Got a few Mother’s Day pictures to show off.

Got to watch the Bewick’s wren babies being fed by a parent again today–and now they can fly up as well as down. Solitary most of the year, interacting as a family now and I love it.

Saw a junco yesterday flapping madly as it descended onto the box but it didn’t know about this tuck your wings in thing and found itself lifted right back up in the air again and oh oops how do you stop these things? Bouncy bouncy bounce.

It’s the landing that’s the part they have to learn. Playing in the light and the air comes naturally.

Just wishing every day could be like today.

Hudson has this Skype thing all figured out. He doesn’t try to climb through the screen to us anymore but rather took it as his cue to make funny noises up close with Grandma and giggle. Then he brought his favorite toys over to make sure we got a good view, and if the thing makes lots of power-tool-type sounds, all the better.

Silly Grandma, Parker’s pajamas you can’t see behind his knees are Thomas the Tank Engine, not Superman. We cheered on Thomas the Tank Engine.

Got to talk to everybody and a very happy Mother’s Day was enjoyed by all.

And typing this near 11:30 at night it just hit me that wait, my hubby forgot to give me the new chocolate torte pans that I *cough cough* don’t know about, for when I need to do a production run and the ones on hand weren’t enough (plus dishwasherable nonstick with a silicone seal, pretty cool, I simply wanted to try them.) We both just utterly forgot the just-stuff stuff.

There was also going to be some silk/lycra from Colourmart but it hasn’t come yet.

(break)  (return) I just ran and told him we forgot the material gifts of the day. There was a moment of say what? on his face, then the dawning and a guffaw. Yes. Yes we did.

Two blueberries a day. It’s early in the season and the plants are only a year old. On this one variety they definitely turn color fast once they’re ready to go and suddenly they completely stand out from behind the bird netting, begging, pick me, pick me: two perfect, big, blue, berries, as if the canes know to pair them off like that for us, and so for the third or fourth time now, Richard smiled tonight as I proudly handed him his portion from the garden. With a fair amount of bemusement on his part as he held the tiny thing between his much-larger-than-mine finger and thumb.

There was never such a perfect little snack.

He would agree on that description.

One project at a time. Happy anticipation.

He looked at me, sure he’d heard that one wrong, repeating the word back to me so I could correct it. “Cobweb?”  One could just picture a spider-phobic kid reacting to a project with that thought attached to it.

“Yes, cobweb,” like, everybody knows, I mean, right? The thinnest weight of the superfine laceweights, the barely-theres: “It’s a technical term,” I grinned.

I was telling him about the little package of 70/30 cashmere/silk that had come today from Colourmart2.com, the site where the Colourmart folks sell the very last of their mill ends. There were just under 300 yards of that blue softness, just enough to pair up with a strand of something else for a cowl project to add a pop of blue and a strokeable depth to the hand (technical term alert) of a good merino. Including postage from England, the mini cone had cost me all of $5.

And it’s gorgeous. (And lighter and brighter than that nighttime photo shows.)

And it got me to sit down and make myself get 6000+ stitches closer to finishing up the current project, not a technically difficult one but still a slog because it involves paying attention to every single stitch on the needle and on the paper as I fine-tune a pattern that was not quite as perfectly written the first time as I’d thought it was. Which means I’ll have to knit it again after this before publication and probably again after that to be very sure there are no. more. errors. –but I’m that much closer to it now.

Worth the five bucks right there.

A joyful Easter Sunday–and a birthday dinner at Michelle’s, shared with our niece and nephew.

And…

For about 15 years now I’ve been in a lupus study at UCSF, the current focus being longterm SLE patient outcomes. There is an annual phone call of an hour to an hour and a half.

That call was scheduled for Friday, and we got through most of it–but the woman’s voice was giving out and you can’t talk softly to my hearing. She apologized that it had been an intense week and sorry about her voice and could we finish the memory testing part next week? Maybe Thursday?

Yes, sure, of course.

Then, with some hesitation, she told me why she was so stressed: her mother had just been diagnosed as being terminal.

Oh honey!

Which is why I found the ever-so-slightly-grayish-ice-blue Venezia merino/silk in my stash, very soft, and got right to it: the sheen of the morning light across the San Francisco fog for where the daughter lives, warmth and love to the both of them, whoever they may be.

A chemo cap. A little bit of knitting. It’s nothing and it’s everything.

Tap. Tap. This thing on? The resident geek spent quite a bit of time stamping out the bug in the program and I’m trying again. Apparently there was an automatic platform update that got snatched back to a new-improved version almost immediately but we were stuck with the bad one and it did not want to let go peacefully.

HEY! Dad! (Photo taken Monday before I flew home.) There you are!

Okay, let’s try to link. How about to the pomegranate farmer I met at a festival whose products taste like the best fresh pomegranate you ever tasted, not that horrifically bitter stuff like most of the commercial juices.

Well now. So we do have our linking back. (Testing some more: unlink from the fruit spread page. Yup. Now go to Skylake’s home page that says free shipping through Monday, link up again–and it works. There you go.)

Okay, let’s try uploading the amaryllis picture.

Yes!

Okay, folks, we are back in business here.

The connection was iffy. Sound came and went. The damaged hearing aid worked for the memorial concert after I toggled the battery case a bit, like I mentioned, it worked through the hours of the cousins gathering afterwards (with just a few moments where it randomly cut out and back on again a few times), and I simply left it on all that night, afraid to risk opening it again, after getting assurance from Marian that it wasn’t feeding back. I put it on in the morning thinking it should be okay that day too but so much for that, it was dead.

But by then it was just my folks, my brother, my sister, her friend, my son, my niece and her fiance… So I guess quite a few people actually but where it was easy to say, talk to my left side.

I kept the right one in, though, even if as custom-but-dead electronics it plugged up that ear a bit because at $4444 *each* (and that was at a discount from $7k) you just don’t lose those, y’know?

I opened the battery cases again on the plane home to turn them off, glad there was nobody in the middle seat this time, and after we landed I turned the left aid back on.

It went through the exasperating little overly-long tune it plays inside one’s head to let me know it was ready to go. (I would love to someday ask Oticon, hey, whose idea was that? Just–why? Why not make that part reprogrammable?)

Closed the other one, wishing if only, since I was going to need to call Richard to come out of park’n’call shortly. But I knew I could make the bluetooth work with just the one.

–When–hey, I know that song–it played! Look at that! Whyever, I’m happy, and we were able to talk all the way home on the noisy freeways, catching up after I’d spent three days with So. Much. LIFE! crammed into them. Small/great blessings.

And then this morning it was dead again. And intermittent again.

Yesterday, after seeing Dad’s museum and taking Bryan to the airport, Marian had said, call your audiologist right now and I looked at the clock and realized it was still before 5:00 California time. Hey. So I did.

They got me in this afternoon. They replaced the battery door (now I know the right way to describe it) under warranty. Done. And that was clearly all it needed.

And now I can go back to talking about things like handing cousin Bruce in person the cashmere/silk cowl for his wife Paige in handdyed turquoise, a color I knew she loves, as I asked how her treatments were coming. Still in radiation. He was so thrilled, and he told me how much she loves her shawl I’d already sent.

I was just grateful there was something I could do to be with them where they were in any way.

And how another cousin said she was moving to England and said it with so much embarrassment mixed with such fervent hope, something about how she was going to be needing a scarf and hat in seven months when they go, that I laughed and told her, “Of course. What color?”

“Surprise me.”

As I grinned but thought of my friend Constance’s line that color is everything, wondering just how adventurous I should be, she added, motioning at my blouse, “My coat is that shade of purple.”

Having twenty-three cousins on that side plus aunts and uncles and spouses, I almost told her, Just don’t let the word get out, okay?

Home again. So good to be home.

The promised story.

We set out for the airport in time to get there before the one-hour pre-flight requirement; thought about trying for earlier but at dark o’clock like that we just couldn’t make ourselves enthused enough.

There’ve been a lot of changes to the place and we don’t often leave a car there (like, once, I think). We missed the exit to the right parking lot and had to circle back around (twice!), waiting at one point for a large team of athletes to cross in front of us who were going to be on our flight.

Which was much cheaper than the more-reasonable-hours ones and the airport was surprisingly a zoo–and our gate far away, with pleas there over the loudspeaker for someone to volunteer to be bumped. $150 towards future flights plus a refund on the ticket for waiting for an hour? Hey. Had Richard been there I might well have taken the offer. If they would do it for two.

My ticket, unbeknownst to me when we arrived, had randomly been stamped TSA PRE. I had no idea what that meant. The security person working her way from the back of the line forward did, though, and I got hustled over to a roped-off line with all of three other people, told not to take off my shoes nor take out my laptop (which was home with a bad battery) and to just go. And no he could not come with me. Express service through the screening and out of there.

In front of Richard in the large crowd was a couple that hadn’t known they had to buy a ticket for their infant, too, and “They were in a world of hurt,” he told me later. Basically, he got stuck in security-line delays while I was already being called onto the plane–and we never cut it close like that. But it happened.

I boarded. I pulled out my knitting to add a layer of calm to the inwardly-loud prayer going out there and watched. A few late stragglers came dashing up but still no Richard.

Then there was no one. I told the stewardess my husband was back there somewhere and she worried a little too and took the edge off it for me simply by caring.

He was the last one on and they shut the door after him but he made it. Phew.

Someone must have asked after all if they could have two vouchers: because there was one single empty seat on that whole plane and we had it. I had told people asking to sit in my row that they’d be next to my 6’8″er and they shook their heads no and passed right on down the aisle. He had room to stretch out in.

We made it.

———

And on a different and far more important note: there are those here who will remember when Caremark refused to send my Humira prescription five years ago while I was fighting for my life with a Crohn’s flare, with a clerk saying on the phone that they didn’t know if they wanted to be responsible for selling me such a dangerous (FDA-approved!) med, and that it took five days and you all storming the gates by phone and by email for them to come through. I am eternally grateful to you all, and your support is part of why I am still here. (We loved the, We don’t know WHO you are, but WOW! as they approved it.)

So this hit close to home. I was very happy to sign the petition asking Caremark to honor the prescription that has already shrunk a young dad’s tumors and is his last chance but that they are denying him. Life as a very clear long-term possibility and even likelihood, while they are consigning him to certain death. They should be better than that. If you all would be so inclined as to join me, I’d be much obliged. Thank you.

And so there was a birthday party, three days early because weekends rock.

Grampa Richard read the Pirate book, the current big favorite in the household as it turns out. I turned to another parent and marveled, “The Pied Piper,” as he got swarmed by small children all trying to climb in to get a better look at the pages.

There is nothing in this world as funny as a twelve-month-old with that early-walker stagger growling, “YAWRRRRR!” I’d been told about it but I got to actually hear it in person. Twice.

Richard and Kim both exclaimed in delight at the sight of Hudson’s new sweater to go with his big brother’s, totally making my day, and they loved the hat, too, far more than I did. Next thing you know there was a proud Parker parading with great glee towards us down the hallway in his digger sweater, Hudson was then dressed in his (I was very pleased with how it fit–a thank you to the Bev’s Country Cottage site for the measurements), and cameras were being whipped out all around for some play outside on the grass where the light was good. (Pardon the sleep-deprived thumb.)

I did at one point put the hat on Hudson and he looked up at me with this suddenly sad little face as if to ask, Gramma? Why are you doing this to me? I laughed and hugged and took it off him and promised him I was all done now.

There was a bounce house set up during the party. I had never actually been inside a bounce house before, but after the party was over and the neighborhood little kids and the cousins had gone home, Parker and I ran races inside it, going along the blue outer-perimeter lines.

Parker stayed within those lines. I could not and keep up and keep my balance at the same time; seems that being somewhat bigger means you sink somewhat more and kind of evens out the little one’s chances of beating you. We did the “we all fall DOWN” ring around the rosie part, too, and the sudden oooof was a surprise–I am not three anymore and that was not as soft as I expected. I bounced down twice more with him just the same but am quietly fine with not doing that again soon. I’m still glad I did it.

I don’t usually have multiple projects going, and yet the night before the trip I was just not satisfied with what I had going somehow and I grabbed the  Stitches West, Jimmy Beans-bought Technicolor Dreamcoat MadTosh yarn and some needles and cast on a random stitch number and threw it in my purse. The tag said it was worsted, I’d call it more chunky–it was a cowl and it went fast.

I started knitting at the airport, on the plane, to keep my calm when Richard almost missed the flight (more on that tomorrow), during random quiet moments (Hudson napping, Parker playing in the sunshine when I couldn’t go, company gone home and Kim out for a moment’s errand.)  Kim exclaimed over how pretty it was. I asked her her favorite colors, and she said browns and navy blues and brights, like that.

I said to her just before we left for home, right after casting off, that knitting serves to me as a kind of mental marker of various events in life, as in, I was making this when that happened. And so, I said, this was for remembering Hudson’s first birthday, and I surprised her with it and would have been surprised myself the night before–but not very. The chance impulse had become the perfect one.

Parker drove with us to the airport, his favorite digger toy in his hand the whole way. He teased us and pretended at first not to say goodbye because maybe that way we wouldn’t really go.

And my brain woke me up at 5:00 this morning so I wouldn’t miss the alarm and the flight and I thought nice try, and went back to sleep.

4:50 am alarm. 6:40 flight.

9:15 flight. 11:17 walked back in the door after a grand glorious wonderful day celebrating Hudson’s first birthday (which is actually in a few days, but hey.)

G’night.

So I wanted a hat to go with Hudson’s birthday sweater (not that he really needs one in San Diego).  And I wanted it to have a car on it, but cars take lots of stitches and there were only so many to go around a small head.

So I plunked one on the top of the thing instead, and unstretched, darn if the thing doesn’t look like I turned a heel on his head, poor kid–it’s pretty funny looking. Stretched, though, it’s okay (I guess).

Looking at the thing it’s immediately easy to see what I could do to make it a lot better next time, but not in the amount of time left at this point. Can’t wait to see them.

She admitted that she was really hoping for an angel food cake.

“It’s in the oven, honey.”

“Oh good!”

My husband has taught all our kids that the One True Birthday Cake is always that 12-beaten-eggwhites type, and when I made myself a chocolate plain old ordinary one once since hey, it was my birthday and hey, I was the one making it and cake isn’t even my favorite dessert so I was going to make what I was going to make, he was quite surprised at the blasphemy, uttering the memorable “That’s not a birthday cake!”

It is to me. Chocolate it was.

But this is April, which around here means stocking up on a whole lot of eggs. Happy birthday, sweetie!

Wintertime cold (47 in the afternoon? Really?), wintertime rain, spring flowers at the door. Our utility bill that just came was surprisingly low so having already been a good girl and put on a second sweater I cranked up that heat completely guilt-free, quite glad for the new furnace. I ran the misdelivered mail next door and seriously wished for my coat as I chatted with the neighbor a moment.

I ripped out my buffalo yarn project completely and started over and am much happier with it.

And–a friend dropped by this evening. I’d told him my clamshell plan last year and he’d tried it on his Comice pears and actually gotten fruit off his tree at long last, just like me. He was thrilled. And even more so when we told him that we had a Comice too, now, that that was all I’d wanted for Valentine’s Day and that Richard had helped me plant it.

I did? asked Richard. Oh, that’s right, I did.

The guy was quite interested to hear me say that the squirrels had raided my Fujis in years past at fingernail size. Huh. Maybe his Fuji apple had set fruit after all. That early? He was going to go to Smart N Final and buy more clamshells and watch his now-blossoming apple tree like a hawk.

You can buy them? Smart N Final?

I was really glad he’d stopped by. So was he.

Fatigue with a twinge of lupus so you’re getting the easy post tonight: a bit of spring.

Got the peach tree photo by holding the camera high over my head and snapping a lot. Bigger and redder by the day. The neighbors are hoping we encourage the tree to, y’know, kinda lean thataway and over the fence and if we got this much growth in just one year it seems like it would take no time at all to. They were seriously considering planting their own as well, maybe a later variety.

Some friends were collecting clamshells, unbeknownst to us, and asked me at church today: did I want them this year too?

Ohyesplease?!

Michelle has already put in her request for peach pie.

All in good time, hon.