In July 2006 my husband said he wanted to replace my old minivan for me. I said maybe we should replace his first-generation Prius instead, not that it was so old but because he was so squeezed in there that his knees had cracked the dashboard(!) and it seemed a safety issue to me. I argued for not cutting him off at the knees in an accident.

We went to the Toyota dealership. We looked at cars we could fit the kids into.

But what really grabbed us both was the new generation Prius that had enough room for his legs, even if we would have to give up our quirky pregnant-mouse-look one that proclaimed us as early adopters. (It’s a Silicon Valley thing.)

But it really was the time to do so, if we were going to, because it had some of the rare carpool lane stickers that only went to the first so-many-thousand hybrids; those stickers were going to expire in under two years but such cars were still going for, on average, an extra $4400 at the time. Count dollars against hours saved on commuting and being with your kids and if you could afford it of course you would.

In two years of course the value would be zero.

Richard did not commute on the freeway so the stickers were of no great matter to him personally.

The salesman was surprisingly, exceptionally rude to me. From the moment we walked on the lot he would not acknowledge my existence. I was the one who had done the research, I was the one we’d come to buy for, but anytime I said anything he immediately started talking to Richard over me, every time, while avoiding all eye contact with me, and he never, ever responded to me in any way. Only the man of the house mattered to him. I was utterly invisible.

Excuse me?!

I finally got sufficiently ticked off that I told him I was leaving and they could talk about whatever they wanted. Have a nice day.

I got myself home, got in the other car, and went off to my then-LYS, Purlescence, on that bright summer Saturday afternoon where there would be nice people and I could quietly calm down surrounded by wool fumes.

LYSO Nathania’s then-husband was there, and quite sympathetic when I described that salesman. Yes car dealerships were notorious but since women buy most of the cars in this country, supposedly most of the salesmen had learned or had at least been coached to show some respect. Man, not that one.

I was not expecting it to turn into plotting–but it did: Kevin invited me over to the shop’s classroom space in a separate room in the back, logged onto the computer there, and we tag-teamed for Richard against that salesman over my cellphone. We had decided on replacing the Prius after all and negotiations were just starting.

The guy said the list price was X.

Kevin, googling, which was a slower process back then, said It is not, it’s Y.

The guy said the value of the carpool lane sticker was Z.

Kevin, looking: He’s full of it again, it’s W, like you guys thought.

He said the Blue Book value of the trade-in overall was B.

We told Richard, No, it’s A.

We were going to pay cash so the whole interest rate thing didn’t apply. No padding there.

We were having the time of our lives and that salesman could not argue with someone he could not see nor hear and he had to wait on Richard while Richard did. So there.

Richard came home chuckling. The guy was still willing to make the sale, however grudgingly, to get his sales numbers up for his boss. We got that second Prius for $11k and the 2001 trade-in.

One of his co-workers later told him, License plate so-and-so–is that your old car? That guy tried to tell me some old lady only drove it to church.

Our reaction was, Oh come ON, the oldest cliche in a car salesman’s book?!

So. Our car’s a 2007 bought in 2006. Used it for a 3.5 mile commute, which doubled when the van at last bit the dust and I was doing the drop off/pick up thing just about every day.

This was the year we were finally going to replace it, what with all the safety features of the new ones out there and so many more options to choose from; after years of 40-50 mpg, we’re never going back to bad mileage. Our grandkids only get one planet.

And then of course the house, and the sizes of those reroof/repair contracts, and this isn’t the year.

But you know? We really don’t need to. It works peachy fine. Yeah the fabric’s stained and the seats sag but it’s reliable.

Today, at long last, it answered a question I’d had for a long time as to whether it would start over at 0 the way the cars of my youth did or if it had one more digit hiding in there.

Answer: yes it did. (Picture taken just after I pulled into the driveway and stopped.) Go little car go.

The eye department couldn’t fit me in all on the same day for all the testing they wanted to do in answer to my query Monday, so after going yesterday I came back today to see just the technician for that last test.

There was the standard question yesterday of, do you have any new allergies.

Dr. S. mentioned by way of reassurance that he’d gotten that same fiery red rash from that brand of heart monitor, but it had faded away after a few days.

We were having a mutually surprised moment: you needed one, too? (How could you be old enough..! Answer: we’re sort of not. But him even less so, and I at least have lupus as an excuse.)

He was fine, he assured me, they were just checking.

He was quite delighted with the homegrown pomegranate. “Look how BIG it is! I love pomegranates!”

Coming through the door on my return home this afternoon, the answering machine was just finishing up.

It was Dr. S.

He had gone over that visual field test’s results. (Immediately, clearly, rather than waiting till the end of the day to get around to the paperwork. He’d wanted me to know right away.) It had taken a little more energy for me to see the flashes on one side, he said, consistent with the optic nerve having been narrowed by what appeared about 25 years ago to be optic neuritis. It had changed since last time, but only a little. From all he could see, there was nothing to worry about–but come right in if anything changes or you have concerns.

And then his voice sounded more emotional than perhaps he’d intended. “I’ll see you in a year. Come back in a year. Thanks.”

A promise that he would be here and that surely I must as well.

I felt that.

I appreciated that, and wished he had held off two more minutes to call so that I could have gotten off the freeway and grabbed that phone in time to say, and you, too. All the best.

To life!

This is long and meandering but it’s late and I don’t have time to edit it.

My cousin Virginia cut her beautiful shoulder-length hair very short and posted pictures on Facebook and got lots of compliments over her new look.

And then she quietly sent out a note to her cousins that she’d had cancer nine years ago, had long since beaten it… and the haircut was to make it seem less abrupt when it starts falling out again.

All those hats knitted as carry-around projects, a moment here, a row there, they were ready.

She said she had a blue one from me from years ago but yes, she’d like a soft white one, very much, thank you.

And so today, I–

Waited till 3 pm. On the nose at the two week mark, off with the heart monitor and into its box to ship back to its manufacturer so they can report to my cardiologist. My skin had a fierce enough reaction to the adhesive that I’m amazed it stayed on. I hope I don’t have to do that again for awhile.

So that got mailed and the white hat, and also one in purples and another in greens. She hadn’t wanted to ask for too much. I had wanted to give her all.the.hats. I compromised.

Andy’s dried slab Blenheim apricots in another box for my mom, the ones picked so ripe they go smush when cut. The best.

And a warm winter outfit to my niece’s baby girl.

But before I headed out for the post office, one last note on the diary notebook to return with the monitor: yes I pushed the button at 3 a.m. this morning but, um, ignore that. I was asleep. Pushing it woke me up that wait, I did what? No. Nothing to see there. I was dreaming.

If only we could solve all health problems that easily.

And then at the end of the day, finally, I knit and got past the tree.

And then said, But what I really want is to go make a batch of chocolate, darn it. We’re out, and the pre-pandemic Trader Joe’s bar doesn’t count.

Wild Bolivian Mix, in the melanger now.

I said to Richard, I calculated wrong so I didn’t put in all the sugar I measured and now I don’t know how much I did and is this sweet enough?

He took a taste and considered thoughtfully: it was good, and yet, “Seems a little too sweet to me.”

And it’s not enough to me, even though I like mine quite dark. Good. Right in between. That means we hit the sweet spot.

There was a baby shower by Zoom Sunday for two nieces who are expecting: the idea was, order baby books mailed to them in advance and then let’s all celebrate and talk about our favorites!

I sent Sandra Boynton board books. As one does.

One cousin, whose youngest is about five now, told them, There’s always some lady at a grocery store who will tell you, Oh! They grow up SO fast!

I think that’s a pretty universal experience for young moms, often when the kids are not being their stage-presence best and so trying to get the simplest things done takes forever; I remember when, for a month, I had four kids under age six.

I answered, The days are years and the years are days.

There was an article on Graves disease in the Washington Post today. I found it very timely, because that diagnosis is in my chart but nobody’s ever told me much about it beyond the word itself. One endocrinologist retired after ordering the antibody tests, one went on maternity leave, one filled in temporarily, and I haven’t gotten back there in so long–covid being most of that time–that it kind of dropped through the cracks because I simply didn’t need to go in.

My autoantibodies for both hyper and hypo thyroidism generally duke it out pretty much to a standstill.

But it would explain some of this stuff, including the almost two pounds lost these past two weeks. And here I was thinking juggling yarn balls all day long was proving a surprisingly good if implausible diet.

If it is the Graves, it would be quite treatable.

A text came in as I was typing this: I just promised the friends who stopped by last night that I would call them if we need any help whatsoever. She’s young, but she’s had heart experience, successfully treated and fine now. Some people are just easy to turn to anyway, and then you learn more and more why.

*To clarify: the heart monitor’s recording for two weeks straight. They want me to push the button to footmark my notes on it.

So I got the first set of branches done, remembering again why one should always do such a thing on needles that are long enough that you can spread the whole thing out to really see what you’re doing to get perspective as you go. These aren’t.

Darn if it didn’t look like a penguin flapping its flippers.

The only antidote to that was to add another set to give a better sense of tree-ness.

You know those cell phone towers along the freeways that are supposed to be mistaken in passing for pines but instead look like someone electrocuted the Christmas tree?

I kid, I kid, it’s totally fine even if not entirely how I thought it would be. (And a little bit of this is the camera angle.)

I’m better at learning from my mistakes than not making them.

The yarn came.

It’s an exact match. That never happens. But it is. Probably came from the same batch at the mill even though I bought them at different times and different San Francisco-area stores. Twelve inches of afghan recklessly knitted in the previous undyed white wool, suddenly totally justified. Man, that feels good.

The tree is branching out now.

And in the strange, strange house department–the pouting telephone stays. The bears stay. (Just sell me one of those and we’re good.) Everything does. Except not the tractor nor, inexplicably plain after all that other stuff, the table under the gazebo.

I’m thinking the ladder for the kids to bypass the stairs to the second floor with would disappear if I had any say in it and having a gun overhead much less in earthquake country is unfathomably Darwinian (did they think the kids wouldn’t figure out that ladders can be moved?)

But should one ever want to put one’s head in a lion’s mouth (scroll halfway down to read where Amy did on a live one) there’s your chance.

I’m not even sure what one of those animals once was and I am so not into carcasses on the wall.

And yet if the power ever went out and the temps were decidedly unCalifornian, you could definitely stay warm.

But first you’d have to drag the ladder over to them.

Why peregrine falcon facial markings vary the way they do. Fascinating.

Meantime, the heart monitor is on and quietly doing its thing.

We’re still in summer drought mode here and there was no plant at the edge of the porch whatsoever, much less a weed. Two days after the workers sprayed all that water off the roof, there were two and I immediately ripped them right out.

And then took this picture just to show what weeds are like in California. From zero to this at the end of its second day from seed (or roots I’d previously missed.) The invasives are always the fastest, and they were already close to grabbing your socks with prickly, snaggy, stabby seeds.

A happier but far slower plant is the Anya apricot that surprised and revived. This was taken exactly one week after the first hint of green showed. I need to  keep it warm and growing all winter (hopefully!), since it lost most of the summer to shock.  

Meantime, I made it to nine-something of my usual twenty minutes’ exercise last night, sat down, recovered for half an hour, tried again, stopped at five, sat down, and finally did a few more to top it off because I’m stubborn like that.

Which is why they’re having me come in tomorrow to wear a heart monitor for two weeks. Having to answer to you all meant I had to answer to me meant I had to answer to the cardiologist, so I did, and thank you.

And you know? If you turn that weed up there sideways clockwise, it would kind of look like the blood vessels on a heart. Of a green Grinch.

It’s just costochondritis, I told myself. Michelle’s driving to her sister’s in a few hours and I cannot have her wake up in the morning to us being at the hospital over nothing. Inflammation of the lining of the heart sounds terrible but it almost never actually is. All it is is a familiar nuisance.

It’s just a little bit of food poisoning, I thought out loud, wanting to get out of bed and toss that leftover that only I had touched, but I wasn’t going anywhere right then and I knew it.

Awhile later: “Would you google ‘women heart attack symptoms’?”

Turns out I’m not the only one who doesn’t hear well in the dark in the bed at night half asleep, especially when someone’s not talking very loud.

I rolled over on my side and my ribs roared. A silent, Oh, so you *can* do real pain here, not just hints. I rolled back. See? Costochondritis. Had it a million times, you’re just out of practice because it’s been awhile. No real chest pains until you mess with the position of the ribs. Okay, so we can stop worrying about that one.

That sense of–tightness? I think I’d picture it more as my insides being pleated and the stitches pulled tight–I don’t think it had ever been quite like that though. I don’t remember being fitted for a corset. And you don’t get nausea with it–must be the Crohn’s joining in on the autoimmune party. I knew I’d done too much sun time. Right?

Richard asked if he should take me to the hospital and I said I don’t know. Okay, so he did catch on to the gist of it! Just knowing that helped a lot, and very slowly, gradually, a good three hours after it had started during my walking time before it all hit hard at once, it receded enough that I finally fell asleep.

And woke up feeling fine. I threw out that leftover. I forgot about it. Life was normal, just like I wanted it to be. To stay being. Because I said so.

It was 3:30 pm before I finally told myself to stop being stupid and messaged my cardiologist and the response was surprisingly quick and it was obvious and it was quite to the point: “If you have those symptoms again please go to the emergency room.”

The nurse managed not to add, You idiot!

It’s all the costochondritis fake-outs over the last thirty years that are going to trip me up in the end. But, like anticipating earthquakes, the big one is forever not today.

So far so good.

By way of explanation: after having been told from age 13 to age 31 that any of what turned out to be lupus symptoms were, essentially, all in my head, leaving me with a profound sense that I will not be believed by a doctor who doesn’t know me if I complain so I don’t, I now have official permission from one of their own to complain. “Because my cardiologist said so” is what will get me to show up at the ER next time.

I promise to go.

And now excuse me, I’m going to go do my fast-walk thing early so that it hopefully won’t be the middle of the freaking night should anything go wonky.

But maybe not quite as fast. I confess to being slightly spooked.

Early last year, I picked out a mug online from Mel and Kris Kunihiro and rather than having them bother with shipping it to me from Oregon I told them I’d pick it up at Stitches West, since we were going to see each other there shortly anyway.

That was the Stitches that I ended up missing because I had, as my doctor told me later, a clear-cut case of covid. (No tests at the time for blue states, as Californians well remember.) I could have turned that big knitters’ convention into a super spreader event all by myself had it been held a few days earlier, before I knew I was coming down so sick.

So. Anne admired and even owned some of Mel and Kris’s pottery and she volunteered to pick it up from them there and drop it off at my house. It meant a great deal to me that she was going so far out of her way to make life a lot easier for everybody.

And that’s what started it all. We’ve known each other for years as passing friends at the yarn store, but she set the stage for a far deeper connection than that.

All these many months where, like most of us, I saw only a very few people in real life at great intervals, it seemed like whenever I most needed it to save my sanity one of them, standing outside, masked and at a distance, was Anne, totally putting up with my deafness that the masks make worse. Popping by to say hi after fair warning to make sure I’d be there. (Like we were going anywhere. Like anyone was.)

Two? Three? years ago? Before we had any idea what was about to hit us all, she gave me a box of yarns that she wasn’t ever going to knit, no matter how pretty they were–and told me not to knit her a cowl or hat.

Totally on to me. Busted.

And yet…things change.

I’m both excited for her and more than a bit devastated for me that she and her husband are moving to Portland in, unfathomably, two weeks. I’ve been covering that up to myself by looking at houses, sending her links, going, Isn’t this one so cool! Or, Can you even/what were they thinking/can you believe nine bedrooms/2 baths seven fridges taking up what was left of what used to be a living room, extension cords everywhere, with a trapdoor in the closet to a gun safe/wine stash in the otherwise nonexistent basement. A frat house maybe?

When she commented on this cowl picture I posted a month ago I suddenly knew why I’d bought that color combination that was a bit too yellow for me. At the last Stitches I’d gone to, from the Yarn Truck parked inside at the edge of the convention center floor.

If only she’d let me.

So I asked.

And she admitted that she had been hoping that, before she leaves, I would knit her something.

She stopped by today. I pulled out a bag of finished projects: purple wool, blue baby alpaca, ecru cashmere, the finished wool cowl she’d admired, and one in a similar colorway but with more blues and almost no yellows.

She went straight for this one. Still her favorite. “I like the yellows,” holding it up under her chin for me so I could see for myself that she was right, that was the one. She asked me the yarn and I didn’t remember, so it’s a good thing I wrote it down while I still had the label at hand. Yarnloveyarn.com’s Magic Forest.

It had been for her from its beginning and had been waiting for the two of us to figure it out.

The roof job began today. They had to clean it to prepare the surface.

I told the guy who came to the door that I hadn’t been up there to sweep (most of it’s flat) since the time I fell off it. He did kind of a horrified laugh and was okay with my not.

I had been told to move any plant pots out of the way and tried but turns out there really was no out of the way, there was only less so, as the roof dripped like a hard rain while the spray billowed out over the yard. I did at least get my water-sensitive apricots out of range of most of it. It went on all day. I could not get a photo to really capture the effect, but during several bursts it went clear over the fence to the neighbor’s.

I just hoped they weren’t holding a family wake for Jim next door with those familiar cars there. It would, um, kind of put a damper on things.

But it wasn’t just power washing, there were scrapings and gougings and a lot of hard, loud work going on.

Having seen all my fruit trees, one guy mentioned mid-day that the years of collected leaves up there were really great for the garden; did I have a compost pile? Did I want this?

I knew full well that the company wouldn’t have to pay for the time or space to remove them if I said yes and I still said yes because his enthusiasm for the possibilities of how good this stuff was got to me. So now I have bags of almost-composted stuff, all nicely bagged and piled up by the pear tree, where it most could use it. I just didn’t expect to have quite so many–wait. Yes. I kind of did. Anyway, there are a lot. I’m hoping I can transmit some of that enthusiasm to fellow gardeners out there. Have a bag. No, no, I insist.

It sounded sort of like a dentist’s drill up there.

The actual new roof will begin in two weeks and take two weeks to get done along with the wood replacement, if their schedule holds to what they told me.

One of the things the building contractor will be doing at the same time is replacing all the skylights and the wood they’re sitting on–which is really good, because the one in the big bathroom now has a crack going around the edge on three sides that was not there last night. Had it made it to the fourth it would have fallen through to the floor.

I can’t hope for no rain, I just can’t, but next to the tub is really not a kosher way of taking a shower, not even on a drip system.

We’re getting there.

Two of them were cleaning up the debris on the edge of the back patio at the end and I opened the slider and said, I don’t need to water my tomatoes today.

They turned, saw where those were, and laughed, No. You don’t.

When little ones who’ve been sick (negative for covid, thank heavens) need some cheering up and their parents discover that Trader Joe’s sells kits for Halloween gingerbread houses. Then they add in grandparent and auntie time via the phone to have them watch you break off whatever you want to eat and to cheer you on and it doesn’t get better than that.

Snack! proclaimed Lillian, holding a piece of candy out to the camera for us to see.

Snack! agreed Mathias, with who knows what part of it in his hand (was it the door?) and then he told us a little bit more about it all that I didn’t hear but that’s okay. The smiles and giggles came through loud and clear.

They haven’t posted the individual talk as a video yet or I’d link to it rather than a quick summary.

It’s General Conference weekend in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, ie the Mormons, with the leaders directly addressing members worldwide. Pacific time, Sunday’s two hour sessions will start at 9:00 and 1:00.

I picked cashmere yarn for it, because it seemed fitting, and got at least half a cowl done while we watched, quietly wondering whose it would turn out to be. It was telling me it needed to be knitted and ready.

Sharon Eubank, head of LDS Charities, talked today about some of the humanitarian aid projects. In the scramble of the Afghanistan airlift, there were religious women who found themselves in public without their head coverings and were very uncomfortable with that. The Church got right to work sewing some for those who wanted them.

She (edited to add link) talked a little about Syria. Where a family that had owned a bakery found themselves unable to procure any food, much less provide it to others, and were on the verge of starvation.

LDS Charities was able to reach them. Food was the immediate need. They were vetted and able to leave for another (unnamed) country.

Needing to somehow convey the depth of their gratitude, Sister Eubanks said, a box of cookies showed up at Church headquarters. From those gifted bakers.

A box of cookies.

So much emotion and experience and gratitude was poured into that surprise package. It was everything.

After a week of watching that last fig slowly, slowly gain color and ripen as the leaves started to curl and turn yellow with the summer ending, Monday I finally got to eat it, wistful that that was going to be it for the year. You wait so long. They’re so good. And then they’re over so fast. (Usually, those Black Jacks are so big that I split them in half and share but this time he went, No, you love those, you have it.)

Yesterday evening I went outside and there, top and center and very obvious on my not-big tree was another last fig. I did quite the doubletake. It’s not like I hadn’t looked before, and now it was copying last week’s surprise peach! All I can figure is that it had had a leaf curled around it hiding it that had blown away. I knew there had been a fig there but I’d thought it long gone. How had the squirrels missed this?

Anyway, it was delicious, and I looked around the garden with a grin thinking, Okay, what’s next, guys? I mean what, an October cherry?

I kid myself.

And then.

Several months ago I gave one of my Anya seedlings to a friend who lives in a hotter area nearer Sacramento, and last night she regretfully told me her baby apricot had not survived the summer heat there.

I had one that I’d tested a self-watering system on before we flew off to see grandkids for the Fourth of July, only, the setup was in place on a day that hit 100F. It was a water bottle screwed into an absorbent clay piece going into the soil near the roots–which sounded great, but it appears I, um, cooked them. That bottle got hot! The seedling dropped every leaf and the top turned black and I was glad I’d only tried it out on one of them.

Every now and then I zapped a bit of water its way with the hose out of sheer stubborn unwillingness to allow it to be dead. For three months. Nada.

A few days ago I was thrilled to finally get to wear a sweater again. Well, so much for autumn no matter what the fig tree or my sweaters may think because today we started a new heat wave. Again.

And…

…Look who showed up for the party. The top is still just as dead as it ever was, but every node where there had been a leaf is now sprouting the beginnings of a whole new branch. Overnight.

I sent that photo to my friend, hoping she hadn’t tossed hers?

She had not. She was thrilled. We are hopeful.

I have no idea if I can get mine to stay leafed out all winter? If I keep it right up against the house? Except that the contractors finally gave me dates and they want everything away from the house that can be moved and it’ll be about Halloween when they’re done.

We’ll just have to find out. Onward to next spring!