Early this morning I went outside with a paper bag and scissors in hand and snipped off all the clusters of larger and near-ripe tomatoes from the Sungold to ripen them inside. Just in case. There are easily this many more still out there, but they were small and best left to chance.

It’s 9:40 pm and forget the forecast of 41, it’s 35 already out there. I think I got these just in time.

Oh and. You know how we replaced the double oven recently because it sparked and arced and tried to burn the house down and the dishwasher because it got caught in the act of scorching the floor? We got a recall notice Saturday on the new Bosch: its cord catches on fire.

California doesn’t need any more fires, thankyouverymuch. All of you in SoCal–stay safe.

Today the washing machine died. Again. We’ve had its transmission replaced twice already; I’m guessing it just really doesn’t like my repeatedly putting individual hand-washed items in on spin-only. Tough beans. I’m going to do it anyway.

Just not tonight, clearly.

I instantly recognized the logo and stopped in my tracks and guffawed at the sight: I tell you. Best. Product. Placement. EVER.

It was right at the edge of the walkway between the airline gates going off to the left, while, to the right, a long wall of plate glass windows let arriving passengers boggle at the immensity of the heights of the mountains that Anchorage backs up to, a world of deep, white snow and ice coolly indifferent to the needs of mere humanity.

Here, let them help you with that part.

Gloves.

Hats.

Socks.

All in a vending machine ready for you to choose your size from. (Just don’t think about those $numbers up there too long.) Whatever you packed or forgot to, you could walk out of that warm building knowing that now you could handle what you were about to face.

The little white plaque down there says, “YES. It really is made from bison fiber.”

Warm warm warm, soft, machine washable stuff, and if I hadn’t been on my way out of Alaska I might even have been tempted (heck, confess it: I was.) I know the owners of the company from many years at Stitches West and they are good folks. I bought my son-in-law some of their socks on sale last year. I surprised them with a copy of my book and they surprised me right back with a skein of bison/silk and when I protested at the difference and that that wasn’t fair to them they laughed and enjoyed doing so all the more. I like Ron and Theresa.

But I was going home to California (where the 39F on my thermometer right now is 43 degrees warmer than where we were a few nights ago), so I left it all for the incomings. They’re the ones who need it right now anyway. Winter is only just starting.

A group of one would guess Native Alaskans was taking pictures after Thanksgiving was over and they were about to leave the hotel, taking turns as to who was out of the picture working the shutter at the moment we happened to walk through the double sets of doors (those are everywhere in Anchorage, stamp the snow off your feet and shut out the cold before you enter) and into the lobby.

I stopped and asked, Would you like a picture with everybody in it?

They did not respond at all nor glance my way. I couldn’t be talking to them. I was a complete stranger.

I repeated the offer. I meant it.

There was a two-heartbeat pause, then a, Wait–what did you say?

Would you like us to take a picture of all of you together?

A one-beat hesitancy and then the decision was made, YES! Yes, please! An iPhone was handed over and they all squeezed in together. They had decided to trust us with that expensive piece of equipment after all, and after we handed it back another one got passed to me so that that person could have pictures on their phone, too. The second phone did the small whoosh sound with each click of that shot being sent somewhere (and I’d love to know how they pre-set it like that because my ancient 4S can’t do that. As far as I know.)

Happy to help. And we handed it back. Actually, I had Richard take them all and in hindsight… Everybody looks better in photos where the photographer is looking across or slightly up rather than way down, but ah well, the deed is done now. Now they get to remember that really tall guy and his pointing of view.

In those moments they had become downright bubbly in their unexpected inclusive new last memory of the moment and we were all friends as we continued on our way with a smile and a wave.

With me remembering a hike in the redwood forest of Muir Woods with our family and my sister and her boys years ago, when complete strangers stopped us where a dead mossy limb hung suspended over the trail and asked if we could take pictures of them. They handed us all their cameras both expensive and not and climbed onto or next to that limb in a happy lineup. Ride’em cowboy! They had so much fun posing in those shots that they turned it into a memorable celebration for us all, and I never even asked them their names.

It felt great to be able to pass that happiness on.

We went to the chocolate shop. Twice, actually, for Sam and me, the second time on our way home from the yarn store, where I looked for the softest wool and asked her which color her husband would pick out if he were there.

I took home skeins of something new to me but that I am definitely looking for again: Fourteen (referring to the micron count in the merino), by Juniper Moon Farm.

I did the ribbing that started a hat and then surprised him by saying I had a design question: beanie or cables?

Say what? Double take. I was knitting this for him? We confirmed that cables meant like on his wife’s sweater; “Cables would be nice!”

Alright then!

We played, we giggled, we wore ourselves out.

And we marveled at how gorgeous the landscape is. I remember the unending snow of New Hampshire as being dirty and gray at the roads’ edges as you go by, but everywhere in Anchorage was just enough, not too much yet, of the purest white everywhere, with the towering mountains the most perfect of all. I understood now how one could love this place in winter.

And why a few of the homes here and there are painted in cheerful tropical colors.

They took us to see the edge of the bay and our son-in-law pointed out the textures in what in summer were mud flats; now, though, the tide relentlessly brings in waves of crashing ice under the ice.

There was a stiff wind at the edge there, defining what cold could begin to really mean. We stayed just long enough for Michelle to snap pictures. We were well bundled but my hands were too cold to.

Left a little before dawn Anchorage time, got home 11:30 pm California time. Took a whole extra rollaboard suitcase stuffed mostly with that teals and white blister-stitch afghan that had been waiting so long to be delivered in person.

Bedtime for bonzo and more later. (Oh, and: it’s 40F out there. Normally I would find that quite chilly, but I made the friends who picked us up at the airport laugh when I exclaimed, No snow!)

I had to go look up Whistler’s Mother to figure out why this photo reminded me of it. This one’s colorized, of course, a la Ted Turner after he bought those 1920s movies.

And that is 1420 grams of Malabrigo Rios, stuffed back into that ziplock and about to go poof and escape like an octopus. 

She found me via the high school reunion messages and friended me and sent me a message: she was looking for my book. Turns out she’s a new knitter.

I promptly responded with, It’s yours. Happy Birthday.

And then I explained a little.

We were in French 2 class in junior high, stuck with the same teacher we’d had the year before for French 1: a woman I now see as terribly depressed, but in her classroom, we kids simply kept our heads down and tried to dodge being a target and there were a lot who did not continue on.

I remember a kid in Fr. 1 who, on being called to read aloud, made what to the rest of us was an obvious mistake, y’know, the kind of thing the other kids might tease him for–but what happened is that the woman demanded that he leave right now if he was going to be like that! “If you have been in my classroom six weeks and still don’t know that in French we…!” He was not misbehaving in any way. It was our first semester in a new language–what did we know? I just remember sitting there stunned. Way to make him want to learn, lady.

So here we were across the hall the next year and she called on me to read something aloud. Now, my folks had had a French couple come stay with us for several weeks when I was two, and I think again when their daughter was two so I would have been six? (Mom, Dad, am I getting that right?) And my parents talked to each other in French when they didn’t want us kids in on the conversation, making us keen to learn.

So I had a slight head start at least on accent on the other kids, and that teacher tended to see me as being less trouble than the others.

She called on me to read something out loud.

Now, there was this phrase that I’d seen a few times before but had never known what language it was in and there it was–it was French. Okay, that made sense. Having been immersed in phonics in elementary school, I dove right into it. The v came after the r.

English phonics. Just like that other kid had instinctively done.

Horse DOOvres. With an h, no less. There is no h sound in French.

The teacher roared in indignation, betrayed. The classroom was a mixture of loud relieved laughter that it wasn’t them and as much teasing as they dared say out loud in that classroom. This was the DC area and there were kids in that school whose parents attended embassy balls and political dinners and the like and were well familiar with such edibles, but not me at thirteen.

Charm, a desk or two over, whom I saw as one of the popular girls while I was not, rescued me with the quiet words: “Hors d’ouvres.”

Me, suddenly putting it all together, the sounds, the spelling–so that’s…! Oh! Then, brightly, helpfully, I echoed her. “Hors d’ouvres.”

The teacher grumbled.

I went on in French through my senior year in spite of her.

And horse doovres has been an in-joke with my husband for decades.

I’ve owed Charm a thank you for a long, long time now.

She marveled at my good memory as we typed, and I guffawed quietly and thought oh honey if you only knew. But on that one? I had been the target. And she had saved me from it. She was nice when she didn’t have to be, even risking bringing the wrath of that teacher on her own head for my sake back when we were all bratty insecure adolescents.

I owed her.

I found a project that should have been done several months ago. I just have to pick up stitches along the edge, and…

…leaning way over thataway and checking…

Buttons on the right, right?

He looks at me funny.

I need to add a button band. Buttons on the right?

And hearts on the left!

Me, envisioning that and doing a head tilt: Say what?

He pats his chest with a grin: Heart’s on the left!

OHHHH. Oh Okay. I was picturing you in an oxford shirt with little red hearts all over on just one side and not even on Valentine’s and it just wasn’t… And I definitely wasn’t going to add them to the sweater. It’s the apostrophe I missed. For once in my life I needed to add an apostrophe, not delete it like all those other superfluous ones running around out there indicating possession when the person meant plural, or substituting for the i in is. Heart is on the left. I. See?

Got it.

I actually made some noticeable progress on the afghan and it felt great. (After a four hour nap–not over this bug yet.)

Meantime, in case you know anyone with dyslexia, or just for sheer curiosity’s sake, I recommend this article. It says that the patterns of cones in the eyes (there’s a good graphic of them here* about halfway down) are supposed to be different between the two eyes so that the brain parses out the images via the differences. But the cones are lined up the same in dyslexics, so that mirrored images (think d and b) appear the same.

Fascinating. And they offer something one could do about it, with a simple flashing light. A little hope with your science.

*That would be at  https://askabiologist.asu.edu/rods-and-cones  but their website will not let me link directly to it.

Not a knitting day yet.

Two moments from the weekend:

At the 65th anniversary party. Was it the cane? My hearing impairment? Or her own age? She would later tell me her childhood memories of LA going black at night after Pearl Harbor–no street lights, no headlights, no house lights near windows, just a total darkness that was new and strange.

She had to ask me twice, even though I actually did hear it the first time–it’s just that it was so unexpected that I had no idea how to respond and I didn’t want to be rude by bursting out laughing.

Again: “Are you Frances’s younger sister?”

(Frances IS the younger sister.) “No, I’m her fourth child.” Alright, then! And the conversation moved cheerfully on, no harm done.

Thing the second. When we stopped by my uncle’s house, we surprised him by coming, even if for just ten minutes or so pre-airport–he didn’t know we were in town–and he surprised us with two bound copies of some essays he’d had printed. He needed a little help figuring out again just what the connection was to his late friends but he knew there was one.

He had been the mission secretary to our daughter-in-law’s great-grandfather. This guy, in the man’s youth. And then he was in the Army with Conway, the man’s son.

There were memories in those pages and he’d wanted his late friend Conway’s kids to have a copy and there we were. Probably the best Christmas present we could possibly pass along to them–not that we’ll wait that long. Uncle Wally is 94 and he’ll want to hear back.

Just let me finish fighting off this bug. It’s down to simple cold status today.

There were so many sick people in the airports, I forgot to wear a mask, and I bounced my nephew’s baby for awhile despite her cold: she was adorable, and she let me cheer her up even though she didn’t really feel up to it.

Today I know how she felt–it’s been awhile since I’ve been sick enough to sleep away nearly the entire day. And nobody to lift me up high and do head noogies on my tummy while making raspberry sounds. (Chicken soup, though, he did a great job adulting for me. Safer anyway.)

I prefer being just sick enough, if I have to be, to sit and quietly knit. Maybe tomorrow. Night night.

I got a few good photos of one of them, at least. Mom was always a blur of motion.

Here you go, though: Dad, at church before services started yesterday.

I hope I look that good at 91.

My parents celebrated their 65th in great style, first with family, then with friends on Saturday. One of whom pulled me aside and told me, Your parents throw a great party!

Today was the actual day. Turns out today was also my Uncle Wally’s 94th birthday, which we did not know, and he was having a get-together, too, so we swung by there for just a quick visit on our way home.

To back up a little: Friday, we got to the airport two hours early because going any later meant hitting the very worst of rush hour and there was just no way.

Then the flight was delayed two and a half hours.

I cast on a hat right at the beginning and knit. And knit. And knit. Grateful that it was a pretty hefty yarn and size 9 needles so that my hands could just keep going without needing ice packs. (Which is part of why I’d bought three more skeins of Malabrigo Mecha a few days earlier.)

The hat was finished before we landed: all but running in the ends.

We fell into bed in Salt Lake City at last at 1:15 a.m. (Sorry, Mom and Dad.) We shall not speak of the car rental agency that did not check the flight status, decided we were no-shows, and did not hold our car nor would they make it right by upgrading us.

My cousin Bruce and his wife were at his dad’s during our brief dropping-by, and she got a chance to tell me how much she loved the soft shawl I’d made her. Looking at her three years later, I’d say that cancer treatment definitely worked. The doctors do theirs, I do mine.

Suddenly it dawned on me–I hadn’t wanted my handknits in my check-in so everything I’d brought to wear in the cold and the parties was stuffed in my purse–and that hat was in there. I asked her do you think he’d like, and as soon as he got wind of that idea, YES he’d love…!

But the ends. This was not quite up to my usual. Did they have a big sewing needle?

Bruce surprised me by saying that his stepmom had taught him how to crochet, so yes, he could figure out the weaving the ends in on the knitting. Then he asked how long it had taken me to make that.

Boggled his mind. “That would be six weeks for me!”

His sister joined the conversation, the cousin whose son I knit a Christmas stocking for earlier, and loved that Bruce got that and then half-turned away so as almost not to say it out loud that she wished she had a hat from me too.

Well, I’d started another one but it was only just started.

Wait. I hadn’t thought of it since I’d packed for the trip, but, I did, I’d brought a baby alpaca lace hat in a deep burgundy and it was right there. She exclaimed in delight as I pulled it out and offered it to her.

It was a little small, which is why I’d never given it away but it had carried it around on various trips to colder places: often taken, never worn but maybe once.

This time our plane was only delayed about fifteen minutes. Fifteen more and that second Mecha hat would have been done. I’m going to ask her if the hat she got really did work for her once she saw it in a mirror, and if not, hey. We’ve got a backup.

It was so very very good to see everybody. Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad! Thank you for having us!

I’m picturing Maddy two weeks ago, rocking in toddler exuberance next to me: “Read it AGIN! AGIN!”

He’s about 13. He cat-sits, including for a friend’s elderly cat that needed its meds while its owner had to go out of town and who was very grateful to him for the help. Just a really great kid. And so it finally occurred to me that I could ask if he would mango-tree-sit, too, keeping it covered by night and uncovered by day.

So I sent an email to his mom.

And I got this note back from him:

——

Hello,