Wrapping, addressing, post office-ing…

Saturday was the annual December Club birthday party: a potluck brunch, then we sing Happy Birthday To Us and adjourn to the living room to open our presents we bought ourselves, taking a moment to say why we bought what we got and thus tell a little about what makes us tick.

And we copy each other’s gift ideas all the time. All the time. Every single year. Like the time the late Virginia brought a mirror that laughed when you picked it up: I went, Where did you GET that?! and then merrily sent one off to my folks for Christmas.

Not knowing that they were going to be throwing a party, where Dad, unbeknownst to Mom, put that mirror down on a side table off in the corner.

Fortunately the person who snuck a peak laughed, too.

So, Saturday: for once mine actually wasn’t something knitting related. I unwrapped my new Mel and Kris small square plates, gorgeous hand-thrown pottery and much admired as they were passed around the room.

Mona Jo, one of our founding members from 40 years ago, bought herself an old-time simple wooden box of a jacks game and challenged us all to a round as people were getting up to leave at the end.

I begged off because I needed to get the car back to Richard.

Sterling stayed. She would have to remind him how, if he’d ever learned–he wasn’t sure.

As he later put it, If an eighty-five-year-old woman challenges you to a game of jacks, prepare to be schooled.

When he added, She got tensies on the first round, it came back to me that yes, I do know how to play jacks, come to think of it. It had been so long since I’d even thought of them that I’m not sure my own kids ever played.

I was getting my hearing aids worked on this afternoon and I went by the bird center afterwards like I always do because they’re far away but close together, and next door to Los Gatos Birdwatcher, never much noticed by me, there was a small independent toy store.

I went in.

We did, she said, we had like ten of them forever and I know we did last week but I’m not seeing any! It’s been crazy!

She went in the back for several minutes and came back out triumphant. Found one!

They were not in the plain natural-wood box: it was wood, it had that sliding lid, but it was a bit larger and had a jacks motif kind of splatted on it that looked almost more like flowers. Flowers that were decaying on asphalt gray a few days after a heavy rain. And the brand name was one I associate with baby toys, although those were anything but classic baby colors and babyhood was the last thing I wanted my turning-nine-year-old grandson to associate with a birthday present from us.

What were they thinking?

But for $9.99 I was here, it was in stock, time was short, and I handed over my credit card.

Hand-eye coordination and quick reaction times, not to mention a game you could carry in a pocket and play anywhere you and your friends were: that’s what I was thinking about.

But that box keeps stopping me. It definitely stopped yonder Grampa.

Anyone have any ideas or experiences on boys playing jacks? Hey, I can tell him Sterling plays, and his kids are in college.

I think I’m going to go look for the version Mona Jo found. I’ve now looked up where that store was and it’s much closer to home.

Decaying flowers on asphalt is good enough for a grandmother’s purse, though, so it’s all good. I could even challenge Maddy to a round. She’s about to turn five, a little young, but what little kid doesn’t like to wildly grab for desirables with permission and then giggle like crazy.

But I’m not promising tensies on any round.

Scratching that itch again to get something finished and finally off the needles.

It had needed a dozen rows of seed stitch to top it off. That’s all.

I don’t love knitting seed stitch; I just like how it looks when I do.

There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?

(A detail I added this time: on the first round of pines, I started each tree one right-side row later than the one to its left in order to give a sense of the hilly topography. I liked how it came out a lot better than the original flat-across version.)

My dad mailed me amaryllis bulbs every December, and sent me home with six monster bulbs a year ago November when we were there celebrating my parents’ anniversary.

It would be his last time.

The first of those just opened up again today despite being outside while the nights are cold. It is white, and planted in a red pot, one of the nicest I have.

It’s like a bright wave hello from him every time I look up.

There was some discussion here of Lego/not Lego with a too-young younger sibling–we had a memorable case of Lego Stomach and x-rays when our own were going through those stages–so I took a look around Amazon to see what they had in the way of larger ones but ended up ordering none. Just not our choice to make for their kids.

About an hour later, I noticed my gmail had a new message: Target, offering me 40% off on many of their Lego sets.

They don’t miss a beat, do they?

The afghan is finally in the fun to knit stage, but I wasn’t about to tote those two cones I’m working from to the baby shower tonight–one time of having everything tangle in the bag was enough.

Suddenly gauge swatches have a whole new meaning. That trip all the way through the laundry offered a realistic view of what the finished blanket will feel like and to a lesser extent how it will look.

The mom-to-be held up the swatch with a laugh and I held out my arms: “It’s this wide–and it’s going to be” as I swooped my hand down over my feet. “I figure every baby needs a blanket that keeps the mom’s toes warm on a cold night.”

There were a lot of young moms in that room and there was this resounding “YES!”

After an inextricable (I tried!) tangle for reasons of utter stupidity the lavender afghan got ripped back to nothing this afternoon for the–I think third time. I don’t think that halfway time counts.

So that was fun.

Just. Let. Me. Get. Past. Two. Inches.

The originally planned bottom edging that I’d tossed after changing the stitch count (too wide the first time) and didn’t want to hassle with the math to work it back in is now back in the game and halfway finished.

And then, only then, did it at long last hit me: there is a lace pattern going into this project whose name includes the maiden name of the mom-to-be. THAT’S why my brain had been so insistent that it had to be in there.

I am marveling at just how slow I was on the uptake.

And typing that, I just pulled out the tape measure: 2.25″. Alright!!

Yeah, sounds weird. I would show you a picture but it all disappeared too fast.

Richard’s aunt always asks at the end of Thanksgiving whether I want to make stock out of the turkey bones or if she should toss the carcass. There’s only one answer.

This afternoon I shredded the most obvious meat off it and then boiled it down, stopping when the broth tasted good about two and a half hours later. Note that it had been stuffed with mandarin orange slices, and they went into the pot, too, along with a bit of pepper.

Good thing I had an extra large strainer–it had been a big bird.

I had some small yellow mangoes that had been picked too early to be very sweet; they were okay, but even after ripening for a week they were still more cooking mangoes than the dessert type they’d been raised to be.

Which would be perfect, right? I debated, standing looking around my kitchen, and then thought of my father’s description of my more adventurous mother’s cooking: “You’ll never be bored at Frances’s table. It might be INTERESTING,” and he would laugh his big laugh for sheer joy and pride in her.

A half a bag of spinach (grocery store size, not Costco’s) rinsed and nuked for two minutes.

I poured three+ cups of that broth into the blender, followed by the drained spinach and several glugs from a bottle of smokey Trader Joe’s Apple Bourbon Barbecue sauce and let’er rip.

I poured my green soup into a large bowl and added one of those mangoes, diced fairly small.

I nuked that for two minutes or so, added a bunch of the turkey, and put it back in for about 20 seconds.

And then came over here to write it down. Because that was very, very good and I definitely want to do it again.

Maybe thicken it next time. Or not.

Right now there’s more of all of where that came from. Yum.

Over the river and through the woods and up to the top of the mountains.

Where we saw snow and ice as we turned onto their road and along the switchbacks coming down. Only at the last house, at the bottom of the hill, did it clear up. (Turns out they’d had hail earlier, too.) The redwoods towered over us. We pulled in.

His aunt was hosting.

I like to surprise people, but colors are things people have strong feelings about, so I showed his cousin who grew up in that house the photo I posted here yesterday.

Motherhood had been a long time coming for her and I’ve particularly wanted to celebrate with her and her husband.

She pointed out the lavender and said she really liked that one.

You like lavender?

I love lavender!

I told her I’d put all those others together in part because I only had that much of each–except for the lavender. Colourmart had had a closeout on it (in a different weight, but, same yarn.)

She didn’t quite want to hope out loud for plain lavender until I made it clear that that was totally what it was there for, and then Yes! Please the lavender!

Note that I had certainly not needed more yarn at the time Colourmart had put it on sale this past summer but that color and only that color had felt compelling–that someone was going to need it. It bossed me into it, and when it showed up here there was this unfathomable sense of joy and a certainty of purpose that mystified me because, I mean, it’s just yarn, really; I wanted to know what that purpose was, and why was I so excited about this? Ever since, it’s made me happy every time I see it.

Now I know why.

The mystery that she didn’t have any way to know anything about (and still doesn’t) has been solved for me.

Her baby’s due at the end of January. I need to get a move on.

Southwest: There are three seats left at this price…

Me: Book’em, Dano.

I’m just going to leave this little bit of happiness right here.

Thank you, everybody, for all the notes. So appreciated.

Rose came out of the vertebrae reconstruction surgery talking nonstop. She’s drinking clear liquids and the Rybka Twins (I had to look them up) whose booksigning the injured had been on their way to stopped by her hospital room wearing cheerful neon pink and big smiles.

Which meant her parents posted a photo of Rose with them with a great big grin of her own, holding up her newly signed copy in front of her face.

I think everything’s going to be okay. Time and patience and a lot of medical skill to come (there will be more surgery) and physical therapy and she’ll get there. Maybe even pick up an Australian accent just for fun before she comes home–she’s a singer, she’s got a great musical ear for it.

Today was such a relief.

That, and, I spent ten hours watching the impeachment hearings and at the end of it went, wait–I just need two more days like this and this afghan is actually somehow finally going to be done!

He’s there with them now.

My cousin’s wife was visiting with their youngest daughter (who’s I think 12) and niece in Australia and were in a terrible accident over the weekend. They’ve all survived, so far. But their daughter was going in for her second surgery today after massive brain swelling.

His wife posted that she had been pouring her soul out in prayer while overwhelmed with the memories, the 40 minute wait for the ambulance, her own broken bones as she was trying to help her daughter not bleed to death, her niece calling out for her mom, who was not there.

And the flies! So many flies, and holding that gauze she just could not keep them away from her daughter’s face to at least offer her that comfort.

And in the moment she thought that in her prayer she suddenly knew: it was the flies. Rose had needed to stay conscious, and the annoyance of those pesky bugs, that insect insult on top of all the fear and pain–

–had been what had kept her awake.

And she woke up again after the first surgery, which was on her brain.

Update: and she is responsive now after her second. Go Rose!

All day long I’ve been remembering that Veterans’ Day when I was on my way to Cottage Knits, my route taking me past Golden Gate National Cemetery.

As I waited at the light at the corner that edges two sides of it, there was an elderly man near the end of the row. He was stooped, his head was bowed, his white hair blowing in the wind and chill, his face the picture of grief. I wanted to leap over the fence and hold him up. To somehow ease his unspeakable pain.

This page says more than I ever could.

Love you, Dad. Miss you, Dad. Thank you for offering your life for our ideals and for our whole world’s sake.

I set d wn a cup next t the computer and missed. Which means it instantly went lying across the keyboard my clothes the rug my she’s.

Sometimes bviusly n t always but sometimes autocorrect gets it right–never thought I’d be glad r autocorrect.

The new keyboard is supposed t come tmrrw.

While I was expressing frustration with the keys that won’t type Richard said just copy and paste the letters in.

Hey. Slow but it works. The man is a genius.