didn’t get to see them–but I knitted this to make my own version.

And at last I know why it needed to come to be.

This is the niece and nephew whose house in Pacific Palisades burned to the ground, her childhood home and entire neighborhood gone, my nephew and sister and her husband visiting to fix up the place barely escaping with their lives.

I grieved their loss. I wanted them to have a hug from me always.

Wool has a natural tendency to extinguish flames.

The forecast had said an inch and a half, then suddenly jumped that by an inch last night as it was starting to come down.

We got 3.22″ of rain. It was a good day for not going anywhere out there.

So.

My ear molds no longer fit (changing the size of your ear canals is the weirdest part of changing weight), I’m going in next week to get new ones made, but meantime it makes every bit of wax a problem and sound isn’t getting through well enough anyway.

I forgot I was holding one hearing aid in my hands to clean it when I heard…

What on earth was that? I listened intently. Screech. Another skunk vs raccoon fight? A little early in the season for that, isn’t it? Although, I guess, food, anytime, though I didn’t know what the source might be. Neighbors talking loud enough to hear across the yard and through the glass? I mean, no, but, what?

I finally got up and walked in the kitchen, asking, Do you hear that?

Hear what?

Just then I looked at the screen behind him and instantly remembered what was in my hands and not in my ear.

‘Pink Floyd: Wish You Were Here.’

Well, I was now!

Old story, but… Our honeymoon, in a comic strip. For us it was marshmallows being toasted over a fire. Just one skunk at first–but it came up right between us and was brushing its tail against my new husband’s arm as it reached over the fire and settled our surprisingly emphatically held opinions over whether a fast burn-and-crisp-and-melt (me!) or a slow browning (him) was the proper way to campfire the thing.

His slightly browned one was it, thankyouverymuchdon’tmindifIdo.

While his face silently begged with everything that was in him at me not to laugh. Pleeeeeeeeeease?!!!

We left the bag on the picnic table as we edged away after it was done. It called its best buddies over and the four of them threw a party. They ate them raw. Heathens.

Good times.

We did it, we finally did it. We talked about it at Christmas when they had a good deal but there were too many unknowns in the air re the other lines on our account.

Verizon has non-stop promotions, says he, they’ll still have this up after Christmas.

Nope. They had offers, just not of the ones we wanted anymore. I checked almost daily.

Yesterday they changed that.

The one thing I needed to know was, would the heavier phone be too much for my hands.

It was raining. That is absolutely when you want to go to Verizon during a good promotion. We learned that lesson long ago.

The display models were leashed to the wall with a bulky apparatus covering most of the sides so you couldn’t really tell what the heft of the phone itself would be, and I lamented that fact.

The saleswoman, who was clearly enjoying the fact that we were the only customers in there so she didn’t have to be pulled in multiple directions at once, thought about that a moment.

And said, Well, I can’t hand you a 16. But I can hand you a 16 Pro: mine, and she did.

It has a better camera, it has better battery power, it’s a little longer but not much wider–but it’s an ounce heavier and the moment I hefted it I instantly knew the one thing I’d had to know: would holding those 7.03 ounces, like during the two hours of reading captions in church, damage my ability to knit as many hours as I wanted to.

The answer was yes. I thanked her very much, gave her back her phone, and she rang up the 16. Which currently is free with my trade-in (which made her laugh when I told her it was an iPhone 6) and that three-year commitment not to switch to their competitor. Fine by me.

But we both upgraded on memory (but it doesn’t have to be teal! You wanted teal, get the teal) which means the models weren’t in stock. (The future Otterbox will cover that teal right over.)

Well, if you’re going to twiddle your thumbs while you wait for the mail you might as well be using them to knit. Got six rows done today.

Earworms: the music memes of the brain. After being stuck with one long enough, he transferred it to his mouth and then I got stuck with it. I hadn’t heard that one in decades.

Thus the following conversation:

‘Old Screwball was a racehorse,’ he sang.

Stewball. I still heard consonants when I was a kid, that’s a t, I told him.

I always thought it was Screwball, he insisted.

I went and looked it up. Nope. Stew not screw.

He was trying to remember some of the words in a later verse.

It’s, ‘I bet on the silver, I bet on the bay, if I’d a bet on old Stewball, I’d be a free man today.’ I always assumed that meant a slave wishing he’d been able to buy his freedom.

Is THAT what it means?!

I always thought so. (There are reminders of that hellish institution where we grew up, including a blacksmith shop just down Seven Locks Road that was used by George Washington.)

Turns out it’s an old folk ballad about a real race. Peter Paul and Mary recorded the version we knew growing up, but Stewball was an actual racehorse and the song was sung by, among many others, slaves in chain gangs dreaming of freedom. My heart broke a little reading that.

1741. How many horses, I asked him, have been so famous that 300 years later we know what year he was born?

Not many, says he.

He’ll even sing it as Stewball, just for me.

My grand niece is three today. She will tell you that she is not little. (Her dad called today to say they’re expecting in two months; that might have something to do with it, although you know she has no idea how her life’s about to be upended.) She will also say firmly that she is not big.

She is medium.

She runs a tight ship, observed her dad. She will tell you how it is.

The dinner was light. Fruit is healthy. We could justify this.

A bag of frozen berries. A quarter cup of sugar, a spoonful of cornstarch, nine minutes covered in the microwave stir stir stir at the end.

And now for the ice cream.

We tried to wait till the fruit had cooled but given that I had an oven mitt on as I brought its stoneware bowl to the table I’d say we failed. I handed him the vanilla ice cream container; he’s better at getting it out when it’s frozen hard.

….Did I want more?

No no stop thanks that’s quite enough.

Then I looked at his bowl. All those three sections needed was a carrot nose and a scarf. “Once there was a snowman, snowman, snowman” I started singing (I think I learned that song when I was three, and so did he) “once there was a snowman, tall tall tall! In the bowl he melted melted melted” (pouring hot berry mix over it) “in the bowl he melted small small small.”

A few minutes later…

There’s a little fruit left. Did you want it?

No, he grinned, the proportions were just right.

Me: I’m putting in an order with Target for paper products. You need anything?

Him, scrunching face trying to think of something fast: A million bucks.

Me: In paper money? Nah, wouldn’t want that in the house.

Him: agrees. But still: Money in the bank and world peace!

Me: They don’t sell those at Target.

My cousin Kathryn’s funeral was held today; I watched by Zoom.

Her sister recounted how she always knew everybody’s birthday, always connected with anyone she met, and she had always had a note, a card, a message ready any time for anyone, and added, “And she’s probably sent one to you.”

I realized with a surprised start that that’s exactly what had happened and I felt the truth of it in my bones.

Because yesterday I had reminded myself that the funeral was at noon and Do. Not. Miss. It!

Suddenly, as if in an aside in the middle of an ongoing conversation I felt the words, Remember that’s 11:00 California time.

Whoa. How could I have been so dumb as to forget to notice that, and how had I suddenly remembered in spite of myself?? Because I was sure *I* hadn’t remembered, and yet–yeah, no way was I going to forget now! And I didn’t.

Her sister was right. I would have been devastated to have missed it, especially after not having been able to go in person.

So Kathryn made sure I didn’t.

Our niece’s childhood home, per fire reports given the family, is gone.

My nephew has a mother-in-law unit downstairs that walks out to their garden, a beautiful spot; last Monday my sister and her husband were there from Atlanta helping our mom to move in. Mom is great at taking care of herself but at 94 she needs not to be alone anymore. Her young great-grands are looking forward to having someone who’s not their mom helping them with their homework and reading to them, and my niece-in-law is a treasure. So’s her husband.

They also own a house in southern California that is a rental, which I totally get: it is an aphorism here that if you ever sell your house in California you can never afford to move back. So. It had a plumbing problem.

So said nephew left Gram in his wife’s good hands and flew with his folks to fix that thing and my sister was looking forward to a little California in January.

Which is how she found herself taking pictures today as the smoke came closer and they were packing the car and then suddenly the fire itself leaped over the mountain top and came barreling down at them from less than a mile away in the Santa Ana winds as they rushed to evacuate. They were turned back three times because of the spreading flames. Official guidance: Go this way! No, no wait, don’t! Traffic was gridlocked.

It took them four hours to get off that mountain and get the wildfire behind them. But they did it. Our niece, meantime, had booked them a hotel room from the get-go so they had a place to land.

I debated adding one of my sister’s pictures here and thought, nah, the last thing she needs right now is me pestering her for permission, that is just not something she should have to worry about right now.

I don’t know how long it will be before we know if the house is gone–but they are safe. As of this typing there are zero known deaths from the fire. Praise be.

There will be more knitting time after her plane leaves tomorrow, but that doesn’t make it any easier to see her go.

She was describing the weather she’s returning to and I grinned, Yeah, when we were heading back to Logan Airport from our house hunting trip out here and the pilot announced what the temp was in Boston, I muttered under my breath, Turn that plane around!

She laughed. Brrr. She was totally with me on that one.