So, during the pandemic, I bought some glasses online.

They fit okay, they looked good and I liked them, but they got the prescription wrong and argued that it was my fault for typing it wrong to them when I knew I hadn’t; they told me I was too late for a do-over.

I went back to wearing my old ones.

Got a new prescription. Still liked the looks of that one pair, and now that that company would let you take a picture of the printout, I thought, okay then, they can’t botch that.

I was wrong. I wasn’t sure, though, because it was when my Fuchs corneal disease was flaring.

The new pair came with no packaging materials, banged up. They fell off my face any time I looked down. Despite the company’s advertising, once you add up the details I hadn’t saved a dime anyway; the only thing they had going for them was that I liked round silver rimless of a certain size and I just hadn’t found those anywhere else.

That year was finally up, I finally got a new new prescription, and this time I went into Costco. Did they have rimless? Silver? They did not. Gold. With rims. Eh. But they had someone who carefully fit them to my eyes and my face.

Which means I finally have glasses that are comfortable, that fit, and after those super flimsy ones, are actually sturdy enough to wear around grandkids. (Typed with the memory of being thwacked in the face by a toddler about ten years ago hours before a wedding, going to a local mall in that town where an eyeglass place rescued me because there had been no way I could wear those, and then getting the long skirt for the reception caught in the escalator on my way out and jamming it and trapping me till my mom and I tore the skirt as we pulled hard together to get me out of there. Oh well, the ruffle hem just got a little more so. Besides, weddings are supposed to be memorable. Mom, bless her, hand stitched it together as best as could be done.

Glasses and me: we have a history. But I digress.

The new Costco pair came in.

For the first time in two years–almost three? (Picture me jumping up and down like a little kid in excitement) I can see like I’m supposed to! Even at night! At *night!* I can read street signs from much farther away! It wasn’t my Fuchs disease getting worse, it was just the stupid cheapster glasses!

I had not realized how bad it had been until it got better. Which makes it all the so-much-better-now.

So there’s a subtropical virus native to where the temperatures tend to keep it in check that was discovered in an invasive cutworm in Japan where the cooler temps allowed that virus to thrive. The New York Times article lays out how all this was discovered, starting with sheer chance.

And what that virus does is make it so that the next generation of bugs is only or nearly only females–and it is inherited. Thirteen generations were only able to produce three males out of all those eggs.

I thought, well, that’s one way to kill off an invasive species!

The resident male was not quite so sanguine on the existence of such a virus. Oh. Right. Yow.

Yawn. The day ran a few spoons short.

But it rained: glorious, life-offering rain, and watching it come down felt like being a tourist in some exotic new landscape.

Somehow a third cowl is now done. (And wet because I forgot to snap the photo first.)

Last Sunday there was a potluck lunch after church; I took some pumpkin almond flour muffins in an old Tupperware pie-taker. I’ve found it to be exactly the right size for putting three rings of cupcakes in.

My friend Gail, who is old enough to be my mother, saw me carrying the now-empty container afterwards and her eyes lit up: that was perfect! Could she borrow it for Tuesday night?

Sure!

I had all week to muse on that; in all her years only now had she found the best thing to hold out to trick-or-treaters? But I could see it, though: big but fairly flat so that all the candy showed rather than being in a pile, so that kids could see what they were choosing. Wide enough to put space between a small shy child who has to reach in for their goodie and a grownup they don’t know well.

It took someone well aged to help me see the potentials in that piece of plastic through the eyes of a little child. I will always think of Gail now when I use it, and next Halloween (insert a Please? sent upwards) I will offer it to her before she even asks.

She wheeled her walker up to me today, chuckling, and held it out for my reclaiming. I laughed too and we thanked each other.

Hey. Hey! I bolted upright. “Richard wake up I smell burning.”

Checking out electronics all over the house–they felt cool to the touch, they were fine. Everything looked fine. Normal.

He didn’t think it was anything but the furnace waking up for the season. Maybe. I pointed out that the furnace had already been running some nights.

Sitting under one of the vents tonight, he smelled it again.

I thought our HVAC guy had moved out of the area during the pandemic, but it felt like who else could I possibly call? and went looking. He’s here now, anyway. Yay! And he’ll be by tomorrow to inspect that furnace for us.

Joe is the guy who came off our roof white as a sheet some years ago and asked, Are you guys okay?! when he found the previous furnace pumping carbon monoxide down our vents. The CO alarm helpfully went off five minutes after he took it out of commission. Lesson learned: never let your alarms be 20 years old. Replace them at five even if they look like they’re working.

We were not okay, and now we and our doctors knew why. We will forever owe him so much.

He’s on it. So much better than worrying about it. See you at noon, Joe.

One of my hopes this year had been to fly home to Maryland to see old friends, and I was telling one of them tonight that I was sorry it hadn’t happened yet.

Turns out Karen just bought two acres near her daughter, has the house plans all drawn up, and is planning on moving. Not now, but in about two years. She’s done her homework: utilities available to the site, confirmed, etc, etc. She was thinking out loud to me, should she add this feature, and maybe that…

…And I, knowing that she could and that it is way easier to get all the construction stuff done before you move in than to add it after, urged her to do it. Do it all. Make where you want to be what you want it to be.

She’s even already priced elevators for her coming old age to keep it accessible and found the price quite reasonable in the overall context of building a house.

Yes of course. I reminded her that our old classmate who’s been fighting Parkinson’s since his late 30’s added one to his.

And I’m left now going, wow. Wow. I so wasn’t expecting this. It’ll be beautiful up there. And cold. She’ll love it. She’ll have space with all that land to garden to her heart’s delight but still have neighbors close by, along with her daughter and son-in-law. They are all the family she has left.

I told her, I’d better get a move on on my plans before she gets a move on out.

I’m finding this odd exuberant mixture of being so happy for her, of loss as one more connection to home peels away for me, and like she’s going away to college all over again. While I’m not this time.

Trying to sort it all out, I thought, y’know? It sounds like there’s going to be another New England house that’s going to need to be knit. Good thing I got in some practice at it. Don’t you think?

In a year or two….

Just sayin’, if a man were developing a pattern for an infinity scarf would his fellow knitters cheer him on with, Write’em, cowlboy!

So. I sat down in the waiting room for a bone density scan, pulled out my knitting–and two sets of eyes across the room were immediately on my hands. I smiled, did the first few stitches, and then the woman about my age whom I took to be the daughter got up and came over to ask questions about my knitting. Did it take very long to do that? What was it going to be? It was so pretty!

(She had no idea how much I’d needed to hear that. It’s nice stuff but ribbon yarn still isn’t my favorite to work with.)

Then her mom got up slowly and carefully, as the very elderly do, and with her walker made it the half dozen or so steps to come join us. The daughter explained to her that it was silk.

I knew she wanted to touch it so I held the project out towards the mom so she could feel the fabric that was coming to be. She was delighted and I felt like I had just made her day, which totally made my day.

“So soft!” said the daughter.

There was no language nor cultural barrier. Just a coming together.

Then they called my name, and mother and daughter headed out smiling and on their way.

So we were talking over dinner and he mentioned that time that his grandma had called him his freshman year of college; she was chuckling.

I’d never heard this story. I knew she lived in this very small town in the middle of nowhere and where everybody was Mormon.

Seems the restaurant–

Me: that town had a restaurant? Post office, general store, and a movie theater, I remember. (And lots and lots of cows.) How many restaurants did it have?

He thought about it and held up one finger–then a second, but wiggled it in hesitation, his face scrunching up; he wasn’t sure, but, definitely one, anyway.

So.

That restaurant had some pretty plants growing near the windows and on the tables for decoration, as one does.

It wasn’t till one of the young men in that town came home after two years from a mission for the alcohol-, tobacco-. and coffee- and tea-abstaining Mormon Church that there was anybody who recognized what those plants were.

And honey, they weren’t growing it for the hemp.

Earthquakes roll up and down and side to side, with the P waves and S waves going at different speeds: so the farther away you are from the epicenter, the weaker the shaking but also the longer it goes on.

And we know from the big Loma Prieta in ’89 that those waves can bounce back and forth off the hills to east and west of the Bay and amplify themselves back up.

Thus it is imperative to get the alarm out immediately when one goes off: it gives people time to move to safety and away from where things might fall on them.

But it also means you’d better get it right, and the reverse-911 system for quake alerts is new, as are some of the sensors.

So there was a drill planned for tomorrow for testing that system, and an announcement went out to our cellphones about it this morning so that come the time, people would know it was only a drill.

However. An actual quake went off at about the same time, and both alerts went out more or less together, to much confusion. This was not helped by the fact that a sensor was off.

So around 9:00 a.m. our phones buzzed loudly that a 5.7 had just gone off in Sacramento. That’s a pretty big quake! And that–wait, are they saying this is just a drill or wait that’s tomorrow–what!?

The next problem is, within seconds, they determined that one sensor was quite off. The other sensors downgraded it to a 4.1 very quickly, but the word was already out because seconds matter.

Even at 90 miles away, for a 5.7 we got a blast of noise and told to duck and cover.

Uh, what quake?

So they are still getting the bugs out of this new system. But now everybody knows there’s a system. And not to freak out at the drill tomorrow.

Unless the earth decides to have a sense of humor again because hey we could all use a good laugh right now, right?

10:19 a.m. here we come.

Scene: a Saturday at church about twenty-five years ago. Our son was playing basketball; the teams were a way of getting kids from different wards to meet each other.

I was cheering him on when I suddenly realized that I was, yes I was, I was actually seeing it: a teenage girl over there was watching the boys going up and down the court. She had a small gun in her hands pointed at the opposing team as they moved. Including my son.

She was big, I was not, and my immediate instinct was to note the tall older dad with the deep voice who was in the building and I quietly got up, ran once I was out of her sight, and explained what was going on.

I didn’t know him well but I knew enough to expect him to be unflappable but firm, and he was. Given that I’d just ratted her out I stayed well out of her sight so he came and found me to tell me how it had gone.

You cannot bring a gun in the church. It needs to leave.

It’s not a church! It’s a gym!

This is a private church and guns are not allowed. It needs to leave.

She huffed and puffed angrily as denied teens do and then left.

I have been grateful for his courage and help ever since.

When we were flying home from the funeral three weeks ago, who should be at the window seat of our row but him! Truly it was a delight.

Except, after 36 years of our being familiar faces, he clearly had no idea who we were.

I named his daughter, to his slow-motion recognition and then delight and we had a little bit of a conversation at last, but he seemed uncertain of himself and it seemed kinder to offer his family my regards and require no more of this good man in his (it surprised me) old age.

It had made him happy that a stranger spoke well of his daughter, and that is enough.

I started this at my daughter’s in April; it’s the one where Mathias looked over from his Legos at the first few inches and pronounced, That’s pretty, Grammy.

I worked on it a lot while waiting for some of the yarn to come for Carolyn’s afghan, knowing which one would take priority the moment it did–especially given the fact that slippery silk/merino laceweight is not my favorite to work with, though I love how it turns out.

I got back to it yesterday, and again some today. It’s ~65″ long.

I have more yarn. Part of me thinks, it’s past my fingertips and that’s long enough, call it my Aftober project now, done, and part of me thinks, why not use up the yarn, and part of me thinks maybe I settled the argument when I went sprawling on the pebbled walkway at 5:00 and a gallon of milk went flying left and another gallon flew right right out of my hands. (Somehow they didn’t burst. Go Trader Joe’s.)

Richard in his astonishment watching helplessly could only come up with an amazed, Did you cut the corner?! (There are azaleas in the way, you can’t.)

No, I took my eyes off my feet because I was looking at you and hit the wood edging at the corner and went sprawling.

Oh. Don’t do that.

The Etsy vendor in Washington State who’d just made the corduroy skirt I was wearing for the first time assured me she does have more of that fabric.

It does go nicely with that scarf.

Which is backing away slowly….

(Edited to add in the morning: I don’t know if the milk jugs took the initial impact? But my hands and wrists are fine. Yay!)

Me, yesterday, looking at the state’s update of where the new covid booster was currently available: Man. This is like when the original shot came out, where you have to get out of the blue areas to find any and the pharmacy chains haven’t improved their user interface one iota. Anyway, (it was almost not a question) you want to go up to Santa Rosa?

He gave me The Look. We were both remembering that day trip to get him his first shot in Antioch two years ago and that’s what that would be like all over again. How about we not.

I looked again today because I also learned last time that persistence pays off.

A small mom and pop pharmacy in Newark had just gotten some in. Openings today. Across the Bay and before rush hour gets too bad.

About an hour later we were hopping in the car for our appointments.

They had four chairs set up for giving the shots and the obligatory 15 minute observation afterwards–that was all the space they had. Clearly we weren’t the only ones who had found them and those chairs were filled, one right after another.

Afterward, given that the effects were likely to wipe me out the next day, when we got home I quickly threw together the long-anticipated package with the afghan to the post office a little before closing.

An aside here to Margo Lynn: Yes, that too. Caught the clerk ringing it up as New Jersey and got him to correct that real quick.

I drove away from there wanting to shout, I DID IT I DID IT I DID IT I DID IT!!!

It’s not enough to make the thing–you have to get it to its owner. They are on their ways now towards a sorting facility.

I think I’ll turn in a bit early…

I have had cheap Panasonic microwaves for years and years. They’re familiar. They look decent. They hold a big plate without taking up as much counter space as some. They’re fast. They cook evenly enough, and Wirecutter praised them for that, and you can find them anywhere when you suddenly need a new one.

Which you do, is the problem. Often.

I once came home from Stitches so exhausted that I broke the glass turntable and found out that replacing it cost almost as much as simply ditching the entire thing–and so each time I replaced the oven I would hold onto the previous turntable. Since that one was already paid for.

Bought the same one as ever as far as I could tell last time, and they’d changed the turntable size. Out with the old.

Thirteen months. Eleven months. They just kept dying. Maddening. Just inside warranty (but in the middle of covid lockdown), just outside warranty. I know the way to extend a microwave’s life is to keep it clean, and out of sheer I’ll-show-you! towards that company I did. Then they changed the interior from visible to dark taupe grey plastic that aging eyes couldn’t see the splatters in. Fine, I’ll clean it blind then.

Yesterday the latest one died. Brand new, its door had refused to open till the fourth or fifth try, but over time it had allowed me to get it on the second or even first try pushing in on the thing: my feral cat was getting almost friendly.

And then suddenly it was nothing but a 20x15x12″ digital clock.

Did I mention the lower one of our double oven died last week.

Lots of time got spent today hunting down descriptions, reviews, etc, but when I read Wirecutter praising Panasonic it was my moment of truth: I will never ever buy another one from them. I’m done.

I wanted to have one that I would actually want to have, whatever it might be. I wanted one that was expected to last, I wanted one that *would* last. I checked with Richard, I price-checked.

And then I spent $16 more than Amazon to buy it locally and came home with a Breville Combi Wave 3 in 1. Microwave, air fryer, convection, with a learning curve ahead.

The interior is chrome. You can see in there!

The door is soft close and self-closing and quiet. Quiet doors rah rah rah! in the company’s descriptions and I thought, yeah? So what?

Ohhh. That’s what. Huh. I had no idea that could be something I would enjoy so much.

My justification to myself is that it could help cover the baking, especially to tide me over if the upper oven starts having problems heating up too, and that I finally have an air fryer. But most of all: that it will be no more money than if I’d bought a string of one-year models again and a lot less electronic waste. Cross your fingers.

I got it in the house, then as his work day ended it was his back’s turn and he got it out of the box and onto the counter. It was gorgeous. I tested it with a bowl of broccoli. The display asked for the approximate weight and category of veggie and auto-cooked it on high for 2 min 36 seconds. I went in the other room–and heard the ‘it’s done’. *I* heard it. And it wasn’t even an obnoxious sound to get that to happen, and you can change the volume up or down or off entirely.

Someone really knew what they were doing on that one.

There’s just one thing that made me want to wince/laugh and ohmygosh! in horror. (Pushing me to go find this article referencing Breville’s quality controls that made me feel better about it.)

The turntable. It was the same bleeping turntable. The most-recent Panasonic one that hadn’t fit the previous Panasonic fit right in that Breville should I ever need a backup.

Four years, to prove me right in springing for this. That’s all I ask.

I can hear it!!!

I had this old Ashford Traditional spinning wheel that I’d bought used 30 years ago.

My tall older son in his teens walked across the family room in the dark because he didn’t want to turn on the light that would shine in his sister’s room and wake her up–and tripped over the wheel, his size 13 shoe breaking the maiden (the assembly above the wheel itself) and his tumbling leaving the rest slightly off kilter.

He said he was okay. I said that’s what matters.

I had been using that wheel for Colonial Days history demos at the elementary schools’ fifth grade classrooms and it was known around campus, and so another parent, an acquaintance but trying to help, heard about it and offered to repair it. He unscrewed the maiden (that phrase took a turn later) from the body of the wheel and he took it home and it took me several years to find out that the reason he didn’t just give it back when I finally asked was that it was lost in his garage somewhere. I was later told that that was not the only mistake he was making; I can just picture his ex discovering a what-the-hell in a box somewhere and pitching it.

Meantime, I’d spent the painful $125 that it cost at the time–more than half of an entire new wheel with bobbins, second guessing myself all the way but an extra hundred bucks is a hundred bucks–and bought a new maiden.

And a dear friend’s husband offered to assemble it onto my wheel for me. She’s a knitter and spinner and he got how passionate we are about what we do; he wanted so much to help.

He didn’t know that the uprights are not supposed to move. He set it up so that you twist one to help release the flyer. It’s damaged the wood, and the flyer tends to shake until it frees itself of the drive band and projectile vomits itself across the room.

Which is why you haven’t read much about the spin part of the spin dye knit thing here in a very long time.

Nor have I mentioned any of this to anybody in a very long time.

My friends Sand and Kaye, who were the owners of the much-missed Purlescence yarn/weaving/spinning store that closed about a dozen years ago, have been selling some of their old wheels of late. They are clearing out space–but also because of a serious injury. Sand is finding new channels for her creativity because she has to.

She reached out to me a few days ago. There was this beautiful Kiwi wheel they’d painted. It’s not finished. Finishing it now would be…problematic. Would I like it? She could throw in a Super Flyer if I wanted, though she’d have to charge me for it, but the wheel itself? Free. She really wanted it to go where it would be loved.

It is General Conference weekend for our church, with Saturday and Sunday sessions, but in between those we drove on down. I got to share hugs with my old friends. Oh, man, it had been so long, and with Stitches gone now…

Kaye brought out a box and I got it in the car and thanked her and we continued the conversation and I thought that’s all Sand and I were doing as Kaye disappeared–

–but this time she came back with this.

That’s a gorgeous wheel!! I exclaimed in surprise, and I guess my deafness had tripped me up because I didn’t get it, what were they doing with a second one–I said, You already put the box in the car!

That’s the accessories.

They’d gotten to see my reaction to their painting and just how blown away I was, and man that felt good.

I reminded them a bit about my old wheel and said, I’d almost offered to give you that one to sell–but I, I, didn’t want to inflict it on you.

They laughed.

I promised to send them a picture, and they can decide. There it is. Lovingly stained years ago by–Sand.

While I finish the ribbing on the other side of the afghan…

For those who’ve read my book, the woman in the intro worked for many years at the Fish Market restaurant, which just closed because the land under it became too valuable to the landlord. That beautiful old building with all the carefully tended flowers will be replaced by high-rise housing.

There was an online auction yesterday, local pick-up only: own a piece of your memories.

So. Many. Steamer. Trays. Which makes sense. The glass partitions between sections with fish etchings in them–must bring own tools to dismantle from wall. Etc. There were somehow two and only two springform pans, and they looked like the ones I used for decades till they gave up the ghost and you can’t buy them quite like that anymore, so I made one bid. Oh well so much for that.

I had always wondered about the mounted fish on the walls. Most, turns out, were fake, but they went for pretty good money anyway.

But one. One was not fake.

Caught in 1987, the listing says.

It’s the head of a Great White Shark and presumably the buyer has to find a way to get its 3200 pounds off that wall and carry it home. Probably the only time one would be able to buy shark for $3.55 a pound.

I want to know, how is a taxidermied fish head 3200 pounds? How did they weigh it? How did they get it up there?

How did that wall hold up all these years, especially during the Loma Prieta quake!

Can you imagine sitting under that thing at 5:04 pm for dinner that October 17th?

The idea is just jaw-dropping.