You know how cats, caught up in something suddenly out of their control like skidding across a newly-waxed floor, will at the end feign perfect poise and studiously lick their front paw as if to claim they meant to do that?

There’s this one scruffy bit of tree-wannabe I’d wanted gone for a long time, we all had but nobody had ever quite gotten around to it. It split into two branches slightly overhanging the neighbor’s yard between their orange tree and their garden.

Never a good thing to shade away someone else’s fruit to any degree, even if there wasn’t much to the thing. I hadn’t talked another neighbor into taking down her battered kitschy Snoopy with the broken windmill arm that she’d put on the shared fence and was shading one of my peaches slightly, but it gave me incentive not to be that neighbor.

Pride goeth…

Those two branches were thick but I finally decided I could at least give it a try. I could have mentioned my resolve to my tall strong husband, but thought, nah, he’s busy with something. Got out there with my aging clippers held straight over my head, got a good grip on the smaller branch, looked like I might actually be able to cut through this thing after all, I was putting everything into it–

–when the trunk that I didn’t know was rotten suddenly gave way at the bottom. I was flipped over backwards, hard.

There were two thick tree roots running in tandem above the ground and my spine exactly lined up with them. Richard happened to look out in time to see the end of the fall and, he said, my head bouncing back up again.

Knocked the wind out of me.

And maybe the sense.  Ah my, the perfect poise moment. Part of me was able to think, I really shouldn’t be lying here with the sun on my face. The UV rating was 1 out of 16 before I headed outside but that’s still a 1 and I really ought to get up and inside now.

Willing myself to move just wasn’t getting it to happen.

It’s quite peaceful on this fine evening, looking up at that blue sky and all those green leaves.

Richard, rushing out the door, reached me by that point, wanting that not to have just happened, wanting to help, and the back-to-reality of having my sweet husband within view helped me focus.

There was the wry thought as he helped me carefully up, of, and *tomorrow* I’m supposed to have that injection for my med-induced osteoporosis.

He got me icepacks and I wondered what would complain the most later vs right then. The answer so far is the right shoulder, holding up the heavy clippers that had twisted downwards and then missed me (ohthankyouthankyou). At least we know we did what we could for it. So far I seem to have gotten off really easy, all things considering.

The squirrel escalator at the side of the fence got it way worse than I did.

So glad Richard was there.

Next time I might, y’know, tell him first what I was up to so he could volunteer to go do it himself. He certainly would have.

Skyped with the grandsons, talked with our kids, chatted with our dads, made angel food cake and mixed fresh berries and mango salad and all kinds of good things–

–and somehow, this evening, the account on Richard’s phone burped up old voicemail messages onto his suddenly-insistent cell. Years-old messages, very much to his surprise. How on earth did these show up?

I heard the raspy-to-me electronic voices and came in the room and asked who he was talking to, and he explained.

And among those very old messages were two from his mom.

Today was the first Father’s Day with her gone. He was sitting there listening to her voice.

Those two messages are staying.

Saw a Nuttall’s woodpecker two days ago; they live in California on down to Baja with a few into Oregon but overall a small range.

Richard heard it working away this morning, over thataway.

Well then. I was watering the fruit trees this evening and I knew the pattern when I saw it. The background doesn’t show the intense black and white contrast, but the end of the feather there looks as if it were pulled taut, ready to sail into the wind. I like that.

I thought of the days when Richard and I would hold our little ones over our heads (well, mine, anyway) to see mama bird feeding the babies in the crook of the 8′ ash stump the former owners had left for the woodpeckers to carve a home out of–and they had.

That stump has long since gone the way of the earth.

Good to know that whatever this generation of woodpecker needs, it has found.

And. A friend was asking around for advice about her young daughter, and I remembered this article and thought, choose your battles wisely and let go of your pride. But ya gotta love the expression on that eagle’s face on the right in that first photo.

There were a lot of sick people in the airport five days ago. We had stayed healthy for Baltimore, which Sam had really needed, still germ-free during our visit with the grandsons thank goodness, but after that last airport and plane filled with coughing people…

Only a bit of fever and cold, nothing too bad. I’m definitely better today than yesterday.

Meantime, we’d met Eve, our grandcat, four and a half years ago when she was still basically a kitten.

While we were in Baltimore, my friend Karen and Richard and I were at Sam’s place when Eve decided to come down and join the party.

We were told she never does that! Never! She stays away from strangers, she’s just not a party animal. But she did, and she let me stroke her soft fur and murmur sweet my-aren’t-you-spinnables at her. Maybe she remembered me?

Sam and I remembered the day she and the other kids had brushed the neighbor’s Persian and I’d spun the fur we retrieved into an 18″ strand, plied it with silk, and made it into a little pin for the very pleased owner of the cat: a 1×2″ knitted rectangle dangling from knitting needles made of toothpicks with pearl beads glued on the ends, ending in a little rolled ball of the yarn. Idea courtesy of Spinoff magazine.

Eve had gotten a haircut for the hot summer, though, other than her tail, so we’ll just have to wait for it to grow back in before we can go all jewelry on her.

But so there she was, seeking/allowing attention from me. A few minutes into it, Sam grinned and passed me a bag of cat treats.

After Eve was too full to really be enticed by them anymore–and we’d startled her by clapping and laughing in the conversation–I caught her rolling her eyes at my requests for one more petpetpet.

Caught her nevertheless giving us the hairy eyeball as she watched us getting ready to leave.

It’s okay, little cat, we want us to come back, too.

Lunch with friends, taking the time to take the time, a too-rare thing. Home, then dinner at Nina’s with more friends, some I knew, some new to me. Another friend just arrived in town and is crashing here for the night before flying back.

Tomorrow is going to seem pretty quiet.

Still working on getting pictures on the blog.

We arrived Saturday noonish and found we’d chosen the same weekend as the San Diego Rock’n’roll marathon–and now we knew why the flights were crowded and expensive and how lucky we’d been to get a hotel reservation.

Hudson was waking up several times a night and a tired Parker at about the light of dawn with the transition to summertime brightness, so, giving them all bedtime and waking up times to themselves as they’re adjusting to the new baby was the way to go.

Sunday was the blessing of the baby, our christening ceremony, and afterwards, a luncheon at Kim’s folks’ that was a small family reunion on their side. I so love these good people. I chatted with one of her uncles who did not know I had known his father so well, and as we talked, he showed me the ring he wore that his namesake father’s father had had. Inscribed in it was the date of the Titanic (setting sail, I think, rather than sinking).

I’ve mentioned before, but, his grandfather/my grandsons’ great-great grandfather had had a ticket to be on that ship but had ditched the trip because one of his fellow Mormon missionaries he was going to return home to the States with was too sick to go, and the grandfather, being the one who’d booked the tickets, refused to make the one man travel alone later. Everybody was going together, he said; they could wait. Even if it meant they would miss out on the much-hyped trip of a lifetime.

Al wore on his hand that reminder of how much everything, including his own and his extended family’s very existence, depends on the things that always seem at the time to be such small gestures of kindness. Never let a chance to do right by others pass unseen.

Hudson at seven and a half weeks was struggling mightily to learn to smile back at will and caught me by surprise when he giggled a one-syllable laugh with a big brief smile as we held each other in our eyes with him in my arms. Oh wow!

Parker’s favorite blankie now is the Malabrigo Rios one I made at his birth. He has carefully worked his way into the stitches to make several gaps–nothing broken, just gaps–big enough for him to wave hi at us through. Peekaboo!

As we came past airport security last night, a young man was taking the stairs next to us  as we rode the escalator–lifting each step ever so carefully but clearly painfully but determined to keep on going and not take the easy way out, not now, not after all this. He was wearing a t-shirt: Finisher (and then the name of the marathon.)

I looked over at him as our escalator took us on up slightly faster than he was going. “Congratulations!”

The biggest grin spread over his face along with his thanks in return. I think he forgot his pain in that moment.

Parker, meantime, had learned to look for purple flowers on trees with me (the jacarandas were in bloom), and we saw several as we were on our way to that airport. He cried mightily as we got out of the car and hugged him and his daddy goodbye: he wanted to come airpane too.

Soon as we can, little guy, as soon as we all can.

It didn’t even hit me till this morning: the other part of the story. That the two were connected.

Yesterday after Karen dropped us off at the airport we found what gate we were supposed to go to, A23, and then while Richard found us some seats in the holiday crowd I went off to the restroom and to buy us some orange juice while we waited.

It was awhile later that I pulled out my phone, which I’d already turned off in anticipation of my bags being overhead, turned it back on, and checked the time, wondering at my sense that it seemed to be taking a long time.

Wait. 5:22. Were we delayed? Wasn’t it supposed to leave at 5:30? The place was full of people but there was nobody actually lined up in our immediate area.

Richard hurried over to the counter to doublecheck and then came running back: yes it’s on time and we were at the wrong gate! They’re almost all boarded–run! “Good catch,” he said gratefully to me as we went down the gangway just in time.

We usually preboard: it’s very difficult neurologically for me to walk through tight, visually very busy spaces, they toss what’s left of my balance and make me stagger and hang on for dear life and with the bag thing going on too I don’t want to be very far from the restroom and I don’t want to break a hip getting to it. (Okay, and my 6’8″ husband likes not bruising his knees if he can get a seat at the front of the plane.)

We were well back in the plane because of our near-miss. I found seats on opposite sides of the aisle, but he said, no, let’s go a little further back to over there where there are still two side-by-side, and so we did that, settling down next to a young woman by the window.

And that is the only reason I ended up next to that nurse in training. We would never otherwise have even seen each other.  Along with the rest of the conversation, it was a comfort to her to know that our going to see Richard’s mother just before she passed had been a great joy and comfort then and since–that she was doing the right thing by going now.

I guess it was more important than I could guess that that whole thing happened, because I cannot fathom, other than the intervention of God, how it did. How neither my husband nor I took in the obvious fact that we had the A25 sign above our heads rather than A23. It just didn’t enter in. Neither of us got antsy over it when we found out, either, we just fixed the problem and were quite grateful we hadn’t missed our flight, in other words, we were emotionally prepared for all that followed without simple human stress tripping us up.

I wish I knew who she is so I could marvel together with her over how our meeting up came to be.

And on a more mixed note, John did a one-day drive for a two-day stay at home that was supposed to end in another one-day drive straight back to Salt Lake City on Monday. Only, the people he came in with went off to San Francisco on Saturday (while he was planting my cherry tree for me, among other helps around the house) …and they came back to find their car window smashed.

Along with several others parked along that block. New car. Nothing was stolen, nobody was hurt, just, they have to wait for an insurance adjuster to see it so a shop can get the okay to fix it and tomorrow’s a holiday and and and.

Looks like we get a few extra days enjoying our son’s company that none of us were expecting.

I’m very sorry they’re having to go through that terrible experience. And I am very much going to enjoy the extra time we suddenly get to have with him.

I like my blessings wrapped in nicer packages certainly than that one, but they come as they come.

We had a wonderful time at the lunch Thursday–but I would have given so much to have been able to stand outside in the bright summer sun afterwards and chat some more with Scott and his mom where the noise of the restaurant would have been a door behind us and he and I both could have heard better. There are moments where I highly regret my lupus. But it is what it is. And it was so joyful to see them. He sent us home with a collection of his photography, and he does such beautiful work. Alaska was well represented, and I hope someday to see some of it too–and I reminded him of the postcard he sent me from there when I was in the hospital the first time, of a sign warning no going beyond this point: bear danger.

A very large bear was leaning casually on the sign, all his world before his eyes.

We took Sam and her roommate Maria and Karen out to lunch yesterday as a final hurrah before the airport and then got home late last night, and on the first leg of the flight I sat next to someone who was clearly studying nursing.

Or maybe she was brushing up, but it’s always best to guess on the one side rather than the other, so when the plane landed and I could hear, I asked her if she were a nurse?

Oh, no, not yet, she said with a pleased smile, but she would be graduating in December.

Oh cool! I thanked her: “A nurse saved my life.” I told her I had been in the hospital with Crohn’s disease, I had had temporary diabetes on the IV steroids, and during a shift change a nurse I didn’t know had poked her head in the door in my room and gone, I don’t like the looks of you. She had checked my blood sugar: 32!  And falling.

Oh wow! said the young woman at that number.

I have heard from enough sources that it is hard in many workplaces to be a beginning nurse, and everyone has to start somewhere–so I wanted her to come into it knowing that the patients appreciate what she will do. I thanked her for going into nursing.

She was coming to see her dad…she hesitated…and her grandma for the last time. Her husband had told her to go, just go, and I could just picture a very young couple with no means really yet agonizing over the price of the plane ticket; she had flown from Columbus to San Diego via Baltimore, a long day but the cheapest flight. I chuckled; we were coming from Baltimore to San Jose via San Diego, same reason. A long day.

I told her we had flown in December to see my mother-in-law for the last time, that we’d had a wonderful visit and had been so glad we’d gone.

We had enough layover to grab a fruit smoothie from a vendor whose shop was right against the gate and get back on the next plane. I know, I know. But it is Richard and Kim’s anniversary this weekend so we will see them and Parker and Hudson next week, and our son John made the long drive home for this weekend because at the last minute some friends needed a fellow driver and back.

He is here now. We are home, too. Life is good.

Our neighborhood was built for young families.

Their children grew up, many moved away and we moved in, our youngest coming along a year later.

Our children grew up and now we have new young neighbors. And the ones who had been surrogate grandparents to our little ones back in the day threw a party tonight to welcome the new couples in and to reconnect the older ones, a gesture much appreciated all around.

I would love someone to tell me stories on our house, and we got to tell a few on the others’.

I asked our hostess about their magnificent old plum tree outside the window, whose crop they have shared so generously with us so many times, and this good woman whose children are just younger than we are said it was there when they got here. Whether it was supposed to have been a standard or a semi-dwarf, she didn’t know and I knew it didn’t matter; it simply was a gracefully grown, beautiful, leafy tree, and no matter how many plums the squirrels took, she said, there always seemed to be plenty.

My baby fruit trees aspire to the day. I  smiled, wondering who might be enjoying them 50 years from now: peaches, plums, will the old lemons still be there, cherries, apples, blueberries, too, now, and I still hope to put in a Comice pear. I aspire to pass along a bounteous place that will give our future owners much. (While I’m still at the stage of hoping for anything for us on everything other than the lemons.)

One of the newcomers asked the name of the type of tree we have out front: Bradford pear–but no pears? No, they are tiny wooden things barely the size of your smallest fingernail, but the flowers are beautiful, and as we stepped outside at the end, I looked next door at it and marveled at the memory vs the present. “It was a twig when we moved here. With two supports. And look at it now.”

And in between it went through this but this past March looked like this.

I can’t wait to see what they plant at this house and that house and to get to play surrogate grandparents to their future children, to see how everything grows up to be all over again.

(Side note: this site will be down for awhile today while the resident admin does some work on it. Back soon.)

Dropped off the drycleaning this afternoon.

I’ve been going to this one place for years, and the middle-aged woman who runs it always whips out that slip and writes down Hyde, A before I even say anything.

We bonded forever over the moment where, early 0n after I’d made it–

–okay, back up. Twenty-three years ago, when I was newly back into knitting as an antidote to all that my new lupus diagnosis threatened, after I got the use of my hands back after the first six months of the disease, I knitted my husband an aran. A big, cream, woolly, cabled aran. An aran with sleeves that he could fold the cuffs back on, a luxury in his eyes that had forever been denied him because of his height. This is what happens when you have to duck through doorways.

Most people are fingertip-t0-fingertip the same measurement as their height.

Back then, I didn’t trust myself to handwash a wool sweater without wrecking it, especially not after all that work (now I wouldn’t bat an eye) and I took that aran with the 78″ wingspan to that new-to-me-then drycleaner. I told her not to block it, having been warned (I think by my mom) that they would press all that glorious cablework flat forever otherwise.

Several years later, he’d worn it enough that it seemed time to get it cleaned again.

“Oh, *I* remember THIS sweater! she exclaimed, holding it out to her own arms’ length, which was a whole lot less than his–or mine, for that matter. She admired it, exclaimed over it, and oh! You MADE it?!

I never forgot that moment and I bet she didn’t either.

There was somebody new working with her today, and my friend whose name I somehow never found out seemed scattered and pulled in too many directions. Helping the kid back there with something he was asking her about, rushing back to me, finding out that no, those weren’t my shirts, oh, right, those were…she’d forgotten..she swept them into a bag and out of the way, apologizing, while I smiled, no, no, no problem.

She took a breath. All her attention was now on me. My husband’s suit? Monday, alright?

Is it possible to have it rushed by Saturday?

She was momentarily distracted and glancing away just then while trying hard not to be–but she had to–!

It was okay. Meantime, the new helper did not fall but inched ever so slowly, steadily closer, coming up on the left, holding tight to a laundry cart that suddenly seemed to need rubber stops on one side of the bottom just in case.

Saturday is fine; thank you very much!

She had to ask me my name, and that was a complete tipoff as to how overwhelmed she was feeling.

The woman I am guessing was her mother got ever so much closer to the counter on her slow way forward, her body so bowed that she could barely lift her head enough to make eye contact.

But you make eye contact with the customer and you greet them and she was determined.

And so this very tiny woman of about 90 whom I had never seen before at last looked me eye to eye and found me smiling. She raised one hand from the cart in cautious slow motion and carefully, gently, waved hi to me, and then her face blossomed into a smile at our shared sense of success.

She completely made my day. I will never forget it.

Darrin Bell wrote recently of taking care of his 94-year-old grandfather in his final weeks and what it was like to be with someone he loved so close to the other side, and in his comic strip he quoted his grandfather as saying, everything you do in life, you’ve got to be at your best.

I felt privileged to share a moment with a woman of about his grandfather’s age who was showing me how to do exactly that.

And I think, when I take the drycleaner slip back on Friday for the pickup, I will take a copy of this post in thanks. (Ed. to add–wait, I don’t want her to feel she’s lost face on the name thing; I’ll just tell them thank you.)

My late sister-in-law and I had our baby girls ten days apart 31 years ago and the girls have always been good friends.

Jessie and her husband came by for dinner tonight and while they were here, Sam called from across the country.

We chatted a moment and then I asked her if she wanted to talk to Jessie?

There was this sudden doubletake at the other end–Sam had forgotten her cousin had moved to California. And then an enthusiastic, YEAH! that made my day. People I love loving each other. It’s wonderful.

Parker bounced happily in all his little-boy-energy glory at getting to Skype with us; Hudson looked at the people-movement-and-speech on the screen with great big wide eyes. *Such* a beautiful baby. Our grandsons have *such* good parents. I love that I got to show them the flowers they’d sent.

I talked to my mom, John called, Michelle made the dinner, and a fine day was had by all. I know how lucky I am.

Hudson laughs…

The little peregrine eyas is back on the roof as of this afternoon,  drenched by Glenn so he would preen rather than blindly flee at his release; he has seen his brothers and they have looked up and seen him. Dude! Where ya been!

I took a ride in the Radio Flyer wagon! You’ll never believe it!

(Actually, he rode back up in the elevator in the traditional peregrine-baby-rescue apple box. Don’t know why it’s always an apple box. But it’s always an apple box.)

———

The area where they shaved my scalp for skin cancer surgery, July two years ago: I’ve been waiting a long time for that hair to grow back in, wearing it pulled back from my face in combs so the gaps wouldn’t show.And then there was that time last August where we had to whack a bit nice and close to free me from the back of the hair dryer when we were defrosting the freezer. (You might want to check to see if there’s a protective screen covering yours. The hair dryer, I mean. I’ve heard from half a dozen people now who’ve had the same thing happen.)

It was time. My friend Nina’s daughter Gwyneth is a gifted stylist, the only person I would ever go to for as long as she may live around here, and I made an appointment for last Friday, showed her how things were at this point, and asked her help.

It’s still a little below the shoulders in back–I gotta do my earth mother/artiste thing–but it’s a lot shorter; she did a fabulous job and I am very very happy with how it came out. I keep looking at this one spot (and that one and that one), thinking, how did you DO that? How did you get that to behave exactly perfectly in the pattern it was going to curl into once it was shorter?

All of this is of no real importance to anybody but me, but I wanted to record it so I could go back later and see when that cut was. Also because I know how hard it is to find someone you absolutely trust with your hair, and if anyone around here is looking, everybody I know who’s ever gone to her has had the same reaction: Gwyn is absolutely the best.

Parker has taken to photobombing when the camera points at his little brother. Smile! (Didn’t go through. Will have to use stand-ins here for now.)

Does anyone else remember not just playing marbles, but trying to have the prettiest ones, so you would finally get Mom’s permission and watchful eye and go simmer them on the stove–no boiling, it’s always a risk but still you don’t want a million shattered bits of glass in her pot, just those clear marbles with the thin twist of colors down the center, making them leap into crackly patterns surrounded by transparency, breakdancing into kaleidoscopes within while staying smooth and round on the surfaces. Hopefully. The final objects were never a sure thing till they were safely cooled off and done.

Woke up this morning with the mental image of my eyes close to the stove from my then-height, standing staring intently (and a little bit bored) at those small glass balls, watching the tiny bubbles forming and slooowly separating from the sides of the pan but no big airholes allowed to form (keep that heat down), waiting for the marbles to become more colorful, done just so. They took a very long time at that age and a steady concentration.

Haven’t thought of those in…! But it suddenly seems like it was early training for appreciating the steady click, click, click process that is knitting, keeping the stitches bubbling steadily up. Sometimes with a cooling-off after the finish to realize that no, I didn’t mess it up and yes this IS gorgeous.

I not only coveted my oldest sister’s prettier-than-anybody’s marbles (which is what got me to beg and plead for that one session at the stove), I wanted to be able to sound like her too, like, yesterday, at the piano, and I remember her playing Fur Elise. A lot. That one seemed simple enough to aspire to–well, the first part of it, anyway. I started lessons the last year she took them.

I just didn’t quite get to this point in that first year, though. These guys had way too much fun. Don’t miss the picture frame falling down and the window shimmying.

If you haven’t read this piece about creating a little unexpected peace on earth, I highly recommend it.

Meantime, we had a bit of drama in falcon land (link goes to the cam) today. The San Jose eyases are quickly shedding the last of their baby down as their feathers come in, their coloring darkening by the day–but their flight feathers are not in yet. They’ve got about a week to go. Eric’s photos from Saturday here.

They’ve been exercising their wings and gradually picking up on the idea. First you jump up to the lower ledge, then get down from that scary place with a whole big new world way, way down there and go huddle in the corner with your siblings, face to the nice solid wall. Later you slightly lift off (in surprise) as you flapflapflap running down the runway, your talons dragging low, not quite entirely willing to give up concrete places, then as those flight feathers keep coming in and your shoulders get stronger and your feet are tucking up better you take that huge leap of faith and reach the upper ledge your parents so often come and go from–or you miss on the first try, oops, as one of them did once.

And then at last you start keeping the fledge watchers on their toes.

They’re not assembled yet. The babies have only been reaching the lower ledge for a few days  now.

Clara brought in food this afternoon, and one of the young got so excited he raised his wings for joy halfway down the runway, flappercized some more towards that low ledge–and poof, he was gone.

There were some stiff winds going on and one had simply picked him up and flung him off.

The cameras panned everywhere. No sign.

To quote the children’s book, Are You My Mother, “Down down down. It was a long way down.”

About a dozen volunteers immediately jumped in their cars and drove in to look for him.

Every year posters go up around City Hall and San Jose State University and the big library at that corner describing fledge watch and whom to report to and what to do should one see a downed baby peregrine falcon. Regulars around there know the annual drill well, and when I’ve been there, people on the sidewalk were always pointing out the babies standing on the upper ledge and the parents taking off and landing, 18 stories up.

I’m told they’re very loud and command attention, helping that outreach effort. I hope this year to actually hear that for myself with the new hearing aids.

And so 90/P–the annual schoochildren’s naming contest isn’t even over yet, all the little guy has is his band number–was found by a passerby who knew to call but not touch. He’d landed on a parking garage. Wildlife rescue got the word, who told the biologist who’d helped bring the species back from the brink.  Glenn Stewart jumped in his car and drove up from Santa Cruz.

The little one is too young to release to the roof to flutter down into the box; he does need those flight feathers, and it’s blowing a good one out there. And so Glenn is taking care of him at home till the wind is predicted to calm down in a few days, having everything needed on hand; in the sky kennel, the baby bird won’t know he’s being fed by a human, and Clara will have no problem taking care of him when he gets put back up at the roof.

He took quite a tumble but birditude and sheer good luck won out and he’s fine and he’s safe. And in the best of hands.

Object in distance is larger than it appears.

Went back to the audiologist this morning. Got the base turned down some more and that did it at last: the new molds finally sounded as exquisitely perfect as the old, and with no dangers of feedback. YAY! Happy dance, happy dance. John told me he aspired to make that much of a difference to all his patients the way those aids have given so much back to me.

Chatted with other-John at Los Gatos Birdwatcher and picked up some seed as long as I was down there, got to share my enthusiasm at being able to hear some of the birds again. More happy times.

On the way home, a large blue rubber mat flipped up from under the wheels of the car in front of me on the freeway. I had this sudden just-a-blink to think, wait, I just had perfect, I have to have more time than that to enjoy the perfect in.

There was no way to dodge.

I slowed enough that it had time to head back downwards and under (I thought) rather than up against my windshield; phew. I glanced in the rearview expecting to see it. Didn’t. Wondered, noted the traffic might be blocking my view of it, kept glancing, kept thinking that distinctive pool-water blue should surely show up back there.  Remembered my dad and the similarly-encountered box. (Haven’t I blogged that? It caught on fire under the gas tank. I was ten. Dad pulled over, raced back there and pulled it out and stomped it out and only then said, marveling in response to our relief, I didn’t know it was there.) Prayed.

There was no real place to pull over.  The sound wall was right up against the breakdown lane and I’m going to open my door right into the traffic? No.

The guy behind me had pulled a good ways back, and he stayed there and nobody zipped in in front of him. I noted the sign: next exit a mile and a half. Eventually he pulled into the middle lane, sped up next to me, and looked pointedly down.

Right. I was going to pull off there anyway.

At the bottom of the ramp there was a light just ahead so the oncoming traffic would be slowing if not stopping, and behold, a pullout bulbout for utility trucks. Perfect and ohthankyou.

I got out. It fell to the ground. It was someone’s water toy, far as I could tell, a foam rubber chaise lounge–broken now. Well, gee, so sorry about that as I snapped its picture, pulled it into the dirt and got back in my car, safe now, and snapped another picture–if anything’s wrong with my car I want to be able to prove I did indeed meet up with Pool-onius Thunk.

Everything seems to be peachy fine. Just one of those weird things.