(And one last picture of us holding Parker while he was here.)

Just a week ago my husband reminded me that our old family-size tent had given up the ghost a number of years ago, the fabric aged and damaged and the thing unusable. It was bothering him that we weren’t prepared. He was thinking we should replace it in case we might, as we eventually will, have another big earthquake.

We looked at models, prices, talked budget. He knew I’d like an Ipad, which is a total toy (Don you old sweetheart don’t you even THINK about it!) A tent, on the other hand, we would hopefully never need to use (my camping days are over), but if we did need one, it would be so far from a frivolous thing. Got to keep those ravenous squirrels away from my millet-hull pillow.

Tent wins.

One thing that I read today said, “East Coast freaks, West Coast rolls its eyes”; 5.9 didn’t sound like all that much over here.

Different geological structures have different effects, though; ask anyone living in a liquifaction zone in California–we’re close to one but I think we’re okay, knock on rock.

Someone I grew up with, (Mom and Dad, that’s Ky), has a son living in Louisa, Virginia. His house is gone. Reading her note today, I was at first quite surprised–that’s real damage, not just a traffic jam.

But then I remembered that when we had our big earthquake, no news came out of the mountainous epicenter area for days because reporters couldn’t get in and phones there were down. The only mention of the Loma Prieta area in the news was from the USGS’s reports that gave the quake its name.

My husband’s aunt–who knew Ky as a small child–lived a half mile from that epicenter and her house was heavily damaged; her neighbor pulled into his driveway in time to see his three-story home collapse before his eyes, with, as it turned out, the two inside escaping harm because when the mom had called the teen moments earlier to come help cook dinner, the kid had come–joining her in the only room that turned out to be safe.

Do what your mom tells you.

I wonder what news reports will start trickling out of Louisa now, too.

But we had no way to know back then how the aunt’s family was, and her aged mother in Washington DC, dialing all night, called at 4 am our time to ask if we knew anything: she’d finally gotten through at least to us, but we too had heard nothing yet. (It was quite the experience, but they were okay.)

That did it. He’d been thinking of it for some time. My husband got his ham radio license right after that.  He has ever since volunteered with the city, the county, and the Red Cross doing disaster services and emergency communications drills. He’s done a lot of good with it: because, once upon a time, there was an earthquake and people we loved were unaccounted for and maybe hurt.

And he never again wanted to be unable to know and unable to help.

Church was long when you’re not quite two and the usually very cheerful little guy had had enough. It was over but his parents were still busy talking to their friends.

After he ran halfway across the foyer, I’m not quite sure whether he tripped or threw himself on the floor; I caught the motion out of my peripheral vision.

He let out a loud yowl of declaration for extra effect.

I went over to him from his oncoming direction, got down on all fours, and leaned my head down towards him with a curious grin. He was turned away but suddenly he bounced his up high like a sphinx, he grinned the biggest grin at me as if glad someone was in on the joke with him, then he leaped into the air with a happy dance and ran to his mommy.

I guess church turned out not quite so long after all.

You may remember this from a few weeks ago. There was one more reason that I didn’t say there why I was so angry at them.

I was still angry the next day. This had to stop. It felt imperative that I take that stress and put it on the shoulders where it belonged so that actual changes for the better could happen, and so I googled, found the name of the chief medical officer, printed out my words from that blog post and slapped a Forever stamp on it and felt, walking away from my mailbox, like the world had been lifted off me.

But before I put it out there, I dithered, I thought, I decided that, no, they need to know; I didn’t put in any details, hey, let them go look it up. I’m sure they did.

I added that a medical error there had widowed G years before.

I did not say a stunning, egregious error that made me gasp out loud when I heard what they’d done–that any reasonable person, medical background or not, would too.

They weren’t going to take my friend G away from me too.

G got a phone call from that chief medical officer: an abject apology and a concern for her well-being and a promise to look into their procedures. Then, “I got a call from Sacramento!” G laughed; she told me of her initial confusion at being told a grievance had been filed. She knew she hadn’t.

“No, it was filed on your behalf,” they said, and she told me, “I knew instantly who had done it.” She thanked me, wondering out loud if she shouldn’t have done so herself.

But she’s a nice person who doesn’t like to complain.

I’m a nice person who doesn’t like to complain.

But I sure can if my friends need me to stick up for them. It was so necessary.  She told them that day that she had not just me but two other people lined up in advance in case there was any problem, but they would have none of it. She was bullied that day.

And I was paying it forward for all of you who bombarded Caremark when they refused to process my Humira prescription with life in the balance two years ago; thank you forever for that.

“They all came back clear!” All the biopsies. All the worry.  And now she is finally free to go ahead and have the other surgery that will make her well.

At Kaiser.

It was a sign of the day to come: I woke up with Jim Croce singing in my head, of all things, “Speedball Tucker,” a song I hadn’t heard in forever. That got me to go look around and find out that Croce‘s wife and baby weren’t on that plane that day and the son is now making his own music. I’m going to have to try it out.

So it was go go go thank you for the news magazine Don good to see you got only ten minutes at knit night to see Purlescence‘s new place (a few doors left of the old) and then the phone buzzes and time to go pick up the daughter across two towns and then go and off to the grocery store, quick.

When the left foot doesn’t quite remember how to keep up and in sync with the right on the treadmill and has to be told consciously to keep the rhythm of the steps then you know maybe I’m a bit tired.

Well, then, keep on walking a good one, that’ll cure that.

I remember how many days I couldn’t possibly have managed any of today, just an ordinary day, and I tell you, life is good.

You know it’s all good when you get not a phone call asking you to come in to be told the news by a sympathetic human being in person but rather an email asking you sign in to your account to get the message that your scan came out just fine.

Yup.

Meantime, I debate from time to time what kind of fruit tree to plant next; it would have to be dwarf to keep from overshadowing the panels on our roof. (Last month’s electric bill during our 100 degree heat wave, though it was nothing like everybody else’s heat wave: still. With the AC running nonstop. Four cents.)

I’d really like an avocado tree, although I hear they’re messy and drop leaves constantly, and if anyone has any experience re growing them vs squirrel and raccoon raids, I’d love to hear.

But it would certainly be funnier to join the throw the book at ’em club, as seen on Okra.

Nope, no bungee-jumping ice cubes today. But I’ve spent most of the last seven hours slogging through some design work that needed to be done, and there’s such a sense of satisfaction in having it come out right after all that work.

Got an email reminder, went in yesterday, got my mammogram out of the way: I don’t think I could have faced my sister-in-law if I had made excuses or just not bothered. She’s lucky she had one done when she did, and even so, it’s a hard fight. She is in her 40’s.

Let me just say upfront, I’ve never understood those who kvetch and forward emails about how awful a process it is. It is not. You’re uncomfortable or maybe in pain for 10 seconds max, four times.

Then it’s done and you’re done and you walk out of there free of all that. If you get to find out you’re one of the lucky ones, all the better. And if not, you have the comfort of knowing you took good care of yourself from the start.

One of the side effects of 21 years of lupus with longterm, severe pain, mostly faded out of the scene now but always ready to flare up a bit here and there at the least provocation is that I find it a struggle at times to be patient with people who have not yet learned that the fear of pain is far worse than any actual pain. Longterm pain is simply a different avenue for learning about life. (The author is at Harvard Medical and knows the subject personally). You can do it.

Now go get that mammogram/colonoscopy/irregular spot (I don’t care how old or young you are, a child of mine was 18 months) checked. We need you around. (That child is in their 20’s. It was caught at the precancerous stage.)

Someone on my high school’s page wrote about it last week. A few days ago, Deseret News did. I have no idea how the subject appeared in both places one after the other all these years later, but it was one of the funny parts of my growing up.

The Washington, DC Mormon Temple was built on a hill above a place where the DC Beltway takes a sharp curve: so that as you’re driving down the freeway at night, the hillside covered in woods remains dark, emphasizing this white, illuminated building with towering gold spires that seems to float in the air above you. The outer loop of the road bends away to the left just as it looks like you’re about to tunnel right under.

The place promptly got dubbed “Oz” among the locals.

So what came next was a total delight to everybody I know, at church, at school, you name it.

“Surrender Dorothy!” (Done in a carefully proper manner, with newspapers stuck in the chain link fence on the overpass, nothing harmed.)

That promptly got taken down by the authorities, of course, but then came another, although one that required too high a level of risk.

“Surrender Dorothy!”

(Hey, Karen, am I right in remembering a version on the sound wall too?)

And on a personal note, the landscape architect for the Temple needed a temporary home while the place was being built; my parents volunteered, and so a sweet old guy came to live with us for awhile. And (though it’s true I remember him from a young teenager’s perspective) I do mean old: come to find out he had known my father’s grandfather, and he was able to tell Dad about the grandpa he never knew.

Building a yellow brick road for us linking us to our ancestor as those daffodils went in.

Friday’s DrGreene.com post is here, the story of the young dad with the screaming toddler. I’ve always loved how that one played out; I wonder how they are now. That would have been back when I was dyeing my hair, the only reason I shopped there, which would make her maybe ten by now.

Give her a few years and maybe she’ll go for the purple dye over thataway. The most harmless thing a kid can do to rebel is with their hair, and whatever they may look like for awhile, it grows patiently naturally back on its own time.

Speaking of which, with this vasoline in the scar thing going on, the Spaceman Spiff look? Totally nailed it.

(Eleven rows of 448 stitches today, an ice session in the middle, and I finished it! The shawl is blocking.)

Thank you, everybody… Much appreciated.

Between the server crash and the dermatologist making cutting remarks yesterday, I forgot to mention.

I have posts here and here on DrGreene.com, Dr. Greene being my old friend Alan I grew up with. I was going to mention those Monday, and there will be one there for each day through Friday, but yesterday, an Apple a day kept the Doctor at bay.

I wrote this yesterday afternoon and then our server died. Richard was up late wrestling with it, knowing people would worry (plus he wanted me to have my web access.)

Not sure when the lidocaine finishes wearing off, but for now I am a bit of a numbskull. It is a highly odd sensation to have your ears pulled together by the top of your head.

As the dermatologist got set to leave, I asked her to grab the white paper bag with handles sticking out of my knitting bag. She did, wondering, and then pulled out the scarf I’d made her: Handmaiden Camelspin (luminous and a bit greener in real life). “I love the colors!” as she felt that soft yarn and I explained the 70/30 silk/baby camel content. I can’t help it; I’m a fiber artist, it’s important to me to say what a thing is made of.

And it was important to me to tell that good woman what a difference she made in her willingness to drop everything and see me right away.

(Tuesday morning, getting ready to get Michelle on her train.) By the way, I was looking at some old pictures of us holding Parker in February, and there it was–a clear shot of my part in my hair. No sign of the lesion. So it did grow that fast that recently. 2 cm. And my head already feels better than yesterday.

Cashmere Superior with Malabrigo Lace, shades of green. I wanted it supersoft. I knitted a lace scarf for the wife of a childhood friend after finding out they lived not too terribly far away and that his work brings him to my town once a week.

But then I had a bad attack of shy and it sat there. We hadn’t seen each other since we were 18; it’s easy to feel awkward barging in on someone’s attention like that.

The last two weeks put a lot of things in perspective, though, and it felt like it was time. I sent him a message after I got my biopsy report (I wanted to have that sense of relief first), explaining what I’d made, about the shyness thing and saying as how vanity concentrates the mind; given that I was about to lose some hair off my scalp permanently–while I still looked like me, would it be okay to schedule a get-together?

He was delighted. Today was the day. I drove over. After he got off work, we talked for awhile, and then his wife arrived and joined us and we were all old friends together as if it had always been so all around. She’s a peach, and I am so happy for both of them; they’re a great couple. The kind of people who, when you step into their presence, you are instantly home.

And come to find out, through the years we had forged connection after small-world connection with no idea till just then. And even just this week we were forging more.

When I answered his question about where Michelle’s internship was, his jaw hit the floor and he stared. He named her bosses. Close friends of theirs.

The person I’d mailed a shawl off to last week–dear, dear mentor to him and a  friend of his dad. Known her for years.

When his wife came, the twinkle in his eye as he just waited for her reaction–she’d been reading my blog, she’d read about that chocolate torte, yes–and then, listening to him, she turned to me and went, WAIT. *YOU* made HER birthday cake?! (And then she laughed, going, “Yes, she really did have a horrible rotten no–good I think I’ll move to Australia kind of day.”)

And Cheryl, I found out today, is a knitter. They now have a copy of my book, autographed with great delight. I am now a proud owner of “Feeding Baby Green,” autographed with great delight.

And I on sudden impulse on my way out the door had stashed a copy of a book by, as it happens, that mentor in my knitting bag, having no idea.  They didn’t currently have a copy of it. They now have it. I apologized that I hadn’t had time to find a more pristine copy.

Too amazing. Too wonderful. To life!

I had a summer job in college back in the day working for a company that processed payroll for other companies. That’s right, kiddies: I was a keypunch operator. Ask your great-grandpa.

That meant a lot of names went by as I typed, and I used to keep a mental collection of the funnier ones.  Cherie Baum, for instance. (Was there ever a kid who didn’t get teased about their name?)

During college, I worked as a copy editor for one of the colleges on BYU campus and the other woman hired said she could never change her name when she got married; she’d been born a month before the book had come out, and nobody ever forgot Charlotte Webb.

Okay, so. On my way to Knit Night tonight, same old route, about to turn left, when over to the right was a company name emblazoned on a building where I’d never noticed it.

Ron Fetsch and Associates.

I have no idea who they are nor what they do, but I tell you, that’s a name you just can’t shake a stick at. (Just tell me his parents didn’t give him the middle initial N–and yes, I’m sure he’s heard it all. Whatever we go by, we all have.)

Richard said to me first thing this morning that the fact that I hadn’t heard anything yet meant that it was sitting on someone’s desk because it wasn’t urgent; he wanted me to call them.

But the doctor said she’d…

Hey. Ask if I need to be pushed twice. I called.

I sat on hold, on hold, on hold. Then the young male receptionist came back sounding pressured and in a hurry. I gave him the requisite name, birth date, why I was calling–and added that I knew the doctor had said she was going to call and that I hoped I wasn’t being too antsy or causing problems, but if they did know anything yet on that biopsy, I would love to know.

His voice changed. Suddenly I was more than a name on a screen and a voice on the phone, I was a fellow human being; he did what he could for me and wished me the best and I heard in his voice that he meant it.

Not long after that, the doctor did call. She was saying things about nodular and tendrils and 5mm size plus the 2mm edges each side she’d gotten out with the biopsy and that she was going to have to take out more because–

–and I had to stop her a moment. Sorry, I didn’t hear; so–was it basal?

She started to apologize for going on before I’d caught that part; I think it bothered her that she was going to have to take out more of my hair forever than she’d wanted to. My question was reminding her about the good side of all  this.

Yes, she affirmed, the gratitude showing in her voice. It was basal.

Praise be.

I turned left onto the main road near the pedestrian underpass to the commuter train station. The road there has five car lanes, two bike lanes, and an island in the middle.

With all that walking to do and that underpass to get to, it’s one of the intersections that has a countdown for those on foot along with the white hand on the WALK sign, going to a flashing red hand the last ten seconds, then the usual solid red DON’T WALK. If you’re a driver looking sideways at it, at least you know how long the wait is going to be–and it’ll be a lot longer than if  a car tripped the signal.

They looked twenty-something. The guy looked like he’d finally gotten the cute girl to talk to him, and she was pleased too; they sauntered, their attention on each other.

And they had not pushed that button. Their light was green, the hand stayed red, and I kept a careful eye on them as well as my own red light above their crosswalk.

Another driver came down the ramp to the right, that fifth lane, and stopped; he, too, was watching those kids.

Who suddenly noticed that the light had totally turned and we were stopped for them at our green. They glanced to their right–and ran!

Because, and I didn’t see it till too late to react (or…), a red car was barreling down that middle lane at full speed, the limit there at 45. The young man stumbled, trying to protect her, I think the girl stumbled too then, and I fully expected to see their bodies careening into the air. My immediate instinct, and apparently the other stopped driver’s too, was not to honk for fear it would distract the kids for even a nanosecond.

They made it just in front of the nose of the other stopped car. The red car never did slow down. I don’t know if that driver ever even knew.

We have to look out for each other in this life. We *have* to be willing to see to the extent we humanly can.  Why others are reacting the way they are, what it might mean, how we can do something that makes their world a little better and therein our own. Thank you dear God for looking out for every single one of us there, and most especially that couple, in that moment tonight.

A mole, been on the back of my face about eight years now, and suddenly last week there was a small second one behind it, same color.

Oh come ON. Just because my child has melanoma doesn’t mean…

Wait a minute… I dabbed my finger under the tap to get a little water on it, scrubbed at the spot and looked in the mirror again.

A splash of hot cocoa. That’s all it was.

The dermatologist laughed today when I told her that–classic, classic, and she told me she’d had a few patients she’d seen for similar reasons, as she checked out the rapidly growing lump in my scalp that had been a barely-there pinprick around, oh, I dunno, maybe December when we first noticed it? I assumed it was a lupus lesion and had asked to make sure, then after the rheumatologist ignored it I did too.

Richard’s been bugging me. Being married to a very tall man can really come in handy.

“Oh yes. It is,” then she immediately reassured me she was very sure it was just basal; cut it out and it will all be gone.

She had gotten my note yesterday about my daughter and my head and had immediately cleared a path to see and biopsy me today. Results next week. She will call me and we will set a time for my Mohs surgery–so, yes. I have skin cancer too.

p.s. The final pathology report came in today for my Sam: they did indeed get all hers. No chemo. Done. To quote her, “I will, of course, have to be monitored the rest of my life but that’s a small price to pay for having a life to live.”