And we are home from Washington State and the first visit with grandkids since Covid hit. The flight was late, we’re tired, but I wanted to check in. We are so glad we got to go.

A couple we know called and asked if they could drop by; they’d been baking and had some snickerdoodles to share.

Sure!

So as we were visiting, I mentioned having this rootstock-regrowth Yellow Transparent tree whose apples were ripe and needed to be processed into apple butter or applesauce; they’re great for those and mushy and terrible for eating out of hand.

They would love to!

And so the four of us found ourselves outside picking apples as the sun headed down. They said how many should we take and I said, the whole tree–please? (It isn’t very big.)They laughed. They got all but the smallest that just weren’t ready to go.

Apple butter needs apple cider–so much better than mass-bottled juice. We had some, thank you Trader Joe’s.

They went home happy to have a tasty project to work on with their boys and we got to be done with that tree for the year. They’ll have four sets of hands coring those apples, and you don’t even need to peel them for apple butter, especially not those super-thin skins that give the variety its name.

And the snickerdoodles were delicious.

Afterwards I baked this recipe with some of Andy’s Yuliya apricots after all that talking about fruit and desserts. Why not, it’s our you-crazy-kids day from when we were 21 and 22. One more year till we get to be Life, The Universe, and Everything!

I live in clogs but for a goodly while now I’ve needed a plain old pair of sneakers. Like, for years.

When you’re 6.5 to 7, depending on the brand, but a EE width, buying online is an exercise in returning the online.

Unless it’s Birkenstock. And even their shoes, I find you mostly have to go up a size from their sandals so it’s still not a sure thing.

Guess who makes sneakers now. Wildly overpriced, but who else would fit my feet? You just can’t do mud puddles with kids while in clogs. They don’t work.

The box came today. Upped a size.

I’m wearing the new hearing aids today.

I put on the shoes and wore them a bit on the carpet, trying them out, and finally made the decision non-negotiable (having been taught well by my mom that you do not walk off the carpet unless you’re keeping them) and, feet exploring their new surroundings, started doing stuff around the house.

My shoes. They made noises. I was trying to figure out why. The laces flopped against them with each step–who knew? But I wasn’t sure that was all of it and looking at them didn’t tell me what they were saying. You cannot lipread a sneaker.

I mentioned to Richard that they were making sounds and he said, All new shoes squeak.

?

So then I had to walk back across the house and around a bit more and there, in the kitchen: I heard it! That was a definite hamster type sound, ever so briefly. And another! Flappity flap (squeak!) Are everybody’s shoes this distractingly noisy? Since when do shoes make sounds?

I went back to him in triumph. I heard it! They do!

He looked at me, totally understanding/totally trying not to roll his eyes at my excitement over hearing something I hadn’t in decades.

“I’ve had Squeak Deprivation Syndrome!”

Pitted (shown), sugared, nuked, cooled. Trying not to think about adding ice cream to it.

I was going to joke about okay, now you’ve seen me so you’ve pretty much seen his face, too.

But the car didn’t.

My big brother whose face I compared mine to yesterday was riding a bike today on a beautiful day after work and a car came speeding without looking. Morgan shouted and the driver matched his frantic yanking of the wheels to avoid the hit.

And just just just avoided a strike from the car but not the one with the pavement from that momentum mismatch.

As he lay in the road people came to his rescue–except the driver, who hesitated and then took off.

Three broken ribs, and another one cracked, along with his shoulder.

But he’s alive and himself and will heal and yay for helmets and as he dryly noted, his bike is okay.

Praise be.

September 2019, Kimber gave me a nice haircut and we agreed on the next March for me to come back in for a trim. But March 2020 didn’t quite turn out as expected. She is fully vaccinated now and I am, too.

She combed it out and held it up for me to marvel in the mirror with her: Look how long it is!

Yeah, I told her, I pulled the two halves to the front and snipped a few times over the pandemic, otherwise there would have been about ten individual strands down to my waist. I lost a fair amount when I was sick and it got pretty sparse at the bottom.

Do you want this much? (About two inches.) Or this much? (About four, maybe even five.)

I held up my hand to motion the four/five.

My self-snipped edges fell gently away to the floor, finally, after all this time, curling into circles on impact after she’d conditioned it straight. The straggly ends by my face got evened out and morphed into done on purpose. It looks great.

I took a picture when I got home, and of course it didn’t come through, but I have to say I was dumbfounded to see my older brother’s face looking back at me from that photo. Twins.

Except with hair.

And I know exactly who would tell me, with a grin, not to complain over not being able to get a haircut.

Kimber waved me off at the end with, See you in two years!

I laughed/winced, Not that long!

Happy Birthday to my son Richard! Who did not quite make it in time for Dad’s birthday but by waiting a day did make it so I got the obstetrician I wanted, so Dad laughed when we called to say it was a boy and told me it was okay.

One of my sisters had a daughter on his birthday two years later.

One of my sisters had a son the day before (edit, with her help: three days after) his birthday I think two years after that. All three had part of his name in theirs.

The cowl picture doesn’t have anything to do with any of that other than hey, cast that off and finish it already, willya? I was always the late one.

Today would have been my dad’s 95th and even though he was allergic to chocolate, he loved it and we love it, so it seemed a good day to celebrate, and, yeah. We got in the car to head to Mutari in Santa Cruz. Richard pulled up Waze on his phone just to be sure everything was cool road-wise.

Nope nopity nope. Bad accident. (Turned out later that friends of ours were stuck for three hours in that mess, and one can only pray for the people who were hit.)

Michelle turned and headed north. Dandelion here we come!

We even scored a jar of their dairy-free fresh chocolate/freshly roasted hazelnut spread that was sold out online. For that, she forgave my asking about Imagiknit a few blocks away, and so we came home with four unexpected skeins of Malabrigo Mecha, too. Make more art! Yay!

And then after we got home.

Richard’s glasses came in and he needed to go to Costco to pick them up; did I want to come?

Not overly, and I dragged my feet a little; Costco on a Saturday?

It turns out it wasn’t too bad, actually, but as I started in the door their guy called out after me.

“I’m with him,” pointing at Richard.

“No, you can’t come in without a mask.”

“Wha…Ohmygoodness, I’m sorry, I forgot, here let me grab mine” (fishing it out of my purse while the guy was offering one from the store.)

He was apologizing, saying they make him say that–and then added, “Some people, you know, they think it’s mostly a hoax.”

The way he said it made it clear he was one of those who thought they were probably right.

I found myself telling it with a keen sense of love for this good man I’d seen working there for years, so that it came out almost joyfully, “I had Covid. I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. There was one day there where my oxygen was so low that I knew if I moved a single muscle I’d be out–there was just none to spare. I’m so glad I survived! I had long-hauler syndrome, and after they gave me the vaccine it was gone just like that!” snapping my fingers. (It took about a week, but a week is nothing after a year of that.)

His face was a mixture of wonderment and relief as he took all this in. Somehow the incoming crowd had thinned just then so that he had that moment to have that conversation and to consider what I’d said. On a Saturday, no less.

“It’s real?”

I nodded, answering, “I am SO glad for the vaccines!”

As I walked off I was smiling and he was really smiling, like he was finally at peace. He finally knew what to do and it was clear he’d made the decision. He was going to get his, too.

Our daughter was asking if we had any close members of the family who’d served. My dad in WWII, of course.

Richard mentioned some in his family.

I told her there was a member of the family (I’d have to check with Mom to make sure I got the right name) who had served in WW1: as a pilot.

She did a double take. Oh. A lot of those did not do well.

He did not.

My grandmother wrote her autobiography when I was ten years old, and the story she told about an officer talking to her son in the Army–was Richard’s great uncle.

Diana started it. My cousin’s wife.

She posted a picture of thick bumpy wholesome-looking oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and said, You ever have one of those days when you just want cookies for breakfast? Rolled oats makes them almost the same thing as oatmeal, right?

I told her it does–and that my daughter had made a batch of dough of exactly that that was sitting in our freezer and after looking at hers, now I was trying hard to avoid its calling to me, all the louder because I knew I could make, y’know, just three, one for each of us here. It would be almost guilt-free.

Knowing there was homemade chocolate mixed in did not help in that resistance.

A few hours later I gave Diana an update: yes I had, I’d made three cookies and then dashed off to a doctor appointment.

When I got home there was a second cookie sheet on the counter next to mine. With some clearly missing.

My sister asked for two of the Anya apricot kernels a few months ago and I sent her some.

One never came up, one almost made it–but then faded away, and I had no more to offer; she was going to have to wait another year. The one small hope was that while I was cracking them open for everybody one went shooting away from me and had not been seen since; maybe it was somehow wedged under the dish drying rack and would finally show up? (Not as if I didn’t look repeatedly.)

I would have mailed her one of my seedlings if I’d thought it could survive days in the dark.

This afternoon my daughter opened the freezer, looked at the door, and went, Mom, why is there a kernel in your freezer?

It had not been cracked open. It was not the one that got away–oh wait. Obviously yes in its own way it did, but, huh, how on earth did that end up there. I think–I’m not sure–that there was one too many to get the little Rubbermaid tub lid to seal, back when I had them all, and it had just been put next to the rest on its own and been long forgotten.

The mail had not yet come. I shot off a note to Marian but didn’t wait to hear back because I knew what the answer would be and put it in what seemed to be a strong envelope. Inside that envelope I put a corner I’d just cut off from a padded envelope and had taped the cut edges shut around the kernel.

She got back to me quite happy about this before the mailman picked it up. I had already put three stamps on the thing to bribe the post office not to mess this up.

Sometimes, just sometimes, you get a second chance.

I don’t know if it’s the sheep’s-rear-stinky wool wedged in the tree keeping the squirrels out or the sounds of squawking peregrine fledglings occasionally coming from my computer, if they can even hear that from outside. But whatever, something’s working and there’s still fruit on the trees.

Speaking of squirrels, I’ll mention it here for my mom, who’s not on Facebook: my cousin Jim reports that he and his family were watching a movie tonight when they heard a thud, scampering, and lots of squeaks. Everybody went running to see what on earth?

A squirrel (it wasn’t a very big one) had fallen through the skylight, the cat had chased it, and it had leaped for the nearest hiding place–which happened to be the toilet. Somebody had the presence of mind to whip out their phone and hit record for posterity. It was trying to get out, it was now trying to retreat and hide from them but wait let’s not drown, and the poor thing looked like a Mark Rober video reject.

They got a big thing of Tupperware and corralled it and Jim felt it shivering through the plastic. He got it outside, I’m sure shutting the door behind him first so it couldn’t dash back in, and tried to let it go.

It just stayed right there and kept shivering.

His daughter’s studying to be a nurse. They got some rags and bundled the poor soaked thing up and she confessed to petting it for about ten minutes to calm it down while offering it some cat food. Which it finally nibbled at.

At last it went off to go be a squirrel again at owl o’clock. Watch that curfew, kid.

Jim reports (not needing to mention the whole pandemic thing by way of context) that it was the most exciting Friday night they’d had in some time.

Last Saturday we were three hours past the 24 hour mark and things turned out such that it was simply going to be me dealing with pouring and trying to temper the batch of chocolate we’d started the day before.

Nuts to that.

I got those molds set out and then just took it straight from melanger to bars. No whipping in pre-tempered shredded cocoa butter to try to get it to set into the correct type of crystal out of the seven different ones chocolate can turn into. No thermometer, no waiting for the right viscosity, just do it and be done. We knew how good it was going to taste regardless, and personally, I liked the cacao+sugar only idea.

It was glossy and glorious that night. In the morning there were little round dots. Over the week, some of them spread into big round dots and galaxies while others stayed stars in the distance. The bars became a bit crumbly.

But man do they taste good.

There was a fundraiser at my daughter’s office to raise money for Parkinson’s research, and in the Before days she had colleagues who quite looked forward to her bringing in homemade cookies and the like once a week.

So she made bake-your-own oatmeal chocolate cookie kits in quart mason jars and entered them in the raffle, specifying homemade chocolate in them, no less.

She chopped up about a pound of that batch, knowing that once it melted within the cookies the crystalline structure would both reset and not matter one bit, while trying not to use too much. I encouraged her to use however much she needed.

Then I asked her to make us some of those cookies; after all, we have more cacao nibs and if the termite guy next Tuesday says they have to tent the house, all food will have to be out of it. It is a lot easier to share chocolate cookies than nibs.

Thus the plan is to start another batch in the melanger tomorrow so that we can again have a Saturday to have to deal with the pouring and tempering (we’ll see) and the cleanup.

That stuff is SO good. It’s worth the decibel level.

And the thought suddenly hits as I type that that, yeah, do it now while I have the old hearing aids. Come Monday that machine is going to be sounding a whole lot louder to one of us.

—

p.s. At about 4:29 in this video the first female falcon fledgling in San Francisco, named Rachel after Rachel Carson of Silent Spring fame, tried to do what her brothers had done and fly. It, um, didn’t go so well. Whoops! (She safely landed in another bay of the building 27 floors below where she’d jumped off from, so, no worries.)

Last night changing out of my long sleeves into my pj’s I noticed the veins in my hands and arms were very swollen, deep blue, and you could see them going from my hands wrapping around my arms on up to near the elbows. Puffy. I checked around. It seemed to be mostly there.

“That’s inflamed,” said Richard, with both of us aware that my lupus did this all over early on in the disease and the doctor guessed afterwards that I’d had cerebral vasculitis. That’s where my face blindness and short term memory damage originated from. I was 31.

Urgent Care was closed by then and he asked whether we should go to the ER. Insurance punishes you heavily if you go straight there ($13k bill last time), even when the doctor tells you to. We knew we would spend a very long night awake and go home near dawn beyond exhausted, which would greatly exacerbate the whole autoimmune flare thing, and chances are they would probably just dismiss it anyway; at an hour when all we wanted to do was fall into bed it seemed like the best way to treat it was to get a decent night’s sleep.

I was antsy and didn’t sleep well at all. But it was gone in the morning. Breathe.

My GI doctor said I could see her next Monday or come in and see someone else if I needed to on those Crohn’s symptoms; again, my call.

Today was not perfect but it was improved on that one, too, and I was able to eat normal meals, so for the moment Monday it is. But I will change that in a heartbeat if I need to.

So today there were more birds in the yard than I’ve seen in awhile. House finches in breeding season: you never saw such a brilliant red. A western tanager flew up close to  the house, the jasmine’s white buds promise their exquisite scent on the way, the pomegranate sent out more bright red buds, and we shared a few blueberries straight off the bush after dinner. The newest apricot seedling began a new set of leaves and after its faltering start seems to really be taking off.

It felt a good day to drink every bit of that in.

I’m going to go top the day off with a few rows of a bright blue soft wool hat and then call it a night.

Well, will you look at that. Photos at last! Lemons! And sour cherries!

We know from experience that if you go to Santa Cruz on a Saturday you’d better go early because there are only a few routes over the mountains for the millions of people in the Bay Area who might want a bit of ocean in their weekend. I did a bit of knitting in the car and in the parking lot as we waited for the place to open and it felt great to have good wool in my hands.

Mutari‘s chocolate bars are expensive but are the best there are–and the vegan offerings in their shop are many. It’s our daughter’s favorite spot.

The kicker is that our melanger had been going since yesterday afternoon but that was just going to be bars. She wanted hot chocolate and truffles, specifically, theirs.

I chuckled over their Wild Bolivian–and we bought one to compare, because that was the label of the nibs in our machine. Their chocolate is always tempered right and roasted to perfection because they’re pros who know what they’re doing. It would tell us what we could aspire to.

Us, we just play with our food.

And it’s all good.