One of the great things about being this age is that you can take your time.

It was a perfect Bay Area upper 70’s early summer day and I was at Andy’s Orchard buying the week’s fruit and there in the store was Andy himself and two men who were clearly old friends of his. One of them disappeared in the back and came out with a three-pound box of dried apricot slabs, saying something along the lines of these are the finest food you can eat.

He’s right on that.

They gradually shifted towards the door and outside as I was being rung up.

I came out to my car to find them continuing the conversation, reluctant to let it end, as old friends with a lot of shared memories do.

And they were standing behind my car. Not super close but I definitely wasn’t going anywhere.

There was a young man and a young woman sitting on a bench right there next to me watching this and waiting to see what I would do.

I didn’t pull out my knitting but I probably should have, just for the laughs. I didn’t turn the car on. I just watched them through my side mirror, enjoying that they were getting to see each other.

Finally, the young man waved one small wave to try to get their attention and I rolled down my window and laughed, They’re having a good old time.

Making it clear that I was fine, no worries, and now those two were, too. They laughed because I did and looked a lot more relaxed after that.

Finally the one guy got in his car, I didn’t see whether the second one got in the same car or not but he was out of there, and Andy headed over to the kids and reached out to shake their hands, greeting them with all the warmth that is right there for every person he meets. The man is love personified.

And it dawned on me: I could be wrong, but it sure looked to me like they were there to interview to work in his store for the summer. Which means I’ll get to see more of them. Cool!

Got to the hospital ugly-early, they recommended I go home because I wasn’t going to see him at all for the next several hours anyway, he told me to go take a nap, so I did. Which helped a lot.

Immediately after the doctor messaged a few hours later to say the ablation had gone well and he had tested negative for other problems, yay…

…I heard someone trying the front door. What?! Like he’d skipped out on the whole shebang and Ubered home? I don’t think so!

Next, the doorbell rang. I saw the young man, I don’t think he saw me, and I don’t open my door to unexpected strange men. Especially not one who tried to get in before he tried to ask to.

He jimmied the doorknob again.

I picked up the phone and called the cops and AT&T committed the hell of killing my landline dead just as the 911 operator picked up:  from working to “Check tel line.”  I grabbed my cellphone. The cop was at my door within two minutes.

I told her that after that, I saw him going up to the door of the house across the street but the angle is such that I can’t see if he went in and I didn’t see him after that.

The neighbor next door came out and said he’d come up to their door too.

Just then, there was the neighbor across the street.

She said he was her pest control guy. She was horrified that he’d tried to walk in unannounced, but since she’d vouched for who he was and he hadn’t actually gotten into my house, the cop decided we were good and left.

Went back to the hospital to keep my sweetie company for several more hours of observation on their part and found he’d gotten a message that someone dear to us got hard news today–but it could still be benign.

Bleep all of that that needed to be bleeped. We headed to a local ice cream shop that makes all their own from scratch and now has Indian immigrant owners and got (oh look what they have now!) Alphonso mango milkshakes. Two. Size large, and I never order large, but I did.

So good. Totally rescued us. That, and having him home, safe and sound.

AI totally failed on this one: just because one guy ruined a turkey baster shlurping up the caustic goop at the bottom of his dishwasher doesn’t meant that that’s the way to do it. Spare me the robot-think. I scrolled on.

I lifted the silver cap on the side of the sink: yes water went through it but only barely; I put the cap back. I pulled out the filter at the bottom of the Bosch and sprayed it clean. Looked okay–oh wait. There’s a long hair caught at the bottom.

Now whose would that be, says the guy with the migraine, glad to be able to hand over the problem of the day.

I gave it a few twists to prove it twists and having by now gotten the water out of the bottom of the machine as much as possible, consulted the instructions again. They said something about some white cap and honey ain’t no white cap no way no how that I can see. I put the filter back in, took the soap square out just in case I’d have to do this all over again, and turned the machine on.

It ran great for about five minutes. Then it gave the error message we’d woken up to yesterday.

Back to the instructions.

No I am NOT going to pull the dishwasher out, and neither was his back going to, but I did look under the sink. Hose looks old but fine. I gave it a little tug, as if that would tell me anything.

I scooped the water out again with a metal measuring cup (a whole lot easier to clean than the rubber inside of a turkey baster), got the last of it out with paper towels again, and took the gray filter out again. (I found out there was still a bit of dishwasher water down in there when my hair landed in it. Great. I mean, what’s it going to do, bleach it?)

Back to the instructions. They were full of jargon they assumed everybody knew and I was like, Magnetic resistance? On plastic parts? What?

Wait. Are they saying over here that that filter comes apart? We’ve had this machine how many years and I never saw that? It does? It does!

And there.

There at the hidden bottom of that inner part.

Was a second and totally tangled single hair that had twirled and twirled and wrapped around a small piece of fat. The meltings from a cheese sandwich maybe?

I worked it out of there and was certain it couldn’t be that simple. I clicked the two filter parts back together (make sure it clicks! they said) and back into the machine and hit Express Wash to test it for an hour.

It. Worked.

I pulled the filter back out and scrubbed it down again after taking the photo and thus seeing bits of crud that had reappeared in that one spot, thank you blog.

I loaded today’s dishes I hadn’t done by hand yet, put the soap back in, let the machine cool down for as long as I could stand it and then set it to actually wash this time.

It finished its 168 minute cycle as I was typing this and everything is gloriously clean.

Just in case you ever wanted to save yourself the $238 Bosch dishwasher repair job I paid for last time. The online instructions were kind of terrible, but the relief at success is giddying.

(Postscript: I just found how-to videos from Bosch, here. For next time.)

His pre-op required an EKG at a satellite cardiology clinic.

Did he want me to come with?

Up to you, he said.

Carpool lanes?

I always like having you with me, you’re welcome to come.

Hah! Waze said take the surface streets.

When we arrived, the others in the waiting room were quite elderly. But that quickly changed: suddenly we were the elderly ones by comparison. In cardiology!

First, a woman (an older mom or a younger grandmother) with a girl of about three and a boy of about five wearing a patka. They were in a strange place, it was close to dinner time, the front of the building was partly boarded up in plywood due to some remodeling and you know how little kids pick up on their parents’ worries no matter how hard you try–and without the understanding to know how to handle those big feelings.

The place just didn’t look friendly to her. She started whining. Then, despite the woman’s best efforts at loving her into being okay, the escalating began.

Excuse me? I asked.

Surely I couldn’t be talking to her–but finally the woman turned to me.

Next thing you know the two littles were transformed by those little finger puppets, playing happily together with them, the big brother clearly looking out for his little sister and her responding in kind.

A man of about 45 had come in in the meantime and everything in his posture and face shouted stress. But although he still was not making eye contact with anyone in the room, there was this small smile that had sneaked onto his now more relaxed face.

Another man about that age came in and sat down alone and hunched up. A few minutes later what turned out to be his wife and daughter showed up to join him, and soon the daughter, about seven, was watching the littler kids playing as her mom checked in.

She totally lit up when I asked her dad if would she like one, too?

He had looked like the weight of the world was on his shoulders and I knew so well that fear of major illness when you desperately want both of you to get to see your kids grow up. And hey, to grow older together, too. That was the plan. Remember?

Their daughter got a soft bright black and yellow bee, deliberately chosen (I didn’t say this) because she could wear it on her finger but she could also run a yarn through the wing loop from the way it had been knitted so that she could wear it as a necklace or bracelet later if she wanted to, to keep it with her without having to hold it all the time. She was old enough to take care of it and keep track of it.

A honeybee! Yay!

It broke the logjam of fear in his face and everything was now about his beloved daughter’s delight and his wife’s joy at their daughter being loved in the world. All that was left was love, and you could feel it extending to everybody in the room.

Everything in me wished healing for everybody else. I was so glad that in that place of anticipating what you can’t yet know, they got to take a little bit of tangible goodness home to see them through whatever may come.

If only, if only the women who make these could know the profound effects their work does for good in the world.

Ever wondered why people tend to unconsciously walk in circles when they’re lost?

I never realized, till reading this article, that actually yes I very nearly always do turn left to go all the way around the block when taking a walk. Turning right just feels–it feels ridiculous to type this out loud–wrong. So much so that in 39 years here I’ve done it probably twice, because I remembered it because it felt weird.

For those hitting a paywall: someone was doing a study and got distracted by the the unexpected and ran with that.

It turns out that no matter where you live, no matter your language, no matter your culture, given a random decision most people will walk heading left rather than to the right. Counterclockwise. Tell people to walk across a gym to the wall and then turn, whether it’s a crowd or an individual, whether they’re right handed or left handed, nearly everyone turns left.

They wondered if it might be conditioning. They went to where people drive on the other side of the road. Still to the left. They studied children running to music in their school’s play yard, with a drone overhead recording. Still to the left. All ages everywhere across the world.

The direction of the planets around the sun.

We are stardust.

I made my first trek of the year to Andy’s Orchard today. (A bit of history on him here.) Red nectarines, several varieties of peaches, coral cherries went into my basket, you know that if he’s growing it he considers it the best tasting there is–

–but there was no sign of the iconic Anya apricots. A few other good ones, yes, but I was afraid I’d missed them for a second year in a row and there might not be a next year. So I asked.

Her: There might be some in the back–I’ll go check. She came back out with two boxes, saying that was all there were.

Me: Would it be greedy of me to take both?

Her: No, go ahead!

They are small and the color is uneven and that bit of mottling is from sugar spots inside the fruit. Give them a day to ripen perfectly and they’ll be ready to help our apricot-loving neighbors celebrate their baby.

There were two new signs near the farm: saying, not Andy’s Orchard, but Mariani Orchard. I have never seen that before.

I wonder (I so hope!) whether a younger member of the family decided to take it over and continue it on after all.

Today walked me back home.

A post from eighteen years ago was found by the granddaughter of my childhood piano teacher this morning; we messaged back and forth and it was a treat to hear from her. Those lessons were a big part of my life–and they were not just for me, in the long run, but the effects extended forward throughout my kids’ lives and now my grandkids’. I told her about my son minoring in organ performance and playing the Mormon Tabernacle organ for his final.

Then I put down the computer and went off to Leeanne’s funeral.

Her sister-in-law was of course there.

Richard and I grew up with her in Maryland. And with Leeanne’s cousin, small small world. There was a lot of catching up to do.

This evening I saw another note from my piano teacher’s granddaughter and told Richard she’d gone to his high school. Note that we went to rival schools and have been teasing each other over it for decades.

His face lit up: She’s smart! I win!

Cracked us both up. Nope. I win!

I win!

We both do!

Our parents lived across the street from each other when they were newlyweds, and he’s the part of my growing up that has stayed with me all along this sweet road called life.

She had outlived her initial prognosis by several years with the help of a study at NIH, but in the end cancer and age took her.

The first Sunday of the month is our Fast and Testimony meeting, where traditionally Mormons fast for 24 hours (or whatever one can in their own circumstances) and then donate the money that would have been spent on that food towards feeding those in need. In that meeting we take turns as the spirit moves us to get up and speak briefly. Or to sit in quiet contemplation, listening.

I took a turn.

I said, My children were 2, 4, 6, and 8 when I was diagnosed with lupus at thirty-one. About a year later I found myself being told I needed a cardiology appointment.

Leeanne found out. She insisted on coming over and picking me up and taking me to the clinic for that appointment. (I don’t remember whom she got to watch my kids at home.) She stayed there with me, reading quietly outside the exam room where I got to watch my heart beating on the screen. It would not have occurred to me to ask, but she was determined that no young mom who had to be worried about her kids’ futures (I was) should have to go through that alone. She was there for me.

At the time, I barely knew her.

I wanted her grandchildren who were in the audience to hear this story from me directly. I said, I don’t know if she remembered that later but I never forgot it and have been grateful to her for it for all these years.

Serving by love is what living the Gospel is. And she did.

The mail came.

I’d wanted darkening gradations of the color mix I had in an out-of-print colorway and I could not have asked for better than what was in that package. I opened it in the moment of truth hoping hoping almost not daring to hope–and then stood there just staring: They. were. perfect. Thank you Alison in Australia!

Then in the evening we went to hear our niece’s husband playing in a band in a local park. He’s in the symphony but he also plays bluegrass for fun. This was the fiddle’s turn and those guys were good.

A kid put on a purple dinosaur costume that I hadn’t seen coming. He had to pull the clear chest part down a few times so he could see but eventually he got the hang of it.

A two-year-old girl with a big princess flower clip in her hair ran over to investigate this brand new thing in her life.

He pulled his head out from the opening just below the clear part to show her not to be afraid and waved hi.

Next thing you know he was back inside and they were dancing together to the music in wild abandon.

Oh! her face said. I stepped on its tail. Is that allowed?

Yes! Dance!

Yay! (Twirl.)

It was just the most adorable thing you could ever have hoped for.

So the phone line that AT&T is taking away in six weeks died again at the same hub across the neighborhood a week after they finally repaired it after waiting months but at least this time they sent someone out right away.

Who after some hours over there and over here said he thought he’d fixed it–but he’d turned it off at all but one room of the house, till Richard went out there with a test phone and helped walk him through what he’d unplugged and got everything restored by getting him to plug those over there back in like they’d been before he came. (No you are not going to be able to say it must be inside the house so the company can charge us for the visit because it never was.)

And then I had to take a second try at figuring out how to say what I had to say because there was so much that could go wrong. Yesterday’s rough draft? Edit edit edit.

There was a long long line at the post office for that registered letter I wanted to send.

IRS, huh? asked the guy to the whole crowd. Gee thanks dude.

Oh well, might as well now, so, Yeah, I told him, they hit us last year with a big fine over an account we have nothing to do with, we paid it, they went oh sorry our mistake and refunded the fine (they paid interest on it!) we thought that was all settled and they suddenly decided a year later that we owe it all over again.

We don’t. So, yeah. IRS.

I didn’t say, and they sent us a threatening letter months after the check had cleared last year, telling us to pay it a second time, and our protest of that is what got them to go oh wait and refund us.

Possibly because there are three people with the same name in the same town? Two on one street till last year. Redelivered their mail when I needed to but never did get to meet them.

On the way home there was a shiny new big and black gas-guzzler Ford 150 pickup with a bumper sticker that was–supposed to be funny? I mean, they certainly didn’t put their money where their mouth was? “I identify as a Tesla.”

Then why didn’t you buy one?

It was not a day for relaxing and knitting. But finally after dinner I made myself sit down with it.

And promptly knitted a purl row in knit stitches all the way across before I realized it.

I decided to fix it by dropping each stitch one at a time, flipping the yarn to the other side, picking it up, and knitting the next row right then and there. Easy, right, and progress, too!

Two hundred and twenty eight times. Don’t do that. It’s harder to keep the tension even, and with a splitty yarn knitted doubled on the purl ridge where it will show the most… An hour. Next time just tink back and start over.

Some days you just need to stop and go do something else.

I need some knitting to relax me from my knitting. Just not that one right now.

To which my helpful brain suddenly earworms Rick Nelson’s song written after performing at Madison Square Garden: “And if memories were all I sang? I’d rather drive a truck.”

So there I was, finishing up that fifth repeat before the distance between the waves starts to shrink going towards the shore, and I was remembering that time we went to the beach with my little brother and his wife. Pacific Grove. After a visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

The tide was out and there were large rocks strewn across that beach. Not much in the way of sand, just smaller stones everywhere. The kids started climbing up to play king of the mountain and they were having a good old time, so, hey, why not. We’d already cautioned each other about never turning your backs on the ocean and sneaker waves and all that, even if the water was a fair bit away.

So I climbed up on one, too. Above waist high as I remember. So did our visitors. We were all a little spread out.

Now, this is a really dumb thing to do when your sense of balance died in a car crash and there’s this ocean thing that means the visual ground isn’t holding still.

My sister-in-law took in the situation and quickly ditched her rock to climb up on the platform that mine made, and just barely in time–I suddenly in spite of myself started to pitch forward headfirst onto the rocks below and she grabbed me hard and fast and pulled me back to safety.

We took a deep breath and I thanked her as I got immediately off that rock, common sense reclaimed. I was and will forever be grateful to her.

Stitch after stitch after stitch… What would make this more interesting and more of a memory…

That day at the beach!

I started thinking how I could add rocks. With yarn overs? Add stitches, since lace expands and crossed stitches contract, then cable them? I tried to visualize possibilities.

If you make like a honeycomb cable, only bigger, so that you have three or five stitches in the center at the widest part, you could with that center do a yarnover-p2sso-yo. It would be a depression within the cable-raised circle with a focal point at the center. You could have another bit of Old Shale bumping up against it with the k2togs split and the purl ridges sweeping around the outer edges. I’ll have to try it out.

I might not have perfected rocks yet but I just figured out how to knit tide pools by texture rather than color and I am inordinately pleased with myself.

I booked the appointment.

I said to the cardiologist today, I don’t know if I’m over reacting, under reacting, or just fine. But I found myself struggling hard enough for breath at Costco last Friday that a random stranger stopped and asked if I was okay and if he could help? (ie, he was clearly debating whether to call 911 anyway when I smiled and said I was fine.)

The nurse took my blood pressure. I’ve taken a med for 25 years to raise it but it does still tend to run a bit low.

The doctor did his careful history and exam.

An initial reading of 80/32 had left the nurse freaked out so she’d done it again with a different cuff and it had come out more normal and she’d blamed the first one.

The doctor made it clear to me that there was nothing wrong with that cuff.

I have been prescribed more salt in my diet. (Again.) There are other things they can do but that’s the easiest. He also said, Next time, put your head down to the level of your heart: that alone can raise your blood pressure 30 points.

Will do.

—

Peregrine fledglings video here. One did a Whoops! and got rescued.

Seven sons and a dad who could fix anything. One said, Dad never took the car to a mechanic and so now neither have I, and described starting out sitting on a chair handing tools over as directed, to actually helping his dad do the task, to, many years later, his dad sitting on a chair holding the tools and handing them over and doing the watching.

Their dad was a friend to every human being he ever laid eyes on. He told bad dad jokes to embarrass his kids, because that’s a dad’s job. To anybody. His ice breaker question was, What kind of music do you play?

George was an electrical engineer and a tinkerer. One of the sons called out my husband on the time he and his dad were shopping electronics parts and ran into him. We were all nerding out, he said.

When one kid described his dad taking the dashboard apart on his car to hunt down an electrical short and the adventure that took them on (they did get it fixed), I quietly laughed: my husband did the same thing back in the day, only in his case he couldn’t quite claim the same success. He got the turn signal working again–except that the inside lever and the outside signal were now switched, so you had to remember that signaling left was actually signaling right. He was not going to go through all that again just for that: up lever or down. You know, you do. Good times.

As a boy George started off with piano and quickly went to fiddle and guitar. Loved him some high brow, loved him some bluegrass. Went to every music festival he could. One of his kids described his own friends in high school going, What are you *listening* to! to then deciding, since he kept playing it, that they liked it.

That kid plays professionally now and he described meeting one of his bluegrass heroes.

The man looked at him and exclaimed, You’re George’s kid?!

He took off his battered hat, threw it into the dust, stomped it with his foot, picked it back up, put it on his head and said, Kid? You’re alright.

While the young man (with his own signature suede hat with a feather) watching this, thought, What just happened here??

George is the friend who’d been checked into the hospital just before Richard got checked out. In the months since, nobody was completely sure he was still in there very much but they all came to see him and they say the hearing is the thing that stays when all else goes.

So they played the music they’d jammed with their dad so many many times. They kept him and their mom company. They strummed those strings. They sang. They talked to him. They brought their kids.

One of them was singing to his dad and playing his own instrument when, he told us, I don’t know. Telepathy? He just felt like he needed to put it down and play his dad’s favorite guitar. So he did.

His dad’s breathing relaxed and slowed down. Slower. And then quietly, with love, he slipped away from them. He was just shy of 84.

A friend’s funeral is tomorrow, and there were so many people in town today whom I hadn’t seen in years. Kids I saw grow up who now have their own kids going off to college, or in some cases, kindergarten. Hugs and catchings-ups and grief and love. George with his music would have loved that we’re doing an encore in his name in the morning.

And then we bugged out of there to go hold the baby and see Richard’s sister, who had flown in to see the new little one and be yet another surrogate grandparent for what time we have together.

She was about three. She had had enough and decided to say so. She opened her mouth comically wide to give it the best wail she had–

–when some random white-haired lady tried to offer a finger puppet to her mom. The distraction totally stopped her.

The mom wanted it, she almost let me give it to her, but she wasn’t sure she understood what the expected transaction was going to be here no matter what I said and decided no, with a smile. She didn’t have to say, Besides–my kid’s being good now. She appreciated the offer. We parted with a smile.

Then in that same aisle at Costco I tried to reach something my husband wanted. It was stacked in the refrigeration unit so tightly that it wouldn’t come out and so high at the top that after several tries I thought, oh well, and started to turn away.

Just then a man who’d watched the whole finger puppet thing stepped up and offered to get that down for me. And did. I thanked him, and every time we passed each other after that we gave each other the biggest smile. Thank you for your kindness.

Past the nuts, past the bread…

A grandma was being delighted by her little granddaughter in her cart. The two of them said, Thank you! together and with that, they redeemed that same finger puppet with its curly antlers and big eyes that wanted to look into a child’s and be her friend.

—

I owe you a better picture. Here you go.