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.

Our sweet old car just runs and runs and runs, which is a good thing because it’s still not a great time to replace it.

Last Friday, we pulled into the ice skating rink parking lot and turned it off.

The motor was still running.

He hit the Prius’s power button again.

Still running.

It IS in park… What… It took about six tries, with me wondering out loud just what we were going to do if it didn’t before it finally complied.

Is it KitchenAiding us? I asked, stunned.

No problems since. But it’s going into the shop after Christmas.

Meantime, the new mixer made it to the Central Valley this morning and is set to be delivered tomorrow, now that it’s outraced that huge bomb cyclone storm.

You all stay safe out there for me, y’hear? Please? So you can have yourself a Merry Little Christmas, alright now, sounds good. And Happy Hanukkah, too.

Edited to add, especially for those in the storm: a raccoon trying to catch snowflakes.

I have a 5 quart Kitchenaid mixer. It’s my third. I like them, they’re what I’m used to, and in my experience they last about a dozen years.

And all of them, when they started to go, the on-off button started getting iffy.

I learned this the hard way thirty years ago when the first one switched itself on while my hand was down in the bowl working on the bread dough. Broke my wrist.

Now, here’s where the story meanders to the Christian bookstore that has since been bulldozed, but it had a title someone had recommended I read and had told me I could find it there.

The internet not being a thing yet, knowing where a book was was way better than traipsing from store to store searching.

So. I go in there.

And I see a whole labeled section of straight-up anti-Mormon hit pieces, three long levels of shelves. Huh.

I found my book, went to check it out–and after a fervent little prayer not to blow this but to be able to live my faith no matter what response I might get, and for their sakes, too–I had to ask.

In gentle curiosity but not complaint: Why do you stock those books?

The man squirmed. Well, because Mormons aren’t Christians and they’re going to hell, that’s why.

I loved him in that moment for trying to do his best as best as he knew how but boy what he didn’t know as I said simply, I’m a Mormon. Jesus Christ is my Lord and my Savior.

My smile was sincere and steady as I looked him in the eyes.

He looked at me. For some reason he then looked at the black splint on my broken wrist at some length; I guess I seemed harmless. He had no answer other than his surprise turning to a thoughtful expression as he silently rang up the sale but I had no doubt he was relieved when I walked out his door: he clearly had questions but it seemed he didn’t dare be caught asking them, not there.

A Going Out of Business sign went up not long after. Then the place was gone, and I don’t know that the business was resurrected somewhere else, I think it was just gone.

So. I took the mixer to a repairman and he disabled the switch entirely so it couldn’t break my wrist again but the speeds were suddenly gone, too: it was plug and unplug, on and off, full blast or nothing.

The second machine took a faster nosedive from the turning on randomly stage to the never turns off  at all unless you unplug it stage, so I gave it and a warning and its accessories to someone who couldn’t afford such a machine at all. At least that way they could have one for awhile. Carefully.

Here we are again, and sometimes this third one will turn off when you turn it off but most of the time now, no. It’s been several months and I’m tired of having a scary machine. I have this fear that it’s going to snag my hair as I reach over it to the plug (two individual hairs by the roots so far), and the cord’s too short to reach the other one.

Metal recycling is now a thing here, and I think that would be the better option.

Kitchenaid is apparently closing out the lift-bowl-model 5 qts at long last–meaning I could get it at $200 off, ie at the price I paid last time, thanks, but only if I want it in pastel aqua or black. Black, thanks. I don’t need a bigger machine but I do need to be able to continue to use all these bowls I’ve accumulated; they’re highly useful.

This morning it was on a truck in Texas. FedEx claimed it was going to be here tomorrow night.

I’m looking at the weather reports that are saying that that record-breaking cold front is hitting hard and fast (has Dallas ever had a windchill factor of -7 before?) and all I know is–

–I don’t want anyone breaking any bones for my stupid mixer. Drive carefully out there, whoever you are, and if I need to I can certainly wait. Saying a prayer for the truck driver.

(Checking: nope. Still in Amarillo. I’m going to say that’s a good thing. Merry Christmas.)

Happy Birthsday to my mom and grandson!

Meantime, there was a potluck at church for the women’s organization and I got to meet the mom and her two daughters of the family for whom we tied those quilts last Friday.

Sometimes you both need to talk about it and you need to have a chance to get away from it and as Ruth joined me and them at the table, we tried to offer both as the conversation flowed.

Have you seen the Stanford Museum?

Didn’t know there was one!

It’s got Egyptian artifacts collected by the young Leland Stanford Jr before he died–looting archaeological digs for the rich was in style in the late 1800s. It’s got a Rodin sculpture garden: you know The Thinker? (and I mimicked the stern face and hand on chin.) It’s there. And you can walk there (from where they were staying.)

Do you need anything, I asked at the last, thinking, because I would do anything. The mom crochets so I’d already, I hope, made clear that my yarn stash was wide open for them.

She looked at her daughters and how do you answer such an open-ended question, which I knew it was.

So then I said to these good folks who’d driven a long hard day’s drive to where they knew no one for medical care for her son, What you need though is a local number. Someone you can call. Here’s mine.

An old and dear friend was admiring my dandelion gerdan in church yesterday, exclaiming over the design and how well the beadwork was done, explaining to me that it takes years to get up to that level of skill in the weaving where the piece lies perfectly flat and even. (I’ve seen a few beginner-ish looking pieces and I don’t doubt it.)

She was wistful a moment but caught herself and tried not to let it show. (While I thought, I know… It’s so expensive to live here…)

She is one of the most empathetic people I know and I knew how much it would mean to her to be able to reach out visually in solidarity with our Ukrainian ex-pat community. I know how much it’s meant to me. I could just picture the random happy moments to come, that I’ve had, that she could have.

UCSF has me in a long-term lupus outcomes study and every year they give me a small VISA gift card for my time, and so often I forget about them and never even use them.

So I had an excuse: I would now, finally, and see, it almost wouldn’t even cost me anything and it would keep me from wasting it.

Oleksandra was thrilled when I came back today, and even more when I told her why I had just bought more of her artwork–the woman who made my really big sunflower that lies perfectly flat with the edges and every bead lined up just so, whose work goes well with my friend’s admiring eye. That it was for passing the blessings forward.

So now there will be another sunflower in the wild, smaller and more her style I think; above it, daisies, red poppies and blue cornflowers. At the top to either side is a stalk of golden wheat sparkling against the black background.

For Marnie. The woman who brought her daughters and a comfortable swivel chair to my house and washed my hair over the sink after my discharge from the hospital years ago with a PCC line still in, utterly unable to manage the energy of the thing and absolutely forbidden to get water near my heart where the line went into but desperate to finally have a clean head at long last.

Martha of Biblical fame washed Jesus’s feet with her hair. Marnie washed mine. Carefully.

Her gerdan is being created starting today. (Click on the “7 sales” if you’re curious, though the thumbnail doesn’t really do the beadwork justice. There are sparkles in just the right places.) It’s coming, and I can’t wait.

Don’t tell her.

(Edited in the morning to add, the 6.4 quake in Humboldt County was way north of us and I woke up to an alert on my phone but didn’t feel it. We’re fine down here as we wait to hear updates re those affected.)

Come to the ice skating rink on Friday, they said. A ward party. The place is rented out to us for two hours. Pizza and hot cocoa will be served and eight quilts will be tied for the incoming family.

Ice skates and nighttime outdoor quilt tying? Yeah, I did a double take, too.

Turns out there’s a family coming the week between Christmas and New Year’s from I have no idea where whose 13 year old son is being given a last-chance try at Stanford at stopping his brain cancer after five years of treatments. He is one of the younger children in a family of eight.

This was a good time to find someone who would be away visiting loved ones; a home was volunteered for them so they could all stay together at this time.

They would be long-distance driving in, one assumes with not a lot of room with that many people and space for surely only their most essential luggage.

It’s been below freezing at night this past week.

And so it was quickly resolved that we would make every one of them a quilt. Given how short a notice the whole thing was, those turned out to be two layers of soft fleece with snips made all around the edges and then those pairs of snips tied together, upper to lower: simple, warm, and easy for a bunch of people to work on together and finish quickly, no sewing, not even setting up a frame, just laid out on the picnic tables together–and go!

I admit my first thought was, man, it’s cold out here.

Of course there were no outdoor heaters: they have to keep the ice cold. The check-in booth is inside but there’s no roof to the rink itself.

I hadn’t been in that facility since before my ’00 car accident. Skating on ice with no sense of balance just doesn’t sound like a great idea, y’know?

But what intrigued me (as I played spectator) was the accommodations: now, they had polar bear chairs, designed for little ones to ride on while being scooted on the ice pushed from behind, with those chairs being strong enough that the teenagers got in on it too and the ice patrol was totally cool with it while they occasionally swooped in to scoop up a toddler, mindful of every person on that rink. What a great idea!

There was a kid in a wheelchair, and the older kids playing with the bear chairs completely normalized his sitting down as they twirled around him sliding on the ice, legs akimbo. He could look down to them, rather than his peers always looking down to him. So cool.

I have Reynaud’s and my hands get white and stiff in the cold. But I wasn’t skating, so after I ate my pizza and cleaned up the hot cocoa I spilled down my skirt (brrr) and off the concrete so others wouldn’t slip on it I got called over to hey, come help us with this!

I was amazed at how fast others were going at it and my cold fingers fumbled as I thought, I am not good at this.

But you know what? Once I actually got going, things did limber up and when someone new joined us, I was now the one at that quilt going at a good clip, and man it felt good to be doing this for that family.

I said to the person who organized it, They’re surely not going to have the room in the car to take all these home afterwards. We should offer to mail them home for them when they go.

That’s a great idea! You’re right!

So. Now, we wait. They are coming.

And they and their son and brother are loved already, whoever they are.

Chocolate and pastries at Dandelion in San Francisco for the birthday celebration, by special request. I wanted that more than going out to dinner.

I thought I’d mentioned it here but I’m not finding it: in October I found a pattern for a dandelion gerdan being sold by its Ukrainian creator, but the only place selling a finished one anything like it was someone in India with scathing reviews warning would-be buyers away from having anything to do with the guy.

I only wanted to do it to support Ukraine anyway–that was the whole point.

Well, so maybe I should consider the idea. After all, I figure digital sales are safer than going to the post office there.

So I priced out beading looms and read up on various models and why and that led me to start wondering about the beads I already had and how good I might be at using them in a way I hadn’t previously considered, which got me to later ask the blog about what all those numbers mean, and thank you for the help.

But reality: moderate cataracts and corneal dystrophy. An inability to feel much in my fingertips. Chasing the really tiny beads around with a tiny needle? Thirty years ago, but not now.

So I asked the artist if she knew of any of her fellow countrymen making her pattern for sale. I said a little about Bloom County, how a dandelion field was its solace and spot of heaven, and how I think one of the best chocolate makers out there likely took its name from that comic strip.

It’s the Pogo of our generation, but I didn’t go into that much detail.

She considered a moment and told me, Yes–yes I think I can do that for you, sure, I’d be glad to.

Saying it that way completely endeared her to me: every knitter out there knows what a great compliment it is to the person we allow to jump our queue, and how they often never even know they did, much less how much it means.

She warned me it would take her over a week to make and I responded, I am in no hurry–I’m just thrilled that you’re willing to do this for me, thank you. Whenever works best for you in your schedule, you come first.

I signed for the package less than a month later, and in terms of mail from Ukraine in the middle of the war, that is lightning fast. I certainly can’t say she’d manage that the next time but she did on that one for me.

And that is how I came to own a dandelion gerdan to wear to Dandelion Chocolate today, where one of the staff exclaimed over it.

And where, as it turned out, we ran into a former co-worker of Richard’s whom he introduced me to. Sam, if you’re reading this, I apologize that I couldn’t hear a word in the noise. I tried hard. Richard explained to me afterwards that your in-laws card and weave wool and you’ve read my blog from time to time and what I wouldn’t have given to know that while you were right there to talk to! So cool! But at least I got to meet you, and you really tried, and thank you for that.

(Frost on apricot.)

We were FaceTiming with the grandkids in San Diego who called for my birthday yesterday and the 7, 9, and 11 year olds (two of those numbers change next week) along with their 4 year old baby brother nodding solemnly were telling us that it had rained for two days and they’d had to stay inside to play. They need the rain, we all do, but…

I told them it had rained here, too, and had left a puddle.

And that the puddle froze. It was solid ice this morning!

ICE! I had their full attention. No such thing had ever happened at their house. (It helped that it had been a very shallow puddle.)

I said, Yeah, and when I went to change my clothes, you know there’s just this little flap of metal between the dryer hose and the outside. The underwear was in the dryer.

I topped off my tale with, I put on frozen underwear!

(Just in case you ever want to know how to make southern Californian kids go wide-eyed and then fall over laughing so long and so hard and so shivery as they imagined just what that would feel like. I think I just stamped a dominant Gramma memory for life on their childhoods. Ice cube undies, yessir. I am so going to hear about this at their weddings.)

Without in the least bit planning on it I’ve found myself humming that tune all day.

I didn’t wait for Mom’s birthday.

I am what Paul McCartney thought was old when he was young years old today.

Oh. Wait. I spent my usual writing time not blogging but composing a thank you letter to Sola for making my mother so happy. (Typing fast.)

Mom got her package today (don’t look at the price tag Mom); her birthday is next week but I had told her don’t wait, go enjoy.

Once she saw it…!

She made herself stop and try on her new hand-embroidered vyshyvanka before calling me so she could say it fit–she knew it would and it did–and then realized that that intricate work was not even sweeps of blanket stitch but tiny X’s of cross stitch. Done by hand in Ukraine, all of it.

She ran to her friend’s apartment to show it to someone who would understand just how much work and how much love went into that and look at this!

Then she came back upstairs and picked up the phone and called me and was so happy I was almost in tears. This. This is why I did this. This is why Sola did this and what she was so looking forward to, too.

I didn’t get to go with Mom to her Christmas party tonight a plane flight away from me where she showed it off, but my heart sure did.

Go to Andy’s first and replenish my apricot supply or go to the post office? I had plenty of time to do both if I hurried. I’ve never tried his Japanese-style preserved Hachiya persimmons but after the New York Times’ write up, I need to and Andy’s is the only place I know to get them.

Wait.

Priorities. Get the Christmas presents mailed so you know it’s done. The shipping process isn’t going to speed up the closer we get.

Last year I did my homework and it was cheaper to use the post office. So I got my mom’s and my daughter’s off there and then headed over to the UPS store to buy a box of the right size for the other grands.

Turns out the size they had was close to my 27x22x14″ one and they cost the same to ship.

But the price! Twenty-six less than the post office! I ran home, packed it up at long last, ran back and got it done, with thanks to the random stranger who saw me struggling to wrestle it out of my car with the cane in my way and carried it in for me. So grateful. It was a bear.

Rush hour kicks in ~2:30 around here and it just felt like, no, don’t go, it can wait. The drive to Morgan Hill? Let’s try Monday.

What I didn’t know and was not expecting was an email from Andy’s: they’d had a covid exposure. The book signing and holiday get-together are canceled and they are closed till further notice.

They’ve been so careful for so long. Andy, like most farmers, is not young. I’m going to be holding him and his close in my prayers.

It’s that time of year again: the one where you recycle what you know is a perfectly good box (plus about five more) and you know you’re going to want it in two or three weeks but you think you have plenty of time to find another one and not have this cluttering up your house, and besides, you don’t even know what you’re going to need then because the things you’re going to be packing haven’t even come yet, much less gotten wrapped.

And then two or three weeks later you sit there with everything looking all pretty for their trees and ready to go, your tape measure in hand and your screen open to USPS Send–Pricing.

Your largest box, which came Santa-ing six grandkids in two different states, is a lot bigger than you need.

The next largest is a half inch too small and you only just managed not to shred the wrapping paper trying.

But, but, you just had that other one…

Because they want $83-something for that monster one. Doesn’t matter what it weighs (to a point irrelevant to the question at hand), it’s oversize. And they’re happy to offer incentive to ship smaller.

I could ship way bigger for that much: at Southwest’s very best sale fares, I could fly me there and hand-deliver a free suitcase’s worth in person. Just not in December.

I need a 22.5×16.5×11.5H if it even exists, plus a little extra for the December birthday presents (but they can go separately.)

I knew, I knew I was going to need that earlier box, but did I listen to me? Did I open the bin outside to see if it was even retrievable after being stomped on, like it kept pleading for me to do?

It is I-told-you-so-ing faintly from whatever it’s being reincarnated into. Likely more boxes.

A few years ago a friend was telling me that knitting with beads is easy, and showed me how before she moved away.

But so many details I didn’t know to ask about. What is an 8/0 vs an 11/0 and does it matter and is the bigger number the smaller bead or the opposite, and where did those numbers come from anyway and why are they fractions. And if you’re just stringing them, what kind of thread should you use?

Questions I learned when an online yarn store was selling out their beads and I thought, hey, those must work with yarn because it’s a yarn store selling them, right? And I bought a bunch of pretty colors. Plus some sparkly white to be, y’know, practical and all that.

And there they have sat.

I found a simple beaded scarf pattern from someone who appeared to be American and it seemed like you wouldn’t need to buy a beading loom for it, so that was good–till I read a scathing review saying the pattern had been lifted from someone else’s video.

Now whether she’s right about that or not I don’t know; it seems to me that that simple a mesh would be like designing feather and fan–it’s easy, it’s been passed on forever, I’ve known people who claim they don’t know how to do lace, just feather and fan. Which..is…a lace pattern, but never mind.

So maybe it’s like that.

But whatever, I followed her link because a video is always going to show you more anyway. (I’d skip the first four minutes or so.)

I’m guessing it’s in Russian. It might be Ukrainian but I think that’s hoping for too much. There are English captions as best as the machine could do.

I still don’t know how to pick the right synthetic thread and size needle to make such a thing, and I’m willing to buy a pattern, hopefully from a Ukrainian.

After the holidays are over I just might try after all out of curiosity.

But even so I’ll be buying from Ukrainians. They need the help and the work and I love what they create. (Yeah, I do–I need to knit that. Gorgeous.)

If you ever want a quick visual of how California’s water is doing, see this chart of major reservoirs posted by the state. Scroll over a description and a blue dot pops up on the map to show you where that one is.

It’s been record-breaking cold these past few days and it’s been raining (we actually almost had snow–wait. It could be we even did, but gone by the time we woke up) and those bars are improving. Which shows you just how bad it had gotten.

It took me a moment, as I peeled the first layer of the frost covers off the mango tree yesterday morning, to be sure it was the ice breaking on top as I pulled and not the tree ripping leaves off along the way. They weren’t even in direct contact. Right. It’s the ice.

Brrr.

But not complaining. Water!

Monday, the wheelchair pusher absolutely deserved a handknit hat and it didn’t even occur to me till a moment too late. They were in the rollaboard anyway–oh wait.

The crowd was closing in behind me.

Climbing up into the bus to return to the car rental (every bag present and accounted for this time), there was a snowstorm on its way in and it was even colder than the week before.

The driver’s head was bare. Not even a ‘fro for warmth, just that last close-cropped bit left behind his ears. He was 55-ish.

I stopped at the top of the steps and looked in his eyes and asked him with the intensity of a grandma, Are you cold?

He was surprised.

I whipped the deep green Mecha beanie right off my head, my hair going all electric socket: “I have another hat in my purse.”

The warmest smile entirely took over his deep brown face. The words were a simple, “I’m okay, thanks,” but spoken in what felt like a magical moment of deep appreciation both ways:

You are seen. You matter to me. Take good care of yourself. Go have a wonderful, wonderful life and maybe we’ll even meet again.