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.

The incoming storm was dark yet the yard vividly bright in contrast. I found it a surprisingly hopeful metaphor.

And there is nothing like a group of small children given bells to enthusiastically ring as they sing their best Christmas songs up on the stand in front of everybody. Their arms go, Look, I can hold mine higher than you! Well I can hold mine wider than you! Well my stuffed bunny can ring mine better than you can! Well I can sing louder and roll my eyes better at you because I’m two years older!

The adult grabs their attention by waving her arms a little more vigorously and they all focus a little more on Silent Night-ing with their voices and un-Silenting their enthusiastic bells. Rrrring!!

Little kids. They’re so human, and so funny.

So the latest and greatest in the tire world is that you order what you want for the car you have at costco.com, they ship them to that Costco, and you wait for an appointment. No more of their stocking random everythings and hoping they’ve got people covered.

Seventeen days.

I showed up 40 minutes early, which confused the guy but I wanted to drive there before the projected eight straight days of rain began. I wanted only dry pavement under those old tires, glad for the heads-up from my mechanic that they needed to go.

Man, it felt good to have that taken care of.

I sent off a couple of texts and got no response. C’mon, pick up your phone, hon.

I came home to news of an ambulance ride hastily followed by (he’d just gotten off that phone) And everything’s okay now. People had gotten a little overexcited at a fainting over a needle draw.

Okay then!

Suddenly, sitting in the chair at Costco’s Optical Department knitting for two hours while people wondered who the heck you were and why you were  sitting there demo’ing green yarn didn’t seem at all like a hard way to have had to spend the time.

I guess it was the day to be a spectacle.

Christmas party, dinner served, chocolate tortes consumed, an announcement made, a young friend unexpectedly grieved, stories shared of good friends and good memories, it ran late because it suddenly had to. G’night.

Sepsis.

Love your loved ones. Love your loved ones. Please, please, love your loved ones.

I saw the guy ever so briefly past the window. I went outside.

It was a mailman I’ve never seen before–tis the season for extras–and he looked to be in his 80s, a stooped old guy. That was a surprise. I picked up the mail he’d just left and hearing me, he turned around to offer one more thing.

Because you cannot risk leaving a to-be-cherished Christmas present out where someone could just walk off with it, is all I can guess, and maybe those last steps to ring the doorbell at the end of the day at the end of the route felt like a bit too much? He was clearly relieved to be able to hand it directly. He loved my, Oh cool! when I saw who it was from.

It held a single skein of hand-dyed yarn from Karida Collins of Neighborhood Fiber Co in Baltimore. She had taken a break and dealt with health and when she re-opened her business I’d ordered that one little bit just to cheer her on.

Clearly, whatever was in there was too valuable in the old mailman’s eyes to be left unguarded. Neighborhood. Fiber. Good things!

Karida’s going to love that.

I haven’t opened it yet. That mailman’s smile convinced me it’s for Christmas.

Clara Parkes asked today if there was a time when darkness, however one might choose to define it, had made the light more clear.

I answered with the following story from 2003. I probably said it here years ago but in case not I want to make sure my kids have it, so here goes.

—

I was in the hospital fighting for my life and a nursing assistant was assigned to me who was a mess. She was clearly depressed. She had a thick accent and hated that I had a hard time hearing her (hey, I have a hard time hearing anybody.) She hid her badge to avoid her name being reported for lashing out at patients.

I resented the fact that at a time when I was so ill and in so much pain I should be stuck with someone like her.

But I also had time, while there, to think about it. I couldn’t do anything about whatever her situation was–but at least I could say a prayer for her. It couldn’t hurt. Why hadn’t I even thought of it earlier.

The next time she came in was at a peak moment of difficulty for me and in spite of all my best intentions I snapped at her. Before she’d even said anything.

To my surprise she didn’t snap back–instead, she looked terribly, terribly sad and turned and fled the room.

I felt terrible. I was the one with the good life and support structure and I was taking things out on someone else?

The next time she came in the room the nurse who also happened to be her boss (I didn’t know that) also happened to stop by steps behind her. I apologized to the NA in front of her, and said, I was mean to you and you were nice to me in response. You didn’t deserve that. I apologize.

I later told that nurse that I was glad that the woman had had her there to witness my saying she’d treated me better than I’d treated her.

That’s when I found out the NA was already in the process of being fired for her treatment of patients. The nurse knew it was depression and had been trying to find a way to reach her and help her. And here the two of us were presenting the NA to herself as being better and kinder than how she’d been seeing herself.

I later went back to the hospital with a stack of handknit little items for the people who’d taken care of me. I assumed the NA was gone by then, but just in case, I had a hat for her.

She wasn’t. She saw me from down the hallway and came RUNNING and threw her arms around me! Wow!

She was saved by my having lost it.

My portion of my late dad’s art arrived today.

I had previously had a few paintings shipped to me and they’d arrived carefully cushioned inside thick cardboard boxes. So that’s what I was expecting.

After I’d pre-paid the shipper he happened to mention that it was not going to be delivered inside. The driver’s contract stops at our garage door. Although, I could hire their other guys at our end to bring it in for us.

Sure, how much?

My brain refuses to remember how much above $600 he said because I instantly said no. I could call in friends if need be; I could carry those boxes myself, even if it might take me awhile with a bad back. Could they give me a warning once they actually hit the road with them, since the delivery day was uncertain. I knew it was a twelve hour drive.

They did not do so.

This morning, there was their delivery guy in my driveway with three big wooden boxes just past the sidewalk. Heavy and nailed shut. Holy cannoli. And I thought I had it all planned out where the items were going to go. As if.

I walked back in the door with the guy’s piece of paperwork and said to Richard, who is limited by having once broken his own back, We’re in trouble.

Walked back out and shook my head as I read the weights Sharpied onto them: 207 pounds, 201, 109. Clearly, the boxes themselves were a great deal of that weight. Someone with the skills could easily rework them into furniture.

The young driver was blown away at being met by only this little old lady. He just couldn’t leave me like this. He insisted.

I had found yesterday (because I so seldom use them) that I was out of checks–that was stupid–and he’d gotten there before I had any chance to head to the bank for replacements like I’d planned.

He simply said, Pay what you think is right, and started working that first box forward, twist and push, twist and push.

Wait, I said, running to get the dolly. It helped for the first two, with me helping as best I could, but he thought it too small for the third and put it aside. The low raised step into the house was the biggest challenge. Even he had to stop and breathe a moment, but he did it, he got them all in just inside the door. I thanked him profusely and emptied out my wallet as he watched me searching for one last ten or twenty to throw in there, but at least there were quite a few. Richard added his twenty.

I’ve iced and stretched my back while praying for that guy’s all day long. He didn’t have to do that. But he did. I so much want him to be okay.

Richard got the drill out after dinner. He wanted to make sure everything looked good in there, and he removed all the nails along the tops.

Those guys did a good job protecting everything.

And then, immediately after saying out loud that I was going to have to be careful not to drop that heavy board from the biggest lid on my foot…

We know the drill by now: if I did break it it will hurt worse and more specifically tomorrow, and with that we did not go to Urgent Care. Yet.

What I most want out of those boxes is the painting that I had loved but that had had a several-inch tear in the canvas. My brother has the skills and he repaired it for me and touched up the paint there. You cannot see where and would never know if you didn’t know. That one means a lot. I want it on my wall first.

I think we’re done lifting for tonight.

(Ed. to add in the morning, I don’t think it’s broken. Yay.)

There was one more thing I’d been wanting to do since late summer. Michelle and I drove to Andy’s last week and this was one of the reasons why I’d wanted to go.

A Christmas card. A pretty little bag.

Inside, two small half-pound boxes of figs stuffed with dried peaches plumped up with honey, candied orange peel, and nuts. I look forward to these every December. They were so popular last year that I entirely missed getting any and I wasn’t going to let that happen again.

But also, since that surgeon had become an instant Andy’s fan with that first peach he’d shared with his wife, I wanted to make sure he knew what else that farm can do.

The second box was for his nurse.

The card read, One last thing…

He’d told me with great love, “I never want to see you again! For your sake” after finding no cancer and not having to do surgery.

I didn’t see him. Nor his nurse. That’s okay. The receptionist asked me if I was there for an appointment? and then took that bag with so much joy for them at someone coming back to say thank you. At her wonderful boss being recognized, and the nurse, too. She had no idea what was in there, but it was the being there that mattered. She made sure my name was in there for them before she let me go.

Her love on their behalf will carry me forward through so much. Just like theirs still does.

$395 later, we have a working dishwasher again. Yay.

(When the rent is too $!$!! high, so is everything else. The average for a one-BR 649 sq’ apartment is $3007 here.)

(Nighttime photo.)

It amused me no end and I went to take its picture. Where did I put my phone… And then I got distracted to something else.

There had been a pair of pomegranates hanging onto the tree that I could have picked weeks ago but I’d never gotten them past the critters long enough to see how long they should/would stay there if I let them. I had a small pop-up style birdnetting tent–not over them, trying to balance it in those branches was too fiddly, but sideways with the fruit sort of just inside the bottom of it and the top of the tent facing the fence: En garde! (Autocorrect added an n. I am much amused.) I knew they were accessible but the critters who could reach it didn’t have to know that from their favorite runway and I knew they did not want to be in a cage.

It worked!

Michelle’s a fan of pomegranate juice and on her last night here I squeezed the ones that had been kept in the fridge, and that was as much of that work as I wanted to do at the time.

I checked. The two on the tree were still there.

This morning she was back in Boston and some sheer curiosity got me to go outside to check those fruits again.

Picture a little kid on Christmas morning tearing open a present: the strip of wrapping paper still attached to the tape in their hand while the box falls away. That’s essentially what was left: two stems, each with a thin strip of the bright red outer rind.

While all of the rest was utterly gone.

I laughed. The timing! As if they’d only been holding on for her! How did something get to both of them among those thorns, how did it eat that much? I wanted to get a photo. Didn’t I put it–where was it? Huh. Whatever.

We were just sitting down to dinner when something just really nagged at me and I apologized and said, I have to know if I left that phone in the car, I haven’t been able to find it anywhere. He said Go ahead, and meant it, so I got right back up from the chair I’d just sat down in.

It wasn’t in the car.

It was on the ground in front of the passenger door for all to see where it had fallen out of my purse when I got out this morning.

Had I waited ten more minutes there wouldn’t have been enough light left to see it there and I might well have stepped on it going to the car door to look. I’m just glad it was still there.

Thank you pomegranate silliness…

No water coming out of the air intake at the top of the sink? It’s the dishwasher, not the pipes.

Got that scheduled.

Off to the clinic, where I told the nurse dilating my eyes, My calendar says Dr M followed by a quick check by Dr. R but only Dr M shows on my online appointments and I did see R a few weeks ago when there was a problem. Will I be seeing both?

Oh yes, she assured me, we always have you see one and then briefly the other when you’ve had the two surgeries done in tandem like that.

Dr. M came in, was pleased with my progress, went to go and I confessed to having knit each of them a hat. And that I’d then kept on going, so, choose a color?

There were five (there was also a dark blue), with a sixth color on the needles.

He loved the dark green stripes. He was thrilled.

That was fun. So I waited for his colleague to come in.

And waited. And knitted. And waited. Eight rows.

A different nurse came in, flustered, not sure how I would take the awkward news that I’d wasted my time and saying, You don’t have an appointment with Dr. R. He’s seeing you in March!

That’s fine, I assured her. I explained about having confirmed with the original nurse but it’s no big deal–just, could I ask her one favor?

?

Could you take these to Dr. R and ask him to pick one? (I figured she could interrupt him at a more knowingly timely moment than I could.) Meantime I would go to the waiting room to get out of the way.

That instantly changed everything, and when she came back to me she was radiant.

I would have sent her off with one, too, but I was afraid of a contrast between that and the unknown nurse who’d given me understandable but wrong information that perhaps had tied up their room, and I let the thought go. Didn’t know her name, didn’t want to take the other one’s time chasing people down again.

Still wondering whether I got that right.

But she was already showing me that making him happy had made her happy. She made it be enough.

(Mark my calendar. March. Two nurses. Maybe more. Be ready.)

Our house is reminding me of the two-year-old Chevy we bought in the late 80’s that quickly got us introduced to every tow truck driver in town.

So.

Still waiting on the Speed Queen dealer to answer my I’m-no-longer-asking re dryer replacement. I sent off a firm note yesterday. A few hours later:

E:24, it said, and being the Bosch of us refused to go any further.

I cleaned the dishwasher filter again. I turned it off again. On again. Reboot.

It worked up to the same point as last night and then for the third time, that same error code. And we have our dairy-allergic daughter in town for a few days and really really don’t want cross-contamination happening–we need that dishwasher.

Not draining, explained their troubleshooter page, asking, Did you recently get a new disposal? Then the installer didn’t remove the cap.

No, but we had the entire plumbing under the kitchen sink replaced October 15.

Richard had no doubt that was it before I’d even Googled.

I didn’t remember the name of the plumber nor could I find his workup sheet. I was sweating this.

Yay blog: I found the date. Yay plumber: he’d sent me an email receipt.

I called, and if you know me you know how desperate I am to get this done to do that, but thankfully the person who answered had a deep voice and we muddled through.

The work had a 30 day warranty.

The guy hedged. I said point blank, Having it nineteen days out of warranty on an eight hundred dollar job bites.

He sounded almost relieved, like I’d just made up his mind for him, and said he’d send a guy out to do diagnosis first thing in the morning, no charge. He said something else, and I couldn’t make it out, and I am hoping hard for no surprises.

So we have to be ready for a repair guy at 8 a.m. who might not get here till close to when I have to leave for the eye doctor’s but Richard will be here and they’re coming.

XKCD today. I love how the older memories are in gray, the more recent in black and white and easier to see clearly. Pure poetry. I love the confirmation that his wife is still okay. Beautiful piece and very close to home.

Meantime, over here it looks like all systems are go! We’ve got us some memories to go make.

Scene: the bank, since I was in the neighborhood anyway and I needed to get this dealt with. We had had a very unwanted surprise bill from FedEx for a tariff fee on the heels of a delivery and it was a lot.

Then 47 played Taco Don (Trump Always Chickens Out) and that particular tariff, at least for a little while, disappeared.

FedEx sent us our hundred dollars back. Who knew it could work that way? Only, the check was made out to Self. Do not ask me why. The teller had to ask his manager because that was just too weird–but then this whole tariff/no tariff/who’s got the tariff nonsense is weird. We all shrugged a who knows? and they processed it.

So there we were and then the teller, who up to that point had seemed stressed and probably counting the hours till he could get out of there, said dutifully, Is there anything else I can help you with?

Well, I said: Could you make me a couple of pies?

He cracked up. He smiled warmly. He asked after my Thanksgiving and I wished him a happy one and it was so gratifying to be able to pay forward the gift yesterday from the single dad at church to someone else when they needed that.

A night of very little sleep (too much dark chocolate pie last night but it was good), a morning that started earlier than it had any right to even though it was our usual time, so so tired but it was time to get up.

A few minutes later I saw it before he did.

He had stepped on who knows what, but since he couldn’t feel it he didn’t notice it. It was even a whole new toe to worry about, not the old one. I followed the blood across the hall, across the carpeting, so much on the carpeting, and then where it had obviously started. It was bad.

I’m tired of collecting Southwest future travel do-overs.

He cleaned up his foot while I tried my best to clean the carpet. It was too early to be having to work that hard and that much. I did not succeed in getting it all. It was time to go, and we made it to church on time. Breathe. The meeting hadn’t started yet so I pulled out wool and needle and started casting on a hat because boy did I need my hands to switch to the language of happy anticipation.

He tried to tell me I should be setting up my phone for the Zoom caption. I told him I was doing this (waving the needle) for me. Which was nicespeak for (and we did talk it out over lunch later), I am just barely holding it together right now worrying about you and being frustrated with you and this is how I am not bursting into tears out of sheer fatigue and worry and yes you are right and I don’t want to hear it while I have these thirty more seconds to do this so zip it buddy.

Just then someone dropped a little notecard in his lap and smiled and continued walking on past.

I put my yarn away the moment it looked like the meeting was about to start and, for the sake of the both of us,  just immersed myself in the good spirit that others had brought to the moment. It was there, waiting for me to find myself in it again. And what a story one woman told of the power of Love and the redemption wrought in her life!

After the meeting, we finally opened that envelope.

It was a handwritten note. From a single dad.

Saying how much he enjoyed and admired Richard for this, me for that, and that he had just felt moved to say so out loud.

I sought him out afterwards and thanked him. I told him, You could not have known. You had no way to know. But that was the day we most needed what you took the time to give us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.