“The oil light flickered on in your car, Mom, just as it was stalling out.”

And so Richard drove an extra almost two hour commute time today to take her to work and then to his own office and later back while I took my car in. I haven’t driven it in a long time, and it felt very sluggish going those few blocks to the mechanic. I walked home and waited to hear.

The engine is fine.

The transmission is toast, and so is one axle. The car is an ’00 with 116k miles.

Stitches West is this weekend, the one time a year I need a minivan and the only reason we still have it: so that I can set up the ramp for the electric scooter.

You put a hundred fifty vendors of balls of yarn and thousands of people in one convention center with someone who had the connections between the balance and visual centers of the brain severed by a speeder, and you have the neurologist who looked at that five-day brain EEG and warned me, “You’re not epileptic yet–but you’re real. close.”

My balance is tactile and visual and when the visuals are on extreme overload and I’m trying to walk through it my brain feels like water droplets skittering across a smoking pan. Scooter. Period. Not worth the risk.

You can take the machine apart and put the pieces in the trunk of a car but the heaviest part still weighs 60 pounds; I wrote on Facebook, I can’t ask anyone to do that.

Jasmin says that Sam offered. I wrote back that I already had the manufacturing cream bought to make a chocolate torte in thanks.

And I’m quietly marveling over that: with no plans in mind, and certainly not with any idea of what was about to happen with the car, I had splurged and bought some at Milk Pail on Saturday. Because it just felt like I needed to be able to make chocolate tortes right now. It wouldn’t be anywhere near what I owe in thanks, given how much going to Stitches means to me and what his generosity does, too, but it’s a start.

Our beautiful spring weather–it was 72F on Saturday–is gone. Alaska who pushed it away and it’ll get back to us later.

I woke up this morning and refused to believe it and put on two layers of 3/4 sleeves, the second a fairly warm sweater and only because I had to.

That should do it.

But no.  I got out the wool knee-highs.  It’s not winter! Stop it! Do you see the green on that plum tree? (Embiggen photo. Squint hard.) Does that not insist spring? I did not pull my get-well afghans over me, although I should have.

A few hours later, still unwilling to concede but being just too chilled to knit and finding that motivation to get up and do something about it, I went and got a handknit hat and that helped too for awhile. But.

And then at last I put on my fingerless gloves, but it was a little hard to maneuver silk around wood in them–ergo, I took my thumb out and pushed them back onto my wrists. Full length sleeves now! There you go!

This particular pair of the several I’ve been gifted with has thumb gussets and they did look odd dangling off my wrists like the back of a raptor’s claw, but hey–not only was I visually reminded with every stitch of my own of all the people who have knitted to make me happy, by golly I was finally warm at last.

And it’s open! And it looks like we will have flowers on all three peach trees this first year. Cool!

If you missed Monika’s comment yesterday, go see the link she offered about keeping critters out: so intuitive, so obvious, so wishing I had thought of it, so glad someone did. Just collect those clear plastic clamshells that grocery store fruit often comes in–with those airholes so rain won’t collect, the guy points out–and snap one around each piece of fruit on the tree.

I wonder if a twistie tie to thwart raccoons will be needed too, but hey. Cool. Easy!

Meantime…

Wednesday, when I encountered all those men buying roses at Costco? What I didn’t say was that I shared an atrocious pun with one of their workers and he stopped right there in his tracks and just roared with laughter. Couldn’t ask for better than that. New employee. Didn’t know him. We parted with both of us chuckling.

Friday night , with other plans for Saturday, Richard and I got a little more grocery shopping done there.

Now, at Target or at least the one here, they have an electric go-cart that they hook up all the carts in the parking lot to in a line that then pushes them all back to where they want them with no more human muscle involved than a single cart’s worth at a time. Beep beep beep flashing light flashing light. Seems like a great idea to me, and I’ve never liked that Costco, which uses bigger, heavier carts, doesn’t do that; they have their workers attach a long leash to the one at the end and then pull, pulll, pulllll a long bunny-hop of them line-dancing back to the front of the store, with extra pains for where the tarmac is uneven.

As we got out of our car, it was dark and the guy on cart duty just ahead of us had on an orange vest with yellow reflective stripes. Good thing; his face, unlike mine, would not be one to glow in the headlights.

Same guy.

He got to the safety of the overhang and out of the way of potential oncoming cars (not to mention not wanting to lose his momentum) before he turned around to see what on earth was going on.

This time he was suddenly laughing out of surprise. There was that lady again with the bad pun, the gray hair and the cane, and this time she was at the other end of those carts.

Dude. I’ve got your back.

Richard caught the cold that I’m just about over, and so it was that I went off to the nearby Costco to buy him some juice: orange, strawberry, mango smoothies, get-better stuff.

It was 5:30.

The place was almost woman-free. I have never seen such a stream of men coming in and out of there, and alone. They didn’t have to go but a few steps inside the door, either: there was a huge long wooden pallet set-up going between the front door and the registers, grab’n’go. Not just roses; this year for $50 you could get roses plus greenery plus probably baby’s breath (I tried not to look too close) and everything your sweetie who doesn’t know you’re stopping by there on your way home from work so you can surprise her in the morning could ever hope for.

I totally felt like an interloper who’d accidentally snuck in on their secret.

One of these days I’m going to have to replace that picture over there. When the hair started coming back in after my skin cancer surgery 19 months ago, I knew there was just going to be a very long time of it looking goofy no matter what; why not grow out the bangs at the same time to match? Nothing else in all these years had given me the courage to spend a year looking bad, but hey, long as I’m there anyway….

So when the new hair got to the length of the bangs last February there you go. (And  now there’s a new bunch growing in and it looks like I’m just starting to grow that part of my bangs out. Of course.)

Speaking of bangs, there was one at the window behind my head this afternoon and I turned just in time to learn that it takes three wing beats for a Cooper’s hawk to stand in the air and then U-turn after its still-fleeing lunch.

I got to see my hawk. Cool.

I like the fact that when you knit from a cone, you only have to weave the beginning and the end ends into the fabric. No joining of skeins in the middle.

It’s not that the skein lengths are the problem: it’s my memory of the baby quilt a friend lovingly made my youngest. It was a great quilt, bright and cheerful and colorful and with little shiny slippery ribbon ties all over. (With, thank goodness, a cotton batting inside that could never bunch up.)

John at a year old discovered that he could undo those red ribbon ties. I would put him to bed and he’d work his fingers carefully into those little knots and tug here and there and pull. Great dexterity very young, interested in fibers, clearly a future knitter. (I’m still waiting.) Once he was asleep I would take it away from him, retie all the ties (0r at least the ones he hadn’t pulled all the way out) so that it wouldn’t become a game with Mommy to him because then we’d lose them all, and then cover him back up again with his favorite blankie.

I know what little fingers can do to ends.

My daughter-in-law would like a baby blanket made out of a soft synthetic such that it can be dragged around and abused and used without her wincing or gasping over what her little boy or the laundry might do to it. But I just wish I knew how to find a baby-soft worsted synthetic/blend on, you know, a cone… Any suggestions?

And yes that is an announcement. We are starting into the third trimester now. Parker is going to be a big brother, and the new baby boy is due on my husband’s birthday.

And we are home.

Which seems both so very ordinary and so strange.

Had a great visit with my parents while we were in Salt Lake: my mother-in-law had wanted her ashes  buried next to her daughter’s grave there.

Her brothers and some of their families would be able to attend that way (not to mention my folks).  There were people who’d retired there after careers in Washington, DC, and I had people re-introducing themselves to me who’d known me since I was born.  Who knew. Edna Lou, who said she’d worked for my dad (wow, that would have been, what, 1953?! ’54?) Wow.

And there was the doctor who–I asked Richard later, that was him, right? Yes–was a close family friend of my in-laws and my parents and to whom my in-laws took their daughter when she was a teenager for some diagnostic tests. She was given a contrast dye to scan her kidneys, in the hospital as I remember the story, and promptly went into anaphylactic shock. It took a team working hard to bring her back, and in that moment of relief as she came to, she looked up at this good man she knew from church and declared, “My dad’s a lawyer and” (with extra emphasis) “my brother’s 6’8″. You better watch it.”

Everybody in the room cracked up.

And here my Ft Worth sister-in-law was, with her three grown or nearly-grown kids.

Cousin Michelle, younger than me, is fighting breast cancer and it was not caught early. “This last year’s been real rough,” she told me.  Her husband looked around at the happy crowd at the luncheon, laughed at the toddler who played games with the cane with me and declared, “We need to all do this again. For a happy reason.”

This morning as we packed up the rental car to go, somehow it caught my attention and I found myself bending low for a closer look. I knew I would want a picture, but even with the fingerless gloves on knitted by (you know who you are, and thank you), it was too cold to pry everything open to get to my Iphone in the this inside the that. We needed to go.

There was tiny frozen rice everywhere: as if the wall of fog had shattered into perfect little frozen grains of it on the ground. I don’t remember ever seeing anything like it before and I’ve certainly lived in snow in my life. It was like the weather was trying to throw a wedding. Or perhaps wishing Michelle and her love a long and happy life together.

We were coming in for landing when my seatmate opened her window at last and I had a sudden moment of, wait, it looks like snow on the ground here, too?! But of course it was the late sun coming blindingly white off the waters of the San Francisco Bay.

We are home.

I filled the birdfeeder.

Things are so much the same and so different.

Saturday, graveside. The family had wrapped things up–when our niece Jessie turned back. Her brother’s small children had started to quietly play in this exotic ice you could slide a little on; snowballs had not yet been invented in their world. They’re California kids.

Jessie showed them her mother’s grave marker and told them about their grandma. Their eyes were fixed on the spot: in their experiences, Grandmas were people who loved you, always ready with a hug, not gray rectangle stones with words carved in them like a book. And soon there would be two, for their great grandma we were laying to rest.

A little later that day they were gleefully chasing yellow balloons and coloring Curious George pages at the surprise birthday party for their great- grandpa after the funeral luncheon. To Life!

Raised cane with a small toddler Saturday: I offered it to her, she got it, walked away on me, teased me over her shoulder with an impish grin and then turned back all the way around and carried the trophy over her head, presenting it way high to me. So big!

I would say thank you with a big smile and a slight bow. She would grab the cane back. Repeat.

I tried a variation where I asked for it when she was only a few steps away; that was breaking the rules of our new game and she said No! with a little dance. She knew how to say that word.

And so we went on for some time. Twice, someone tried to rescue me, stranded in the luncheon crowd without my balance-on-a-stick. I told them we were fine, no problems.

Richard’s cousin’s second daughter might not remember much later, but in this crowd of family but strangers to the little one I wanted her to come away knowing she was loved and to be happy she was there. And her big sister too. And that, that was worth the sitting and the giggling for a little while aside from the adult conversations.

Not to mention how fun it is to have a toddler accept you as her friend.

He had a sniffly nose and he didn’t like being in a strange place at nap time. He started to let it be known.

My sweetie had replenished my Peruvian hand knit finger puppet supply for Christmas.  A bright, multicolored bird.

Ah bah duce, he confirmed to his mommy as she got out a bottle while I was quietly purse diving.

Richard and I offered the puppet to the parents. All three faces lit up. “Duck!” as the little one reached for it.

It was the perfect toy: new, soft, pretty, and just the right size for the moment.  The dad grinned and gave a thumbs up.

I just wish I could thank the knitter in Peru. She saved their day.

Called my sweetie adorable, and he says he’s not a-door-able, since he has to duck to go through them.

Silly person.

Meantime, same pharmacy, different clerk, again, this one looks at the total and is staggered. I try to explain that $468 is so much better than last time. Now I think we’re at least where we’re only having to pay 20%.

This doesn’t seem to make her feel much better.

(Yeah, me neither.)

But while I was sitting waiting for it, another knitter watched my first few stitches for my new project and promptly plunked down next to me and we had one of those wonderful conversations that a shared love of yarn helps happen so easily.  I told her all about knit night at Purlescence, a store she didn’t know about, and that it was tonight…

…And then, my apologies, I just didn’t make it there. Things got done that needed to get done but I simply ran out of time to make the trip.

But I do hope I get to see her there next week. *waving hi*

“In 2001, the Faustman Lab reversed type 1 diabetes in mice with end-stage disease, a project that is now in human clinical trials.” That really got my attention: there is so much research that never succeeds that far. They hope to expand their findings to other autoimmune diseases, lupus and Crohn’s specifically mentioned. Hey!

My cousin Heidi was diagnosed four years ago, out of the blue, with Type 1 diabetes, the autoimmune version of the disease, and her husband’s employer donated an Ipad Mini for her to raffle off towards raising funding for that lab. The link goes to her blog post about it. Heidi asks that people donate directly to the lab, no middleman on her part, three bucks per chance, you get the tax write-off, and then come tell her to be entered in the raffle (and to honor the legalities of it, there’s a no-money option).

And just for fun, in addition to changing the world for the better, someone gets that Mini. You can name it Cooper.

A cowl for the cold should be long enough that you can pull it over your head from the back and still have the bottom of it puddle around your shoulders in a warm scarf, right?

Didn’t have quite enough of the sheared-mink yarn for that–close, though, and it is done and like so many other projects, once it actually touched water and then was laid flat, the small bit of lace in it blossomed beautifully. The pattern was something untried and new…. It’s perfect. (Phew!)

Next up: a warm soft scarf for my  husband, who, after 26 years of not needing one, does not seem to actually own one.  Or rather–there was one from scratchy cheap dimestore acrylic I made him nearly 30 years ago when we lived in New Hampshire, in a rather gaudy stage-prop green (you could see it clear to the last row) because it was the best that store could do. It was in no way warm, and ugly as all get-out (the stockinette with poofs of purl rows curled in a lovely seasick poodle effect) and the very memory of the thing makes me cringe: it made me not want to be a knitter.

There are good acrylics out there now, but not then and not this. (Dear, tell me we don’t still have that thing around!?)

Time to make it up to the man worth far more than his weight in qiviut.

(With a nod to RobinFre of Yorktown on that title; scroll down to see her square.)

Thursday, I went with my friend Nina to the Campbell knitting group I rarely get to, I think only once all last year; faces lit up as we came in, the last to arrive. Carol ran in the back and grabbed two more chairs for us and set them up where there was a bit of space to squeeze us in.

Next to someone who, awhile into things, started sniffling and coughing.

Already exposed. There was no escape.

I so cannot catch that right now.

And… I was wiped today. A rare nap helped, and then I finally got myself out the door in the late afternoon to the place Michelle had thought my best and closest bet in my shoes search, a Nordstrom Rack.

I went down the 6.5 aisles. It was laughable, as I expected. I decided to try the 7s, and there in the sea of towering heels and bright sparkly straps was a sensible pair of Clark’s in wide–not quite too dowdy, not quite too casual. And black. The heel was about 2″, twice what I want, but I could actually get my foot into them, unlike anything else I’d seen. And they were comfortable!

A few hours later, there was this odd feeling like my feet seemed a little big in them–well yes but–so I pulled one off, wondering–turns out I had bought 7.5s that had been misplaced. A full size too long.

Which is what I had always had to buy in the days before I started wearing Birkenstocks. The shoe universe had kicked me back to my teens and twenties.

And I can wear my thick black wool socks in them in the snow and they are not open-backed clogs like my others. They will do.

At that store, going towards the checkout, my other problem was suddenly solved. I hadn’t thought I was going to be able to do anything about it at all, but there they were: wide-brimmed black hats, in a very soft wool (you sure this isn’t cashmere, I wondered, checking), half price, to make being outside when I have to be graveside just a little bit safer.

There were two. I liked the one with the sassy suede tassel dangling off the side but that nagging inner voice seemed to insist in spite of me that the other made more sense.

There was a petite Asian woman trying on hats in front of the same mirror, and we kept carefully stepping out of each other’s way, deciding, going back to the earlier one, being careful not to hog reflection time.

“I like that one on you,” she said, pointing at the other.

Standing there in my old Birkenstock sandals, I explained that that tassel appealed to the hippy in me.  But I did have to admit I was going to a funeral.

Ah. “That one’s more formal,” she affirmed.

I thanked her and put the betassled back and bought the formal one, marveling that she’d opened up and spoken to me and had said what I’d needed to hear. She was right.

And then I hightailed it to Purlescence for their last 15 minutes and got to see DebbieR after her class was over and to meet her husband before they made their long drive home. It was wonderful to see them! Till we meet again at Stitches. I’ll probably be wearing Birkenstocks, with, of course, handknit socks. Ya gotta keep that hippy thing going, y’know?

The boots don’t fit. Ah well.

I stumbled across this article. For the first time, researchers were able to regenerate some of the hair cells in the inner ears of mice. Actual mammals. I want to jump up and down yelling at the top of my lungs, Do you know what this means?!!

(The link seems not to be working. Hmm. Well, the url was this: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-sensory-hair-cells-regenerated-mammal.html    Okay, that works.)

Historically there has been a huge gap between basic research and having it be applicable to actual patient care, and a lot of breakthroughs that could possibly have done much haven’t gotten the attention nor the funding to bridge that gap; if there’s not a clear path towards making a lot of money, companies won’t spend the millions it takes to jump through the FDA’s hoops–especially because historically the hoops could get yanked out from under them if/when a new head comes in. Politics happens.

As happened with a once-promising lupus drug that a company had believed in to the tune of, if I remember correctly, $21 million worth of development. Vanished. Would the med have worked? We don’t know.

President Obama made a point awhile ago of noting the problem and saying we need to move forward past those gaps–there was much cheering at places like the National Institutes of Health in my hometown.

Given the number of aging people with aging hearing, I’m thinking this one could be one of the most profitable drugs ever.

C’mon guys, I’m waaaitingggg…! Hurry up!