Nothing like seeing a breaking news banner with a story of a wildfire near my mom at an hour when it’s too late to call her since she’s far enough away from it anyway that I shouldn’t worry. But how close is that to my aunt. Breathe. Okay, so, this is what I was intending to write about:

We did a Trader Joe’s run. Saturday evening, lots of customers, lots of clerks, busy.

I’d never seen the one at my line before. Clearly she was new; my guess is that she’s a student on a summer job. She was trying to do it well–don’t smash the crushables, bananas go on top–but it didn’t come automatically yet, she had to pay attention to each task, and twice she rearranged an item to make sure it would get home safely.

She did a good job. I didn’t care that she took a little longer than some might. Everybody starts off young and new.

But clearly others had taken it out on her because she looked like if one more person said one more thing she was going to burst into tears. Still, she was gamely trying to greet customers pleasantly, as required, even if she couldn’t quite look at them right then.

Somehow there was nobody in line behind us yet as she handed me the receipt so a moment’s distraction wasn’t going to hurt. I told her, For customers with a crying kid? Or for whatever–happy birthday! as I handed her a hand knit brightly striped toucan finger puppet with a long black beak and crossed eyes.

Oh that’s so cute, she said, in a tone that felt to me like her pain exhaling away into the wind as she examined its tiny details while we wheeled the loaded cart and away.

That, that, I could do.

The doorbell rang yesterday.

On the other side was a younger woman who was there to ask us a question.

The houses around here were built in the 1950s with radiant heat, and time and several mild and one big earthquake later, those inefficient old systems are falling apart. People who grew up with it have told me they love it and I’ve long wondered how it would be to wake up to a warm floor, and we even once looked into taking our house back to it. We were quickly talked out of it. It would require jackhammering the entire length of the house to replace the pipes under the slab.

Doesn’t every foundation need weak points in a quake?

So. The woman and her husband had just bought a house in the next block. They needed to replace the heat. They could see that we have an HVAC unit on our roof and wanted to know, were we happy with it?

She clearly had a lot riding on our answer: she wanted what we have, very much. Her husband was convinced it would make the house shake every time it came on.

The thought had never occurred to me. Yeah, you can hear it running quietly in the background, sure. But shaking the house? No.

Richard chimed in.

I told her how a dual unit had been nearly the same price as a simple furnace, so that for $100 we got whole-house air conditioning, and you can’t do that with radiant heat. I gave her Joe Lerma’s name at A-Z Techs Mechanical and said, Joe really knows his stuff, he’s good, his prices are good, and he’s very honest. I think you’d be very happy with him; we have been. We found him when he was recommended by the roofing company.

She was tapping into her phone and his name and number were already there. Got it.

She left looking hopeful. You could just see her telling her husband, this being right after a record-breaking heat wave: Air conditioning, too!

I’m really hoping for them.

This lady’s got a listing to write and a sale to make and I am in the way.

Thus the realtor for next door will meet with me and her fencing guy tomorrow about those three feet. Three weeks for a guy I found? Doubtful.

Moral of the story, part two: good realtors know their contractors and the contractors know to be available for them.

And now, just for fun and because I’ve been trying to grok the thing. Why did someone make a basketweaving ceiling? Sound absorption? Hide a roof leak? (Nahhh.) Couldn’t bear to toss the woodworking scraps from a project and finally found a big enough place to stash them?

Three FEET?!! I exclaimed at the guy.

He grinned, nodding, knowing what that meant. Knowing that now yes it was going to be worth it, yes my having called his company was worth it, and he had just justified their $3000 fee. And how.

We replaced the fence some years ago and the neighbor’s redwood and roots were in the way, so the fence company went offside of it a bit and told us and them that and we didn’t love it but at that point it’s not like you can tell them to take their lumber back and go home.

All these years we thought the difference was at most a foot at the front and we just shrugged it off. What if it were even less. Why bother. I almost didn’t call the surveyor, and in fact put it off for weeks till the coming sale of that house made a deadline I couldn’t resist: one way or another, at long last we had to know.

I’d thought that side of the yard felt a little closed in after that installation because of the missing trees that had had to be cleared out because they’d grown into the old fence and were pushing it down.

No. It was because they’d moved that line far closer to us than they’d needed to and then angled it so that even at the back of the yard it was still off by a foot taken away from us. There was no need for that.

One could cite squatter’s rights laws. Except it wasn’t ignored and permission for it to remain that way was never granted. The late owners knew about it (even if not to that degree), discussed it with us, and always intended to do right by us and split the cost on fixing it once the redwood was gone, but by then they both had cancer and there were more important things to deal with and it’s really easy to not spend lots of money over potentially not much.

I was blown off when I tried to get surveyor quotes by three companies who told me, On one side of one house? Pffft, we don’t do small jobs.

I don’t know if it was that I name-dropped the realtor who’d recommended them but these guys came right out. And they were absolutely wonderful people. And man were they worth every penny.

My sour cherry and pomegranate are about to get a lot more sunshine and the mango won’t mind, either.

The kicker is that the neighbors added an ADU for caretakers, which they ended up very much using and was a good thing–but if that fence had been where it was supposed to have been, it probably would have been too close for that ADU to have gotten approval.

So I’m actually mostly glad we didn’t get this fixed sooner.

Now to find the right fencing company. I’ve been looking up a bunch but you know? I bet that realtor’s got some real good names.

His mom moved here just this week. Everything is new. He’s new. He wasn’t walking yet, but he could crawl under chairs and, as he got more sure of himself in this room he’d never been in before with faces he’d never seen before, he could cruise upright along them too if he felt like it and if there was something to grab onto.

Took him awhile to decide to include me in on that, but a finger was all he needed and mine would do; he almost had this walking thing down.

It wasn’t just the smiles and the peekaboo games that drew him in my direction. It was the stick.

And not just any stick. Look at that. It was smooth and had a curve at one end and it didn’t weigh too much, either, it was just right for dragging around, maybe creating your own steady finger to walk by? He didn’t know, but he was determined to find out.

Only, something kept thwarting him. Why was this so hard. Why was that lady’s foot on the other end? (Because she had seen how babies can bash innocents around them with the ends of that thing, that’s why, kiddo, and because since I only just met your mom I want to stay on good terms.)

I’m not entirely sure why babies are enamored with canes, but they are absolutely compelling to them.

He had his fingers around the top of mine and looked up to see my reaction and I was smiling, even if I wasn’t abetting him. Yup you’re right, kiddo. Canes are cool.

And with that we were friends.

Went with a friend to Andy’s Orchard today (ripe peaches! Cherries! Apricots!) and saw this posted at the checkout.

I kept reading that “any sale is dependent on future events that may not occur for quite awhile” as meaning from Andy, Over my dead body.

After I got home, another friend said he’d told her they’re thinking 3-7 years.

The clerk who gave me permission to snap that picture found herself with a new Whales Road colorway hat; it had just felt like the right time to bring her something I’d knit. I figured the heat wave wouldn’t last forever.

But man, I so much want Andy and his orchard to.

It is, it’s a Sandra Boynton creation, and very funny.

Continental drifts of words reversing to Pangea form, glacially.

I do think we need to call it a night, though, hon.

Ohmygoodness.

You know I love Ukrainian vyshyvankas, their embroidered shirts, and Ukrainian gerdans, their traditional beaded necklaces woven on beading looms.

I have a particular favorite artist on the latter.

My father the art dealer spent decades helping keep the hundreds of years old French Aubusson tapestry weaving guild alive, and in many ways I am my father’s daughter.

Etsy at the beginning of the war in Ukraine forgave all debts and waived all fees for all sellers there. So everything you pay goes directly to the seller.

But also, according to what I have read, they have a policy in response to scammers such that if the computer address where your shop is listed doesn’t match what you later use, they’ll block payment. In war zones where people too frequently have to flee, the seller has to work out with Etsy that they are still legit.

Which brings me back to Lyubov. Many of her projects are one-offs and the designs are her own with the work carefully done with finer beads than most and an artist’s eye for where the light travels in the piece vs the matte beads.

My cherry tree gerdan came from her.

And frankly, you pay for that talent. She had one with a field of sunflowers on one side and above, a seagull with black wing tips taking off into the bright sky opposite a lighthouse where the tide was coming in below, the blue waves and white foam forming the curls framing the head of a woman rising from the water with a sun tattoo. Such tiny beads. So. Much. Detail. (I loved that one but just couldn’t afford it.)

Her home is–was?–in Kherson. Last year she showed me pictures of the bombardment her apartment had taken and vowed to rebuild. She had family whose home was entirely gone.

It’s easy to want to support someone who deserves it in every way.

She created some new pieces–and then her shop went down.

A few weeks later, hoping she was okay, I sent her a note asking after her. I told her I was hoping to buy her new Lilies gerdan if it was still available because I have a four year old granddaughter named Lily.

She reposted her shop, albeit with fewer pieces. There it was.

But the payment wouldn’t go through. I tried. I contacted Etsy. I sent a note to her. I tried again. And again, hoping something had changed. I bought a $4 sunflower sticker to prove to Etsy there was no problem with my credit card. Nothing.

I didn’t hear back from her and feared for her safety.

It turns out she had been hoping to surprise me, and in fact she very much did: she had my address so she simply packed it up and put it in the mail so that I would have it. Five other people had put it in their carts but she knew where she wanted that one to go.

After our busy weekend, I tried again today to see if everything was fixed and if my payment might go through this time, and as usual it did not. So I sent her one last note.

And with that she told me what she had done.

I was speechless. And thrilled. For the necklace, absolutely, but also very much for how it confirmed the goodness of this woman I’d love to meet on the other side of the earth.

I wanted to do my part and asked if I could pay for it, and how?

She decided to let me PayPal her. I would have anyway. She would have waived it anyway. I did it anyway.

After all the times I tried to be there for her the best I knew how from my distance these past few years, she was the one who chose to be there for my granddaughter and me. I am in awe of the person she is in the middle of all she and her family have been put through, and so grateful.

Slava Ukraini!

Hottest day in the heat wave, the Saturday after the Fourth of July, thirty-five degrees cooler at the beach than inland, where are you gonna go. Right?

Except it happened to be the day of a family get-together with a cousin who actually lives near the beach. Otherwise we would never ever…

Much Waze and Googlemaps checking ensued.

Ken’s brother later exclaimed, Four hours forty-five minutes?! (For an 83 mile route.) You could walk it backwards!

Which made me laugh, and no we didn’t take that route, and it was a 6 pm event so we left late enough that most people who wanted to spend the day at the beach were already there (or trying to be) so the extra 45 minutes wasn’t too bad.

The dinner was outside, but at 7 and under the shade of a huge oak so I pulled up a chair.

Cousin-in-law Ken’s mom, who lives in Arizona, sat down next to me to catch up a bit. There are only so many weddings and baptisms and the like to get to do that.

That close to the ocean and in the thick fog and breeze it was getting cold. I’d grabbed a silk cowl on my way out the door with the fleeting thought of, since anyone can wear silk (well yes it matches my blouse?)

It matched her dress even better, and she was quite grateful for the rescue. It is amazing how much warmth something around your neck can add. (It’s the Fettucia tubular silk in that link in blue, bought at a half off sale, just so she doesn’t worry about that price tag if she sees this.)

When it was time to go I told her, When am I ever again going to have a chance to totally match your outfit? It’s for you. Loosely spun silk has a tendency to stretch over time, so it may, just so you know.

Richard wanted to go before the two hour trek home (reverse beach traffic ended up demonstrating that it was a thing) so we didn’t linger too long from there. But I’m so glad for those limited times that she and I have had.

And eight-year-old Caleb, who was who the day was about in the first place, was celebrated and loved by all.

2.41 lbs.

These are getting to be a habit.

Enough already.

Got out the Sharpie.

So there.

Only took me 44 years to decide to do that.

A certain former reporter who is a private pilot mentioned in his Substack the case of the Southwest plane (NBC link) that went into a Dutch roll a few weeks ago, and explained how that had happened. He linked to a video (YouTube) of it actually happening to another flight years ago. Yow.

Which led to a brief exchange with him, because on one of our flights a week ago our Southwest plane suddenly dipped way down to the left and then immediately after, way down to the right. We were sitting at the front (the pilot in that first link said you would feel it at front and back but not so much in the middle) and all the passengers around us were looking at each other, like, What was THAT.

And then the plane seemed to straighten out and be okay.

I asked him, Do pilots always report those incidences? Are they required to?

His answer was, typically, no, unless they thought it had damaged the plane or was a sign of damage. But there are ways of anonymously reporting them, designed to protect those who do so. It is possible our case could have been turbulence–and it was possible we would hear more about it in the coming weeks.

Turns out not even Southwest knew about that recent case right away. But when they did they took it to Boeing and said This is your problem. This piece should never have had power mid-flight.

You know, there’s a reason I routinely say a prayer for the pilots and crew members before every flight. I don’t usually feel like it’s actually needed other than for my feeling like I’ve done my very small part towards a safe journey for all.

But I guess you never know.

With some fussing at myself over having put it off, I headed out the door to run to the pharmacy.

There was a Tesla at the vacant house next door. ? Wait. Had to be… And then the driver, instead of pulling out, got out.

And with that I met the real estate agent starting the prep to sell the place. I’d needed to meet her, she’d needed to meet me, and she happened to be leaving at the same moment I was so there we were.

I told her where the neighbors behind that house had left some damage to the fence during their construction. I told her about my difficulties in finding a surveyor so we can redo the part of the fence between us where it had been rerouted for the now-gone redwood, and we’d like to have that foot or so back; she could help me with that. She knew who to call. She was on it.

Such a nice person. We have each other’s name and number now and I look forward to meeting whoever the new neighbors will eventually be.

I’ve been sitting here staring at the screen and thinking it was too big a day to squeeze into this little box in front of me.

Okay, let me try. Church renewed the soul, as it should; a dinner potluck with friends did, too. That ended early because there was this lecture that some people wanted to go to and it sounded interesting so we went, and… Yeah don’t have to do that one again. But whatever.

The one thing that saved it was that we ran into my second cousin (who had looked as ready for this to be over with as I had been) and her face lit up when I came over afterwards. Lisa told me she had seen my mom yesterday at her dad’s 95th birthday and how great my mom had looked. It clearly made her day to be able to tell me that, while I said, Happy Birthday to your dad!

He and my mom are the only two surviving grandchildren of their generation, their famous grandfather having been born in 1856. My grandmother had raised Lisa’s dad/Gram’s nephew for awhile after her sister/his mother had died from childbirth–penicillin was known but not widely enough available yet–and the two cousins are close.

I’m glad they got to see each other. I’m glad I got to see his daughter!

Picture #11 really sells the place. That train wreck was a long time coming. Although I bet the heating and cooling bills were low after that glacier of grass swept halfway over the house. Wow.

We could have a little fun making up AirBnB-type ads for the place. The che-Shire cat: come see the disappearing home! It’s got the Ring halfway on!

Meantime, yesterday I was trying to make an appointment about that rib but the Medicare bounced. I spent two hours on the phone, with Medicare insisting it wasn’t a problem at their end.

Without that cleared the clinic would not book me an appointment, because not only would I not be reimbursed, if I ever–once–paid out of pocket I would be kicked off Medicare for life.

Whoa.

Which is why I’m mentioning any of this at all, because who wants to learn that one the hard way.

At long long last the doctor’s office realized that why yes in fact we did spell your name wrong and that’s the problem. But by that point all the appointments were gone and I had to settle for waiting till today and someone I’d never met.

Which is how I met a great guy I’d be happy to be sent to anytime.

The x-ray came back: no breaks. Yay!