All in one hour a sudden flurry of incoming plans, emails, texts, phone, of, oh if they’re coming I wouldn’t miss…!

And suddenly I’m ready to start hanging the Christmas decorations right now.

Let me see if I can get that new kitchen flooring done first, at last. I’d needed some major motivation and there you go.

If you ever wanted to see where the Oz books were written, this was L. Frank Baum’s home.

And the children’s section of the library near it, with Dorothy, the Tin Woodman, Munchkins, the Scarecrow and I think the Cowardly Lion is in there somewhere.

There was a tot-sized area to rest in. Genius. The one who was the most tired is a climber like his daddy was and couldn’t resist. (He was helped down immediately–no matter how enticing it was, let’s not, kiddo.)

There was a huge killer whale of a stuffed animal atop one of the children’s shelves; Hudson asked about it, I found one of the librarians, and she thought out loud a moment with, Well, we don’t normally let children play with them–and then she brought it down and held it out and he petted it on the nose in awe. That was all he’d needed.

We ran into a young family who, when I found out who the dad was, I exclaimed, I used to babysit you!

But no–it had been his older sisters, he’d been born just after they’d moved away from Maryland. That’s right. But same idea: I knew his folks and his sisters as little kids, I’d run into the whole family at a wedding fifteen years earlier and that’s where I remembered the son from, who was now neighbors and friends with our son’s family, and it was all quite the small-world moment.

Hudson had been up late the night before but had been so excited that we were coming that he’d bounced out of bed early. It finally hit him when it was time to leave that glorious library: he clung to the railing. He didn’t want to GOooooOOO!

I scooped him up after a minute and asked, You really like this library?

Uh HUH! And as I said soothing and understanding things he let me carry him almost to the car, then his daddy the last few steps. Conked out as soon as the motor turned on and was still fast asleep when it was time for us to leave for the airport. We opened his door and I silently blew a kiss and hoped he wouldn’t be too upset to wake up to find us gone.

It is amazing how tiny little bundles of energy become when they’re run out of all their awake.

On an entirely different note–but in a way kind of not–back here at home tonight, we watched the eclipse, and I have a question: why did both the photos my iPhone took show twice as much moon as my eyes saw? There was just a corner of red, then at 8:32 half of the moon was lit up brightly, no more.

And yet, the camera saw past the shadows cast by the earth to let the moon shine brightly and whole.

I can’t wait to see them again.

There was this sweet face today.

And this one. (And somehow no pictures of the baby? There are in my son’s camera, but still, how did that happen!)

When I went to snap these (it’s the only time anyone was holding still) I said something about my camera and Hudson, perplexed, pronounced, “It’s a phone.”

Yes it is, and in camera mode I showed it to him with my fingers wiggling on the other side of it and showing up on the screen. It was the funniest thing they’d seen all day and they let me know it. Hudson: “Way cool.”

This was the first visit where the boys didn’t have to spend any time warming up to us; they were right there right away claiming us instantly, snuggling for books to be read and Legos to be played with. Even Maddy crawled over a few times and sat up against me sitting on the floor so she could. Her big brothers had vouched for us so we couldn’t be too stranger-y.

So we had a guy out to talk about our solar panels. His company was offering something that I don’t think existed when we installed ours: an inverter that separates out each panel, so that if one gets shaded the others still work.

Ours is an all-or-nothing system and there’s a redwood next door, so it was definitely worth getting a quote to replace that part.

When all that was done he was interested in asking about the fruit trees, and it being early evening I walked back out there with him and Richard. He wanted to know what everything was.

“A mango?!” He thought that was so cool.

Cherries, there and there, mandarins, there and there. “Peaches for June July August September,” I said, pointing one two three four, noting that the biggest was only planted in February but it was standard root stock vs the semi-dwarfs and also had better sun.

A few more steps, then, “That lemon tree looks so healthy,” he said, admiring how loaded its branches were with small green fruit. He reached up to touch one. “Meyers are sweeter, right?”

“Yes, they’ve got some tangerine in their parentage.”

“Wow, you guys could open a fruit stand with all that!”

Except… And then he told us about his plum tree, how the squirrels bit into his plums and then threw them down without finishing and made a huge mess he was having to clean up–with the implied thought of, and they don’t even leave me any.

We know how that goes.

It was clear he’d wished for more fruit trees if it weren’t for that. And we knew how that goes, too.

We were standing in front of my plum tree as he mentioned this and I pointed out the clamshells on the apple next to it and why. I told him about the raccoon that ate the plastic (no shards on the ground anywhere), ate the apple, and then never touched another clamshell again, not last year nor this nor any possible descendant of theirs. It had worked.

“Oh so that’s why…” (Yeah, I know they look pretty. Not. But hey it works!)

And over there… “I *love* figs!”

I told him mine was in a pot to keep the shallow roots from causing damage.

He was clearly eager to learn more. It was great fun. I think some nursery is about to make a sale.

When our 84-year-old friend Shirley passed away a week ago I wondered when or if we would ever see her kids again, now that their folks were gone.

The youngest showed up at our church today, even though it was an hour’s drive. We had a good chat.

His older brother was two and a half hours away from his home yesterday when we randomly ran into him in Oakland. Instant joy.

It was so good to see those two. And even when it’s been decades when you see an old friend, you pick up right where you left off as if there had been no time between, you just have all the more to talk about as you catch up.

I’m sitting here thinking of several old friends who really could use a vacation to California. Hint hint.

So apparently there’s a Twitter meme going on whereby former teenage nerds are offering Ahmed Mohamed a show of support by building clocks themselves and taking a picture of wires and all and posting theirs.

My sweetie happened to take his with him to Timothy Adams tonight to show our daughter; thus we have a chocolate shop going on in the background and empty truffle wrappers in front. (And they were very very good.) I wish we could share those with Ahmed, too; maybe Mark Zuckerberg could bring him in after his tour of Facebook headquarters.

By now you’ve probably heard of Ahmed Mohamed, a 14-year-old who built a clock and took it to show to his engineering teacher at his new high school in Irving, Texas.

Now, being married to a nerd, we have a lot of motherboards and various other parts kicking around here. Lots. He’s actually got my yarn stash beat. (Note which one of us is writing this.)

The Heathkit company of our youth quit making electronics kits ages ago. Even I built some of their kits–it was a requirement in a college electricity course. My clock finally died after 35 years but the alarm in case the standing freezer gets too warm is still at work in the garage.

So into that vacuum stepped the folks who started Raspberry Pi after looking at how expensive gadgets had gotten; few parents would want to let their kid take, say, an iPad apart and explore its innards, and they decided budding nerds needed to have access to electronic parts to tinker with and to be able to make things at a reasonable price–and I mean exceedingly reasonable.

And thus we have, for instance, the controller that turns the Christmas lights on my mango tree on and off depending on the temperature range I set for it. Had we bought such a gadget prefab it would have been prettier but also more expensive and this way my sweetie has made himself a part of that tree’s success. He built that.

This is the hubby who decided one Christmas years ago when the kids were little that the usual setup of chairs across the hallway with blankets draped over it to block their view of the goodies ahead wasn’t enough. The rule was that you wait for Mommy and Daddy and Mommy and Daddy are allowed to sleep till a semi-reasonable hour after trying to assemble that #*% rocking horse till 2 am (second page of instructions, line 17 halfway down: “Before you start, make sure you…” And so forever after it had a screw missing because there just was no way.)

No peeking.

A motion sensor, a tape recorder, and the very unexpected sound of Daddy’s voice: “Go. back. to. BED, Richard!”

And so it was with some amazement that I listened to my ever calm peacemaker of a husband take off on that principal and those cops. “They should be in JAIL!” He was just outraged. In his own youth, he told me, he had gotten permission from the school, made fireworks (me: You *made* fireworks? him: Yes, I made fireworks!) and had brought them in.

They called Ahmed’s clock a bomb and when he confirmed his last name and refused to say that it was a bomb, after having illegally questioned him without allowing him to notify his parents much less in their presence, they marched him across the school in handcuffs, hauled him to police headquarters and arrested him.

Let’s see: false imprisonment, false police report, false charges, under color of authority, lack of parental notification, libel, and even after they found out that it really was just a clock the school still said he was suspended for three days as if he were somehow guilty for embarrassing them–and then they sent home a letter to the other kids’ parents about how their children were being kept safe (from, basically, terrorists by the sound of it) and that there had been an incident but everything was fine now.

Now, if they’d thought it was really a bomb, would they have left it sitting in the school as they blasted this child? But they did.

Would they have evacuated the school? But they did not.

It all comes across as the English teacher and the principal with the cops piling on trying to show that smart brown kid with the Muslim name just exactly who had the power around here.

But then, thank heavens, the aftermath began. President Obama on Twitter: “Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.”

Mark Zuckerberg, NASA (he was wearing their t-shirt when it happened) and a growing number of places: You want to come tour our headquarters/lab/etc? We want smart people like you and we would love to show you around here.

Mohamed’s father, an immigrant from Somalia, thanked all those who stood up for his son: I love America. When we see something wrong we stand up.

The school is utterly unrepentant.

Some lawyer is totally going to clean their clock.

Last week it was over a hundred degrees most of the week.

Today I wore a sweater for the first time and there was a yellow leaf from one of my baby peach trees on the ground. I guess it decided to be September after all. Cool.

Someone fairly new to the area gave a talk in church today and introduced herself a bit. She mentioned her love of knitting chemo caps and how knitting for others in need had centered her when she was struggling.

Then she starting having aches and pains herself but shrugged them off–until she couldn’t: it was uterine cancer.

And that’s how they found out she had ovarian cancer too. The uterine had saved her life because it had given her symptoms.

And there were her friends from her knitting group, keeping her company during the long days in the hospital.

I’d wondered if her hair meant… It’s growing back in nicely.

Richard and I came home and shortly after we found ourselves exclaiming, Oh look!

He stayed a good fifteen minutes and I thought in my friend’s direction, Honey, someone’s looking out for you too now.

Richard, looking for his camera quickly (no luck) and wishing for a better shot than my iPhone could do at that distance wondered if it were a new hawk; I said, could be but could be the lighting. The fact that it let me pick up and point my phone at him says to me it’s my old friend Coopernicus back.

Equinox cometh and territories must be reclaimed. And so we are here.

Looking forward to seeing the little ones soon. It’s been too long.

This morning started with 9/11 memories.

And then the day changed.

Last time I sat on this side of the church during a funeral, the pew suddenly lurched hard upwards then down again as the other end rose, a single-use seesaw as the wave passed through. I looked up to see a chandelier swinging wildly right over the head of the oblivious guy just across the aisle and instantly gauged whether, if I leaped across to knock him out of the way, could I do it in time. Stay…stay…!

It held.

This time the earth held still while heaven was happy to move us. Shirley C’s children spoke. Did I hear that right? That her childhood nickname was Squirrel? Too funny!

My grandmother, who lived to be 96, told my mother years ago, Make friends with people younger than you; pretty soon they’re all you have left.

Shirley wasn’t about to wait–when she was in her 50’s she was already throwing parties to meet new young families moving into the area and I know because we were one of them. Games and homemade trifle, get to know each other: come, and know that you belong.

Always cheerful. Always helpful. Always welcoming. One friend who’d known her 39 years said that smile of hers that lit up the whole church every week said to him, I know you: and (he grinned) I like you anyway.

Much laughter.

I learned something I had not known: she had wanted to go to medical school and she had worked hard to attain that, but her grade in organic chemistry–my biologist daughters can tell you how hard that class is–was not quite perfect, and at the time only two women in the entire country were allowed into medical school per year and she was not one of them. So she put that degree to other uses, and thus many students got to have Mrs C in their lives who would never have met her otherwise. They lucked out.

She was here and healthy three weeks ago, how could it be…

An infection and a reaction. It all happened in two weeks. Her children had time to come and they were with her at the end. Her granddaughter in Argentina got to talk to her on the phone. Love, all that had centered her in her life, she centered them with one more time and they her.

Her Paul had wanted bagpipes playing Amazing Grace at his funeral thirteen years ago and his cousin had flown into town and done just that.

I could just picture those notes sounding again as her beloved welcomed her home.

I got to see Mel and Kris! At Kings Mountain Art Fair today.

I totally lucked out: I found a parking space right across the street from where the shuttle picks up and drops off for the outer-darkness cars. Couldn’t ask for better.

Got there and they offered me a seat, come sit awhile. We tried to remember just how far back we go; our kids were a lot younger and so were we. We swapped stories and laughed while I tried to stay out of the way of interactions with other customers. I related having recently had dinner guests where each had two of Mel and Kris’s little rice bowls: sour cream in this one, brown sugar in the other one, a big bowl full of strawberries each: dip, dip, eat.

I needed more of those little bowls, then, and while I’m at it I broke one of the bigger ones this past year and it was a favorite. Fortunately they had just fired a run that looked very much like it–I bought two.

At last it was time to note the height of the sun and be on my way.

Mel insisted on carrying my bag not only to the waiting area for the bus that is a former trolley car, he boarded it with me and took my new pottery all the way to my car. Thankfully he got back on in time to ride it right back to Kris, it being one of the busier times of day for them.

I went home and halved Ghirardelli chocolate raspberry squares to make spikes on a cake dragon…

At the block party, we got the great surprise that a mom and her daughters were there (but not her son) who had grown up friends with our kids. I hadn’t seen any of them since their middle-school days and now the parents live right around the corner.  We had about sixteen years’–how did that happen!–worth of catching up to do between us all.

The daughter remembered that I was always knitting while waiting to pick up my kids back at the elementary school; did I still do that? The mom asked if I still did the, did the, (and she motioned a spinning wheel turning).

Oh yes!

They said that with all the unpacking going on they almost hadn’t made it and they were so glad they’d just dropped everything and come. Me too, oh, me too.

And on a lighter note, I decided to try out my new cake pan.

A bundt type and a dragon guarding its three eggs. Block party, enough people to eat such a thing, little kids around, when would be a better time, I figure.

I know, I bring a chocolate torte every year and someone’s going to be disappointed and if I totally mess this one up there just might be one of those after all. If I have time. Which I won’t. Tomorrow’s Kings Mountain, too, and I’ve been waiting all year to see Mel and Kris.

I could pour a ganache over the pound cake but I’m picturing more a caramel sauce. I don’t have the skill set yet to frost something so detailed and fragile.

About one more hour before I get to see if it comes out looking remotely right. I did thump the pan down hard several times on the counter to shift batter bubbles away from the pan surface before I put it in the oven.

If this comes out well, then I need a big enough crowd to do a castle cake and a dragon cake together. Suddenly thinking, y’know, candy corn would make great teeth and spikes on that thing…

Update: I used Martha Stewart’s Classic Pound Cake (it had more eggs and less flour and sugar than other recipes I found but the salt is a bit high, thus begging for that homemade caramel sauce) and baked it at 325 for 66 minutes. Could have taken it out a minute or two earlier. When it’s cool I’ll dare to turn it over and see how the design came out.

Second update: Nope, the center needed another ten minutes.

It shouldn’t bother me that much. I told myself that for fifteen years. I should just let it go. I’ve tried to talk to her, she’s blown me off every time, how much does it really matter, I should just let it go. Let it go.

I was almost good at that, too. For a long time. If only the problem weren’t quite so big and bright in my face every single day.

I tried to think through how it would feel if I got what I wanted–would it have been worth it? The answer was a clear, if I do it in any degree of anger whatsoever on my part or, and this is the hard part, theirs, the answer was definitely no, and so I stalemated myself.

We have an annual block party every Labor Day and it’s a wonderful tradition where everybody gets to know each other. When there was a city issue needing discussion, we widened it to several blocks and found the more really was the merrier.

At last year’s, though, when I tried again, wanting to discuss at least a possible change of placement with M, she cut me off with, “I don’t want to be a bad neighbor” and walked briskly away as if that fixed that.

I recently tried running tape–shipping tape so it would hold–from my side of the fence to the belly of her tall Snoopy perched on the fence shading my peach so the tree could get a little more sunlight. The thing had long since ceased being a fixed object; here, point this way.

Someone yanked my tape off my side of the fence and set it back the way they wanted. Full shade.

After all the… But I knew they didn’t know just where my fruit trees were. Still, I was afraid the whole thing would at long last trip me up on Monday. I needed to finally deal with this, and better I do in time for both sides to think and come to an agreement before we see each other.

Another neighbor had their email. Score. If you loved the Anne of Green Gables books as a kid like I did, one of Anne’s lines stuck with me for life: “Paper is patient.” You can take the time to say what you want to say the way you want to say it without having emotional triggers trip you up. You can more easily be kind even when you’re bugged when nobody’s interrupting and it’s just you writing away.

You can delete, too.

And so I spent several days composing a letter to the Ms. I had to notify them anyway that they had several things sprouting up behind their hedge right against the fence where I could see them and they couldn’t and that they needed to do something about quickly before there was damage.

There was the fig tree on my side a few years earlier that, no matter how much I’d wanted one, I took it out as soon as she requested it; it was only right. It was their fence too. I had a new one now planted in a pot where it couldn’t intrude on anyone, and I thanked her for her common sense and said she had been right.

I rehearsed the story of the Snoopy and Woodstock figurines: how they’d suddenly appeared on top of the then-new fence right outside my living room windows and that for all the years since I had had an ongoing visual reminder that had made me sad for her that she’d felt more afraid of being told no than of the appearance of being rude: she’d asked no permission and allowed no input, even when I’d wanted to ask her to just move them down the fence a bit so as to be out of my direct sight.

One arm of the Snoopy snapped jaggedly years ago, ending its weathervane function.

And then someone on their side lifted it out, turned the broken side to face my windows and not theirs, and shortly after added the bright yellow Woodstock.

We were not strangers; I had been in their home back when we’d discussed the best way to replace our mutual fence and I’d invited them to mine, I knew she knew how to reach me. It was the ongoing struggle not to feel insulted that was the hardest. (I didn’t mention that.)

Over fifteen years those wooden figures continued to disintegrate.

That peach shading went on for as much as an hour and a half in the early afternoon in June–there has been no flowering under that direct shade line. I told them I certainly have no say regarding their trees in their yard and wouldn’t expect to, but on items on a fence that I own too? That, I do. I commit my water towards future fruit and I had a problem.

Now, while I was struggling to figure out how to say any of this in a way that might be kind and that might be heard, in a way that I hoped both they and I could be comfortable with after the fact, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, bless her, wrote a blog post that totally saved me: she wrote about how when she and Joe are upset with each other they work on being extra kind to each other to help work themselves through that, fake it till you make it when you have to, she said.

Sheer genius. And boy had I needed that right then, thank you, Stephanie, and Joe, too. What I had been needing to do, both for the Ms and for me, was something nice, something positive, anything. (Well, duh! Sometimes I can be SO slow.)

The squirrels would have stolen any tomato before I’d even closed the door going back in–and so it was one of my cupcake zucchinis that got plunked up between Snoopy and his sidekick before I ever sent off a word. From my garden; have some!

Then, and only then, did I feel ready to start writing; I had the right attitude I’d been searching for and it was a relief.

I found myself checking again and again in happy anticipation: had they taken it yet? No? Now? After several days, at last they did. Bon appetit!

I wanted them to enjoy their figurines, I said, and I imagine there must be some happy story, some strong connection that’s kept them there all this time and that if I only knew what it was it would have been easier to deal with them; I’d like them to enjoy them on their side now.

Add no no no okay you got that out of your system but that’s way too self-righteous delete that try again okay getting better.

Paper is patient.

Finally tonight I had the right mixture of this is why this has bothered me. This is why it’s more of an issue now. You are someone I can count on to do the right thing, I am glad you’re my neighbors, and if you liked the zucchini please let me know because there are a ton more where that came from and I’d love the help using it up. Etc.

I prayed long and hard before sending it off–and felt no, not quite. I studied it, caught a phrase that wasn’t quite…, prayed again. Very close. What more could I…? Oh, I see it plain as day there, okay, thank you.

After repeating that process several times it finally felt right, really right, and taking a deep breath, hoping hard for the best neighborliness forever, I hit–there’s no going back, ready? You sure? Yes. Send.

I opened the sliding doors and walked outside after dinner to see if my baby fig in its pot needed any water and in the time it took me to check out the growth on the warned-about saplings at the far end of the yard and then over to the fig and back across towards the door, Snoopy and Woodstock vanished.

Only the long metal nails remained.

Y E S !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And I came back in and wrote them a very grateful, Thank you, that was VERY kind of you!

The shawl: blocked. Done. I totally love it.

Remember the bubblewrap around the awning pole to keep the squirrels from jumping onto my bird feeder? It worked for months.

Yesterday, however, the lower two-thirds of it disappeared. What was left was still around the pole–but chewed on. What on earth eats bubble wrap?! I could not find the rest anywhere.

Till suddenly in the early evening there it was running down the fence line, a squirrel tripping over it each step as it glanced sideways at me with its mouth very full, looking at me like, I *know* you want this, it’s MINE now! It leaped into the tree in a sudden panic, struggled mightily to continue, snagged the thing and gave up and fled.

Oh now that looks lovely. (I apologized to my neighbors. They laughed and said they couldn’t even see it from their side.) That’s their tree growing straight over our property in front of the redwood, and under there is the 60-year-old corrugated roof to our shed gently blanketed in decades’ worth of redwood needles. There’s no climbing on that thing–it would collapse in a heartbeat. The limb lopper can’t reach. At least it’s not at the top of the redwood.

But I guess for the moment we’ll just have to let its freak flag fly.

Meantime, we got a card in the mail from the Census Bureau, which was doing a mid-decade test to see if they could move the whole process online. And so by force of law our household was to fill out their questionnaire at this URL by tomorrow, with a phone number to call if that weren’t possible, in which case they would send out an in-person census taker.

The thing checked out and yes they were actually them so I took care of it.

Richard walked in the door tonight to find me doing my best John Denver impersonation. Sing it with me: “I Filled Out Your Census!”