Family time via phone and computer. Chocolate Bouche de Noel for breakfast. Celebrations. Love. And I finally got a Cuisinart 14C replacement for the food processor that died and can make hazelnut tortes again. Yay!

We got to talking phones with our older son. I told him I’d figured out that the retail price of the iPhone 16 Pro Max is $20 more than the quite-a-bit smaller, lighter 16 Pro, but if you pick the Max, Verizon charges you $200 more over the course of those three years, so, no, I’m back to wanting the Pro.

Your Mom’s hands fit the smaller phone anyway, his daddy chimed in.

Which cracked the kid up. If you’ve ever played Rachmaninoff on the piano, an octave is my limit and forget the rest but an octave and throw in a bunch more notes will do him just fine. He in fact has the 16 Pro Max via a previous such promotion–and overheard someone saying to someone else that that really big phone on my 6’9+” son looks like a normal sized phone on anyone else. Like it had been scaled up just for him. And it’s true, he said, it’s the perfect size for me!

But you’re a teeny little thing, he teased.

Am nawww—oh right. I guess to him a 5’5″ woman would be.

His number is the one they spam, poor guy.

Which also means he knew more than I did, so that when Verizon’s site suddenly announced the phone offer was ending in an hour and forty minutes, he said there was no hurry. We hadn’t gotten all the info we needed; one of the kids wanted to go to see them in the store first; we weren’t ready. But that offer would reappear within days at the most, he insisted. Probably wouldn’t even expire.

Okay, so I didn’t need to know right this very minute what color our youngest cared about or what model his sister preferred. Hopefully. Or how we were going to get their new phones to them without having them being cut off from their service for a few days.

Two hours later, they’d added a new iPhone 15 option and seem to have deleted the Apple Watch add-on, but he was right, the basic offer was still the same.

And then he explained.

Verizon has always had far better coverage than T-Mobile. They use different technologies, and the wide open spaces of non-coastal America is a big challenge for the latter.

But T-Mobile has now cut a deal with Space X’s Starlink and all the sudden nearly all of Verizon’s advantage is about to disappear. Granted, signals from satellites have a hard time going through multiple buildings, he said.

Me: Meaning you might have to go outside to get a signal?

Him: Yes. (While knowing exactly where I was going with that. Sun? Lupus? Let’s not.)

But that, according to him, is why Verizon is offering free thousand-dollar phones to get you to sign a three-year contract. The competition and market are about to change a lot, and they know it.

I chatted with one of Verizon’s agents this afternoon, explaining my problem of four new phones for four lines but three separate cities for the new phones to be picked up from. (Two, if we wait till a plane lands at the end of the week.)

Not a problem, she said: I can mail each person their own.

Right after that chat there was an offer on their home page for free overnight shipping for each new line. I can just picture the agent yelling, Hey, Fred, tweak this for these guys, will ya? I’ve almost got the sale here!

Beautiful music and readings straight from Luke. More music. Young children lighting each other’s candles (fully and safely electronic, pretend you don’t see them pushing their on buttons.) A light lunch afterwards with time to visit.

A chance to thank Monica and her family in person for those homemade cookies.

Sharing a new-today picture of our son’s kids with those who’d been part of his own village when he was growing up. The oldest is clearly doing what his daddy did at that age: growing half an inch a month, so much so that we’d done a double take, having seen him just three months ago and, wow. You look at the feet of the next oldest where the camera catches him in the act of standing halfway to tiptoe, trying to keep up. Kids. They’re just like all the kids who ever came before them. Forever adorable, as I’m sure we at our best are even now to G_d.

The young parents I gave finger puppets to. Getting to meet the parents of one of them, visiting from far away.

Love and instant community whether we know each other or not.

Every day should aspire to be like today.

Let me quietly state for the record just so that in later years I can find when this actually happened, someday when we’re replastering and repainting: tonight we were setting up the Christmas tree in its usual corner.

Every year I wish we’d bought a flip tree, fully aware that we’d bought the wide, lush Douglas fir that they don’t sell anymore because I’d fallen in love with it back then. It comes together in five large, awkward pieces, and you have to find the dangling cords and connect 1 to 2 and 2 to 4 but not to 3 etc etc to get the lights to work. Never ever lose that diagram in the bag. (Found it!)

I said something about skipping the whole thing because of our backs but that was way too bah humbug for him; he wanted that tree up. Okay. Because of course I really did, too, and we were late enough at this point as it was.

He got the base down and went for that first big chunk to fit into the slot at the bottom.

I was in the next room going through ornament boxes when I heard the low loud BOOM and came running.

He said his head hit the far wall. I pointed out the quite large dent in the side wall; from what I saw of anything, that’s where his head clearly went but he thinks that was where his hand went. Uh, one boom, one big dent, but more importantly, are you okay?!

While he caught his breath I worked on getting the next four pieces out. He objected to my lifting piece #2, but after that let me wrestle #3, 4, and 5 out of their bags and bring them to him, both of us knowing that we are still buying milk by the half gallon so that I can lift it without too much of a tweak. If he was letting me help him with those pine pieces he was hurting more than he wanted to let on. Falling is not fun when you’re 6’8″ and big.

We did it. We got it up and I decorated while he went to go lie down a moment.

He said that no he didn’t at all need me to take him to Urgent Care but that if the slightest sign of a head injury showed up he would let me know. He promised.

I found his ibuprofen.

He loves his Christmas decorations and I take comfort in the fact that it’s going to comfort him that it got done and is so pretty. He always remembers, far better than I do, how much of a difference it makes to make that difference happen every year.

We talked ourselves into it. Because who doesn’t want to go into the downtown (parking is fun!) Verizon store during an intense promotion on the Friday before Christmas? I mean, it’s like car shopping! Everybody’s! Favorite! Thing! To! Do!

It took a couple of hours, actually, and then a spur-of-the-moment declaration of really wanting to see how the thing felt in my hands before ordering it, and he wanted to, too; his phone was also getting old (even if not ten years old like mine).

It was actually quite quiet in the store. We were surprised. Probably helped by the fact that the company claimed that the offer was only available online–but note the big sign out front touting the same offer to get people to come in.

Nothing got bought. But we found ourselves sold on a particular one each, and for me, it was not the one I would have expected: a certain somebody egged me on to make sure I got the one I *really* wanted, with all the bells and whistles, given that I hang onto mine so long; I figured, geeks gotta geek. Ask me if I mind.

So that was step one. Maybe they won’t be out of stock. Maybe I’ll be able to actually take good nighttime photos soon. Maybe I won’t get stuck with that lime green that is so not my thing in order to get that price. ($5.55/month/36 months comes to an extra $198 total for a thousand dollar phone.) Maybe, just maybe, they make covers for iPhones, y’know? (Otterbox, Lumens series, green, yes, yes, that’ll do nicely.)

Small company, great products for the older grands, and all Holly‘s fault for introducing me. (A link here would be a spoiler.) I ordered early to make sure they wouldn’t be sold out but asked if they could hold off on shipping till we were home from Thanksgiving?

Sure!

(They don’t wrap, they don’t have enough staff, but putting a box to the side for a few days they could do.)

Two weeks ago we were supposed to open it, wrap everything, and get the contents on their way to family, but as Richard said today, We live in the reality-based world.

He was driving me home from the post office. I’d expected a long line and there was only so much I was up to doing yet so we’d made it an outing together.

The Christmas rush and price increase hadn’t even set in yet. Three people ahead was nothing. The two grands with birthdays this week and next should actually get those on time, too!

The flu had not caused any problem with it at all, just worries that it would. We’re good. Yay!

1.82″ of rain, way more than expected, while a tornado flipped cars up in the mountains. San Francisco had its first-ever tornado warning but Scotts Valley took the hit. (No one was killed.)

It left me musing over the words of a friend some years ago who’d grown up here and had moved over by the coast. He’d never understood why people from the East Coast said they missed ‘real weather.’ What’s so great about shoveling snow in the cold or hurricanes or storms that take out the power or all of that.

But he told me he got it now: it meant being closer to nature. We all have an innate need to connect to the natural world and weather brings it right up close and personal and humbles us.

I think (and I’m sure the guy would agree) that we can do just fine without the sky throwing a temper tantrum with heavy vehicles, but I quibble.

Meanwhile, down here, most of the rain happened at night and my hero made a grocery run this evening with nothing barring his way nor slowing him down, just a normal, calm, boring northern Californian day.

With the first sprouts of winter’s new green everywhere.

I’m going to try again tomorrow to get this to work between my phone and my answering machine, but meantime: I have for years kept a recording on that machine of my mom and dad singing Happy Birthday to me. I’m pretty sure it was from the year before my dad was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis, which he survived longer than they thought he would. I’m sure they were quite disappointed they missed me for that one day. I’ve long been glad they did.

My mother and her family were all very musical. Dad, bless him, I have multiple childhood memories of the spirit just sweeping him up into the joy of the song during hymns at church–and small children turning around to stare: How do you have a grown-up who doesn’t know how to sing? And who’s so loud about it?

I remember him being embarrassed and shutting right up mid-hymn one time, and he rarely sang at all there after that, though occasionally he would as part of random happy conversations at home.

And yet, what, sixty-odd years into their marriage? That recording sounds so sweet to my ears. They do say couples become more alike as they age, and Mom and Dad were so good for each other.

Love you, Mom!

And next week we get to call her and sing Happy Birthday. Let’s see if we can get my much-missed Dad singing along with us.

Last week he was a total hero and took the bins to the curb for morning pickup.

Today I was the one who was feeling stronger so I did.

Looking up and down the street, I wondered, Wait. Where are all the others?

I came back inside and stared in disbelief at my phone claiming it was Monday. It was not! It was TuesMondays, two, not one that we just got through!

Oh. Right. I guess I wanted to be one day further along on this than we quite are yet. Oh, well, that’s one thing we don’t have to do tomorrow night. (Sorry, neighbors.)

It had not gone out this week (neither of us was bending nor lifting anything Tuesday.) It had to be done. It was piling up. We discussed who felt most up to the task and he was sure he should do it but he might need help with the lifting, he said; we could manage it together.

And then I remembered that probably the only thing actually in that silly trash can was plastic packaging material, since we’d left town on pickup day last week, and went across the house to confirm that hunch.

Getting the new liner on afterward was the hard part and that did create the sharpest twinge I’d felt since, I dunno, yesterday, so back to the stretching exercises pronto.

At long last there was a task where the fear had been the hardest part. We can deal with that. Progress!

Her favorite part and mine: I spent awhile pushing Lillian on the platform swing. It was wet and a bit heavy from that water, it was covered in needles, I swept it off with my hands as best I could but this is what she wanted to do and she wasn’t about to let any of that stop her.

It’s hanging from a limb of a huge old Western Red cedar tree.

Someone walking her dog on the other side of the fence got the biggest grin as she saw these little feet coming up again and again while a five-year-old voice giggled and counted off the numbers with her grandmother: 20! 20! 21! 21! 22! 22! (I think she skipped 23, but I wasn’t going to quibble.)

That swing kept wanting to go just a bit sideways on its way back and there was a scratchy bush there that had grown somewhat in its way this past season, with the angle of the cedar limb aiming for it; I found myself catching the thing again and again and saying, Reset! (Hold high in the air, shift to the left a foot or so, resume count.) Go!

Reset!

24! 24!

I don’t remember how many rounds of 24 we got to. She was absolutely adorable, and I got a real workout.

How much I didn’t know.

Later, I moved her brother who was climbing on her to the other side of me as I cheerfully put myself between them, as one does when little kids are too caught up in their own momentum to do what they should. Reset!

Man, that suitcase was sure heavier and more awkward leaving than it had been coming. Surely those gift bars of chocolate didn’t make that much of a difference.

I’m now doing 10-20 minutes of back stretches every hour or two. My goal is to be able to pick something off the floor without joining it. I will be more mindful of my limitations next time–but I’m almost (almost. Do you hear me reminding myself here) glad I wasn’t these past few days; we had a great time!

Next time, though, (I don’t think she was ever in actual danger of scratching herself on that bush anyway from where she was sitting,) no resets.

Appointment: Monday. Yay.

Meantime, I was thumbing through the city’s Adult Ed class brochure they sent everybody today. Knitting classes! Meant for beginners and the more advanced alike, the latter being asked to bring their projects to work on. Fee: $160.

Now that’s called paying for a compliment.

Cooking classes. Learn to make Belgian chocolates? How to temper on a slab of marble? Sounds like fun, but I could fund a lot of trips to Dandelion in San Francisco for that much, and I already make my own actual chocolate bars. Sometimes. (Flips page.)

Python cooking.

Staggered doubletake.

Python CODING.

While Richard is already grinning, Yeah, you have to fillet it yourself.

Where could you even lay out 18 feet of such a thing. I know! You could wrap it around the kitchen. Avoid Florida-ted water. Don’t forget the Everglaze.

I remember as a kid being warned to put sunscreen on or I’d get skin cancer–at a time when nobody I knew actually wore it and getting a tan, which I could never have pulled off even if my freckles had decided to unionize, was something of a social requirement.

Sunblock was not even the word yet.

Whatever anyone said to me about sun exposure hazards at the time, I remember a mixture of inability to believe in it because being actually old enough for that to happen was beyond my imagination, and of feeling a little bit indignant at this vision of a future me I’d never met who was old. Which I most emphatically was not.

But who would want to hold me accountable for what I was doing as a kid, ie, running around and playing outside. As one does. How could I ever be her? And who was she to boss me around? Or to make me feel guilty?

Granted, Sandy down the street liked to sunbathe on that vinyl chaise-lounge by her mom’s rose patch and I knew all I would do is fry and hurt if I tried that. Not to mention I was not one to hold still. Hiking in the woods was my favorite thing.

I wonder if this would have worked better: laughing at pictures of how funny future me could look like. Still with my hair below my shoulders (go me!) but with this scar at the top of my scalp, imprinted like a baby’s fontanelle. (Here, feel that. Like a thumbprint!) And what it does is, any remaining hair there starting a new round of growing shoots straight up into the sky. Which looks really weird while the rest is mildly curly. Finally, months later, it gets long enough to flop over but it still wants to go left instead of right.

I happen to be sporting the hedgehog look just now, conditioner additions notwithstanding.

The photos of me holding Parker as a newborn nearly 14 years ago show that that basal-cell was present nine months before I finally let Richard talk me into taking seriously this spot that wasn’t going away, and got it looked at. I’d thought it was discoid lupus. I lost a fair amount of hair to that procrastination.

Two weeks ago, I found myself scratching at night at maybe a mosquito bite on the side of my head.

Today I finally asked Richard to look at it for me and take a picture (nah, you don’t want to see it.)

I’m sure the thing my dermatologist most wanted to do during the countdown to T-day was squeeze in one more patient appointment and a surgery when she just saw me last month.

Last time it rained as much as it’s supposed to tomorrow, a year ago, I had an appointment with her but the roads were closed and the floods were high and there was no way to get there.

I’m getting ahead of myself. She has to see the message first.

All I can do is wait. (As my brother waits for his melanoma recovery to attain five-year status. One of my children had it at 29 and is fine. Nah, mine’s just going to be basal again if anything. Looks the same as last time.)

Just slow, steady progress on that bright red.

I told him in the course of the conversation, I have enough yarn now that I could actually do three more repeats and make it beyond a baby blanket to a real throw. But would they want that, I mean who needs their neighbor decorating their house for them and if I leave it baby size does that obligate me to make another if they have another child so I’m not creating jealousy and yeah I don’t expect they’re going to have half a dozen more or anything but this could get expensive. And this other neighbor didn’t get any when her kids were born because she was having hers at the same time our kids were having some of theirs and what about hers being left out. But oh well.

He was smiling at this point: “You’re overthinking this.”

He told me just do what you planned to do, let life play out however it’s going to and take it from there when it does.

Of course.

I guess all I really was asking was did I have permission from myself to cast off now, which looks like it would leave it an inch or two wider than it is long (as far as I can tell pre-blocking), or do one more set.

That shape bugs me. The number six bugs me–the eye is pleased with odd numbers. Request denied. One more set. Because I’m the boss of my knitting (my stash just guffawed) and I said so.

I wonder how her life turned out. She would have been able to reach people nobody else could have.

When I was at the end of my first semester of college in 1977 at BYU, facing my first finals, my dad surprised me with an amaryllis bulb kit in the mail for my birthday.

He had given one to my mom every year for hers. To be included in that celebration felt like my dad telling me quietly that I was an adult now in his eyes. And that because of his faith in me, I was. Finals? I could do this!

One of the girls on my floor in the dorm asked me about that box with the pretty flower picture on it and was so taken with the idea that my dad would do that that we got to talking.

And talking.

We found ourselves walking the campus. Around town. Walking, walking, till hours past our bodies ached to be sound asleep. There was no way to stop.

I was her first witness. She had to tell someone.

When she was younger, her parents had lost a child in a house fire.

Her father, well regarded in their community which had rallied around the family, at home was someone who beat her mother. Often.

The day came when Becca stood between them to make him stop. He knocked her out.

And again.

At one point, and I don’t know how she met him, some older man told her he loved her and would protect her and brought her home to his place, where she was his plaything for a week. I think she was 17.

At the end of that week, though, she considered all the Sunday School lessons about waiting for marriage and knew she hadn’t done that and the ones about loving your family and she knew her father hadn’t lived up to that–but that this wasn’t how she wanted to live, either. She went home. College was coming soon anyway.

My father had sent me a flower bulb, simply to surprise me and make my day, and because he believed in me. There were actually people out there who loved their kids and lived that way. That, that was what she wanted ahead of her in her life. Love. Kindness.

She confessed to me then that a few nights earlier it had all become too much and she had sat in a tub with a knife in her hand, looking at her wrists, prepared to do the deed.

But something had made her hesitate. She felt an intense empathy reaching out for her personally, with a question, and I will never forget her saying these words describing how it felt: Yes. This life *will* be hard. Do you want to continue it?

She felt a promise holding her in its loving arms that she was not alone, that it would be so hard, but worth it, worth it, worth it, if she did. And so she lived.

Then she saw my amaryllis box.

And knew that good, loving people were out there, that they were more than just a Sunday School wish, that they were trying to live up to what they profess about following the teachings of Jesus to love one another. They were real. That could be her. She could want others to feel that same sense of being offered rescue that she had.

Yesterday morning, surely from the stress of what last week’s election means for the whole world and worried sick over my friends in Ukraine, I woke up from a nightmare. In it I had relived the pain of her telling me what had been done to her.

Becca–her parents had called her Rebecca when they were mad at her, which had never made sense to her because they had in fact actually named her simply Becca–had, shortly after our long nighttime walk, gone home at Christmas break to her folks in the South and she never came back. She told me just before she left that she had decided to go home, trying to reassure me that it was okay to now.

I never heard from her again.

I have never known if she was okay, and all my adult life I have wanted her to be, wherever she is out there.

She could be there for others going through what she had had to in a way I could never know how to. We opened up each other’s worlds. If we saw each other now we would be throwing our arms around each other and telling how this whole life thing had all turned out for us.

I told Richard the gist of that long walk.

It was a hard story for him to hear on top of the overwhelming grieving going on re the election outcome, wherein half the nation had returned to its abuser.

I had a thought–and went and pulled out the Nautilus puzzle of a sunrise at the Grand Canyon.

Pouring out the pieces. Getting out the cookie sheets to sort them into. Heads bowed together, turning each one over to see its true colors, searching for the edges, finding where it turns its corners, slowly, slowly over two evenings going from setting up the boundaries to filling in the center, the rocks and the sky and the river coming to be, slowly and painstakingly at first and then faster and faster towards the end till the picture was complete.

The laser-broken pieces now a glory of a view.