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’ve been trying to remember all week to get that bowl back to Nina. This evening I saw it, knew if I didn’t do something right now I’d forget again, grabbed it and jumped in the car and knocked on her door.

She wondered why I hadn’t called first?

I usually do. Can’t begin to say why I didn’t, other than that I was afraid of stopping long enough to let the other distractions pulling at me get the better of me yet again.

Turns out her car had been in the shop, it was ready for her to pick up, her mechanic was about to head out for San Francisco, and could I take her to pick it up? Like, right now?

Absolutely! Of course!

Wow, that really worked out. Gotta love those impulse perchances.

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.

I went to the audiologist this past week, concerned that perhaps my hearing was getting worse?

Looking the thing over, it only took him a moment: no, actually, the problem is this is broken.

With my pair of hearing aids, there’s a speaker in the aid itself, which is normal, and one in the earmold too, which was a novelty when these came on the market three years ago. (Maybe it still is, I don’t know.)

The tiny filter piece had gone missing, I knew that, and for all I knew it was still in my ear. He looked: nope. But under where it was supposed to be there was supposed to be a spring keeping that first speaker at a particular distance but that speaker was quite dislodged. The only thing for it was to replace the whole thing.

No earwax in the way, good: and so he injected my ear with pink blob and had me wiggle my jaw around while it dried to help shape it so as to be comfortable when I’m talking or eating. The model got sent to the manufacturer and the whole process would take about a week.

I had him make two, as long as he was at it, both of them going further into the ear than my current ones. We know from three years ago that doing this delivers a lot more sound. But also that they hurt to wear if I’m not really really careful, because of the whole connective-tissue-disease thing that wants no pressure anywhere especially from hard objects like these. No fiddling with the things. This time, at least, I know all that going in: if I irritate anything it means several days of not wearing them at all while it settles down and maybe even having to give up again and go back to shorter ones, so let’s just not. I want to hear everything possible.

This could actually be the start of things being much better–I think I need to tamp down the hyperactive hope a little bit because after all, once I get used to them they’ll simply feel like normal. But a much better normal, hopefully.

So you heard it here first: when it comes to hearing aids, I totally broke the mold.

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 have missed my treadmill time. The doctor forbade it after my concussion Thanksgiving night for as long as I had symptoms. I tried a few minutes here and there the last week or two to see if it felt okay, and finally today I did nearly my normal amount. It was surprising how slowly I had to start.

But man that felt good.

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.

I got the Christmas stockings put away in their bin.

The hearth looks so bare.

I was going to start in on the tree… Looking at it a moment, I instead turned the lights on and let it glow. One more day won’t hurt.

Negative on the giardia, just a regular stomach bug and it’s almost over.

But still, we were going to fly to my nephew’s wedding tomorrow but there is no way we’re risking spreading that germ.

Southwest has the most customer-friendly policies out there, and the end result is that the day started off in profound disappointment and gradually, email by email, morphed into one of oh I can’t wait! And I’ll not only get to meet the bride after all, but see people dear to me that I wouldn’t have otherwise. Good times coming, definitely.

Happy New Year!

Beaver’s Disease–what the Alaskans call it (I learned something new this week.)

Giardia–what my microbiologist daughter calls it.

And in a moment of supreme irony, since none of us saw this coming when we were talking about it…

A possibility–what the doctor called it today (“Have you been up in the mountains?” Yes) as she wrote out the lab order.

Parker exploring Grampa’s spinner toy over the weekend. A fellow enthusiast!

Today was our last day with the happy couple, the other faraway kids having already flown home.

It’s so quiet.

Alright, so, one little boy’s favorite rock needs to go in the mail back to him, stat. Are there any small boxes we didn’t recycle already? And that long-de-glued niddy noddy that I always had to put the one piece back on the top and that was always a pain for the first few yards of winding hanks of yarn on because it wanted to flip off–thankfully, the little boys discovered the thing and that piece is nowhere to be seen and gosh darn, I’ll just have to buy a new one! So sad. Not.

There was another great joy that took place this weekend that I haven’t mentioned till now.

There were airplanes today, lost luggage, and now we just have the last two for a few more days.

Michelle drove John to the airport for us while the four of us took off after lunch for the coast.

He (I forgot to ask permission to say his name) had never seen the redwoods before. We hiked through Memorial Park a bit through the towering ancient trees, having the place nearly to ourselves in the cold.

They went a little ahead down to the creek, where he splashed his hand in California water and pulled the one piece of manmade this-does-not-belong-here out to let the water be freed of it.

We followed the signs along the trail in search of the park’s tallest redwood: there, up ahead, thirty-nine feet around, 225 feet tall and 1600 years old, solid and sturdy and lasting through storms and lightnings and fires, steady through every blessing and every stress of life.

It seemed the perfect place to take a newly-engaged couple’s photo.

There was a name on the bench with a fresh soft yellow rose by it. Should that family ever see this photo, please know that we bowed our heads a moment at your loss and moved the rose back to its rightful place at that center spot afterwards. It bore silent testimony that love is simply who we are and what we have.

From there we took him to see the ocean as we get to see it, warning him that no, it’s not warm, not at all. Again, he touched it and made it a part of himself too now.

He is so good to our daughter and they are so happy and we are so happy. We get to have him in our family! So. Much. Joy.