It was one of those times when a yarn leaped onto the needles of itself. Probably because I’d made Nanci a cowl out of that peach cashmere and she’d so exclaimed over it that I made a second one. That’s probably why I bought more of it, for that matter. I have some memory of thinking I was going to overdye some, till I decided it seemed too fragile to risk having the strands felt together.

(This is as close to Piuma as they have now. That price makes me feel like I really got a bargain. Anyway.)

The second cowl sat there quietly waiting to find its person, and as the pandemic came on and our  interactions with friends died off and felt far away it became utterly forgotten.

Last year someone mentioned on Ravelry–and I rarely read the threads on Ravelry, it’s like trying to catch up on every conversation with every knitter everywhere–that she’d made her daughter a sweater out of this glorious braided Piuma cashmere from Colourmart and had wanted ever since to make herself one to match. She had some of the peach, which she loved, but that mill end was long since sold out.

How much did she need? I went looking. I did! I had a cone and now I knew why, and dye lot would never be an issue from them. I mailed it to her. She insisted on paying me. I’d gotten it on sale. I told her, how about paying it forward instead by buying something from someone in Ukraine? With Etsy waiving fees there, it all goes to them. She really liked that idea, and did, and made a point of telling me what she’d ordered so as to share that happy anticipation and sense of reaching out to good people far away who were going through so much.

And I thought, I haven’t met you, but I feel like we would be instant old friends if we ever did.

Awhile later I found two more cones, offered them in case it would help–very much so, thanks!–and I let her pay me back that time.

Months later, I found out she still hadn’t started her sweater. (I totally get that there’s this fear of losing at yarn chicken that can get a project shoved to the end of the queue.) I only know because I went looking for that conversation again to see if she had her sweater yet, because, put away in the wrong spot, I’d found one more cone of that lusciously soft Piuma. I’d had no idea I’d bought that much of it, because it was never my color. It had always been planned to be for other people, so, hey, it was for her.

So that was around Thanksgiving.

Late February, I was rearranging yarns and finished projects, going through seeing what hats and cowls were in the stash ready to go, which ones needed ends woven in–when I discovered, smushed between other things inside a ziplock, that long-forgotten twin to Nanci’s.

It could be backup to the backup to the backup, but what it would be would be the matching-yarn cowl to get that sweater off the ground because I knew how much she wanted to have it. Sometimes you just need a nudge to get started.

Not that it’s any of my business whether she ever does or not. I just enable.

I wrote her a note telling her happy birthday–I was sure she was having one some time this year–and that no, she could not pay me back this time. This was from me, it had been waiting all this time to go where it had been meant to go and now I finally knew. If by chance she lost at yarn chicken on her sweater, I was entirely fine with her unraveling this for it.

I mailed it off.

I didn’t hear back, which was unusual, because in our earlier emails back and forth she’d always been quick to respond.

Then I did, I got a note saying she was out of town helping her mom move into her (likely final) address (my heart instantly went out to them both), and her husband had told her a package had come for her from me and that it felt like yarn and she was pretty excited about that and he was going to fly shortly to come help with her mom and bring it for her to open then. She couldn’t wait to find out what it was.

And then I didn’t hear back.

And I didn’t hear back.

And I thought, well that’s fine. I got the satisfaction of sending it off and knowing she would love it and that it went to the right place and that she’s happy, that’s certainly all I needed.

You know all this weather we’ve been having? You’ve seen the pictures of the 600+ inches of snow covering everything up in the mountains near Tahoe–burying the ski lifts!–and how impassable everything’s been?

Turns out her husband had not made that flight. Nor the next nor the next nor (repeat repeat repeat.) He was snowed in, without power or water or heat for some of that and no way out but with neighbors who needed help so he did. For three weeks. How he managed through all that I do not know, and I am in awe.

Finally, finally, he got out and to where she was and handed her her long-anticipated package.

I’m picturing that moment of all those weeks of anticipation, of hard physical and emotional work for the both of them, unable to be there for each other in person through it all, all the worry, all the goodwill towards those around them that kept them going: finally getting to be back together.

And opening my silly little package as something they’d both been looking forward to.

And finding it wasn’t just yarn. It was the time of a stranger, just a little, but offered freely as they had offered their own.

And that is why I hadn’t found that cowl earlier: this was when they needed the experience of it.

While I marvel at the project that would have looked good on several people along the way but refused to be so much as thought of until the right one at the right time. At the Love that answered his and her love.

As far as I know (with a nod towards Stitches West) I’ve never met her nor she me, but oh we have. We have. As best as we know how.

While a purple hat in Mecha got quietly worked on in the other room for the most part: Joel came and spent a fair amount of time measuring everything we might ask him about later. His boss knows we’d like to redo the whole kitchen even if we don’t plan to right now, so I’m sure there was incentive to make that a possibility as long as he was there.

He admired our cabinets, saying, They don’t make them like that anymore.

Yes, they were custom made–but in the early 90s, when the state was requiring certain finishes on the wood for the environment’s sake, rescinded after they found out those don’t hold up. The skylight bleached it out; they need to be refinished.

Refinished, definitely, and we can do that, he told me. He was glad I knew how good what I had was.

(It’s everything else that has to go. The Bosch dishwasher. It can stay too.)

The big but independent appliance place I bought my Speed Queen washer/dryer from got back to me with questions about inches and placement re replacing the stove set-up, and it looks like we have clearance enough, if barely, to not have to knock out part of the wall behind the stove, so now Joel knows his guys are not the only ones I’m talking to and that’s always a good thing.

So we are one day and several steps closer.

Joel had so carefully not been eyeing my blueberry/orange juice/almond flour/maple sugar muffins while he was working, but you should have seen the look on his face at the end when I offered him some.

They’re still getting the pricing on those roof panels.

Yeah, I said, yesterday’s bomb cyclone definitely did not improve them.

He chuckled.

There’s another atmospheric river on the way next week.

Today’s rain forecast was at .63″ last night. We’ve had (update) 3.35″ in the last 24 hours and last week’s wind storm all over again. The patio roof panels did a song (more a shout) and dance again. Joel is coming tomorrow again, this time to give us a quote on the kitchen thing and whether or not this will have to be the time on the countertops or whether we can save that expense for later.

We’re supposed to have another storm in a week. Mild, though, the forecast says. Again.

(I will say that big pot thrown across the yard is the one that I had taken all the soil out of to replace it and replant, so at least it was empty.)

Update: officially, we had a bomb cyclone today. We don’t do those here. But we did.

I went to go make sure we were seeing this the same way.

That stove is 29 years old. Do you want me to call a repairman on that switch?

He did a little wince/laugh like, why would we ever… No.

So: it came as a set up, the stove and the vent set up behind and not above it, with the switch to the fan built into the stove. Suddenly today we were stuck with a gas stove with no working vent, which is not safe, and Thermidor has long since ditched any stove with that switch.

Maybe I wasn’t the only one whose sweaters caught on fire (twice!) from those burners being set so far forward.

Only one burner was fully functional at this point anyway. Good riddance.

I’ve mentioned before (probably often enough to get really boring about it, sorry) that the original contractor goofed and put a 36″ stove below a 30.4″ inch wide cabinet gap above it. Which has helped ruin the finish on the wood. You could never sell the house like that and we don’t want to look at it either, a 30″ cooktop has to go in.

But the cutout for it is still 36″. So the countertops have to go.

So. I need a contractor, like, now. I have no idea if the guy who didn’t get back to me yet with an estimate on the patio roof after the storm is available for that, but I just shot a query his way.

I guess that electric skillet we inherited four or five years ago will finally get put to use. And I will finally soon not have to look at the Corian color anymore that my husband liked so much because he does not have an artist’s sense of color when seeing it against the cabinets and at the time I didn’t think I cared enough to object. Corian wasn’t supposed to chip? It did. I can out-klutz anything.

Man, I can’t wait to see it go. Out! (But we’ll see what the contractors say has to be done.)

Our neighbors invited us to listen to a piano recital of their daughter and some of her fellow students: a kind of a practice run before their official performances so that playing for an audience wouldn’t be such a novelty on the big day.

We were thrilled.

It took me straight back to my days at the Maryland State Piano Competitions at Peabody Institute in Baltimore: these kids were the best of the best on that baby grand. An hour of straight-up concert. So good.

One of the moms had to show up late. Which led to the moment afterwards where I turned to the young woman behind me and told her with a big smile, Thank you for laughing!

She laughed again.

She’d been at the keys when someone’s mom had had to come late to join us. What we didn’t know is that the family’s large dog had been put in a bedroom to keep him away from the guests, and here was a stranger coming up to the door: his family must be notified! It was his job! WOOF!!!

And then for good measure as eyes suddenly went big and fingers hovered above the keys in freeze frame, an encore of WoofwoofWOOF!!

You know what? It was perfect. If any of those kids get nervous on the bigger stage later, they can just picture that big friendly dog making sure from the other room that they were all okay.

1. His co-worker was what? I blinked. She’s going skiing?! Did she check first? Road closures? They’re hand-shoveling out the buried chairs on the ski lifts.

2. Everybody’s trying to figure out how four goats came to be running around in traffic in San Francisco. The people who rent herds out for munching fire-prone hillsides have said nope, not theirs.

3. The silk tape cowl is finding out what size it wants to be when it dries. This is nearly the whole 150 grams’ worth: it’s big and it will likely stretch some from all the weight. Note to future self: I started with 70 stitches on size 9s and increased to 84. It was a quick knit, but also not because the yarn was a bit of a hassle.

Although, compared to some silks it was thankfully a lot less snaggy on the fingers and it offered a chance at easy retrieval at a dropped stitch if you were careful.

But what I like best about it is that it’s done. I’d been needing more of that.

A large window blew out 43 stories up on a skyscraper in downtown San Francisco. Yay for those reverse-911 calls pleading for people to stay home during the storm; thankfully nobody was hurt. Today I ran to the grocery store and was amazed at all the tree debris shoved to the side of the road. The next town over is still out of power and so their schools are closed, because the schools are required to feed the children.

Which means yesterday they called out for pizza for the entire district’s student body one hour before lunchtime. Can you just imagine being the owner who got that call? I wonder if it took every pizza parlor in town. Probably did.

Our old contractor Chris’s man Joel came by this afternoon. He measured, he observed, he poked and lifted: we had four panels broken. He would get back to me with a quote on lifting the one back up and then tacking the cracked and broken back into place, risking the wood beneath by exposure over time, vs replacing all the of them so they’d match.

Is this a trick question.

But he was trying to make sure he’d be doing what we wanted.

I pointed out the one in the corner. He lifted it–it’s not supposed to be able to–and saw where the cream colored paint ended about 18″ down the dark brown beam, whereas it was supposed to have been entirely painted. I do have a contemporaneous small can of that paint that I bought so as to have it for emergencies.

And so we go forward from here.

The next atmospheric river is supposed to start Saturday/Sunday night and go to at least Wednesday.

In the immortal words of the late Richard Thompson, author of the Cul de Sac comic and Richard’s Poor Almanac,

“March comes in on clumsy feet

Kicks the trashcans down the street

Spills some garbage on the lawn

Blows the rest to Hellandgone

Knocks the branches off the trees

Gives the power lines a squeeze

Then March leaves. And as it goes

the sun comes out. Then it snows.”

(Yeah, we had a fun day today. Noisy, though. 77 mph winds at SFO, 97 in the hills.)

The phone rang at dinnertime.

It was a reverse-911 call from the county warning of the incoming storm and pleading for residents to stay home and stay put if you’re not in an evacuation zone. And don’t drive through water in the roadway!

We are staying home and staying put. It’s supposed to start pouring any minute, strong winds, the works, and then another atmospheric river is expected next week. You know the “Drove my Chevy to the levy but the levy was dry” line? The levy wishes. They are dropping boulders from helicopters at this point to be able to reach it.

And yet all was quiet here so far. So I took a moment to photograph the biggest Anya seedling: I love its formation, it’s such an elegant little bundle of hope, and its leaves have really grown. It just makes me so happy.

There was enough air movement to twirl its skirts a little.

The flowering pear is at that glorious moment of full bloom mixed with the incoming leaves; it had waited all winter for this.

The start of the storm keeps being pushed back–11:00 pm, they think now. Edit, nope, 1:00 am.

That pear tree was a staked newly planted whip when we moved here. Hey, little apricot? You’ve got this.

Those stripes on the chest are protective of the young: they signal to adult peregrines that this is just a kid hanging around, no reason to hassle them, they’re not trying to steal your mate nor your territory.

But since no other male had chased him off at the abandoned nest and he got there first and then she showed up, well, it took a number of days to convince her but there you go.

The falconistas say this pair should mostly likely succeed this year after all.

Flight feathers are usually molted as a symmetrical pair wing to wing and he’s missing just one, so that makes him easy to spot till the new one grows out.

Just to add re the California flooding: the road nearest the Bay is under water and the city put out a warning and we’re definitely not traveling anywhere, but we’re doing fine.

Oh, and, thank you all for the advice re the microplane. My daughter reminds me that she thought they were a good idea too so she bought me one a year ago.

That was the Christmas we had almost no lemons because the unusual, intense summer heat had so stressed the tree that it had dropped the fruit before it had had any chance to ripen. And so the microplane had been forgotten.

And now I know where it is!

You know how the beep beep beep makes you go spend way too much time looking for which smoke alarm it is that’s going off?

That sound was driving us nuts one day last week, but we could not find it and at the end of the day we had to give up and go to bed: I took off my ears. He wished he could.

And somehow in the morning all was silent. Huh.

Then this morning it was back; the only difference is there were more people here now for it to annoy.

Michelle started staking out smoke alarms, waiting for the sound to coincide with the flashing light that would nail the culprit. Won’t work, we told her; we did all that.

It somehow sounded to me like it was coming from the printer, which made no sense. I touched all kinds of plugged-in things to see if they felt too warm. Everything was fine.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

It might not end this time. It had to end.

It was somewhere in this room–we all decided that much.

Much deep cleaning behind stuff and much squelched frustration later, they found it. At least they hadn’t had to move the piano to get to it.

I did not believe that that could in any possible way be what it was, much less be the source. It was. I could not believe that thing was still in this house. It was.

In 2015 our 20-year-old carbon monoxide detector finally started screeching the alarm it was made for–five minutes after Joe Lerma turned off our furnace up on the roof and knocked on our door, white as a sheet, exclaiming, Are you guys okay?!

That furnace had been damaged by its installers and with the air intake filter now burned away, was pumping carbon monoxide down our air vents. No we were not okay, all we’d known was that it wasn’t working well so we’d called him to come inspect it. But we’d barely turned it on because it had just felt wrong somehow, so our exposure had been thankfully low.

That’s when we learned you’re supposed to replace those alarms every six years whether they seem to need it or not–they do. It’s not worth risking your life over. Given that we were hospitalized with CO poisoning at our old house in 1985, we’re a little antsy on the subject. How many people get hit with this twice?!

It is safe to say I am not fond of the alarms that failed us. I had no idea the one had been put down and fallen behind the speaker and had never left the house.

It has not been plugged in for eight years. Eight. Years.

And yet it went off from dawn till sometime in the middle of the night last week and it did it again today.

I disabled it, he assured me a few minutes ago.

That wasn’t good enough.

The electronics recycling is being picked up in the morning, I assured him.

And it is out there sitting in that bin and it is not coming back.

We’ve replaced the smoke and CO alarms we replaced after that one and its peers were supposedly thrown out the first time. 2028 (for when I go to check out the date later) we’ll need to do it again.

I don’t know that scrubbing the back of the fridge and getting out the stuff that had not aged well or had frozen at the bottom and all the details one would probably be better off not mentioning (Really? You do eat year-old kimchi? Who knew. Well then that’s why it’s still in there, honey. Do I have to keep it? –Nah, toss it– ) would count as a blog post.

But it sure felt like it at the time.

—

Editing to add a link to a short video of the yearling male and the female falcon. Rarely, a yearling can succeed at starting a family but it’s more likely an adult will take over.

Somehow it reminds me of a high school dance.

Scene: church. Time: after Sacrament meeting. Characters: the young men, who’d taken the lace tablecloth that had been placed over the sacrament table outside to shake off any possible lingering bread crumbs.

One came running back in and grabbed his dad. People came out the doors to see.

At first disbelieving glance it was a hard snowstorm, but wait, snow doesn’t bounce–it was hail, and it was hailing so hard that the diagonal streaks of white were accumulating as we watched. Not big, dangerous stones like the ones that dented my brother’s car in Colorado one August, just little ones, but the air was white with them.

That dad pulled out his phone and took pictures of the teenage boys with ice balls in their hair, individually and arms around each other, laughing. It was windy and beastly cold, forget the 53F forecast, we weren’t dressed for this. I ran inside and grabbed a few more people to come see and they were in disbelief too as they took it in. Quite a crowd now.

And then suddenly for anyone who hadn’t already come outside, it was too late: it was a hard rain and all proof that it had ever been frozen vanished away and they were just going to have to take our word for it.

Eli’s mom wanted to know who’d had that camera because she’d missed seeing her boy laughing with nature’s glitter sparkling in his hair. Gordon. Oh good.

Back inside for the second meeting as the sky lost its impromptu audience.

When it was time to go, Richard, who had not come outside and had missed all of that, overheard Kimber’s excited little boy: MOM! I threw a snowball!

Close enough, little guy, close enough.

We laid out all the pros and cons again this morning, trying to balance out how badly I wanted to go see old friends after four long years away vs what the most right thing to do was and finally threw it up to G_d in prayer because we couldn’t decide. We figured He knew better than we did.

Richard wasn’t going to say it till I did: I felt an immediate, loving answer that driving to Stitches was not what was most needed of us today nor would it be where we’d be most glad we’d been. And somehow it now felt okay that that was so.

It was Michelle’s moving day.

225,000 tech workers were laid off last month and she was one of them. The kicker is that most of those companies are actually doing quite well. She was told there were 400 applications coming in for every job posted.

Her yearly lease was coming right up and it made the most sense for her to cut the biggest expense for now.

Which is hard for her and we know it but already it is so good to have her back.

Her day had its moments (like, the key is *where*?!) and it turned out we were glad we were around and not just coming home after she and her friends had done all the work. A notable one of those unforeseeable moments happened later after her friends had left, and I was glad we were there for her and not off somewhere else.

Next year. Sacramento drive or no.

Scene: yesterday. Him: migraine, with lab work due. So me: driver.

Stuck in traffic. Even the helicopter overhead wasn’t going anywhere.

I pointed out all the people on the pedestrian bridge over the freeway and said, The paparazzi. He remarked on the big camera on a tripod and I said, I bet that’s a news photographer.

It was a relief to find out afterwards that the entire freeway had been shut down for hours not because of an accident but because PG&E said they just had no other way to safely access the power lines that a tree had fallen through in the storm, taking out most of that city in the process.

Nature happens. Nature, we can deal with.

Alright, then, very good, carry on. (Is that our car behind that truck way back there no I don’t think so I think those trucks were both behind us come on why am I looking at this.)