Sam’s home from Vermont!

Amazing (there’s that word again, hope I’m not being boring, but it really is) how much easier it is to begin, work on, and finish a job when there are two doing it together who enjoy each other’s company.  Hey Michelle! Look at this picture of you at two!  A deadline is a whole lot of help, too–along with the reminder to myself that this was in celebration that I could DO these things this time this year, when last time around the sun, no way.

But first I had to get past the “Begin: the rest is easy” part.

Michelle really wanted that thing given a makeover, and I looked at her this morning and said: “So does that mean I can’t sing in desk-can’t?”

And me a December baby, too… (I wrap my family’s birthday presents in Christmas paper in April and June because if they get to do that, then I do, too.)

It wasn’t till we were halfway through that I realized we were serenading my mother over the phone just now with “Happy Birthday,” only, to the tune of “We wish you a Merry Christmas.”  (Quick! John! Everybody! Think up the same last line on the fly and sing it together as if we planned this!) …”We wish you a happy birthday,” (we looked at each other like, uh, oh, stumbling a moment to) “And the whole rest of the year.”

No, wait, we mean more than 11 days’ worth, we mean, like, for all of being 79, and and and…

Well, hey, she laughed.  That worked. Happy Birthday, Mom!

Amazing how much bigger the laundry room is with a new dryer in there, set back against the wall where it rightly goes.  As of today.  (Thank you Rachel!) It doesn’t need to be pulled two feet forward to work–and it doesn’t burn the clothes. (Yes, we cleaned the old one’s hose out and cut it down by half; it still did that.)

Amazing how nice it is to be able to know one can now do the mercifully ordinary task of loading clothes or sheets into the dryer and they won’t come back out with little permanent burn marks.

I told Richard a year ago that if he put the exercise bike away in an unused kid’s room, I would never use it–so he assembled it right there in the dining area of the kitchen.  Not exactly lovely, but effective product placement, definitely. I got in the habit. I do use it.

Amazing how much bigger that room is now with it out of there. As of today.

Amazing how much bigger Richard-the-younger‘s room is with it moved in there but lots of other stuff cleaned out.  As of today.

Amazing how good those cookies Michelle baked for Nina came out, dairy-free and all. Yup, she made them today. Two types, filled, one, her first try at piping, and she did a superb job of it.

Amazing that they found the fake tree in the garage and actually got it set up.  As of today.  (No, it isn’t the same. On the other hand, the allergies found themselves not on the list of invitees and stayed away.)

Amazing how much we got done today–and two Christmas parties on top of that.

But before we left for those, my kids saw me starting to push the bike out of the kitchen area and were appalled: Mom! You can’t do that, let US do that!  But…but…  Together, with much effort, they carried the thing down the hall and maneuvered it into their big brother’s old room.

Their dad came around the corner just then and told them, You DO know that thing’s on wheels, don’t you?

Now.  Pardon me while I go fall over. In my nice, embiggened, cleaner house.  The kids? They’re at more Christmas parties, visiting with their friends while they’re in town, too.

Amazing that they grew up already and we didn’t even need to drive them there!

You know, that tingley Spidey sense and all that.  (I know, those look more like weevils, and this must be Spiderman’s cousin Webster.  He lost an s and his weapon it went with and is left with only wordplay.)

Michelle shrieked at a small scrambling cluster of spiders the other day while getting John’s room ready for his homecoming, and I went Eh, gimme that vacuum hose, I’ll get’em for you.

It is very useful at times to have impaired pain nerves. On the other hand, so sometimes I don’t have as much sense as I should; I decided today, when the swelling on my finger was worse, to play it safe and take it to the doctor.

I’m told it should clear up in a week or so.  But hey, I can still knit okay, and there’s some blue Manos Silk blend going at a good clip.

But still just not fast enough to knit all the things I wish I could in time for Christmas. Okay, so, that method didn’t work.  Mrs. Weasley?

(Ed. to add: I wrote this for every young mom who gets told–and it happens to all of us–that just watch out, her kids will be horrible when they’re teenagers. I’m here to say that even though mine have all left the teenager stage, that teenagers actually are wonderful and interesting people to have around and they only get better with each year that passes.  And that message, I like to think, is what this mom was seeing: looking at John and his interactions with them and then me and seeing the future progression of her own son and daughter.)

At the airport, there was a young mom also waiting for her luggage to appear who was holding a very tired-looking 15-or so-month-old.  I opened my purse and, with a few words, handed her a bright pink handknit flamingo fingerpuppet, her three-year-old clinging to her leg and her hands full, with me hoping one more thing wouldn’t be too much to hold; the little one didn’t look at all in a mood to reach out towards a stranger for it.

The mom’s face totally lit up.

Turns out John had been sitting by them on the plane. The kids had been tired and crying off and on, but he could sympathize with their wanting to be home and in bed and not understanding why they couldn’t be. They were absolutely adorable little ones. End of story. So he told her they were and made a friend for life on the spot.

I did not know at the time why she smiled at me and then at my son as she looked at that flamingo in her hand, affirming–I had utterly no idea yet what.

But her kids were absolutely adorable.

Flipping out: now let’s see if I can get this gadget to work.

John, seen at a distance, coming from around the corner and towards the waiting area in front of the airport gate.  Dad holding camera. Mom holding small Flip video camera but after the initial aiming it at John’s approaching face, ignores Flip pretty much and focuses on her kid; Dad holds camera steady.  The grins get only bigger and bigger, and that last little bit, nobody can stand it anymore and John and Mom, at least, are running towards each other.  (Sorry Dad–not paying attention to you at this point.)

Massive hugfest ensues: John and Mom, then John and Dad with Mom suddenly remembering to capture something on the Flip other than that steady walk and the blur that must have have been there with the running and the arms being thrown around each other after two years apart. So. Steps back a step to get them both in the frame, captures the grins from down below (boy, am I short some days.)

Come evening time, Mom decides that maybe she could share that video, and as for the blurring that must be there, hey, it’s all good, right?

Asks for help from resident geek.  Dad plugs Flip into computer.   Silly Flip takes forevvvvvvvvverrrrrrrr… And then says it only has one video in it.

Which is of Mom typing away on laptop in hospital in August, suddenly looking up, seeing Flip in face, and if looks could kill… Oh my. I’m still laughing. No you can’t see it.

Turns out, when that one got loaded onto computer, said computer backed itself up–its whole memory, or as much of it as it could–onto that Flip. We have not a clue why.

Memory full. Today didn’t record.

Like (expletive deleted, she typed primly) it didn’t. Maybe not on a bunch of electrons, but… !!!

If the timestamp on this blog were right, I’d have one less hour to have to wait: John comes home tomorrow afternoon!

The plum sauce awaits.

I may not be getting to explore the cathedrals of Europe anytime soon.  But tonight, listening to Michelle singing with the choir in the glorious acoustics at Stanford Memorial Church, I felt, it doesn’t get better than this. It just doesn’t.

And when the flute played–a flute! (My family will understand that exclamation point.) From a seat halfway back, I heard every note as clearly as if I’d played it myself.

Wow.

And Jim, who was my kids’ organ teacher, totally hot-dogged it on that massive, ornate old pipe organ way above our heads; he was having a great time. Remember the story about his son Nicholas?  Nicholas played a duet with him tonight.

Hark, the angels indeed sing, shining brilliantly in the cool night.

Grow older with me, the best is yet to be.

It’s true. We’re an April-December romance.

Last night, turning off the light and tucking in, our hands reached out to each other–and we totally snagged the velcro on our hand splints and I burst out laughing.

Fifty-one years, twenty-nine married. It’s a good start.

(Ed. to add: Michelle had cocoa in the fridge with Green and Black’s Maya Gold melted into it ready for me to warm up in the morning. That child knows how to celebrate a birthday!)

Going to Rachel‘s in San Jose: “Did you get the GPS?”

“Nah, I’ll just use my phone.”

Showoff. Oh, wait, mine does that too?!

We finally gave in to the inevitable on our dying Sidekicks and bought new phones.  When you’re buying five cells, it’s like buying a car–you can’t just walk in and be done with it.  Even though we mostly knew what we wanted, Wednesday evening it took us three hours. The saleswoman laughed a bit ruefully when I gave out, gave up, plunked down and pulled out my knitting.

Richard had great fun later swiping his new phone at the barcode on a Safeway receipt and having it tell him where all the most-local sources were for that pumpkin can and what their prices were, telling me that his friend had written that Droid app.  Cool!

I got an LG env Touch, plenty for me. And I can now plug my hearing aids into my phone! I have always had to turn on the speakerphone and hold it (and hold it and HOLD it) right up at my ear.  I will actually be able to have a private conversation now?  And have much better sound quality from the phone itself, apart from the hearing aids?  This is going to be quite nice.

I told Richard I really didn’t need him to buy me any more birthday presents, we’d shot our wad.  Dirt. I need dirt. Dad sent me more amaryllis bulbs, Richard bought me a few too  (yay! Thank you!) and I just need some potting soil and a few pots.  I’m simple to please. (Wait–don’t look at that Touch when I say that…)

I’ll see Sunday if he agreed with me.

You know why it’s so hard to keep those holiday pounds off?

It’s those see stars. One arm breaks off, they just grow another one, appearing time after time.  Whaddyagonnado.

(Michelle volunteers one-on-one as a tutor and the middle schooler brought her holiday cookies as a thank you.  Michelle wasn’t about to tell her she didn’t dare risk eating them; it was a sweet thing for her to have done.  I was glad to help out a little, and besides, I could use nudging the scale up a tad.)

Meantime, this morning, our piano doctor who makes house calls, an old friend after all these years, came by.  The house was, shall we say, unfinished–and I was discouraged at how fast my energy had given out on me.

He smiled a warm smile; “Doesn’t look messy to me.”

And at that suddenly everything was much better.

He glanced out at the birds on the feeder, taking them in for a moment; he has done recordings of the wildlife in his own area.  I’ve heard his frogs.  (If you ever need some theme music while ripping out your knitting…)  I wondered if he could hear my finches through the window.

I’ve heard them I think twice now. Yesterday the feeder swung around so one couldn’t see me coming as I opened the slider as quietly as I could and slipped outside.  The feeder swung back around, and I was close enough to stroke the little bird’s stripey-brown feathers had I moved.  I didn’t dare move.  Or breathe.  It chirped and dove into the seed, again and again, keeping an eye on me–and when I did finally breathe, it was a Mr. Tumnus moment: Oh my goodness! You’re a human, and I’m–I’m a bird!  Fright and flight!

I picked up my needles while Neil tuned my piano.

I don’t usually knit in the mornings; I’m not sure how to describe the weirdness that is the body responding in slow motion before about noon–you tell it to move and it dithers like a 13-year-old told to do the dishes and arguing about it. Knitting at that hour, and particularly on tiny needles?  Slow as doing taxes.

And yet. He played a few snatches of song here and there as he tuned, reminding me why my concert-pianist grandmother had chosen that Kimball in the first place ages ago.  Such a gorgeous depth of sound to it.   Some notes had slipped, but he was pulling them back into where they belonged.

The needles picked up a bit.

He got to the highest notes on the piano.  So many times in the last twenty years I’ve heard only the slight thud thud of the hammers hitting against the strings up there, but with my ears turned up now–thank you John Miles–I caught a few of those actual notes, thin and high and as unstable as a hummingbird’s flight, but briefly actually mystically somehow there.  So that’s what those sound like.  I had long forgotten.  Wow.

That stopped my hands altogether across the room as I felt, Do it again!  Make it play like that again! And he did. I didn’t hear each note every time, but just enough to feel like I was in the presence of a small, rare gift from Life itself.

Don’t forget to breathe! And don’t stop in the middle of a row of laceweight silk or you’ll drop a thousand stitches and he was almost done there. Hurry!

I didn’t finish the row. I didn’t drop the stitches. I did, however, find myself hugely cheered on a morning when I had been needing cheering.

So many grace notes appear when we are in the presence of good people who are our friends.

The kids are coming home soon.  Let the music begin.

Company’s coming.

I remember reading a funny essay once by Anna Quindlen on “putting up a good front” the way women do. My mom called it “a lick and a promise,” and as a kid I always wondered who was being promised what. Now, of course, I know full well that it’s promising oneself to do a better job later even when the pressure’s off.

My daughter, on the other hand, wanted to put on a good back: the laundry room, the bathroom, the back areas of the house.  So while I was at the doctor’s, she spread everything out of there into the living and family rooms and started sorting. Old towels and sheets vs newer, etc etc., what ought to be tossed, and do we need the XL twin sheets now that the XL twin bed is gone?

All that needed to happen, but, timing, child…

She was working where I had planned to be cleaning. Well, but that stuff did need to be done too, true.

Mom, what do you want to do with this?

Huh!  I thought I’d given all of that rambouillet fleece I’d had carded and combed to the local Boy Scouts for stuffing in their shoes during long hikes–the mill had totally botched it.  My fine wool had come back with neps and pills and spinning-wise, it was just a mess, but the Boy Scouts were ecstatic.

There were two bags of it?  I still have one?  I do?  Anyone planning a long hike? Looking at the amount left, we’re talking Grand Canyon here.

Although I knew better than to take a picture of the living room mid-day to prove it.

Got merry olde England and cheery New Mexico mailed today. Colorado, Qatar (how on earth long does it take a box to get to Qatar?), Utah, Maryland–nope.

Bought a thirty-six ounce can of truffle almonds at Costco the other day, and then realized, wait–that’s not…*chocolate*… truffles…

I’d tasted truffle oil once. It instantly brought me back to being ten years old at Moose Mountain Provincial Park, where we were camping for a lot longer than we had intended to; our pop-up trailer had a broken part that required delivery from the manufacturer.  And so we hiked, we had a volleyball land in the campfire and sizzzzzzzzle slowwwwly flat.  Oops.  Um, let’s go hiking some more!

Deep woods, musty (okay, rotting) leaves… It was all right there in that olive and truffle oil sample that the purveyor was standing there beaming at me over, waiting for my rapturous response.

Jumping in a pile of autumn leaves, okay, throwing them at my siblings when they’re not looking, just watch me, I might still.

But eating them?

So you know what we had to do.  Open that can and sample the things.

They have butter. That leaves Richard and me. We tried them.  Make that me. Rather garlic-ish, hold the essence of bark of maple or worse, it ain’t there.  Huh.

Richard thinks he’ll leaf it all to me.

Break out the Cuisinart.  Bring on the Yuletide guests.  Truffle pate’, anyone? C’mon, you know you want some!

(Don’t even SAY “nuts to the squirrels” yet, okay?)

The Rooster Rock (this one captures the color better) went out of here a few days ago.

I sent my son John an email earlier this week and mentioned about my going to Purlescence and having had that handdyed Blue Moon Peru skein leap into my hands and insist, as loudly as a bluejay defending its nest, that it had found its territory and I was not to argue.  Didn’t matter that it was a heavier weight than I wanted. Didn’t matter that it wasn’t what I was looking for. It had found my hands.  That’s all that mattered to it.

And so I had had to introduce myself to this stranger of an alpaca-blend yarn.  Not knowing why it was so sure of itself, I figured out a pattern that would match the autumn-leaves effect of the colorway and knitted the thing up quickly for–who?  There wasn’t enough yardage to get it as long as I wanted and there was just the one skein, so I kept the stitch count fairly short and left the neck long and wide and open to make sure it would work well for a larger person should it need to. Fling it over the shoulder, tie it in front, whatever, it would do.  It would go well over a winter coat, given its thickness, and then once inside, the wearer could fasten it over their blouse or sweater.

It was done.

John wrote back.  Given that he’d already asked for a shawl once during his two-year mission for the Mormon Church–that silk one (better picture here) I sent him awhile back–he’d felt very hesitant about imposing on me again. But just like the silk went to a woman with MS, he knew, in the city he was now serving in, another woman with severe health problems he was worried about.  He hadn’t been going to ask me again, but…

And it was sitting there in the corner going, Hah!  Toldja so. I answered John, You’re not asking, I’m offering.

That son of mine has a soft spot for people with health issues. I wonder how that happened?

It felt right.  I don’t even know the woman’s name this time, much less her coloring or favorites.  It still felt right.  It’s not bluejaying me anymore–now it’s time for it to bluejay him. He won’t be out there much longer, so I FedExed it to make sure it got there while he could still get it where it needs to go.  The time to do good in this life is short enough as it is.

He’ll do the right thing with it.

And now you know as much as I do.