I didn’t blog this yesterday because I wanted to know the outcome first, or at least more of it.

Yesterday morning I looked at my husband and told him, Call the doctor.

He shrugged me off.

What is it with men and calling doctors?

An hour later: Call.The.Doctor.  Or maybe I will if you don’t?  He let me hand him the phone at that. An hour later, he handed it back, not having called, and I thought, well, I can’t make him.

Finally, about 2 pm, he suddenly appeared in the hallway in his bathrobe and croaked, “Urgent Care!” I lightly touched his back as I answered him, and he winced hard.  “Is it your kidneys?” I asked him.  Sam hurriedly hustled him out the door, both of them telling me to stay home and not be exposed to all the things that would be coming through the doors at the clinic. They were right, but I didn’t like it.

So all I could do was wait for the phone to ring; Sam called before they did the CT scan.

They got home hours later.  It was a kidney stone, lodged up where they couldn’t do the ultrasound treatment on it, at least not yet; tomorrow he sees the specialist.  The IV they gave him with morphine made it so he came home feeling a whole lot better than when he left, and he’s to stay on morphine till he gets to the doctor.

My mom mentioned to me that she and Richard (with Richard later confirming it was true for him, too) had spent all that time watching over me in the hospital and had not had their usual amount to drink while they did so; only during lunch and dinner at the hospital cafeteria.  Here people were telling me I was going to have to drink a lot more often once they sent me home to keep from getting kidney stones, because of being an ileostomy patient, but Mom and Richard didn’t think to make sure they got enough themselves.  Goodness.  Poor guy.

I can’t tell you how glad we are that Sam’s here! Can you imagine me trying to drive him to the clinic with that right leg of mine?  No way.  I definitely have incentive now to work on strengthening those muscles. You never know, and she’s not staying here forever.

Hopefully they won’t have to do surgery on him and this too shall pass.

What I didn’t mention yesterday was, Sam offered to take me to Coupa Cafe to celebrate my being able to eat chocolate right after my Dr. R. appointment on Wednesday, and I just wasn’t up to it; I went home and crashed.  So when she went out with an old high school girlfriend in the evening, she came home with a cup of it for me anyway because she wanted me not to miss out.

Good stuff!  And then I really wanted to go there.  Friday, going off to see the surgeon, I was able to swing my right leg into the car without having to pick it up and toss it over for the first time in forever.  I can’t tell you how good that felt.  Then my surgeon was exclaiming at how well I looked as I thanked her for making that possible.

That did it. I was taking Sam to Coupa Cafe on the way home to gift her back and to celebrate.

She found a parking space in the next block and across the busiest street in downtown.  Now, just a few days earlier I could never have done this, but I made it across that street in the time of the walk signal.  (Defensively, with a smile, eyeballing the impatient driver halfway in the crosswalk who’d nearly run the light and who looked ready to gun it when it changed, ready or not.)  When I told my legs to move they actually did, even if the steps weren’t as big as I told them to do.

We walked up the block, got ourselves a table, and had a grand old time.  A little mango mousse cake may have been involved too.  (I just now finished it off.)

My knitting still feels slow and awkward, but I’m up to being able to do 40 minutes’ worth at a stretch now.  And I am slowly, gradually turning back into being human.  Stitches West next Friday afternoon, and hopefully Saturday too, here I come!

p.s. Just for fun: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151ap_obama_basketball_parents.html The Obamas went to go watch their daughter play basketball at the elementary school my husband went to.  I like that!

That’s been my phrase for it.  It was the yahoo KnitTalk group that started using my name as a verb, but drive-by knitting was always my phrase for it.

I like the responses in the comments to Dad’s suggestions, and thank you. The easiest thing to do would be to set up a Ravelry place for people to share stories, there already being a place for pictures of projects and yarns there, although that excludes the non-Ravelry subscribers.  The stories are what inspire, they’re what help get people going, and I’d go for any way to make that happen, Ravelry or however.

Meantime, I got driven past, myself: a turtle showed up in the mail today, a water turtle to match my shawl pattern, one could say, because Diana felted it.  I love the cheerful colors.  Thank you!

I saw my surgeon this morning, and she was highly pleased at my progress and at the condition of my stoma and incision.  But just seeing me looking my normal self, cheerful and no longer a lump in a bed–it made her day. This is why she does what she does. To make people healthy again.

I thanked her for saving my life, and she was a bit abashed for a moment–but she had, and she knew it and I knew it.  She had admired my book in the hospital, so next I gave her a copy with that thank you for my saving my life there in the inscription.  Put it in writing.  Keep it for always. Know that the work you do and the way you go about it, visiting your patients every day before and after, is important, dear woman.  I asked her to thank her husband for loaning her to me for all that time she spent on me, which was considerable.

I did feel I had to explain to her as I stumbled trying to get up on the exam table that in real life, I use a cane for my balance.  (I don’t think she’d noticed it against the wall)  because of that car accident way back when.

Anyway. Jennie and I celebrated afterwards by going to Coupa Cafe downtown.  (I wish their site included the gorgeous long photo on the wall of the farm.)  This is a well-loved local hole-in-the-wall bringing Venezualan coffee and cacao beans directly from farm to here.  Theirs is seriously good stuff (I’m told the coffee is too) and the fact that we actually got a table almost right away was highly unusual.  If you ever want to celebrate being able to eat chocolate, this is definitely the place to do it.

And celebrate we did.  To life!

I talked to my Dad on the phone today. Remember when he said he had an idea for knitters?  He’d written it up and he wanted to know if I would let it be a blog post here.  I said sure, Dad–and then he made me absolutely promise not to touch it, not to edit a single word.

Ooookayyyy…  You know you’re in trouble when…  I promised.

Oh, and Dad? The last time I saw Grandmother Jeppson before she passed, I was admiring the afghans she’d made and wishing I had the patience someday to knit a project that big.

I think she’d be pleased.

Now, being the daughter, I think I’m nowhere quite near as famous as Dad thinks I am, nor that I deserve to be.  I also squirm when people describe my name as a verb the way he’s referring to.  There are many knitters more generous than I.  I don’t give things away to be on record; I do it for the selfish reason that it makes me feel wonderful, not to mention the person I’ve knit for.  I also tend to knit scarves or the like when I don’t know the person well: it’s a small enough project that if they’re not thrilled to the bone, it’s okay, it didn’t take me six months to do.  But the goodwill in the knitting is just the same, large project or small, and I certainly do a fair number of large projects to give as well.

All that said, I’ll sit down, be quiet, and let Dad have his say:

Knitters’ Idea

Five or six years ago while watching Alison knit something she intended to give away I suggested that she make a log of what she had knitted and to whom she had given it.  I thought it would make an interesting record. She moaned, saying she could not remember many of them. We finally concluded she probably had given away 200 of her wares. I would not be surprised if the total now came closer to 500. She may wish to correct these figures.
Whatever the number, Alison has become so internationally known for knitting things which she could give to special, and usually unsuspecting, people that her name has become a verb describing the act. “To Alison someone.” The harrowing attack of Crohn’s from which she is recovering has demonstrated how much she is admired and loved.
Knitting something and giving it to an unsuspecting person is an act of kindness that can have wonderful, extensive, and long-lasting repercussions. The practice deserves encouragement. I would like to suggest to followers of spindyeknit, and to others as the word is spread, a means of fostering this goodness.
I suggest the creating–either as merely an informal grouping, or later as a legal entity–of The Alison Hyde Knitters Gifts Foundation. It could work along three different lines or levels.
1. It would simply be a database. Knitters would be encouraged to Alison someone–and whenever possible send to the database a photo of the object, the story behind the gift, the name of knitter/giver, and something about the recipient (just described, not necessarily named). As this information accumulates in a fashion that anyone can access, the practice will spread. This will likely generate additional comradery among knitters.
2. Knitters (or others) who have surplus yarn can list it on the database as something they will give to any recipient who will promise to knit the yarn into something she/he will give away. Recipients might be expected to pay incoming postage and sign some sort of pledge form.
3.  In its ultimate possible development, yarn producers or importers who have a surplus product might donate it to the Foundation for distribution as in No. 2 above. At this level the Foundation probably would need to be legally established as a charitable entity so that major donors would be motivated by some tax benefit. Perhaps there is a knitter or a spouse who could handle this. Also, if the Foundation develops to this stage it probably will need to do a little fund raising to cover expenses.
I am not a knitter, although I have been the nation’s foremost expert on modern, handwoven French tapestries for many years. But my mother was a knitter, and maybe that gene passed to Alison. During World War II, the entire country was mobilized..  Every community had volunteer projects to help the war effort in some fashion. We lived in Carson City, Nevada, which, though the state capital, had only about 3,000 people. My parents had three sons, no daughters. My oldest brother, Robert, was the supply officer on the Petroff Bay, a pocket aircraft carrier which fought in every major pacific battle of the last two years of the war, including the brutal Battle of Leyte Gulf. My next brother, Richard, although he is in the history books as Morris, was in the Air Corps and used to write our parents not to worry about him because a few weeks after he got overseas the war would be over. No one believed that. Turned out Richard was the weapons officer
on the Enola Gay who armed the atom bomb and was the last person to touch it. I quit high school to volunteer in the Army Specialized Training Program and was training to become a combat engineer.
One of the volunteer projects in Carson City was a band of knitters under the Red Cross. I’ll let my mother tell of it, as she wrote afterwards in her life story.
“….the war years brought so much worry and heart aches to parents of sons. I was really resentful when (Lawrence’s) call came–he was 17. We already had sent our other two sons and he seemed too young to leave home. When we put him on the bus for Pasadena and it pulled away it was almost more than I could bear.
“Just before and during the war I was in turn knitting chairman and County Production Chairman of the Red Cross. We produced an unbelievable amount of hospital garments, sweaters, kits, etc., during this period. I spent an average of five hours a day, six days a week for over two years in this particular service–feeling that if I worked hard enough maybe the war would end sooner and my sons would come home.”
So I am very sympathetic to knitters and aware of the substantial good they can do.
—Lawrence Jeppson, Alison’s Dad.

I need to work on those leg muscles a little more. I got down to snap these photos and couldn’t get back up off the floor by myself, which surprised me.  I keep thinking I’m more recovered than that.  I finally scooted over to a chair and table in the kitchen and pulled myself up–while reminding myself I couldn’t have done that at all before.  One week ago was the day I came home, and I had to have help even getting up out of a chair most of the time, much less climbing up into one.  Where my rear landed on the bed was where it was going to be for the night, with me having to lift my legs over and up with my arms.  I don’t have to do that now.  Every day there’s a little more progress made, and the “hey I can DO that now!” realizations that keep coming are very cheering.

I needed to take these photos. The soft appleblossom is a gift from Rena, my knitswap pal; the deep red, a gift from my father.  Thank you, Dad! Thank you, Rena!

My daughter Sam has been doing the most wonderful job of helping out.  She is right there for me, anticipating when I need to be drinking a little more to keep hydrated, something I need to watch, helping me decipher what the ostomy supplier on the phone is saying, straightening out my kitchen shelves and working hard.  And how many moms get one-on-one time like this with their married child?

My daughter-in-law’s mom Ann stopped by today with some elegant soaps, a bouquet of white tulips, and a hug to make my day.  Her dad had surgery today so she was in town, and I wish him a speedy recovery.

As always, she was thinking of others.  And I am the lucky recipient of that.  Wow.

Sheila Ernst has been ill herself and yet thought outside herself as well and surprised me with a beautiful pair of her handmade glass circulars, in colors I love (“Blue Moon”), blue running to gold and green and in the size, 9, she knew I use more than any other in my shawl knitting.  Some handblown glass stitch markers were in the package too.

And then there’s all the support from all of you.  I feel well loved.  How could I not heal quickly?

Mom’s here, Mom’s here!

The doctors have been very reassuring.  Symptoms are being better controlled today, and I’m hoping tomorrow’s finally the day re starting the Humira.

I’ve been picturing all the people who needed there to be another, better med on the market that didn’t yet exist, praying for help.  And picturing a researcher or two with a sudden hunch that felt so right that they pursued it, culminating in this class of meds that makes such a difference to so many people.  The way I see it, there are two miracles at work here: the initial impulse. And the willingness of some human being out there to follow up on it to see where it would lead, hoping it would do good.

And how.

My cheerful, helpful, wonderful mother has more energy than I do on one of my best days and is perfectly happy talking to us and making us laugh while I rest up.  Hey, Dad, thank you for loaning her to us!

Crohn’s: I hit a wall at dark o’clock this morning the 22nd time I’d passed blood in 24 hours.  I can’t have the new med yet. Waiting… Knitting, meantime, is something to aspire to.

Mom’s catching the first flight. Yay Mom!

You can knit a whole lot faster when you already know the road ahead.

Hat #2: down a needle size.  Smaller keyboard (and thus faster to knit), more piano–I like this one.

Michelle pointed out that it needs to be a thicker yarn to be really warm, and I chuckled at my child who was only eleven months old when we moved to California: college has taught her to appreciate warm clothes.

I regret that my children never got to make a snowman in the front yard. I have memories from when I was a kid of my Dad helping our giant balls of snow walk the plank: there was no way we could lift that midsection, so Dad set up a board and with his help we rolled it on up. The head would be smaller and lighter, so Dad simply lifted those up for us, although I remember one big snowman in the yard in front of my parents’ bedroom where it was a challenge even for him and he went looking for a longer board.  Good times.

My kids growing up in California never got to ice skate on the driveway. Or on the Canal.  Or on the Reflecting Pool between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument like we did, with the Park Service running a warming bonfire on the side.  The Reflecting Pool is something like a foot deep, so if you weren’t sure the water was frozen enough, you weren’t going to get anything but really cold if you fell through.

So. No snowmen.  Yesterday I got a surprise package in the mail, one that hadn’t made it in time for Christmas, but all the better for that.  Totally unexpected.  What… From KC?  And it’s a snowman! Who knits! And sings! And waves his knitterly arms, with his ball of yarn glued to his backside (I kid you not).  Who flies through the air in his red sleigh on New Year’s Eve, delivering yarn to all the procrastinating knitters who didn’t get their Christmas presents knitted in time this year!

And yeah, he waves that nail-needle perilously close to his carrot nose, and I love him all the more for it.  I played it over and over till Michelle put her hands over her ears and wailed, “Make it STOP!”

Ya gotta love a great snowman.

Before the number of food items goes into serious decline and the Appleblossom amaryllis starts to sprout, I thought I’d better go blog quick that the KnitTalk Yahoo list has an annual opt-in knitswap, run by Margo Lynn, who gave my name to Rena this year.

I opened a box that was ready to burst on Christmas morning.  Thank you, Rena, and wow! The handknitted dishcloth alone would have been enough to totally make my day, and then there’s Zephyr in Elderberry, and chocolate, and the amaryllis, and chocolate, and a notepad, and hot chocolate, and ornaments, and hot chocolate, and a stuffed little pad for keeping my mug of cocoa warm, and did I mention hot chocolate?

I’m displaying it all on top of Robert’s handwoven Medicine Blanket, which has been the backdrop for many a blog photo by now.

On another note, my husband just got a video camera for the computer and I got to teleconference tonight with our older daughter and son-in-law in Vermont and wish Jonathan a happy birthday and actually wave hi. We all made goofy faces at each other like little kids just because we could.  Our daughter held Eve, her black cat, in front of her camera and told us how funny it had been to see Eve running off down the stairs with a ball of white yarn in her mouth, while the other grandcat at the top of the stairs was attacking the steadily-lengthening end of yarn.

Almost present.  Almost close enough to offer them a mug of hot chocolate.

But guess what I sent them for Christmas too?  And that they drank this morning, on a snowy cold day over there?

Thank you, Rena.  I love December!

On a more cheerful note: I woke up this morning from a dream of the church doors being flung open, a joyous crowd streaming out, and the narrator to the dream exclaiming, “Let’s celebrate!”

Heck yeah!

Yesterday was a little like this square: I was casting it off when the phone rang.  Later, I thought I was done with the thing, went to pick it up, and found out that when I’d gotten up, I not only hadn’t finished casting off, but I’d managed somehow to yank the needle out and it was frogging itself as I’d run for the phone.  I’m too deaf to hear the tinktinktink that had been going on behind me.

Oops.  so I had to reknit a bunch.  Eh.

And I’m sitting here this morning thinking, the trick is not to let the Crohn’s unravel me.  It’s just a few rows in my overall life.  So.

My son and his bride arrived from the airport Christmas night in time for dinner. Her family is having a big reunion tonight; quite a few of them live in this town.

I’d knitted a shawl for her grandmother, and I know I have a picture of it somewhere in my files, but I forgot to take another one just to make sure, so I can’t show it; I’ll ask the kids to snap me one.  She’s a tiny woman, so I knitted her the Constance shawl, which, when done up in fingering weight, is one of the smaller patterns in “Wrapped in Comfort.”

I learned something along the way of knitting hers and my sister’s Christmas present: I’d done them in one strand of laceweight baby alpaca or cashmere and one strand of Claudia’s silk.  Gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous effect, with the silk shimmering around the quieter fiber much more prominently than when they’re blended together into a single strand.  But–and this is the big but–if you snag the shawl, the slippery silk tends to pull out merrily while the baby alpaca stays obediently in its place.

It is much easier to work a strand back in that is in tandem with its knitted-along partner. This was a bear to fix–but it was doable and I did it and my sister’s was none the worse for it.

And so I was hesitant to send Kim’s grandmother’s offwhite shawl along, as if there were something wrong with it.  It was absolutely gorgeous, and I would have worn it myself–gingerly–in a heartbeat, but I didn’t; it was hers. I thought about knitting another one, but that didn’t feel right; the one I’d made for her couldn’t belong to anybody else.  It was hers!

So I sent it off with Kim to give Grandma with careful warnings and wondering nervousness as to whether it was good enough.

Silly me.  Her grandmother was ecstatic.  Yes, yes, she’d treat it carefully, okay, but WOW! LOOK at this!  Kim said Grandma had made everybody laugh when she exclaimed, “I have to buy a new dress to go with this!”

And I was worried?

(p.s. For a little holiday cheer, may I recommend Lawdog’s blog post here.  No, (looking at the first paragraph or two), I mean it!)

Okay, first, here’s the recipe:

CRANBERRY BARS

Cookie crust: oven at 350.  Grease edges of 15x10 cookie sheet.  Cut
1 c of cold butter into 2 1/2 c flour; don't use a cuisinart or anything
that would pulverize the butter, you want it lumpy to come out crisp.  Add
1/2 c sugar and 1/2 tsp salt. Press firmly in pan, bake 20-23 minutes or
till golden.  Top with filling right away and bake again.

Filling: 4 eggs, 1 c. corn syrup, 1 c sugar, 1 tsp vanilla, 3 tbl melted 
butter, 2 c
coarsely chopped cranberries, 1 c. coarsely chopped pecans.  Beat eggs,
corn syrup, sugar, and butter.  Stir in cranberries and nuts.  Immediately
pour over hot crust as it comes out of the oven, spreading it out.  Bake
25-30 minutes or until set.  Cool; refrigerate it to be able to cut it
really cleanly.

Now the story:

My son John has been on a mission for the Mormon Church for a year now. Like his brother did, he’s serving in the South.

My friend Bonnie, whom I’ve known online for ten years and have long wanted to meet in person, got to meet John instead.  He had something that needed mending; she told me her shop’s address (she’s a seamstress) and warmly welcomed him in and waved away any offer of reimbursement and then told me what a nice kid I have. Look who’s talking.  Thank you, Bonnie!

I got a phone call a few weeks ago from a member of John’s ward (congregation), asking me for a recipe for his favorite comfort-food cookies and for a few photographs of his childhood; she was going to throw a surprise Christmas party for all the missionaries around her area.

I sent off a few pictures and typed out my cranberry bar squares.  And then John got transferred to a different city last week, and that, I thought, was the end of that.

My phone rang this afternoon: the woman had the cranberry bars in the oven and wanted to know how to tell for sure when they were done.  Till the edges look golden, I told her.  But–he’s been transferred! I added, not wanting to disappoint her, but.

Yes, Christy said, she knew that.  But she was so sure it would make his day.  (Well, yeah, it totally would. He could snarf half a 15×11 pan of those by himself.)

And then she stunned me: she said her husband was a pilot and they were going to go fly the quick hop skip and a jump and take him those cookies, warm out of the oven.

Oh. My. Goodness.

She told me her own son was serving a mission in a place where she’d sent him a Christmas box in November and he hadn’t gotten it yet and probably wouldn’t in time.  She couldn’t fix that.  But she could help my kid feel loved from home and by the people around him.

How on earth can you thank someone for something like that?!

I called my mom yesterday to wish her a happy birthday, and she told me that, reading my blog, it was clear to her that I’d been having a particularly happy week.

I answered that my flare had actually gotten worse during the week and that things were being pretty rough.

But you know? I got off that phone, thought about it, savored the tone that had been in her voice as she’d said that, re-read the week’s entries, and realized she was right. It *had* been a happy week!  No amount of Crohn’s could change all the things that were wonderful.  The surprise party and all the kind comments that flowed into the blog afterwards, Richard and Michelle being marvelously helpful, the two friends who came over during the week as well as the ones who came to the party, Mom’s silk blouse arriving in time for her birthday…

And in a rush of gratitude, I sat down and yesterday’s post just poured out of my fingertips.

So I have to offer one correction: Mom didn’t just teach me to see the best in others.  She taught me to look for the best in every situation as well.  She did it again.  Thanks, Mom!

I had a friend, growing up, who felt she was not supposed to come home with dirt on her clothes. A young lady was not to do that.

Which is how I learned early on to treasure my mother’s take on us after a good day down at the creek or in the woods in the back yard: she would give us an appraising look with a grin on her face and pronounce, “You must have had *fun* getting THAT dirty!”

She had this big bicycle horn she would raise high and honk to call us home from all over the neighborhood; all the other parents and children knew that sound and if we didn’t hear it would go, Hey, you, your mom’s calling you.

We would hold back and go one at a time, then run from our game of four-square or what have you on up the sloping street to Mom, especially in the summertime when the light continued for so long after dinner: run run running trying to pick up speed and at the end leaping up into her arms where she would swing us around and around and around on the grass next to the street, often till we were so dizzy we would fall down in delight when she let us down into the grass (or if that didn’t work, airplane our arms around and around till we made ourselves dizzy enough).  Just every now and then, she would fall down laughing too.

We learned we couldn’t be jealous and try to push ahead of the next kid–Mom couldn’t catch two at once.   She was perfectly capable of turning her back and chirping cheerfully as she walked away, “Nope! Lost your chance!”  Awww, MOooooommmmm…”  We had to take turns.

I wrote in my book about my friend Lisa, who 18 years ago volunteered to watch my preschoolers Monday through Friday mornings so I could go do swim therapy after my lupus diagnosis.  And like I did with my own kids, I used to swing her preschoolers around and around like my mom had done with me.

When Lisa’s family flew back to this area for her mother-in-law’s funeral, I swung her two little boys and their little sister around and around till we all fell down, for old times’ sake, even though they were beginning to be a bit big for it.  Arthritis shmitis.  I was not about to miss the opportunity. They’d been such a big part of my life for the three years we’d traded off watching each others’ kids, and I wanted them to remember the fun parts.

Lisa later had one more child, who of course had no connection to his older siblings’ California memories.

A few years ago, they decided to come vacation in Washington DC to coincide with when we were going to be there for our oldest’s Maryland wedding reception.  We had them over to my folks’ house and had a grand time.  And before they left, in my folks’ grassy front yard, to the delight of the youngest, I ditched my now-cane and picked him up and swung him around and around and around till we both fell down laughing. (There was no way I wasn’t going over too, nowadays.)

What delighted me was the instant reaction of the older siblings to their little brother: “NOW you’ve had the Sister Hyde experience!”  They still remembered being swung around! And they were glad for him that he got to have that!

My mom taught me how to do that.

My mom taught me to laugh when life makes you dizzy.

My mom taught me to see the best in others.

My mom (and Dad, too, I should add) taught me to go play in the woods and splash in the creek.  To admire the box turtles munching the mayapples but leave the snapping turtles be. To fill the birdfeeder without fail when it was cold and to laugh at the antics of the squirrels trying to get at it (and not to mind feeding them, too).

My mom taught this high-strung child how to chill out.  When my then-bachelor brother told her he could never have six kids like she had had, that he just didn’t have the patience, she stared at her older son a moment and then guffawed, “How do you think I *learned* it?!”  On the job training!

Happy birthday, Mom. Thank you.  I speak on behalf of all of us when I say, your six kids love you. Very much.  Wishing you a little bit of creek, a little bit of dirt on your new silk blouse, and go twirl till you’re dizzy!

“They didn’t plow the highway this side of Point of the Mountain, Dad, I’m going to miss my flight!…

They delayed my flight!…

Maybe…”

And she made it! Yay! Merry Christmas! Welcome home! To semi-sunny California, where it was cold enough it could have snowed here last night too.  Our heater huffed and it puffed, and it blew the front of the house to a balmy 61.4 degrees F in the living room.

Could y’all throw some snowballs for us out there, if you’ve got the makings?  Freezer scrapings just don’t have that certain oomph, and I think the Bay Area’s done as good a job as it can do.

(Ed. to add: My husband’s offer letter for the job here promised, in writing, “No home delivery of snow.”  We were shoveling snow higher than the top of our garage–sold!  Take it!  We did.  But our kids missed out on the whole build-a-snowman or make-a-snow-angel experience, which left me a little wistful at times.)