Here, taste the tip of a spoon here, see what you think of it so far.

They approved.

Then the kids drove to San Francisco to Dandelion Chocolate for some sibling time and brought home a splurge of bakery goodies and hot chocolate. Not your standard lunch. That orange sanguine entremet–wow!

As my dad loved to say, How many meals do you eat in your life? Now: how many do you remember?

Then John drove me to Kings Mountain Art Fair, with the ocean to one side on that twisty road and Silicon Valley laid out below on the other and the Fair on the spine of the ridge, where we got to see Mel and Kris. Mel knew exactly what I wanted when I broke my favorite tall mug and held the new one up in happy anticipation of my delight. Which he got. I liked it even better than the old one. Kris was there for the first time in several years, her chemo long over and looking great. I picked up one of the smaller mugs–and it had a sheep on it! (With apologies to them that my photo washes the colors out a bit.)

I knew she played with adding hummingbirds and dragonflies and honeybees…

She was delighted that I was the one who bought her first sheep.

Not long after we walked back in the door, Michelle and I ran an errand exploring a store that sold favorite pantry items she hadn’t been able to find in Boston. And because she liked going there; it was part of being home.

John cooked dinner.

We all got to FaceTime with Lillian, who wanted to show her grampa the wart on her foot in solidarity. She wanted to see his foot, too. He gently told her she wouldn’t want to.

And then at long last we turned off that goshawfulloudnoise that had been going in the kitchen for 26 hours at that point (24 is about optimal on the conching) and John and his dad worked for a couple hours more at cooling and re-warming and thus (hopefully) tempering our new batch of homemade chocolate correctly while getting some one-on-one time of their own.

I got to do the honors of pouring it out and did as messy a job as I ever do and we managed not to devour it before it had even set, probably because, really? We had a lot of cleanup to do. And we’d had a lot of chocolate today already.

And all of it was very very good.

I like days like this!

Today was the cataract guy. He was thorough. I got referred to a corneal scarring specialist at Stanford to go to after all this; he says some of the bright scattered reflection problem is from that, and that it can be fixed, too.

So: a multifocal lens, or what by the sound of it is a new improved multifocal with fewer problems at night, or monofocal, and if the latter, for distance, mid, or near, with glasses for the rest?

Multifocal+ sounded good to me!

Richard cautioned that a friend of his greatly regretted making that choice. His own prescription is quite mild, so he went for mid on his so he could spend his work time and grandkid time without having to worry about glasses.

Me, I’ve worn glasses for distance since third grade and just assumed that’s what I would choose. But maybe not?

I’d love to hear anyone’s input, because I have zero experience with this.

Meantime, the person who was supposed to call back to schedule the surgery didn’t, and doctor #2 didn’t seem to be in a hurry about it, and I’m okay with that right now.

The important thing is, it’s going to happen.

Meantime, when I changed Richard’s dressing his foot looked way better. I feel like I can finally breathe easy on that one.

The question, the moment of truth, the blunt response.

I have a macular pucker and it’s been stable for several years now, with me coming in every six months to get it checked.

The retina specialist came in the room today after the routine pictures had been taken, concerned before I even said anything. He asked how I was doing.

I’m fed up with it, I told him. My husband was just in the hospital for five days and I found I couldn’t see well enough to drive home safely later than 5:00 because the late sun created blinding reflections. I needed to be with him and I couldn’t be. And I can’t read labels in the grocery store anymore.

He asked how my husband was doing, and I said no amputation so far and so far okay but the infection was not gone.

He made a decision on the spot. He told me, Don’t ask the front desk–they’ll tell you four months. Dr. M will do the cataract and then I’ll do the retina and we do joint surgeries on Mondays, sometimes Fridays. Maybe we could get you in Monday, would that be okay? Or even this Friday, let me see what I can do.The second cataract is typically done two weeks later.

Me, surprised: Sure!

I realized afterwards that Monday’s a holiday and this weekend is King’s Mountain Art Fair and I’ve already said I would pick up something my potter friends Mel and Kris were making for me.

I dearly want to see them but I do have friends who go to that. And there’s certainly always the mail.

One way or other, this is all going to work out. Finally. I know that macular pucker surgery can take 3-12 months to show improvement from–so let’s get started. It’s time. Taking out the cataracts will give me some instant gratification on seeing colors clearly again in the meantime.

Scene: Trader Joe’s. I was wearing a plain shirt and this gerdan.

The woman in front of me at checkout looked over at me, decided I looked friendly enough to engage in conversation, and exclaimed, I just love that!

She tried to get back to the task at hand but ended up saying it again.

I told her a woman in Ukraine had made it for me.

“I’m from Ukraine!” She asked me who I’d bought it from, but I explained that the woman had lived in Kherson and had evacuated and I didn’t know where she was now.

She asked, with some hesitation at first, if she could touch it?

Sure!

She felt the beads: yes of course glass, not plastic. Could she take a picture of it? She loved it so much!

Sure!

She did, and I wondered if she was a beading artist herself or was close to someone who was; she was texting the joy of the moment via her phone with someone whom it would mean something to, too. All artists need that spark renewed from time to time.

And everybody far from home needs to feel welcomed and a part of their new community.

The guy finished checking her out and she headed on out the door, beaming at having run into someone who knew what those were, who’d interacted with her countrywomen, who cared about her country during this war and who was making that part of her culture visible here. She was just about dancing.

And that, I said to the guy now checking me out, is why I wear these even to the grocery store. I have several of them. There are quite a few Ukrainians in the community.

He glanced out the door after her and for the first time in this long wearying Saturday rush, he was now smiling, too.

In case this is of use to someone else out there: decades ago I had a doctor tell me to take 500 mg of vitamin C a day to help ward off bladder infections.

I call it my placebo of choice, and awhile ago Richard got in the habit of taking one when I did. Anti-colds, right?

The first thing the doctor at the clinic asked him was, Do you take vitamin C?

Yes…?

Stop immediately. It almost certainly is the cause of your kidney stone.

Turns out the last time he’d had one it was the type directly tied to it. The guy also told him supplements for calcium and vitamin D are the other culprits for their particular types of kidney stones.

So it could be that easy to never have to go through this again.

You’re going to like this part.

His kidney stone moved to where it somehow doesn’t hurt, and the clinic’s urologist saw him and is keeping tabs on him. Cardiology set him up on a heart monitor for two weeks to get a more complete diagnosis.

And while that was getting started, I was in the next town over seeing my surgeon #2.

Who told me that surgeon #1 had called him and warned him she was sending a doozy of a case over. I got a bit of, Oh, *you’re* the one!

She had told me of potential nerve damage.

He told me it was way more than that. With no colon nor rectum in there holding things in place, things just slosh around, and–he was pleased that I knew what adhesions were–that ovary they couldn’t find on the ultrasound: it could be fused with my tailbone. Anything could be anywhere.

Finding it all and fishing it out and freeing it amongst all the adhesions risked my small intestine.

I was stunned. I’d had no idea.

I asked him how many hysterectomies he’d done on patients with colorectomies.

It was rare. He’s been practicing a long time. He held up five fingers and said–But they all had cancer. There’s a risk/life balance decision that has to be made. He went through all the testing I’d been through, and he too had tested, giving me a pap smear just to make sure and do due diligence.

And my reaction to that smear was to start bleeding on the spot, and it’s still noticeably going. But that’s not necessarily cancer.

A side note here: his nurse had come in first and while she asked questions, I said that the bleeding had started small and gradually crescendoed over the two years till it was (this much). I wrote about it while waiting for this appointment, I told her, and was quite surprised that the next day it was far less.

And then friends told me they’d put me on their prayer lists. I didn’t know–and it changed, and make of that what you will, I told her. (A thank you to all you who prayed or Thought Good Thoughts my way, which to the loving G_d I believe in fully counts. Love, as they say, is love.)

Come back in three weeks, the surgeon said, and we’ll have the results of that pap smear.

But as he said it, we both were sure we knew what it would say and what we would say and that it would wrap it all up nicely. He didn’t quite say, And tell your friends to pray again, y’know, just to make it a little easier on you.

Having told him about my husband’s hospitalization, I told him of the ones who had asked what they could do to help. And then they’d joyfully made a day trip out of it with their teenagers to make sure I didn’t miss out on my favorite peaches.

And with that I left him with the most perfect single Kit Donnell ever, with the divine scent of tree-ripened perfection. He was blown away by just the smell and sight of it and the kindness of people he didn’t even know and he wanted to know where this had come from so he could find more for his own family.

Such a good man. His patients are lucky to have him. And lucky, in my case, soon not to have to!

One friend asked a few days ago what she could do to help and I somehow let myself say out loud in spite of myself that it was the week the Kit Donnell peaches at Andy’s were ripe, that I consider them his best, that I wait all year for them and I was just going to have to miss them this year. Otherwise I’d be buying a bunch and freezing them.

We can do that!

What?! He’s in Morgan Hill, it’s a 45 minute drive each way when the traffic is good, I can’t ask you to do that!

She and her family decided to make a day trip to Santa Cruz, let the kids have fun at the beach before they all finish growing up and going away, stop at Andy’s on the way and get some of those fabulous peaches for themselves, too and learn about what he had to offer. So much of California was still new to them. Exploring is fun!

The whole thing turned into so much joy. They were absolutely jubilant at the day, the trip, the getting to do something that they knew meant so much to me and we had a good hug this morning.

Her daughter helped me load my boxes into my car after the main meeting at church, I got them home and then made a beeline for the hospital.

Where I surprised Richard with a new Nautilus puzzle that I had ordered Tuesday, right before all this hit. A clown fish.

Having no idea that the most pieces in the smallest size would be the best for doing on a bedside hospital tray.

Two of the friends who stopped by to visit him couldn’t help but match up a couple of pieces themselves, to our great delight.

He looked so much better today. So much better. Normal heart. Swelling way down. Sitting in a chair, alert and with it, taking phone calls from family. He snorted a little laugh when I pulled out a 65-piece Nautilus puzzle and asked him if he were interested–and then we dove in on it together.

But the latest buzz is that kidney stone ultrasound treatments for some people can damage surrounding tissue so they’re having him wait it out for now.

An MRI this morning says the foot infection did go to the bones. The Infectious Diseases guy came in, knelt on the floor before him, and unbandaged and rebandaged him with a gentle tenderness that made me think of the story of Jesus washing his disciple’s feet to teach humility and service towards one’s fellow man. Then he told us that the antibiotics will continue orally for a goodly while after he goes home, but that these days, that should be all that should happen on that.

Who knew that catching the bathroom door on your foot could get your heart diagnosed in time.

He is a stone’s throw away from getting to go home.

Scene: Wednesday, Urgent Care. IV antibiotics round one.

Thursday: Urgent Care, same, round two.

Thursday afternoon, hours into this: Oh look he’s got a kidney stone too and it’s big. Take this CD with your info with you to the ER.

CVS sends reminders that a prescription refill is due, then that it’s ready, and then, hey you, come get this thing already willya.

Except for those times when it sends nothing at all and you suddenly realize the dose meter on the inhaler is close to zero and you should always have been paying more attention to it than that–but you didn’t.

I showed up 22 minutes before closing without even the prescription number but the pharmacist saw me standing uncertainly at the drop off counter, called over to me, and then immediately got to work on it.

I’ve seen some who used to work there steadfastly ignoring people trying to get their attention when they knew they were going to turn their computers off at 6:00 pm sharp and walk away. Not this lady.

The pick up line was going the fastest I’d ever seen it. I got behind half a dozen people and five minutes later I had the med she had held up to catch my eye with to say it was done and waiting.

I said to the clerk as she rang it up, Could you do me a favor? Could you thank the pharmacist for me? I was going to come in hours earlier when it wouldn’t have been a problem for you all and then had a day…(I described it very briefly.) Please tell her I am so grateful.

She glanced over towards her colleague, suddenly almost radiant in anticipation at being able to tell her what a difference she’d made and promising me she would.

More later.

I was unloading the car from Andy’s Orchard as the mail truck pulled up nearby.

After weeks in the 70s, 88F was hot, with a slight fire shadow to the air even though we’re hours away from the worst of those.

Going and putting down the heavy lug of peaches and wrestling the top open was not something I could do quickly enough as he was passing by and those could use a day to reach perfection anyway so I offered him a Green Gage. It had rolled out of the bag onto the seat of the car and had gone from there to my pocket. Easy to get to.

He held the little yellow/green two-bite snack in his hands wondering out loud, What is it?

It’s a plum. I just got back from the farmer’s in Morgan Hill.

Did you pick it?

No, I bought it, but it was picked today or yesterday.

Sounded good to him!

Just then my next-door neighbor came running up holding out a bottle of cold water. She had seen him walking past with his shirt unbuttoned in the heat, which I’ve never seen him do in all the years he’s been on this route, and she had to make sure he was okay.

So he got something to wash his miniature plum down with and if he threw the seed in my front yard I say good for him. Maybe it’ll sprout. Green Gage plums are rarely grown on a commercial scale because the trees are difficult and production is iffy–but when they do, they are so good.

But what was really really good was seeing my neighbor seeing that need (I was sorry I had not) and immediately doing something about it. She’s a peach.

It suddenly hit me this morning that what I didn’t want to call fear–but still, it was a nagging, ongoing sense of dread–all the angst around meeting a new surgeon in two weeks, about having a more major surgery than expected, not at Stanford but in a hospital where I knew no one nor my way around and there would be no old friends who were nurses suddenly popping up, about what the results might be, about the pain meds, the recovery, the being made to get up and walk after they’ve cut into you–

–last time, they got me upright and I insisted, Take my blood pressure before you try to make me do more.

It was 73 over something like 30 and they decided okay, let’s get that up to 80/40 first.

The stress that had triggered last year’s eye infection to resurface.

All of that.

It didn’t matter anymore. There was no problem anymore. There was just something to go through and then go live happily ever after and that would be that.

Finding and rescuing that beautiful little finch had in some way I cannot describe somehow rescued me, too.

Most mornings, I wouldn’t have been looking out that window for another half an hour–but today, I did.

Two Bewick’s wrens caught my eye, and I realized with a start that I hadn’t seen one in several months. And as they danced around and I delighted in watching them they drew me to see…

…Oh goodness. How long had that poor thing been there.

A finch was tangled in netting around my blueberries that I’d thought was too fine a mesh for a bird to dart through. It was caught up to its shoulder and around. Oh, man…

I stooped down next to it. It struggled to get away. I put my hand under its feet so it wouldn’t be hanging by its shoulder and wing like that and that gave it something to push against to try harder to get away. Flutterflutterflutter, with the strands cutting in. No blood at least. I had never seen the underside of a finch wing from that close up before.

But then it held still for a moment.

I looked at it and it looked at me–and the little bird closed its eye slowly for a moment. (I could only see the one from there.) I hoped not in pain but to rest ever so briefly.

I felt somehow trusted. By a wild thing. I felt its feet on my hand. I fervently hoped I could do right by it.

Then it struggled again against the strands because it had to. It is the nature of it.

I assessed: what I needed was scissors to cut that plastic so as not to jerk the little thing around when breaking it free, but I couldn’t risk the harm of walking away and coming back out and its panicking or hanging.

So as carefully as I could, I balanced that sweet little finch on my knee and worked on breaking those strands with both hands, wanting so much not to hurt it, glad that at least the netting was that fine.

It knew before I did and suddenly it burst out of there: not to the camphor tree above but over to the step outside the bedroom door, facing me. It caught my eye, and only then was it off and away.

I walked inside marveling that I had even been there at that time. That my favorite Bewick’s wrens had not only come but had kept it company till help arrived. And they’d made it so it did.

Even the sparrow in its fall is known to Him: that scripture became vividly real to me today.

The New York Times did a piece on a home, if that’s the word, in New York. The dentist who left Ukraine during a prior administration wanted a piece of, say, St. Peter’s Basilica, he said, y’know, that kind of presentation.

How much had he spent building on the lot of the razed Victorian, they wanted to know.

Oh, I gave up counting after $10M, he waved that away.

So. For $25,000,000 you too can rival Felon47’s gold-leafed-everything. Although I do have to say I like that stained-glass star up there, forgive me, I do.

And! A bucket shower! (Somehow the Times did not include a photo. I mean, like, everybody know what they meant, right?)

What. Is a bucket shower.

I got suckered in. I googled. I found photo #17. I…I…

Do you have to donate to the ALS Foundation every time you use it? That’s all I can figure out.

The person at the pulpit was talking about Jesus at the Mount of Olives. No loaves and fishes, no mention of any other miracles but the one of His ability–and willingness–to feel all our pain of every kind in order that we might always have a friend to turn to who knows exactly what it feels like, because He was willing to go through it with us at a time when He was entirely alone.

I was reading the Zoom captions on my phone.

My eyes did a silent Ohmygosh!

No. No he did NOT say the Salmon on the Mount. Wrong part of the story anyway. NO.

Clearly, that AI has been to church before and it thinks it knows everything it’s supposed to learn there.

Well, teaching us in parables always was His style…

But also, it brings back to me the time my mom told young-kid me that clearly, G_d has a sense of humor. Which intrigued me and puzzled me no end and made me pay attention to that possibility all of my life.

Clearly, He does, because a shared good laugh can bring out the best in us.

Salmon. On the Mount. I’d tell him a good joke but He told it to me first.