Conversation at dinner: Marian was talking about when they first bought their house in the Seattle area.

She stepped outside one evening and encountered a neighbor standing by his curb staring to the southeast. Had she heard?  Had she seen this?

Heard what?

Uh, about Mt. St. Helens? You know, the volcano?

The what?!  So Marian looked over thataway and you could see the plume in the distance.  Whoa.  She’d had no idea there was anything other than Mt Rainier, which she could see, anywhere nearby. There was a fine layer of ash on everything the next morning.

Richard buried his head in his hands in mock dismay over his dinner, teasing us: “One sister who can’t hear the fire alarm” (no hearing aids in, the building being evacuated, and me totally oblivious on the day he was referring to) “and one sister who doesn’t know there’s a volcano in the neighborhood,” shaking his head.

I guess she hadn’t heard hers go off either.

Sisters.  Whaddyagonnado.

…And I need me a good bird book.

A little more water on those tomatoes.

That plum tree is going to be so hosed, no doubt about it.

And I still need a goofy picture of Marian. Shouldn’t be hard.

(Note added an hour later to draft: write it and it shall happen…)

I told my son John about that plum sauce and A.’s visit, and he emailed back, Please leave me some? I’ll be home in December!

He’s been on his mission for the Mormon Church for 18 months now.  Homemade plum sauce for winter sounded t0 me like a marvelous way to anticipate and then celebrate the day he comes home.  So there is now a container in the freezer marked for the occasion to come: memories, neighbors, family, fruit tree history, it’s all in that Rubbermaid, waiting and ready for him.

You know how when you point a camera at a kid they give you a goofy face?  All I had to do was tell Marian I was going to take her picture and she gave me a goofy face. And I missed it.

The plumber agreed to come tomorrow, having an all-day job today–which he then finished early, called, rushed over, and rescued us.  Yay!

And life is good.

Really, it’s all just a matter of coming Bach to basics.  You know, like the garlic ice cream they sell in Gilroy.

In the Happy Father’s Day department, one will note that I seem not to have been the only one with the idea: there was only one left in the whole store Friday.  I snatched it.  Mine.  And then, briefly, his. (He let me taste some, but the thing disappeared surprisingly fast when I walked back out of the room.)

For the man who lived in France for two years on a mission for the Mormon Church, came home, and taught me what True Chocolate was supposed to be like, lifting me from my Hershey wilderness into true European dark bliss.  And now you know why I really married him. Heh.

Vosge’s Haut.Chocolat to celebrate the day.  What could be more manly than an applewood-smoked bacon chocolate bar?

Our neighbor across the fence once asked me if we’d lived in this neighborhood in ’55 when…

And I told her I hadn’t been born yet in ’55, much to her chagrin, judging by her reaction; my hair was grayer than hers, and I guess she’d just assumed…

But our house was.  Which is why today after I’d bleached and cleaned all three bathrooms (we added the third to keep our then-about-to-be-teenagers from killing each other) yet again after the second go-round on the plumbing we thought we’d finally fixed, I was not entirely Little Miss Sunshine today when the shower pans announced yet a third time that they really really needed a Zofran equivalent in their system.

I have my sister flying in from Washington State on Monday afternoon. We were going to wash the already-clean linens on the guest room bed, just to make sure they weren’t dusty.  Right now I would settle for being able to tell her she can use the bathrooms safely.

I will have a plane to meet.

And a plumber who should be making good on his short-term warranty, who came out last month, who doesn’t work weekends, and I’m too cheap to call someone else and we’re still trying to fix it ourselves.  It keeps starting to be okay and then–not.  So someone has to be home to meet the plumber Monday, assuming we’re still at it, and at round three, I think the squirrels are slapping their thighs and telling human jokes on us.  (They lost rounds two and three on the birdfeeder so far and could use the comic relief in the face of their dire deprivation.)

Happy almost-Father’s Day!  (Toilet snakes are a manly art.  No, no, I insist, Dear, go right ahead.)

(Edited to add:  So I did what any reasonable knitter would do: I blocked the seacell/silk shawl on that guest bed while I still could, keeping the rinsing water in the sink to the most minimum possible in doing so.)

(Falcon image property of SCPBRG, a marvelous organization that has brought peregrines back from the brink.  Look how those babies are growing up!)

Stephanie wrote awhile back about the black hole effect in handknitting. I’ve put hours and rows into this shawl today, trying to wrap it up, and it still stretches out to, roughly…18″.  Huh. (Probably because I’m not trying quite so eagerly to prove to myself it’s farther along than it is.)

The yarn is 40% silk, and silk yarns knitted up, especially when they aren’t spun tightly, have a tendency to stretch out over time.  (A side note: I once knitted a 50/50 kid mohair/silk vest, with much cabling work in the front and then knitted plain in the back because I was afraid of running out of yarn.  The vest buttoned down the front, which turned out to be a very good thing: the heavier weight dragged the fronts about six inches downward, coming down, if I wore it unbuttoned, to look like I’d knitted points on purpose, while the back stayed primly in place just covering my waistband. Moral of the story: be careful of mixing dense and lightweight stitch patterns when working with silk.)

So.  This shawl will either still be rather on the short side, which is fine with me, or it will stretch out surprisingly far when I block it and grow even more over time and I’ll have something long and swoopy from my gorgeous, shimmery yarn. Either way…

…(launching into storytime here, folks)…

My husband and I met for the first time when my parents decided I was an old enough newborn to be taken outside and to church.  (Or maybe when Mom had had enough of cabin fever, right, Mom?) It is safe to say I really don’t remember the event.  Thus, given our 15″ height difference in adulthood, the jokes that are, by now, a tad shopworn: we grew up together, he just did more, I knew when to quit, yadda yadda.

So we were just old friends who started finally actually dating in college.    I had a classmate, about 6’2″ or so, who saw us on campus one day.  The next class she and I had together, she took me aside and reamed me in great indignation. “All the short girls take all the tall boys!”

What could I gracefully say? I beat you to it?  Neener neener?  I told her simply, “I took him in the size he came in.”

I thought of that as I measured this shawl and wondered what its real dimensions will turn out to be–just like I wondered once what married life was going to really be like.  After 29 years come next week and four fledged kids, I think I’ve got a good idea on the latter.

I don’t quite think he wants me to knit this for him as an anniversary present, though.  It would be too much of a stretch.  I’ll have to think of something else, huh?

With apologies to Paul Simon (and an extra verse added by special request of the peregrine group)…

The problem is all inside your wings, Clara said to Kya
The answer is easy if you practice, and eventually…
I’d like to help you in your struggle to fly free
There must be fifty ways to leave your louver.
Fifty ways to leave your louver.

Dive out of the way, Jose. Set a flight plan, Esteban. Watch your Clara, Tierra. And set yourself free.  Look and fly clear, Veer. Try it today, Ilahay! Just hop off the ledge. Fledge. And set yourself free.

The watchers said it grieves us so that Carlos went astray
We wish there were something we could do, to make him show again
But Esteban is here. A peregrine papa too, now, teaching,
Fifty ways to leave your louver.  Fifty ways to leave your louver.

Dive out of the way, Jose. Set a flight plan, Esteban. Watch your Clara,
Tierra. And set yourself free. Look and fly clear, Veer. Try it today,
Ilahay! Just hop off the ledge. Fledge. And set yourself free.

Glenn said it’s really not my habit to intrude
But the more I see you’re grounded and your directions misconstrued–
Don’t want to box you in. But at the risk of being rude
There must be, better ways to leave your louver. Better ways to leave your louver.

Dive out of the way, Jose. Set a flight plan, Esteban. Watch our Clara, Tierra. And set yourself free.  Look and fly clear, Veer. Try it today, Ilahay! Just hop off the ledge. Fledge. And set yourself free.

Tierra said why don’t we all just sleep on it tonight
And I believe in the morning, we’ll begin to see some flight
And then Veer kicked her. And she realized, they probably were right
There must be, fifty ways to leave your louver.
Fifty ways to leave your louver.

Dive out of the way, Jose. Set a flight plan, Esteban. Watch our Clara, Tierra. And set yourself free.  Look and fly clear, Veer. Try it today, Ilahay! Just hop off the ledge. Fledge. And set yourself free.

———–

A side note. My son John got T-boned by someone speeding fast, totaling both cars. He lucked out in that his passenger wasn’t hurt and only John’s shoulder got reinjured: it was operated on after a high-school wrestling team injury a few years ago.  He hurts, but oh goodness.  Thank you dear God for saving the life of my child and the others.

And of course, since he’s not currently a full-time student while on a mission for the Mormon Church, our insurance won’t cover him even though we pay the same premium as before he left. But that’s just noise at the moment compared to what matters.

There was one other thing I didn’t mention yesterday on the very remote possibility I’d be spoiling the surprise. In the late morning, we picked Richard and Kim up at the airport, got to share hugs and tell him happy birthday in person, and took them out to lunch at the place of his choosing. Pizz’a Chicago.  (I can just see all the locals suddenly smiling. Good place.  And the one place where even Michelle can safely eat pizza, which she loves, if we’re careful.)

Birthday cake at home.  Then we dropped them off at Kim’s aunt and uncle’s house a few blocks away, where they were getting ready to surprise her grandparents, who also live in town: it was their 60th anniversary.  They were expecting a small celebration. Ain’t gonna happen.

Her grandfather was in Stanford Hospital the same time I was, and Kim’s mother would visit me after visiting her dad in cardiac.  Sometimes life teaches you not to take things for granted; sixty years together? Hey! Everybody! Let’s ALL celebrate–to life! And so their children and grandchildren showed up.

On the falcon front, Esteban Colbert (aka Papa bird) sat on a ledge on City Hall motionless for four hours yesterday, while his adult-sized chicks, who have not yet learned how to hunt–fledge first, one thing at a time–got hungrier and hungrier.  It has been reported that one parent will fly at a group of pigeons lined up across a lightpost, and as they skitter away, the other will snatch one from behind.  When you’re flying at 200+ miles per hour, you want a cushion of air under your prey, not a metal post.

But this time EC was, from his son’s point of view, sitting on his duff. So Veer flew right at him and then pushed him off that ledge!  His Pigeon English conveyed the message loud and clear: feed me!

Later, Veer was seen chasing after one himself.  You can just picture his father smirking–nothing like a little motivation to get a kid to do some work that he’s new at and uncertain about.  (A one-on-one parent/child hunting lesson happened as I was typing this. Squab-on-the-wing. Tastes like chicken.)

We’d have offered up a slice if pepperoni/veggie had been their thing.

Hi, Mom and Dad, it’s a boy! Just like I told everyone he was going to be (although, no, there was no ultrasound done; it just had felt like this one was definitely a boy, and so he was.)

“You missed my birthday,” growled Dad good-naturedly.

I told him that well, the doctor I wanted wasn’t on call the day before, and I wasn’t going to have my baby till he was going to be the one to deliver him.  End of story. Sorry about that.

Well, in that case, he guessed I was forgiven.  And Dad got a good laugh out of it, knowing that yes, I would indeed have gone out of labor if I hadn’t gotten the doctor I wanted.  I’d inherited Dad’s stubborn streak.

All the stories I could mercilessly tell on this 6’9″ little boy of mine.  The fingers dipped in the oil floating at the top of the natural peanut butter that he then ran down the newly-painted wall, at age two, of the house we were trying to put on the market.  We had to sand it down before we could paint it again.  Of the time he…

Well, let’s just say he was a normal, active little boy.  He filled all the lines on the massive x-ray chart at the clinic and they had to start a new page.  He is someone who I had to explain to a pediatrician (not his regular one, who knew him) as, this one doesn’t feel pain much, and if he *does* complain of pain, something’s wrong–listen up.

As a kid, he got hit by a car on his bike (just like his dear old Mom did at age nine) and ignored it and went to go play in his soccer game anyway and thought he could get away with not telling anyone–he didn’t want to let his teammates down.  He got bitten by a gopher he was trying to pick up to protect it from the kids on the playground who were stomping on its mounds.  Got a heart of gold, that kid does; we were assured that gophers don’t carry rabies and that the gopher had definitely been provoked, even if not by him.

He volunteered for a mission for the Mormon Church, being willing to go into the chaos that was Haiti, studying Haitian Creole, and then being reassigned to southern Florida when all Americans were ordered out of that country for safety’s sake shortly before he was to arrive.

Thus he was in southern Florida during all those hurricanes a few years back; he cooked and served hot meals for the Red Cross shelter, and lived for a time near Barbara Walker’s home.  (She and I swapped a few hurricane stories on the phone once.)

He had placed sixth for fluency in French for non-native speakers for all of northern California in high school; Haitian Creole, the old slaves’ French, was easy for him to pick up.  And thus, in one of those Red Cross shelters, he was able to translate for a woman with a severe heart situation to the paramedics, writing down in English what she was telling him.  He was told he’d saved her life.   A news crew came in, looking for a human interest story in the storm, and people pointed him out.  But there were hundreds of salisbury steaks needing cooking and people who were hungry.  When he later emailed me the link to the newspaper story, he added, Mom, your, um, hero son–they got in my way! I had work to do!

And he told me that if he never accomplished anything else during his two-year stint, he now knew why he had to learn that language and receive that calling: to be able to be there in that place in that moment when that woman so needed him.

He later picked the best daughter-in-law I could ever have hoped for, and thank goodness she picked him too.  He loves her dearly for now and forever.  Happy birthday, Richard!

(I’ve been corrected–there were no paramedics at first because nobody knew the woman needed one.  She’d simply given up.  Richard got asked, since he could speak her language, to go ask her if she needed anything. Uh, yes.  She did.)

I called my Dad today to wish him a happy birthday. (This is an old photo but I think it captures him so well.)

He gave me a mild scold that I’d been talking about birds on my blog and avoiding telling what’s going on.  I allowed as how that was true.  But they’re so cute!

So.  How ’bout them peregrines?  Two were snoozing at the end of the ledge this afternoon, and one gets up after awhile and decides it’s time to go play.  He (of course it’s Veer, who else) nudges his sister with his beak. She’s snoozing. He tries again; nothing doing. He picks up that big foot of his and gives her a decided shove.

Veer–let me explain this to you.  I am ignoring you.  I am ASLEEP.  Notice the closed eyes?

He puts his foot out again and broadsides her.  Waits for a response.  Nada.

Does it again, at which point she turns her head away and does all but roll her eyes, which are now finally open.  VEER!  I. Am. NOT. getting. UP!

On the other side of siblinghood, yesterday, when Kya was up on that roof drying off from her ordeal, a report came in this morning that said that she’d flattened herself down in the way that’s referred to as “pancaking,” the way the babies sleep, with feet out behind and bellies flat, to soon see one of her siblings (one report said Veer, one, Ilahay) who’d flown up there to keep her company.  The arrival pancaked down beside her and stayed there till Kya was ready to pick herself up and give it a go again.  She was not alone.

She ended up eventually safely back in the nest.

I don’t know if that was her on the ledge today with her brother or if it was another sister.  C’mon! There’s a gorgeous world waiting out there for us. I’ve seen it!  Let’s go fly!

Give it a rest for now, okay, Veer?

Oh, alright, be that way, and he half flew half ran off down the ledge and away.

——————-

And just because it’s Dad’s birthday and he wants me to, okay, yes,  I’ll add a report.  My Dr. R finally got back from his sabbatical, something I’d been waiting for (along with probably half the population in town, it must feel like to him.)

Bleeding below the endpoint of the colectomy surgery, pain above in upper GI, although less of the latter now.  So.  I’m to go on prednisone again while hoping it’s not enough to set off a diabetes reaction again, come in for x-rays next Thursday and see him again the next day, and meantime he scoped that bleeding stapled-off stump.  (The big G search engine is not my friend on any further description here and that’s probably more than you want to read anyway.)  Totally Crohn’s-y looking.  Further surgery is one eventual option, but not yet.  Biopsies taken.

And I had not told him anything about it nor said anything to her this morning, but it was all I could do not to snicker as he surprised me by telling the nurse I’d “already been prepped” for the scope: she had shoved a pamphlet at me last week with pre-sigmoidoscopy dietary restrictions.  I’d tried to explain to her that there was no colon.

She insisted.

No connection.  Does Not Apply.

She still insisted.

I drank my thoroughly-dairy-containing hot cocoa yesterday morning and this with a feeling that it was an act of defiance.

Guess who was assisting at the scope.  Not that I’d said anything to her, but.  A lesson to myself not to roll my eyes at any nurse ever, even just from within, because you never know when you’ll need them, and besides.  Who doesn’t need a little gentleness their way anyway.  It was probably at least partly a language barrier, which must be very difficult for her and I of all people, with my deafness issues, knew it.

Meantime, I am enjoying my time chuckling at the antics of teenage birds acting so much like my kids did and my siblings and I before that, while grateful to good parents who helped us learn to spread our wings well.  Happy birthday, Dad!

I’ve gone from a calm yeah, yeah, whatever–hey, no blood through the stoma, which they were glad to hear, so how bad can it be, to wanting to type a screaming NO NO NO NO NO!!! to semi-calm again.  Yes, we did go to Urgent Care, the deciding factor being that there’s no question they would have access to my electronic medical records there; the peer pressure via the blog was very helpful in getting me out the door, and thank you.

I did not know there was such a thing as drinkable lidocaine with maalox. I told the doctor I preferred chocolate.  He chuckled.  He came back awhile later and asked if it helped; it did. I got the impression he almost hoped it didn’t, that he wanted to be wrong.  Looks like upper GI inflammation.  That area would be your stomach, and…  What do they treat your Crohn’s with?

…oh.

He allowed as how he could do a full workup with a CT scan, but it could wait till tomorrow with the GI doctors taking over. Oh, right, sorry, Tuesday.

We got home.  The phone rang. My friends Valerie and Al: his mother was visiting, they wanted to go to Santa Cruz but she wasn’t up to the walk, would it be possible to borrow my wheelchair?

Hey, not only a wheelchair.  When they got here, I apologized for the ratty-looking air cushion that we hadn’t replaced because of the unspeakable price tag, so please, no keys in the pockets, it’s punctureable.  But the chair alone would make her sore after a half hour or so, and with the cushion she’d feel wonderful however long they took and wherever they might go.

I took a risk and let my cushion I can’t afford to replace go to make an elderly woman I’d never met before today more comfortable in her day, and it totally made mine.

Of all the times she might have visited, of all the days they might have decided to drive over the hill to the beach at Santa Cruz, I needed it to be today, which they could never have known.  And so they did.  I can just hear the wheels going bumpitybumpitybumpity down the boardwalk from here.

(p.s. Today is my son Richard and his wife Kim’s first anniversary, and I can’t tell you how grateful and honored I feel to have Kim in the family. Happy anniversary!)

(Note on the book: I’m a backwards author. When people ask me in person to sign their copy, I ask them if they’d be willing to sign mine too.)

Yesterday I had a mammogram done, came home, grabbed Michelle and went to the insurance broker’s to sign her up for health insurance, came home and dropped her off, went back to the clinic to the infectious diseases specialist, came home, grabbed a bite and typed that draft–

–and then Richard said, “Let’s go.” It turned out he hadn’t kept anything down since the afternoon before.

Dude. You’re supposed to say more than “I don’t feel well” in answer to your wife’s questions before that point.  I *can* cancel appointments, you know.

I had a half-finished scarf in my purse, which certainly wouldn’t hold me, and I’d finished my shawl project. I had about twenty seconds to decide on yarn and pattern, no time to print out nor look for a hardcopy of a new one, so I grabbed some Kidsilk Haze and Shelridge Farm laceweight, a pair and then, thinking about it, a second size of needles, just in case (good thing!) and my book.  I didn’t think in the rush to grab the Jerome Groopman book I wanted to finish.  And off we went.

Urgent Care sent him to the ER at Stanford, where they wanted to know if he had (I kid you not) swine flu. Richard happened to mention that one of his co-workers was in the hospital and had spent a week in the ICU, of what, he didn’t know yet.  Lovely.

I got to row 35 on my Wanda’s Flowers shawl before my hands made me stop.

We had assured the ER doctor that we had Zofran anti-nausea meds at home from my Crohn’s flare, no need to go looking for an open pharmacy at that hour. We got home, I added that bit to the draft, Richard de-wonked the computer so it would actually post while I looked for the Zofran… And it had fallen into a drawer.  Took us both looking till 2:20 before we could fall into bed.

You’ll forgive my not posting a more complete story of the evening last night?

(I’m throwing in some pictures that would have been in Friday’s post if I’d been home near my own computer. Our son Richard graduated with a minor in organ performance, and the chance to play on the Mormon Tabernacle Organ was his favorite professor’s graduation gift to his star pupil.)

My husband’s boss let him take the time off to fly with me for the kids’ big day. This was a real gift, considering all the time Richard missed while I was ill–with, again, his boss’s insistence that he not feel guilty about spending every day at my bedside in the hospital. He did work from there on his laptop, at least.

Anyway, after the Convocation Thursday (the perp walk was by college the next day), there was a family trying to capture the day taking turns holding the camera, one person out of the photo each time. There was the younger kid, about 14, playing the standard role at that age of obnoxious  teasing little brother, and the parents and the older brother were trying hard to laugh it off and be patient and understanding in the crowds and in the emotional intensity of the day. (And when I say crowds, I counted about 100 empty seats in a building that seats 22,700. We weren’t going anywhere fast.)

Noticing them, I asked if they’d like me to take a picture and let them all be in it together. Oh! Yes! Thank you!

And then, being me, I stumbled as I tried to get them into the camera frame, and said, Here. You better let him do this, he’s steadier. Richard!  And Richard stepped over to snap it for them.

They all gave this posed-smile look and I thought, hey, we can do better than that: so I stood on my tippy-tippy-toes to give my 6’8″ husband bunny ears behind his back while he aimed the camera, grabbing the role of  the little brother for them. But do you know how hard it is to give bunny ears behind a tall guy wearing a fedora on his head?

It worked. They cracked up.  Best family shot ever, I’d say.

Off in a few minutes to hear my son Richard play the Mormon Tabernacle Organ in Salt Lake City, with his wife and in-laws with us.