She used to come to my knitting group, but then her daughter was born and priorities on one’s time shift. It’s been a few years but we’ve reconnected online and she recently offered to do a very kind favor for someone I love just because I do and because she’s that kind of person.

And so. I offered up a thank you prayer for her sake.

And felt strongly, Pray for Meg.

The next night, during the meditation that is my treadmill time, I felt it again as I walked: Pray for Meg.

This became a thing, and so for oh easily a month at this point I have asked daily for a blessing on Meg and her loved ones, not knowing what it should be about other than my offering up my thanks–which isn’t hard, because I am grateful and she’s a good person. But it was kind of a curious staccato mark. It commanded attention somehow: that it not be a quick glancing nod in her direction but with thought and effort put into it. Oh okay I can do that and I did (and kind of wondered what that was all about, but hey, I’ve had enough people pray for me that I certainly owe the favor.)

She started off her Facebook post a few days ago by announcing that, first, everyone was okay.

And then she described a kid with a license of about a year now being hit, crossing five lanes of freeway at high speed and striking her car and spinning it around and then both cars went over the embankment. Hers, she’s convinced, would have rolled (and looking at the picture with the car sideways to the steepness, most definitely!) but for the trees and bushes growing there that had caught it, the top of a palm visible to the side from the ground below. The kid, though, went straight down, through a fence, and on into an industrial area.

And to her and her husband’s amazement he came running right back up that hill to see if they were okay. The empty car seat scared him; the couple quickly assured him their daughter wasn’t with them just then, it was okay. Meantime, people who’d seen it happen had come running, too, whether they pulled off the freeway or were from the business below or both I don’t know but there were people ready to do whatever needed to be done to save whoever had just gone down over that embankment. The poor kid was so shaken; she gave him a hug and did her best to comfort him and wrote, We were all just fragile people who’d just gone through a scary experience.

And all three of them were able to walk away from it. The tow truck driver and the cop marveled, she said, that their car had been stopped where and how it had. It had all been such a near, near, thing.

Did God need my prayers for Him to go rescue those good people? Of course not. I wonder; the prayers certainly didn’t hurt, and at the same time maybe (speaking selfishly) I was going to need that comfort too for their sakes, given how close to home this hits with my daughter having gone through a similar accident and still being in recovery. I do believe God reaches out to us in such quiet ways to teach us to look out for one another, to care about each other, to help us to matter to each other all the more than we might think to do on our distracted own. I am ever so fervently grateful for them at their best-case outcome, and for all the people who put themselves on the scene to offer any help they could.

They have sore muscles to heal and paperwork and insurance hassles to get through.

Her words have been of joy in the greatness of the reprieve. To life!

A knock at the door. The old dishwasher was wheeled away with our dolly while the other worker stood there with the new one up on his shoulder (!!!) waiting to get by to bring it inside for us. That was at 2 pm and then we spent the next seven hours on the installation.

Even he didn’t see any way to get those two top screws into that box that’s supposed to go against the wall under the sink, not with the disposal in the way. He was suddenly glad he’d bought a tube of caulking during the run to the hardware store for the right screws and a level (after an hour of both of us looking for his level)–he would just basically glue it to the wall. We had the two lower screws in, the most important ones, so, hey, that would do it. As he caulked while wedged in at an impossible angle he casually mentioned that I was now going to have to hold it in place there for ten minutes while it set.

Blink. Dude. I can barely even reach, much less…

But wait, I think, there’s more than one way–and so I turned around, laid my back on the floor, and put one foot up against that thing. There you go. Easy peasie. Staring at the skylight straight above, watching the seagull kiting on the breeze.

Except that before I could congratulate myself my posterior was already starting to slide across the kitchen and I had to tell him to grab that box quick. I readjusted. I ended up spending the ten minutes holding tight to the cabinet door, still far easier than the alternative.

Does this thing come out? (The third rack at the very top for putting silverware and spatulas and the like into. There’s a silverware tray at the bottom like every other brand, but this was to give you more flexibility with big stuff.) Surely it comes further forward than this?

Huh. Let me go check.

I googled Bosch 500 series dishwasher. Turns out we’d bought a new model. Their own site doesn’t even show that third rack open on that one, but I found a photo somewhere else with it pulled all the way like one would expect. Nothing in the manual. Meantime, he simply called customer service–and they didn’t know either at that hour on a weekend. In the end we simply loaded the front third of that third rack because that was all we could reach of it.

(Turning it on at long, long last) What’s this 2:30 thing? Our model doesn’t count down to when the load is finished.

No, it doesn’t.

Actually, turned out, yes it does.

And so we have it going with the ultimate test one could throw at a new dishwasher: can it clean a pan that an angel food cake was baked in that was not presoaked and scrubbed before throwing it in there? No dishwasher I’ve ever had has been able to do that. Time (current reading: 14 minutes left) will tell.

And it’s a beautiful, beautiful dishwasher. So far so good.

Oh and? Even the floor looked scorched where the heating element of the Maytag had been. We so lucked out. So close.

(Okay, now I’m just stalling, waiting for that Bosch to hurry up and finish.)

And… (It’s past our bedtime but we both want to know.)

The angel food cake pan is absolutely spotless.

Old dishwasher: out.

That took a lot longer than expected but we promised each other we would be all sweetness and light while working on this. He didn’t fit into some of the tight spaces and forgot that I might call a plier a screwdriver at the hour it had gotten to and at one point I stopped myself and went, Wait: I am being growly. And I stopped being growly

It is done.

Oh, wait, I know what I was going to say–I got a happy email from my doctor, saying: Scan read. Looks good.

Yes!

We left yesterday morning for the trip southward and got back well into dark.

This evening, after two days of not being out in the yard, there were not just flowers with bulges at the bases but actual cherries, lots of cherries and there will be more as more petals fall away. I am utterly smitten: homegrown cherries on our own tree for the very first time ever, with some branches just starting in on the whole process. The third year’s clearly the charm.

The old Yellow Transparent apple was gray and wintery-bare Saturday with one single hint of life that is now a fully open flower at the end of a gnarly branch. So much more now. We will have cooking apples in June.

Inside, I finished a soft MadTosh merino hat but missed my chance to hand it off to the person who will give it to its recipient. There will be more days. He doesn’t know it’s coming and the anticipation of the surprise feels so sweet.

Trying to figure out how to get produce clamshells over all those cherries–or not–I think I definitely need to find some unsweetened Koolaid packets. Dilute them in water with no sugar, and an orchard back home near Camp David when I was a kid sprayed it on their cherries to make the birds reject the taste and leave them alone. I can only hope the squirrels and raccoons (who can tear through bird netting if they’re determined enough) feel the same way.

(Edited to add, I just found a review on Amazon by someone who spreads unsweetened Koolaid in his lawn to keep the Canada geese out. He said it MUST be Grape. Alright then. Grape it is!)

The wide expanses of farmland. White heads, some enormous with the plants sagging under their weight: “That one’s cauliflower,” said our niece. We three passengers were all trying to decipher crops from the expanses of green. We passed a proud sign: Iceberg Lettuce! (Wait, wait, let me guess.)

And the artichokes, the raspberries, the newly-planted-anyone’s-guess. The irrigation canals were dry but the fields were green.

And it rained, not much at all this first day of the incoming storm and less than we’ll be getting at home a hundred miles or so north, but any rain at all, we’ll take it.

Re the purple sweet potatoes I’d roasted in olive oil, someone wondered, “Where did these come from?”

“Here,” I answered. “Salinas.”

And so Easter was happily spent with family at his cousin’s house with her three small children running around excited at all the company. The baby, like all babies everywhere, takes especial delight in touching index fingertips with smiley people he doesn’t remember: close, connecting, just-at-length-enough as needed. (Sometimes he let me snuggle him too.) The three-year-old, after showing off the bows on her pretty shirt, played many a game. Her six-year-old sister quietly studied her grandmother’s drawing in action, intent on being able to create flourishes and flowers like that and was highly pleased with herself when she pulled off quite a decent version. Her grandma was even prouder.

I said something to (to us she’s) Aunt Mary Lynn and the three-year-old stopped right there and turned and stared at me and then back at my daughter across the kitchen: “You mean she’s yours?”

“Yes,” I smiled, “she’s my little girl.”

Little?! The kid took in how a 5’11” grown woman could be…!…and, done with that, jumped and skipped away with, “Okay!”

The first Babcock peach of the year, with quite a few smaller ones coming along.

So. Friday afternoon the phone rang. It was the repairman’s company with a quote at last on that part.

I had expected they might pad the retail price showing on the Maytag site ($143) but I was staggered. They affirmed to my disbelieving ears that what they said was what they meant. They wanted two-hundred-*what*?

Wow. That and what we spent replacing the panel and lock a month or so ago and we could have paid for a whole brand new dishwasher!

Okay, so we could still have done it ourselves: but we didn’t even know for absolute sure that that was the only thing wrong with it, he hadn’t been about to tell us, and we’d thrown an awful lot of money down that hole already. Three control panels, three door locks, four or five silverware trays and two circuit boards already, and still it tried to burn down our house.

The favor he didn’t know he was doing us was shocking us into wanting to feel like we were done with this mess forever and that we were better off paying one big lump now and finally getting it over with. And so today we drove to San Jose to where there was a floor model to look at and we ordered our super-reliable 500 series recessed handle, three-level, etc etc. It was even on sale. Good timing.

In other words, that guy totally put the ki-Bosch on our ever having to deal with that Maytag again.

And our new one will be SO nice.

Happy Easter, Passover, and Spring!

The dishwasher repairman came some time after three. He started off cheerful, with a thick accent I struggled to place. He sounded surprised when I excused myself to get out of his way and I wondered if he expected me to stand there and chat the whole time; a few pleasantries and we were done, right? I wondered what cultural miscues were going on here.

I remembered reading a Dennis the Mennis cartoon when I was a kid, a plumber under the sink and Dennis right by him and the guy wrapping it up by saying, Well, I could have done it in an hour, lady, but with your little boy’s help it was two and a half. And my mom, when I showed it to her because it so echoed her own strict orders to us when someone had had to come out, answering, And *that* is why I make you stay away!

Right. So. My momma taught me. Repairmen. You stay out of their way.

There was the whirrr whirrr as he took the door apart screw by screw, like we had so many times, only with better faster tools. It didn’t take him too long before he was calling out to me as I sat and knitted in the next room to tell me the circuit board had short-circuited.

(Exactly as Richard had guessed.)

But he didn’t have the part, he would have to order it. No, he couldn’t tell me yet how much it would cost. He would call me in a few days and come back with it.

He looked annoyed and I had no idea why.

I don’t know if Maytag is willing to pay for that second visit or if they’d expected him to come more prepared; I do know we’ve replaced that circuit board before. Probably a good idea if I go talk to them again.

Trying to place the name, he asked me, Who’s Chris Hadfield?

I started singing Ground Control to Major Tom (I LOVE this video! It’s someone’s repost of the one that was seen 22 million times but only had a one-year license to stay up) and he instantly got it. If you haven’t read Stephanie’s post, please, do, her post is way more fun than mine!

Meantime, here, I turned the dishwasher on at 11:00 last night and we were off to bed. At nine a.m. I went to grab my hot cocoa mug out of it–and the door wasn’t quite hot enough to burn my hand but it was getting close and the thing smelled of burning plastic.

In disbelief I pulled it open and the white plastic at the bottom below the heating element was scorched.

This is a dishwasher that had previously been serviced under a recall for having burned houses down. I immediately unplugged it.

Maytag, bless them, when I called, duly noted that we had bought it according to their records in 2007 so of course it was long out of warranty. I expected an argument but instead they immediately offered to send someone out to repair it: the service call and the labor would be on them–they hoped I wouldn’t mind if we paid for the parts that might be needed?

Sounded quite fair to me. Although: I will have a tab open on the computer with their own price list/suggested retail for such showing when the guy comes. One can only hope he says it’s repairable.

So we came thisclose to burning our house down last night, and when I mentioned it on Facebook my friend India from our Warm Hats Not Hot Heads campaign (where we and others knit hundreds of hats to create a sense of community among members of Congress) said her neighbor actually did get burned out of their house a few nights ago by their dishwasher.

Mine is model MDBH945AWB (that last B for black). In case you want to go check yours. It might be a good idea.

It’s that time of year again. There are three peregrine falcon eggs in the nest on San Jose City Hall, and the first one started to hatch this morning; you can see the chick moving in there. Video of the new little one here and reports are that the next one has apparently started to pip (break through with its egg tooth). To life!

(p.s. Dear Apple Autocorrect, a propos of nothing to do with this post: creme brûlée is not creme bullets. That will be all.)

Sunday School and the subject was the feeding of the five thousand that had come to the hilltop to hear Jesus speak and now had a long journey home ahead of them. Jesus told his disciples he didn’t want them fainting from hunger along the way, we needed to take care of these people here.

A stunned, “Two hundred pennyworth would not suffice!” as in, And what are WE supposed to do about it! gave way to, “Here is a lad with five small barley loaves and two little fishes but what are they among so many?”

The story goes on to say that after the blessing and after all had eaten, in the hands of God that young boy’s gift had become twelve baskets’ worth of leftovers.

And the thought occurred to me and I raised my hand, remembering how much young teenage boys eat and what a sacrifice that might have been, varying with the actual age of the kid.

“Y’know, he could have squirreled that quietly away and just been glad he’d had the foresight to pack a picnic (or that his mom had). But instead he offered his food up in hopes of helping others who might need it more. There’s no way he could have known the entire crowd would have a full meal from what he’d offered, no way he could ever have known that two thousand years later his small act of kindness would still be blessing countless other peoples’ lives. It is a beautiful metaphor for the idea that every act of kindness we do takes on an eternal life of its own, far beyond our ability to see.”

And I’m sitting here thinking, I need to always remember to be ready with that first basket. In whatever form it needs to come in. To see in the moment and not think of myself first. One can only hope.

He was about a year old when we moved here and his parents were some of the first people we met.

He’s the kid who, post college graduation (he’s back now for grad school), took a job for awhile in Texas such that we utterly randomly ran into him at church in Ft. Worth while we were visiting my in-laws. Out of all the places in all the country and to end up in the same room at the same time… Our jaws hit the ground in unison.

Such a great kid. Yeah yeah yeah, so, I knew him when, as well as some of the other kids in the video who also grew up with mine. Don’t know if you’ve seen it yet but JK Rowling herself called this brilliant and how cool is that?!

He mashed Bruno Mars with Harry Potter.  Keith plays Harry (direct YouTube link). And if you watch it over here you get to find out more about that python whose face his buddy sang to.

Yeah, that talk about getting the taxes done so fast?

Turbotax e-files the federal form for free but charges $24.95 to e-file the state one, after all they charge for the software. For twenty-five bucks I can make a trip to the post office, thanks, since I was going there anyway.

One checks every page first, of course…

Hearts. And smiley faces? I stared. And here’s another one. Hearts?! Smiley faces?! Turbopunked? Emoticonned?

Nah, said he later, probably came from when I got the printer to finally work with the new computers. Must still be a glitch in there somewhere.

And it only shows up when we’re doing that one little task, think I. Great.

Michelle dropped by and she and I spent some time going through what was missing and what was mutilated and trying to reprint what was needed.

No more emoticons but some pages still stayed inexplicably vanished.

That was one of the more irritably spent $24.95 ever. But now (unless we hear back to the contrary from Sacramento and the Feds) we are really and truly *done* for this year. Let’s just assume the pristine view we saw on the screen was what they received.

You just really don’t want the tax collector’s face to do what mine did when I first saw those printouts.

I was ecstatic: I’d done the taxes and I’d done them in under four hours. This has never happened before. Richard knew of one other number we needed–and it was right there, page two in the stack. Done.

The Meyer lemon burst into bloom in celebration–there were no flowers yesterday, but, look at it now. 

Today’s Sunday School teacher, whom I happen to be married to, was talking about the parable of the sower who tossed his seeds along the ground as he walked, hoping for a good crop later. You’ve probably heard that one.

The text was read and then the poetry of it was discussed, metaphor by metaphor, soil types, marauding birds (what, no squirrels? Do you know how fast they dug up the sugar snap pea seeds I put down?) the part about the lord of the harvest saying, no, don’t pull out the tares or you’ll uproot the wheat along with it, let them keep growing together till they’re ripe. The growth habits of rye and wheat plants were mentioned and we had a visiting rancher from Wyoming on hand (what were the chances!? Never seen the guy before) who talked about how they are mechanically separated now at harvest with the machine being able to tell which is which.

Cool. Learn something new. While part of me was wondering, two thousand years later they’ve *still* got their seeds mixed?  Couldn’t be by much, surely. Clearly there was a lot more to ask the guy but it wasn’t the time or place.

Then the general query was thrown out there: So what did it all mean?

I raised my hand and pronounced: Having planted a few trees this past week, if you want them to produce well then by golly you’ve got to have slimy earthworms and chicken manure in there.

The tall man standing at the front of the room was amused as the room laughed. “Slimy. Earthworms. And chicken” (we were in church, the only word I would dare use there and that he would ever use anyway) “manure.”

Yup. Every life has to have some for the person to grow into the best they can become. It’s all just part of how it is.

(Don’t take that subject line too seriously, I just couldn’t resist a pun like that.)

I’m smaller, I fit better under there–let me give it a try.

Okay, that makes it sound like I volunteered a lot more enthusiastically than I did. It was definitely not going to be comfortable with the lip below the counter digging into the small of my back but the job needed doing and I had nothing to complain about vs what it would be like for him. We put a folded towel over that edge down there.

My hands aren’t strong, though, and as I tried to tighten the nut on the right bolt as best I could I dropped it again and again: my arms were simply too short. The nuts had not only come loose, the big brass washers to either side had actually fallen out. How, I don’t know. This was a new faucet as of December.

I gave it my best.

Being that tall and squeezing under that bathroom sink in that space was definitely a challenge–but he did it.

When he got all done I suddenly noticed that the faucet above was off. Like, WAY off. I tried to describe it for him, wedged under there, and he, realizing it meant undoing both sides, kind of pleaded for it to look good enough. A half to three quarter inches skewed to on side, that doesn’t sound like a lot, right?

Uh… I described it.

He knew. He lessened his grip on the idea of finally being done: So we really do need to undo and start over?

I’m afraid so.

I knew we should have been looking at it from top and bottom, says he.

(I didn’t, even if it was obvious in the aftermath, but I do now. If it’s break-the-sale bad if the house were on the market which it emphatically is not, the house I mean, then you need to fix it.)

This time he simply stayed crammed with his head at a painful angle behind the U-tube till it was done rather than asking me to spell him. He tightened up the last of it far faster than I ever could have done. Hopefully there will be no more leaks, hopefully the faucet will stay solidly in place now. My hero! I exclaimed as he stumbled out and to his feet, and I meant it.

I don’t feel like a hero.

My hero, I repeated emphatically. Given how strong his big hands are, having his being the ones holding that wrench this time means we won’t have to do this again. Hopefully.