Old story, but… Our honeymoon, in a comic strip. For us it was marshmallows being toasted over a fire. Just one skunk at first–but it came up right between us and was brushing its tail against my new husband’s arm as it reached over the fire and settled our surprisingly emphatically held opinions over whether a fast burn-and-crisp-and-melt (me!) or a slow browning (him) was the proper way to campfire the thing.

His slightly browned one was it, thankyouverymuchdon’tmindifIdo.

While his face silently begged with everything that was in him at me not to laugh. Pleeeeeeeeeease?!!!

We left the bag on the picnic table as we edged away after it was done. It called its best buddies over and the four of them threw a party. They ate them raw. Heathens.

Good times.

We did it, we finally did it. We talked about it at Christmas when they had a good deal but there were too many unknowns in the air re the other lines on our account.

Verizon has non-stop promotions, says he, they’ll still have this up after Christmas.

Nope. They had offers, just not of the ones we wanted anymore. I checked almost daily.

Yesterday they changed that.

The one thing I needed to know was, would the heavier phone be too much for my hands.

It was raining. That is absolutely when you want to go to Verizon during a good promotion. We learned that lesson long ago.

The display models were leashed to the wall with a bulky apparatus covering most of the sides so you couldn’t really tell what the heft of the phone itself would be, and I lamented that fact.

The saleswoman, who was clearly enjoying the fact that we were the only customers in there so she didn’t have to be pulled in multiple directions at once, thought about that a moment.

And said, Well, I can’t hand you a 16. But I can hand you a 16 Pro: mine, and she did.

It has a better camera, it has better battery power, it’s a little longer but not much wider–but it’s an ounce heavier and the moment I hefted it I instantly knew the one thing I’d had to know: would holding those 7.03 ounces, like during the two hours of reading captions in church, damage my ability to knit as many hours as I wanted to.

The answer was yes. I thanked her very much, gave her back her phone, and she rang up the 16. Which currently is free with my trade-in (which made her laugh when I told her it was an iPhone 6) and that three-year commitment not to switch to their competitor. Fine by me.

But we both upgraded on memory (but it doesn’t have to be teal! You wanted teal, get the teal) which means the models weren’t in stock. (The future Otterbox will cover that teal right over.)

Well, if you’re going to twiddle your thumbs while you wait for the mail you might as well be using them to knit. Got six rows done today.

Earworms: the music memes of the brain. After being stuck with one long enough, he transferred it to his mouth and then I got stuck with it. I hadn’t heard that one in decades.

Thus the following conversation:

‘Old Screwball was a racehorse,’ he sang.

Stewball. I still heard consonants when I was a kid, that’s a t, I told him.

I always thought it was Screwball, he insisted.

I went and looked it up. Nope. Stew not screw.

He was trying to remember some of the words in a later verse.

It’s, ‘I bet on the silver, I bet on the bay, if I’d a bet on old Stewball, I’d be a free man today.’ I always assumed that meant a slave wishing he’d been able to buy his freedom.

Is THAT what it means?!

I always thought so. (There are reminders of that hellish institution where we grew up, including a blacksmith shop just down Seven Locks Road that was used by George Washington.)

Turns out it’s an old folk ballad about a real race. Peter Paul and Mary recorded the version we knew growing up, but Stewball was an actual racehorse and the song was sung by, among many others, slaves in chain gangs dreaming of freedom. My heart broke a little reading that.

1741. How many horses, I asked him, have been so famous that 300 years later we know what year he was born?

Not many, says he.

He’ll even sing it as Stewball, just for me.

My grand niece is three today. She will tell you that she is not little. (Her dad called today to say they’re expecting in two months; that might have something to do with it, although you know she has no idea how her life’s about to be upended.) She will also say firmly that she is not big.

She is medium.

She runs a tight ship, observed her dad. She will tell you how it is.

The dinner was light. Fruit is healthy. We could justify this.

A bag of frozen berries. A quarter cup of sugar, a spoonful of cornstarch, nine minutes covered in the microwave stir stir stir at the end.

And now for the ice cream.

We tried to wait till the fruit had cooled but given that I had an oven mitt on as I brought its stoneware bowl to the table I’d say we failed. I handed him the vanilla ice cream container; he’s better at getting it out when it’s frozen hard.

….Did I want more?

No no stop thanks that’s quite enough.

Then I looked at his bowl. All those three sections needed was a carrot nose and a scarf. “Once there was a snowman, snowman, snowman” I started singing (I think I learned that song when I was three, and so did he) “once there was a snowman, tall tall tall! In the bowl he melted melted melted” (pouring hot berry mix over it) “in the bowl he melted small small small.”

A few minutes later…

There’s a little fruit left. Did you want it?

No, he grinned, the proportions were just right.

Me: I’m putting in an order with Target for paper products. You need anything?

Him, scrunching face trying to think of something fast: A million bucks.

Me: In paper money? Nah, wouldn’t want that in the house.

Him: agrees. But still: Money in the bank and world peace!

Me: They don’t sell those at Target.

My cousin Kathryn’s funeral was held today; I watched by Zoom.

Her sister recounted how she always knew everybody’s birthday, always connected with anyone she met, and she had always had a note, a card, a message ready any time for anyone, and added, “And she’s probably sent one to you.”

I realized with a surprised start that that’s exactly what had happened and I felt the truth of it in my bones.

Because yesterday I had reminded myself that the funeral was at noon and Do. Not. Miss. It!

Suddenly, as if in an aside in the middle of an ongoing conversation I felt the words, Remember that’s 11:00 California time.

Whoa. How could I have been so dumb as to forget to notice that, and how had I suddenly remembered in spite of myself?? Because I was sure *I* hadn’t remembered, and yet–yeah, no way was I going to forget now! And I didn’t.

Her sister was right. I would have been devastated to have missed it, especially after not having been able to go in person.

So Kathryn made sure I didn’t.

Our niece’s childhood home, per fire reports given the family, is gone.

My nephew has a mother-in-law unit downstairs that walks out to their garden, a beautiful spot; last Monday my sister and her husband were there from Atlanta helping our mom to move in. Mom is great at taking care of herself but at 94 she needs not to be alone anymore. Her young great-grands are looking forward to having someone who’s not their mom helping them with their homework and reading to them, and my niece-in-law is a treasure. So’s her husband.

They also own a house in southern California that is a rental, which I totally get: it is an aphorism here that if you ever sell your house in California you can never afford to move back. So. It had a plumbing problem.

So said nephew left Gram in his wife’s good hands and flew with his folks to fix that thing and my sister was looking forward to a little California in January.

Which is how she found herself taking pictures today as the smoke came closer and they were packing the car and then suddenly the fire itself leaped over the mountain top and came barreling down at them from less than a mile away in the Santa Ana winds as they rushed to evacuate. They were turned back three times because of the spreading flames. Official guidance: Go this way! No, no wait, don’t! Traffic was gridlocked.

It took them four hours to get off that mountain and get the wildfire behind them. But they did it. Our niece, meantime, had booked them a hotel room from the get-go so they had a place to land.

I debated adding one of my sister’s pictures here and thought, nah, the last thing she needs right now is me pestering her for permission, that is just not something she should have to worry about right now.

I don’t know how long it will be before we know if the house is gone–but they are safe. As of this typing there are zero known deaths from the fire. Praise be.

There will be more knitting time after her plane leaves tomorrow, but that doesn’t make it any easier to see her go.

She was describing the weather she’s returning to and I grinned, Yeah, when we were heading back to Logan Airport from our house hunting trip out here and the pilot announced what the temp was in Boston, I muttered under my breath, Turn that plane around!

She laughed. Brrr. She was totally with me on that one.

The Miyoko (vegan butter) had come to room temperature for the cookies, but she’d forgotten and suddenly realized she had to do XYZ before leaving for the meet up with her friends and–oops.

I can bake them, I offered.

She texted me a recipe to squint at and, being so much my child, told me of the things she does just a bit differently. Triple the cinnamon. Double the vanilla. Use chocolate chips instead of raisins. One cup of flour, one and a half cups of oats, old-fashioned, not quick (did that). Half sugar, half brown sugar.

Then she ran to do that errand that had to be run.

Even embiggening it I had a hard time reading it and my phone kept turning itself off fast.

Every cookie recipe everywhere says one teaspoon of vanilla, so okay, I put two. And then found the recipe said a half? Who puts a half a teaspoon of vanilla in a batch of chocolate chip dough? Too late.

The Miyoko went squish when I tried to cut it. Much better to have a bit much than not enough if you’re not sure. Cold butter you can displace in water to check the measurement, but warm Miyoko? No. So let’s add maybe that’s a tablespoon but who can tell.

The big Costco brown sugar bag had never been opened but nevertheless was fairly dried out. I mostly filled the measuring cup from it and used a little white sugar to fill in any gaps–so much more flavor than plain white. Plus I wanted to squish as much as I could of the rest into my small OXO container for it and be able to securely tie off the rest of that bag.

It calls for baking soda and baking powder? Why do people do that to perfectly good cookies? (I actually went looking for the baking soda but I so dislike the taste of it that all I had is that five pound bag under the bathroom sink along with vinegar for clearing out drains and darn if I was going to pick that up to wreck a perfectly good batch of cookies. Double the baking powder it is–like the vanilla, it had only called for a half teaspoon of each in the first place.)

The second sheet of cookies came out of the oven just as she was walking in the door to get ready to walk back out the door.

She tasted one. She pulled a face.

Did you triple the cinnamon?

Oh! Dang. Sorry, no I didn’t.

Weak, she pronounced them. Needed more cinnamon.

But quadruple on the vanilla! They’re vanilla oatmeal chocolate chip cookies!

I did not tell on myself over it being almost all brown sugar. Some dire secrets are meant to be kept close.

Man, it’s good to have family visiting! And man did I get a lot done. Kinetic energy squared!

My hubby helped overbuy on frozen foods on Thursday, I told C at church, and there was no room for the chocolate torte in there anymore. It got moved to the fridge, where there wasn’t really space for it either; it had to go. Could she take it off our hands?

She couldn’t believe it. She told me if I wanted to cut off a slice for myself/ourselves first she was totally fine with that. Were we sure??

Her kids are home for Christmas break and I knew that getting rid of the whole thing was not going to be a problem and that it’s one of her favorite desserts.

But what I said later as I dropped it off at her door was, My daughter’s in town. She’s allergic to dairy–but she remembers how much she once loved these.

Ah. We were not eating it in front of her. Got it.

She sent me off with some oranges she’d just picked from her tree in happy anticipation of sharing back. They are so good.

She’s home, she’s home!

I hadn’t heard of the Cube Rule of Food? Oh, Mom, she told me, you’ve got to see this!

And now you get to.

It was a day when friends rallied ’round without any idea how much that meant and how vital their timing would be or even any idea that I needed them.

Debbie had spent some time on her sewing machine and these two beautiful pieces showed up in the mail with a lovely card.

Afton decided out of the blue to text me.

Other friends emailed to say hi.

We were going along having a perfectly normal day when suddenly Richard at work in the other room heard me gasp.

My cousin Kathryn, the oldest of the 29 grandchildren on that side and the cousinly matriarch to us all by her warmth and love and hospitality, died in post-op Christmas day after lung surgery. I was stunned.

Having the later afternoon off, Richard told me that I’d been so wanting to go to Andy’s Orchard before they close at the end of the year: their holiday stuffed figs have long been a favorite. But being sick and then not being sure I was up to doing that drive had kept me away.

Who cares about traffic. Let’s go, he offered.

And so we did.

There was an atmospheric river coming in and the skyscapes were glorious as we came around each bend in the road. It looked as if the ocean had jumped the coastal range to produce tides and lakes and ponds of clouds surrounding the road but clear sailing down the freeway itself.

We got the slab apricots that are so good, fresh persimmons, daisy mandarins (a new variety to me; my own trees aren’t ripe yet), a jar of honey. Sour cherry syrup to whip into some cream and add to almond muffins, or some such to come.

But the apricot- and honey-stuffed figs were sold out. They did have some small plain dried figs. I bought a box as my consolation prize.

The lady who works there carried my stuff to the car, having no way to know how much my back appreciated that, and gave me a fond farewell with a “See you next year!”

The car needed gas.

Richard did a search for a Costco gas station between there and home and somehow, the route that put us on had us turning…south. Ten miles? We live north of there. I was thinking, Stupid Waze tricks. Richard’s response was, Do you want to be on an adventure? Or not?

That suddenly sounded like a really good antidote to the day–more time together meandering through rolling hills greening up from the previous rain–even if it was going to put us in the middle of a big southbound traffic jam for awhile that we would otherwise have dodged. Sure! Why not.

The not-till-midnight rain for our town started up intermittently down there. We were not planning on it nor on it turning cold that soon. It was okay. We were on an adventure.

Filled the car. As long as we were right there, we went into the Costco–and the one thing we were looking for was cheaper than at our own Costco. Lower rent in farm country, surely, and we had insulated bags in the car, so that worked out great.

Waze warned, Do not take 101 through San Jose at rush hour–go around.

Richard marveled, It never tells me to take 85! It’s longer!

We’re on an adventure, I reminded him. It was a prettier route, too. The undeveloped hills to the west–and the skies had spread out to layers of blueness towards lightness above. Paintbrushed.

And so we ran away from home and came back again and started in again on setting it in order for Michelle’s arrival tomorrow.

And so the living continues on.