Parker plays the best peekaboo ever now, Hudson melts our hearts. Much cuddling time happened today. Photos to come.

The resident geek found yesterday that it helps if you delete all the individually auto-saved drafts of posts that the system, it turned out, had been hoarding for years–four times the number of actually published posts. Oh.Things should speed up on the site now.

One person besides the driver has to stay awake at all times, I reminded John before he left. He was very much with me on that one. And so he got home at 3:2o this morning safe and sound.

Meantime, a friend offered three large produce clamshells. I got at least five apples snapped inside them, thinking as I arranged them around leaves and twigs and fruit that I definitely owe her a pie in four months. Squirrels: thwarted.

Back to the endless baby sweater. If I’d knitted it in cables it would have been done long ago, but I went for a simple 3×1 rib: on one side, it goes in single-stitch vertical lines against a purl background, and on the other, it pulls widthwise to show you what it really is, but relaxed, the purl stitch vanishes down into the fabric and it looks more like stockinette. I so rarely knit something that simple that I’d forgotten that 3×1 does that.

Part of me is charmed while part of me is mostly by the fact that it’s within 40 rows of being done. That and–just wait till I get to see the baby it’s to go on, that will cure any doubts about it on the spot. It’s not about the knitting at all, it’s about Hudson.

Okay, that just totally perked up my needles. Back to it!

The repair job on the car window was finished this morning.

One last hug and a wave goodbye and our youngest was off.

The house was suddenly way, way too quiet.

I ripped back the top of the baby sweater I’d done wrong. On size 4 needles.

A Bewick’s wren showed up for a quick bite. I had so missed those…

And then this evening a whoosh grabbed my eye as a squirrel and a Cooper’s hawk (the hawk! The male! Hey you, long time no see here!) rushed in, feinting right, then left, and then the hawk grabbed the lawnmower handle, wheeled right again and away. At first impression it had seemed like the squirrel was chasing the hawk! But I think rather Coopernicus simply flew faster than the thing could run and he’d overtaken and gone past it. I don’t think that’s what he was hunting this time; he stayed at birdfeeder height.

He had a tail feather askew. Out of sight now, I looked back to see if the squirrel was watching him go, in taunting mode like the one awhile back that had won the Darwin award, but no, he’d disappeared into hiding. Good.

My mind’s been on the road all day: climbing over the Sierras, careful on those pointing-down freeway curves with the thousand-foot drops, across the endlessness of the Nevada desert, past dusty Wendover and the shriveled former ocean, and at last the lights of Salt Lake City in the distance as you come around yet another mountain, willing John and his friends a safe journey on their long drive back.

It didn’t even hit me till this morning: the other part of the story. That the two were connected.

Yesterday after Karen dropped us off at the airport we found what gate we were supposed to go to, A23, and then while Richard found us some seats in the holiday crowd I went off to the restroom and to buy us some orange juice while we waited.

It was awhile later that I pulled out my phone, which I’d already turned off in anticipation of my bags being overhead, turned it back on, and checked the time, wondering at my sense that it seemed to be taking a long time.

Wait. 5:22. Were we delayed? Wasn’t it supposed to leave at 5:30? The place was full of people but there was nobody actually lined up in our immediate area.

Richard hurried over to the counter to doublecheck and then came running back: yes it’s on time and we were at the wrong gate! They’re almost all boarded–run! “Good catch,” he said gratefully to me as we went down the gangway just in time.

We usually preboard: it’s very difficult neurologically for me to walk through tight, visually very busy spaces, they toss what’s left of my balance and make me stagger and hang on for dear life and with the bag thing going on too I don’t want to be very far from the restroom and I don’t want to break a hip getting to it. (Okay, and my 6’8″ husband likes not bruising his knees if he can get a seat at the front of the plane.)

We were well back in the plane because of our near-miss. I found seats on opposite sides of the aisle, but he said, no, let’s go a little further back to over there where there are still two side-by-side, and so we did that, settling down next to a young woman by the window.

And that is the only reason I ended up next to that nurse in training. We would never otherwise have even seen each other.  Along with the rest of the conversation, it was a comfort to her to know that our going to see Richard’s mother just before she passed had been a great joy and comfort then and since–that she was doing the right thing by going now.

I guess it was more important than I could guess that that whole thing happened, because I cannot fathom, other than the intervention of God, how it did. How neither my husband nor I took in the obvious fact that we had the A25 sign above our heads rather than A23. It just didn’t enter in. Neither of us got antsy over it when we found out, either, we just fixed the problem and were quite grateful we hadn’t missed our flight, in other words, we were emotionally prepared for all that followed without simple human stress tripping us up.

I wish I knew who she is so I could marvel together with her over how our meeting up came to be.

And on a more mixed note, John did a one-day drive for a two-day stay at home that was supposed to end in another one-day drive straight back to Salt Lake City on Monday. Only, the people he came in with went off to San Francisco on Saturday (while he was planting my cherry tree for me, among other helps around the house) …and they came back to find their car window smashed.

Along with several others parked along that block. New car. Nothing was stolen, nobody was hurt, just, they have to wait for an insurance adjuster to see it so a shop can get the okay to fix it and tomorrow’s a holiday and and and.

Looks like we get a few extra days enjoying our son’s company that none of us were expecting.

I’m very sorry they’re having to go through that terrible experience. And I am very much going to enjoy the extra time we suddenly get to have with him.

I like my blessings wrapped in nicer packages certainly than that one, but they come as they come.

We had a wonderful time at the lunch Thursday–but I would have given so much to have been able to stand outside in the bright summer sun afterwards and chat some more with Scott and his mom where the noise of the restaurant would have been a door behind us and he and I both could have heard better. There are moments where I highly regret my lupus. But it is what it is. And it was so joyful to see them. He sent us home with a collection of his photography, and he does such beautiful work. Alaska was well represented, and I hope someday to see some of it too–and I reminded him of the postcard he sent me from there when I was in the hospital the first time, of a sign warning no going beyond this point: bear danger.

A very large bear was leaning casually on the sign, all his world before his eyes.

We took Sam and her roommate Maria and Karen out to lunch yesterday as a final hurrah before the airport and then got home late last night, and on the first leg of the flight I sat next to someone who was clearly studying nursing.

Or maybe she was brushing up, but it’s always best to guess on the one side rather than the other, so when the plane landed and I could hear, I asked her if she were a nurse?

Oh, no, not yet, she said with a pleased smile, but she would be graduating in December.

Oh cool! I thanked her: “A nurse saved my life.” I told her I had been in the hospital with Crohn’s disease, I had had temporary diabetes on the IV steroids, and during a shift change a nurse I didn’t know had poked her head in the door in my room and gone, I don’t like the looks of you. She had checked my blood sugar: 32!  And falling.

Oh wow! said the young woman at that number.

I have heard from enough sources that it is hard in many workplaces to be a beginning nurse, and everyone has to start somewhere–so I wanted her to come into it knowing that the patients appreciate what she will do. I thanked her for going into nursing.

She was coming to see her dad…she hesitated…and her grandma for the last time. Her husband had told her to go, just go, and I could just picture a very young couple with no means really yet agonizing over the price of the plane ticket; she had flown from Columbus to San Diego via Baltimore, a long day but the cheapest flight. I chuckled; we were coming from Baltimore to San Jose via San Diego, same reason. A long day.

I told her we had flown in December to see my mother-in-law for the last time, that we’d had a wonderful visit and had been so glad we’d gone.

We had enough layover to grab a fruit smoothie from a vendor whose shop was right against the gate and get back on the next plane. I know, I know. But it is Richard and Kim’s anniversary this weekend so we will see them and Parker and Hudson next week, and our son John made the long drive home for this weekend because at the last minute some friends needed a fellow driver and back.

He is here now. We are home, too. Life is good.

We went around the tornado area in very rough skies, even at 3900 feet Monday, and eventually got here. About three hours sleep last night.

Sam’s diploma is in hand and she is beautiful.

My childhood friend Karen, Sam’s roommate and we had a grand day visiting.

I have no idea what time zone my body thinks I’m in–off to bed.

I saw a Bewick’s wren at dusk on the fence, peering into the neighbor’s garden.

This was huge to me. I had had a delightful courting pair, as I do every year–and then they vanished. Seeing a Bewick’s had been a near-daily occurrence for years and they had become my favorites, and then nothing. For two months. I could only assume the neighbor’s cat had gotten them, as so often happens to their kind, but there one was tonight!

And. There is a squirrel who’s been taught to water ski, here, just for fun.

And. When Sam graduated the last three university degrees, illness got in the way: I once had to call Southwest and explain the Crohn’s and the bleeding, and the good woman on their end took my nontransferable ticket and reassigned it to Richard’s name so he could go in my stead.

This is Sam’s third graduate-degree commencement (this was for her previous one, go, Sam!) and I think it’s safe to say this one’s her last. And so tomorrow I arrive, via Southwest of course, in Baltimore: Johns Hopkins here I come! (Don’t forget to water my potted cherry tree while I’m gone, gotta feed those future birds, right?, ‘kay thanks ‘bye.)

Is this thing working again?

I’d been wondering why the site was being so slow for me and where all the comments had gone and then this morning it refused to let me delete spam. I did manage to get that one note in at the bottom of yesterday’s post and then we had no access.

Richard, a computer scientist, put in seven hours today dealing with tech support and fixing the wonkitude. There may still be a little weirdness, and if you come across any please let me know. He missed Maker Faire so that I could have my blog and website back, which hurts (me more than him; he’s watching it live now online and saying don’t worry, it’s fine. It helps that Michelle went and brought home the most exquisite chocolate.) I tell you, he’s the best, and so is she.

Along the way he found out that another site had my Marnie’s Scarf pattern picture up with a link to my page, which is cool, but it had been renamed, which wasn’t cool at all and he logged a protest.

I’d been wondering for awhile why on earth I was getting occasional requests for help with a Goddess Dream scarf when I had designed nothing of the sort. Nobody ever gave me the link (because surely I knew it, I guess) and I wondered why they didn’t ask the person who’d made it. I mean, I like to be nice but it’s a little hard to walk someone through the details of a pattern you don’t know and you’ve never seen.

It’s been nine years since I put my own free patterns on my site and I always have to go back and remind myself what I did where; it has at times taken hours to walk a new laceknitter through the work in their hands that they can see but that I can’t. I may have years and years of practice at my work, but generally they’re asking because they don’t. I was there once, when there were no online sources to turn to and not even any books in print that I could teach myself laceknitting from; I’m very glad to help.

It’s all about passing along the love of the craft. But I have to have enough information myself to start from.

I did have a wonderful time yesterday answering a woman who said, “I’m 93 and I’ve been knitting all my life but what in the world is an ssk?”

I so hope to be knitting new things at 93! And how cool that she was online to ask me!

But those times people asked about the Goddess Dream scarf I was wondering why on earth…when I had no knowledge of and nothing to do with it.

Oh.

The responsible party is here. I very much appreciate that they linked to my pattern rather than just taking it, but I think they just had no idea what problems they were causing me and other knitters by changing the name to something they thought more catchy or impressive. I adore my friend Marnie, in whose honor I posted that freely as she had freely spent her time and efforts helping me recover after a major hospitalization for Crohn’s disease, and I’d like her name to stay attached to my pattern. Her great acts of service and love, only one of which is posted with her namesake scarf, represent a level of unselfishness and good-person-hood that I aspire to.

I guess I’ve got a ways to go yet. I certainly should have asked the people who asked me why they’d come to me so perhaps I could have found out sooner what was up. My apologies to all those who didn’t get the help they were looking for at the time.

(Sorry for the earworm.)

Out of milk and orange juice, and there was something else we wanted to look for.

Which they didn’t have. But Richard humored me while I went to go see if the latest batch of ooh look, they’re all ultra-dwarf this time! trees at Costco included, by wild chance, a Stella cherry again.

Found one. Didn’t look great. And then two more that did. I actually got a choice.

I doublechecked with my sweetie….

I asked one of the employees for help getting it into the cart past all the lilies on the forward part of the pallet. He moved those out of the way, made sure which tree I was pointing to, I read the tag again just to be certain that this trunk and that tag went together, and then as he brought it over and set it down he started peppering me with questions, very interested: how much were those? $18.99? When do they produce?

I checked the tag: mid-June here, and I told him they grow to only six to eight feet tall and produce about nine pounds of cherries a year. (Found out after I got home that we should get our first ones next year; it doesn’t take them long.)

You should have seen his eyes! “My mother could grow one of those!” Something that small, that productive but not overwhelmingly so, that enticing–what a cool idea!

And so my delayed Mother’s Day present sounds like it means someone else’s mom may very well get one too. Or maybe the Kieffer pear or one of the peaches or apples or that nectarine over there. But the fact that Costco was out when Richard went to get me mine earlier meant that this conversation happened and now there’s all this other good that can come from that. Picturing that fine young man planting a fruit tree for his mother just totally makes my day.

They take so little effort. They last so long. They flower, they fruit, they give so much.

p.s. Michelle saw what she was very sure was a golden eagle as she was coming out of work yesterday, and today, not far from her office, a local golden eagle intruded on Clara-the-peregrine’s territory near her fledglings and Clara firmly escorted the much-larger bird out of there–one of the very few that can prey on peregrines, but not this time. Eric’s pictures of the encounter, here.

“Stace spation?” he asked, turning and looking at me with perfect comedic timing.

Wait. You’re right, that didn’t come out right.

He lifted an eyebrow. Impishly, “You know that’s got to be the most expensive music video ever recorded.”

“Depends on what you count as an expense.” We were both laughing by now.

The first line out of the captain’s mouth took me by surprise the first time I played it earlier today and I cracked up and had to show it to him. Don’t miss it.

(Meantime, today’s falcon photos from Eric. Comet did finally make it out of there after about six hours.)

Edited to add Wednesday morning: Captain Hadfield is front-page news on the Washington Post this morning, with more details, including some of his space experiments. He’s clearly a born teacher.

From the daughter of a ham radio operator, after listening to me read a line of pattern row out loud to myself while transcribing from my notes. I was reknitting that last new pattern to fix a few quirks: yo, ssk, k1, yo, sl2-k1-p2sso…

Michelle listened to me a moment–not interrupting, like when I’m counting stitches, no problem–and then told me her earliest reaction to having seen some of my written work for the first time was, and she said it with a grin, “Mom is learning to write in knitters’ Morse code.”

Actually, this one is a no-remorse coda: the first shawl is fine, just, this time it’s coming out even better.

My late sister-in-law and I had our baby girls ten days apart 31 years ago and the girls have always been good friends.

Jessie and her husband came by for dinner tonight and while they were here, Sam called from across the country.

We chatted a moment and then I asked her if she wanted to talk to Jessie?

There was this sudden doubletake at the other end–Sam had forgotten her cousin had moved to California. And then an enthusiastic, YEAH! that made my day. People I love loving each other. It’s wonderful.

Parker bounced happily in all his little-boy-energy glory at getting to Skype with us; Hudson looked at the people-movement-and-speech on the screen with great big wide eyes. *Such* a beautiful baby. Our grandsons have *such* good parents. I love that I got to show them the flowers they’d sent.

I talked to my mom, John called, Michelle made the dinner, and a fine day was had by all. I know how lucky I am.

Happy Mother’s Day!

This morning Richard and I came home from an errand and there was a Cooper’s hawk at the top of the tree behind our front gate, duly noting our arrival. My territory, your territory, no-wings; welcome!

Didn’t quite catch the best moment, but, an Oregon dark-eyed junco male (the one with the black head) feeding his mate. He takes good care of her and it charms me to no end.

And below, the black squirrel that had a bad case of mange two years ago and went bald in patches and her fur grew back in white, making it look like she’s wearing a tank top and head band. She’s easy to spot. She does look like a very agile small skunk from a distance.

Don and Cliff saved six plastic produce clamshells for me, to my great delight, and now I have that many more plums and apples protected from those little thieves that in the past have stripped my Fuji apples clean in a day, two months pre-ripe. The little stinkers.

I know you’re supposed to thin the fruit out to one per branch but there aren’t a whole lot this year to begin with. I left the first cluster I found at two–safe now–and then went eh and snapped a clamshell around the whole threesome I found next.That tomato package was big so I was going to make the most of the space.

They may come out big they may come out small but we will at long last have our first homegrown apples (and plums!) Twenty-one years after I planted that Fuji. Thank you Don and Cliff!

Happy first-month celebrations to Hudson!

Costco had Stella ultra-dwarf cherry trees today.  Grow it in a big pot, never have to prune, go ahead and make use of that one little sunny spot outside the laundry room that’s too close to the house for free-range roots.

About ninety cherries a year forever after for about the price of a skein of yarn. (Oh wait. Pot and potting soil. Three.) I am seriously tempted.

Hudson laughs…

The little peregrine eyas is back on the roof as of this afternoon,  drenched by Glenn so he would preen rather than blindly flee at his release; he has seen his brothers and they have looked up and seen him. Dude! Where ya been!

I took a ride in the Radio Flyer wagon! You’ll never believe it!

(Actually, he rode back up in the elevator in the traditional peregrine-baby-rescue apple box. Don’t know why it’s always an apple box. But it’s always an apple box.)

———

The area where they shaved my scalp for skin cancer surgery, July two years ago: I’ve been waiting a long time for that hair to grow back in, wearing it pulled back from my face in combs so the gaps wouldn’t show.And then there was that time last August where we had to whack a bit nice and close to free me from the back of the hair dryer when we were defrosting the freezer. (You might want to check to see if there’s a protective screen covering yours. The hair dryer, I mean. I’ve heard from half a dozen people now who’ve had the same thing happen.)

It was time. My friend Nina’s daughter Gwyneth is a gifted stylist, the only person I would ever go to for as long as she may live around here, and I made an appointment for last Friday, showed her how things were at this point, and asked her help.

It’s still a little below the shoulders in back–I gotta do my earth mother/artiste thing–but it’s a lot shorter; she did a fabulous job and I am very very happy with how it came out. I keep looking at this one spot (and that one and that one), thinking, how did you DO that? How did you get that to behave exactly perfectly in the pattern it was going to curl into once it was shorter?

All of this is of no real importance to anybody but me, but I wanted to record it so I could go back later and see when that cut was. Also because I know how hard it is to find someone you absolutely trust with your hair, and if anyone around here is looking, everybody I know who’s ever gone to her has had the same reaction: Gwyn is absolutely the best.