A quiet day.

A brisk mile’s worth walked.

A little baby-blanket knitting.

A lot of looking forward to the next great escape!

Here’s where I’ve been: about eight years ago, during the worst of the brainstem lupus stuff, I set myself a goal to walk all the way around my block once. Without shortness of breath, without chest pains, without weakness. That was my goal for the year. And the next.  I did not make it.

And for awhile there, it was also to feel well enough again to be able to drive a car without worrying about my blood pressure getting too low. I did not make it. I chose, and will always choose, to err on the side of caution on that one, this driver‘s choices being a good reason why.

Now, back when my kids were little, I used to racewalk four to five miles every morning before my husband left for work–my much-needed time to myself in the great outdoors, time to work out, time to just be out and SEE to recharge the batteries before starting in on the day with three children four and under.

Then the fourth child arrived, the lupus hit, the no-sun issue surfaced, and all together it added up to years of wishing keenly for all sorts of things.

And one of those was to just get in the car and go see the ocean again. Not our close-by Bay but the actual ocean. It wasn’t like it was very far. (Oh yeah, sun, right.)

My younger brother Bryan was here about eight or ten years ago and we did exactly that: we got in the car, him at the wheel, and the two of us drove down to Monterey, reveling in the rare time together.

Pebble Beach. The 17-Mile Drive. Got out from time to time (took the risk, how often do I get to with him) and looked at the seascapes below. The funky Monterey cypresses, the redwoods on Highway 17, the weirdness of the sign claiming copyright on all images anyone ever might make of that one lone tree on that outcropping as belonging to… You can’t copyright a picture you didn’t take! Silly people! Hanging out. Having a day to just go be siblings again.

I so wanted to go back there. I so wanted to cruise down Highway 1 and just be free of all health-related cares and just go. I tried to ignore how confining lupus can feel.

The B’s did not know that when they booked a cottage where they did for their vacation. It was simply a good spot for the things they wanted to do.

Bryan and I had driven right down that road. You go past the sign to 17-Mile Drive and there you are.

The best part of my trip yesterday, by far, was getting to see and spend time with the B’s. With serious chronic illness for two of us and a 3000 mile distance, this is a rare and wonderful thing. I think we two were both surprised at how well the other was looking. Acknowledging, yes, but acknowledging too how things are holding together in spite of all that as we created new memories to rejoice over with the old.

On a side note: going such a distance, and down a highway that occasionally turns into a country lane, a kick back and relax in the scenery type of road with slow produce trucks hauling artichokes from the coast and ambling at their own pace, one never knows what to expect. So I’d left early with the idea of Monarch Knitting as my time buffer: I’d wanted to meet LYSO Joan there anyway, very much so, for over three years now.

There was a big knitting retreat going on back then at Asilomar (wait–not SOAR, it was June–trying to remember its name) and my friend Nina was attending. She asked for, and got from me before she left, my author’s proof pages that I’d had spiral bound.

The first day of the retreat happened to be the day that Wrapped in Comfort was released, and the conference also happened to have a show-and-tell scheduled then.

Nina, bless her, held up that book, wearing the shawl in that book (she had wanted to own the very one, not a copy, even if it meant waiting for months to get it back from the publisher, so I did that for her), pointed to the page, and she announced, “I am Nina. This is the shawl in this book. You want this book. Go buy this book!”

And thus she led a posse of 50 knitters over to Monarch, where, she and Joan both told me later, Joan was just opening a box shipped from Martingale that had six copies in it.

And everybody wanted them.

Joan took a deep breath, made a decision, and pleaded with them: please, if I do this, promise me you’ll come back tomorrow?

They did. So she did: she called Martingale, on a Friday afternoon close to quitting time, and asked them to Federal Express Weekend Overnight her those 50 copies. And they did it! They got them out in time! The next day, they all sold except the copy Joan wanted to keep for herself.

She told me the shipping fees had eaten any profit from the sales but oh what a good time they’d all had!

I thanked her for giving me a book story to brag on for life. And I do.

So, yesterday I was making good time, on my way, passing several bicyclists who were off the road talking to each other, when suddenly a cop passed me, lights and sirens. A few minutes later, another. Oookay. There was a long curve there near Moss Landing, too far away to see why traffic had by then come to a stop.

And there we sat.

It was one of those times I was glad I was in a Prius: I turned off the fan to save electricity and thereby gas. We sat. Pretty scenery… But I really hoped things would get going; I did want to stop by Monarch.

After a half hour it all started to clear up again. No tow trucks, no fire engines, no sign of anything having been out of the ordinary. Curious.

To either side of the power towers at the Landing, there were swamps and birds that I wished I could see closer up.

I did get to go to Monarch. I walked in and the first person I saw, having cheated and looked at her website, I asked in delight, “Are you Joan?”

“I am!”

“I’m Alison Hyde.”

She knew exactly who I was! Totally, totally made my little ego’s day.

I looked around with the occasional exclaiming of delight as one room unfolded to another and ooh look there’s another back here! I bought a little baby alpaca. “Souvenir yarn.” I explained about the time buffer, thanking her for her offer to wind it but gotta run.

I had no idea when I got back in that car I was going to be retracing some of my brother’s steps from there. Hey! I recognize that restaurant!

And that’s where we all had lunch together.

The B’s happened to mention having gone birding at Elkhorn Slough over by Moss Landing a bit earlier, where a large group of bicyclists had gathered and traffic had backed up for two miles behind them.

Oh my goodness! You were there! *I* was there, at the far end of that! Too funny.  I asked Scott, Did you get to see your Bewick’s wren? Knowing he’d so wanted to and never had. I have one that hops across my view every day, moving like a cartoon figure the way it bounces almost faster than the eye can keep up with.

“I did!”

Cool! I told the three of them that I was now into birds and it was all their fault. They grinned.

Joan over at Monarch had offered to take the hanks and ball the two up for me and let me pick them up on my way back later, and that was really nice of her.  But…

I thought as I came back through Pacific Grove just after her quitting time, I was right. Don’t wait up. I was having too good a time just being friends in person again to get wound up.

And I did it. I know now I can do it. I knew, but I hadn’t tested, hadn’t pushed myself, and now I have. Along with their friendship, the B’s gave me back the most incredible, the most exquisite sense of freedom reclaimed.

Do I tell this one?

I was in Costco today. Nope, not a fingerpuppet story. I saw someone familiar and it took me a moment to place her–it had been awhile–but then I told her,  “Oh–HI! You’re from the Red Cross!”

She was clueless. I identified myself as the wife of…, one of their longtime volunteers.

She was speechless. She looked at me, stepping back ever so slightly to check me out top to bottom, foot to head. (While I mentally raced to think when the last time we’d seen each other had been–ah yes that would explain it.)

“You look WELL!”

I was standing up. That’s the first thing that had thrown her.  I wasn’t in a wheelchair. I wasn’t dead yet. Well yes, given how I was that last time, I see where you’re coming from but honey, the times, they are a-changin’. I mean that. Don’t make me go back there, I’m done with all that.

“You look, !!!, WONDERFUL!”

“Why, thank you!” (And since you are yea verily a little old lady I will refrain from saying the same thing back at you in quite the same way. Volunteering clearly is good for all that ages.)

It was good to see her; I waved hi over at her husband patiently waiting for her to finish up.  I told her our son and his wife were expecting our first grandchild, and she was thrilled for us. I know she can’t wait to congratulate Richard at the next Red Cross event.  Really really congratulate him.

I guess if I had to make people hold their breath for so long I have to put up with the outcome of being well now, huh? I think I can handle it.

Today, I was driving past the block that Milk Pail is cornered in and decided to try again: I was about out of bourbon vanilla, and I’ve found (insert big name brand here) to be watered down compared to theirs. You never know when the next big chocolate-torte-baking binge is going to happen; got to be prepared.

And lo and behold. A parking spot right in front.

The place was crowded as always and there was not a shopping cart nor basket in sight. We’re in the middle of a heat wave, it’s a mostly-outdoors market, and the warmth on their strawberries carried an intense freshly-picked berry smell throughout the place.

With a cane in one hand, that meant I ran out of other hands real fast because honey no way was I going home without some of those.

This was getting difficult. Which increased my incentive.  I looked some more and finally found a cart over that-a-way, but as I shopped there was a young man walking around, I’m guessing Middle Eastern, with his arms full like mine had just been and looking like all he wanted was for this to be over with. He looked tired.

So, let’s see, I got my strawberries, I got my vanilla extract, I got a few extras just because, with a cart handy, I could. (Shelf-stable coconut cream for dairy-free tortes.  Amaretto cookies, 200g, two bucks–yummm.) I glanced over at checkout and saw that by then he’d found a cart too; oh good. His face still looked like he was having a long hard day.

Sign that slip, I’m out of here.

But there were two little boys playing around the bushes and cars in front of the store, including around mine, laughing, running, teasing, being normal bouncy little kids with a parent shopping around in there somewhere, one hopes. I was concerned.

I hesitated. I looked. It seemed clear, but I know how kids can dart.  I got in my big blind minivan and–just then that man came out with his bags, and I rolled down the passenger window and explained and asked if he might check for me.

He not only looked and assured me, he stayed there, waving me back, double-checking constantly, looking out for those kids and me too, staying there till I was moving forward and on my way out.

It was such a small thing. And yet. He looked as if some of whatever it was in his day had suddenly been lifted. I was so glad he’d done that; glad for his sake. He’d earned that.

The greatest human need, I am convinced, is to be needed.

I went home and finished Don‘s chocolate torte–finishing off the last of that cream.

And Don, in turn, inspired by Friday night’s bidding war on that other torte, made a donation to Central Asia Institute, founded by Greg Mortenson, the author of Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools, to help fund building schools for girls as well as boys in the most remote areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan, where most NGOs refuse to risk going. CAI funds the materials and the teachers; the locals do the building (up to code, too) and the teaching, making the schools theirs, not outsiders’.

Mortenson writes that his nine-year-old daughter asked him, after the major earthquake that devastated Afghanistan, what the children who’d survived all that did to play? To cope, they needed to play, what kind of equipment did they have?

He hadn’t ever thought of that.

She told him to start off with jump ropes but that they needed to have playgrounds. And so, through the wisdom of a child, the schools he was building started having playgrounds for the children.

A group of Taliban elders approached one of them after that, saw the seesaw and the slide and the swings, put down their automatic weapons, and played on the equipment! And then said, everything’s cool, carry on.

A small donation. A chocolate torte in thanks.

Another man willing to direct the traffic of one woman’s car so that someone else’s little boys would be safe.

It all comes together, in ways only God knows the extent of, when we look out for each other.

Okay, so here’s what’s been going on in the background:

Richard came home from work sick the other day. Thursday, I was afraid I was catching it and not wanting to expose more people, stayed home from Knit Night.  Friday, he was better and I was fine other than that I was still very very tired.

That night the Boy Scouts were having a fundraiser spaghetti dinner. There was to be an auction of desserts at the end.

Anyone who knows me knows that means one of my chocolate tortes had to be there.

And so I pulled myself together enough to get out the door to buy manufacturing cream, one of the key ingredients, at Milk Pail. It’s 40% butterfat, no additives, and it has a short shelf life.

Now, that place is a good one for locavores, good produce and cheeses, and it is very popular. It’s also in a badly-designed lot with minimal parking unless you’re willing to walk a ways (and climb through bushes and walk through a blind intersection and never mind).

Willing is one thing.

I went. The lot was as full as if Thanksgiving were coming.  But there was one spot, right in front, right there–and their employees had commandeered it for the moment.

I had nowhere else I could safely go, sunwise, and I just barely had the oomph anyway, so I put on my turn signal and figured they’d finish up shortly.

Every single car that encountered mine after that as I waited had some totally stressed-out person for whom I was just the last straw.  Pounding their steering wheel. Yelling. Losing it.

I had done not a thing wrong. I’m still trying to understand it.  I wasn’t even close to blocking anything.  Maybe they were all trying to run a quick errand on their last bit of energy and couldn’t find a spot except for the one already spoken for?

The last woman’s behavior was such that I was afraid of her screaming at me in the store. Bag this–I went home.

Where I put a note on the ward chat list, not mentioning the screamers, just saying I hadn’t been able to park at all and I’d really really wanted to make a chocolate torte for the Scouts; if anyone else more hale and hearty had the time to try for me, I would so happily make them a torte too as a thank you.

And then I put myself on timeout and took a quick nap, realizing that if I were complaining to my whole church about the disappointment over such a small thing, I was having a meltdown and needed a nap.  Bring me my blankie.

I got up a short while later, much refreshed, checked my messages, googled, and found out that hey! Smart and Final carries manufacturing cream too–who knew?

So I sent out a second message saying thanks, all’s cool, I’m getting some after all.

I got my usual pair baked but with not the time left to cool them. I improvised: I put the cakes on a metal baking sheet to conduct the heat away, moving them to another baking sheet as that one heated up. It did help some.

Ten minutes before we were supposed to be there, I started the glaze. I tried too hard; I zapped the chocolate and cream too long. I wrecked the top of this one; I decided, oh well, I’ll have to take that one–the one that lost a piece to the side because I took it out of the pan before it was cooled.

It still hadn’t entirely cooled. It melted the top even more.

You’ve seen those lava cakes? I had a volcano in full flow with the side of the mountain given way for it to pour down.

We got there late.  By the time they got to the auction, it had set–looking like that, but at least it had set.

I noticed the scouts picking up all the desserts but my Charlie Brown Christmas Tree one and leaving it quietly behind. I grabbed a scout (whom I didn’t know) and told him, Tell them it’s Alison Hyde’s chocolate torte. They’ll know what it is.

Okay, lady.

It was one of the last ones, then, and some of the crowd had taken their little kids home to bed by then.

Dave, bless him, held it up high and asked, What am I bid for Alison Hyde’s world-famous CHOCOLATE TORTE!

My friend Phyl started it at $20. That quickly went to $40.

And I thought, Thanks, you guys, but–did you SEE that thing?!

Phyllis was having company Saturday night and told me later, I didn’t care, I knew what it tasted like!  But Jessica outbid her and got it with great glee.

Earlier in the day, Mary, bless her, had seen my first email and had immediately jumped in her car to go get that fancy cream for me.  But for all that, Milk Pail, alas, was out by then.

Tyler, bless him too, emailed me to say he would go in a flash if he could, if it weren’t for being at work, even before he saw the offer part of my email.

Those messages (there was another, too, but I’m not done yet) completely and totally made my day on a day I so much needed that. Just their acknowledging me made it all feel better; the fact that Mary ran immediately to go help meant the world.

Now.  A half gallon of manufacturing cream is a lot of cream.  Eight tortes’ worth.

I went back to Trader Joe’s: I stocked up on their bittersweet 500g Pound Plus bars. Baked, cleaned pans, baked.  And then I started calling/emailing/knocking.

Phyllis’s guests stopped me today to tell me how good that torte had been.

When I offered to bring Mary one, she and her husband instead came here and picked it up.

Ditto Tyler and his wife.

Jessica got a prettier one, two for the bid of one.

I’m not done yet!

Bathroom: eh, floors could use a mopping next.

Towels: in washer with a goodly amount of bleach.

Plumbing (which otherwise hadn’t been used in awhile, thank goodness): FAIL.

Bathroom floors: all nice and bleachy-smelling and fresh now.

Plumbing, after careful tests with small amounts of water over several hours: seems to work peachy fine now, no need to call the plumber yet. The cotton must have had a hairboll.

Me: Um, gee, thanks, old house.  Sort of.

We had our twice-annual stake conference today in the town just north, wherein five wards (congregations) come together for one really big meeting. Lots of old friends there one rarely gets to see and lots of unfamiliar faces, too.

When it was over, of course, there were a whole lot of cars leaving all at once. One woman, younger than me, dressed in a rather tight skirt and medium heels, walked past us as we waited to exit the lot. I assume she was walking home to somewhere nearby rather than adding one more car to the mess.

As we got onto the road, there was a side street right next to the lot with people exiting from that, too, a traffic jam, a light ahead we were all trying to get to, and that woman was a goodly ways up ahead.  Walking never looked so sensible.

When, there in a brief patch of unpaved gravel where some work had been done, suddenly, she fell. Hard. Immediately two cars pulled to the side to rescue her, and we would have too but they beat us to it. I have no idea who she was or who they were, but a young woman was leaping out of the first car and, after a moment’s pause for taking a deep breath, was helping her carefully up. Clearly the older one was in pain, because they kept their arms around each other’s shoulders as the young one helped her to her (or possibly her parents’?) SUV. We will take care of you.  We will not leave you alone.

I felt for the one who fell (and that skirt made the fall more difficult to control–there’s a reason I like mine loose-flowing and long, but then I *know* I’m going to do some falling from time to time.) But whoever you are who pulled over, I wish I could tell you, thank you.  You helped all of us up.

(Ed. to add: I had a photo I was looking for for this post but stumbled across this one first.  When I shot it awhile back, it rather annoyed me that my straight needles in their holder had reflected in the window.  And yet.  Yesterday, it was striking to me that that reflection looked like the top of one of the Towers, with the needles as the cell-phone antennae that had been on the roof.  There/not there, with the peacemaking birds as the intended subject of the picture several months ago.)

Watching the various species that have been coming up to my porch and my birdfeeders the past 17 months, I’ve learned something:  each of the territorial types chases after newcomers of their own species.  There is plenty of food for all but when the level in the feeder gets low, I seem to get more, not fewer finches, as if suddenly they need to make sure there’s enough for them even if they have to fight to get to it.  They often do not all come back after I refill their supply; they just seem to need to know it’s there.

But do the towhees feel threatened by the doves? No. Do the doves feel threatened by the titmice or the adorable little Bewick’s wren that flips itself around by the tail?

No.  Even when they eat the same sunflowers or skitter around the same area: they only feel a need to establish dominance over the ones the most like themselves.

(Then there was that remarkable pair, the little junco feeding his ladyfriend finch that I got to watch over several weeks.)

We are all most like each other.  We need to get to know one another better for the fear of the different, of the unknown, to be replaced by our common human ground.  I loved this article (thank you Margo Lynn).

We are better than birds, and it is said that He knows even the sparrow in its fall. And I have to tell you that, outside their native European element, sparrows are absolutely terrible to those around them.  But He knows them too.

There are no strangers before God.  All He asks is that we live as best we can by love as He freely offers love to us, however we may understand the life He has given us.

They must have seen me coming: there’s a pull-out section in the road to the post office with room for a few cars to park and take pictures of the birds in the Baylands sanctuary there.   But they already had the cones set up to block that.

So no, there was no place to stop and take pictures of the herd of goats (so little! So cute!) chomping on the dry brush at the edges there, bringing down the fire hazard, and having been by there a few days earlier, my goodness can those things eat! A few were resting in the cattails, curling up with a good baaaa-k. It was certainly not my everyday sight.

On my way home again, just to top off the trip, there was a car in front of me that made me laugh in sheer delight.

It was a Cadillac El Dorado.  Not a new one by any means (said the woman with the ’99 minivan). But whoever owns it clearly loves that comfortable car. It was as new looking as its first tenth of a mile, polished with pride, with that Cadillac emblem done up in shiny gold and thin, orange pinstripes going down the sides just so, the car itself a lovely, vivid purple. Not a scratch in sight.

With one of those metal fish emblems on the back, one with “Jesus” written in the center just to make it very clear who meant a lot to that owner.

He’d dressed his car in purple and had it carrying the Name in the Bible.

Whoever that African-American man was driving that car, I so wished I could have told him about that good Samaritan he reminded me of.   He would have loved it.

He spoke in church today. He’s a young doctor who had just gotten back from a medical mission to Africa, and I know his wife was anxiously waiting his return. I asked if I could share his story here, and he told me warmly, Yes.

It was Sunday and he was in a city. He asked at his hotel whether there might perhaps be a Mormon church nearby?

The familiar in a strange place, the chance to worship with others where the Sacramental prayers are the same, no matter the language, all over the world.

Oh yes; just take a cab to the subway, get out at this stop, turn and go up the hill, you’ll see it, it’s right there.

He got off at that subway stop to find himself in a place where he, a white man dressed in a tie, felt suddenly very conspicuous. It was not a good end of town. And he clearly was not from there.  He was Other.  There was no sign of that church whatsoever, no safe haven.

In those moments, another man stepped off the subway. “He was wearing a purple shirt and carrying a Bible.”  That man was on his way to church too, and when asked for directions stopped and spent twenty minutes going out of his way to walk the stranger to where he was trying so hard to get to, befriending him and, by his actions, proclaiming the love of God in the world. By living that love.

And then he headed off to his own church.

The language is universal: when we choose not to be strangers, we are, I said to him and his wife, each other’s angels.

We were told today by one of our kids off at school that maybe the “old people’s noise ordinance” here wasn’t so bad an idea after all.

Yeah… There used to be a musician in our immediate neighborhood who did some of his growing up in this town and stayed (when he wasn’t on the road).

I used to see this guy out taking a walk sometimes, which I noticed because I did too, (y’know, wave slightly at the neighbor or nod a simple hi in passing if you’re on the same side of the street) and man did he look familiar. But I didn’t have a clue who he was.

There used to be another neighbor of ours down our street whom we knew pretty well, the retired chief of police, who complained to Richard about this hippy neighbor of his just across the fence from him playing his music loud with his buddies but always staying *just* inside the noise ordinance; Ski was used to calling the shots, given the position he’d had, but he couldn’t touch the guy and he knew it.  Bugged the heck out of him.

His neighbor went on to design psychedelic ties.

And he went on to have a Ben and Jerry’s flavor named after him.

Which happens to be Richard’s favorite.

(I can just picture him and Ski, the Ungrateful Dude–all those free concerts he was treated to!–now that they’re both up there, with Ski going,  So, Jerry…  Teach me how to jam on that guitar of yours?)

There was one other thing about Saturday night at that clubhouse: one person actually DID see me.

A young mom with two very small children, one of them barely old enough to walk. They were doing the charming wobbly meandering exploring of the great outside world that people of that size love to do, and she was keeping a bored but careful eye on them while letting them roam a bit.  The little boys stayed together, pretty much. I’m sure she was making sure they didn’t get too near that pool back there.

Which meant she was standing in the walkway between the gate I was stuck behind and across from that open door I was so fervently wanting to reach.  She was in.  I was out.  She saw me, then carefully turned and did the I’m-not-seeing-you pretense, glancing my way occasionally without quite making eye contact again.

If that gate was locked in my face it was obviously because I didn’t belong there.  Well then.

Now picture it, a potluck party going on in that clubhouse, and me, dressed in a skirt and silk blouse and what I think is one of the most elegant shawls I’ve knit, a chocolate torte held up in one hand and my artsy hand-carved sassafras wood cane in the other hand, justifying my wavering balance.  The Birkenstocks.

Quite the scary stranger stereotype.

I called out Evet’s name as Evet walked past that doorway. Waved that torte. The cane.

I wonder if, feeling guilty later, the young woman perhaps ventured to check whose name the clubhouse was reserved in for the evening.

All I needed her to have done was to step five steps sideways to poke a head in the door and ask, Is there an Evet here? Someone’s trying to get your attention.

To be fair, yes, small children change direction and speed fast and unexpectedly; she would have had to shepherd them in the same direction to keep them in her direct line of sight.

It was easier to just keep to her own business and pretend she didn’t know I was there.  And I, openly dissed, could not make myself ask her to do for me what she did not want to do for me. Because if she refused even that–I’m a mom too. I would not want one of my children to feel so much worse the way that making that choice would cause her to feel later.

I have often thought how true the words are of one of Rachel Remen’s cancer patients, who told Dr. Remen, I have found there are two kinds of people: those who love. And those who fear.

When we close down and deny the humanity in those we don’t know, we deny our own.

I’m looking at this from the standpoint of middle age, remembering the boredom and the hassles and the interrupted-sleep nights of when my children were little.  Of some of the things I might have done differently had I had enough rest and some time to myself to just sit and think.  Which, come to think of it, is why I took up handicrafts–sewing, then smocking, then went back to my love of knitting–when my children were small. It stayed done. It gave me a sense of creative accomplishment.

And it gave me time to center myself and think.

I like to think I left that woman with a life lesson she won’t forget.  I like to think she’ll choose differently next time, never again wanting to feel the sting of that regret.  Opening the gate for me, or asking the others first to make sure and then letting someone else there take the responsibility of doing so–it would have been so easy. I would have been so very grateful.  Hey, she’d have been invited in with her little boys for celebratory chocolate torte with the rest of us, first piece!

There are many ways to learn not to choose fear.

There’s still some leftover torte.

The guy in south San Jose tried my car this morning and it seemed peachy fine. Huh. So he took it out on a short road test and suddenly all four brakes completely locked down and those wheels turned not at all. He had to manually disconnect them and get that car back to his bay. The man is definitely braver than I.

I am all the more amazed they turned–just enough–for me when I desperately needed them to.

He commented that the brakes were new; yes, they were. That smoke I saw? Turns out it was a puff rising up from the tires coming off the freeway with the brakes in full blast yesterday.  The master cylinder was toast.

My regular mechanic is closed weekends.  Couldn’t ask him for advice.

This guy was open Saturdays.

The dealer is closed on weekends.

This guy couldn’t get a new master cylinder from the dealer till Monday. Would I like a rebuilt one, then?

I asked for an estimate while quietly googling ’99 Chrysler Town and Country ones: list price was over $1500 just for the part.  That was about the Blue Book right there.

The rebuilt cylinder? With tax and labor, it rang up at $377.  Amazing how cheap that looked by then.

They finished it at closing time, we got way back down there to pick it up, and I got to go off at last to a long-anticipated party of peregrine volunteers.  I had my car and I would get to go after all! Good and late, but verily, them’s the brakes.

It was held at a condo clubhouse.

The gate (there being a pool behind it) was on autolock.

The door to the clubhouse was open and no farther away from me than the length of my living room, and I could see two people I knew in there through the glass walls.

I called out.  Nada.  I waved my cane above the gate. Nada.  I held up the chocolate torte I’d brought for it. Nada.  They were right there! I was right here! If just one person would glance up!  I tried calling them on my cellphone and found I didn’t have their numbers in it.  I stood there for ten minutes, sure that someone surely must…c’mon, guys!… And then, as I got back in my very own car (yay!) going back to my own home, I reminded myself how good it was that I could do that again.

I laughed at the sudden thought of, me, I may be fairly invisible, but good European dark chocolate?

Ah, well, tonight was just trying to make tomorrow look good, right?

(I got profuse apologies, but there was absolutely nothing to apologize for. They’d had it propped open and the prop-er had fallen.  Sometimes life just does what it does and you go on to the next.)

I’ve got my car back! And a little extra chocolate on the side. I’m sure I can find something to do with it.

So I had all these things I was going to do today, and one was a trek to the outlets in Gilroy an hour+ away to look for warmer clothes for the daughter about to need them.  On a whim, I threw a small knitting project in my purse, feeling a little silly but you never know.  On another whim, I said I’d drive  and Michelle went, Oh! I thought I was going to. Sure, and how about I do it on the way back?

Sure!

Which is why a more experienced driver was at the wheel and the other driver got to learn new things without having to make any decisions in the moment.

Heavy traffic, lots of braking ahead, I was slowing down–when suddenly the brakes felt dead. Boom just like that.  My car is old but well maintained but oh well.  I was sure I was going to slam into the guy up there ahead of me, but no, the brakes actually worked even if they didn’t feel like it while I was pushing as hard as I could. Thank heavens!

I was in the next-to-left lane and there was an exit just ahead. I managed to get over several lanes and the traffic just opened up for me when I turned on my signal, how in that mess, I don’t know, thank you everybody and somehow it worked without all the things that could have happened happening.

Off. I got far enough down the ramp to where there was, for whatever reason, a stretch of suddenly cleared-off pavement in the margin, not much longer than one car’s length. I took it.   Before and after that point, the breakdown lane was all covered in dry tinderbrush that believe me you do not want to touch with a hot car in a California summer.

And that’s when I saw the smoke.  Just a little, then pouring out from under the hood on the right.  Please don’t blow up on us.  Just please don’t blow up on us.  (I flashbacked: I once saw a car with its engine on fire shooting massive flames fifteen feet high and it was three blocks from my house: the driver had pulled over right under a very dried-out olive tree. In front of a gas station.  I thought, flashback, you are not helping me here.  Shut up. It shut up.)

Meantime, behind us, people were speeding and cutting over the line on the offramp, seeing us and veering back into their lane and I was glad for every inch away from them we had–and very glad to be off that freeway!

Where, while we waited for the tow, grateful for cellphones, we saw a fire truck and then an ambulance making their way forward as the traffic started to back up past that point.  Someone was having a way worse day than we were. Gratitude check there.

AAA towed us to the nearest AAA-approved garage.  While I gave the owner our contact information, the tow driver quietly said to Michelle, This is NOT a good end of town.  Would you like me to drop you two off at Denny’s to wait for your ride home?

I almost hugged the guy. I did hug Richard later.

A shout out to KatherineL, who offered to rescue us when we couldn’t reach Richard at first. Thank you *so* much.

Coming home, trying not to feel weird about leaving my car to an unknown fate in the hands of strangers, Richard had a doctor’s appointment he was only going to make to on time now if he could go in the carpool lane.  We swung by home, let Michelle mercifully out, and I went with him.  He told me I didn’t have to, he could risk it if I wanted to get out too; I told him, You rescued me; I rescue you. It’s only fair.

And I was so glad I had that little knitting project.  My coming grandson’s little hat finally got all but the decreasing done while I waited. I think I really needed that.

And yet–Michelle and I were talking afterwards and we were both saying, You know? For all that that could have been, that was as pleasant as it could possibly have been under the circumstances. The tow truck driver was a sweetheart, the garage owner seemed a decent type, KatherineL was ready to run right there, Richard enjoyed the pumpkin pie piece I bought him to go while waiting at Denny’s. It could all have been so much worse.  We got off easy, we really did.

At least someone’s going to be warmer because of that trip!

The last two flowers out of four. So out of season, so cool to have them in bloom just because they happen to feel like it right now.

Meantime. Tonight.

(Nah, couldn’t be.) I kept knitting.  Several people in the shop had already commented on my colorway, and the woman who’d just come out of a class in the back seemed to like my shawl project. Except she kept looking at me, not just–but nah, couldn’t be.

From across the room she was going: (Nah, couldn’t be.) She was talking to Kay about learning to knit shawls. They picked one up off the back of a chair and Kay was explaining how to do its simple dropped-stitch pattern.

Then Kay mentioned my name. I didn’t hear her, but I sure saw the effect.  Suddenly, this woman is bounding over towards me and I’m exclaiming, Are you KATHY?!

Now I don’t have to tell you the hugs that followed: our kids went through school together clear back to kindergarten. Back in the day, the elementary let the older grades out I think 40 minutes after the younger grades, and when you had kids on both sides of that, you learned fast that there needed to be extra adult presence on that playground in between. And so we parents who picked up our kids would sit and chat.

Kathy reminisced over the times I would bring my spinning wheel, and how I’d spun up Cole’s samoyed’s fur. I’d made it into a hair scrunchy for his mom.

(Take a standard covered-elastic hairband. Take yarn and crochet around it until there’s no visible sign of elastic left.  Work it as big and ornate or as tiny and simple as you want.)

And now she’s learning to knit and wants to make a shawl. I think I could help her along the way with any questions, why, yes.  So for Kathy’s sake, here are a few old pictures of projects from my book.

One last thing, just because it tickled me: Richard mentioned tonight what one of his co-workers had told him today–the lady was stopped at a light and heard ducks. A little late in the season for ducklings but you never know and you have to watch out for them, you can’t run over them! Where would the water be that they’d be toddling towards…and so she was looking and looking all over. Where are the ducks! Quackquackquack.

She finally looked up. And there, perched on the wires above the intersection, were several parrots.  Speaking in Duck. (Mari and Kathryn, that’s for you.)

Hey, lady, no Peking!