One of the things I found during my looking at Zillow/considering/rejecting moving, was, the nicer the house, the more likely that there was a fake-fur blanket artfully diagonally draped across the foot of the bed in the master suite in the pictures.

A really, really nice one, realistic and with great depth and obvious softness.

Wirecutter, today’s answer to what Consumer Reports used to be, actually did a report on such and came away saying, If you want the ones that everybody actually wishes for there’s no way around it–you have to shell out the big bucks at the upper end stores. But oh, what you get…!

Soft Surroundings sells some and their reviews sounded great. They know they’re a popular item. They often tie them into some promotion or other around Christmas time. I snagged one of last year’s models for my birthday at 75% off.

When I was pulling it out of its shipping box, Richard was suddenly concerned and warned, You know you’re going to have to worry about red paint.

It’s a blanket!

Oh. Good.

But it looked that fur-real.

It was my turn in the sibling Christmas round-robin to give to my oldest sister this year as another of their ads hit my inbox. So now this year’s model was that much on sale.

I already had–but–those are so nice. It would be fun to surprise her with something her grandkids would love to snuggle up in at their house, to be able to contribute to future happy memories for them all.

After Christmas, she thanked me for the apricots from Andy’s.

So there we finally were in person, seated around Mom’s table enjoying Indian take-out that first night there, and I decided to ask her my nagging question I’d been avoiding, not wanting to put her on the spot if her opinion of it was nowhere near mine: So. Did you like the blanket?

She and her husband did this mid-spoon-lift stopped in their tracks startled jaw-drop and a loud exclamation of surprise: The BLANKET!!! YOU’RE the one!!!

She scrolled through her phone to show me pictures she’d taken of it and its matching pillow (for hers you got free shipping if you forked over $11 for the pillow, ie it cost $1, why not) that she’d sent to a dear friend. Nope, not her. She’d asked all her kids. She’d gotten an invoice (you blew that part Soft Surroundings) but no mention anywhere of who had paid it. It had been a complete mystery these three weeks and it was so nice and how do you not thank someone, but who?! They were all entirely stumped and it had been driving them crazy. She’d thought of me–but no way. It would be an afghan if it was from me!

Yeah, well, y’know, sometimes I cheat…

Yes. They did. They absolutely adored it. Even if it wasn’t handmade.

And they couldn’t wait to laugh with their kids over the mystery being solved at long last.

Before the trip, I watched the forecasts and worried out loud more than once about having to drive in snow and ice as it promised the rain would turn to little white stars on the screen very early Sunday and stay that way all day. It’s been 36 years since we had to drive in New Hampshire winters, were our reflexes still there? I remember going ice skidding.

I’d forgotten the basic fact that roads are dark and take longer to get frozen.

The rain held on longer than expected; it was a mixture going into church, all fat fluffy flakes coming out and starting to powder the ground, but the streets? They were wet. That’s all.

That could change, I thought, given that our flight wasn’t till seven.

And then after our lunch of Indian restaurant leftovers I found myself looking out Mom’s windows as I wished for every minute with her to last longer.

Watching the snow.

Gently coming down.

I had almost forgotten.

How peaceful it is to be warm and inside and watching the world slowly turn itself into a soft, quiet blanket, and what a privilege it was to get to do that with my mother. The top of the Capitol building a few blocks uphill from her disappeared into the cloud.

But then the skies threw their forecast to the wind and stopped: that was enough for now, don’t want you guys to worry, safe travels.

But I’d wanted it to keep going! Like that protest was going to get me anywhere.

We drove to the airport with no ice, no snow on the road, and headed off to Vegas airport (of which you have heard) and then home.

Where I wished that I could go back to watch the snow falling quietly alongside my mom and was glad we got to have that together while we could.

So the other thing about the Vegas airport.

Southwest uses more than one terminal there and it was a long haul across the both of them. I found myself exclaiming, How big is this airport? Is it trying to be Atlanta? (The biggest in the world.)

I got an older wheelchair guy, the manager of the service with white hair to match my own, taking it briskly and cheerfully and at one point he said encouragingly, We’re about a quarter of the way there.

Me: Wow.

We didn’t tell him that my husband had taken a hard spill the day before, but he was in pain and moving slowly.

As we came around a corner, the guy spotted a woman waiting for her flight who was by a clearly-needed wheelchair but not in it just then. It was a different type from the one I was in, and just what he’d been looking for, though we had no idea.

He stopped. Excuse me, ma’am? Is that your wheelchair? Mind if I swap you? (There was a second one nearby like mine, left behind at someone else’s boarding.)

She looked confused but raised no objection as he helpfully moved it over by her and took hers. Apparently it was easier to manage for what he had in mind.

There you go: have a seat, he told Richard to our surprise, and proceeded to push the both of us at a brisk pace across the rest of the way.

My 6’8″ husband is not small.

We were a wide load and people were being oblivious and I did not want the man to lose and have to regain the slightest bit of momentum nor did I want to plow anybody down, so I proceeded to call out Beep Beep! and an occasional loud EXCUSE ME! as needed to get people to dodge us.

We thought at first we were on the brink of missing our flight but he knew better; we’d changed time zones. (Duh.) Besides, he told us, they’re not leaving without my passengers. Still, he took it at a good speed because he could.

He at one point bemoaned young people who collect money not to work, they don’t want to work, he said, they get paid to sit around at home, and I thought quietly, okay I know what channel you watch. They’re looking for better paying jobs and going back to school to qualify for them, but what I was actually hearing from him was, I can’t find enough people to do all I need done for all the people who need it at the amount I’m allowed to offer them.

But he was quite cheerful about getting to help us, as if simply meeting us had made his day.

He got us to our gate, I tipped him a good one, but before he could leave I said, A question, sir: are you allergic to wool?

That was so unexpected that it entirely threw him. Am I what??

I was unzipping my jacket pocket. Do you like green?

None of this was making the least bit of sense to him and he suddenly had no idea what to make of me.

Above and beyond, I marveled at him, not for the first time. You are amazing. THANK you! as I put a Malabrigo Teal Feather hat in his hands. I knit that on the way here, I told him; it’s brand new.

He was speechless.

And then as if suddenly remembering his manners he asked if I needed to use the restroom? I did, actually, and he wheeled me over thataway. On the way, I explained, That’s what I do. I knit things and then go find out who they were meant to be for.

You take good care of her, he said with great warmth to my husband back at the gate while patting my right shoulder and at a loss for how else to say how he felt.

A hat. Knit by hand. For him. For pushing a wheelchair.

What he didn’t know he also got was my fervent prayers for his back to be okay after all that work.

Okay, more details now that I’m not typing at midnight: the niece whose Texas wedding we missed to the Southwest meltdown? She had a second reception in Utah on Saturday so we rebooked for that–which meant getting to spend time with my mom, too, which was so great. When we flew in Friday evening we had DoorDash deliver Indian food to her house, and my brother and his daughter and our sister and her husband and our youngest joined us at Mom’s for our own mini-reunion.

Traveling tip: if you order a big restaurant meal in another state hours before you arrive in that state, call your credit card company before their fraud unit calls your land line so you can tell them yes it’s legit. Thank you Discover for calling quickly and unfreezing us before we left for the airport.

Last night on our return, there were no direct flights so we came via Vegas. There was a guy in that airport where I thought, I hope you’re not on our flight. He was, along with three family members, but they were not the first but the second family to loudly harangue the crew starting with the gate agent.

A woman we’d seen walking around just fine suddenly developed a profound limp and demanded to pre-board. The agent had seen her, and had the backup of you’re supposed to say when you book your flight if you need assistance, so she got told, nicely, no–your place in line is this number and that’s where you need to go.

That mom was angry and she let everybody know it, including telling the flight attendant once she finally got on all about how she’d been wrongfully denied and how terrible that agent was. The kicker is that she and her young son got second row seats anyway and could have spared herself the embarrassment of her ongoing public tantrum.

Richard expressed empathy quietly to the agent, who was grateful for it.

The woman’s limp magically entirely disappeared after the flight.

But that was nothing compared to the next group.

While she was still in line inside the terminal, as an antidote to what I didn’t know was only the start of it all, I figured our trip was pretty much over and it was time to put the rest of the finger puppets to use with no further need to save any. I pulled out some pretty ones and the first two flight attendants we saw, a young African-American man and a young, petite African American woman, were just so taken with them. For crying babies, I said, and as they asked if I’d made them I told them they were from Peru: the women can put food on the table, kids get happy, everybody wins.

It was clear they were both wishing for one of their own as they held them so I added, And they’re for you, too! Any ones you want. A handful more puppets came out to make sure they had enough.

So that started our time together on a joyful note, with Richard passing the little wearable animals over from me, and I said to him on the drive home, They’re good people anyway but that probably set the tone and helped them through what was about to happen.

He thought that was probably so.

I’ve never been so grateful for TSA screening. We were delayed by storms in the South but then by that angry guy. And his wife. And his mom. And their kid. During boarding he was yelling at the back of the plane loud enough for ME to hear at the front row and I would have said that wasn’t possible. But it was. And he went on and on and on and on and on and on and ON and on. Does the man ever breathe? Then his mom wouldn’t board–I have no idea what her problem was, but she finally got on. His kid (about six?) yelled for awhile, too, because that seemed the thing to do. His wife at the last was visibly shaking her body with rage in view of my window as she screamed at the plane’s door. At length.

Only able to guess at what her problem was, I thought, Lady. This is Southwest. You arrive late and there’s only one seat left on the full flight, that’s your seat. Nobody has done you wrong. But you guys don’t threaten the crew and you don’t scream at them.

The young flight attendant with the beautiful long braids was soothing, kind, wise beyond her years, in no way backed down, and at the last said, Thank you for your time, ma’am, with so much emotional honesty to the improbable words that it reminded me of when I was being calm with my teenagers: you love them and you see they’re acting that way because they’re in pain and you try to meet them where they are while still saying the rules hold. If our hero was religious, she fully lived by the Love she believes in.

She asked if anyone would like to move for this family, and boy howdy people did because nobody wanted to sit by any of them if they didn’t have to.

I have to add to last night’s remarks that Richard was every bit as much if not more of a support to her and the others as I was. Even if I’m the one who got the hug. He asked her later, Do you have to put up with drama like that often?

Her whole body did a Phew! at the question and then she laughed and said, No! 421 flights and that’s never happened before!

And yet she’d handled it like an old pro and I thought, Every police department in the country should hire you to teach them de-escalation techniques.

All of those people actually eventually sat down and shut up after she was done. I’m sure the male attendant at the back dealing with the dad was handling it just as well.

I wondered afterwards if that second family was, in effect, Westboro reincarnated: trying to anger the workers so they could sue Southwest when they kicked them off–it’s the only thing that made sense.

Nothing was going to be served during the flight, the pilot announced after we finally started pulling away from the gate about an hour late: there would be too much turbulence.

He didn’t say, and half of it has been human. It was definitely one way to keep drinks away from those guys without making the attendants have to take any more flak that would surely come with the denial. That pilot was brilliant.

We did in fact have enough of a rollercoaster starting a little while into the ride that the pilots were too busy to remember to turn off the bathroom sign. Whee! Yeah, we stayed buckled.

So. We finally land. The lights come on, people get up to get their stuff, it’s quite late.

You know how they drive the outside walkway over to the plane’s door and the little canvas-looking accordion overhead stretches out its cover?

The first eight or ten times, the gate agent at the controls approached, stopped, backed up, considered, tried, missed, backed up, again and again, till the pilot came on and chuckled, She’s new; she started in January.

This, of course, was January 15.

She tried a bunch more times and none of it was done quickly. We could see her calling someone. We could see her hands gesturing in frustration and embarrassment as she could see us seeing her. She tried again. Way off. No. On the phone again, and you could imagine the words to go with the pleading face and motions: Can’t someone come?! Has everybody gone home for the night?!

Our intrepid attendant got on the mic and said, Anybody want to hop down from the plane and help her out? We’ve been on the job for eleven and a half hours and we would like to go to bed.

The whole plane laughed with her because she was laughing and a little comic relief is always a good thing.

It had been a good ten minutes at this point. The pilot asked everybody to sit back down. We did. Then he moved the plane forward.

She considered the angle. No, no, that was worse.

Okay. He backed the plane up and angled it sideways towards that walkway as he did so, and this time, she cruised right forward. Nailed it. She connected us up, we had a cover out of the hard rain and we had our walkway, and there you go.

The poor woman was back inside at the gate and had to watch all of us go past her and we all smiled a hello of, that’s okay and an everybody’s new at a job once, we get it (it wasn’t just me by any means.)

We followed the emotional lead of our wonderful attendants and pilot, who’d repeatedly made everything all right in spite of it all.

Richard and I got home wired and tired and way past our bedtime in both time zones. I told him my body didn’t want to sleep but I was going to boss it around and tell it too bad, and with that he gave up the day to its ghosts along with me and that was that.

I’ve never seen such behavior in an airport before, much less on a plane. They should have been thrown out and criminally charged with interfering with a flight crew, but I guess Southwest is trying really hard to rebuild customer relations. But these people did not deserve how well they were treated in response to their aggressions.

That flight attendant–

–well, there’s an old Washington DC saying that the definition of a diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you look forward to the trip.

So much went so wrong. She handled it so well. I told her that and thanked her.

Never before has a flight attendant given me a hug as I was getting off the plane.

Katie Porter is running for Senate ’24! I’ll finally get to vote for her!

Meantime, I had to make a quick run to the post office: please keep my mail out of the rain and all that.

I pulled off the road at a small gravel turnoff by the bike path along the marsh looking over towards the Bay, because I had never seen water in most of this. See that dark wooden fence in the foreground there? (Click for a bigger view.) The bottom of it is underwater. One might not want to go birding down that trail today.

The forecast was .82″ at noon, then five hours later as it actually finally started to come down they changed it to 1.73″.

Meantime, someone had backed into a fire hydrant in Sunnyvale and an old Purlescence friend took video of the resulting geyser and flooded street.

My reaction was, the sky took one look at that and went, You think that’s something? Here–hold my water.

One of the enduring artifacts of the pandemic is how visible it made the handiwork of all the unsung hair stylists out there while so many salons were closed. All that long hair out there. The number of women, here, anyway, who’ve kept it that way since.

By the way, the DIY youtube video that says to turn your head over, brush your hair straight, put in a ponytail holder and lop the ends off below there and it will come out perfectly layered towards the bottom? Don’t do it. Just don’t. Don’t ask me how I know.

Part it down the middle front to back, pull it to the front under your chin and hold, snip across. Much better. I don’t know how well that would work on straight hair but curls are forgiving.

But I wanted it done right. My hair was going to be in pictures forevermore, and that’s incentive enough to brave the scissors of someone new. Both the distance and, as I discovered, the politics of the woman I’d previously gone to…let’s just say the distance.

I found a place about a mile away.

It was a great feeling to come out of that chair feeling like this woman had done exactly what I’d hoped for–and, given that I have some older salon stories that could curl your hair, it was such a relief.

Except for one small thing.

I don’t know what that product was, but I’d forgotten to ask for nothing scented.

He squirmed a bit. He didn’t want to say it outright. So I said it for him: It stinks.

Yes, (emphatically), it definitely does. (Heard but not said: It is entirely messing with this dinner, honey.)

Now pardon me while I go wash my hair.

Should I take the unwieldy afghan that would get on the floor of the garage?

That’s a question I can’t answer, he responded, reasonably.

So, I finally decided, I guess the boring usual, then. Lucky me, there was one skein of Mecha that was already wound up. A dark teal green.

Which got me thinking.

I don’t spend a lot of time in waiting rooms these days, but sometimes, and so somehow I did, I had three plain Malabrigo beanies sitting waiting to find out whose they were supposed to be.

I checked their website. The three of them had been running the garage since the original guy who’d opened it in 1952.

It’s not in walking distance and I had no ride so I was just going to sit and wait while they worked on the car. I could call Enterprise Car Rental if it came to that; they pick you up.

Oh–are you waiting? she asked me. (For so long they didn’t let you; now they’ll let one person under the relaxed covid protocols.)

They got right to it, then.

I pulled out my needles and cast on.

I did the nine rows of ribbing on the usual 70 stitches of Mecha.

Someone else popped in to give his key and say his car was here.

I kept knitting.

I did some of the solid area above the brim, and at about 90 minutes in the mechanic stepped into the office area, glanced over at my knitting a moment, and said my car was done.

And then he shook his head with her a moment talking about the 24 year old Buffalo Bills football player who’d dropped on the field in cardiac arrest–so young, so young. In the ICU. But it was like that basketball player, he said.

Len Bias, I piped up to his surprise.

Either there were two basketball players or he didn’t remember that name; it’s been a long time.

He went back to work on the next car.

Len Bias was in Maryland, I told her, and I’m from Maryland.

Ah, she said, and rang up my bill.

While wearing a shirt and jacket in the very colors of the feminine one of those hats. The other two were in Vaa and Solis, darker green on the gray side and the other a bit brighter. I was knitting teal green. I was wearing two layers of green sweaters. Tuesday’s for the color green, today.

Two guys back there? I asked, just to confirm.

Two guys back there, she confirmed.

Having waited for my bill to be finished so it couldn’t affect it in any way, I pulled out the three hats and thanked her very much.

She’d just seen me making one of those. She instantly knew I’d made those. Her jaw dropped, and then she hurried to go share as I waved goodbye and headed out the door without even asking if they liked green.

The guy who’d worked on my car hurried out the big garage door to catch a glimpse in time but I was on my way.

I drove off feeling like, where have I been? Man, that felt good. Do it some more. You’ve got some catching up to do, hon.

So the neighborhood didn’t blow up. Suddenly that last tomato variety’s name up there has a different twinge to it… Thank you, firefighters.

The blue lines in the forecast continue: 5.95″ still to come between now and next Wednesday and it looks like it’ll keep going after that. This Wednesday and next Monday look to be like the big day we just had. Stay home.

Shasta, the biggest reservoir, is still only at 57% of normal and 34% full. Etc. But day by day we’re getting there.

As it was pouring down today, I opened my new Burpee catalog–now that it’s had a few days to dry out so you can turn the pages, and then I ordered visions of Spring.

I always think I should plant marigolds to protect my tomatoes from the squirrels, since they hate the smell of them, but I never do. With our overhangs, I don’t have bright window space for much and then it always feels like too late for a round two of starts.

20% off? (Enter code BSC23 till 6/30/23) A new color variant that I like? Strawberry Blonde. I ordered the plants, which I never have before, and I don’t care how small the marigold seedlings turn out to be when they get here: they’ll be actual plants, not wishes. This year those tomatoes are mine!

And I bought sunflower seeds. Their new Creme Brûlée. I mean, sunflowers this year of all years, yes, not to mention that with a name and look like that how could one not. Slightly burnt-looking stamens on the back catalog cover, reminiscent of what the Ukrainians have endured, but deeply satisfying to the eye, the heart, the birds: gorgeous flowers, absolutely gorgeous.

And, yes, the squirrels will be thrilled. Let’s see if I can get them to grow on the far side of the house from the rest.

—–

Update: I just got a notification that a major tree is down and blocking one of the more problematical creeks. That’s an emergency, and the mayor of the next town (not sure if it fell to or from their side) is on it.

Anne was right, of course: it was the section of 101 that goes around the airport and just north of it that flooded, the stretch where it offers a beautiful view across the Bay, where you can see the ships lined up for the Port of Oakland–and where, two weeks ago, I was thinking as we drove that stretch that it would be the first thing to go when the waters rise in the coming years.

Meantime, I did some serious progress on the stalled afghan, and being that close to done makes me want to finish it. It feels good to have that motivation back.

Richard was out taking a walk while I was typing that and came in saying there was a massive smell of gas in the next block, he’d put in a call to the city’s utilities department, and the fire truck had arrived before he even made it up the block.

Okay, the night just got a little more exciting. (The blog timestamp’s off, it’s 10pm.) Well, huh. We’ve got a reverse-911 system here if they decide they want us all out of here, but I’m not expecting it.

As of 6:30 pm the amount of rainfall for this year for our city is 13.51″.

The amount of that rain that fell in the last 24 hours is 3.25″, as measured up in the foothills where it gets more than down here, but it all comes through town on its way to the Bay. The city said today’s amount is three times what the National Weather Service had predicted.

Should we happen to need to go to the hospital tonight for any reason (we don’t, and let’s not) we would have to go sideways and up across the foothills and around the flooding and the closed roads, hoping. (To Anne, who recently moved away from here: El Camino’s underpass just before the Stanford Mall is completely under water.)

It’s still coming down hard but is supposed to drop off by bedtime, and then Sunday is supposed to totally be a day of rest. Bright sunshine. Take a break.

And then we will start off the new year with a projected 4″ across the next eight days with about half that as a deluge on Wednesday. Don’t go anywhere Wednesday.

I am so grateful for a warm dry house (and that we finally finally after over a year on the waiting list *got the roof fixed*.)

Those reservoirs still have a long way to go to get up to normal. Keep going.

Happy New Year, everybody! We were going to do to a pot luck with some friends but it got canceled. Next year.

I was able to match someone’s yarn and dye lot so she could finish her sweater, and could there be a better Christmas present for me than that.

I drove past marshland on my way to the post office. You could tell it was vacation week–and that it was during a break in the rain that’s projected to continue past next Friday; there was a family with young kids skipping happily near the bicyclist sculpture dedicated to the environmentalist who’d worked for decades to get the marsh habitat restored, a group of people on the other side of the southernmost pond as if on lunch break from the nearby offices, someone birdwatching towards the Bay. The green grasses were lush, the winter water was running high.

The trail was long enough to keep them all at good spaces between each other.

There was a magnificent red-tailed hawk perched on its favorite light pole over the road. It was taking in the scene and not the least bit perturbed by all the people. I had seen it there before. It was a thrill to see it again, with the suggestion, then, of territory. May it choose this place to raise the coming year’s family.

And just beyond it, farthest away from anyone else, there was a couple walking.

I’d guess early sixties. What was striking is that he looked like he was having a political or family or some kind of argument, if you can call it an argument when only one person is carrying on with it; he didn’t look angry, just emphatic, hands waving and finger jabbing towards the air away from her as he made his points, not looking threatening and a little stooped but maybe a bit bothered. She, it seemed, was putting up with it. Maybe it was all old hat to her.

But you get someone out taking a walk in nature and you might already know what they’re going to talk about but they’re also going to get some exercise and feel better when it’s done and so will you so you might as well go, right?

All these impressions of the lives of complete strangers that flashed in the few seconds on approach. And then you go past.

I almost pulled the car over. I wanted to say, Did you see it? The hawk? It’s been observing you. It’s gorgeous, look how big that thing is! Don’t miss it!

I thought, whatever he’s talking about, they won’t remember it five years from now but that sighting, if they finally looked up, they just might. Red-taileds like to soar high and that one’s so close. You could see so much detail.

But I didn’t. And neither, as far as I know, did they.

I got past the light way ahead and pulled in at the post office, mailed my small box, and again made the deliberate decision to take the longer way home rather than the freeway on the small chance that the hawk might still be there.

They were not. I’m guessing that had been their car by the bicyclist statue.

The hawk still was. Cool as the water in an incoming northern tide.

Answering Jayleen’s question: it was a small road with no cars on it but mine. Nice and straight, and the little kids on bikes, even if they were at the end of a path through the marsh and a few feet away from the road, were excuse enough to take it slow.

I was going to tell her how she’d saved me: the audiologist (not the tech this time) got me in last week, fixed the issue of the air filter that had fallen out into my ear canal and blocked the sound (and got rid of some wax while she was at it), she reset the aids to be 1 dB louder, and best of all, she plugged them in for a software update.

So much better clarity! I could hear!

We were heading to a niece’s wedding tomorrow and since despite last week’s Arctic blast it was supposed to be in the 70s in Texas, I was going to wear the embroidered dress I’d gotten from Ukraine.

It’s gorgeous. It was priced well below some of its competitors, but I actually picked it because at the time it was the only one in that color and that pattern and I loved how it looked. The seamstress, in making the whole thing from scratch, altered the neckline a little bit for me and it came out perfect.

I decided to try it on one more time before packing it. It had been too cold to wear it here since I’d gotten it and I just wanted to admire it again.

Good thing I did. That thing was LOUD! Wait, what? Since when do clothes make sounds like that?!

I have a blouse from Ukraine with machine embroidery where they put a fine facing on the back side to hold the fabric steady as the colors were worked over it, so clearly at some studios that’s how it’s done.

I guess when you’re making do in wartime–well, this woman had used paper. You can carefully, slowly, tear it away from the backs of the stitches afterwards (and you’d better or you’ll clog your plumbing as it disintegrates when you wash it) but with limited light and power she hadn’t and with the sleeves, front, sides, and bottom all embroidered, I sounded like I was noisily crinkling up a big wad of paper with every step or movement of my arms.

I had tried this thing on before. I’d had absolutely no idea, I couldn’t hear it, wasn’t even aware the paper was there, I just thought it felt a little stiff because of all those embroidery stitches.

Now I could. Thank you thank you Dr. Clark.

Y’know, I thought, linen is just not a great thing to put in a suitcase when you want to look formal on the other side anyway. Forget that, and I grabbed something that wouldn’t wrinkle. Including an elegant hand-embroidered blouse from, you guessed it, Ukraine, no backing used.

I was going to tell her the gist of that with a laugh, and I still will, but…

I got a text from Southwest last night. I got another one this morning, but it’s kind of a moot point to cancel the second flight when you’ve already canceled the first, don’t you think?

They have thousands of people from last week still trying to get to where they’re supposed to go, so many suitcases that were boarded but the people were not, such a mess to untangle and that big storm so badly handled.

Three airports at our end, two at the other, and they had not one single seat available at any hour or price. Well, $6300 on another airline given the next-day ticket, and we actually know someone who’s paying one way of that plus a three hour drive across Texas because she absolutely has to get home, but to start the trip?

With apologies to our niece, I went to the post office to remove the hold on the mail.

We had a wonderful, wonderful day, and I hope you all did, too. I’m just going to write about a little moment on the side because I’m never going to remember the details next year any other way. Maybe do 325 next time.

Hunk-o meat, we call it. If he wants a large cut he cooks it, an arrangement going back to when his widowed retired dairy farmer grandmother filled a large grocery bag with part of a cow out of her freezer and sent it home with us. T-bones? Broke newlywed students are supposed to know what to do with those?!

We’d gotten a James Beard cookbook as a wedding present and he had fun learning and in retrospect, I think that’s what his grandmother was going for all along.

We rarely eat beef these days. We’d rather the Amazon not be bulldozed for it. But at Christmas he likes to go big–even though it would just be the two of us this year, because hey freezers and leftovers and faster meals later and all that but whatever, he just really wanted that beautiful rib roast.

Start it high, Beard says, then after so long you turn it down.

He did all that.

Only… he had set a timer for the amount of time at 425 and later, since I was in the kitchen anyway, could I change the oven to 325–nah, make it 350 when it goes off.

Sure.

There’s the timer timer and the oven timer and he’d set the wrong one. The oven was now off. I turned it back on. No biggy.

It was about 20 minutes before I went, wait a minute…

I always use the lower oven because I am not a fan of standing on my tiptoes in front of major heat to see into the top of the thing.

He’s 6’8″ with a back that has opinions. There would have to be a really good reason before he’d ever use anything but the top one.

Duh. I turned his back on but it had already lost about half its heat. It, of course, went into full blast mode to make up for it.

Also, now the timer was and had to be the one on the thermometer and I couldn’t hear it at all, though I did hover nearby and rescued it at two degrees above what he was aiming for.

We really thought we were doing okay.

There is only one way to describe the result.

The beef.

It felted.

I think, on further reflection, that we ought to be able to measure felting levels and call them Kevlars.

Chicken and fish, I tell ya.