Went to the post office yesterday and was quietly admiring the sweater of the woman several people ahead of me. She had nothing in her hands.

The line did not move by a single customer in ten minutes and I was debating putting my boxes on the floor and pulling out the latest hat project. But didn’t. Finally it was her turn, and I couldn’t hear the conversation, I just got the faces and the tones of voice: sweater woman presenting what she thought was a reasonable request, clerk lady quickly turning to sounding like what I can only describe as almost triumphantly unhelpful.

Finally, the lady in the thick single-ply blue top-down hand knit gave up and turned to go in disgust.

I’m picturing myself back when they told me they could not pay out the insurance on a package that was a “this must never be lost” but was, and being blown off and being told it had to be missing for one more day than that before they could make good on it.

Five minutes after I got home I got the message that they had miraculously found it. Right there in that building after a month or two AWOL. I guess I’d put the fear of payout into them.

I hope they didn’t lose something she’d knit for someone.

Whether her issue gets resolved too or not, I wanted her day to go better than that, so as she went past me I asked her if she’d knit her sweater.

She had–but in her moment of trying not to voice how she felt at that clerk she took it out on the yarn: she grabbed a bit of fabric near her elbow and told me, Yeah, but it pills!

It’s beautiful! I said as she continued on by.

And it was.

And that’s the last thing she heard walking out of that post office.

I got the same clerk. She knew I’d seen all that. Maybe she even was glad I’d tried to make things better for the woman. Or maybe it was that because we were actually doing a transaction, her job required that she ask me at the end to click the pointer at the screen to mark whether I was smiley face or sad face at how I’d been helped.

Her face was such a funny mixture of pretty please!!! and this bared-teeth smile that was trying too hard that I fought back the ‘you have got to be kidding me’ impulse, the laugh-out-loud one, too, and gave her her hoped-for smile.

One for each of them. Fair’s fair.

So I was doing my walking time last night and saying a prayer, telling G_d the obvious and that I needed to know what to do about that water coming up into the rug.

Suddenly I knew. I KNEW. I mean, I didn’t know know but I knew!

So of course I ran to Richard to tell him that.

Well, go and look, then!

And there it was. The dishwasher was running and the water was streaming out underneath the sink to the ruined cabinet floor. Yes a $$$ major plumbing fix happened last month, but not that particular part. But that’s why I hadn’t thought of it, I thought everything under there was fixed.

I put my biggest dye pot underneath it. I didn’t know if it would run like that all night or just while the dishwasher emptied or what.

There were over four gallons in the morning. I couldn’t just empty it into that sink (actually I probably could have), I had to carry it outside. On second thought, I hope the detergent doesn’t kill the Chinese elm on that side of the house, I should have carried it down the hall to the bathroom but my back was distracting me.

A new faucet is on order.  The old one leaked a quart or two over the course of today, a whole lot less than I was afraid of, and I am not turning the dishwasher on again till the new Delta and its intact supply lines are in there.

Phew.

Two days ago I thought he’d spilled a glass of water  (“No…”) and dabbed it out with a towel. Yesterday my sock got wet again when I stepped on the edge of the carpet there. Today it was Houston, we’ve got a problem. The soaking went several feet wide now.

This house was built with the water pipes running under the slab but ours failed years ago. The then-plumber explained that the reverberations from one leak can make a weak old pipe give way in more places and in fact we had, suddenly, 16 of them. We could jackhammer the entire length of the house–or we could run new pipes across the roof.

Done.

And so here I am 32 years later, going, yeah we had a freeze, but there’s nothing under the house. The wall is dry. No sign of dripping through the ceiling. Somehow water is seeping up through the concrete from the ground, is the best we can tell, even though it hasn’t been raining. This is going to be $$$.

We tried to figure out who we should call for a problem whose cause we don’t know.

Well, a plumber would be able to pinpoint the sounds of the water if it has anything to do with pipes.

I’ve been pushing towels at it all day and the washer is running a load of them as I type. But I think at the very least we’re about to lose the carpeting in the living room.

So I did what one does in such circumstances: I went outside this evening, looked at my oldest Anya tree (2019) that didn’t get to go in the ground because it didn’t look as healthy as the other, but that could be because it’s been potted too long, and finally, a year after I bought a bigger pot and soil, did that transplant. By myself. Without telling anyone.

Those branches are fragile and so am I. It was heavy. That rootball was an impenetrable mass, no easing individual roots apart like I had intended, not while trying to keep it from falling over and crashing. I hope I didn’t leave bare spaces between it and the new soil underneath because air prunes off roots but I’m sure in some places I did. I ended up pushing the mass down with my knee from trunk to pot edge, around and around to try to connect it to below. And then threw those pants in the washer with the towel load.

It was all frankly a stupid thing to do because a friend told me he was going to get some kids from church to come do it for me, but I never got a firm time nor day. I didn’t want to pay another repairman, I didn’t want another major home repair (termites were $79k) and in that moment what I wanted most was the satisfaction of getting this one thing done that had bugged me for over a year so my plant could go live happily ever after and maybe even give me some fruit.

Besides, what are back exercises for.

It feels so good to have gotten it done.

I half-apologized and warned the friend from church so the kids wouldn’t be disappointed, and thanked them for the offer.

On a different note: fifty Bavarian sheep got distracted by acorns and then, they believe, someone carrying a bag in.

A feedbag! Thus suddenly they were checking out the inside of a grocery store. I imagine automatic doors were involved. Lettuce? Nah, go for the drinks.

Meanwhile, the shepherd in the middle of moving 450 other sheep didn’t realize he’d lost a tithing of his flock.

The grocery chain, rather than going after the shepherd for cleanup and replacement expenses, knew a priceless ad campaign when they saw the viral video, laughed, and said they would sponsor those 50 sheep’s feed for a year.

Loving, laughing, forgiving. Thanking.

Man, doesn’t it feel great.

I heard from two more Minnesota friends today. Love Thy Neighbor is what this whole resistance thing is about.

Bill Gold was a columnist at the Washington Post whom I read when I was a kid, probably because they put him next to the comics, and he started an annual competition for the best funny word: one where you change or add a single letter in a given word to play off the original and offer a definition for your new one. My memory is that the contest ended when he passed, but apparently the Post’s readers insisted they bring it back.

(He also had another wordplay contest that I still remember one entry to: “I dropped the toothpaste,” he said Crestfallenly.)

Here, go have some fun.

He worked at Trader Joe’s. He’s a little bit shy and yet has the most outgoing heart. He had a kid in college when we had kids in college and we occasionally talked parenting when the store was quiet. He liked connecting with people and asking their stories and went out of his way to make clear he was glad you were there, not some store-policy fixed smile but his genuine own. He might not start a conversation, but he’d be glad you did.

Then I didn’t see John for a long time. When I finally did again he explained and I exclaimed and I was so glad he was back.

His heart had nearly done him in. I’m not sure he’d even hit 50 yet. He’d been out for months. He was moving a little slowly and carefully now but he was back and working again.

Carefully.

There were some slower times when I’d see people huff and get in a different line and I wanted to tell them what they were missing. Their loss.

My times and his have somehow not overlapped for awhile now, which is a shame because he’s the biggest draw for that particular store. I figured his health had finally required retirement.

There were errands to run today and I really wanted to get them done because that rain was promising to get bad. (No flooding yet. Yay.) Pharmacy, grocery… Logically, it made sense to go to the Whole Foods with the underground parking and stay dry.

Something in me strongly urged me not to. Huh. Okay, whatever. I headed to TJ’S instead.

Look who was there!

Been a long time, he nodded with a warm smile as he started to check my stuff out. Old times all over again, man, it was great as we caught up a bit. Where’s your other? he asked.

Working. At home, I said, which answered any question about Richard’s retiring yet for him and his being there answered that question for me about him so we were even.

The next line over went faster but the guy behind me was in no hurry; his wife made a sudden appearance, put something new in his cart, and went off to find something else. He watched her go.

Then, seeing a lull in our conversation, he spoke up and said something to John and made him laugh. Watching them, it was clear they felt a longtime kinship, too, so I said to John, You make friends wherever you go!

He looked a little bashful and as if trying to explain to himself how that could be he smiled and said, in a tone of wonderment, I just show up.

That you do, I told him. Thank you.

And pulled my cart out the door and into the rain that looked a lot sunnier than a few minutes before.

If you’re going to be bewildered, at least have it be by something that doesn’t matter in the slightest, right?

I wanted silver. I settled for gold because I finally had my new post-op prescription in hand and I wanted my new, clearer eyesight and I wanted it now.

Oh Costco. Rose gold? With pink temples? That is not what I saw in the store. How did that happen.

I picked them up Wednesday night and waited till Thursday morning to start wearing them because the lenses were so different; I could have New Year’s Day to get used to them.

Today I saw more. Wait.

Who–seriously, who???–thought that a pair of women’s bifocals needed the joints where the temples meet the frame to be covered by–

I mean seriously–

metal teddy bear faces??? (I held them out to Richard and said, Please tell me at least those aren’t cats, no aspersion on cats but on stereotypes.)

No, those are teddy bears, you’re right.

I am dying to know who thought that that was the best possible idea to do to sell their product. It feels like a UC Berkeley prank in Stanford country: Go bears! Go Tree!

So, (whistling innocently) what are their cat’s-eye frames doing for their side hustle?

How’s the weather up there?

Do you play basketball?

How tall ARE you?

I get that people try to strike up conversations with those around them while stuck in lines, etc, but those same three questions across a lifetime, over and over and over and over and over…

I pulled out my phone and typed, Seven people in line in front of me.

Ouch, he texted back, I’m sorry.

I figured everybody was trying to pick up their prescriptions before the next week-long atmospheric river hits tomorrow.

A fairly tall guy was just in front of me. A taller one came up behind. They chatted a moment over my head. The one behind kindly offered to let me go sit down on that chair way over there and he would hold my place for me; I thanked him for the offer but was fine being where I was. We all went back to quietly waiting and reading our phones. I debated the ribbing of a hat but settled for the New York Times.

The one behind looked away from his screen for a few moments with a little bored sigh in his shoulders.

So I looked him in the eye and said with a grin, When we remodeled we put in extra-tall doorframes so my husband and son wouldn’t have to duck.

Instantly I was in the in group: I clearly knew what it was like even if I wasn’t tall at all. He laughed as *he* asked *me*, How tall are they?

6’8″ and 6.9″.

More laughter, then, I’m not that tall, I’m only 6’6″!

How often does he get to state his height with the word ‘only.’ Non-ironically, no less. He was having a good time.

The CVS clerk motioned me over, we got that done, I turned, and the man caught my eye and said warmly, Have a wonderful holiday!

You, too!

He’s in college and home for the holidays. His mother was one of the speakers in the main meeting in church and so his grandmother, whom I know a little bit, was there, too.

After the second meeting I went up to the two women: the younger one, to thank her for her remarks.

She had gone through multiple surgeries, she’d said, and was trying to sleep one night while fighting fierce, unrelenting pain. She’d finally prayed, I just want to sleep!

And felt the answer, Be willing to feel the pain. Acknowledge it. Live with it. Give away the fear of it to Me.

That was a reset, for sure, but as she tried to do that, knowing her Savior had felt all our pain for us, she was able to find peace at last and slept.

I thanked her for that because I knew that scenario well and that her words would be remembered and offer guidance to those who will find themselves there someday. It was a powerful talk.

But I had one other thing I wanted to tell her and her mom:

I explained losing my balance 25 years ago–and that with my foot in a boot, the tactile half of the visual/tactile feedback that realigns my up vs down was thrown off. I was trying to walk out of the chapel with a lot of people moving around me and nearly falling over at every step, holding onto the back of each pew carefully step by step. (Richard was in a conversation and didn’t see.)

Her son noticed. He stepped forward and asked if he could do anything to help. I explained my little weirdness to him and he asked, a little hesitatingly not sure he was reading this right if I needed an arm?

It took me a split second, but yes that’s exactly what I needed. I didn’t need to hang off his arm or anything and didn’t, I just needed to lightly touch it as we walked steadily together across the building. Piece of cake. I flashed back to the brain rehab of long ago.

He saw, he noticed, he offered, he meant it, and he made all the difference and I wanted to be sure his mother and grandmother knew that.

They were so proud of him.

Rightfully so.

Do you remember how, at the very end of high school, everybody felt so close to each other because we saw now how much even our more casual friendships meant to us and knew that we would never see some of those friends again, maybe even the closer ones, we just couldn’t yet know who those would turn out to be across the future?

Like that.

Post-Christmas gifting I looked at my boxes of apricot slabs, did the math on how fast I go through those, and knew they wouldn’t hold me till Andy’s Orchard opens again in May. And nobody sells apricots like his dried-while-dead-ripe slabs. Plus I wanted to pick up something someone else wanted who was going to have a hard time getting there.

Three years ago there was a cherry orchard next to Andy’s. The new houses are big. They kept the name of that farmer on the development but I don’t think they left a single fruit tree in place.

On the other side of his farm, driving down that newly widened and piped road, the open field to the right was rapidly turning into apartment buildings and closely spaced houses. So much change in a month. I turned the corner to the left around the end of Andy’s towards his store and thought, That cannot be good. That’s too many gone.

Stumps…

As I filled up my basket, the guy on duty laughed when I said, These are for my cousin-in-law’s mother-in-law… I laughed too and said, But she’s a really nice person, I love her! She’s flying today from Germany to her son’s house an hour away and is hoping to be able to get here before you close next week. I’m not sure she’ll make it in time, so I’m making sure she’ll be able to get what she wants.

One of I believe Andy’s crew had come into the little store in the middle of the conversation; the two men clearly meant the world to each other, and in those moments they included me in that palpable love, too.

Together they told me.

The closing isn’t just next week.

Andy will do one more season.

And then that’s it. The land is in the process of being sold. The neighbors who complained about being next to a farm, well…

But they bought houses next to a farm! I exclaimed.

They appreciated that I appreciated the absurdity of that. I mean, fruit trees! How intrusive is that!

I had had a feeling this entire year that this was coming, and soon.

I just didn’t want it to be ‘soon’ as in ‘it’s actually happening now’.

I’m just grateful we get to have one last year.

Before I get to what I’d planned to write about, Barbara Walker, author of all the knitting stitch treasuries that together are the knitters’ bible and inventor of the SSK stitch, passed away Sunday at 90 with her son by her side. She gave our world so much.

And on a different tangent.

It’s a little big (let’s be real: it’s huge) but I liked it. The style is a down-to-earth classic. The strap is wide enough not to dig into your shoulder, and, as it turns out it doesn’t grab and pull my hair like my current purse does. The organization, the softness they claimed (rightfully so–yay), its full grain…

I measured and checked sizes again and again. I was glad they said family-owned, not a big corporation, so I could order it in good conscience during the Black Friday sales. Because protests.

The zipper went across the whole freaking top, not just the middle third section like my Kate Spade. Finally! No spilling! And there’s a mesh holder for a water bottle, along with all the other little details inside.

But: Christmas morning I told him I’d bought that bag for him. I explained why.

I carry a purse everywhere. I want one stuff doesn’t fall out of, not just to have my wallet be protected but my knitting. (Which got dumped in the muddy driveway last winter when I pulled my purse across the steering wheel getting out of the car.)

A bag with its strap over your shoulder is the last thing he ever thinks of because that’s just not his life.

And that is why he has twice now left his travel cpap machine behind while flying. Both times we’ve gotten it back but that last time especially was a near thing.

It fits into my humongous new leather zipped tote. So still does enough of the stuff that I would need to carry on board a flight that it will definitely do. I will never ever leave my purse behind. We’re good here.

We mostly pick out our own gifts at this stage and tease each other that it’s from them, but, I don’t think I’ve ever seen my husband so grateful that I bought myself a present.

You could buy four of those and a fanny pack for one CPAP replacement.

The perfect Christmas comic, here. My thanks to all who work on the one day they’d rather not simply because people out there need them.

Edit: Let me add the text here. Picture four kids on a toboggan racing down a snowy hill, talking:

She was fairly confident the x-ray would show a hairline fracture, but it proved a 404: Not Found. Swelling only.

She exclaimed over my green Mecha hat on the needles, and I thought with a grin, now I have motivation to finish it.

She very much approved my Birkenstock clogs (she has the same ones.) Nice and solid bottom to them, good for this. But even better, this boot would keep me from flexing my foot while walking around and yes I should wear it to speed up the healing quite a bit. She diplomatically did not say I should have come in two weeks ago.

So I’m wearing it. My gift to Near-Future Me. It looks like a mini black snow shovel with straps.

Happy Birthday to our Maddie, and a Merry Christmas to all!

We’re supposed to get an inch and a half of rain overnight. That’s a major storm for us.

They had tented the drop-off area but it wasn’t needed just yet.

There had been two piles of stuff, good stuff, useful stuff that someone will love that I had deliberately placed in view of my knitting perch.

It was stymying me to have this thing that I wanted to get done left undone. With clouds low and darkening and after checking their times, I loaded up the car and finally made that Goodwill run. Nothing gets one going like a deadline. I did it! I beat the rain!

Look at all that cleared space to look at, opening up those creative juices.

At last I can really go knit.

My childhood self is feeling as gleeful as those little kids with their bells yesterday: look what I found! No Christmas is complete without a dose of Snoopy and the Red Baron. I bet one of my siblings can tell me which one of us officially owned that record but we all played it over and over.