Re yesterday’s post: I have long had a piece of paper with my contact information inside that rollaboard, but when I was packing I noticed it had gone missing. I was going to go write up a new one in just a moment after I finished this…and then I forgot.

Now one is zipped inside the meshed-bag compartment where it won’t fall out.

Re the big magnetic-snap (if only it had a zipper!) tote bag with knitted cables embossed into the heavy leather, my adored Charlotte Ronson that was the most me purse I’ve ever had: but aging gets to everything eventually.

I took it to the shoe and luggage repair guy, who exclaimed over how nice that leather was. He did what he could to rehab it for me; I used it awhile longer but it was just no longer church-on-Sunday-able, and I’m not one who switches back and forth between purses for fear of forever grabbing the wrong one. It is in emeritus status. I would keenly love to get another, to the point of requesting a local leather worker if he might consider embossing one of his like that for me even though I am far from a designer handbag type person, but I got nowhere.

So that’s the answer to those questions.

Meantime, our kids who flew in Wednesday afternoon flew back out Friday morning. Saturday, a very tired three-year-old Lillian was told by her mom that it was time to take a nap but she refused, turning to look at us accusingly: “If I do you’ll disappear!”

No, no, honey. We will still be here when you wake up. For a few more days; we’re not leaving till Monday.

We kept both those promises, and I’m missing all of them very much right now, but at least she and her five-year-old brother got to hug and wave us goodbye.

And I’m left thinking about dumb things like purses and suitcases to distract myself.

The noisy life is more fun.

Walking in airports with all their movement and visual overstimulation is a seizure getting ready to pounce–I can do them sitting, it’s the long walk in that environment that overloads.

So, as usual, I was doing the wheelchair thing. SeaTac is a big airport and I was just as happy to have my carryon tucked under the seat and give my back a break, too. Big plus: those guys know their way around the place, which seems permanently under construction, and we sure don’t. The chair pusher who stepped forward said a few last words with three others standing waiting and I got the impression it hadn’t been the best day for him but he waved it away with yeah, it’s okay, it’s okay.

And off we went.

There was a bit of a scrum as what seemed like our entire planeload tried to all get on the same bus at once to take us to the car rental building, and my balance skittered like water flicked into a hot pan of oil–both Richard and the chair pusher urged me to get ON when some instinct told me to turn around to make sure they… But the chair guy was afraid I would fall and was focused on making sure I was okay.

We were the last ones off the bus because Richard was still looking for my rollaboard. You know, the one with the hats I’d knitted, my extra yarn and needles, and the cashmere sweater jacket I’d bought twins of so that I could match my mom when Soft Surroundings had a super-duper-duper sale (2 cashmeres/$50 for a few hours.)

It was gone.

The bus driver, bless him, parked right there and spent an hour on the phone with Southwest and airport people trying to track it down for us. Turns out Southwest has contracts with multiple wheelchair pusher companies and they didn’t know which one it was.

Whoever he was, that driver was a saint and a rescuer and I am profoundly grateful. But no luck.

I’d taken it onboard specifically so I’d have it with me and not risk losing it. Oh, and did I mention where I’d packed my ileostomy supplies? You cannot just walk into a drug store and buy that type of bag. At all. It’s a three-part system that you change every third day and the bag part is for a single day.

Richard said, But you always keep one in your purse against emergencies, right?

(Dude, I haven’t done that since I downsized to a smaller purse two years ago. Didn’t even think of it or I would have.)

I had nothing. Nothing but the acute awareness that a badly manufactured batch had, since October, left me with eight failures in eighteen days after years without problems.

We finally and profusely thanked the bus driver (did I mention it was 39F and we were freezing?) and sent him on his way. Were we going to go back to the terminal with our rental car to try to see if it was in lost and found yet? We were not, because we already knew that as far as the driver could tell it was not, and it was already past the time our kids (much less the grandkids) go to bed at that point and we had a goodly drive ahead of us.

Our younger two kids flew in the next afternoon, apprised of the situation. Michelle offered to dash last minute to our house two cities away in the wrong direction to grab more supplies, but first I called Southwest and they referred me over to Lost and Found.

I described everything in my small suitcase that had no name tag because we hadn’t thought it would need it and they sounded like they were waiting, waiting for it–and pounced when I said, And ileostomy/colostomy bags. That was IT! Yes! They had it! We could come and pick it up anytime!

I gave them our daughter’s name. Our son got there before she did even though her flight was supposed to land first but whatever, and as soon as he walked in there with the right name and the right info about the contents and the situation and the sister’s name and my phone number that all matched, they handed it right over.

And everything was right there inside it as it should be. Even the single-serving beef jerky airport snacks.

So.

Last night, a week later, we were again flying at night, y’know, the cheap, direct-flight seats. We showed up at the Southwest counter and Richard asked for a wheelchair for his wife, as it says on my ticket.

This time there was just the one wheelchair pusher nearby–and it was our guy again! The immigrant from Africa with the scars on his face that made you want to ask oh goodness what did they do to you before you managed to escape from–? But who would ever want to make him feel like that part’s all that people see.

Because what I saw was a good and honest man. I got to see him instantly taking in the fact that not only was it us, we had the rollaboard! We’d gotten it back, after all his worries, he’d succeeded! He was so, so happy, and I thought, by the grace of G_d for both of us, you got to see that we came out okay and we got to see how much that meant to you. What a treasure to have met.

He about danced and the cheerful smile on his face as we went back across SeaTac going the other way this time was something I will never forget.

I wouldn’t have wanted to say I was desperate nor to have admitted it to myself, for that matter.

They had me come in an hour after I called this morning, which was wonderful.

The tech asked me what the problem was? I told her that Saturday the right hearing aid was simply dead. Entirely. I’d tried switching batteries between the two and that clearly wasn’t the problem.

She had me hand her both–cleaning them was a good idea as long as I was there–and then she, from behind her mask, asked me a few more questions.

I explained that without my hearing aids I’d once been oblivious to a fire alarm going off; could I step back several paces and have her lower her mask so I could lipread?

She did, and we did our best from there. She went off to a room that away and I sat down to knit. When she came back, she showed me what had happened: the connecter piece between ear and hearing aid was broken. It was under warranty. They could send it in, no charge.

I’m seeing my grandkids tomorrow, I told her, and I so want to be able to hear the little ones.

I’d never seen her before, I don’t know if she was from the other office covering someone’s holiday-week hours or what, but she had just seen just how deaf I am.

Hang on a second.

She conferred with the other tech. She called someone, apparently her boss, and then she disappeared in the back.

They did, they had one in stock on hand for that brand and model of that hearing aid and she fixed it. No charge, happy Thanksgiving!

I managed not to burst into tears as I gave her my heartfelt, Thank you!

The nights have been mid-30s this week.

Which is why a box was dropped at our door this morning: a snatch-proof ten foot plush blanket. Watch out, the ombre dye job in the comments is real–but I’m okay with that. Let the warm and cozy begin!

Grandma M! he laughed.

This being in the morning with the whole thing over with, I guffawed: “I had the same thought!”

Our oldest was born during our grad student days and when she was maybe two months old we got invited to the wedding reception of an old friend of his. Who happened to live in a small town high in the mountains in Utah a few miles from his grandmother.

We were Saving The Planet (yes kids that was a thing in our day too) and not using disposable diapers. We had cloth diapers, but not just any cloth diapers, they closed with velcro so you wouldn’t have to worry about stabbing your baby in the dark of the night. Or you.

Grandma offered to watch the baby for a couple of hours while we headed over.

We forgot to tell her, but figured velcro is pretty self-explanatory anyway.

We didn’t stay long, but when we came back Grandma was trying to be nice but clearly she. was. ticked.

Where were the diaper pins?! How could we hand her a kid with no pins on her diaper? Did we know just how long it had been since SHE’D had a kid in diapers–and she had to go FIND the stupid things?

Bless her heart–she did it.

After we got home an hour away and fed and went to change the baby, size-wise on her she was wearing kilt pins and we realized what we’d done to his poor grandmother.

The at-home sleep study that I drove three and a half hours a day for two days to drive Richard to/from work to have the car to pick that equipment up and drop it off again the next day?

It only got the oxygen reading on the finger. They wanted a do-over.

I told them, well, the velcro on the chest belt did keep giving way gradually and I kept pushing it back up all night.

No commute problems this week.

So I got the equipment back yesterday, set it up, and again the velcro just wasn’t doing its job well enough. I reviewed the video again. Nope, I was doing it exactly the way that guy was.

Dang.

It was a miserable enough night ahead with prongs in my nose, rubber on my finger, a belt around my chest, tubes in the way whenever I tried to roll over and #$!-unhelpful lights on the equipment that stayed on all night that I wasn’t going to do this a third time. I went looking and I did, I found a large safety pin and I pushed it in place to hold that belt and I definitely called the entire contraption stupid in my frustration.

The pair of green lights in the morning conveyed that the test had worked this time. (Waiting for confirmation on that.)

But I thought you had to be a *great* grandma to safety pin velcro.

I still get the emails and delete most of them, but I thought, eh, okay, I need a break from election updates, I’ll bite.

One very ordinary looking house out in suburbia somewhere. (Redfin link here if the Zillow one doesn’t work.) Complete with Narnia lamp out front.

And then you get to picture #10.

That’s the living room. That’s the dining room. And that’s…

An attempt at a new definition of living on the water. But you’re going to have to hold your plate the whole time you eat or everybody else is going to be wearing it.

But wait, turns out, there’s more: that part’s actually an ADU addition–and it looks like the only windows to the living room of the main house are looking straight into the ADU side and relying on their now-outside windows for light, so if they pull their blinds between you you’re in the dark all day. Not even a skylight, just the front door on the other side of the kitchen.

And the city signed off on that? When all they had to add to the plans was an outside walkway’s depth between the two living spaces?

This is why we hire architects, folks.

I’d never heard him speak publicly about it before. For years they didn’t want to, understandably.

But announcements were made about the 35th anniversary of the annual creche exhibit our church puts on the first weekend every December.

And thus of their son’s accident.

John was twelve, and he and his little brother were on their skateboards crossing the busy street that runs just behind their house and on their way home when a drunk driver blew through her red light. The younger brother took a glancing blow; John took the full force.

I was at that creche exhibit when they suddenly interrupted the crowd to explain that they’d just gotten word: would everybody, of their faith or other faith or of no faith but willing to Think Good Thoughts, be willing to kneel together with them and join with them as they offered a prayer for John?

And so we did. The feeling of hundreds of hearts calling out together towards someone else’s child was a powerful experience never to be forgotten.

It did not look good. But he was still hanging in there.

The thing, though, is that what his dad did for a living as a neuroscientist was to try to help people recover from major brain injuries. His biggest fear as a parent had always been that such might happen to one of his children, and now here it had.

John was in a coma, and his dad knew that every day in that coma was a step away from future recovery.

Two weeks later, he did wake up. He had aphasia. Language, both giving and receiving, was scrambled.

And now here’s where part of my story sneaks a word in (though I didn’t interrupt his to say it.) I had a kid in kindergarten (edit: first grade) and two preschoolers and a friend in the ward had a two year old. Lisa thought we should go visit John at Children’s Hospital in Oakland (the one at Stanford not having been built yet.)

So we did. Once a week we piled in a car during school hours and drove an hour each way to go visit him, one at a time per the rules while the other entertained the littles in the lobby. We became very close during all this.

Lisa had been a cop in Hayward in a previous life so one day when a bad accident entirely shut down the freeway, the only day John’s mom was unable to go see her son, Lisa said, Turn off at that ramp I know all the back roads we can do this, and so John was not left alone that day after all. We made it through.

He spent six weeks in brain rehab and all in all it was I think three months before he was able to come home.

His dad said he went through special ed from there on out and it took him six years to graduate from college–but he did it. He’s married to a wonderful woman now and they have two little boys.

I remember the description of the entire middle school turning out to welcome him back, festooning his wheelchair with enough helium balloons to look like the house in the movie Up.

A year later I was diagnosed with lupus. I’m allergic to all NSAIDs and my arthritis was so severe I was eating with plastic utensils because I couldn’t lift the metal ones. I got told the best thing I could do for it was to start going to a warm indoor therapy pool nearby that was only open to those with a doctor’s prescription to get in.

I had two preschoolers. How on earth was I going to pay for a sitter every day?

Lisa took a deep breath and said, Tell you what: I’ll watch yours if you’ll watch mine right after while I work out in a gym.

She gave me the gift of her mornings Monday through Friday for two years. I could never ever have asked anybody that, but she offered and she did it and our boys grew up as brothers for that time. I expected to keep doing that for her as my youngest went off to kindergarten and she had two more children, but it was not to be; they moved to Michigan.

So. John’s dad told his story. His greatest fear had come true. The whole world had turned out in support in such amazing, inspiring, wonderful ways and his son was so happy being a dad and husband.

When he got done telling this, I asked for the mic.

And what I said was not all the stuff about me nor Lisa at all, but this: that about six years later, during the holiday season, I had been stuck in the backup of an Avoid the 13 sobriety checkpoint where they stopped every car on the main drag and made everyone wait to be checked out by the police to make sure they were driving sober.

The kicker is that they were holding it exactly where John and his brother had been hit, and that went deep for me.

Those checkpoints were deeply unpopular (and sued over) and I knew it.

So I found myself sitting down one day and writing a letter to the police department (by hand in those days!) to be a rare voice of support, telling them it was important to me that they did that.

I hadn’t planned on saying it when I sat down to write but it demanded that I add it, so I did: I explained that my friends’ 12-year-old son and his brother had been hit by a drunk, at that very intersection as a matter of fact, and John had not been expected to survive.

But he did, I said, thanking the first responders; I just wanted you to know he’s in college now.

I sent that off and thought, well, that’s that. Didn’t expect to hear anything back.

A heartfelt letter from the chief of police showed up in the mail.

That checkpoint had been set up where those boys had been hit specifically in John’s memory.

And he told me:

I was the cop who had to knock on that family’s door and tell them what had happened to their son. I never knew how it turned out for him. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Work was still all hands on deck for him while I had an appointment to get the car damage appraised after waiting two weeks to get in, and given how booked they’ve been, standing them up on an hour or two’s notice would have been just too rude. And I had to return the at-home sleep-study equipment within 24 hours. Rescheduling that study (again) would have pushed it to January at the earliest.

So I drove him to work again.

I showed up at the body shop at 9:59, inwardly proud of myself for getting there on time, and the lady blinked. I was who? With an appointment for when? Not on their schedule. She called the nearest shop in their chain, nope, and turned back to me: Had I gotten a confirmation email?

No, I told her, and I thought that was strange because usually you do.

Which was the tip off that I had been here and they had done that car before. The other time Richard got hit on the freeway, as a matter of fact. Note that their nearest competitor was right across the driveway and I had in fact parked facing that company’s building because that’s where there was room to. I was a repeat customer, but I had options.

She got up and talked quietly to her boss in the next room.

He decided no harm done and came out and took pictures of the car to get things started for the insurance company.

I was not expecting him to ask, Have you had your catalytic converter stolen?

Yes, twice.

That down there where it’s bent away from the door–that isn’t from the accident, which is all up here: that’s where they jacked up the car to get at it. I’ve seen so so so many of these, I know what it is. The insurance won’t cover that.

He gave me a quote on the spot for fixing it and a scratch on the other side. I guess I looked skeptical because he almost immediately knocked a hundred bucks off.

Come back in two weeks for the actual work.

After that I got the wires and monitors and belt and questionnaire all back to the clinic, glad to be done with that. Hopefully.

But for the record: I think I’d recommend not having to wake up early-ish and driving ninety rush hour minutes right after a sleep study night. It worked out okay but I wasn’t sure what I was going to do if I woke up too tired.

Actually, I do know: I would have called both and bailed (and paid big bucks for hogging the medical equipment an extra day and messing up their schedule.) But I have no desire to do to another driver what was done to me years ago.

Okay, all that aside: it’s pretty ironic to be getting up early three days in a row right before the Fall Back time on the clock.

I’m just going to jump the gun a little early here and sleep in tomorrow.

We’ve had so many rain forecasts these past three years that have sounded so promising and then have fizzled out to nothing, including last week. We were expecting today’s to do that too.

We got a strong cloudburst.

I had to drive to a doctor appointment up the freeway in the middle of that and never mind our grumbles about Californians who have no idea how to drive in a real storm because they’ve never experienced one–people were actually slowing down for it.

In the hidden noontime sun, the bright white sprays from the tires ahead against the darkened skies were creating rising car ghosts.

Yesterday, the day after the gerdan arrived, the doorbell rang.

It was almost deja vue–if only the war had ended.

The mailman (the guy who shows up on our regular guy’s day off, which rotates forward one day of each week) had a package for me to sign for, and clearly he’d read the return address because he exclaimed, “Kherson?!”

“Yes, where the fighting’s been going on.” I told him; “It’s a dress for my granddaughter. They also sell t-shirts that are anti-Putin and anti-Russia.”

I didn’t have to say, Nerves of steel there, man; he felt it. We both looked at each other in amazement as I handed him back his little handheld and its pen, at the sheer determined ordinariness of commerce in the face of all that.

At least I have this one thing I can do for them, and the means to do it.

Same company the birds t-shirt had come from (in a completely random color but they got it out of there.) They’re still getting things mailed. (The dress only came in the one color.)

I think it’s actually too small and might have to be a gift to a niebling’s toddler, but I’d still really like one for Lillian.

We just might end up with a do-over on that conversation.

The little globetrotter finally showed up after its second trip from Kiev: the beaded sunflower necklace with an upper flower split like falcon wings raised triumphantly to the sky.

It’s big. It definitely announces its presence.

Oleksandra went through so much to make this and get it safely here. I put it on in great glee. (Not pictured: the sunflower ponytail holder she added as a surprise.)

The war, however, did not end, no matter how much I told it to. Darn it.

Not yet.

But it will. And Ukraine will win.

As one person put it today, the US and Russia both believe in freedom of speech: the difference is the US believes in freedom after speech.

And Ukraine is quite willing to give voice to its opinion about which of those two outcomes it chooses.

Why I didn’t drive to Andy’s Orchard today (in retrospect, not that I could have known it at the time.) I would have been driving right past the spot with my tires all bouncing around on a crowded part of the freeway. I somehow decided this morning that, nah, I’ll go Thursday or Friday.

And then the conversation went something like this, as my husband came around the corner:

Did you feel it?

Feel what?

Yeah, I didn’t either.

What? How did we miss it?

Turns out he’d been talking to someone in south San Jose when the 5.1 hit, nice and shallow and close at four miles deep. (Note that he was also on the phone with someone in San Jose when the Loma Prieta hit in ’89 and before the shock waves made it to here, got up and stood in the doorway of his office to prepare for it. Suddenly he heard a colleague down the hall yelling his name, he being the biggest guy on the second floor: Hey! Quit jumping up and down!

Oh wait…

Today’s means, the USGS warns, that there’s a high chance of aftershocks in the next 24 hours. And if we get something stronger then they’ll change the classification to a foreshock. This was on the Calaveras line, which connects to the Hayward fault, which is problematical because in the post-War boom of the 1950’s the fault line was the cheap land and they simply bulldozed it and developed it. Every single hospital on that side of the Bay is within yards of where the earth wants to spit and split.

This is why California decreed in 1994 that by 2020 every hospital in the state had to be seismically able to stay standing in a bigger quake than we’ve ever had. And by 2030 any acute-care facility has to not only be standing but still functional.

We have a friend who was operating on a patient at the VA when the Loma Prieta hit and his unconscious patient was suddenly trying to shoot across the room while all medical personel present grabbed at the guy and held on.

Fun times.

So. What do you do when you have an actual timestamp on that particular possibility? Where the power and even the water could get disrupted, even on this side of the Bay?

You quick run and go do all the laundry so that at least you’ll have clean clothes for as long as possible.

And you don’t wait till evening to hit post on this.

There was a woman’s conference at church. They were holding the first half of it in the room with the worst acoustics in the building by far and I knew I wouldn’t hear a word. Everybody would be part of a shared experience except the woman in the back who doesn’t laugh or gasp or whatever sympathetic thing along with the crowd and how awkward is that for the speaker who doesn’t know. I didn’t want to go.

But when I considered the thing last night, I realized I felt kind of starved for some people time and the very fact that they were finally holding this again was like the Before Times. And that was a privilege. Besides, you can’t do anything for anybody if you don’t show up. I would wear a mask anyway, so my face wouldn’t cause much of a problem, right?

I made very sure I had some knitting with me.

And man, that room was as bad as ever.

And man, did I mess up that pattern and had to just stop about 45 minutes in and put it down; after I got home I tinked back 2/3, but never mind, I fixed it–and messed it up again and ripped it again and fixed it again and that time it actually was fixed and stayed fixed but the whole thing was not one of my more shining moments with a ball of yarn. But at least, in public, it made it look to anyone else like I could do fancy lacy things with yarn–just don’t squint.

So.

When I walked in, I was waved over and invited to a table by some very kind soul I wasn’t sure I’d ever laid eyes on. Who turned out to be a friend of my daughter’s. I started to feel rescued from myself. We found ourselves seated for a breakfast that I’d thought was going to be a lunch at the end so I’d already eaten and I don’t normally like breakfast much in the first place and looking at that lovely fruit plate, I certainly wasn’t going to explain Crohn’s to strangers. But I didn’t dare touch it.

Across from me was a young mom with a small baby, about four months old. Those right around her apparently knew her and chatted with her.

But she was struggling harder than I was to cheer up.  Sleepless nights of early babyhood are hard–or maybe it was postpartum depression, I worried. If I’d thought I was isolated these past few days with no car, remember what it’s like to be at that stage, I told myself.

I ran into a friend after that and we caught up a bit and were late heading into a classroom and tiptoed quietly in at the back.

Right behind that mom.

Her baby fussed a little. I distracted his attention. He smiled. I wiggled a finger puppet on my hand.

She offered silently, Did I want to hold him?

My face lit up. And how!

Oh I tell you. All that pent-up grandmotherhood came pouring out for that sweet little face, and the best thing you can do for the mother of a baby is to adore her child like he’s the most beautiful human being you’ve ever seen. Because he is, every one of them is. Even when they’re fussy. They just are. And so he and I made friends and she–

–she started laughing quietly. At his antics, mine, for sheer joy, and when he finally decided okay, I want my mommy now and started reaching her way I handed him right back and thanked her profusely (quietly) for the great privilege.

She walked out of there happy.

So did I.

Friends forever.

Tell me her name again? I didn’t quite catch it.

That spammer stopped calling, in fact there have been none the last day or two.

No car repair shops told me, You clicked! on their link that seemed not to do anything so I tried another one and apparently when they’re closed for the night the insurance company’s link to them doesn’t respond. But I half-expected them to know I’d tried and for the phone by the computer to ring endlessly. Nope. The silence has been lovely.

Oh that’s right.

It’s really nice when your handset stops working.

Grateful that the worst hassle of the day was filling out insurance forms together, with both of us proofreading as we went. Did we read his handwriting wrong on the other guy’s phone number? Doesn’t matter, we have the same insurance company, they’ll know who he is.

Daylight offered me a better look and I had to laugh ruefully at the curved stamped-out line of the SUV’s wheel well right above our Prius’s–you could just imagine the sign at Disney: Must be THIS big for this ride.

Well, we did used to call our old first-year model the Maus.

Higher cars are definitely more visible.

Just in case they total ours out simply for old age, (bought summer 2006, finally hit 100k miles a couple of months ago) I’ve been looking at front seat head and leg room on various offerings for what a 6’8″er might be able to fit into.

Having routinely gotten 40 to 50 mpg, we’re not going to go back to worse than that.

Toyota so far has the most safety upgrades as standard equipment for 2023. Bring on the mass-market electrics!