Woke up worse, Richard hauled me to the doctor, I got put on antibiotics. One single pill so far. I’m by no means cured but I’m so much better (and yes I will faithfully take every last pill for ten days–I can’t fathom not.) I managed to do my taxes start to finish, with a lie-down as needed. Done!

And saw the Cooper’s hawk swoop in. He missed.

He danced around from point to point on the roof of the shed, searching; it looked like he snatched a bug popping up–that’s a first to me–and strode from there well into a tree to flush out whoever might be hiding, twigs brushing his tall shoulders as he went. Nada. He was antsy and in a hurry and I wondered if he had little ones newly hatched or about to hatch? I couldn’t remember when I’d seen him quite so jumpy like that. And I know the San Jose peregrines are scheduled to hatch in the next day or two, and those parents likewise are restless as they listen to the early peeps from inside their eggs.

He swooped in again a few hours later, scattering the finches to the winds; pursued one that got away, but meantime in the surprise of the ambush one went the other direction–into the elephant ears on the patio rather than the trees. They almost always go for the trees. This one didn’t.

Then it thought better of it and tried to flee again, again in the wrong direction, and bounced off the window. It was close by so there was not enough momentum to do it much harm. But. It made that bird on glass sound.

And the hawk knew it.  He came straight back and hopped through the amaryllis leaves, a pot on the table at a time, one, then two, then three, closer, closer. Then he stood on the rim of the nearest (I was glad it had been watered so it could take the weight without flipping him–a heavy pot, too, he lucked out), looking that finch dead in the eye from a distance of about a hawk’s length. Toast: it’s what’s for dinner.

After endless moments of standing there frozen, the house finch had to at least try, and they suddenly sped out of sight with the hawk gaining on it fast. And I thought, I get the drama without the gore, somehow, yet again.

Meantime, in San Francisco, where their falcon nest was a few days ahead of ours, a new female peregrine fought off the resident one a few weeks ago and ousted her. The male was at incubation stage, so he had no interest in mating with her as she claimed him and his territory. But he had this perfect nesting box in the best spot and she wanted it.

Gradually she started trying to mimic him, sitting on the eggs as if they were so many more rocks in the scrape. Scattered them to get comfy. She kicked one out of the box and paid it no-never-mind. She would sit but whether there were eggs under her or not was incidental; the hormones that flow from the mating just hadn’t happened. Gradually she came to sit more directly on them but not in incubation stance–she couldn’t, really, because another part of that hormonal flow is the falling out of feathers in an area called the brooding patch, which becomes a warming spot with swollen blood vessels for the eggs to nestle under. She did start holding a wing out to the side over them. Doesn’t work that way.

The eggs should have hatched three days ago and there is a near-zero chance of them still coming out, for all the male’s valiant attempts in all this time. She would fly in and he would fly out as if exchanging nest duty, but…

So many questions were raised and answered. Yes, the two might mate after Dan finally gives up on those eggs, but who knew when that would be? Nobody had permission to remove them. If it happened soon, they could start over before it’s too late in the season, but eventually the stench of the failed ones would make them abandon that nest for now.

Or something.

And then today to everybody’s extreme surprise, she laid an egg! Right there with the others!

If they create the usual clutch of four it’s going to be interesting seeing if they try to cover up all seven.

There has never since a hundred years ago been enough peregrines still alive to find out much of what happens after territorial oustings.  With the help of nestcams this is all new for the learning.

Robin, looking out on snow in the town we moved here from, was wishing for signs of spring. We’ve got a few to share.

We have the most glorious view out our front windows, with the leaves beginning to come in in contrast to the bright white. Coming home from Trader Joe’s this evening, I scooped up a handful of petals that had somehow clustered on the far side of the driveway, wondering at the thought that I don’t think I’ve ever actually paid much attention to how they felt, not just how they looked.

They were so very soft–and cool to the touch. That surprised me. I’ve joked here before about them becoming our snowdrifts as more and more come down, but in the brisk evening air I expected my hand to feel warmed by being covered in them and in the immediate moment the opposite was so.

Cool.

I let them scatter while they still felt like the ice crackles they looked like.

And behold in the back yard after years and years of wanting to grow these and finally starting to: our very first ever actual peach!

Every now and then I learn something new and what to do/avoid/change related to the ileostomy of four years ago.

Saturday I did not realize I’d somehow gotten a little of the adhesive that’s not supposed to come off but did on my finger–and then in my hair. Bubblegummish. How did that…?!

I tried what I knew how to do, and then Richard got some medical adhesive remover that he had. My alcohol pads had done nothing but the little squares of reeky whatever-it-was of his melted the stuff right out of there–and it suddenly hit me and I looked up and asked him as I patted around the top of my forehead, “That didn’t take out my hair, too, did it?”

He looked at me wide-eyed a moment and then thought out loud, “No. It doesn’t take the hair off my arm when I’ve had to use it, it should be fine.”

And then I tried to wash the citrus oils that were in it out. And the stink. Tried again. It helped some but far from enough, but at least I think he was right about the hair. I later ran my head under the kitchen sink on impulse briefly to try one more time to get away from that smell.

I set the time for the alarm last night a little early so I could shampoo it a good one in the morning and be done with it. I would have done it then, but I was knitting every last row of baby blanket I could before bed.

Forgot to set the actual alarm. Richard was staying home with a cold so his was off.

And so it was that I had to run to church at the last moment with weird-stinky, oily, total bedhead. At least the extra sleep would diminish the chances of my catching his cold.

And guess who showed up. Old friends whose baby is a senior in high school now, wow! Look who’s here! They happened to be visiting from Oregon and it was so wonderful to see them. I was completely in the moment as we caught up a bit: how are you, how are the kids, and I told their daughter who didn’t remember me, “Welcome home!” She grinned back shyly, holding her mom’s hand and twisting halfway behind her as she considered the thought. The oldest towered over us. Who knew.

And I came home and looked in the mirror.

Oh my. A lot worse than I thought.

What a blessing it is that our inability to see our own faces when we’re out and about helps us forget and get over ourselves sometimes when we need it.

(And then I took that shower. Only a whiff of orange since.)

Just a picture to show why Richard and his dad didn’t think they’d have to do anything more to the 50-year-old apple tree when they cut it down: surely the last bit would just rot away.

There’s a whole tree grown now above where they left it, balanced really well somehow over that gaping hole, and anybody familiar with what January ’09 was like for me while I tried to get used to that new number 50 on my hospital bracelet will understand why it so appeals to me that this tree that was expected to be gone grew  back to productive life: can you just see the darkened ballet shoe in the gap? Dance!

How did I not know this?!

Okay, we need Muddy Waters playing a soundtrack in the background as I type this.

In all the conversations across all the years, and even with the worries of the San Bruno pipeline that blew up up north running within a few hundred feet of our house (they dug up around the corner here after the explosion at the other end). When the water main broke in ’08 on suddenly-perfectly-named River Road at the back of the neighborhood I grew up in in Maryland, in front of the side street friends of mine still live on, creating such a whitewater that people on their way to work and school had to be rescued from their cars by helicopter. All those times.

He never mentioned it.

Or maybe he did years and years and even more years ago (I mean, I’ve known the guy since I was about a week old) but he just never really described it and it didn’t sink in for me?

I told him this morning that my friend Robin had had to go the long away around on an errand because of another water main near River, and that there had been a big break yesterday on Connecticut Avenue, too.

Which runs alongside his old neighborhood.

“Did it make a big hole in the ground?” Something about the way he asked that sounded odd: there was a sudden tightness in his voice.

“A huge hole!”

“Yeah, they do that.” He sounded like he knew, no, really knew, which had me looking quizzical, and that, finally, is how his story  came out.

He had been a teenager, running errands with the family car that day; everybody parallel parks on the steep hill that is his folks’ old street, there are only a few driveways on the other, flatter side, none, theirs. Turn the wheels to the curb at 10007 and walk up the steep steps to the door.

He noticed some utility workers. Top of the street, bottom of the street, with his folks’ house about halfway down. Turns out there was a water leak somewhere and they were trying to find it.

Turns out it was under his car.

Turns out the jackhammer, when they tried there, simply fell downwards–not through and vanishing, but, there was nothing for it to hammer against. They sent a rod down in the spot and swished it around: no resistance.

There was no there there anymore.

“I was right there!” And sending vibrations and pressure down again and again as he’d driven in and out, parked and pulled out and parked, oblivious.

And so that area was cleared out, everybody thanked their lucky stars nobody had fallen through the sinkhole from the water erosion, and it was a huge mess to have a giant hole where the street had been till it could all be fixed.  But everybody was safe.

Thank heavens for those Maryland utility workers who were aware of the sensors or whatever it was that had tipped them off and that they followed up on it.

(Edited to add: After Don and Debbie wondered, I asked, and Richard says they asked him to move the car so they could test there–and then went holy cow, and got everybody to move their cars out of there.  They had been testing for eight hours at that point and it had been gushing hard under the surface for at least a day and there was just nothing left underneath.)

Glenn Stewart just published a book! The biologist whose lifework has been to bring iconic raptor species back from the brink. And I already know the guy can write well. Kindle version so far, and I can only imagine the squinting of the person who said he was reading it on his Iphone, but as soon as we find our Kindle I’ll be reading it too.

And in the meantime.

I kept kicking myself for feeling zero interest in working on the baby afghan this afternoon. I should be putting it first and foremost–and I did want to knit, but not that, and instead found myself picking up the hat I’d been working on at the lupus group meeting yesterday, trying to finish it before knit night.

Didn’t quite make it.

With the one-car situation, I only made the last hour at Purlescence. (They have my book. I sign them. Just mentioning, like I do occasionally.)

And so for forty-five minutes or so I worked those last repeats and decreases. Bound off. Managed to work the ends in far enough with my knitting needles after coming up empty for an eye-of-a- type.  Checked my keys: nope, I’d taken my little Swiss knife off them last time I went traveling and never did remember to put it back on. Well, then.

And with that I walked across the room to Danette, who’d been far enough away that we hadn’t exchanged a word the whole time–I’m too deaf to even try from that far in a noisy room–and thanked her again for the ride home from Stitches. Baby alpaca/merino/cashmere, says I as I’m grinning and walking away while her eyes are up to the ceiling and her jaw down to the ground and the whole room lights up.

Y’know, there’s this whole inner issue of do something quietly, not for show. But dang was it fun just the way it was.

Danette’s got a little girl who’s just starting to be verbal, and so as we walked out at the 9:00 bell I turned to her where she had the hat happily on her head and those two yarn ends hanging down her shoulder, picked one up a moment and pronounced, You’re dribbling.

She guffawed.

Who knew that blueberry flowers look like bluelessberries?

Ellen is the friend who asked to borrow the autoharp, and late this afternoon, her husband called and asked if he could swing by to pick it up?

Sure!

Allen showed up with the baby in his arms and daughter and son in tow of about three and five. It had been eight years since they’d moved out of our ward so that we no longer got to see them at church every week. I hadn’t met the little ones.

The five-year-old wanted to show me why that autoharp was going to be appreciated for the week it would be at their house. He sang me three verses of a song; I smiled my biggest grandma smile. How often do I get to be serenaded by small happy people? The baby thought this was great and grinned back.

Then the middle child needed to give it her all, too, and she sang me a wobbly I Am A Child of God.  Sweetie, you most definitely are. So cute.

The big brother had another go at it, and all the while I was standing in my doorway ready to walk the autoharp to the car because the dad’s arms were full, while the sun–late sun, but sun–was beaming in.

They had no way to know.  I kept expecting it to be over while not wanting it to be over and the dad needed to be on his way, so coming in awhile wasn’t happening. Had it been noon, I would have said something, but at that hour, I hoped the risk was small–after all, I would be out in another half hour or hour snapping quick photos of my blueberries and plum tree, right?

The little girl held my hand as we went to their car. She asked as she climbed up into her carseat if I would come with them? But no.

We had made friends. I am utterly charmed.

The August Pride peach blooms on, the Babcock joins in.

Back when our older children were babies and toddlers, Richard wanted an autoharp. I had my piano, but he wanted to have something he could play too.

He and I had both had a county music teacher who traveled to our elementary schools and taught us songs to sing while she played one, the happiest part of the schoolweek. Probably the same teacher. Fond memories for both of us.

Autoharps were not found in great abundance in southern New Hampshire in the early 80’s.

And yet somehow we found one. It had been a public-school music teacher’s–perfect!–offered up now at a music store an hour west in a small picturesque old New England town near the Vermont border.

The place was magical. Stepping stones for our oldest to jump along on cleared the way through the last bits of snow scattered about the melting winter’s earth, taking us up to the door of an old building at the top of the hill amongst the trees; inside it was warm with old wood shelves and walls and age and stories to tell.

The shopkeeper hefted and opened the slightly battered case with affection, telling us of this autoharp’s history, glad to see it go to a young family that would appreciate it.

Our kids have grown. The instrument has been quiet awhile now.

I got an email today and forwarded it to Richard at work: a young mom was looking to borrow an autoharp for a week while doing some volunteering in the schools, and if she could buy one, all the better; did anyone know where to find one?

I struggled to remember the name of that shop in that small old town in the mountains in a land far, far away. I wondered if it had continued to remain through the years.

We would not sell. But we could share.

She thinks she has a lead on one to buy, now, but we are her backup plan in case it falls through.

Richard came home from work, and, after dinner, having had it pull at him ever since her query, pulled that battered case out, improved with further age only in our own eyes. He found the tuner. He worked at it awhile then strummed quietly, remembering the chords, the fingering, the sequences.

He came into the kitchen behind me at one point and the music was infectious by now, the only possible response to dance for the joy of making music together again, for all the memories, for making new ones right here right now.

But our outer cases are getting a bit older, too, (Mom and Dad: I can hear you guffawing) and at some point I sat down over here, he sat down in there, and as he continues to play and I continue to listen I write this down for Parker and his little brother and all the other grandchildren to come.

Parker’s parents say with a cheerful smile that they have forgiven us for giving him a Christmas present that was a roll-out plastic pad like the old Twister game, only the picture was not rows of colored dots but of a piano keyboard. Which does indeed play the notes little boys might have fun stomping on to create their own tunes. Make a joyful noise unto the Lord all ye lands!

Start’em young and watch them blossom.

Heard today during a heartfelt talk at church: “We all have the capacity to do more good than we have the capacity to know.”

Eric’s photos of the San Jose peregrines of late, here.  Four eggs are humming along in the nestbox just out of sight over that ledge.

While we were at my audiologist’s on Friday, the guy talked to the manufacturer of my hearing aids. I had bought wires for the things a goodly while ago, they had been a frustration, we tried it with a bluetooth unit, they still didn’t work, they were useless. They plugged into my Iphone at the other end and the idea of being able to listen to music etc on it like everybody else was so, so–if only!–and all they did was turn off all sounds to everything when I tried. So that I was suddenly wearing $6400 earplugs. Was there anything else we could try.

With right and left plugged into his setup, I saw him say, Oh, okay, and he hung up the phone. He turned to his screen and added a new program.

Richard ran an errand this morning and came home and said, “This is cute.”

“What is?”

“This,” and he held out the new bluetooth unit to go with those wires and I, to my surprise, answered, “Oh, that’s cute!”

And then we plugged the wires into my ears.

And then he walked to the far end of the house, dialing my cellphone. Which had always told those wires, You are dead to me.

Even in speakerphone mode, I have never been able to carry on a conversation with my Iphone. Ever.

His voice sounded higher pitched than in real life but it was clear as a bell. Every word. I about burst into tears. Wow!

Richard said I should call my folks. I reached for the more audible landline out of sheer habit mixed with a little disbelief.

“No, on your cellphone!”

I called them in celebration and had to work at hearing Mom–same old same old–only, since I wasn’t in speaker mode nobody else could fill me in on what she was saying. But I got about half of it. On a cellphone!

It felt like the moment I looked up at a chandelier in a quiet room in a grand old building here not long after we moved to California, and having been entranced in church by the glass of one dancing to its own neverending tunes it was creating in the air currents when I was a child, observing the lightplay in the now-silenced-to-me one all these years later, to my astonishment my brain filled in every sound. It still knew. I heard the chandelier of my childhood again, brilliant and beautiful and alive again.

Talking on a cellphone. It felt like that.

One other thing about Saturday: after the oven shopping, Richard thought, and I happily agreed, that, hey, it would be cool to go for an ice cream about now.

This is a rare impulse for us.

We had no idea where such a shop might be in the town we were in and neither of us felt like walking through the mall that was back thataway.

I fiddled with my phone a moment–how do you get Siri to come up again? I’d been able to hear her in the Verizon store’s demo when I bought the phone, but in real life, not so much. And Siri doesn’t come with closed captions. (Wait. If she actually does, tell me quick!)

But I knew how to get to the local Whole Foods from where we were and so we headed there for some single-serving Ben and Jerry’s. Not quite the same, but. Happened to pass a frozen yogurt shop on the way, actually, but didn’t pull in there but just kept going. Huh.

Found a cart out of habit, and, walking in the door, while Richard turned left towards the freezers I found myself turning right into the bakery section–I realized afterwards in order to have a moment to observe out of the corner of my eye before deciding. Reached for a vegan doughnut to bring home to Michelle, put it in my cart, found I did have the courage by that point, and went back a few steps left and stopped a man a moment.

A new veteran, was my guess. Maybe thirty at most. Not much past the entryway but standing in place, staring at the store laid out before him. Tall, muscular,  close-cropped hair, with a hard-looking face fiercely clenching an unlit cigar in angry defiance of all the preppy-health-obsessed-self-righteous-overprivileged-lifestyle and sticker shock that Whole Paycheck can be to some. (Though it’s great for people with food allergies.)

And coming from his hand was a cane with four very small walker feet at the bottom, like a child’s toy of the grandpa’s version. The cane itself, though, was an unexpectedly beautiful piece of woodwork for something with such a Medicare-suggesting end.

Mine, though nowhere near as nice as his, was carved and stained in two colors of varnished wood candycaning around each other. With the usual thick ugly black rubber tip.

I lifted it a little and looked up into his eyes, and because of what was in my hand, he was willing to meet mine.

“If you’ve got to use’em, might as well be a nice one,” and I complimented him on the woodwork in his.

His face changed entirely. He almost laughed but for that cigar he wasn’t about to let fall.

I don’t know who he was. I knew in my bones he needed that moment and that that’s why we had had to go there, and so, turns out I needed that moment too and didn’t even know it till afterwards.

Annnnd… (after the transmission and the water heater last week.)

We need a new double oven.

Lesson learned for the day: always go in in person and see how they feel as well as look. Richard pulled on the handle of one to see the inside and there was a seam in the metal on the back side of the thing, flimsy and rough. On a $2000 oven!

What I’d really like is to tell the manufacturers to ditch the electronics and go back to dials. Plain and simple and far more durable than just-past-warranty. There were some with dials, for hundreds of dollars more, but they were all faking it–the ubiquitous motherboards hide inside. $850 a motherboard part per oven plus labor was the repair quote we got on ours. And now you know why they all make them that way: how else could you get a couple to want a third double oven in 20 years? Electronics in major appliances are the Wall Street derivatives of the industry.

The good part is, one of the stores we went to was Lowe’s and on the way out the door was a candy aisle for grownups:  spring seed packets.  A dollar twenty-eight, a marvelous antidote to sticker shock, and a thousand potential Burpee’s Big Boy tomatoes all packed in those tiny brown dots in there. I haven’t tried tomatoes from seed since we lived in New Hampshire and the poison ivy lurking in the woods somehow climbed and claimed them.

And on a happier note–I loved reading this story. A group of blood donors, asked to regularly contribute to keep a baby alive, who continued to do so month after month; “the John Muir baby,” that was all they knew.

For five years.

And then he lucked out on a bone marrow match, was cured of his vanishingly rare blood disease, and his mother wanted to thank all those unknown good people.

Four of them came. And so they got to meet the little kindergartner whose life they had saved, again and again and again, month by month by dogged, determined, meaningful but anonymous month. To meet that burst of real, happy energy that was all boy and a part of them always.

To life!

We have friends selling a ’99 black S80 Volvo. It’s a beautiful, beautiful car.

We have an ’00 Minivan Of Doom (per my kids) that, after all the money we have sunk into it, ungratefully blew through most of its transmission and an axle not to mention the crack that is now all the way across the bottom of the windshield and the side door that, the third time the kids crunched it in while they were learning to drive, we gave up on it. T’ain’t pretty. I have babied it, I have kept that transmission going for over four years since it first started grumbling but its time has come.

The mileage was high on the Volvo (183k, yow) but the car “is in good shape, as far as I know,” said the owner, showing us a tall stack of yellow mechanic’s reports from over the years. And his price was less than the estimate on my van.

So I took it to my mechanic, who was dubious over those miles and for $47.50 gave it a good checking out for me.

Always take it to a mechanic.

Turns out the estimate on their car was within a few hundred of their asking price and the minivan suddenly doesn’t look so bad; I finally asked what my windshield would cost–$225?! Is that all? Why didn’t I do that long ago? and I gave our friends their car back. Reluctantly.

So for $47.50, I came away grateful for what I have and my friends have the favor done them of knowing exactly what they’re dealing with and my mechanic had a little extra pocket change for the day. Everybody wins.

And now I will still have a car after all that is big enough to haul all the stuff out of here that’s going to go away after the Great Closet Crash of Saturday’s flooding.

But I admit to a mixture of keen disappointment with that sampling of gratitude.  It was not new (well, the detailing was) but that wood-burled heated-leather-seat side-impact-airbags sunroofed-but-my-tall-Richard-could-still-fit-in (that was a first) Volvo, it was a beautiful, beautiful car.

“And I’m not talking about the nonmechanical things, like the sunroof that won’t open,” said my mechanic.

“I have lupus–I’m not opening the sunroof,” I countered.

But it would be cool to know I could if I wanted.

“Are you disappointed?” I asked my sweetheart.

“Yeah,” he admitted. He liked that Volvo too.

Sam saved the day and picked me up again this morning. Go Sam!

Usually, when I go to Stitches, I zip around the whole place, chat, see who’s got what, avoid temptation for the first day and figure there’s less around to buy the second day so I’m safer that way, right?

I’m torn between guilt, minor innocence, and being really glad I bought the yarns I did my first day this time, which were not a lot but which I really love and can’t wait to knit–because I didn’t know and the car transmission was bad enough, but today…!

We woke up to no hot water. None.

Richard was wondering whether the pilot (is there a pilot on that thing?) had gone out and was about to get to it to check at the time Sam came.

I had a grand day at Stitches all over again. It was Saturday, lots of people were there, friends I’d been looking forward to seeing. Got a few texts from Richard–we’re working hard here. Hot water heater blew. Plumber wants $1400–and I bought not one single ball of yarn.

And all the while I was reassuring myself that the last time this happened, it flooded out the master closet and the laundry room that it sits between, so the whoever-he-was plumber had charged us extra to set it up so that should it go out again, it would drain to outside. Far easier to deal with.

Towards closing time, I was chatting with Rod and Lisa Souza again and a friend of theirs they introduced me to, Heatherly Walker. Heatherly got to asking me about my pattern writing; did I use any software?

No, I just hash it out on my own.

Was I interested?

Did she know of any good ones?

Sure! and she told me about how she and her husband had come up with what she’d wished were out there so that now it was, and she told me a bit about it as she reached for a copy in her backpack.

I had visions of transmission and plumber estimates dancing in my head as I asked her how much I owed her.

A direct quote: “Nothing! I LOVE your book!”

(Jaw. On. Ground.) Wow. Thank you!!!

I talked to Melinda and Tess at Tess’ Designer Yarns, and I apologized for my lack of buying this year; I so love their yarns. Next year, as I explained why.

They offered me to just have a skein of yarn, whatever yarn. Everybody at some point has a week like mine had been; they wanted to make it easier. I thanked them but told them hey, they have to make a living. (And there will be more customers who might want it tomorrow, so.) But I very much appreciated their generosity, and I love the softness and the colors in their yarns and I wanted to give them a shout-out here. Good folks.

Time to go. Richard was stuck with the plumber. Sam had something else going on but still offered to come get me, good man that he is. I told some of my Purlescence friends and they conferred: when Dannette’s husband arrived, Kevin and other-Richard lifted the scooter into her minivan. Dannette had been about to go out to dinner with the others but they all decided to work around taking care of me (they invited me too but I was just too tired and too broke) and Dannette, her husband, and adorable baby drove me the ten miles home.

The plumber who had set the water heater in a pan with tall sides and an overflow pipe to outside? Balderdash. That pipe was spraying all over the inside of the heater enclosure nonstop as more water pumped in, which is why Richard sloshed through standing water going past the closet after I left. Michelle helped him try to rescue our things.

At some moment of stupidity in my life I had put some of our older family photos back in there. He thinks they’re dryable.

There was a zipped cotton bag on the floor full of handknit sweaters: the infamous 86″ wingspan Aran I made him when I was newly back into knitting 23 years ago, the cabled Kaffe Fassett in llama where every half of every cable is a different color against a background of navy (wet, and next to that white aran, and I haven’t been able to bring myself to inspect the aran quite closely quite yet), the handspun handknit baby alpaca/silk cardigan with the wooden buttons, five other handknit ones…

A pound of 90/10 cashmere/nylon cobweb weight that I’d bought at $15/lb years ago, pounds and pounds, and had plied a lot of it up into thicker yarns; nope, still had a cone back there. The bag was wet but the yarn seems okay.

And on and on. We are running the washer nonstop. If it was near the floor, it’s wet.

I wonder if homeowners will replace that wall?

(Edited to add in the morning: the white aran seems to be okay. Phew.)

Correction, Monday morning: I got the details wrong. It was the *top* of the water heater, somehow, that rusted out and was spewing at the wall. The plumber’s setup was good for your much more typical failure, and the new guy made good use of it.

It’s not even Stitches yet and I’m exhausted. Got up early, drove everybody to work, ran the errands, did the dentist thing, had my fob fall off my keyring and had some stressed minutes retracing my steps with help from the good folks at Trader Joe’s till I found the rest–and at dinnertime got a surprise of a note from a friend saying he’d hesitated to say anything because you don’t want to jinx a friendship if something goes wrong, but he knew we needed a car and as far as *he* knew, his was in great shape, just old…

And he’d just bought a new one to celebrate a new job.

He was asking less than our van’s estimate. If only we’d known sooner.

It was gorgeous. And a tight fit for my 6’8″ husband, who didn’t want to test drive it with a migraine but was willing to sit in it and let me drive it and fall in love with it. Volvo makes nice vehicles. It’s got a ton of miles, I wouldn’t use it for a major commuter car like our friend did but then I only putter around a bit–and Michelle will be doing her own car shopping Saturday.

Quite reasonably, Richard didn’t want to pay for a car till he had actually driven it. And I have Stitches the next few days and another couple is (as one should) taking it to a mechanic tomorrow to have it checked out: the only way to be sure we could claim it was to hand over a check on the spot. With regrets on the unintended, unwanted pressure.

I think that quite reasonably means we won’t get it, but it was a nice dream. At least now we know there are possibilities out there.

And did I mention the battery on my scooter for Stitches, after lo these many months of my testing the scooter and not keeping it plugged in because the batteries need to be run down and of running it deliberately downwards, doublechecking the charging, and of the scooter being fine, is being iffy only starting today? Not last week, not Monday, not all those times in the whole year when I tried to keep it babied so it would behave when I needed it, just and only today? That needle dips into the yellow warning when I go halfway across the house. It’s supposed to stay firmly, solidly green. It did it did it did it did and now it doesn’t.

What could I do? Tomorrow’s the day, so, I plugged it back in and could only hope it would recharge all the way just because, please oh please, oh pretty please, I need it to.

——

(Edited in the morning to add, after the first few comments were already in: as we were going go bed, Richard said, Try unplugging and replugging.

I did, twice.

Try again; couldn’t hurt.

I did, and that time found out that the cable between the chair and the power box plugs in to both of those, it’s not built into the power box side like I thought. Guess what had come loose? Saved! That seems to have done it.