Lots of snow up in the tops of the mountains, the perfect weather here far down below, with blossoms on the trees that in our own climate were gone over a month ago and all of it celebrating with us–what a perfect day.

Took the kids and my folks out to dinner tonight to the kids’ favorite restaurant, an Indian one where they all love the food and where Michelle can easily enjoy a meal out without wondering about the ingredients; the staff knows her and they know her dairy allergy.

She told me they had gone out of their way quite a few times for her, that they had offered to make her items not on the menu and had been willing to give her points on how to cook like they do, sharing enthusiasms over this method here and that spice there.  They had been careful in taking good care of her–creating a new twist on the phrase that whom you serve, you love.

The fact that the manager afterwards made a point of telling me she would be missed was quite something to me. He totally made my day.

Well. I had a blog post all planned yesterday: I often tell people in colder climates that I miss snow, to please throw a snowball for sheer glee for me if they would. Granted, it’s easy to miss the stuff when you don’t have to shovel it, I know–I was having to toss shovelfulls higher than the top of the garage just before we moved away from Merrimack.

What prompted all that is that I checked the weather forecast a few days ago: snow showers coming in Provo.  SNOW? *NOW*?

So I was wondering how on earth I was going to… I mean, my shoes are of the open-heel Birkenstock clog type good for Californian weather, definitely.  Can you just picture it? With each step, the snow would go flip, flip up the backs of my legs. I’d be throwing my own little snowballs. At me.

I checked again last night, though, and the forecast had changed. If it does anything, now, they say, it’ll  rain.  Well. That’s better, but it killed my anticipated blog post.  Heh. And then Phyll and Lee showed up to surprise Richard for his late-birthday and I quit worrying about it.

Five years ago, our Sam graduated from college and I bought plane tickets to go: nontransferrable, nonrefundable, yadda yadda. Two days before the flight, I started to have a Crohn’s flare. Oy vey. I hoped it would let up. It did not.

So I called Southwest Airlines and explained my situation.  They were wonderful and let me transfer my ticket into Richard’s name in spite of the restrictions, and he went instead of me on that trip.

We have two kids graduating this weekend.  My colon is gone, so it can’t even think of throwing any Crohn’s at me; it’s my turn. Tie a snip of thick bright yarn on my suitcase to help mark it as mine at baggage claim–I get to go.

And if it does snow, I will scoop some up and throw my own real snowball, and it’ll be gleeful. After these last few months?  Oh you betcha.

(Ed. to add: happy Earth Day to all.)

To answer Birdy–here’s my been there done that:

My kids once got into not the food coloring but the fabric paint.  Whichever child it was never got caught. But nothing I could do could clean the green (Lorelei would be so proud) fingerpainted smears off the front of the white bathroom cabinet.

I threw all the tubes out after that–I didn’t ever use the stuff anyway and it clearly wasn’t worth the hazard to my house.  Replacing that cabinet when we remodeled was simply the only way we found to clean up that mess that worked.

So. One of Sam’s first-grade friends was moving away and gave her a box of stuff including, you guessed it, a tube of fabric paint.  In bright red.   I said no, and tossed it straight in the trash.

The trashmen somehow dropped it out of there while going about their job. I found this out when I pulled into my driveway later that day, and–picture this.  With my deafness. Inside my car. With the motor still on.  And the windows up. I HEARD that four ounce tube explode when the tire hit it!

Bright red, and splattered in tiny droplets all across the front of the house; Jackson Pollack would be so proud.

I was wearing a brand new outfit I very much liked. Oh well. I ran into the house at top speed for a wet towel, knowing I didn’t have time to change, and then scrubbed as fast as I could, hoping hard not to have to have my entire house repainted.

My outfit was toast.  Paint from the towel had swiped onto it, Cat-in-the-Hat style, but that was small potatoes to the could-have-beens.  One last drop was left on the house, dried hard before I could get to it, but it was tiny. There were a few red spots on the otherwise-berryless male holly bush.

I got off easy that time.

(Suddenly thinking, as the daughter of a modern art dealer, gee, I could set off a whole artistic trend with this post, couldn’t I?)

A new day, two doctor appointments, making progress.  After I posted yesterday,  LynnH reminded me, “Alison–you’re ALIVE!”   She was right, and she even got me to laugh over a glitch in the TurboTax software. (When one is trying to enter copyright royalties, do not give the author or artist a screen about rental properties as the next logical step. I’m just sayin’.) Anybody who can make me chuckle over taxes…

…Speaking of which.

Two years after we got married, we knew we had to finish ours early because life was about to get very busy.  Richard was preparing to defend his master’s thesis; that was one thing.

When they told him when he was scheduled to do it, he pleaded for an extra month, which they granted him–because Sam was supposed to show up that week. That was the other little thing.

Sam arrived on a snowy April 15 and started teaching us what this parenthood thing was all about.  Never was there a baby so perfectly adorable.

My grandmother had been a concert pianist and had taught music at the University of Utah (before women were even allowed to vote!) Our Sam, at four months old, lay in her baby carrier at Gram’s, waving her arms and legs in perfect time to the piano being played. That’s our girl.

I learned what ipecac is when, at 13 months, she scrambled up a chair when my back was turned and snarfed the tomato plant I had in the window; Poison Control recommended I give her the stuff. I’d never heard of it.  In that case, they said, hie thee to the ER, fast.

A week later, I learned how awful it is as a parent to hear your 13-month-old screaming in a room where the parents weren’t allowed in as they x-rayed her fractured skull after she’d climbed up again.  She’d fallen backwards onto the concrete floor of our apartment as I’d raced to grab her to get her down.  No. You do not climb up on the furniture.

Yes I do, she thought, just watch me.

She was our crash course in handling this stuff.

She taught us we could be wise: she ducked her head suddenly into the tub during a bath one day and came up terrified and screaming.  Water was not her friend. That bathtub was her enemy. She fought it with everything she had–till the day,  a couple of weeks later, that her daddy put her favorite toys in the tub. And then her.

She screamed and she fought, as we expected, and then–she stopped.

There was no water in the tub.

Oh, okay. That’s cool!  And so she played with her toys while I did everything I could to make it the Most Fun Time Ever.  After that she had no fear of the tub or water again.  Done with that, moved on.

She grew up to be a kid who could handle pretty much anything.

And one who (ask Anya here) makes better hot chocolate, out of melted chocolate barely diluted, than even Coupa Cafe.  We got spoiled daily when we visited her and her husband last November.

About a year and a half ago, they decided they wanted a cat, and went to their local no-kill rescue center.  They fell in love with the cute black kitten; they got asked if they would take this other one also, since they were attached to each other? More on the cats here.

Sam often jokes about what her cats would do if only they had opposable thumbs; opening the can opener would just be the start.  Me, I’m thinking I’d teach my grandcats to knit. Anya, though–she’s fast and she’s smart.  Give her the taxes to do: the IRS forms would make as much sense to her as anyone.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SAM!

When my folks were raising us six kids, there was a day when Mom hauled my brother to the emergency room–Washington, DC is not a small town–and the receptionist looked up and smiled, “Oh hello, Mrs. Jeppson. What is it this time?”

I heard that story from Mom when I called her 26 years ago wailing, “Do kids survive childhood!” after my baby, my first, 13 months old and a determined climber, had ended up in the ER two Fridays in a row.

Mom laughed and reminded me of all the things I’d done that had helped lead up to that receptionist’s question.

But I dunno. When you call the hospital (this was today) and the person who answers recognizes your voice…

Two and a half months ago, after my surgery, they told me that some ileostomy patients eventually become allergic to the standard skin protectant they were using.  Hopefully I wouldn’t be one of them.

And I thought, my stars, have you ever met my feral immune system? It is NOT housebroken!

Two and a half months.  The fungal and yeast tests came back negative, the allergy patch flaming. That stoma paste is SO busted.  There’s an expensive alternative, and my insurance is just going to have to take it.  (I know,  I know, given January, we’ll all weep for them.)

You guys out there in the industry, creating Eakins and the like, you’d better keep researching and inventing fast, because at this rate I’m just plain hosed.

I think I’ll go wrap me up in a blanket for which I am exceedingly grateful to my friends and knit. Something complicated that will require a lot of focus.

While I look for that one last piece of paper so I can mail the forms off…

A note from someone sparked this memory. That and the fact that one of our kids was born April 15 and I am hunting for that stray piece of paper.

My husband and I had a small infant, our first, when we were invited to a wedding reception.  His friend getting married had grown up near Richard’s grandmother, who lived in a tiny town up in the mountains above Salt Lake City.  You remember the buffalo and the fence story? When I suddenly learned how fast and how high I could jump?  Yes, that friend.  Zane.  So.

We asked Grandma if she’d be willing to take her great-grandchild for an hour or two for us; as a very new mom, it was hard to be away from my baby for any longer than that.  We’d be close by if there were a problem. She said sure.

Velcro was still a pretty new thing back then. There was a woman in the town we were living in who these days would be on Etsy, who sewed up her creations for the local baby-goods store: cotton diapers shaped to fit a baby and that closed up with velcro.

I made a point of having those diapers on Sam so that it would be easy on Grandma. No fine-fingered maneuvers for elderly hands to have to worry about, just press together and go, although, I was hoping we’d be gone a short enough time that changing the baby wouldn’t be an issue anyway. I made a point of showing Grandma the velcro and explaining it to her, just to make sure she was familiar with it. She nodded, yes, yes, got it, okay.

Or maybe not so okay.  We had a grand time at the wedding, picked up our baby for the drive home, and thanked Grandma profusely.

She seemed less than pleased.  I asked if the baby had behaved well for her?  Yes…

It wasn’t till some time later that I found out that she was not happy with us at all. How could we have left her with a baby to take care of–and no diaper pins! She’d had to search and SEARCH and search till she’d found the diaper pins she’d used on HER babies.

I found there were these huge pins going right through the thick velcro. It must have taken her quite a bit of effort to push them through it.

And as I look for that silly (why is this one necessary!) paper to keep the IRS happy, I picture my late grandmother-in-law looking and looking for those pins…

My Aunt Rosemary passed away this afternoon after a long fight with cancer.  My mother flew home last week and went to her older sister’s house right away and had a good visit with her, telling us afterwards that she was surprised at how energetic Rosemary was.

And I thought, yes.  Been there.  When you are very ill and then someone shows up who loves you, it is a very strengthening thing, both physically and emotionally.

Two days later, Rosemary had a stroke and was unable to speak, so we’re very glad Mom got that time with her when she did and the chance to create the memories she now shares of that day with two of Rosemary’s daughters.

The world will be a quieter place without Rosemary’s storytelling. She will be missed.

Mom was wondering how stuff had magically appeared on her cosmetics travel bag in the bathroom.

Her first earthquake. And we didn’t even feel it, although Richard did at work. Granted, we much prefer quakes when they only reach entertainment level, and this one had created a mystery for her: where did this old contact case come from? How did this small packet get here? Why would her daughter have put them there?

A Goldilocks quake:  this one was just right.

The other California experience I wanted Mom to have before she flies home tomorrow was a trip downtown to Coupa Cafe.

So I took her there last week.   I wanted her to have the best hot chocolate anywhere ever.   I had all these associations with the place, so many positive memories: of Sam bringing the wondrous stuff home to surprise me with while out with her friends, of Richard and me enjoying a good tall mug’s worth on a cold evening in that beautiful old building.  Of the incredible Coupa dessert he and Sam bought me that was so rich it took me two days to eat it.  The photograph of a lush hilly greenness going across the wall of the rainforest farm where the owners’ beans come from.

When Mom and I walked in, the first person we saw was Sam’s old high school French teacher, who immediately asked me how she was doing these days.  I love this town.

Mom confirmed that that hot chocolate was really quite good.  But I got the distinct impression she could just as happily have been sipping away anywhere else as well; what she was enjoying was how much I was enjoying taking her there.  And being with me.

For a moment I felt just slightly let down, and then I inwardly guffawed at myself: well, of COURSE!  She’s your MOTHER!  What did you *expect*?  Or want, fer cryin’ out loud, woman.

I’m half tempted to try out her suggestion that we could create a similar mug’s worth if we were willing to put straight half-and-half in our morning cocoa.

But watch out for the aftershocks and keep away from the scales in the bathroom if you do.

By the way, Sue, if you read this, my oldest goes by her nickname Sam on my blog, in case you read back a bit.

Sam happened to call Sunday night, and I told her I’d seen Sue.  Sam told me what I’d already written here, because it was so true, that Sue had held everybody and everything together during Theron’s illness; she would dearly like to see her again herself sometime.

I’m all ready to spring for her plane ticket from Vermont.

Meantime.  Being hearing impaired can be entertaining.

My mom is an excellent cook, as are my daughters; it skipped a generation, but meantime, Mom’s here and it’s fun to have her playing in the kitchen–and to her it is playing, like I play with yarn. Always a new idea or ingredient or recipe to try out.

Which is how I parroted back to her the phrase I’d heard tonight:  “Would you like that wombat with sour cream?”

I think every good punster needs a hearing impairment to help keep their skills up, don’t you?

When my oldest was in high school, a dozen years or so ago, there was a young band and orchestra teacher, Theron Pritchett, in his second year there.  His enthusiasm for music and his love for his students was such that his classroom quickly became the place to be, and the number of kids signing up soared.

Then he found out he had cancer. When he said they’d taken a 15-lb tumor out of his stomach, everybody went, Where?  I mean, the guy was tall and thin to begin with, but afterward it was like his shirt could blow right through him in the wind.  Fifteen pounds!

But it was apparently self-contained, they were very sure they’d gotten it all, and he was relieved to be back at work with his kids.  Mine absolutely adored him.  He was a good one.

I was sitting in my daughter’s next concert at school when an unexpected mental image came to me. I’d been spinning some 90’s (Bradford count) merino.  Now,  I didn’t know at the time how rare it was to even find a wool that fine to spin.  Where I got it no longer has it.  It was seriously soft stuff–the micron count was finer than cashmere. I had a baby blanket in mind to make with it, but as I sat watching Theron conduct and the kids play up on that stage, I pictured a different project entirely and I absolutely knew that what that wool was for was for making him an afghan to wish him well with. To try to convey how important he was to all the parents in the high school music community as well as the kids.

I did a fair bit more spinning, two-ply skein after two-ply skein.  I wished fiercely that I knew how to knit lace.  Had it been a few years in the future…  I could picture exactly how I could have used lace leaf patterns and a faggoting stitch for a trunk to knit the idea of a Tree of Life, but at the time, it was simply beyond me.  That fervent wish later helped propel me to sit down, books and needles in hand, and start to make myself finally work through and learn what I’d needed to know then.  My first attempt at one repeat of Dutch Elm Leaves, in Theron’s memory, took me over an hour to do across 15 stitches with two mistakes I couldn’t figure out how to fix.

And look at me now.  But this story isn’t about me.

So, instead, for his afghan, I sketched out what I had in mind and knit up that tree in a combination of knit and purl stitches gansey style.  When I got done, you could see it if you saw it in light that let the purl stitches shadow across just a bit; otherwise, it was just a white blanket, but very nice.

I don’t have a picture of it. What I really wish is that I had a picture of Theron with it.  He loved it and was fairly blown away; and then the thoroughly delightful exclamation of disbelief I knew was coming: “You SPUN the YARN?!!”

Memory says that band enrollment tripled and that that was when the school hired a second teacher to help handle the load.  Who was Sue.  Whom I got to see last night at the concert.

Shortly after she arrived at the school, I spun and knitted her a scarf–triangle and in angora, if I remember correctly.

Theron was there when I gave it to her.  She was totally thrilled and stunned.  I got to watch the grin on his face as she exclaimed the exact same words he had, “You SPUN the YARN?!!”  He told her about his afghan in great delight.

Then the day word came he’d relapsed; it was hard.  And yet I want to say: my daughter marveled to me at the time at how the kids across the high school came together, how they stopped judging each other the way teenagers do but simply saw each other as fellow travelers.  Life is short; treat each other well.  Theron had a positive influence far beyond what he knew as the kids reached out to each other in their grief.

Sue was one of the small group of friends who played a deeply moving rendition of  “Amazing Grace” at his funeral.

Where I met Theron’s partner and introduced myself as the one who’d knit his afghan. He told me Theron had asked for it and had kept it on the bed with him his last week.  I loved that.  I loved thinking that the love I had tried to knit into it had comforted him.  That comforted me.

I am so glad I got to see Sue last night.  I am so glad we went!

That’s both an exclamation of delight and a note to self. 

Meantime, I was knitting something subdued and quiet and…suddenly I felt like, color. I need color! I put the one project aside and grabbed the Lisa Souza’s Mardi Gras merino that had come in the get-well basket from my Purlescence knit-night friends in January.  I’ve started it in the Carlsbad scarf, a simple pattern that is good for showing off an extravagant color display like this.

This is the yarn that, while I was in the hospital, I kept thinking how good it would look on that day’s nurse. Then the next one. And the next one.

There’s enough yarn for two scarves, and it’s a total toss-up where they’ll land, but at least this one will go to Stanford Hospital.

(Meantime, this Hercules amaryllis opened today, one of the bulbs Dad gave me this past Christmas.)

I got an email from LynnM saying that clearly my Sam was a sensitive and thoughtful child.  And she’s right; Sam always has been. Always.

She was five and a half months old, just barely starting to master where her limbs moved to, on the day of this memory.

We had recently moved, and as a new mom in a new place in a new part of the country, I was feeling isolated and lonely. I was sitting on the edge of the bed one particularly hard day, my baby in my lap, looking elsewhere, when suddenly I…What was that?… I looked down.

And there was Sam: she’d managed to take her pacifier out of her mouth and was trying repeatedly to put it into mine.  Out of the mouths of babes.

And that’s the other thing about her: she had a goal and she was sticking to it.  She’s definitely still that way.

I swooped her up in delight and a hug and great pride.

Sam flew home last night; Mom flew back in this morning.  My family’s taking good care of me for a little while longer.

Mom and I went to Purlescence’s Knit Night tonight, where I cast on my new Casbah yarn, started to knit, looked at it funny a moment, counted about forty-leven times, started another row, stopped, took it back off the needle, frogged, chatted, cast on, and started to knit again–but mostly we just chatted. (Hence the frogging.)  People time!  And we all flirted shamelessly with Meg’s cute baby.  When someone I didn’t know complimented my shawl and asked if I’d made it, I proudly told her, no, Mary did.

On our way out the door, Nathania told me, Hang on a second–and handed me this  lovely get-well card card from Michelle in Ohio and this cool little tote by Debbie R that would have been perfect tonight for my small project and many a doctor’s waiting room.

Good to be out and about, and spoiled on top of that!  Watch it you guys, I’ll be insufferable before you know it.

Two and a half hours.  Stitches West.  Disneyland for knitters, totally filling the large Santa Clara Convention Center near here.  I’m exhausted.  (I know, we all knew that was going to happen.) But I’m so glad we went!

First, before we left, though, another box arrived on the doorstep: they were so tightly closed up that Sam’s first reaction when we opened the box, was, what are these?  I told her, just give them a few hours.   They’ll open up very fast.  They’re daffodils.

They have already begun to and to perfume our family room.  Two dozen flowers in a hefty vase from Kelli, a friend of mine at Purlescence, the friend who already gave me her old camera.  Goodness! That LYS (that’s Local Yarn Store in knitter’s lingo, Don) attracts very giving people.

I debated what to wear this morning, and decided blue with Chris J’s socks to match would be just the thing. I hadn’t seen her in ages, and one could only hope.  Which is how, it turned out, I got to show off to Chris J how happy my feet were and to watch her face light up, which she’d totally earned.

Sam and I of course kept running into lots of people I knew, and very occasionally one or two she did, like Karen Brayton-McFall of the old Rug and Yarn Hut.  People stopping us and they and I throwing our arms around each other.  Over and over and over.  I was mentally thinking in the direction of some of the hospital personnel of two and a half weeks ago or more, you see why I couldn’t miss this?!  You see why I had to go?!  Some of the friends there I only get to see once a year, at Stitches.  I might admit that well, there were a few times I was really glad this person or that was wearing a name tag.

You might forget a person’s name. But you never forget how they make you feel. I felt well loved, and they I’m sure did too.

Rosemary Hill of designsbyromi.com came up to me and tucked her heart shawl pin into my shawl and gave me a hug.  I wondered out loud why she wasn’t wearing Muir (which I happen to particularly like); she was wearing jewelry she’d knitted,  wire earrings (free patterns at the links) and a necklace, which makes sense, given the recent release of her book on the subject.

Gracie Larsen of the Lacy Knitters Guild asked me to come sign books and we agreed on 2:00 pm Saturday.

Sam used that as a carrot to get me to let go and give in to being tired and go home, on the grounds that I’d miss out totally on tomorrow if I overdid it today.  “You’re more tired than you think you are.”  Wise woman there.  She was right; I knew as soon as I stopped moving I would be ready to crash.  And so we came home.

And a good time was had by all.

I went for my liver scan early this morning and got sent home.  At three and a half weeks, my surgery was too recent for the metal stapling inside not to be at risk from the MRI machine. They told me it needed more time for scar tissue to grow to hold it in place. There’s a chance of needing a second surgery to get rid of more tissue in a few months; let’s not up the odds of it.

When I came home, Richard astonished me by being up, getting dressed, and announcing he was off to work now.  Wow.  He *does* feel better–yay!  He just arrived home again, needing those pain pills now, but at least he was able to get some in-person time in and he can telecommute from here.  Having seen him the last three days, I am gobsmacked at how well he’s doing.  Wow, and my thank you for the prayers said and the Thinking Good Thoughts in our direction.  (I very much believe God counts those too.)

Last night, while we were eating dinner, the doorbell rang: it was Kaye from Purlescence. I hadn’t gone to Knit Night last Thursday because people there had colds, (they emailed me to warn me) and Jasmin had brought more of her handknit socks for me while I wasn’t there. So Kaye was bringing them to me.  Wow. I definitely do not live on her way home; how many LYSOs…  And how many people give away handknit socks like that!  Thank you, both of you!

I laid out the bounty and Sam admired.  I told her it wasn’t fair for me to have all these Jasmin socks and her none, particularly since she lives where warm wool socks are such an essential in the snow anyway. In the end, of the four pairs and the Jasmin socks I already owned, I was able to talk Sam into claiming three, though she could have taken more, and she very proudly showed off her happy feet this morning.

My feet were already beJasmined too.