We met his grandparents when we moved to California while his dad was away at college. We got to know his parents better when they lived here their first few years of marriage; they moved to Richard’s hometown and we’ve been able to randomly and delightfully run into them at times.

Now their son Will is in college himself. And you know, you just know, now, that Will’s future wife will expect him to always, always take out the trash.

Good times.

More plum blossoms after the rain! (Snail deterrent at the base of the trunk.)

I looked out a back window this morning in time to see a large flock of crows fly across the neighbors’ yards, easily a hundred birds, coming and coming and coming (and just avoiding flying over our yard. Smart birds.) This surprised me because I’d been seeing fewer corvids around since a reported salmonella outbreak killed a lot of songbirds this past fall and I assume the scavengers who ate them as well, since that would explain why rather suddenly they weren’t everywhere all the time. (Newspaper link from last February on their then-population explosion.)

But here these were.

And so when I got to Los Gatos Birdwatcher to buy my monthly birdseed, I asked: “What’s the best way to keep the crows out of my fruit trees once things start ripening?”

The young clerk, unsure of herself at first, half-asked back, “Bird netting?”

And then it came to her and she brightened and added, “Or you could get on our rent-a-crow program.”

Wait, your what?! (Okay, this I had to hear.)

Behind her, she gestured, were two stuffed quite lifelike crows, one upright, one not so much. You put one keeled over in your yard for a week.

“At night,” the middle-aged woman behind her working on the books interjected without looking up.

At night, the younger one nodded. They’re rented for a week for $10 or you can buy one for $36–“And all the crows come and they hold a funeral for the dead crow. And then they all leave and they don’t come back because they don’t want to be where a crow died.”

Having read Marzluff’s book, Gifts of the Crow, yes, those are behaviors they do and yes definitely you’d want to put it out at night and I was glad to be reminded of what I’d read–because otherwise they would think you had killed it and they would teach their offspring to retaliate against you to the third and fourth generation: attacking, pooping on your car, stealing the rubber off your windshield wipers, you don’t mess with crows. Now, going outside and swinging my arms like I do they’re fine with–they understand territory claims and it’s an accepted thing. But hurting one of their own. Oh no. They will get you.

No soft fruits yet (lemons don’t count) so I told the women I was going to go home and have a good laugh with my husband–and then I was going to come back next time and buy one of those. (That way I know for sure I’ll have one available next year too no matter what they might be selling or renting then or not, but I didn’t say that.)

I need me a toy crow. Definitely. Feet up. Do not go out at dusk but only at the darkest of night and given the city lights I’d still put a hood half over my face. I can’t wait to loan it to my neighbor whose persimmons will be in full production come December when all my trees are done for the year.

I’ll have to drive the car away for hours the next morning after I put it out there so that they know I’m gone and that they can land in my yard to pay their respects.

I knew, and yet finding this old photo it suddenly felt like I hadn’t known at all.

The mango tree February 2 last year and now. One year. And hidden in all those leaves, the ends of the branches are steadily working towards a big new burst of growth. My frost covers are barely holding it in at night as it is. 

Okay, that got me to look. Another startled surprise: hey! They’re selling much bigger ones than they used to (84×72 was the max I found last year), alright then, we’re good!

“I don’t have anything to write about.”

He considered that a moment, and then his face quite brightened at the morning’s memory: “You could write about the chocolate!”

Alright, then, and this was his Happy Valentine’s Day from me: Potomac Chocolate of Woodbridge, VA has only gotten better as its owner has gotten more experience–and that’s saying something. He’s added truffles to his cacao-and-sugar-only bars and they are the best I have ever tasted.

The best thing my sweetie got me was that he tested my two-year-old scooter batteries yesterday, found them dead dead dead beyond redemption (I didn’t use them for Stitches last year–I had the flu), made the trek to San Jose with me to the batteries place and got me set up with a new pair. The salesman laughed when I said what I really needed to do was ask the neighborhood kids to joyride the thing once a week or so to keep them rechargeable, since it’s the letting them just sit there that wears them down. But when I really need the scooter I really need the scooter.

Go Speed Racer–Stitches West here we come!

(Edited Monday to add a link to those chocolates. The truffles seem to be sold out–gee, can’t imagine why.)

It was almost time to go pick up Richard when I felt like walking around the yard while there was still some light out, just to enjoy.

Our lemon tree is having the biggest and juiciest crop it’s had in years (thank you, rain!) and I found myself reaching in past a few thorns for a larger, deeper-colored one. The bit of tangerine in the tree’s parentage deepens the flavor the longer they ripen.

Coming back inside, I meant to put it down in the kitchen but somehow I walked on past and it stayed in my hand.

I was almost to the door. I stopped a moment, looked at the thing, and wondered if today somehow I was supposed to gift someone with, of all things, a lemon. A fresh-picked lemon, but still, it wasn’t much, it certainly wasn’t a hand knit, but hey, they’re fun and they smell wonderful and so out the door we go, sure, I’m curious to see if anything comes of this, but whatever.

I tucked it in a cupholder next to the driver’s side.

Richard didn’t get my text that I’d arrived and so I ended up waiting ten minutes before finally calling and going, yo….

And during that time one of his co-workers on his way to his car walked past where I’d parked and waved hi.

I turned the car back on a moment so I could roll the window down and asked how his day had gone.

Oh! He threw up his hands and laughed with a wince. Busy! SO busy! But he looked like he really didn’t want to be asked any questions about details, so okay, and I found myself reaching for that silly lemon. I described having just picked it and on a whim having brought it with me; would he like it?

That was the–comic relief isn’t the word–the break from it all, something so unexpected, and he said, “Sure!” in delight. He turned it over in his hands a moment, taking it in, and asked, “A Meyer?”

“A Meyer lemon, yes.”

He told me they’d had a tree, but, in embarrassment, “I killed it.” I told him that in that big week-long freeze we had about 15 years ago we thought ours was gone, too, but it had slowly come back and now it’s fine.

I don’t know what he’ll do with just one lemon, but I saw what that one homegrown lemon in that moment could do for him. It was just the thing.

I made a quick trip to the grocery store Saturday night. Oh my.

Only later did it hit me that that Trader Joe’s was in walking distance of a train station, that riders can transfer to the light rail that goes straight to Levi’s Stadium and that maybe that figured in…

Finger foods, desserts, hors d’ouvres, any kind of party food, things especially that didn’t need to be cooked–whole shelves and freezer spaces were picked utterly clean. It was amazing.

One woman with a very full cart told me she’d had to venture out into the crowds and traffic and she was making sure she wouldn’t have to again for awhile.

The police sent out a message today telling us not to go on the expressway and that it was closed past X for security reasons and really, you might just want to stay as far the heck away as you could, y’know?

Stitches West is at the Santa Clara Convention Center the second weekend from now and having missed it last year for the flu, I cannot WAIT to finally go again.

The Levi’s Stadium was built a few years ago just down the street (over the Convention Center’s objections) and the biggest parking lot serves both.

So, um, they don’t need to use that stadium for awhile now that football’s over, right?

She’s recovering from surgery after breaking a hip but you can’t keep a good woman down–she was going to be ninety and by golly we were going to have a celebration. I think she told the doctor he had to okay it and well, hey, how could he not, then?

So celebrate we did. Ninety and a day. It was quite the party. Old friends came from Oregon for it, her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren came in from everywhere all over. The grandkids blew up balloons one by one to create this dragon that stretched far around overhead while the little greats gleefully popped as many as they could get their hands on. Hey, guys! (as one of the young parents told me afterwards.) Not all of them!

Balloons and tape (and a little hanging wire) can become this?! Creativity is a magical thing.

One of the grandchildren told me, I know your daughter! She was in grad school in Ann Arbor when we were!

And in the slide show there was a photo of Jean and her husband with Conway and Elaine that got me right there. It took me by surprise how fiercely I missed those three, mixed with my gratitude that we still have Jean.

I asked one of her sons if he remembered them and he said why yes of course. I told him their granddaughter had grown up and gone off to college and met and married my son and they had three children now.

That just made his day. Small world.

Jean grew up in Hawaii and misses the fresh-picked mangoes of her youth; she’s an avid gardener and has tried several times to grow them here but always lost the trees to the cold. She’s content now to cheer me on and I love that it matters to her how mine does.

I just figure she can’t go anywhere till I’ve finally had a chance to offer her one.

So there it is

.  Thank you Davies Appliance. We made lemon sponge cake to try it out: even and perfect. But they have to come back tomorrow to rewire the circuit breaker so that cleaning both ovens at once (not that we intend to do that) doesn’t cause problems. They also had to cut the lower cabinet drawer to fit it in and–it didn’t come cheap but they do it right.

The installer looked at the dishwasher a moment for us and said whoever had brought it had bashed in the top, which had sprung back, but it was why we’d never been able to pull out the third rack at the top. It wasn’t that we’d been doing anything wrong.

I knew exactly where the sales receipt for it should be (and the one for the oven now is). It wasn’t there. Well no real problem, I went online to my account–where Sears had no record whatsoever that we’d bought that dishwasher from them. Huh. I knew they didn’t do extended warranties, but making it so they don’t have to be hassled over the original manufacturer’s one either? That’s pretty…broken, however it happened. I tried their chat. Nope, no record. He recommended calling the store.

We only have two months left on that warranty. The guy at the store on the phone told me that for him to mail me a new copy meant its having to go through headquarters and there was no knowing how long it would take. He said that part again for emphasis–the implication being, they’ll string it out till your warranty’s over. It doesn’t matter to them.

There was nothing for it but to go there, twenty-one miles each way across Bay Area traffic, for a new copy of the receipt in person. Which he was glad to give me. They’ve got a good guy working there who does right by his customers.

It wasn’t till I got home that I found that nowhere on those two pages that printed out does it say the actual word SEARS. Wow. If I have to drive back down there again to get an amended copy, I do, but, hopefully this will do. But wow. I will never, ever buy a major appliance from them again. Which is a shame, because the people who work the floors that I’ve encountered have all been people whose jobs I want to support.

Glad I bought the oven from the local family-owned-since-1935 company.

(Afterthought: the sales person who said Sears charges $100 less if you order online rather than in the store? Can you just imagine if I’d done that?)

I’ve never watched the Iowa caucus results like this before. It’s past two am their time and they’re still counting!

Clinton, Bernie, O’Malley: 695, 693, and 8 SDEs, ie State Delegate Equivalents, and yes, I had to go look up how the caucuses are done in the two parties in Iowa and it is a strange system and also one that denies any sense of privacy in one’s voting.

Clinton hits 696… Wait, Sanders is at 692 now? Did it go down? Can it go down? Did I see it wrong a moment there or did it really do that? Huh.

Meantime, the phone rang this evening. The oven comes tomorrow morning.

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.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Now, I’ve raised four kids and one of the things you do as a parent is to ask them questions in the most mild tone of voice to get them to think things through. There was no one around to hear the moment’s thought though but me.

I had turned the oven to preheat for dinner, walked out, walked back in the kitchen a few minutes later and…yeah I’d left the inside light on but that doesn’t make it do…that… !

There was no smell nor sign of burning food or anything. I opened the door carefully to see sparklers and a flat hand-size brilliance that wasn’t in the shape one would expect of actual flames and I still don’t quite get what that was but I immediately turned the thing off and shut the door.

And opened it again as it seemed to calm down. There were two spots where the burner itself was white hot and bulging out. They turned a cooler red as I ran for my camera so I could show Richard what I’d seen–but they were too far towards black by the time I raced right back.

That was the upper oven. The lower one died long ago.

Um….

Glad I walked back in that kitchen just then….

Dang.

Do I call the repairman? Or just ditch the whole sorry lot of it?

(p.s. Richard just looked at it and proclaimed the heating element destroyed. Thought so.)

(Second p.s.: Anyone got an 800-series Bosch double oven? Do you like it? I think Virginia’s right. I’m tired of replacing ovens every eight to ten years, hopefully theirs will last longer.)

(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.

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.