The pandas had their turn, now it’s the crows rolling down the hill of a windshield and rear window in the snow. The lid of the trunk just didn’t offer that same momentum, so it tried the next car.

Our own comic, grandma stereotyping and inverted needles aside. You do need a few more spiders if you want to create the golden Madagascar tapestry. (More details at Wired magazine.)

The pandas in DC sledding downhill backwards on their backs in the snowstorm.

And… I actually got some knitting done today. It felt great.

(The full moon with an atmospheric river last night.)

The algorithms are at it again. But then, who needs butter when you could have healthy vegetables with your fat?

I’ve posted the occasional picture on Facebook of my fruit trees and I’ve been poking around via Zillow at a few houses for sale, as I’ve mentioned. Facebook knows all and tracks all: I am told that even if you clear all cookies off your computer theirs will still be in there, hidden.

So. Clearly what I really really need, according to their ad, is a 40-acre avocado orchard in SoCal with a house with lots of windows looking out over the ocean!

My first thought was, man, that’s a lot of toast.

I didn’t even make the connection when I started up a loaf of sourdough this evening, the first one in over a month–till just now writing this.

We’re so not ready for contractors (not to mention, hey, pandemic) but we’re going to need one. The corian could be seamed, yes, but that seam clearly wouldn’t be able to support the weight of the smaller range that’s going to have to go in: we need to replace the countertops, too.

The old range has two burners out of five working again, just enough to take the pressure off the timeline and the quarantine pod.

I’ve been trying to get one definite thing done on the house every day to feel the progress so as to create more progress and am using the whole kitchen thing as motivation.

That sixty-five-year-old bathroom fan that is permanently open to the outdoors has *got* to go. Take a bath, feel a few raindrops on your head in the tub. Roof juice with your shampoo (not to mention a path in for moths where I hang sweaters to dry.)

But still, there are the things I can do. Michelle’s “Oh wow” as she came around the corner this evening felt really good.

For anybody appliance shopping, I did find this one review by a guy who’d ordered a 23″ cooktop and had gotten a 22″ one. It was written two years ago, so maybe the Trump-donating owners of Home Despot have improved things since then. Right. If there’s a paywall blocking you, let me quote:

“I talked to a store manager who actually told me that Home Depot doesn’t sell appliances – they contract to a third-party company – so they don’t accept returns. Then she said they might accept a return within 24 hours of delivery if I brought the super-heavy, bulky box to the store, but I’d absolutely be charged a $225 restocking fee. Website specs are misleading? Not Home Depot’s problem, she said, because I’d “accepted ownership” of the cooktop when I signed the delivery receipt.”

Sounds like a slam-dunk small claims court win to me but I figure that’s something to know and to ask about before you plunk any money down there. Maybe they’ve improved their customer service since then. But if you do go there–I’m not going to–definitely ask about their customer policies first and in detail and in writing.

The windstorm blew the covers off the mango tree. That has never happened before. It seems to have stayed just warm enough, though, but just in case I checked the lights and replaced three bulbs.

Rain and more rain.

A neighbor posted that she’d been given roses from the garden of a friend who had just passed away and was wondering if there was any way now to root them and grow any of them for a memorial bush?

Likely not at this stage, and I was frank about that, but I told her I had Root Riot plugs designed specifically to get cuttings to root and a matching seed starter tray to hold them up in and she was welcome to a set to try. Best to cut the bottoms and flowers off and keep it to a few nodes for the new roots to have to support.

It’s out on the curb waiting for her now, with a packet of tomato seeds tucked in a card (under the tray’s cover to protect it from the rain.) She wanted to try for five on the roses and I gave her all twelve slots’ worth of plugs and told her frankly that someone giving me a few extra tomato seedlings got me started on the whole veggie thing years ago so she was welcome to them.

Funky house find for the day (while wondering if the owner has any clue why that 11th picture will keep people from considering the place, and my apologies for its interruption. There is such a thing as too retro.)

Back to the house itself: not one but two koi ponds inside the living room–that’s one way to keep the herons and raccoons from raiding them–and a range that my husband’s Great Aunt Irma, born around 1900 and living in her parents’ frontier-era house in Downey, Idaho had one very much like when we went to visit her 40 years ago. I had never seen one like it. She took great delight in telling us of how she was able to bake bread for the amazed younger neighbors when the power went out, and demonstrated sticking her arm in to feel if the burning wood had gotten it to the right warmth yet for the dough.

Her neighbors thought but you can’t do that if you don’t know what the temperature is!

Her reaction: I most certainly do! I’ve been doing this all my life, and I know!

And she wanted to make sure we knew about that and how proud she was of this lovely old home her father had built when the railroad came through. He’d dug a well and the railroad had wanted water and so they struck a deal on just where it would be built. They had themselves a little boom town that grew around that whistle stop.

Now, probably everybody else knew this but me, but, it turns out you can have a new range like that if you want it enough; the Elmira company will even give you the woodburning oven feature if you want your bread baked just so. The Heartland company clearly made the particular one in that house listing, scrolling halfway down their blog page, but they apparently went out of business about a year ago. Which is a shame because that thing is a work of art even if it would never fit in my mid-century modern.

Everything old is new again.

For somebody else in this case.

After looking at too many real estate listings–we’re not moving, but knowing what the options are is always a good thing, and it’s become a bit of a pandemic hobby–I have a few questions.

Why on earth is it a thing to have a bathtub with windows that start right at the top of the tub?

Why is it that so many of those are in a corner and have windows on two sides of said tub?

Why do so many of such listings have zero evidence of there having ever been any window coverings on those windows? What?

Entirely outdone, though, by the loft master bedroom with a half-wall so as to overlook the front entryway, with clearly echoing acoustics.

And also, why are drab gray kitchens such a big thing?

Why did the only house with a double oven go for over a million? I mean, I love my double oven but I wouldn’t pay hundreds of thousands of dollars extra for it.

Why is it so hard to find a master bedroom and laundry and kitchen all on one floor for when you’re aging or you broke something and you don’t want to do stairs?

Guess we’ll just have to stay in our ranch right here. It’s a pretty perfect setup.

Did you know you could buy a cute three bedroom house in the middle of pretty much nowhere in Maine and pay a $199/month mortgage? Although I imagine you’d make up for it in heating costs.

Finished a hat last night.

One thing said in church today was that in this time of so much isolation, write someone a note. Reach out.

And so a note showed up on the doorstep next door, thanking the neighbor for opening the door to my daughter at 11:00 at night so that we could retrieve our groceries that had been dumped there, and with the note, a plate of homemade biscotti by said daughter. Who took great delight in going over there again, and then in anticipating their coming home to the surprise.

They were gone all day. They called to tell us that that plate of excellent cookies had been devoured the moment they’d walked in the door.

Second thing said in church today: one of the members had splurged on some food that was to be a particular treat for the husband, who’s been working covid cases in the ICU for long, long hours–but it got stolen off their porch.

The first reaction was anger and upset; the second was, but what if it was because someone is hungry? Because there are a lot of people going hungry right now. She tried to do a little something about it.

The end result was–well, it made the local paper.

And now excuse me, I’ve got me some more note writing to do while there’s a little time left in the day.

Somebody, somewhere, is finding $150 worth of groceries outside their door and wondering who their benefactor is while thinking, ‘hey, cool!’ I hope they really needed it.

I just spent 45 minutes trying to fight my way past Amazon’s circular website h*ll trying to report a Whole Foods order that’s listed as delivered when it was not–at least not at my house. I can get it to list every item as not delivered, but then when I ask for a refund it demands I return the item (and then would probably tell me I can’t return groceries, but never mind.)

Just don’t charge me for what I didn’t get. I can even give them the Ring history to prove it. No car pulled up. Nothing came.

I’m typing this while a bit ticked, all the more so because I’m really hoping it doesn’t come out of the pocket of the one who can least afford it (so just don’t mess up like this, guy) but I’m afraid it might.

I said to Richard, who knows that I remember what it’s like to be young and poor and that I am quite generous on such things, “And I went back and changed the tip to zero. Because I’m mean like that.”

At that he laughed and saved the day for both of us.

If those groceries do actually finally come I have a day to consider adding some level of thank you back in.

But the unrefrigerated shrimp that were a bit of a splurge will be going straight in the trash.

——–

Update: Michelle went on a quick walk and found them next door. I texted the neighbor, wondering if she was in bed, while Michelle went back over there and waved her arms upon seeing that she was up, she was on the other side of the window and the new neighbor opened the door and at the explanation said ohmygosh oh no those aren’t mine take them!

The frozen shrimp wasn’t even cold anymore. Trashed.

But I did put a bit of a tip back in over at Amazon. Because the guy did at least give us a good neighbor story for later, and he tried. Sort of.

Oops.

It was only anchored in two places instead of all the way around because I wasn’t actually using it on the mango, nor had I set up its replacement we got under warranty because of a ripped zipper–since we know we’re not traveling anywhere at all, I’ve reverted to frost cover layers with Christmas lights at night. Way cheaper to heat.

So instead I left the old one up to help me kill off winter weed season within its circle. Californian weeds have Darwinian survival to a science: their stabby little sprouts come up before the grass can while their roots can go 18″ deep to grab every bit of water there might be. Depriving them of even what rain there’s been has left me a spot of good ground towards the coming veggie garden season.

And now it’s picked its own spot.

Winds 40-45 everywhere around for hours, gusts at 98 in the hills. I woke up to a big branch on the laurel outside the upper windows there twisted completely backwards again and again. I didn’t know it could do that.

It did not topple.

It’s been so dry that the winds reignited unseen underground embers from last August’s fires and now the firefighters are fighting the CZU complex wildfire all over again on ten fronts and I feel for my friends up in the hills.

But unlike summertime there’s a big rainstorm coming in, Friday if we’re lucky, Sunday through next Thursday after that, nearly three inches’ worth. At long last. Hopefully. And that should do it.

So on a happier note, tomorrow’s going to be SUCH a great day!

And y’know? The frame on that Sunbubble is still in great shape. They don’t sell the covers separately. I wonder–there’s got to be a way I can cut the plastic away and set it up with birdnetting, and that would be absolutely fabulous to have. It won’t be as pretty as if they sold it that way but with the help of the tall guy we can jury-rig that.

Seven Big Boy tomato seedlings have popped up in the last 24 hours and they’ll be happy to take that nice cleared spot in a month or two.

I better move the thing back over there before it rains so I don’t have to fight round two of the pricker-stabbies.

Oh wait.

Might be a little less effective this time.

The New York Times has a story on the Emhoff/Harris family, with Kamala’s stepkids marveling over seeing their dad on CNN.

Turns out the daughter designs her own knits, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who went, Oh cool!

The son, quoting from the article: “I was a senior when they got together, and I remember I saw a tweet that someone did. It was a photo of Kamala at the Kavanaugh hearing, and someone tweeted, like, “I’d hate to have to look at that face and explain why I’m late for curfew.” And I was thinking, “I’ve literally had to do that.”

The Times asked the daughter what her dad was going to do now.

“I hope he takes up another hobby. I hope he starts knitting, like I do. I think it’ll be a good time for him to slow down and just, I don’t know, like appreciate life. And tap into a lot of the things that he couldn’t do because he was working so much or had these time constraints. I hope that it opens up some of those creative outlets, but that’s obviously just me, the creative child.”

And as I read I kept thinking, I can see why Kamala adores these kids so much.

Time to get that mole looked at. I’d put it off a bit but it was itching and it needed to get it done. (Not a recurrence of basal cell. Yay.)

What made it easier was that my dermatologist is one of my favorite people; we grew up just a few miles from each other and after last week we couldn’t help but talk politics just a bit.

It was no surprise to either of us but it was a relief that we are both so looking forward to having a peaceable man, an adult, and a person with governing experience taking charge next week at long last.

We grieved together for what was done, for what was lost, and for how bad it could have been. It was a relief to have someone from DC to talk to about it, even if just for a few minutes, while mutually mindful of her time and keeping it short. We felt seen.

We asked after each other’s families; like so many millions of women, she’s gone to part time to try to manage her kids’ schooling, but they really needed their classmate time. But the vaccines! Soon!

(This one on your back: you want me to freeze that off too while we’re at it?

Yes please!)

So if someone loses/breaks a favorite thing, not an expensive thing at all but with consternation because they really liked it and it’s not made anymore–and you can do something about it, I wonder: after jumping through the hoops to have something sent to someone else’s house on a different person/address’s credit card, does the packing slip give you away? Does the credit card company?

Because in these days of isolation and missing people, to be able to make that right and anticipate the surprise just felt so good. And it was enough.

I know, I know, writing about it here kind of misses the point there but it’s way more fun than talking about oh hey I patched up that divot in the yard I tripped and went splat over yesterday.

1. I did the first shingles shot over a year ago and was overdue for the other one. The healthcare provider’s office popped up an auto-notice that my tetanus expired last month.

You do not get near my grands without being up-to-date, not that we can visit them right now, but that was the incentive for me to get it over with.

The nurse insisted on one each arm, not together.

2. I thought about what Mathias had said. Seed starter trays and soil plugs arrived right on cue. I planted tomatoes (or rather, I tried to, they only seemed to actually be able to go in where there was already a hole at the centers.) We’ll make some green inside, too, honey, I thought his direction. And if they get leggy maybe I’ll even buy a plant grow lamp…except that what they need for growth I as a lupus patient need not to be exposed to, and how do you set up a lamp in this house where all its light would be contained and away from me on a timer. Not seeing it yet. Windows will have to make up for my failure of imagination.

3. I twisted my ankle in a good hard fall, more so than last night’s fall, neither one as bad as Richard’s falling over backwards three days ago, and why are we acting so old like that but never mind, icepacks and ankle braces and I’m good to go and he seems pretty much okay now.

4. And now if anyone asks me if the shots hurt I can say no that’s just the other thing. Go, get yours, if you need them!

5. Icepacks really work. I got off easy.

6. Can’t wait to see those tomatoes.

7. There are some pitted Anya apricot kernels thinking about sprouting in their zip locked paper towels in the fridge. I picked out the biggest. One was twins. I am intrigued as to whether that would have any effect at all on what they grow into, other than that most likely they’re duplicates of each other. There is so much I don’t know. I almost chose a botany major and I have at times over the years wished I had.

I could use me some spring right now even if I have to jumpstart it.

We might not be able to fly there right now, but today we got to see Lillian in that very brief stage of toddlerhood where she gets what this talking thing is, she wants to, badly, and she’s putting her all into it.

If you ask her a question and the answer is yes she nods her head so hard her nose points to the ceiling, then the floor, in slow motion as she watches you to make sure she got that right and that she has your full attention, and then she does it again.

We nodded our heads.

She nodded hers, so happy.

She picked up a book. We said, “Book!” Her eyes got big: we knew about those, too? She wanted us to read it but didn’t get that we couldn’t through the screen while she wandered, but she liked that word and she tried it again and again, pursing her lips as far out as they could go to make the sound and really leaning forward along with them but didn’t lose her balance. OOoo. (There may have been a b and a k in there too but I didn’t hear them.)

When her brother cried briefly she ran over to him, wanting to make it all better–and it helped. He wasn’t feeling well, but a hug from his mommy helped, too.

I was trying to come up with good questions to ask a three year old going on four come April to help out, too, and came up with, “What’s your favorite color?”

He told us green: because when it’s green again outside it makes everybody happy.

It just staggered me. How did he already know this?

(Update1/11: Turns out he’d heard his daddy talking about back in Alaska, where Mathias was born. A color that makes people happy? What better could you ask for?)

I heard back from my doctor’s office: whether I had covid in February or not is irrelevant in terms of my susceptibility to getting it again (I had told them I didn’t want to take the place of someone who needed it if I didn’t; they said, but you do) and so with my medical history I am in tier 1c and should receive my vaccine in a few weeks.

Very glad I checked.

The Washington Post was reporting on hospitals in southern California, where they’ve been far less compliant with public health protocols than the much stricter and earlier-onset ones we’ve been on, and they are now running out of oxygen to give patients and even the in-home concentrators like my dad was on before he died in Oct ’19 are in short supply.

If only the current administration were actually doing a decent job of rolling out the vaccine. (Today’s disclosure: rich donors were able to buy their way in in Florida.)

To which someone out there responded in the comments:

“Train Amazon drivers to give the vaccines. Everyone would be vaccinated by Saturday, Wednesday if you have Prime.”