Finished the intarsia section on the do-over and would have finished the hat but for the hands needing a break. It’s more stitches and smaller needles than my usual but after all the plain beanies it is deeply satisfying to do something complicated that the recipient is so looking forward to.

On a different subject: my late father-in-law was a lawyer for the Justice Department in his day and there was a case that he flew out west for to argue against a woman who had declared herself the inheritor, by long-ago treaty, of the entire San Francisco Bay and a lot of the surrounding land, from what he told me.

There’s a problem with that: Federal law says you cannot own navigable waterways. Sorry.

For that matter, in California you cannot claim to own the beach. The public must have access. A tech billionaire who wanted privacy took that to court and lost again and again, but the answer stayed no, as well it should. Splashing in the ocean is not for the rich only.

With that, then, I know these were built in 1960, but having the tide come in under your living room? Yeah it’s really cool, I grant you that; $2,649,000 for that view is not a surprise.

The stonework in the kitchen that echoes the flow and colors of the waves is just glorious. So well done.

But. But. One little offshore earthquake and your huge investment will be completely under water.

I got sent to a new doctor today, someone who was evaluating whether I should be in a sleep study; the referring doctor wanted to cover all the bases.

Masks are still required here.

I warned the nurse about my hearing and the lipreading being blocked and even mentioned that I’d given some thought to cochlear implants; when I started to tell the doctor, his eyes smiled and he told me, Yes, I’ve heard.

His voice was helpfully low-pitched but he had to repeat himself a few times, and after a few minutes he finally asked me with both compassion and a giving-it-to-me-straight the line he’d clearly said many times before: “Have you considered getting hearing aids?”

It was all I could do not to fall on the floor laughing. Dude, you are 36 years late to that party. I have a veritable museum of the technological advances over the years, including the 1986 pair whose squealing feedback every time my hair crossed my ears actually cost me 15 dB permanently. Thankfully they don’t make them like that anymore. But what I said was, “I have them–or there would be *nothing*. We’re talking 100, 110 dB.”

Bless him, he knew what that meant. So many people don’t. He did a small “wow!” and okay, then. I didn’t say, well I’m still at 85 and 90 in the lower frequencies, having made my point that I am emphatically not one of those old people being vain and avoiding the things and deliberately making myself miss out on human interaction.

“What happened?”

I told him I’d overdosed on baby aspirin as a toddler when Mommy wasn’t looking and set up an allergic reaction to it and it was years before anybody connected the growing loss not to fevers but to NSAIDs.

Ah…

And I went out of there randomly chuckling all the way home. Have I thought about… Right. Yes, yes I think I have.

But at least I was able to reassure him that loud noises don’t keep me up at night.

(Found the second color I was looking for, found the needles, and most importantly, the brain cleared from those falls to remember how I did it, so Emily’s replacement hat can finally begin.)

Warning: the rest of this post is a Get Off My Lawn.

I was googling to make sure I was understanding a particular architectural term correctly: floating. Because it was being applied to something that I didn’t think was, in order for the realtor’s listing to sound fancy.

Personally, I would say the correct word for this type of staircase has more to do with a direction and an article of clothing men don’t wear save with bagpipes in hand and kilt hose, myself. Do these bother other people?

Taking it further, I don’t know if it’s still there since they did some remodeling a few years ago, but we were invited to the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco with my folks by my cousin when they were in town and it was new.

The floor of the top floor was glass–if I remember right, in alternating stripes of opaque and clear. But what about earthquakes?! All that potential falling glass not to mention people. Wearing a skirt and looking down at the crowds below looking up, I emphatically did not linger. I did not wish to be Exhibit A. I did not want to be reminded of fourth and fifth grade when all the girls learned to layer up with shorts under their skirts in defense against those boys whose behavior was not corrected by the teachers nor staff.

I most certainly had opinions on what the gender of that architect had to be. I’m sure it just never occurred to him.

Or worse, it did.

I’ve been to the post-earthquake DeYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park since then, but not that one.

I have questions.

I got in the habit in my teens of walking several miles a day, and so there were a few times where I really stretched my legs and walked past whatever house used to be where this one is now. If memory serves, my older siblings’ friend Frances’s father was the original developer. (Or was that the next block up.)

So who…thought this was how they wanted it to be now?

Ten thousand-plus square feet, but only half of them finished. You can’t have a garage. The wallpaper in one bathroom is peeling away and the print on it is oak grain painted pink. I know, that was a thing when I was a kid, but it’s been years since I’ve seen the like.

A mansion built in 1985 and it had Formica? Are those cabinets Ikea? A lucite towel rack from the late ’60s when that was a hot new thing?

On the other hand, picture #15 has an excellent yarn storage system in place, bar none.

It says the flooring is carpet, hardwood, and marble, and a lot of it surely is, but honey I recognize that by-the-roll vinyl pattern in the kitchen because I saw it in the showroom in ’95 and didn’t want it in mine.

But what really threw me? Was picture #5. On the left.

I’ve seen that before.

I had to walk into the other room to look at mine to compare. Surely that’s an Anne painting. My sister. From the tour of Europe with our art dealer dad where she came home and painted so many of the cityscapes she’d seen. That’s how Dad liked to frame them, too, and her work was some of his most popular. There are several more shown less clearly that could be as well.

So that explains the mystery of the rest of the house: they’d spent their money where it mattered.

The sunlight only had a few minutes left and I excused myself from my knitting group Zoom a moment to step outside to cover the mango tree to hold in the warmth from the incandescent Christmas lights; it was 34F this morning, and since I had had it professionally pruned on Friday, I could only assume the cuts would make it a little more vulnerable right now. If it freezes it dies.

I always try to do that really carefully because those covers are big, it’s an awkward process, and it’s easy to trip on them. Not to mention I have no sense of balance.

I was not remembering that I must never be distracted nor in a hurry at this.

I found where my shoe had ended up as I took the measure of the outcome. Nothing seemed broken. Fingers unhappy. The rest will let me know (and it’s starting to.) I found myself unexpectedly a bit dizzy. Having fallen four days ago tripping over a box at the front door, one big toe was going, Are you kidding me. Again?

I came back inside and found myself suddenly short of breath as I was turning the camera back on to my friends. I didn’t say anything to them and in fact kept knitting the plain beanie I was working on thank you left hand but I did confess to my family after it was over.

I got me a loving but stern talking-to from both of them. I got lectured on the value of me vs the tree. I got told to be careful. (I know, I know.)

Tonight’s the coldest night in the forecast for the next ten days, and things should be warming up from there so hopefully we’re done dealing with this for the season.

And then.

I got a wonderful note back from my niece re the afghan I’d just finished for her daughter whom she’d given my name as her middle name: she is thrilled, it is gorgeous, and by airplane or mail, by whatever means they will all be very very happy when it comes.

She, hesitating and unsure in the asking, had one request, though: I had once knit her a hat and she had loved it very much. She didn’t quite want to say it but her mom/my sister had encouraged her and said she should, and–would it be possible I could knit her another one like that? Because it had been just so perfect and it had meant a lot to her. She had checked the Lost and Founds everywhere. It was distinctive, but no, they hadn’t seen it.

Her email yanked me right out of my self-pity and straight into happy anticipation at such an easy way to make her world right again. I’d needed that. The afghan needs the security of arrival by air by me after Omicron gets out of here, but seventy stitches’ and about fifty rows’ worth of a hat: that, I’d be willing to trust the post office with.

My left hand might want to wait a day or two to start.

But not if I have any say in it.

An elderly person dear to me got hacked yesterday.

And today, another elderly friend, chatting like she does and asking after my family, told me happily about the quarter million dollar check that had arrived by FedEx from Publisher’s Clearing House and how nice it was that they look out for the elderly and disabled like that and had I signed up for that, too?

I advised caution.

No, no, she’d taken it to her bank and they’d accepted it.

I reminded her of a mutual widowed friend who, at about 90, was swindled out of the house she’d owned free and clear for decades and had found herself thrown out on the street in utter bewilderment.

There was no unconvincing her.

I linked to Publisher Clearing House’s own website where they warned against frauds being committed in their name and say that even banks have been fooled into thinking the checks are real–until they find out they are not.

I asked if she’d called PCH to make sure it was real. She hesitated, then said she had, and I thought, if you did, did you look it up online or did you call the scammer’s number? Because there is nothing legitimate about this.

So since she was a friend from church I got off Facebook and mentioned it to those in a better position to step in and help; she sure wasn’t listening to me.

To which one of them said, could that have been a fake? Basically, (she didn’t quite say outright) was the person they were trying to scam–you?

It was indeed a duplicate of her profile. Reported now.

I guess I learned a little humility myself on the gullibility index today.

They can’t say it out loud, but Fox and the like have got to be really really hoping the unvaxxed Sarah Palin’s defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, thrown out by one court and reinstated by another, fails.

The trial was delayed by her Covid diagnosis. Of course.

With thanks to Lee Ann Dalton for the link, I can only wish that others who’ve been persuaded by such might read all the love in these words.

Today was a stake conference meeting, ie a semi-annual gathering of the six wards (congregations) in our stake. I’m guessing about fifty people sat carefully socially distanced, from what I could see, and hundreds of us tuned in from home.

There was a song announced that was going to be sung by four members who were from Tonga and a friend of theirs whom they assured us was big, BIG! there: “He’s our Stevie Wonder,” one said as the others chuckled in fond agreement.

He was blind. He played the piano. And man oh man did he have a voice. He wasn’t a Mormon but he wanted to add his voice to theirs along with our silent ones in this place where his people would be heard.

The song, they explained, was about an island in the dark as the light comes to it.

They sang it in Tongan, and watching by Zoom I had to chuckle at the auto-transcription trying to create English phrases out of the phonemes going past it. No, silly captions, they are emphatically not singing about millionaires.

But oh, they were good. And after having asked us all to pray for those in their homeland, they were singing their hearts out such that I found myself in tears.

I had no idea what the words were, and I can’t begin to know what the one man’s name was, but there was no mistaking that love being offered up to G_d and how deeply it was felt.

It was an honor to be invited to be part of that.

Someone tripped into her, a mug in hand got spewed, and the stains didn’t come out of a favorite shirt. She told me what she’d done to try and I nodded yes, that’s what I would have done, too.

How long had it been?

A month.

(Me, thinking, length of time equals greater set to the stains) Let me see what I can do.

Oh thank you! in relief. Because Moms can still do everything.

She’d already soaked it in Seventh Generation unscented no-dyes laundry liquid, which is my standard. I added more. Rubbed it a good one. Still there.

So I left it to soak in some more, highly cognizant that she’d been doing that since last night.

And then I went back in there every so often to rub the spots until I was tired enough to need a break (it was that kind of day as it was.) And then came back and did it again, and again. That was a great fabric–100% cotton but densely spun and knitted and it wasn’t looking frayed or worn for all that I was working on it; it held up.

I realized later I didn’t get all of one small spot because I was going after the many big ones that got most of the attention, but, it’s looking pretty good. You’d have to know they’d been there and where to look in bright light to see anything, and I can always give it another try. But given how it was and how it looks now–I was pretty pleased with myself, and the wonder on her face as I handed it to her didn’t hurt any.

I said to her later, Your timing is impeccable!

Because a short while later, I’d gone to clean something from a long-unused closet and had stumbled across a carefully put away stack of baby and little girl dresses in a bin. Handsewn. Handsmocked. I’d forgotten I’d made so many–I mean, I knew I had, but I’d given as many as I’d kept back when my kids were that age and it was a surprise.

Twenty-seven years ago we remodeled this house and while we were doing that the roof leaked badly.

Which means the box that had all those dresses, only a few years outgrown at that point, took a direct hit and nothing, nothing I could do at the time could get out those stains of what we promptly labeled roof juice. I tried.

The one with the blue teddy bears! I remembered buying the pattern booklet in a needlework shop in Burlingame whose name will probably hit me at about 2 a.m. It’s long gone. Maybe Ruby something? Opening that booklet there was a page with a picture of five hand-smocked teddy bears, and below, the words, What’s wrong with those?

Followed by, Surprised you, didn’t I? Didn’t you think, Nothing’s wrong, they’re adorable!

And they are. But this one–and the artist pointed out little flaws or inconsistencies in each one and then agrees with her unseen readers that why on earth would you worry about that when they’re so cute.

She said, So if you’re only seeing the mistakes in the ones you’re making, put it down and walk away for a day or two and come back to it and see how much you love them and keep on going because seriously, it’s hard to mess with the cuteness of a teddy bear.

There was roof juice. All over the dress, the pleating, the embroidery.

But my teddy bears were too cute to let it stay that way. I grabbed the detergent and started the first soak. Rubbing it in was dicier than a thick cotton tee, for sure; some of those hand stitches on the back of the facing…

But if I could fix hers I could fix mine and I have a granddaughter now who would fit this dress that I’d completely forgotten I’d made for her aunt.

There’s just the barest hint of a spot at the center top now but I think I got the rest of it. And there’s that whole pile of clothes to go. The baby ones can wait till who knows when but the toddler ones are in a hurry because two doesn’t stay two very long.

I’m on it.

Eh, I thought this morning, looking at my wet hair, why bother with this. Who’s going to see me anyway.

And instantly thought back at myself, well that’s one way to guarantee the day’s not going to go how you expect. So I pulled it back after all to tame that one weird curlicue that just needs to get long enough to get heavy enough so as not to play half-deelybobber.

About three o’clock the doorbell rang. (Told me so.)

I opened the door, was surprised, and teased, Hey! I remember you!

It was one of Chris’s guys. They had had a free moment so he was coming over to clean off that plaster-looking stuff below one skylight and to paint over the wrong color paint over the nails on another one that I’d mentioned to his boss a couple weeks ago.

I had a baking project at mis en place, measured and laid out but not yet creamed nor mixed or poured, and half-apologized that had I known he was coming I’d have started sooner so he could have gotten some. He reminisced over the cranberry bars I’d shared that he’d liked so much he’d asked for the recipe. Good times. (But I wasn’t going to stand in his way in the kitchen with plaster bits or whatever it was falling down from above, thanks.)

And now I don’t have to have that one nagging thought looking up of, I wish they’d finished this. They did. It’s done. They were little things, but it’s so much better now.

I’ve seen the description “recycled cashmere” in garments for sale, and now in a few yarns at Colourmart. And wondered what processes were meant by that. Is it just the leftover pounds of yarn from a production run, or is it something more? Tell me they don’t shred already processed yarns in the carding machines. Or I guessed maybe they must?

Colourmart decided (not on this particular listing, but here’s an example and it’s on sale) to add a link.

They actually cut up old sweaters? Surely in an automated process and that picture of people holding scissors is for show? There are actually stores that do trade-ins? Where? What about moth damage? They’d have to make sure every stage of such things is eradicated. What about the weak spots that would be left behind in the fibers? Stains? Is this why the recycled sweaters seem to tend to be thicker? To make sure everything’s covered?

And yet the yarns they create all seem nice and even to my eyes.

Well, huh.

LLBean ordered some of this latest trend but given this past year’s shipping issues, got theirs in (if they even did yet) after Christmas.

I have a credit card account in their name that periodically earns me Bean Bucks and I’ve been letting them slowly, slowly accumulate. I’d been thinking I might blow it at the end of the year on a cashmere sweater but they didn’t have any that grabbed me hard enough.

But now they do. Only they’re recycled, even if I think, so far, that I’d rather they were not. They’re not cheap (well, in my case, at an outlay of $12.95 yes they are, never mind) but I’m just curious enough. Plus I happen to like it.

Shipping, they say, commences approximately February 8. Hopefully.

Silicon Valley might call that vaporwear.

Here’s a video, via satellite, of the volcano that exploded near Tonga, and it’s actually pretty cool.

There’s a sign near where some of my family lives: “Tsunami Evacuation Route” with an arrow straight up a hill. (Here’s video taken from someone’s front door in Pacifica. Here’s Santa Cruz.)

We figured they’d be okay, and they were, but I kept an eye on the news.

Which ended up meaning praying hard all day for the people in Texas who were simply going to synagogue for a normal Sabbath’s services and ended up being taken hostage by a gunman with bombs. For the people trying to help them. For their families, their community, for them to know we are all their community as this was happening.

Those prayers were answered in the safe rescue of the hostages.

Are we willing to answer the prayers of those who ask that we help this to stop happening?

To start, can we make Red Flag laws universal?

A local small farm was supplying a restaurant, and you know how that goes these days. And so they got three other farms together and put a notice on Nextdoor.com, as one does when one has no advertising budget, about their new CSA.

I was surprised there were any farms left at all two towns over, but apparently there are, so you can’t get much more local than that. Straight up the road. I signed up. Plus I’m pretty sure one of the names is someone I know.

Yesterday was supposed to be the first delivery day. They said 7-9 pm was the goal but it might take a little longer as they found their way around on these new routes.

I figured they were being optimistic but I also didn’t want my veggies sitting outside attracting critters, so last night I was opening the front door every half hour or less to make sure my box hadn’t been put in that one spot you just can’t quite see from inside.

Ten-thirty. No go. Maybe they should just wait till the morning.

There was a mass email offering apologies for how long it was taking.

Eleven p.m., ready to crash, and there it was! They did it! I opened the door–

–and got the full impact of what delivering it that late had meant for the driver. I don’t know if they took the direct hit or not. I’m really hoping not, and given the intensity I’d say either the skunk was still recharging its batteries from the last time it told the neighbor’s dog to get lost or it was in the dog’s back yard again and took it up on that barking dare. But whatever, it was close enough to give a good dose to open those lungs right up, breathe deep now, best asthma treatment on the planet, there you go.

Right, right, I’m sure the driver was sooo happy for the treatment.

I sent the farm a note today hoping they were okay and that it wouldn’t dissuade them from keeping me on their list and that if helped any, skunks are wanderers. They only stay put when they’re raising young.

Which, of course, they will be doing soon, but hey, I’ve got the rabbits over here, that’s my fair share. (Don’t. Tempt. Karma, Alison.)

One pandemic side effect is that I ordered glasses online, something I thought I’d never do. Two pairs. One as much like my old glasses as I could find, the other the same frameless idea that I’ve been wearing forever but with deeper, rounder lenses.

I wore the former until they got caught on a mask I was taking off and the nose pad went flying off somewhere. Was there no glue to it? Okay, you’re done. The other pair looked great on, so, backup pair to the rescue.

Then I got a new prescription.

I still really wanted to keep unnecessary exposure to a minimum, so I went back to that website and ordered a single pair: that bigger rounder type. Same company same glasses same size.

They fell off my face if I looked down. What?

I kept wearing the old ones a couple of months.

I decided this was getting ridiculous and put the new ones on this morning, determined to get used to the new prescription and get that adjustment over with.

Oh. Right. The falling thing.

I took them off and put them end to end with their earlier twin for the first time.

They angle off to nearly 4″ wider by the ends of the temples. They were mediums, not extra larges.

So I tried to very gently bend them towards sanity, and succeeded enough to keep them from being an overt hazard, but after a few hours one of the nose pads hurt.

They need adjustment. Badly. They need someone who knows what they’re doing.

My dilemma is, that’s part of what you pay for when you buy them in a store and I didn’t and nobody owes me anything, except the online place, and who knows how long they’d sit in transit going back and forth or how they’d fare–after all, they came in a case but there was no padding inside that case in the first place and maybe that’s how we got here.

So a shout-out to the local opticians and a thank you for what they do and I won’t do online again.

Just pretty please bring frameless types back for those of us looking for them?

If your grandmother was like my maternal grandmother, she had small, mostly round, decoratively molded soaps in her guest bathroom in soft pastel colors, heavily perfumed and slippery as heck in your hands, bouncing off and around the sink when you were trying to actually use them.

She would know if you had indeed washed your hands for dinner as she’d asked you to or if you’d tried to get away with skipping out on that step (not that I ever did.) While the scent interfered with your tasting your food.

And that is why I think of Gram every time I take one of my new heart med pills. It smells strongly, and tastes strongly, of good old-fashioned lavender soap. Why, for the life of me, I do not know. And you try to swallow it fast so it doesn’t leave that lingering soapy taste on your tongue.

Chocolate is the antidote.