This first part’s just background noise: I hadn’t worn my Malabrigo shawl before.  I hadn’t been planning to, either, for quite some time to come, but it really did match that outfit well and it was almost time to go.

Oh, wait, I realized as I pulled it out of its ziploc–weave in that last end and snip the other one before we go, quick!  It had been carefully put away with its instructions, safe and sound, not quiiiite done.  There.  Done.

Nina liked it.  “That one’s different–I like that!”

We were at a wedding this evening.  We’ve known the bride since she was a small child.  There was much celebrating, many reunions between old friends going on, many people who rarely see each other but love each other dearly, all coming together in joy.  I found the grandparents of the bride, the grandmother having been a fellow swimmer at the CAR therapy pool when my kids were little; we threw our arms around each other.  I saw others doing likewise, over and over. How ARE you these days!

Congratulations, Sara and Juan!  It was good to see you being the happiest of all.  Dancing for well-deserved joy; you’ve both chosen well.  Our best wishes for happily ever after and always.

When a kid’s first attempt at filing bounces…

…When you realize BYU lets out mid-April so she didn’t quite make it to five months in college for the year, so technically then she’s not a dependent anymore…

…When she doesn’t want to be one anyway because of grad school issues…

That’s when you stifle chuckles while the hubby goes But I just DID that! at the not-helpful tax software chasing itself in circles, just like it did to me for hours before he came home.

And then–we’ve never done this before.  A once-in-a-lifetime chase.  The great American cultural experience of finding an open post office on the night of April 15th.  There are a lot fewer of them than there used to be, and after I looked up the possibilities, I told Richard, It’s a date! We’re going exploring new places! Out into the hinterlands!

This is supposed to be fun?  He wasn’t convinced.  Was I sure there wasn’t one closer?  Uh, Pleasanton and Oakland are your next closest.

Oh. We weren’t sure we needed to get the amends in that fast anyway, since we’d all filed, but better safe.

Forty-five minutes of waiting in line to turn left onto the road it was on, with the usual cut-ins by the cheerful types who like to wave hi while showing you their sore finger for your sympathy.

Big wheeled mailbags at the curb, a tired postal worker who genuinely smiled when I told him “Thank you!” as he took my mail through the car window, lights on inside behind him and people clearly still working on their returns in there. Ouch.

And you know? Really?  Isn’t it wonderful that these are the kinds of problems we’re having this year?

But I gotta say–Sam, this is why your due date was April 11. I tried my best to make that work out, really, I did (hand me that pogo stick…) But the skies were holding a party and throwing sparkly-white confetti on the 15th, and you held out for that. You knew a good thing coming.

So did we, in our anticipation, whenever the day might be, and boy were we right.  Happy Birthday!

Tax software: one tab keystroke off on the very first page. It took me two days to track it down. When it claimed suddenly that we had a California refund coming that was more than the value of our old New Hampshire house, uh, no.

I finally found it.  I’m done!

The classic annual elementary-school chant of kids waiting for the schoolbuses to take them home for the summer, morphed into adulthood: No more taxes! No more doing the books! No more giving the paperwork dirty looks!

I got to see a hawk afterwards this afternoon, and it wasn’t even Thursday yet.  I simply sat down and watched, and then pulled out the camera to go notice the rest of Spring.  Pardon me, now, (don’t miss the captions), I’ve got an edging I finally get to go knit.

Random avoidances of tax forms, which really are done anyway, just print and sign and be done with it, fer cryin’ out loud:

Saw another large hawk, perched on the telephone wires watching the cars, including ours as we were going by during a break in today’s rain rain rain. We came back the other way awhile later, and there he was, still, calmly observing.  The rain was holding off the whole time for all of us during that errand.  Apres nous, le deluge.

Saw a squirrel trying to sneak at the feeder actually slip off the top of the wet awning and fall down to the patio, flipping his tail wildly as the ground jumped up at him. I think he was as surprised as I was. He seemed okay.

We found, next to a large bookcase, the leak in the roof going down the wall of an unused bedroom, the top of the wallboard starting to peel away. My dyepot found a new use.  The warranty on that roof expired in November.  This is Not Good.  At least no squirrels fell in.

Michelle was explaining to a friend from back East yesterday that it doesn’t rain in summer in California and that the rain here is always cold–the idea of a warm summer rain is just “A weirdo thing you guys do back there,” as she put it to me today as the skies did their normal-winter thing.

It never rains in summer, except that it always does just once, and always when it does, people exclaim, But it never rains in summer! This is so bizarre!

Nah, the bizarre part is that it doesn’t and that it’s so ocean-cold when it does.  There are supposed to be summer rains, and they are supposed to be warm, and they are supposed to be enjoyed back home, say, walking along the C&O Canal with old friends watching turtles swimming in the canal as the rain splashes from above and the wide Potomac ripples slowly nearby.

I’m trying to figure out an excuse to go confirm that hypothesis in person this year.

The song “California Dreamin’ ” was written after a 17-year-old from LA joined a band and it landed a gig singing in New York. Her father tried to explain the concept “cold” to her. She bought a wool dress, thinking that should totally do it.

Backless.

Manhattan, we have a problem.  They “stopped into a church” because it was the closest warm building and she was finding out that maybe her dad did know something after all.

My friend’s handknit wool socks on my feet, gratefully… Because it’s raining, y’know, and that means it’s cold in Northern California. (Cold.  Um.  I assure you my snow shovel remains idle. I am not complaining!)

Weighed my yarn, decided I could do one more pattern repeat before the edging–remember the edging? There was a shawl project, once upon a time–I decided I had been yarn-deprived for nearly a week and that that was way long enough. I knitted that pattern repeat.

I will stop treating my taxes like a manuscript or a house remodel: there is an end and we are there, fer cryin’ out loud.

The weather report is calling for rain Thursday. Maybe I’ll get to see another hawk!

I wanted to go to CNCH today, but it seems I’m going to have to do the conference on my feet, which means I can’t stay very long and I will be totally wiped when I get home.  So.

It seemed the right thing to do to get the taxes finished at last before letting myself get that tired.  Maybe I could wrap it up quickly and scoot right out the door.  (As if!) I do have a neighbor hoping I’ll somehow help her get her Nilus Leclerc loom sold; I’m not a weaver, though, and have no expertise in such things.  (But I’m mentioning.)  Still, a convention center close by filled with yarn and a fair number of friends–even if it’s not knitter-focused, I definitely want to go.

I could add paragraphs of IRS-ings as to what today became instead, but surely you don’t want to hear it any more than I wanted to do it.  I’ll go tomorrow.  But I will say this:

Karen, out of the blue, sent this photo today and told me she’d spent the best five dollars ever:  look what they’d turned into!

I glanced up from “Did we save the ambulance bill” at movement in my peripheral vision, to see what was at best guess a Cooper’s hawk suddenly perching right outside my window on the back of the old windsor chair out there–begging squirrels, take note.  It was *right there.* I gaped, trying to memorize it: gray over the eyes, not quite the fitted-helmet look of a peregrine, although a white chest like one and a speckled pattern below, with a grayish back and then, when I tried to reach slooowly for my camera while calling out softly to Michelle, not wanting her to miss it, it flew off with wide bands of gray and white showing across the bottom of its tail. Wow. Straight towards the bluejays’ nest.

Took awhile for the rest of the backyard crew to wingtip-toe cautiously back.

I wrote that post last night, then put down the computer in determination and went back to that big swatch.  I no longer cared how late it was.

Knit that last part again.

Nope, not that; do it again.

No, not that is not it; do it again. C’mon.

No, let’s try–it shouldn’t, I don’t think it will but let’s–wait–okay, get a little further to make sure the effect holds with other stitches pulling from their own directions–that DOES work! That’s exactly the effect I was trying to get!  That’s IT!!! I was so excited I could hardly stand it. I DID it, I DID it! After all this time, I DID IT!!! No knitting software, just me and my needles and yarn, hard at work trying and raveling and trying again. I did it!

A lace pattern I haven’t seen anywhere else. An edging pattern that, likewise, I haven’t seen anything quite like it anywhere else.  Together they create exactly the effect I’d wanted.  Shel Silverstein with his “Put something new in the world that hasn’t been there before,” definitely knew the feeling: it’s like being a little kid opening the best presents.

The two patterns flow into each other and complete each other utterly perfectly.  As an art dealer’s daughter, my stitches are the paint I draw with.  It dawned on me then, that if I wanted so many of these to represent so many of those, let’s see, how many stitches in the main body would I need on the next shawl for it to work out that way… I sat down with pen and paper and did the math.

It was already there.  It. Is. Perfect.  My first attempt was a year ago, and I’ve been stewing over ideas for how to improve it for some time.

I’ve nailed it.  I was just dancing, jabbering, insufferably gleeful.

That gleefulness was downright contagious around here; it’s a good feeling.

And now, after I finish the taxes I’m still plodding through (almost done!) and actually knit that edging onto this shawl I’m working on, I have to start from the very beginning.

And make real the next pattern that’s been bouncing around in my head.

Let’s see, (taking notes) I need this and this and I can’t do a thing about them right now–nope, the taxes aren’t going to be finished today after all.

Too many hours of all that and I was off to Trader Joe’s and bought chocolate hazelnut gelato immediately before closing (adding in berry sorbet in case of guilt).  Escape!

Meantime, Don, having no idea that that’s what I was immersing myself in and that I was being seriously knitting- and reading-deprived, sent his son Cliff over with a CD they’d burned, of what I think of as knitting music: the perfect thing to turn on and let the ears pay attention to while the fingers glide along, knowing their part of the duet by heart.  A relief for a day like today, something to look forward to; thank you, Don and Cliff!

It was fun to watch, though, that the squirrels had figured out, every single one of them before I even woke up this morning, that the game was up.  The birds seemed to know it, too;  they were flocking to the feeder all day in great numbers.  Here, *we* get all the sunflowers now, but you down there, *ptooie*, you can have the leftover millet.  Neener.

The runt of last year’s black squirrel litter who’d acted nearly tame for awhile was suddenly on his best behavior again.  Scrambling up the back of a chair, not too close since he wasn’t allowed to, keeping away from the amaryllises, standing and begging and staring long and longingly at me through the window.   When I laughed, it knew it had won and scrambled down to where it knew I would throw to, just like old times.  Nuts to the squirrels!

Nope, don’t see a line for claiming them all as an aggregate dependent…

Last winter, while my husband, my mother, my friends and readers, my doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, a housekeeper at Stanford–everybody played a part and everybody played it well in taking good care of me, strengthening me, being there for me, and I am so grateful–I, of course, could take no care whatsoever of my collection of prized amaryllises. They were the least of our worries.  They were outside under an awning, up high on an old picnic table so as to be out of reach of the snails that would devour them.

But that also meant the winter rains couldn’t reach them. And when I came home, I could not lift the weight of a water jug as my long incision healed ever so slowly.  The others remembered to once or twice each over the months.

When at last I could do my part, the pots just sat there with the bulbs desiccated. I was sure most of them were dead.

A few were.  But the others, I could feel that the bulbs still had some heft left between my fingers, enough for hope’s sake.  So I kept on watering those pots long past the point that leaves should have started to show already.  They did not. I watered anyway.  Throw in a little Monty Python: “I’m not dead yet!”  I hadn’t been, so they weren’t allowed to be either–have faith in that heft and keep trying.

This went on for months.

I finally got a few leaves here and there.  I figured that was the most one could ask for, really; if they could produce four, the chances were high they’d bloom next year, and that would be wonderful, but if it had to be the year after that, then so be it.

This bulb produced only two.  And yet–I glanced outside two weeks ago and was very surprised to see a bud.  I brought it inside. Eventually, I found six pots with buds so far, and not wanting the wildlife to develop a taste for the flowers, brought them inside and out of their squirrelly little reach.

I really had wondered if they were dead after all.  It had just been so long with no response I could see.

The first one opened today, is opening today, the flower smiling wider and wider in slow motion as I type this.

It is standing there reminding me what I so easily forget, how much Life is a gift, beautiful and powerful beyond all understanding.  It is not limited, no matter what our expectations may be at any one time.  The life force is strongest when we hear its call to cheer someone else’s day–as so many brightened mine when I was in dire need.

Pouring water into flowerpots.  Typing an email to someone lying in a hospital bed, sending up a prayer, Thinking Good Thoughts.  A small moment to each patient bulb, and then another, and then another, adding up.

To pure joy.

Thank you, everybody.

And remembering, as I write this, the One who endured all, rose above all, and loves all, Happy Easter!

There was a choir concert at the church in Menlo Park tonight.  I was the only one here able to go, but our friend Jim was playing the organ and I wouldn’t miss for anything being there in memory of what his family went through a few years ago:  to cherish and celebrate with him by my simple presence the life of his son, remembering the joy in Jim‘s playing as he got the news, right there at the organ at a Good Friday concert, that Nicholas was being released from the hospital.

And to remember God’s Son most of all.

“Two shall be working in the field; one shall be taken, the other left.”  I think I get that obscure phrase better than I used to. Life simply is what it is.

I was two minutes late and the place was packed. Looking in the doorway, I saw one open seat only.  Taking it, I found myself sitting next to Alma. Alma!! We threw our arms around each other in silent exclamations of surprised delight.

We lived near each other and saw each other every Sunday when her first two and my younger two children were babies; her Nicole was a preschooler and Nathan a toddler when they moved away.

About ten years later, my friend Michelle, for whom I knitted the original Monterey Shawl, had her young daughter admitted to Children’s Hospital, and I went to visit her with a toy to cheer her up.

Only, the parents had forgotten to add the detail that when they’d moved here, they’d kept their old insurance, meaning she was in Oakland Children’s Hospital over an hour away, not at the Lucile Packard one at Stanford right nearby. Oops.  She wasn’t there.

Well, that didn’t work!  I was walking back down the sidewalk towards my car, wondering why why why–when Alma and I saw each other. After all those years.

Alma!!!

Alison!!!

Only–I knew if I were seeing her there, of all places…

Her son Nathan had had a childhood cancer treated, one that no child had ever survived that rare type of tumor if it were larger than so many centimeters.

His had been the size of a watermelon.

And now it was back and so was he and there we both were.  We grieved together, and I absolutely knew that that was why Michelle and her husband hadn’t thought to mention which hospital; their daughter recovered quickly from a temporary thing, and I needed to be in that spot on that day for Alma to receive that comfort.

Nathan had wanted to be a fireman when he grew up.  A firehouse near where they lived took him into their hearts as he fought the good fight, so much so that when he passed, they came with their big red trucks to the funeral in his honor and to comfort his family.

And of course I came too.  I remembered Nicole and Nathan, the big sister holding carefully onto her little brother’s hand, the two of them inseparable, always; what would she do without him?  Alma told me they’d stayed close like that as they’d gotten bigger, too.

That was all, again, about a dozen years ago.  And there she was tonight.  I’d come to celebrate that Jim’s son had survived his fall from the ski lift over that Spring Break–and found myself there beside a woman who, as the music went on, was wiping tears, particularly, it seemed to me afterwards, during Mary’s Song.

And I knew. Oh, honey, I knew.  You don’t get over the loss of a child; you only get through it.

I can only hope that knowing that someone else was there who knew and who somehow ended up, again, right there, helped.

I got an email that made me very wistful; I had hoped to see him one more time.  I wrote about him here; Time Magazine interviewed him here.  Goodbye, Uncle Richard; we miss you.  My children remember your kindness.  Rest in peace, and say hello to your brother and the grandparents for me.

It was a day.

Remember this? Prove you’re married or we drop your wife from the health insurance, etc.

We finally got the kid’s transcript in hand; deadlines are wonderful things. So.

Off to his office to fax everything in. Reading the fine print after I got there that I should have paid attention to earlier, marriage and birth certificates in hand, I realized, wait–they want our tax return too?  And, just in case we got divorced since last year, they want a bank statement or utility bill with both our names on it that’s not older than two months?  But what if those don’t put both our names on them?

Back home, growling at the lost time and the utter stupidity of it all.  Growling at myself for forgetting to hit “save” on my *Turbo-taxes yesterday (the software later restored the files for me when I finally dared look at it)…  Trying not to let it all get to me.

The only reason I found what I needed is that, on a whim, yesterday I’d gone to City Hall to pay my utility bill in person as long as I was running an errand nearby.  Meaning I hadn’t torn off the top of the bill, the part you mail in–and the only part that had both our names, the bank being of no help.  Small favors that are everything in that moment; thank you, dear G_d.

Back to the office.  I was almost there, driving along–when suddenly I noticed it. Somehow I just simply hadn’t before.  It was instantly clear to me what it was.

The eruv.

I am not Jewish. But this is Passover week and Easter week, and those who’ve read my book know that our first day in our new house here, the day of the moving van, a day that was completely overwhelming with boxes erupting constantly from the truck while I tried to manage three kids ages four, two, and crawling, we were invited to come to a Seder as soon as that van left.  Just because we were friends of friends and Nina knew what moving was like.

We were the strangers at the gates.  She and her husband warmly welcomed us in.

That line overhead had never called attention to itself.  It was just the simplest reminder on Earth that G_d is here, too.  It brought me up short and completely turned my day around at a moment I greatly needed it.

A piece of string. It healed my world in that moment.  My thanks to those who put it there.

Today was–well, tomorrow is a do-over. I’m looking forward to that.  There were a lot of surprises piled onto one day that I could have done without, although, nothing that can’t be fixed (with a careful attention to old paperwork.)  Just dumb stuff, really.  Richard came home from work and I basically told him, Please give me a hug before I burst into tears.

He did. He’s a peach.

I finally took the time after dinner and made myself sit down with my knitting project.  Yes, it takes a longer wait to see progress on 4mm needles than my usuals. Tough. Do it anyway.

Actually, there’s more progress showing now than I’d expected–and it Stays. Done.  With each row, I never have to knit it again: the thing is accomplished.  My I-wishes became I-dids.

That helped more than I thought it would.

We were walking into church today and I saw, at a side angle as we approached…

Back up a moment here.  For years now I have had visual memory damage and a specific difficulty with recognizing faces of people I’ve only recently met or that I don’t often see.

…And yet, “MICKEY!?!” burst loudly out of me before she’d even turned around.

Sixteen years.  It had been sixteen years. She was the young grandma with neon-(wait, I forget–was it purple? Fuschia?  Blue?  I think it varied.  Punk-spiked and wild-colored, anyway) hair.  Her grandkids were just slightly younger than my kids. Who did not have a California Cool-version grandma quite like my Norwegian-born friend Mickey. I adored her.  Always will.  And somehow my soul refused to let my memory damage defeat me or even slow me down, not for one instant, the moment I saw her today.  I’m still trying to figure out how it could have been so (and her hair was normal now), but… !

Her daughter had moved to Washington State, and Mickey with her, in 1994. I did not get to see those children growing up with mine, and I have wished it could have been otherwise.

She turned at hearing her name and took me in for a full two seconds before it hit her and, “OH!” as she threw her arms around me.  She was too kind to say anything like, when did your hair go so gray? Where are all your little kids?  How did you get so old?  Where on earth did that cane come from?

GOOD to have you HOME, Mickey!!

After church, we sat and just talked, not enough, oh, never long enough, but till I was afraid I was wearing out her friend who was waiting to take her back with her where she was staying. (Thank you, Jean!)

Why had she come? I asked.

Simply because it was time to see old friends.  Just because.

Okay, now, that is a thought to live by. Grab your plane tickets, let’s go.

And in the meantime.  While Richard was sitting waiting patiently for me by the main doors, he was being charmed by a young mom’s two-year-old daughter waiting with her mommy for her daddy to be ready to go, too.  He described the scene later over dinner: if her mommy asked her a question, she had to jump up and down before she could start to answer with a giggle. Bouncy bouncy bounce. Every question. Every time.  She was *so* cute.

Michelle, intrigued, asked, And did she have blonde curls?

Richard: Oh, yes!

Michelle: Oh, that’s just too perfect.

Richard: Yes, it’s exactly how you used to bounce; you didn’t walk, you bounced, jumping up and down with each step.

Michelle: And singing Little Mermaid!

Me, laughing: Oh, boy did you sing Little Mermaid!

Michelle went on to tell us a vivid memory of hers, long forgotten by either of us: her daddy was crossing the street with her to the Double Rainbow ice cream store downtown, a very special treat, one-on-one Daddy time to celebrate her birthday, when suddenly she realized: she hadn’t sung her song! She hadn’t bounced! She was so excited that she’d forgotten and she’d actually *walked*!  THAT’S not how you do it!

And to Richard’s horror, she’d darted back across that often-busy street so she could do the job right.  Bouncy bounce, sing Little Mermaid.  There you go. Did it right that time (and, I’m sure, with her daddy’s hand holding tightly to hers just in case this time).

She remembers that sense of satisfaction in getting it right.  Uh uh uhhh, uh uh uh-uhhhhhhhh. Put joy in the world!

At any age. At any time.  In any color.  Curly, punk, blonde, blue.

I want to see Mickey’s daughter and grandchildren; I say, the reunions have only just begun.

And I hope to see my young-mom friend’s exuberant little daughter grow up here, so her mother and I can swap tales in some day to come over when we had cute little girls always jumping up and down for the sheer joy of being alive and well loved.

Maybe I should go spike my hair.

(And as I finish typing this, Michelle is singing Easter music in the background.)

I needed a break from doing taxes–let’s see, the solar system… billed but no receipt?  (dials phone) And Dear, what was the date of that…

(I need some knitting time!)

I found it easier than last year, but still, the attention must be given its wandering time off from it all.  I grabbed my camera.  Not quite enough light but a little too much flash and then a dead battery but you get the idea.

The Meyer lemon tree, walking across the yard from there, smelled heavenly, and I picked myself a few that were starting to go orange, spreading the intensity of that aroma into my hands, where it stayed for awhile.   Scents and sensibility.

The baby plum tree my children planted me is coming along and in leaf, way ahead of the apples, which are just starting to sprout a bit of green.

Two squirrels were totally making out, squirrel style: tackling, wrestling, chasing, sneaking up, jumping sideways straight up high into the air, pouncing, biting, grabbing and pulling each other by the tail off the tree trunk (near to the ground, though), doing a total Calvin-and-Hobbes act of disappearing into a single rolling angry fighting animated-hamster-ball, and I thought they were fighting over territory because it definitely wasn’t gentle.

Yeah well.

C’mon, you guys, get a tree.

The local paper had a story Friday about Enoch Choi, a physician who wanted to help out in Haiti, who wanted to bring a medical team as well as himself there, but, he said, the major relief organizations wanted a month’s commitment and most doctors and nurses he knew just couldn’t take that much time off.

So he worked out on his own a way to get rotating teams of his local colleagues in and out for a week each month.  His church, Abundant Life Christian, helped with the logistics as he was setting things up; even the local schoolchildren helped with the fundraising.

He was in the first group to go. They’re back now, and were giving a discussion on their experiences the other night. They described:

The group of patients on IVs, very ill, who surprised their caregivers when they broke out into song: a hymn, “How Great Is Thy Faithfulness.”

The baby near death of dehydration and pneumonia, who, given care, one doctor said, “It was like watching a flower bloom in time-lapse photography.” What was left unsaid was the unfathomable gift of being allowed to know they had saved a life–which, one by one, happened many times over.

The young mother, an amputee crushed in spirit, for whom they were able to reframe her situation: she had rushed back into a building to save her two-year-old.  One doctor said, “I told her she was a hero for rescuing her child; her life was made in that moment: that she would forever be a hero. I was able to help her interpret that.”

I love that.  The ability to see the power in our stories helps make us whole, and the gift of that physician seeing the whole picture, and giving it to that mother, changed everything.   For her and him both.

The sum of their thoughts was, Haiti is a place of hope, and that hope will save them in the end.

When I was a patient last year and very ill, I had a kind, calm doctor taking part in my care, the kind of man where you instinctively know you’re in good and caring hands and that, no matter how hard it is right now, you’re going to come out of this okay.

And his name was Enoch Choi.

I think I linked to these sheep before, but my daughter just sent me the link at Facebook and I had to laugh. My apologies for repeating myself from FB on the first one, but…

Mary had a little land(line), little land(line), little land(line), Mary had a little land(line) whose bleat was her ring tone.

Actually, she had two.  She named her lambs Handset and Get It before it stops ringing!, but they were eating her out of house and home phone. They were twins, not identical, but still, a dead ringer for each other, and they stayed close over the ears; Handset was her goat-too guy.

Have you herd?  That sheep got all hung up about the fact that someone didn’t do a number on its face.  The press were flocking to the story.  Some old guy, a Rotary member, went, ewe know, like, totally wireless on him.  Sheepsh. You’d think the guy would be more cord-ial.

By shear happy-stance I have a dial for you.  Creatively Dyed is having a 50% off sale on milk yarn–actually, that’s true–but is it good with spinach and sweetened cranberries in a salad? How do you feta ’bout that?

How about a nice necklace to accessorize your sheep?  An ear-ring?  What’s that use–hay?  Fleece top?  Okay, never mind, I’m just ram-bling on. This is your roving reporter, signing off. (Fingerspells O F F before she remembers the ASL word.)

Stay tuned, and cud-ing right up, we’ll bring you: piranha hubcaps…

*definitions for Don: roving is wool that has been carded at the mill–they wanted to make sure it was old enough to get in. Top is roving that has been processed again to take all the short hairs out so the voices won’t sound scratchy over the lines.

*If you send this in a telegram overseas using babelfish to try to make someone laugh–and I wouldn’t put it pasture–careful, it might come out a barbed wire offense.