My childhood self is feeling as gleeful as those little kids with their bells yesterday: look what I found! No Christmas is complete without a dose of Snoopy and the Red Baron. I bet one of my siblings can tell me which one of us officially owned that record but we all played it over and over.

A grandson’s 15th, my mom’s 95th, my cousin’s (who was named after my mom) 67th: Happy Birthday!

We just hung up and I walked away feeling incredibly privileged. How many people get to spend an hour on the phone wishing their mom a Happy 95th?

It was a quiet day spent keeping my foot up a lot. I got up this morning thinking, Oh, that’s a lot better than I thought that was going to be. Yay.

And thank you all for the kind words and thoughts.

Meantime, it’s been 36F the last three mornings. I really need to get out there and replace the eleven year old incandescent strand on my low-growing mango tree. Removing it from the tangle of limbs and placing the new such that it doesn’t constrict its growth–I’ve been avoiding it.

To be honest, I think for a semi-irrational fear of getting ticks on my head. It’s not been quite, quite cold enough to kill them off.

See, this is why nearly-white hair is a good thing: you can see them, or rather, the tall guy will. Right?

Celebrating at Dandelion Chocolate this morning.

A day well spent.

Nighttime San Francisco Airport is always gloriously colorful this time of year as you drive in, from the towering trees to the rendition of the Golden Gate Bridge in holiday LEDs.

A quick hug, a rollaboard being pulled towards the brightly lit waiting doors, and we came home under the orange supermoon to a suddenly quiet house with happily planned leftover pastries for the morning to console ourselves by.

She’d made sure her vegan chocolate carrot cake in its pretty little box was at the top of her backpack. Right there under the zipper. With a grin.

We were on our way home from the airport a week ago at a quite late hour with all three of us utterly exhausted when he realized in horror what he’d left on the plane. He got out his phone and filed a report. We expected never to see it again.

My phone, not his, got a voice mail yesterday–go figure. Maybe because the flight had been booked with my name first? Southwest’s baggage claim had it. Would we like to come pick it up.

YES!

Michelle drove, I came with. She ran in to retrieve it; being able to hear in a noisy airport is a good idea.

And so I got out, walked around the car, and sat in the driver’s seat, expecting to be told at any moment to move along.

If you’ve ever priced portable cpap machines (it was out of pocket) you know why it turned out to have been locked away among the valuables. That required the supervisor, who had stepped away moments before we pulled in and was suddenly nowhere to be found.

I was a ways past the last door out of the building, facing the longterm parking, and it was the least busy I have ever seen that terminal. Nobody would want to pick up their person from where I was if they didn’t have to. And they didn’t.

At long last one of the traffic enforcers walked up to my window. I told him what we were doing, and that if he needed me to circle around the airport awhile I’d be happy to. He nodded, looked down the road behind me to gauge how much in the way I was–ie, not at all–and told me that if arrivals picked up I’d need to move on but for now, *shrug*, and with that he turned and walked back towards where incoming cars would actually want to be.

She came out the door at long last, cpap triumphantly in hand, we switched places again and she drove away as I wondered how much being a white-haired older woman in an old car had played into all that. Maybe the guy wishes his folks would give up the keys: maybe he didn’t want me on the road when I’d had the good sense to let my kid drive me there. Maybe he just saw a chance to be nice when it didn’t hurt anything to.

We were trying to get every minute out of the visit before she flies home tomorrow.

A huge thank you to Southwest for tracking down that machine and getting it back to our airport and us. The writing on the ID tag had rubbed off.

The info is back on it now.

(Edit: he just showed me the covid vaccine card with his name on it in a zip pocket. So it did have that to confirm it for them. Good.)

Late late flight last night.

First things first: Mathias demonstrates how to properly read a book.

Lillian, the proper way to draw after you’re all exuberanced out. But the drawing itself is absolutely imperative and so you must.

A night of very little sleep (too much dark chocolate pie last night but it was good), a morning that started earlier than it had any right to even though it was our usual time, so so tired but it was time to get up.

A few minutes later I saw it before he did.

He had stepped on who knows what, but since he couldn’t feel it he didn’t notice it. It was even a whole new toe to worry about, not the old one. I followed the blood across the hall, across the carpeting, so much on the carpeting, and then where it had obviously started. It was bad.

I’m tired of collecting Southwest future travel do-overs.

He cleaned up his foot while I tried my best to clean the carpet. It was too early to be having to work that hard and that much. I did not succeed in getting it all. It was time to go, and we made it to church on time. Breathe. The meeting hadn’t started yet so I pulled out wool and needle and started casting on a hat because boy did I need my hands to switch to the language of happy anticipation.

He tried to tell me I should be setting up my phone for the Zoom caption. I told him I was doing this (waving the needle) for me. Which was nicespeak for (and we did talk it out over lunch later), I am just barely holding it together right now worrying about you and being frustrated with you and this is how I am not bursting into tears out of sheer fatigue and worry and yes you are right and I don’t want to hear it while I have these thirty more seconds to do this so zip it buddy.

Just then someone dropped a little notecard in his lap and smiled and continued walking on past.

I put my yarn away the moment it looked like the meeting was about to start and, for the sake of the both of us,  just immersed myself in the good spirit that others had brought to the moment. It was there, waiting for me to find myself in it again. And what a story one woman told of the power of Love and the redemption wrought in her life!

After the meeting, we finally opened that envelope.

It was a handwritten note. From a single dad.

Saying how much he enjoyed and admired Richard for this, me for that, and that he had just felt moved to say so out loud.

I sought him out afterwards and thanked him. I told him, You could not have known. You had no way to know. But that was the day we most needed what you took the time to give us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

So. Today the wound care doctor had him come in.

He told Richard the other guy was full of it. Don’t do it. A PCC line with antibiotics was his recommendation.

(Note that PCC lines have their own infection risks.)

Richard came home going, Who’s in charge??

Me, pointing out what he knew: Doing the other is permanent.

But after a few more minutes knitting and considering the thing, I went back over to him and made a pronouncement. YOU are. It’s your body.

Okay, wound guy had then said to him, You need to go back to the Infectious Diseases guy and have him….

He saw it coming and had already come to terms with it. I didn’t and it threw me. I’d thought, we fought that back once and we’ll do it again.

The wound care guy two weeks ago had said we’re done here and took him off the antibiotics he’d been on since August.

Four days later the bone infection came back. No (over the phone when he tried to be seen again) you’re fine. Yesterday the visiting nurse called the guy and read him the riot act from our kitchen and asked my sweetie, Who’s in charge of this anyway?!

Well, he saw that guy, and the podiatrist, the family medicine doctor, and the infectious disease guy and the answer was, nobody, as far as he could tell.

So today was all the everybody elses. One appointment turned into three with just enough time for him to surprise me with a text, hurry home and grab a quick bite and me for my retina appointment and then head back to the clinic.

Where, when it was my turn, they took pictures and then waited for my surgeon.

The before and after were up. I had been looking at repeats of the same image through two years of screenings–but wow! That one was WAY worse than those had been. No wonder I was having such a hard time seeing those last few months! I’d had no idea it had come that close to tearing through the retina. I had gotten seen and had had it taken care of just in time, and the recovery was and is much easier because of it.

There’s still a bit of red, though, and he wanted me to go back to full dose on the steroid drops and then start tapering off again. But he was pleased with my progress.

Richard, though.

Suddenly he was getting estimates of one week to three months and they’ll schedule it when they schedule it and let him know.

Any travel plans are entirely up in the air right now. I don’t know how long it takes to recover from a partial toe amputation but we’re about to find out. After all this time that we’d thought we wouldn’t have to. He’s totally okay with it. I’m trying to be.

But at least it’s only part of only one toe at this point, and that is far better than it was.

We picked up his new antibiotic on the way home.

And now it’s finished, because…

Him: We need to go to Urgent Care.

Me: Blink. Right now? Are we in a hurry? Do I have time to use the restroom first? Find yarn?

Today…

I had to figure out fast what the next carry-around project was going to be and to grab a second needle for the decreases on the current one, because the last time he threw me like that ended up in super-long waits at UC for two days and then his five days in the hospital.

After being on antibiotics since August, they had taken him off last week. And now one toe was turning raw again.

It was a quiet day at Urgent Care and they got him right in. Back on the boot and the toeless sock, after a single day of covering that foot in his favorite bison silk sock and a normal shoe for the first time in all this time. Back on antibiotics. Back to the wound care specialist who told him last week that it looked like we were done now.

(P.S. And then we ran just now and got our ballots in at the box to make up for all that. We voted! Man, it feels so good.)

It’s your decor, I texted my sister, showing her colors but no details, and your choice. Do you want bright? Or subdued?

Subdued, she wrote back.

I’d been thinking more and more that she would; I’m glad I asked. The one I knitted last year does match her paintings better.

My fingers were getting antsy after spending yesterday and today trying to figure out what the next big thing was supposed to be. All this yarn, all these half-baked ideas, no sense of certainty.

I cast on a new one tonight because the Matisse Blue said that even if I knit it early last year it was next. I told Richard it was to make Y design. But Z is already going Hey! No, me, ME! I counted the stitches again to tell it to hush.

Let me go knit a single row while I remind it that I, in fact, am the boss of me. Not my yarn.

Sometimes.

We almost never get trick or treaters. We always hope.

It’s the day of the hat, the Cat in the Hat hat that makes him about eight feet tall. After all these years of being scrunched into a box 364 days a year, it was just slightly wrinkle-ish in the middle but once it was on his head it stood proud and tall in its fine bright stripes, trying to make his intimidating height into a relatable and good thing from a small child’s vantage point.

Not once on the doorbell.

I just walked in the other room where he was and guffawed. His hat! (While he looked at me like –What?)

The top half had fallen in on itself and then flopped over. Like a tired kid on candy overload needing to be put to bed and put over its parent’s shoulder as they carry their little dragon home.

(Now if I can just get a photo of the finished afghan to come through here.)

Radiology department. They took him to the exam rooms for awhile. Sent him back to me. Made him wait. Made him drink something. Made him wait. Ran him through a CAT scan.

The waiting room was very small. There were five chairs, full most of the time; the receptionist let someone take the sixth chair next to him from time to time since no one else was on duty just then. Except for when there was.

I had two hours to knit quietly.

I had put on a green turtleneck this morning, and before we’d left had decided the only gerdan I had that really went with it was the huge sunflower one. (Photo is from when I got it.) It’s kind of loud, but–why not. It might make someone’s day. So I did.

Two women came in. They were clearly mother and daughter, the ages of mine and me.

The younger woman checked her mom in and settled her in a chair in the other corner, standing next to her.

And from there she glared at me.

I considered whether to offer her my seat. But the only place I could go other than where she was standing just then was behind the door swinging open, and I cannot stand for long periods of time and it would be weird to move over close to her mom in her place. There was no other spot, there was no room.

Just then they called Richard back, so hey, that makes it easy, there you go.

She tended to her mom a moment and then returned to glaring at me. Standing. She refused to come sit next to me.

Huh. Okay, whatever.

My knitting did not distract her eyes, though the receptionist or her mom did a few times. Right in the eyes. I’d never seen her before in my life. I was the only one she glared at and that glaring was what she wanted to do with her time. It struck me as unspeakably sad. And yet her mom smiled quietly at the staff and was clearly grateful for their efforts. I was glad I had wool and wood needing my attention and distracted myself with thoughts of some future happy recipient loving that shade and softness.

Finally they were called and the mom shuffled painfully, slowly down the hall with her daughter looking out for her. Good for her.

I mentioned them to Richard on the way home. They had passed him in the hallway, turned out, with the daughter translating for her mom.

He voiced the same thought I had had, the only one that made any sense: maybe they were Russian. Maybe they have a son or brother fighting.

We do have a number of Russian ex-pats in the area.

But why, I wanted to somehow ask them, would you find fault that a stranger supports people who don’t want to live under Putin’s murderous rule when you didn’t want to either and you got out?

Many many moons ago, there was the annual December Birthday Club party (we unwrap a present we got ourselves and sing Happy Birthday To Us) where Virginia, who always got something funny, gave herself a hand mirror.

Only, when you picked it up it activated two things: a light sensor and a laugh track. (This is the closest I could find to it.)

Put it down flat, it’s silent. Pick it up to check out that wisp of hair out of place and it guffaws at your vanity. Loudly. Busted.

It was hilarious and I had to know where she’d gotten it. Alright then. So I ran down there and bought one for my dad for Christmas, because there was no one who could laugh like my dad.

How to ship it across the country, though, between the glass and the electronics.

An arriving package solved that problem: it was full of those (hated) styrofoam peanuts.

I took a plastic grocery store bag and filled it full of those peanuts and slipped the box inside and tied the top, then put that inside a larger box with other stuff for the folks with the bag safe at the center of it all.

I got comments from my folks Christmas day about how that was such a good use of those peanuts: they didn’t go flying all over the room when they opened the box, they cushioned everything while at the same time they were contained. Nice. They talked about the other stuff we’d gotten them.

But what about…? I had to know and finally asked, That bag. Did you look inside it?!

No, why would we?

Dad…

It had been tossed. It got retrieved.

And that is how I later got told that Mom and Dad threw a party and Dad snuck that mirror onto the long low (mid-century modern and all that) side cabinet to see who it would catch. Which of course it did. Thankfully the victim had a great sense of humor, and the friends of my parents I knew growing up all found out where that had come from. Busted right back.

Virginia loved that story.

And I mention all this because I got my Aftober Prize of No Particular Worth ™ from Afton today: the ever-changing annual item in celebration of having finished a project in October that everybody in our online knitting group looks forward to every year.

I opened the envelope and went oh that’s cool, I like that. Put it down and walked out of the room.

A few minutes later I walked back–and spotted what was now half-hidden in the rug. Oh wow, look at that!

I’m not going to describe it because others haven’t gotten theirs yet, but, it had been well packaged and hiding inside that envelope and then flipped out without my seeing. I almost never knew it was there.

And I laughed and laughed and missed my dad and thought of my mom (I can just picture her going Oh you didn’t at Dad when she heard that laugh track going) and of Virginia too, gone about 25 years now. Look what she started.

Thank you, Afton!

The A-fib thing when he was in the hospital: cardiology put a heart monitor on him after he got out to see how well the meds were working.

Two days later, it fell off. Just, plunk, on the floor just like that. Now what do we do??

They had a solution I’d never heard of, although it took a long wait for an operating room: an implanted monitor, good for five years of readings. About the size of the tip of a matchstick, they said.

(Can’t we just buy an Apple watch? I guess not.)

Looking at the incision tonight he said wryly, Y’know, they didn’t say whether that was a wooden matchstick or a paper one.

Get there by eight, they’d told him; we’ll have you out by about 11:00.

Last night I considered dragging the afghan there and decided emphatically not. I went stash diving. Did I find a ball of yarn for the rheumatologist I wrote about yesterday? I did not. What I found was just the one, it felt like, for the cataract surgeon. I had a few already-done Mecha hats but none had ever felt quite right and this skein in my hand demanded to be it instead. It totally was the boss of me.

In Rios. In ribbing, like for the retina guy; they’d operated together, let them be twins.

It felt so right that I didn’t even mind doing the 1×1 stuff again. I figured I wouldn’t get very far during his operation but at least I’d get some of it done. I cast on and did two rows before bed just to give it a running start.

Heavy traffic. Different town. Eight o’clock. Signed in. Waited.

They finally called him back, and once he was set up on the gurney with his pretty new bracelets they called me to come join him while they waited for the surgeon. (It always amuses me that at every surgery setup I’ve ever seen, spouses are not allowed to be there to watch the other undress for it. Ever.)

It was after eleven when a nurse pulled back the curtain and basically said, You guys still here? Let me go check on that doctor.  …Followed by, She’s almost ready. She had someone ahead of you.

Waiting…

I read a news article on my phone from time to time to give my hands a rest. But I did learn that I can knit on size 5s comfortably for longer than I can the larger sizes; I’d forgotten that.

But then it’s been a long time since I’ve done a six hour long block of almost continuous knitting.

Two more inches, then the decreases. And here I’d thought it was going to take me a week.