I had a tree service person here twenty-odd years ago, and given that so much of the Californian vegetation was so exotic and so new to me, when he was done with the job at hand I pulled him around the yard and had him name everything in sight for me. I knew I would never remember it all, but at least some of it would stick.

He was delighted at being able to be a teacher in the moment to someone interested in everything that his life’s work revolved around.

We had an elm? I thought all those were dead!

No, this was a Chinese elm. They’re not affected by Dutch Elm disease.

Oh cool!

Once a year I participate in the UCSF study of lupus long-term outcomes; this year’s  didn’t involve traveling to San Francisco, I only had to spend an hour on the phone answering questions. Easy enough.

They always insist on giving me a $25 gift card as thanks. I always try to tell them not to and that I’m certainly not in it for any kind of payment; they always say it’s already a done deal, sorry, take it.

And so an Amazon card arrived in the mail. I’d already forgotten about it and it took me a moment to put context to the envelope. Ahhh. Yes.

David Sibley is quoted on Amazon saying that after all these years studying birds, well, you do see a lot of trees in the process. And trees hold still while you’re trying to sketch them, and they seemed the logical next subject somehow…

Eight-three cents on my credit card to bring up the difference (a few cents cheaper in tonight’s listing), and “The Sibley Guide to Trees” showed up on my doorstep yesterday, two pounds four ounces’ worth of them right there in person.

How many books are that potentially useful for your whole life? Did you know there was such a thing as an ape’s-earring tree?

———-

p.s. Did you see the little three-year-old bridesmaid in the picture, a millisecond before the first royal kiss, holding her hands hard over her ears with a face clearly demanding at the cheering crowd, “It’s too loud! Make it stop!”

Second p.s. The resident female Cooper’s swooped at something clearly on the roof above me as I looked out across the patio from inside, and I suddenly got a notion of what it must be like to be on the receiving end of that speed. Wow. (Speaking of which, I added a link in yesterday’s post to Eric’s photo of Clara strafing Glenn as he climbed back up City Hall; don’t miss it.)

And third p.s. The squirrels eating the calcium-rich fire brick? They’ve not only started again on it for this year, but they’ve carved off two big chunks. One ran up a tree with one, looking for all the world like it had a large pastry in its paws as it happily nibbled away.

And… One squirrel has been gnawing away at the metal barbecue grill. Iron deficiency, maybe? Sharpening its teeth for the hawk? (It wishes!)

Maybe we need a forest animals book next.

Zofran, an anti-nausea med, is a wonderful thing. I just need the earth to roll over in its bed a few times to get over this. I’m at least not as sick as yesterday. My in-law who wanted a chemo cap, meantime, called to report that it had arrived safely, that it fits her just right, and that she feels very elegant in it. I could not have asked for better.

Thank you all for all the well-wishes. It helps, it helps a great deal. My apologies for not doing a good job of answering, and now pardon me, I’m going to go fall back into bed again.

Doing my treadmill time last night, I was pleased at how energetic I felt. It had been a really good day.

Today so much not. Woke up with a sore throat and fever and the lupus went bonkers. I did a little email and put myself back to bed.

It went downhill fast from there. I couldn’t get up, I couldn’t even lift the phone from above my head in the headboard to call Richard. For hours. I finally willed myself to anyway, because it was so bad that the will to live kicked in and made me.

We just got back from Urgent Care and two IV bags of saline; my kidneys are working now, the heart is behaving, but if tomorrow is like today they want me to come back and get more.

I had Richard bring along a shawl project with me in case they admitted me at Stanford, but they didn’t. Hope springs eternal: can’t go anywhere without my knitting, even if.

There was a mini-conference today set up by the Lupus Research Institute, so I set my alarm for early this morning and went.

Until Wednesday, no new treatment for lupus had been approved, not for lack of trying on the part of those in the lab, in over 50 years.  Daniel Wallace, the rock star of lupus researchers, told with frustration of how one company had recently carefully followed all the FDA’s guidelines and had spent many many millions of dollars, only to be told that the third FDA president since they’d started had now decided to shelve it for reasons that many felt were very wrong. (And I personally know a patient who went from the normal person I knew to severe brain damage symptoms akin to late-stage Alzheimer’s, to being blessedly, miraculously normal again during the trials of that drug that is now denied to her and her good, supportive husband. I have not seen her since.)

There was an outcry. And the FDA finally paid attention to the disease.

So now there is Benlysta, and great hope–and more new drugs in the pipeline, at long long last.

One of the people who testified before the FDA for Benlysta’s approval was on a panel that spoke today. Another was a patient who’d been in its trials.

What I didn’t expect, though, was to get to have several minutes of private conversation, after most the others had left, with a gentleman (and I use that word to convey my very great respect and admiration for him) whose name I missed, the head of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

He in his own remarks to the group made clear that stem cells can now be made from adult cells. No embryos need be involved.  This goes far beyond lupus; this is everybody. Californians voted for this, the State of California will get 50% royalties on all patents from this, and it is already returning $4.50 for every $1 spent on it.

The state isn’t exactly swimming in cash and the funding was to be re-voted on after ten years. That will be 2014. He wants the word out: there is great hope that we could cure many diseases and that treatment will bring down medical costs, as well as vastly improving the lives of those treated–and their families by extension.

First they had to build the buildings; they did. Then they had to hire the researchers. They have been. Talent has come in from all over the world to pursue their dream jobs of doing real and lasting good for one’s fellow man.

Sixteen million people in California with chronic diseases, he said. And all those others who will get a disease that could become treatable. We can do this.

A house finch (ironic, that), was probably artfully isolated from its flock and was fleeing the Cooper’s hawk at full speed when it hit the window.  Boom! It died instantly.

I turned at the sound, one I rarely hear anymore, but my motion startled the hawk out of its lunch and I caught just a glimpse of the banded tail as it went off through the merest opening in the trees. Mad flying skillz: I haz them.

Oh well, it won’t have to expend much energy to retrieve its meal at the pick-up window, I thought.

Says me. The squirrel didn’t get the memo. I saw it dashing up my tree with its fast food carry-out a few minutes later, running as fast as it could as far as it could to get away from anything that might steal its happy meal with the prize inside.

Yes, they do eat birds, it’s the catching them that’s why you just don’t see it. It continued far, far down the telephone wire as I watched, outraged, thinking, you don’t even live here and you steal my birds’ food? I mourned the little red finch.

That did it. I fled. If I’m getting ticked off at the wildlife for being what they are it’s time to put me around people and friends and take a deep breath from everything that has nothing to do with squirrels or birds–Purlescence, here I come.

What a relief.  I plunked down on the floor there, trying to keep out of the stream of sunlight from the door, grabbed the yarn Kaye and Sandi had gifted me with on Thursday, and cast on.

Pamela’s granddaughter, age 3, smiled at me and waved hi shyly. Totally charmed me.

It felt like a long time since I’d knit a lace shawl. It felt so good. Something familiar, something new. Kidsilk Night–never worked with it before–with Alpaca Fino, slightly lighter, making the silk look even shinier, the combination Sandi’s idea. I’m not a glitter person but this project could change my mind.

The yoke is finished now and it’s one of those moments where you look at your knitting and think wow, have I ever made anything this pretty before?

And here’s the funny thing: it’s gray, smog gray.  It’s not my color.  And yet. There have been a few times when I’ve knitted something whose color I normally didn’t like but that I knew that the person it was for did, that while I knitted it with them in my mind, wrapping wool around wood for them personally with each stitch, it was the most beautiful thing in the world to me then. And to them, too, when they got it.

But did I want to knit up the leftover yarn afterwards, all that oh-so-beautiful yarn I’d been loving?

Nope. No real appeal. Totally gone from me the moment the project was given away, back to just not my color. But for the time that it needed to be, it was the best one in the world to my eyes and in my hands.

As this is. I can’t wait.

(Ed. to add by the light of the morning: it’s dove gray, the color of the bird of peace.)

Thank you, everybody. I was doing better today but was afraid to push it, so I waited: I had Knit Night coming up and I really wanted to be able to knit there but I also knew there would be a lot of knit/stop/laugh/knit/stop/swap stories going on at Purlescence to keep me from overdoing it–and it was so. It was the best way to ease into it. (Pass the icepacks.)

It was so good to be among knitters. Including one I haven’t seen in far too long–I didn’t even recognize Ava at first, visiting from out of state.  She, bless her, recognized me.

I am so glad I didn’t let a little lupus get in the way of my going!

I’m not knitting.

I have a rheumatologist who, the last time my lupus attacked my fingers, exclaimed, “But you NEED your knitting! We have to *do* something!”

And with that, he finally got me to try plaquenil, an antimalarial drug that, like aspirin, nobody reacts to, and as long as you get your eyes checked regularly for retina damage, everybody can take it.

And you know how well aspirin and I get along. (A thank you forever to my ENT and to heaven above for the rare chance to thank Rachel Remen in person as well; story in that first link.)

I got the most massive case of upper-body hives and we crossed another med category off my list.

I knitted yesterday anyway when I had a half hour wait at the pharmacy and then just couldn’t do it again. Hopefully this will all be a very brief interruption, but I’m afraid to push it for now.  I’m realizing I was getting casual about sun exposure: add it all up and I might have spent ten minutes outside in the sunlight yesterday, way beyond my safe point, rationalizing about the low UV levels this time of year. The cage does get old. And there’s so much that’s so pretty outside in a California winter.

Well, hey, there are other ways to be creative, and desserts have been calling me. Here’s one:

First, turn off your hearing aids, this is going to be loud. Ready?  Okay.  Frozen strawberries, a little sugar to taste, add some cream in the food processor.  Whirr for about a century, stopping every now and then to break up the strawberries that are absorbing just a bit of heat from the friction of the blade, (or maybe I just have to do that because my Cuisinart is very old), whirr some more till it’s smooth, serve immediately and there you go.

I used to use egg whites to make it a non-fat strawberry mousse, but after my daughter drove her friend Natalie to the hospital for salmonella poisoning during the egg scare last summer (no no she didn’t eat here), I’ve stopped doing that.

I handed my sweetie his.

“This is better than usual!”

Yes, well. Cream does that for it. It’s the side effects you have to be careful of.

Here’s hoping a good night’s sleep will leave me embarrassed for saying anything too soon and that my hands will be fine in the morning. I’m hoping.