Do me a favor. Please, please. If you can, and you haven’t yet, go get a Shingrix vaccination. The old shingles shot is so much less effective, and the Shingrix one so much more so and with so few complications, that the old one has been taken off the market.

The old one is what my friend had had, and she is back in the hospital today.

I’d never heard of shingles in the brain.

(Late update: they now say en route to, not in the brain. Yay.)

Yeah I should certainly know it by now and I’m sure I do but cellphones make it too easy to just look up someone’s number without thinking about it.

So I typed her name in the search bar and hit the familiar old string of digits.

Now, there are two old friends I wanted to offer cherries off my tree to, and I figured we’d do one tonight and the next in the next day or two as it works out for them and I had decided to call this one first because it’s been the longest since I’d seen her.

The other friend answered that call, to my unspoken astonishment.

I looked back down at my phone: at some point in the past I had thought of the one and typed out the number for the other and I have no idea how long it’s been like that. Huh.

Turns out friend #2 was very much in need of a visit: she is having heart surgery as fast as they can get her meds to the right levels for it. Tomorrow would be good. She had not known she was a heart patient.

We visited while she munched on cherries–“Mmm, those are good!” But not for too long; we didn’t want to wear her out. I had no doubt her husband could use the human time, too, because caretaking and worrying is hard stuff.

Their cat sniffed at and then tried a tentative, ginger step into my upturned wool felt hat on the floor, testing to see if it qualified as a box, and we laughed as she decided that it was actually just too small to curl up in and walked away.

But she had to come back later to try again just to be sure. It was just the right depth and slightly oval and she really wanted to own that new nest. But she was not a small cat. She was our comic relief.

We shared a heartfelt prayer and the sweetest feeling wrapped around us all. So much love.

“Divine intervention,” said Richard when I marveled over that misplaced phone number, and pronounced it again out of sheer gratitude: “Divine intervention.”

Can you hear me, Major Tom

…For here am I sitting in my tin can

Far below the world

Planet earth is blue, and there’s nothing I can do…

–With a prayer for the families of the men lost in the Titan. And all those at sea in the Mediterranean.

Somehow, today my philodendron decided to bloom. This is not something it did the first twenty or maybe even thirty years we lived here.

It sent up a bud a week or two ago (see the shriveled yellowing stalk above and just to the left in the second picture) but that one never opened up. This one did, and its spadix (the peeled banana part) leaned out around noon, following the sun, straightening back up again after its rays moved on past.

The site in that link says the fruit is toxic but that the flower part actually does taste rather like a banana.

Cue the Hey Mikey! Life cereal commercial of my youth: I’m not going to try it, YOU try it! Where’s a Mikey when you need one.

And then I planted some seeds. I hadn’t been planning to, but the phrase, To life! just kept demanding it of me. To life. Know the loss, feel the grief, but honor their memory by never stop looking forward.

I grew up in a house and neighborhood with wood siding in an area dominated by brick homes reminiscent of the colonial era–after all, George Washington himself made use of the blacksmith shop a half mile away. Tradition.

So there’s been this odd interest that I wouldn’t have guessed I had at seeing what a brick house looks like if you could see how it’s built.

A war is not how I wanted to do that.

I sent a private note of admiration for her talent and of support.

In response, she sent me pictures: shredded drywall, pock marks in the bricks behind where that drywall had fallen from, a tennis ball blasted across the room, broken things, crumbled things, but overall, the walls were intact. Or enough so, anyway, and she vows to rebuild. This is her home. In Kherson.

Her mother’s, though, was closer to the dam that the invaders had blown up and it is ruined. But she’s alive. And they will come back from this.

This is the woman who created my cherry tree gerdan, the most intricate one I have. It took me a year to decide to spend that much–but I could just hear my art dealer father exclaiming over the skill and talent that went into it and how much of my own family’s history it reflects. All those summer trips to pick-your-own farms, all those hours and hours of jarring and jamming.

My own Stella cherry looks just like this right now.

I am so glad I got it.

She’s working on a new design right now as a way of coping (bead on with confidence through all crises, paraphrased the knitter to herself, nodding her head) and I am checking her shop every day because I want to see what it will be and because, having seen what she personally is facing, it feels even more imperative to help. There is the World Central Kitchen–and there are individuals. I can’t do everything, but I can do some things.

Getting to wear her artwork is just the cherry on top.

So I was heading out to go get that Brie for that cherry cheese sandwich…

…And the car wouldn’t open up.

Michelle knew where the fob batteries were, Richard handed me the mini screwdriver set, go for it.

The second tip from the right was the one.

Turns out that that screwdriver magnetized the screws, so when I went to put them back in they danced like the proverbial angels on the head of a pin and then managed to hold straight out from the tip–if, if, if I could hold my hands steady enough while trying to twist the screwdriver.

Several attempts.

How about-?

And that is how I found out you can hold the screwdriver in the right hand and twist not the screw but the fob itself with your left while the magnetization holds the screw just steady enough. Give the fob a twirl. Again. Again. Again.

It worked!

So tell me why the fob with its brand new battery still doesn’t unlock the car as you approach the driver’s door, I groaned as I started to walk back towards the house thinking I had just installed a dud.

Unwilling to concede quite yet, I pressed the unlock button even though it hadn’t worked for over ten years.

Popped that lock right open, to my complete astonishment.

I don’t get it, but I’ll take it.

They’re doing something of an experiment: it’s that time of year when the coming-up medical residents find themselves assigned to random new hospitals and towns, the universities are letting out for the semester, Silicon Valley layoffs suddenly erupted in waves again, vacations, people move in, people move out.

So they decided to have the two wards that meet in our building do so together rather than sequentially. Just for June and July and let’s see how it goes.

Generally, the Mormon Church keeps congregations small enough to be personal in the hopes of nobody feeling lost or ignored in the crowd.

And so suddenly there are a lot more small kids running around, more background chatter, and some working out of who does what when responsibilities overlap.

The Zoom that I use for captions got switched off after the first meeting because the other ward didn’t know of anyone who needed it. Oops. One of ours, halfway through the second meeting, suddenly realized I’d put my phone away and dashed over to the relevant laptop to set it up again. Thanks, Davi!

It also means there’s a whole slew of young parents who don’t know a thing about handknit finger puppets bought in bulk from Peru.

There was a wiggleworm of a toddler sitting behind us who was determined for awhile there not to sit still nor quietly today despite her daddy’s best efforts. He was single-parenting it and had several older kids, too.

She was adorable. She was a handful.

Once she was actually doing what he said, so that we wouldn’t be rewarding and reinforcing unwanted behavior, Richard, who could hear them, nodded to me: Now.

And so a vivid pink puppy dog with black eyes and nose got passed over the pew to her profound delight and her father’s relief.

She was clearly three, just old enough to be among the kids invited to come sing a song to their daddies for Father’s Day. She stood at the very front up there, pink puppy jammed hard onto not one but two fingers and clearly barking energetically along with her singing as far as she was concerned.

The song ended, the Primary chorister motioned to the children to exit stages left and right and back to their parents and they dutifully started filing down the (four? maybe five) rather shallow steps to either side.

Not her. That was boring and slow and she was not going to do that. She gleefully leaped over the edge of the pulpit fast before any adults could see what she was up to and jumped to the floor, puppy held proud and high in triumph.

We lost it. It’s a shame that that was just out of reach of the Zoom camera, I’d want to show that video at her wedding some day. You GO, girl!

I had a kid in middle school who has a kid in middle school, it’s been that long.

But the guy recognized me, mask and all, while I was still stuck back at, no, that couldn’t possibly be. But then he made me recognize his face. That face.

He looked just like he did–except this time he was inside the grocery store in the daylight, not outside of one with nobody else around in the dark so he kept his fists to himself this time. Not that he actually touched me that other time–he just threatened to, as he pounded them on the window of my car after I’d jumped inside and locked the door.

Because he had hit my car and I had taken out a camera and snapped a picture of it and his license plate.

What are you, some kind of *** **** private eye?!! he’d screamed.

There in the dairy aisle his face suddenly hardened so severely that I was half-afraid he was going to pull out a gun. Thank heavens for California restrictions.

Was this guy tall? the years-ago cop asked me–while telling me the guy had done time for assault.

Nooo, I said doubtfully, not reeeally…

Well, the license of that car owner says he’s 6’6″.

Oh. Yeah, he probably was. Officer, let me introduce you to my husband so you can see why I didn’t think that was tall.

This evening.

He got behind me in my checkout line just as we were finishing up.

I got out of there and into my car and out of that parking spot hoping he wouldn’t see what I’m driving these days nor my plate, got an improbable green light out of there and held it together and didn’t start shaking till I was home and in my husband’s arms.

Richard said all the right things.

And he’s right.

“Pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you…”

Lord, I’d ask you to bless him but I have no idea if he’d even let You nor how to make his life any better and if anyone along the way for him can help, please bless them. I can’t do anything. I’m leaving it up to You, because You do know and I don’t.

It’s amazing how that just lifted that whole weight clean off my shoulders.

It’s not my problem anymore.

They finished the awning today. It looks glorious.

And then, yeah, it’s June, and wool?, but still. FO stashes come in handy and I offered them their choice.

The first guy picked the bright blue. The second picked the stripey mostly purple/blue/pink one.

I sent them off with lemons and oranges from my trees, along with some early cherry sampling, and got back to the start of the next big project. And man, 225 stitches across sure goes faster than 271 did.

This is where my game of yarn chicken was just before the 271 stitch cast-off row yesterday. Won it.

The men came and worked on the awning today–which included replacing and painting some of the thin corrugated-looking wooden strips that the panels rest on and are held in place by. A few of my guaranteed panels made by the Palram greenhouse people were, oops, cracked and going straight back to the store.

They will be back tomorrow to finish.

It is innately silly and very very human to want to accomplish more when someone’s watching. Even if in fact I was doing this in the next room, but hey, motivation is motivation, I’ll take it.

That’s over two pounds of yarn. Plus four swatches! It’s a good start.  

This one hit close to home for me.

We have friends who are identical twins, I’m guessing late 40s, who own a house together. One of them was giving a talk in church today and started with the usual teasing about which one is the evil twin brother.

But then, as he went on, he told the story of something we’d known only the barest outline of.

Recently, he was supposed to meet up with a friend over dinner. He was dog tired that day, getting more so, and finally let himself realize he just didn’t think he could manage it; he was just going to call them and cancel with profuse apologies and go home and rest.

He sent up a little prayer to ask if that was the right thing to do, just to, y’know, be sure, because sometimes the small decisions matter more than we’d think.

What he didn’t expect was an intense feeling of, NO!! GO. TO. THAT. DINNER!!

How…but okay, so he turned the car that way.

He didn’t even get out of the car. He couldn’t. His friend saw him and took one look and called 911, and he ended up in emergency heart surgery.

He stopped the story there a moment, took a deep breath, looked around the room taking us all in, our physical, actual presence and his own, remembering, and continued.

If I had gone home instead, he said–my brother was out of town. He would have come home and… I don’t… My friend saved my life.

Got a text yesterday: could they come today?

And so at long last the damaged awning panels are all gone. The new ones will come next week.

For all these years, till that first one blew off in the storm, I thought they were just translucent, but they were actually smoky colored on top. Having all of them gone makes not just the patio but the family room stunningly bright on an overcast day in June. I had no idea it could be like that. None.

The new ones will be both UV blocking and clear–so that brightness is going to stay. You all are going to have to be patient with me if I get excited about finally seeing bird bums: I would have loved to have seen the zone-tailed hawk from underneath a few years ago after it soared across the yard and then landed on that thing, suddenly not much more than a shadow.

Oh, and: after the termite repair work 20 months ago, I went to the Benjamin Moore store to buy a small can of the new house color. I was thinking for the mailbox, but really it just seemed a good thing to have on hand. We never used it.

That spot where the painters missed and left exposed wood? That that smoky awning had kept me from seeing for over a year, much less in time to call them back to it?

That little can came in handy today and Chris’s guy totally took care of it.

During the worst of our wildfires a few years ago, our air quality index hit 385, if I remember correctly; our warnings to stay inside lasted 31 days.

With the Canadian wildfires, New York City hit AQI 407 today.

My first reaction to the news photos was, but you can still see the building beyond even if it’s a hazy orange–we couldn’t. After reading that number, though, I remembered cameras can’t fathom how dense that smoke can be. I could not get mine to take any picture that showed how we saw it.

On days when you can’t tell the sun ever rose nor where it is…

I so feel for what everybody on the east coast is going through. Wishing air filters and cleansing rain and the ends of the fires for all concerned. Wear a K95 mask outdoors. Stay safe out there.

I’m saying Dad was in on it. It’s exactly the kind of thing he would have done.

His pulmonary fibrosis took him just before the pandemic began.

Last week I was looking at my two boxes left of Andy’s slab apricots (not knowing I would later spot a few more carefully put away in the wrong spot) and thought, I really ought to send one of those to Mom. She loves them and I’m sure she’s out by now and I’ll be going down there soon and can always get more.

Those are the ones that are picked dead ripe so they go smush and don’t look pretty when they dry them. They’re not just sweeter, their texture is amazingly juicy for dried fruit, even mine that are nearing a year old now–they look great. They taste great.

It was Friday before I got around to finding the right size shipping box, thinking, one for you, one for me, and actually delivered hers to the post office.

Which means it arrived today. I confess I was not connecting the dates when I sent it off.

It’s my late father’s 97th birthday. Mom got some of their favorite dried fruit on the very day and a call from me wishing her happy Dad’s birthday.

Thank you, Dad!

It’s the first Sunday of the month, so there was no assigned speaker at church today: just, whoever felt so moved could get up and say what they felt.

A woman I didn’t recognize was the second to the podium.

She started out with, We lived here 31 years ago…

And I found I had just gasped under my breath but out loud, TObie?!

It was!

She said how befriended they had been by the ward back then, and now they’d come full circle: their daughter was coming for a program at Stanford and it was a chance for them to visit and tell old friends how much they loved them and how much their faith and love have grown over the years since we’d all last seen each other.

Her husband spoke, too, and came off the stand and gave Richard a big hug.

I knew they would be swarmed after the meeting and I wanted their kids to enjoy this, so I took a turn of my own.

Thirty-one years ago, I told them, I was a newly diagnosed lupus patient and got sent to the indoor therapy pool that was across the street from here; it’s closed now, but, one day someone dropped a roll of film there. There was no way to know whose it was except to get it developed.

It looked like a set of wedding photos. Except–the groom looked like Michelle-the-lifeguard’s new husband, only the bride wasn’t Michelle, and they were suddenly quite afraid Michelle would come in and see these while they were quietly querying every client who came in.

Do you know who these people are? when it was my turn to be asked.

Sure! That’s Steve and Tobie, thanks, how much do I owe you?

I watched their jaws drop in tandem just like mine had when I realized who was here–and then we all laughed. Steve, I said, you’ve got a double out there!

The pool folks had let themselves see all the ways the guy didn’t entirely look like Michelle’s husband after they knew it wasn’t him. Phew!

So many stories I could tell about our friends, and every single one of them would make you happy like they do me. Such good folks, so long missed. How often do we get to catch up after half a lifetime? (Or I should say in a nod to my mom, a third of a one?)

Holly was going to be about half the distance here anyway, so could she?

Yes please? (YES YES YES ohprettyplease YES!) We hadn’t seen each other since before Covid and a lot of life had happened to them since then.

And so she picked me up and we went out for lunch.

Came back, stitched and knitted and talked. So much to catch up on. How’s the remodeling going. How are the kids. How’s that adorable little grandchild? Pictures!! Yonder daughter of mine finished her East Coast-zoned workday and joined us for a bit. We laughed. We had a great time.

But there was rush hour–so much rush hour to try to dodge and we kept it short.

I forgot the oranges we were going to pick but did send her off with an apricot seedling for her family to remember the day by. May it live and bloom and thrive along with all of them. I didn’t get its picture, much less hers, but I’m putting this one in to show her what hers looked like on April 30. It’s a lot bigger now and just starting to put out side branches.

And then she was off, north and east and back towards her own life.

While I suddenly realized I’d had my skirt on backwards all day.

How toddler of me.

So next time the laughing will pick right back up from that point.