My longtime arborist stopped by today because I wanted a quote on some pruning that was higher up than I’m willing to go. He was surprised when I asked him at the end if he liked dark chocolate–why, yes, he does, very much–and then opened the front door and grabbed him one of those plisse’ things and told him what it was. That was fun.

The somewhat less fun but worthwhile thing was going in for a mammogram yesterday.

It created one of those weird moments where the pandemic makes invisible people real, and necessary, where you never knew they even ever were: there was a little window on the arm into the innards of the machine, just a few inches across and with a light inside so you could see how the thing flexed as they moved it in place next to the squish table thingamagummy.

And it was dusty. Quite. Inside an enclosed space with no opening as far as I could see, with that little light at the back showing just how the tiny, uneven, fuzzy bits cascaded down the little diagonal whatever in there. Dust bunny-foot, mid-hop.

I marveled out loud, the tech being an amiable sort, and she knew exactly what I was talking about.

“Oh we’re not allowed to touch those.”

Turns out the manufacturer has people whose job it is to clean those inside parts, which the patients are never exposed to, so, given covid restrictions and workers out sick (or maybe they’d quit) and the fact that it would physically affect nobody to just leave it like that for the moment, there had been no one on hand to do that particular job that I would never even have known existed.

I’m still left with the question hanging of, why? Why did they make it that way?

So that this whole x-ray vision thing can be a two-way street between patients and our non-robot overlords?

Two years from now I’ll be looking to see if it still looks like that. Which is the weirdest way to get a patient to book the next routine appointment ever.

People were vaccinated. People got tested.

And then we prayed hard, took a deep breath, made the decision, and drove. No airports. Cars only. Except for an elderly aunt in southern California who I don’t think drives anymore, the one we were being the most careful for. Masks on all.

Richard’s cousin was having her eight-year-old son baptized this morning and that is a fine reason for people to get together to celebrate.

Her brother and his family did the twelve hours from Arizona.

We did two hours from up north.

Her in-laws came from I have no idea where.

Etc.

I had missed several of these family gatherings due to having had pneumonia or bronchitis at the wrong times and I hadn’t even met her youngest–and he’s in kindergarten now.

(Who’s that guy with the long gray hair?) From across the room, he happened to turn around. (MICHAEL?? Long!? Gray?!?) I made a point of telling him I loved it, because it was gorgeous, and he chuckled and said his sisters had offered rather eagerly to cut it. But he’d been finding he liked it this way.

And so we had a grand old time, with lunch at his sister’s afterwards.

She and her husband had bought a fixer-upper and after a year of work had pulled off a gorgeous job of it, and I’m sure they enjoyed how much it got exclaimed over.

But the best part of course was the visiting, and the seeing the kids in such different sizes than they were, and how interesting they were to talk to.

That view. I instantly saw why they’d fallen in love with the place. (Avocados 4/$1, said a sign near their street.)

Um, that flying saucer thing? That’s someone’s plate and toasted cheese sandwich photobombing against the double-paned glass. Oops. For when Johnny’s sharing pictures of his day at some point in the future.

The lovely old aunt got talking about now vs back in her day, and turns out she’s a Golden Girls fan.

One of the younger cousins exclaimed, Oh! That was my favorite show when I was a kid!

We had a TV when our kids were young enough to be distracted by Sesame Street while I was trying to throw dinner together. When that died, a friend’s grandma looking to unload her old one fobbed it off on us: picture a huge 1960’s set made to look like built-in wood furniture with a silvery sparkly panel where the speaker was. My parents had one newer than that when I was a teenager. We watched one presidential debate where we debated which candidate was which as they stood there in their wavy-edged shades of green.

When at last we got offered a trip to the dump for it, off it went.

Several years later, our daughter’s friends, finding it unbelievable that we didn’t have a single TV in the house, all chipped in and surprised her at her 13th birthday party with a new one of her own.

The next morning, without texting even being a thing yet, they collectively went, Oh wait–maybe you don’t have one because your parents don’t want one? Do we have to take it back?

We told her, no, it’s fine. But there will be rules. Homework comes first. Etc.

And so our other kids started hanging out in her room with her to watch shows their friends had been talking about.

Later that year, she caught I think it was strep throat–and we had an old VCR still and she wanted to watch a Star Wars movie, so, sure, we dragged it out of the closet and set it up for her.

Look at the colors!!! she exclaimed as the opening started up.

Five minutes in, her low-rung-manufacturer TV suddenly went black. It never came back on. It hadn’t even made it to her next birthday.

We never did get around to replacing it–but our computers eventually pretty much did.

So with that intro: today I found out just how much we all missed out on all those years. Reading about The Golden Girls in random news articles so that at least I knew what it was while it was on the air in no way compares with (and probably everybody but me has already seen this, but) watching The Herring Wars, where Betty White went off script and ad-libbed with a straight face and had her co-stars convulsing with laughter.

Those five minutes were from one of the greats. And she was a lovely, lovely person. She will be so missed.

I’ve never bought a season of a TV series before but it’s time for that to change.

Note to self: next time, finish the row you’re knitting before you go do that flying leap thing.

The top of the freezer is dedicated to ice packs and most of the time I think that’s way overkill but every now and then, just every now and then I think, that’s actually a good thing.

And it really did help. Just hoping my gauge wasn’t too funky while my fingers were frozen. (Yes I did. I’m stubborn like that.)

Meantime, way more fun, a new song for the season: Masked Christmas. Jimmy Fallon playing chess with his golden retriever. Because of course he did.

After all that drought.

When the ground is hardpack-dry, water just rolls right off it rather than soaking in.

But when it’s been raining on and off for a week, never too much at once and yet relentless, it apparently starts doing what you’d expect and want: I saw this big pond this morning, ran across the house and grabbed my camera, came back and outside and snapped its picture.

Huh. And considered a moment–and walked back inside and across the house to Richard to show him how much water there was out there (but thankfully not against the house anymore!) and told him the picture was showing the ponding as being shallower than it really was.

Then I walked back outside. I wanted to see if I could get it to photograph better–to show how I’d seen it.

And now it was that much less.

The ground had absorbed it that thirstily and that fast.

On the other side of the house, I have a plastic trash can under the eaves that had a little garden debris in it and its lid had been left off. The roof is dripping on it, but still: it’s full. Of water. It’s full!

I was kvetching at myself for not getting anything done on the afghan all week.

It somehow snuck up on me that, wait–actually, I finished a hat this week, knit another, started a third, and stumbled across a half-done beaded silk cowl and finished that, too, because it was Christmas week and you never know when you’re going to need extras. (Suddenly thinking, y’know, if I’d knit those hats in stainless steel yarn I could have added an inside pompom for a clapper and made my own carol bells. Cool! Watch out next year!)

A very Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it, and peace and good will and beautiful music to everyone.

With thanks to Margo Lynn for the heads-up, this is really cool.

Just before Christmas last year our doorbell rang: someone had put a box containing a beautifully-done buche de Noel down on the mat–but then had made sure we would know so it wouldn’t just sit out there. Not everybody risked touching the bell but he did. Hopefully with his elbow.

When I described the person whom I’d called out Thank you! to just as he was reaching his car, and the delight in his face as he turned and waved back, Michelle affirmed that yes, that sounded like him. One of the owners of the bakery. She knew we’d like it.

We did, it was very good–but I have to say that even so, my favorite part was his getting to see the expression on my face as I opened that box and went WOW at their work of art. It was a privilege to see him getting to see how much I appreciated that gift, both from our daughter and from his shop in their efforts.

So you know what happens next, although I didn’t: the doorbell rang today.

Now, one really ought to take the picture before the first pieces get cut off, but, hey, y’know.

There was a tag stapled to the top of the box this time. Door Dash.

And I thought, the world has changed in this last year, hasn’t it. I’m glad that bakery is still here! And glad the guy was able to have help with the delivering this time and that he had too much to do to do it himself.

But still. There was a twinge at not getting to see that friendly face again so that I could say how good these taste, not just look.

We kind of skimped on lunch a bit so we could justify seconds.

(Older picture of it.)

I got an email yesterday that our project was finished. Was there anything I wanted to mention?

Yes, I answered: the big window (about 4’x7′) is lying in the back yard. If you could get that. Plus a bag of debris the painters stashed in the monster philodendron, and a tray that I’m happy to toss or recycle, whichever applies.

And so I got to say thank you to Armando one last time, a tad wistfully, and to wish him and his hat-loving daughter a merry Christmas. I’m going to quite miss all of them.

Tomorrow, though, for the first time in nearly seven weeks, I can sleep in. Mid-week. No alarm. No having to get everything done and my hair dry enough for hearing aids before their 8 a.m. start. We’ll actually have the house all to ourselves!

The final bill popped up and it instantly settled any question as to whether we’re going to dive right into doing the kitchen and the flooring next–I am going to have a little time for sorting and donating and clearing out first.

Somehow I’d found that hard to do with a bit of an audience.

A few hours after Armando left it started to rain and the ten-day forecast chart is a beautiful wobbly wall of blue. Already the inch-age-ness is less than originally hoped, and yet, unlike some of the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge years, the clouds made it on through and past the ocean and the water is coming down. We so, so, so much need that. Go rain go.

I’m totally going to quote Afton here, with her permission.

Her husband was…

“…up and drinking his coffee.

As he was standing on the porch, at 6:35, AM, here comes the postal truck.  To drop off a package filled with very lovely yarn from Alison Hyde all the way from California.  As the startled tall one accepted the package he asked the bleary-eyed postal worker

“Are you the early shift or the late shift?”

And the slightly weaving man answered after careful consideration

“I’m not sure.” And

Turned around, slid into his truck, and sped down the street.

As they said on Hill Street Blues

Be careful  out there”

The last thing was taking off and painting the door. As it was laid out in the back yard across the sawhorses I popped my head out and offered them a hairdryer, joking.

Turns out they had one and it is fair to say it was a tad bigger.

Painting company boss man showed up in the late afternoon and we did a walk-through; he caught things I didn’t, I caught a few he didn’t, and the workers took care of all of it.

And then, at long last, they reinstalled that door. (Afton, the plant is the one you sent me when my dad died and it still blooms all the time and greets everybody cheerfully.)

What he’s doing in the second picture is he’s got this flat rubber-ish thing that he slid under it, with his friend’s help, and then there’s a bulb attached that he pumped up to pufferfish that thing into just the right height and angle so that nobody had to try to hold it absolutely perfectly still for longer than humanly possible while the other guy ran the power tools on the hinges.

Y’know? That door had been ever so slightly off probably since it was originally installed. And now it’s perfect.

On the outside.

And with that and a cleanup, this crew was done with my project.

I don’t even have an estimate yet for painting the inside but we’ve been talking about it with the contractor.

Once you start fixing up or remodeling, the challenge becomes how do you manage to stop.

Those little pressboard squares with the white sort-of-grippy side that holds onto the glass until you pull at them just so: clearly those were for helping protect the new window in transportation.

The first thing I peeled off was that big label at upper right, and then, and surprisingly reluctantly, those little squares. Or at least the ones I could reach. Why on earth didn’t I want to?

It took me awhile to figure out why they so charmed me: they’re as close to watching the snowflakes fall as we’re going to get here at Christmastime. We have memories of turning on George Winston’s December album, turning the lights off, and sitting at a slider glass door far away from here with our babies in our laps watching the unique, repetitive, cold, blanketing snow reflecting in the dark off the layer that had settled before it as it floated and stirred gently on its way down.

Although. (Picking one up.) These’d be great for extra blank squares in a game of Scrabble.

The skylights are all in, the last piece of siding got installed, the windows that needed to be replaced have been now (that upper blob on the big one is paint that got smeared because it was coming out anyway) and now the painters can do the last side of the house.

I looked at how the previous contractor had framed the narrower window with that splintered-off piece of wood and thought, yup, that’s him, that’s how he worked.

They took the mailbox off the wall.

The moment I saw it it struck me hard: I don’t have to live with that anymore. Why have I been putting up with that. Out with it. It had once had two curved lower arms to hold magazines, but one fell off some time ago and the mailman learned to jam them anyway till the second fell off.

Then the lid. The hinges died of rusty old age. We’ve been carefully balancing it on top of the box for about a year now, and the mailman helpfully tosses it to the ground rather than covering the mail from the rain. Except on occasions so rare as to be noticeable.

A mailbox. A wall mount mailbox. A locking wall mount mailbox. A decently-designed locking wall mount mailbox. A decently-designed, big enough to actually hold stuff locking wall mount mailbox.

No not 30″ tall! Ohmygoodness. Start over.

I headed out for a quick trip to the grocery store wondering what our guy would do without a regulation mailbox at regulation height. One of the crew had wondered about him finding it, too, and pointed out to me how he’d brought it back to right below where it had been affixed, its topless self opened upwards.

When I got back the worker was gone for the day–and the mailman had leaned over and put our mail carefully in. That was nice of him.

And then, after all that, my husband insisted. I thought it was silliness. He did not want another slumped grumped Christmas and insisted on wrestling the garage for the tree, with the help of Michelle, who is ever so briefly in town on business.

You know what? They were right. We needed that.

It rained hard yesterday and early this morning, it’s going to rain hard tomorrow and then hopefully/probably all week next week (we need every atmospheric river, creek, and meandering little stream we can get) so after a late start, today was an all hands on deck day. The painters–let me just say here that they are heroes, they were willing to reach into the 4″ space between a towering spiky prickly holly bush and the house to do the job right–told me they want to be done by Saturday and were disappointed the windows weren’t replaced yet nor that piece of siding because they couldn’t do those parts till they are.

While I thought, well, but you were here all last week and you knew the other crew wasn’t while they waited for the parts. And that the problem with yesterday was that it rained cats and dogs.

Half-literally: with the help of the mud for the digging I looked up at one point to see the neighbor’s new dog romping in my yard, thrilled to explore new space (happy birthday to you too!) and then suddenly stopping to stare at me, like, Wait. You’re not my owner. This isn’t my house?! He raced around back to the other side. I stepped out the door over there now. It IS that lady’s house! And he scrambled over to the newly-enlarged gap we’ve been talking about getting fixed and back to his side of the fence.

Just as well there weren’t any open paint cans or precariously-leaned glass yesterday. So many opportunities missed. Right?

The siding is done. So are half the skylights. No on the windows, sorry.

I walked around to admire the work after they’d all left in the late afternoon and went, Wait. They left the stickers on??

It seems to me there are two types of glue: the type that dissolves right away if water touches it. And the type that immediately pitbull-jaws onto whatever it’s stuck to. And those are at roof level.

I don’t expect anybody to show up tomorrow, but the rain will.

And that is actually quite a lovely thing to be able to say after the extremity of the drought.

The doorbell rang at one point. The guy came in to make sure the skylight with the inner screen in the kitchen was squared up from the inside as well as out, and asked me, How does it open?

I grabbed the extender thingy that reaches way up and hooks onto the bottom of it so you can crank it open or shut when you’re trying to avoid the smoke alarm going off.

No, no, he meant which side do I want it to open from?

I guess this side like it was so the water doesn’t come in when you open it, except that you wouldn’t open it if it were raining anyway so I don’t think it matters except that we’re used to it being this way.

Great. That way it is.

So I was submitting a happy memory of a story yesterday to somewhere that asked for submissions of such (if that somehow doesn’t go nowhere I’ll let you know) and their questionnaire asked you to tell them your age.

They’re on the east coast. They wouldn’t be reading it before morning.

I stared at that screen for a minute or two, trying to decide: do I answer what I am as I’m filling out their form, or with what the answer will be when they see it?

What the heck, why not, and I aged myself a dozen or so hours forward and called it good.

In the springtime before Covid my niece Emily, who hadn’t had a flu shot, caught the flu and ended up in the ICU for some time with sepsis. It cost her the last joints on most of her fingers and her toes, but she beat the odds and survived.

She’s a piano teacher.

She adapted an old Christmas song for how her hands are now and played it as an offering to the world for sheer joy and gratitude and I thought, how many kids get to have a teacher who has so much love and so much for them to learn from.

It’s not just the ability to play, it’s the power to share your innermost music with the people around you.