We’ve had so many rain forecasts these past three years that have sounded so promising and then have fizzled out to nothing, including last week. We were expecting today’s to do that too.

We got a strong cloudburst.

I had to drive to a doctor appointment up the freeway in the middle of that and never mind our grumbles about Californians who have no idea how to drive in a real storm because they’ve never experienced one–people were actually slowing down for it.

In the hidden noontime sun, the bright white sprays from the tires ahead against the darkened skies were creating rising car ghosts.

Yesterday, the day after the gerdan arrived, the doorbell rang.

It was almost deja vue–if only the war had ended.

The mailman (the guy who shows up on our regular guy’s day off, which rotates forward one day of each week) had a package for me to sign for, and clearly he’d read the return address because he exclaimed, “Kherson?!”

“Yes, where the fighting’s been going on.” I told him; “It’s a dress for my granddaughter. They also sell t-shirts that are anti-Putin and anti-Russia.”

I didn’t have to say, Nerves of steel there, man; he felt it. We both looked at each other in amazement as I handed him back his little handheld and its pen, at the sheer determined ordinariness of commerce in the face of all that.

At least I have this one thing I can do for them, and the means to do it.

Same company the birds t-shirt had come from (in a completely random color but they got it out of there.) They’re still getting things mailed. (The dress only came in the one color.)

I think it’s actually too small and might have to be a gift to a niebling’s toddler, but I’d still really like one for Lillian.

We just might end up with a do-over on that conversation.

The little globetrotter finally showed up after its second trip from Kiev: the beaded sunflower necklace with an upper flower split like falcon wings raised triumphantly to the sky.

It’s big. It definitely announces its presence.

Oleksandra went through so much to make this and get it safely here. I put it on in great glee. (Not pictured: the sunflower ponytail holder she added as a surprise.)

The war, however, did not end, no matter how much I told it to. Darn it.

Not yet.

But it will. And Ukraine will win.

As one person put it today, the US and Russia both believe in freedom of speech: the difference is the US believes in freedom after speech.

And Ukraine is quite willing to give voice to its opinion about which of those two outcomes it chooses.

Why I didn’t drive to Andy’s Orchard today (in retrospect, not that I could have known it at the time.) I would have been driving right past the spot with my tires all bouncing around on a crowded part of the freeway. I somehow decided this morning that, nah, I’ll go Thursday or Friday.

And then the conversation went something like this, as my husband came around the corner:

Did you feel it?

Feel what?

Yeah, I didn’t either.

What? How did we miss it?

Turns out he’d been talking to someone in south San Jose when the 5.1 hit, nice and shallow and close at four miles deep. (Note that he was also on the phone with someone in San Jose when the Loma Prieta hit in ’89 and before the shock waves made it to here, got up and stood in the doorway of his office to prepare for it. Suddenly he heard a colleague down the hall yelling his name, he being the biggest guy on the second floor: Hey! Quit jumping up and down!

Oh wait…

Today’s means, the USGS warns, that there’s a high chance of aftershocks in the next 24 hours. And if we get something stronger then they’ll change the classification to a foreshock. This was on the Calaveras line, which connects to the Hayward fault, which is problematical because in the post-War boom of the 1950’s the fault line was the cheap land and they simply bulldozed it and developed it. Every single hospital on that side of the Bay is within yards of where the earth wants to spit and split.

This is why California decreed in 1994 that by 2020 every hospital in the state had to be seismically able to stay standing in a bigger quake than we’ve ever had. And by 2030 any acute-care facility has to not only be standing but still functional.

We have a friend who was operating on a patient at the VA when the Loma Prieta hit and his unconscious patient was suddenly trying to shoot across the room while all medical personel present grabbed at the guy and held on.

Fun times.

So. What do you do when you have an actual timestamp on that particular possibility? Where the power and even the water could get disrupted, even on this side of the Bay?

You quick run and go do all the laundry so that at least you’ll have clean clothes for as long as possible.

And you don’t wait till evening to hit post on this.

There was a woman’s conference at church. They were holding the first half of it in the room with the worst acoustics in the building by far and I knew I wouldn’t hear a word. Everybody would be part of a shared experience except the woman in the back who doesn’t laugh or gasp or whatever sympathetic thing along with the crowd and how awkward is that for the speaker who doesn’t know. I didn’t want to go.

But when I considered the thing last night, I realized I felt kind of starved for some people time and the very fact that they were finally holding this again was like the Before Times. And that was a privilege. Besides, you can’t do anything for anybody if you don’t show up. I would wear a mask anyway, so my face wouldn’t cause much of a problem, right?

I made very sure I had some knitting with me.

And man, that room was as bad as ever.

And man, did I mess up that pattern and had to just stop about 45 minutes in and put it down; after I got home I tinked back 2/3, but never mind, I fixed it–and messed it up again and ripped it again and fixed it again and that time it actually was fixed and stayed fixed but the whole thing was not one of my more shining moments with a ball of yarn. But at least, in public, it made it look to anyone else like I could do fancy lacy things with yarn–just don’t squint.

So.

When I walked in, I was waved over and invited to a table by some very kind soul I wasn’t sure I’d ever laid eyes on. Who turned out to be a friend of my daughter’s. I started to feel rescued from myself. We found ourselves seated for a breakfast that I’d thought was going to be a lunch at the end so I’d already eaten and I don’t normally like breakfast much in the first place and looking at that lovely fruit plate, I certainly wasn’t going to explain Crohn’s to strangers. But I didn’t dare touch it.

Across from me was a young mom with a small baby, about four months old. Those right around her apparently knew her and chatted with her.

But she was struggling harder than I was to cheer up.  Sleepless nights of early babyhood are hard–or maybe it was postpartum depression, I worried. If I’d thought I was isolated these past few days with no car, remember what it’s like to be at that stage, I told myself.

I ran into a friend after that and we caught up a bit and were late heading into a classroom and tiptoed quietly in at the back.

Right behind that mom.

Her baby fussed a little. I distracted his attention. He smiled. I wiggled a finger puppet on my hand.

She offered silently, Did I want to hold him?

My face lit up. And how!

Oh I tell you. All that pent-up grandmotherhood came pouring out for that sweet little face, and the best thing you can do for the mother of a baby is to adore her child like he’s the most beautiful human being you’ve ever seen. Because he is, every one of them is. Even when they’re fussy. They just are. And so he and I made friends and she–

–she started laughing quietly. At his antics, mine, for sheer joy, and when he finally decided okay, I want my mommy now and started reaching her way I handed him right back and thanked her profusely (quietly) for the great privilege.

She walked out of there happy.

So did I.

Friends forever.

Tell me her name again? I didn’t quite catch it.

That spammer stopped calling, in fact there have been none the last day or two.

No car repair shops told me, You clicked! on their link that seemed not to do anything so I tried another one and apparently when they’re closed for the night the insurance company’s link to them doesn’t respond. But I half-expected them to know I’d tried and for the phone by the computer to ring endlessly. Nope. The silence has been lovely.

Oh that’s right.

It’s really nice when your handset stops working.

Grateful that the worst hassle of the day was filling out insurance forms together, with both of us proofreading as we went. Did we read his handwriting wrong on the other guy’s phone number? Doesn’t matter, we have the same insurance company, they’ll know who he is.

Daylight offered me a better look and I had to laugh ruefully at the curved stamped-out line of the SUV’s wheel well right above our Prius’s–you could just imagine the sign at Disney: Must be THIS big for this ride.

Well, we did used to call our old first-year model the Maus.

Higher cars are definitely more visible.

Just in case they total ours out simply for old age, (bought summer 2006, finally hit 100k miles a couple of months ago) I’ve been looking at front seat head and leg room on various offerings for what a 6’8″er might be able to fit into.

Having routinely gotten 40 to 50 mpg, we’re not going to go back to worse than that.

Toyota so far has the most safety upgrades as standard equipment for 2023. Bring on the mass-market electrics!

He actually had to go in to the office today, a goodly commute that leaves us glad that that’s a rare thing.

I smooched him goodbye at the door and said cheerfully, Drive carefully!

Somehow that second word just-perceptibly caught at us both and he stopped there a moment, looked me in the eyes, and pronounced, Yes.

I found myself musing afterwards, like, did I really feel that? as he headed down the sidewalk. Said a little prayer for him like I always do and then forgot about the whole thing.

I got the text about an hour later with the pictures of the license and face of the guy who’d sideswiped him at freeway speed at his driver’s door. He’d seen him coming at him but had had a truck right at his other side.

Both men are okay. That’s what matters.

Kidney donor Nate is awake and making jokes and his wife and kidney recipient Heather, whose operation started later and went longer, was just awake enough at last cousin check-in (with her sister reporting to the family) that now all they have to do is heal from it all.

Along with a lifetime of her being immunosuppressed now, but hey, a lifetime, now.

To all who Thought Good Thoughts their way or said prayers, I am grateful. Thank you. To life!

We did something way better than going to San Francisco for chocolate: we visited our friend in the hospital and chatted and cheered and swapped hospital-food stories and left her and her husband with smiles on their faces–and ours, too.

I somehow left out of yesterday’s long list (I thought it was in there, but no) that our elderly friend Walt had died that morning. That I got an email from a mutual friend asking if I could help out, that when I answered, Sure, what do you need, expecting it to be about Walt’s wife in a nursing home because of course you’d expect that, the answer I got was a clear phishing expedition. “I’ll pay you back when I get back in town…” As if. He’d been hacked. On that day of all days.

I can’t hear our new widow on the phone and she can’t type to me and I don’t feel mobile enough yet to risk driving. Aargh.

Today a fake-Amazon spammer called every two or three minutes and one can only wonder if I got put on a list of suckers who’ll respond. The same recording. For hours. It makes no sense; I mean, who ever caves and believes their lie after hanging up the first twenty times?

What finally stopped it is when I let it go to the answering machine several times in a row. I should have done that sooner, except that the machine is where Richard’s working.

I just got a note: the friend who’s been in the ICU had canceled the phone number I’d been texting messages to.  That’s why she hadn’t answered. Okay, got the right one now.

And I think I found the right yarn. But it is 600m and it is not wound yet and my back said, listen, buddy, I’m working with you on this and you gotta admit I’m getting there but you have to meet me halfway and that is not it.

So it is still a hank.

I started in on Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s autobiography instead.

Today was a day that refuses to stuff itself into a neat little package. There was the Jan 6 Committee, the evidence, the videos, the emotions, the finding out a friend has been in the ICU but may go home by Sunday and she was going to answer our question about visitors when her doctor walked in and that was that, the joy of another friend in her photos with her new baby after they’d been trying for years, my being able to do my full 20 minute race walking for the first time in nearly two weeks although some of it was slow walking as muscles threatened but still, I did it and I read in a book that seeds sewn by birds flying around after eating are seriously called craplings when they sprout and I didn’t get any knitting done because the yarn I’d picked just wasn’t the one and I don’t know which is and the pumpkin that’s vanished from the market because people are using it to get pills down their dogs and that’s apparently a really big thing right now and I finally found some on back order a few weeks ago and it was even actually Libby’s which is real pumpkin and not butternut like most canned stuff and I’d forgotten about it and it showed up today and then I had to get a dozen heavy cans in that box over the doorstep and I should have sliced the box open and taken them over the threshold one by one and I should simply have called Richard from the other room to help and I didn’t want to stand in the sun that long and got the whole thing lifted over the doorjamb and scooted over with my foot and my back yelled WhatdoyouthinkyoureDOING when it had been doing better than that at least and I’m icing it right now again too but I got my walk time in and I made pumpkin almond muffins and put chocolate chips in a bunch for Richard and I got everything done and nothing done at all it feels like

and it was just that kind of a day.

Y’know, about 90% of the posts on NextDoor have me wondering why I’m still on Nextdoor. But just, just often enough you find out something that really is actually relevant to the neighborhood that you’d kind of want to know about.

Not that this was one of them, but dang did it grab the attention. Per the conversation there:

There’s a hiking path up in the hills alongside the San Andreas fault line, park land because you’re not about to build on that. (Actually, on the east side of the Bay they did exactly that in the 1950’s because it was the cheap land and every hospital on that side is within something like 100 yards if not feet of their fault. Yow.)

So. There’s a contractor who either followed his surely-infallible GPS or skimmed rather than read the map. Or entered things wrong. Maybe we could even blame autocorrect! Didn’t notice that there were two monte-something names.

It appears he did not stop when what he expected to be a road quickly became a path cut into the hillside that might have room for two joggers to pass each other if they’re careful but most certainly not his big vehicle.

There was a spot just downhill from that track where there was a depression area created by the San Andreas.

He nailed it. He rolled his company’s new big work truck right over into it, fitting neatly upside down into the spot per those who have seen it up close. The only way it can come out is to be lifted vertically, and as he’s already demonstrated, there is no room for the machinery to do that in.

The scuttlebutt was that it’s been there for several months and the county or park service has decided to make it a training exercise: dangerous rescues and all that. Although on the human level, thankfully, there’s a door that is slid open so it looks like he got out just fine.

I imagine they’re waiting for the rain so they don’t set the whole hill on fire when they do it.

But dude. That is not the way to ask your boss for a raise.

The weird thing is, it’s not just that the back twinges–it’s that it suddenly refuses to hold me up and I find myself on the floor. If I can hold myself up with my arms (I learned in the shower this morning) I can breathe through it and it lets go before I have to.

This gives new meaning to the word backpack. Just ordered one. It should help a lot.

In between dealing with all that, I’m a good way through reading “Dearest Ones” by Rosemary Norwalk. Highly recommended. She was a Californian who ran a Red Cross outfit at a port in England during WWII, offering coffee and doughnuts and a smile to every single soldier whose boat came in or left from where she and a few other women were stationed, be it 4 a.m. or 11 p.m. the same day.

There was a big fuss made when the millionth such soldier arrived. And again at the two millionth. Red Cross headquarters: You want HOW many more pounds of flour?? They didn’t believe it. They had to come see for themselves. And then they sent more women to help out as well as supplies.

I have a friend who was born just after his father went off to serve–who never so much as contacted his wife and son after the war was over but vanished into some other life. Rosemary described friends who hadn’t seen their spouses in four years falling in love with people they served with every day in spite of themselves.

She was not going to become serious about anyone till after the war was over and she could see them in their normal lives, not this temporary circumstance that by its nature tended to make people feel close as the Nazis changed from bombs you could hear incoming to ones you could not. Not her, no sir, just here to do her job and serve.

She wrote many a letter home, signed, Love, Roses, and asked her folks to save them all–while writing in her journal the extra details she didn’t want to tell them yet.

And those became this book and a glimpse into the world of her youth.

Don’t tell me if she ended up marrying Bob, clearly she did but I’m not there yet. (There are at least three Bobs so that’s not a spoiler. Mostly.)

It’s always the most innocuous thing that finally nabs you after all the warning signs: all I did was lean down to put two small Corelle plates in the bottom of the dishwasher.

…And give an almost-four-year-old two piggy back rides two weeks ago. A sleepless night last night probably clinched it.

Ice, stretching exercises, more ice, along with consciously relaxing the muscles that want to seize up, and hopefully tomorrow will be better. Realistically, it will be a process.

I knew I should have kept doing those exercises this past week.