It’s strange walking through a grocery store thinking oh wait no not that no oven, oh wait not that…

I froze a half a pan’s worth of leftover berry crisp before going out of town a few weeks ago and it is silly and funny how important that crisp feels now: we will have it tomorrow morning for a special treat. I make crisp all the time, only, I can’t. So yeah. Treat. It’s like we’re hardwired to want right now what we have to wait for even if we wouldn’t have thought of it otherwise.

I called a number of companies yesterday, trying to find one, anyone, that had a Bosch double oven in stock, preferably an 800 series. The 27″ size I needed would have been nice but I gave up hope of that pretty quickly–30″ is the standard. The woman at a Sears store checked her computer to see if any of the other Sears in the entire San Francisco Bay area might have a floor model in either size, since they sell them. I got nowhere.

But I did get the curious bit of information from her that if I ordered online the company would charge me a hundred dollars less than if I went to the store to do so. And I thought, are they *trying* to kill off their physical stores? Wow. At that I wanted to go in to order from her personally in thanks for her considerable time she spent on the phone with me but I really did want to see what I was buying first.

After all, we went oven shopping a couple of years ago just to see what our options were if we were to get rid of the too-random-temp one with the broken lower oven. (The unit that just blew up.) There was one brand where the back of the handle on the door had sharp exposed upper and lower metal edges the length of it that you could easily cut your fingers on, and I did: the handle looked pretty in front but the manufacturer had skimped so that the metal wrapped around but didn’t actually meet much less get seamed at the back. I cannot begin to imagine how they thought that was okay. Maybe they assumed people would order online and then simply be stuck with it?

Bosch is a good brand. But I still wanted to see one first. Trust but verify.

I finally tried searching for ‘major appliances, (specifically) my town,’ and that brought up Davies Appliances in Redwood City.

I was intrigued. I’d forgotten about them. My contractor took me to their store when we were remodeling over twenty years ago–good to see the little guys still succeeding out there.

The thing you saw first walking in their door was a Bosch 800 series 30″ double oven. And it was beautiful.

They offered us a good price, they offered us a contractor whom they said knew their stuff on the installation–that this was all they did, and they would make it look like it was the oven the kitchen had been remodeled with in terms of fitting into the existing cut-out. Shipping was free. We wanted an extended warranty? Three years or five? Five? Sure.

Sears had offered none. That had been the deal breaker. Our then top-of-the-line Thermador double oven blew through an $800+labor motherboard in three years and the second one a few years after that and you bet I wanted to spend a few hundred not to have that problem again any time soon.

The amazing thing? None of this three-week-wait stuff. It will be picked up from the distributor Monday and they will call before they come. Which might not be Monday–but it might.

Been too long since I’d had the perfect chocolate, so I met up with my daughter today at Timothy Adams for a mug’s worth and a truffle or two and for some catch-up time with her.

We saw Timothy starting to stir a pot of something after we arrived, and turns out it was a dairy-free praline mixture so my allergic kid could eat it. He poured it onto some toasted nuts and put a big piece in front of her as we sat. Just because he could.

The mug felt like enough for me right then but I’d had the kid at the counter put two–eh, make it four truffles–into a take-out bag. You can’t have Richard totally missing out, now, can you?

Michelle had parked right nearby but I’d had to circle around and settle for a spot near the far end of a long narrow alley that stretched to the block the shop is on. There was a tall, blind-looking building right up against the asphalt on one side and a series of smaller buildings on the other, including one that looks like the house straight out of the movie UP; in front of it, the alley opened up a bit as if to try to leave it a tiny paved front yard.

And so. On my way back, there was a large FedEx truck halfway down the alley and five or six men beyond, standing near where my car was just out of sight. The truck started backing up at about that point, so at least I wasn’t going to have to dodge it squeezing by. Not a whole lot of room.

There are times when one can become acutely aware of how it looks to be gray haired and walking with a cane. I fought the sudden feeling of vulnerability with the only thing I had: I offered up a silent prayer for everybody in that alleyway whoever they might be.

There were more of them than I knew: two more men were tucked up against the back of the building next to the UP house–and (take a few more steps) one had a mail cart. Okay.

And near them was a woman. She was standing holding a cart holding, one might easily guess, all her worldly belongings, with them as disheveled as she was. Her face had been exposed to the sun for a very long time and her eyes didn’t see things quite the way I would.

I found myself pulling that bright pink and white striped cheery paper bag out of my purse and asking her, Would you like one? It’s from the Timothy Adams shop around the corner there, as I handed her the dark plain truffle, thinking, Keep it simple. Just chocolate.

She let me give it to her; the men behind her were watching, smiling.

A few more steps, and the FedEx driver was a young man calling out to me. His window was rolled down, his elbow resting on the truck door, and he asked me in delight, Was that chocolate?

Yes it was, I grinned.

Can I have some? he teased, with zero expectation.

Sure! Ginger okay?

His surprised oh wow reaction meant that I’d made the right choice on that one–that he was the kind of person who would turn around and do something for someone else in response and pass it along.

Meanie that I am, I saved the date caramel marzipan for me. It lasted about three hours. I was going to wait till my sweetie got home but, y’know, chocolate-covered date caramel marzipan! Sorry, Richard–I’d have handed the guy the hazelnut praline if that’s the one that had come to hand but it wasn’t.

Not that Richard minded.

(Picture: Kathleen and me at Karen’s.)

Laundry. All day, it felt like.

I carefully hand washed, for the first time, an outfit I’d bought to wear to my nephew’s wedding and had had hanging in the closet for several months untouched for fear anything might happen to it: a deep burgundy skirt with a flimsy-fine silk overlay, a silk-and-velvet-burnout jacket that matched. Not a sturdy pair by any means, but pretty. And a cream silk blouse with narrow vertical pleats to finish it off. (Yay for clearance sales on all counts.) I knew that overlay would take very careful steam-ironing after each hand washing to make it go back to being the right length (those shrink up like crazy but then iron out to way long, even too long if you’re not watching it), but the photos of the day would last forever, right?

Going out the door the evening of that wedding reception two weekends ago meant getting past my brother’s mastiff/boxer mix puppy without its big toenails hooking into that flimsy layer of silk and making it look like Parker’s blankie.

There was just no way. I wore something else (and was justified by said puppy doing one last attempt to jump up on me three steps from the front door.)

Now, it was a perfectly lovely outfit but in the time it had hung there unused I had questioned whether I’d really needed it, and ditching it at the last second had made me wonder even more so. My disappointment somehow became the clothes’ fault.

Karen picked me up at the airport the next day and that’s what I was finally wearing. She exclaimed over it. She loved it. She loved how the whole look came together.

I shouldn’t have needed someone else’s approval to make me feel good about it at all, and yet. And yet. She changed everything. Now, at last, I feel like I really do have something nice enough to wear to, well, the next wedding, anyway. Just like I’d planned.

In the last ten days I got to see so many family members I so rarely get to see. I saw old and very dear friends and at good times for those get-togethers to happen in terms of their own lives. I gained a son-in-law and a niece-in-law. My husband got to see his dad. I got some Purlescence time with old friends the day after I got home and finished my airplane project and I love how it looks and I wonder who it’s for. We celebrated a Californian friend’s birthday yesterday, grateful for all that has been and will be.

So I’ve been sitting here looking at this computer screen for awhile trying to figure out how to create a blog post out of all that overwhelming emotion, of feeling so blessed, so loved, so glad for the chance to love back and in person.

And then, (airfare and his time off work being a tad pricey and trying to tamp down the urge to book the next flight immediately), having been denied it by the flu last February, Stitches West is coming right up. There will be people there that I only ever get to see there and man, it’s been too long. I can’t wait.

I got a phone call after lunch from the nursery: the Baby Crawford peach tree I’d pre-ordered in September had arrived. And it was a very nice specimen, too, turns out.

Andy Mariani calls that variety the best-tasting peach in our particular climate and I’ve eaten some of his, which is why I wanted to plant my own–they were fabulous. They also fill a gap when our other peaches won’t be ripe.

I dug out the hole (I’d actually already dug it out a year ago and then didn’t put anything there for the drought, so it was no big deal to do it again), went and got the tree, planted it, and came inside to the news: Sam and Devin had eloped today.

We knew they were going to, just not when. I finally get to call him my son-in-law and you could not ask for a better one–within five minutes of meeting him I’d thought, I don’t know you but I HOPE you marry my daughter!

He makes her deeply happy and she makes him happy too. I cannot begin to say how grateful I am that he’s a member of our family now.

I had no idea I was going to be planting a tree, the best tree, in their honor and on their day. But I like it.

So here’s the story.

The kids and grandkids all came home for Christmas. The day after they left we were to go to my nephew’s wedding. Two weeks later, Richard was going to be spending a week taking care of his dad, and when I booked that airfare awhile ago, Michelle told me I ought to go off gallivanting happily somewhere while he was gone. I told her no way–we were blowing it all on air, hotel, and car for the festivities.

Which were held in southern California, where the bride was from.

Then the stomach flu happened and that was that.

But I found myself thinking of what my daughter had said and y’know? There was to be a second wedding reception two weeks later in Atlanta, where my nephew is from. We hadn’t had to pay for the hotel or car, the original airfare was transferable to a new trip (thank you Southwest!) and there you go. Matter of fact, it was almost as cheap to fly to Baltimore from Atlanta and home for a three-jog trip than to fly straight back from Georgia.

And that is how I got to see my brother’s new house, he having recently moved to Atlanta too, and he picked me up from the airport and I stayed a night with him and his wife. The next night was the reception, then that night at my sister’s, along with fourteen other people: nieces, nephews, their families, all people I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. (It’s 90 minutes between their houses–one does not go back and forth too easily.)

From there to Baltimore and I stayed at my childhood friend Karen’s. Having it be a holiday weekend made it all the better because everybody had the next day off. Given all the changes in our lives that have happened the past few years–including that one friend’s husband had died last March and her brother of a heart attack last month–it was the right time to be there, to be physically and truly emotionally present. Karen, Kathleen, Bev, Scott, Jeb (not that Jeb!), and even their mom came down by train in time to spend a few hours with us. What a joyful, wonderful time it all was. Those you love in your life are forever a part of you, and to get to BE there…

Bev and Karen and I tried to walk a bit of the canal the next day, something we’d all done a lot of growing up and that none of us had for several years now.

It was twelve humid degrees with a biting wind, though, and no twenty-something Californian temps in December had been anything like it: the slower parts of the Potomac River just above Great Falls were actually frozen, with the wilder parts of the currents still going. (It’s a lot wider than it looks in this picture but my fingers just could not push any more buttons to try to get better shots.) Canada geese were on the flowing parts of the river (never seen them there before), mallard ducks were on the still-liquid parts of the canal.

Karen motioned down the hill and grinned that if I wanted to go splash in the Potomac like I always like to do when I’m home, right here was a good spot for it.

No. No way. I know, I do, but not this time, and boy that’s sure not something I wanted to fall into, either. Brrr–I had wool knee socks, a thick wool skirt, three layers of gloves on (two fingerless), a baby alpaca cowl plus a scarf plus a hat–two, but one kept blowing off the other, its wide brim caught in those gusts, so I used it to wrap around my fingers. Over my coat and boiled wool jacket and cashmere sweater and thick silk cowl shirt and silk t-shirt I had on Karen’s old big warm parka and still the wind blew through all those layers. It was COLD. (Thermals? Who owns thermals in California? I am so going to knit me some wool leg warmers…)

I got to be there, too.

I have never been so grateful for stomach flu in my life.

The alarm went off at 5:50 am Eastern and Karen got me to the airport and Michelle brought me home.

At 4:15 pm Pacific I was sitting in front of the arrival/baggage claim doors and on the phone as the security guy walked up to my window because my car had stayed in one spot too long, with me saying into my cell, window rolled down so the guy could hear, I’m right here. Where are you?

Richard was saying the same thing.

Me to the security guard: Do you see a 6’8″ guy wearing a hat?

(Into the phone) Which here?

(Out of the phone) Oakland, where are you?

(Oh… Crud….) San Jose airport.

And that is how I spent four hours in rush hour stop-and-go traffic, ameliorated by a half hour break at a burger joint the last hour so we could both get a break and a bite and a bit of respite on that traffic. 3:30 to 8:00.

It is now 9:30 Pacific time and I just found that the load of underwear in the washing machine that we’re staying up for and that I just went to put in the dryer had a travel ziplock in the load and it had vitamin C chewables in it. There is a huge, vivid orange splotch placed just exactly so on that one pair of his…

Oh bleep. Forget it. Set it to extra rinse with that piece taken out, hope there are no others and call it a night.

My nephew’s wedding in southern California that we missed due to stomach flu? There was a second reception Saturday in Atlanta, where the groom’s family was. Richard couldn’t take the time but at least I got to go. I got to see my brother’s new house, the sister who lives in New York, and my last night there my little sister had 15 at her house with lots of toddlers making their first memories of their cousins. It is amazing how much life and how much joy you can pack into a few days.

I beat them to it, calling as soon as their lunch hour was over: had the new earmolds come in?

She checked. The mail had just delivered them, sure, come on down.

It’s the left side that’s had the broken second speaker for who knows how long and it was the left one that Janet, one of the audiologists, handed me first. The two hearing aids bluet00th between themselves: you turn the right one up to make both louder and the left one down to make both softer. I had no idea what the effect on the right might be–or might not be, for that matter, to have had the left one damaged like it had been.

I put its replacement in.

Holy. COW. It was that instant. And I told her that.

Okay, now the other one.

Wow wow wow and wow. WOW!

On the way home, that sound the car was making when I do this: has it always been like that? Did I just not know?

Best $213 I’ve spent in a long long time. And as I sit here writing this, with Richard at the computer next to mine, I’m marveling: who knew he typed so loud?

Well, that certainly worked.

He called me at about 4:30: there was a meeting about to start, please pick him up an hour late.

I checked the UV index: a grand total of zero. January, you’re wonderful.

I had enough lupus-friendly sun time to get out there and prune all four peach trees. A little more off the top here, trim this side a bit more… No pictures because there just wasn’t enough light by the time I finished, but I am quite pleased. I did it and it looks good and all the growth buds are pointing in the right directions and I can’t wait to see what comes next.

And we’re off to a good new year.

Really? Polyester and it’s not wash-and-wear? The site had said, simply, washable, the little stinkers.

Part of me was actually pleased, truth be told, it meant it would look new a lot longer.

I hand washed a whole lot of things today.

Water at tepid, (cold is for silk, never wool) suds revved up, put the sweater in and cause as little agitation in the water as possible, let it soak awhile, remove from the sink while the water drains and refills so it’s not subjected to the rushing motions around the tap and the drain, lay flat and pat into shape to dry, preferably on a mesh screen or the like. Repeat with merino skirt.

It occurred to me yet again the thought that this is a luxury of middle age, to be able to wear so many things that need to be handled this way, requiring individual care and time. There is no baby to interrupt the proceedings for hours at a stretch or to pull themselves up via the iron’s electric cord, no three-year-old to grab the drying sweater and fling it around lasso-style over their heads galloping down the hall pretending to be a cowboy, no teenagers slamming their backpack down on the kitchen table needing soothing words and the surprise of ice cream and the presence of someone who cares no matter what.

Just me making sure this comes out without shrinking or twisting and with that smudge of peanut sauce from last night carefully removed from that white silk-and-cotton. Then washing that silk shirt and that one and putting them in the washer at the last only so as to spin them out in the no-spray cycle. (Habit. Woolens are the ones that need not to have water spray coming at them.)

It’s a luxury and a loss all at once.

I picked Richard up a little early as the traffic time estimate climbed. Somehow, for all the craziness that is rush hour between San Francisco and south of there, we got to Afton and Neil’s hotel within a minute or so of what we’d planned on–how, I don’t know. I’d left home over an hour and a half earlier.

Our friends who scuba dive in Bali love this one Indonesian restaurant in the City and that sounded good to them. (And it was!)

I’ve known Afton via online knitting groups for at least 15 years, probably more like 20, but the only time I’d gotten to see her in person before was when I went to Stitches East ’08. I’d never met her husband nor she mine.

Stories were swapped and good food shared and a great time was had by all–and then Afton swiped the check rather than letting us pay our share. The little stinker. I got back at her, though: I reached into my purse and pulled out the edges of two cowls and of a ball of green yarn that was becoming a third one, without even saying what they are because color is everything: Choose one!

Ohmygoodness I didn’t bring anything for you!

You gave us dinner!

Well, okay, then. She debated, loved the green (and it matched her handknit sweater) but went for the navy Epiphany.

There’s no more of that yarn to be found, I told her–Cascade discontinued it after its second mill run. Royal baby alpaca, cashmere, silk. By way of saying, this really is a one-of-a-kind.

Looking on their website, they do seem to still have some inventory in an earthy–gold? How would you describe that one? (The dress is white and gold! No, blue! Never did get that argument–the dang thing was purple, or at least the cropped version I saw back then.)

Anyway. And then I handed her a skein of undyed light brown cashmere, the first yarn plied on my new electric spinning wheel. Just because I could. So there.

We had only just gotten started when we dropped them back off at their hotel. So glad for the time. So wishing there were more.

My endocrinologist retired and before he left, recommended the Sweet Young Thing coming in as his replacement.

Today I saw Dr. SYT to get acquainted and go over a little medical history.

I did quite a bit of knitting as I waited in the exam room, picturing her stuck skimming through that little encyclopedia.

We talked bone densities and past steroid doses for Crohn’s and the fact that I have autoantibodies for hyper- and hypo- thyroidism and what was showing low right now (oh it is? Wasn’t, last time they checked.)

Tell me, she said: Do you feel cold all the time?

I so did not expect that. It was all I could do not to burst into laughter so loud the nurses might come running in to see what was wrong. Oh honey, asthma-attack-force guffawing if I let it escape. Oh. My. Goodness. !!! I pictured the floor-to-ceiling windows all over my house, the silk t under a silk-blend nightshirt under how many layers of blankets, including wool, and not my usual one but two handknit wool hats on for a few nights there and loose wool socks on my feet and still not being able to fall asleep for hours for the deep chill till I finally rebelled and said, Dude. Our utility bills right now are a quarter what they used to be. Can we PLEASE turn up the heat?!

Sure, no problem! It hadn’t occurred to him. It was cold?

Lesson learned: never, never go to the post office on the first business day after New Year’s. I hope the guy behind me in the 20-minute line (with zero sense of personal space) didn’t catch my cold and I sure hope I didn’t catch his.

One woman, turning away at last from the understaffed counter, looked for a sympathetic face in the crowd and exclaimed to me, “Twenty-five minutes in line!”

(I was nearly up, clearly I was getting off easy, myself.) More fun than worrying about the loud guy on the phone with the loud cough was getting a chance to answer her. Pointing at one of the boxes I was dealing with, I said that my five-year-old grandson had left his most favorite rock, his pet rock, at Gramma’s. It had sparkly bits. I had it wrapped up as pretty as I could in lots of colors and it was going home too now.

She loved it! It was exactly the relief she’d been looking for when she’d said that. Made her day, which made mine.

I didn’t say that it was Parker’s gold-panning souvenir, that he’d been told he could take one (just one!) home, although that does definitely make a good Californian story. But we were there when he got it, and I was here to get it back to him.

There was this sweater. This screaming-hot-pink-fuschia sweater, 70/30 silk/cotton, and though it would have been just the right color on someone, that someone wasn’t me. 

Enough other people thought the same thing that the price dropped to something like $15 and I thought, I know how warm and comfortable and useful those are and I do have a dyepot….

And then it sat there for a year, nagging me. Every now and then I would pull the little UFO out and hold it up to my face in the mirror, look a moment, think, you wish!, and put it back. And feel guilty.

My daughter Sam is knitting these days, and Colourmart had a big sale on some vivid red dk weight cashmere that was the mill ends of the mill ends. I checked with her and then bought her a monster cone for Christmas on the grounds that if she didn’t like the color when she got here I would overdye it for her.

You see where this is going?

Now, I can’t do a thing about that yarn right now because of the current lack of a functional niddy noddy. (Where DID that piece go?) But I could play with the concept, and I’d be better off if I did–I have black dye in my stash but I use it very very very seldom and am less familiar with how it plays with others than I’d like to be when dealing with precious cashmere.

That sweater had never been worn, just to make sure it would be totally clean when I got to it. I handwashed it to get any mill residue off and to get it good and soaked (silk resists water at first) and then, wooden spoon in hand, I put/pushed it into the ready, simmering darkened dye bath as all-at-once as I could get it to go, stirring immediately to open it up to avoid streaks.

And it came out really evenly.

Or not.

This is really weird.

The camera flashed it back to closer to its original color, which is funny, and it shows as darker where it’s wetter after being spun out, but in real life it is one solid reddish rose slashed by darker lines in a very regular pattern.

How on earth did they spin their yarn? Because this wasn’t my doing, this was the manufacturer’s: my solid crewneck is now striped. How did that happen!? Okay, the cotton wasn’t going to take up the acid dye, just the silk and I knew that going in, but one would expect the two fibers to have been combed together, not partly combed but mostly alternated. Huh. Well, none of it is the original color now so some silk did get dispersed throughout. But it’s the strangest thing.

What’s also strange is that it is blissfully soft now in a way it wasn’t before. I have an old book somewhere on the properties of silk and I need to go find it.

Then, just because I was curious, I threw some more black dye in the pot, since the first seemed to have all been taken up, and threw in a red sweater to tone it down a few shades. 60/40 silk/cotton on that one. From the same company, a few years older. Came out a more subdued red and as evenly and perfectly even as if it had been sold that way, exactly what I’d hoped for.

But that first one. So strange. I will definitely wear it, even though I’m not a big stripes person. But I’d love to know why it came out like that.