Sara and Matt used to live fairly close to us; he was at Stanford and she taught dance at San Jose State and was advisor to one of my girls at church. When they moved away, Matt sold his most excellent bike to my then-teenage older son, who was grateful to have one from a fellow tall person and bike enthusiast.

Not long after that, we discovered that the man we all instantly adored whom my cousin was marrying was Sara’s brother. Small world. So the connection continues.

Sara was running an errand yesterday, the kids were in school, and Matt just happened to be in the one place in their house where he didn’t know he needed to be.

The next door neighbor hadn’t wanted to pay an arborist $4k to take out that 140′ pine and so decided to let some random guy with a chainsaw who was offering to help in exchange for the wood have at it. Video here. No license, and apparently no insurance nor bond.

We had a neighbor’s major tree limb take out a line of the fence and punch a branch through our roof years ago and that was LOUD. Even to my ears. I can’t imagine….

Last fall, due to the supply and labor issues and lumber prices of the pandemic, while we were changing insurance policies we were told that the estimated cost to rebuild our house from scratch just then–and it’s certainly no mansion–would be a cool million dollars.

I think forking over that four grand just might have been the better idea to go with.

There’s a reason we have regulations. They protect both sides.

Scrolling through my photos, wait–there was one more, with a declaration in so many languages: All are alike unto God.

So. Many. Hours. of someone’s life to create this.

Am I correct in guessing it was tatted? Can you do crochet like this?

There was an international competition for an exhibit at the Church History Museum in Salt Lake City on the theme of All Are Alike Unto God, and my sister Anne’s piece made the cut. What is amazing about it is that every one of those faces was done in watercolor.

So we got to take Mom there to go see it.

Mom took off her mask just long enough for me to snap her picture. And if you embiggen it, you’ll see that the couple standing in front of the heart holding a great-grandchild are our Mom and Dad. Here you go, you can see them a little better now.

The medical news part of the trip didn’t really hit me till I wrote it down for yesterday’s post, and then the whole of it was all at once.

While we were actually there with Mom, with our son John, while we were at the Sunday dinner at my brother’s house with his two younger kids and our two older sisters and Mom, the overriding feeling was simply joy: after two long years, we finally got to see each other. We got to be there.

My niece showed me where the peach tree I’d given them for Christmas a few years earlier was growing. My sister told me hers was starting to bloom. (Pictures, and they do embiggen: my Stella sweet cherry today.)

We got to see Richard’s younger sister.

We got to take Mom out on the town. Including where, in October 2019, all six of us kids had approached a local restaurant as we were out walking and said, We know you’re booked solid but we just buried our father and our Mom was hoping for Italian and could you possibly squeeze us in tonight?

And they did. They didn’t have to, but they did.

For the memories of that day and their kindness, Richard and I took her back there Saturday night. It was the best food of the trip. Brio in Salt Lake City–if you go there, go there.

After I spent all that time trying not to grouse at my husband because I wanted to go see my 91-year-old mom and he wanted to wait till the Omicron counts were down to where it was safe for us to walk through the airport for her sake, it turns out he was very very right but not just for the reasons we thought.

They test the sewage here and extrapolate from that the percentage of the population that has the disease in that moment. He wanted that count to go below where it would be inevitable that you’d be exposed to at least one person at the airport and then bring it to Mom, even if she is boostered. I couldn’t rightly disagree.

Finally those tests were encouraging enough that I talked to him and to Mom and went to go book the tickets.

As I looked at that screen I felt strongly that I should book it for two weeks out. I looked at the ticket prices and noped out, even if the thought remained persistent, and booked for three weeks out with the idea in the back of my head that you do have 24 hours to cancel without penalty.

But I couldn’t get a hotel room. At all. Not one single room in the entire city, not fleabag nor Marriott. So I looked at the fares for a week earlier again, talked to Mom and Richard again, canceled the original and booked the new and felt an odd sense of relief about it. Hotel, piece of cake, car, got it. Sooner is always nicer anyway, right? (Later, Mom said to me, But of course–three weeks out was going to be General Conference. I was stunned–DUH. People fly in to Salt Lake City from all over the world for that. How had I missed that that was the weekend! You can tell I didn’t grow up in Utah.)

What we had no way to know. No. Way. Was that in between those two weeks, our 34-year-old son, who lives about a half hour from Mom, was going to be diagnosed with lung cancer. They caught it very early while scanning him for something else and the doctor was as surprised as we were, given his age and that he’d never smoked.

But he lucked out and he should be fine. Even so–there are times when you just want your parents with you, and there we were.

About a week before I booked those tickets, the sister-in-law of one of my nieces, having had epilepsy most of her life, died after being hospitalized for months after a particularly severe seizure. There was a GoFundMe to help her in-laws with their immense expenses, and I contributed to it because, family. And because you do what you can when there’s nothing you can do.

Yesterday her young son went to her and said that M, his five-year-old sister, had thrown up in her bed. The parents found their daughter seizing. It was her first. And it was a grand mal. Just weeks after burying their sister for that.

My mom, husband, son, and I were together when my sister texted about her granddaughter. I texted my niece, who is close to her cousin who was right there next to me, and said I didn’t know if it was appropriate or wanted but we were all ready to come immediately to Children’s Hospital to be with them, or anything else we could do.

The answer of course was that visitors are limited, (because of course they still are) but the offer was very appreciated and the support and love meant so much.

That trip. It had to be on that timing. And it was.

My sister-in-law from Texas.

Our niece, daughter of Richard’s late oldest sibling.

Our daughter.

Take out.

The fortune cookie that said, A gathering of friends brings you lots of luck this evening. And it did, for sure. But not quite enough to finish that James Christensen puzzle together before they called it a night for the aunt who’s on Eastern time.

I wasn’t as much of a help as I might have been on that; I tried, but finally told them (having been to the doctor this afternoon with everybody at the clinic wearing face masks so, no lipreading possible) I solve puzzles aurally all day long, do you mind if I knit?

Not at all.

And then, since the niece was wearing her cashmere cowl I’d given her as her experiment to see if that was the one animal fiber she could tolerate, and turns out she loved it, I confessed that the 50/50 cashmere/cotton afghan I was working on was–for her. I didn’t quite say, and now that I know it’ll be comfortable for you I can really dive in and stop hesitating.

Thirteen inches and it is on its way. Man, that feels good.

Yesterday, Mathias, who will unfathomably somehow be five next month, found this song outrageous–that’s not how you do language! So his mommy and daddy sat down with him and his little sister to have fun playing them some Arlo Guthrie: I don’t want a pickle, I just want to ride on my motor sickle… And IIIIIIII don’t want to diiiiiiiie, I just want to ride on my motor cyyyyyyyy….. cle.

Which I’m sure is why I instantly thought of that song when social media shared the story today of a woman who decided that, you know what? She didn’t need a pickle so much either.

A Ukrainian woman. She saw a Russian drone, went out on her balcony, and beaned it out of the sky with a jar of cucumbers. Nailed it.

Picture taken before all that vegan butter and sugar were added.

In case you ever needed to know, if you use one of those cheapo little $10 (it was then, anyway) battery-powered apple peelers and start right at the top on a big Granny Smith, yes you can, in fact, get a continuous length of apple peel long enough to be able to go play jump rope with.

“Mom, what are you *doing*!”

You might consider washing your sweater after you try it out, though. But it didn’t break!

We were having ice cream in celebration of the splurge of a bottle of coconut-cream caramel sauce with pumpkin spice because why not. A novelty to us and a favorite for her and she’d found one at the store today even though Thanksgiving is well over.

She made sure we knew that you had to mix the contents up with that spoon first.

My brain has a ’60’s or ’70’s song for everything and I found myself singing in cheerful anticipation, Stir it up. Little darling, stir it up, ohh yeah… I mentioned that I didn’t remember who sang it, just the song.

My better half instantly opined, Bob Marley–but I think it’s shake it up, it’s not stir it up.

Yonder daughter already tapping on her phone came right back with: Dad’s right, it’s Bob Marley. But it IS, Stir it up.

She put down the phone and looked at me in a mixture of wonderment and almost laughing, *MOM* heard the lyrics right! And *Dad* remembered them wrong!

Good to know we’re still doing our jobs and surprising our kids.

(And more peach flowers.)

Boxes. Cats love the ones that are just small enough. Kids turn big ones into spaceships and trucks. There’s so much magic lurking inside plain brown cardboard.

There was a box at the front door. It was not expected and not mine. Electronics? Tools? Hey, I know, designer clothes! (As if!) I looked closer.

Ah, yes, okay. The brand that makes the vanilla soy milk she likes has mostly discontinued it, I imagine due to the extreme price of real vanilla on the world market these days, and they’ve been trying to get their customers to substitute this new grain-based stuff even if they don’t want to. When you can’t bake a cake with dairy, though, you’ve got to have something.

Thus the, Hey–your oat cookture is here!

(Found the second color I was looking for, found the needles, and most importantly, the brain cleared from those falls to remember how I did it, so Emily’s replacement hat can finally begin.)

Warning: the rest of this post is a Get Off My Lawn.

I was googling to make sure I was understanding a particular architectural term correctly: floating. Because it was being applied to something that I didn’t think was, in order for the realtor’s listing to sound fancy.

Personally, I would say the correct word for this type of staircase has more to do with a direction and an article of clothing men don’t wear save with bagpipes in hand and kilt hose, myself. Do these bother other people?

Taking it further, I don’t know if it’s still there since they did some remodeling a few years ago, but we were invited to the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco with my folks by my cousin when they were in town and it was new.

The floor of the top floor was glass–if I remember right, in alternating stripes of opaque and clear. But what about earthquakes?! All that potential falling glass not to mention people. Wearing a skirt and looking down at the crowds below looking up, I emphatically did not linger. I did not wish to be Exhibit A. I did not want to be reminded of fourth and fifth grade when all the girls learned to layer up with shorts under their skirts in defense against those boys whose behavior was not corrected by the teachers nor staff.

I most certainly had opinions on what the gender of that architect had to be. I’m sure it just never occurred to him.

Or worse, it did.

I’ve been to the post-earthquake DeYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park since then, but not that one.

While we’re talking about art, my dad, who wrote, “The Fabulous Frauds: Fascinating Tales of Great Art Forgeries” would have fallen over laughing if he’d read this guy’s sales pitch. Napolean’s Talisman? That suddenly appeared out of nowhere, and with a story like that? Yeah, right, dude.

(Dad got sued by one of the forgers and the man’s story and a few others got dropped from a later edition, so, should you be interested, only buy the earlier Weybright and Talley edition of the book, as linked to. Chapter 13 I believe. Him.)

You put those two paragraphs together and I am my father’s daughter, aren’t I. (As I hit ‘Publish.’) Hey, all publicity is good publicity, right?

I have questions.

I got in the habit in my teens of walking several miles a day, and so there were a few times where I really stretched my legs and walked past whatever house used to be where this one is now. If memory serves, my older siblings’ friend Frances’s father was the original developer. (Or was that the next block up.)

So who…thought this was how they wanted it to be now?

Ten thousand-plus square feet, but only half of them finished. You can’t have a garage. The wallpaper in one bathroom is peeling away and the print on it is oak grain painted pink. I know, that was a thing when I was a kid, but it’s been years since I’ve seen the like.

A mansion built in 1985 and it had Formica? Are those cabinets Ikea? A lucite towel rack from the late ’60s when that was a hot new thing?

On the other hand, picture #15 has an excellent yarn storage system in place, bar none.

It says the flooring is carpet, hardwood, and marble, and a lot of it surely is, but honey I recognize that by-the-roll vinyl pattern in the kitchen because I saw it in the showroom in ’95 and didn’t want it in mine.

But what really threw me? Was picture #5. On the left.

I’ve seen that before.

I had to walk into the other room to look at mine to compare. Surely that’s an Anne painting. My sister. From the tour of Europe with our art dealer dad where she came home and painted so many of the cityscapes she’d seen. That’s how Dad liked to frame them, too, and her work was some of his most popular. There are several more shown less clearly that could be as well.

So that explains the mystery of the rest of the house: they’d spent their money where it mattered.

The sunlight only had a few minutes left and I excused myself from my knitting group Zoom a moment to step outside to cover the mango tree to hold in the warmth from the incandescent Christmas lights; it was 34F this morning, and since I had had it professionally pruned on Friday, I could only assume the cuts would make it a little more vulnerable right now. If it freezes it dies.

I always try to do that really carefully because those covers are big, it’s an awkward process, and it’s easy to trip on them. Not to mention I have no sense of balance.

I was not remembering that I must never be distracted nor in a hurry at this.

I found where my shoe had ended up as I took the measure of the outcome. Nothing seemed broken. Fingers unhappy. The rest will let me know (and it’s starting to.) I found myself unexpectedly a bit dizzy. Having fallen four days ago tripping over a box at the front door, one big toe was going, Are you kidding me. Again?

I came back inside and found myself suddenly short of breath as I was turning the camera back on to my friends. I didn’t say anything to them and in fact kept knitting the plain beanie I was working on thank you left hand but I did confess to my family after it was over.

I got me a loving but stern talking-to from both of them. I got lectured on the value of me vs the tree. I got told to be careful. (I know, I know.)

Tonight’s the coldest night in the forecast for the next ten days, and things should be warming up from there so hopefully we’re done dealing with this for the season.

And then.

I got a wonderful note back from my niece re the afghan I’d just finished for her daughter whom she’d given my name as her middle name: she is thrilled, it is gorgeous, and by airplane or mail, by whatever means they will all be very very happy when it comes.

She, hesitating and unsure in the asking, had one request, though: I had once knit her a hat and she had loved it very much. She didn’t quite want to say it but her mom/my sister had encouraged her and said she should, and–would it be possible I could knit her another one like that? Because it had been just so perfect and it had meant a lot to her. She had checked the Lost and Founds everywhere. It was distinctive, but no, they hadn’t seen it.

Her email yanked me right out of my self-pity and straight into happy anticipation at such an easy way to make her world right again. I’d needed that. The afghan needs the security of arrival by air by me after Omicron gets out of here, but seventy stitches’ and about fifty rows’ worth of a hat: that, I’d be willing to trust the post office with.

My left hand might want to wait a day or two to start.

But not if I have any say in it.

I got a heads-up from a dairy-allergic friend two days ago: Mutari Chocolate‘s building is being torn down and they were being forced to move, without a place to land yet. Go, she said. Valentine’s is their last day.

NO! Oh, man…

And so the three of us headed over the hills to Santa Cruz to support Michelle’s favorite chocolate maker. Their stuff is pricey–but extremely good. And safe for her to just simply go and eat out like a normal person, which has been such a gift for her.

I feel like I’m out of practice after these past two years, but I wanted to thank them and support them and encourage them in whatever may come next. So I grabbed four Malabrigo Mecha hats knit of many a Sunday Zoom session and managed, from the back seat, to thread a yarn needle and run the ends in on the three that needed it, despite the steep twists and curves of Highway 17 through the mountains.

We knew it might well be our last chance. We knew we were going to splurge.

That turned out to be a definite understatement.

The chocolate machinery in that place, the music, and of course the masks are all not conducive to my hearing much at all in there and I’ve always just been the pleasant but deaf mom picking out what I want and letting the others have their conversations. But this time the familiar face of one woman lit up when she saw me–and not only did it mean the world to me, in that moment I felt how much having to let go of this place and our coming at this time meant to her.

And that answered my inner question right there. Yes.

And so the purse was opened and I asked her to pick a color. She exclaimed and chose the one in soft purples and browns that could be cacao pods by the colors. Perfect. I suddenly wished I had more of those to offer.

The woman behind her picked a bright blues and greens mix.

Did I see someone working in the back? I asked.

Yes. And so the first woman picked one out for that woman, too, and walked over to that room to share it.

It was my Don’t Go parting gift. My pleading of Please Make It Back Here. Even though Santa Cruz rent is crazy.

They are going to tour some of the farms around the world that grow their cacao beans and then come back here and start searching for a new spot.

They do, in fact, have a second location: in Watsonville, so their website will remain up and running during what is hopefully just an interim.

I was so glad I had a way to say thank you for all the chocolate and the welcoming and the allergen conscientiousness that’s been so freeing for our daughter.

Who, as she drove us back north, said with both wishing and hesitation, Watsonville. That’s…quite a drive.

Yes, but note that at least your cousin does live near there.