There was a phone call, there was news, it’s temporary (you know, one of those learning experiences), but for the moment it’s painful for the sake of the person going through it.

Man it felt good to sit down for an hour afterwards and make more of something soft and pretty to put out into the world. To do what I can to speed up the healing.

I really needed that.

A friend threw a potluck tonight to go over the ballot issues via a lively 15-way discussion.

And…voices stayed understated, everyone was a grownup, but it definitely felt lively there for a few minutes after one person quietly texted her friend the candidate, who showed up and was promptly peppered with questions. (The hostess was, um, a tad surprised, but invited her in and took it in stride very graciously.)

Turns out another woman there was dead set against her (I was a bit stunned at finding out why)–and after hearing the three of them each speak their piece, that candidate very much has my vote. She’s the equivalent of Christine Blasey Ford’s mom’s friend, who in our local case spoke up for the raped 14-year-old for 18 months, hounding school board members and the superintendent, telling that other woman’s kid on the school newspaper that using the defendant’s lawyer as your source for saying it was consensual and not interviewing anyone who said otherwise is so not cool and you must publish a retraction. This is a criminal case and you are contributing to the continuing victimization of the victim.

There was a second assault.

She kept on pushing until she got justice and the school instituted some changes. And now she’s running to be on that board.

The principal who kept trying to brush her off, who put consequences on the victim alone and none on the perpetrator, no support whatsoever for the girl, ended up fired.

Yeah. You bet I’m voting for this woman. She’s got nerves of steel and she will do the right thing no matter who or what power stands in her way.

I’d been debating doing early voting but had wanted to hold off till that dinner was over, and I can’t tell you how glad I am that I did.

Another mango tree picture, for the sake of the wonderful folks at the county extension service and the UC Master Gardeners who helped me with my question re the Sunbubble and the type of heater.

You can see one of the smaller mangoes at the middle, front and bottom.

It’s just beginning to set more fruit in those clusters at upper left.

Pelmeni, it said. Russian-style dumplings filled with chicken, mushrooms, onion (so far so good) and…dill? (That last word nearly stopped me but I was curious.)

Poor little noodle. It was glorious in Italy but as it marched north its pace slowed and when France was no longer in sight its flavors jumped out the train windows in despair. A prisoner now in its Siberian surroundings, it did what it could.

And now you know the inspiration for the great Russian novels and why they’re always so mournful.

Their pasta is in a pickle. And the pasta is prologue.

That was the closest game of yarn chicken I have played in a long time. Six inches–less than the leftover length from the long-tail cast on. Definitely put that full skein to use.

Now for the quick soak and shake to let those stitches relax.

How hard is it to find a thing that works.

Plenty, turns out.

I spent several hours today researching and looking and trying to find a good heater for a small greenhouse. All I could find was cheap Chinese knock-offs that looked like the old tried and true but had dismal, awful reviews. Whatever happened to the ones built to last? To even work?

It finally hit me: Sears used to make good tools for the working man. You didn’t want to freeze in that garage with the door open to the world while you worked on that car.

And so I tried them, knowing full well their vulture capitalist CEO is trying to kill the company as fast as he can for what he can skim off the top and he’s certainly not putting any money into improving product lines.

Lo and behold. One color left: bright red. I can handle that. Stellar reviews. Hey. Happy reviews. One said, I tried all those others but this one actually works and actually keeps working.

So it will be my wistful wave good-bye to what once was, both Sears and decent appliance manufacturing standards, and it is on its way. Wish me luck.

All by way of saying, I’m going to have to let Eli gently down and tell him that (hopefully) I’m not going to be needing him to cover and uncover the mango tree when I’m out of town anymore: my husband told me he thought I should order that Sunbubble greenhouse and a good heater and not to have to worry about being here at the right time every single morning and night, flu or not.

Get the big one, he said. You know it’ll grow into it.

I finally let myself feel just how freeing that will be. The tree can just…quietly, on its own…do its own thing.

Christmas is coming early.

My husband’s the best.

The little sugar ants love the sweet-selling mango blossoms. Individually, they’re kind of their size. It’s a toss-up whether trying to pick them off damages more of the fragile things than they do–but sprinkle some cinnamon on them and they fall right out of the tree.

Which has cut down on their numbers, but still, just about every day right now I’m out there taking care of a few more. Get the scouts to keep the hordes from ascending.

There were floral clusters in nine places now, the biggest at the top where there’s the most sun, smaller and newer ones below. I checked those out to be sure.

And had an impulse, as I walked back in the door, to check my hair to make sure I hadn’t picked one of those up while looking through the branches. Yeah, no, I’ve checked before and there never is–quit being bug-phobic.

A few minutes later Richard had no idea what I was shrieking about but he did what I said and instantly went running and came back with a fistful of eye drops. I couldn’t see. There was this left arm over my face and I wasn’t about to move it.

Just one? Take the lid off for me? I was desperate.

Then, You want another?

Please yes.

It had fallen out of my hair onto my eyelashes and tumbled straight into… I’d suddenly had an ant walking across my eyeball. When I instantly closed my eye it was literally six feet, under.

(This got me to go look it up: ants have not just stickiness but claws at the end of each of their legs. Oh joy.)

I promise you next time I will check my hair. Promise.

I happened to come home from the grocery store exactly as she was coming out.

I have always waved to the neighbors and been the one to step across the wide street to say hi for a moment, letting them know they’re welcome anytime. Thus the memories of two moms and their small children following me to go see the dove’s nest on top of our ladder leaned against the back of the house, holding the little ones high so they could get a view of the baby dove peeking back at them from under its momma’s wing.

Today it was someone new stepping out of the house across the street who waved to me as I waved hi to her–and she’s the one who promptly crossed the street, holding her hand out to introduce herself.

I instantly liked her. No, she told me, the widower hadn’t sold the place–he was renting it to them, but with some work to be done first so they’ll be moving in the first of December and she was quite excited about it. The kids could walk to their school. She loved the neighborhood. She was clearly glad to meet a friendly face right off.

We chatted a moment. It there still a pool in the back yard? I wondered out loud.

Yes, there is!

I told her that the then-ten-year-old living there (the not-yet-a-widower’s son) had been in it when the Loma Prieta quake had hit and it had whooshed him right out of the water.

Omigosh! Her eyes got big and she laughed. Surf’s up!

That house has been quiet a few months now, with a worker’s truck in the driveway by day and emptiness by night.

I can’t wait till they move in.

One week ago, a name popped up in the comments on a Facebook post and I did a double take. We instantly friended each other, and I got to read about a few of her experiences with Catholic Relief Services in Africa. (Do you still go by Katie? I haven’t gone by Katie for 35 years! …I’m behind…)

Then yesterday she posted a picture inside San Francisco airport–because the airline had lost her bag and she was going to have to go fast to buy some clothes before the meeting tomorrow in…

And I went hey, that means you’ll be driving practically right past my house!

Which is how Katherine, my friend since junior high and whom I had not seen since high school graduation, carved two hours out of her very busy trip and spent them today with me and we caught up on forty-one years of life.

“You kind of disappeared,” she told me. I did. I married at 21 and then school and grad school and being broke and kids and distance and we simply didn’t get home for a long time and have never been there for long when we are. I have not seen my favorite mountain laurel in bloom but for three fading tiny blossoms on a single cluster since I was 18.

She married late and no children came, but he was the great love of her life. To describe his generosity, she described his knitting: she was one of six children and there were all these nieces and nephews on her side. One Christmas he knitted them all mittens.

Double knitting mittens. Twenty-four pairs!

Twenty. Four. Pairs. Of double knitting??

I was completely boggled.

He was completely adored.

Ten happy years. Then his cancer. Even in hospice, right to the end, she said, he was knitting for others.

And he loved my friend Katherine and that alone would have been good enough for me. I so wish I could have met him.

I told her, My memories of you from junior high is that you were always nice to everyone. Without fail. At a time in life when kids are so easily snarky and mean you were unfailingly kind.

She was someone I wanted to be a lot more like. Still do.

I sent her back out into the world with a copy of my book and some knitting (thank you for the gorgeous yarn, Lisa!) of my own.

Alaska Air reimbursed her on her clothing purchase.

It was their baggage handling that sparked us those two marvelous hours.

A chocolate tasting party: bring your favorite or your favorite creation out of it or just bring you.

Now that is an idea I could really get into, and it is safe to say I did. It was an excuse to get to know some women better, and what better way to do so?

I might not sleep tonight but it was worth it.

It would be a chunk, but maybe it’s time. I looked at these mango-tree-shaped plastic greenhouses last year but they were brand new with zero reviews and I wanted them to have a little more history first. Now they do. I do like the idea that even I could set one of those up fast–and I could take it down in spring and summer.

I’d have to get a different heating system that could handle the space, though (while not damaging that plastic.) But the tree wouldn’t need the daily babysitting, if this could work, and it would get every bit of morning sun to help ripen its fruit.

Anyone with any experience with such things, greenhouses, heaters, please let me know.

Felt great to feel good today–just a bit tired first thing but that wore off, so we went to church with face masks on both of us just to keep our friends on the safe side.

I was afraid H’s mom had already flown home, but no, there she was. Turns out that although she mostly quilts and crochets, she knits, too, and she was gobsmacked that I had made her this softness and that her daughter and I had plotted together on the color. She instantly put it on and proudly wore it the rest of church, even though it was thick Mecha and it was 76 out.

I looked and looked for the woman who’d exclaimed over my half-done yellow cashmere I’d started for her last month and finally resigned myself to taking it home yet again and hoping for the next time.

We were maybe three steps from the entryway by the door to leave when the hall door opened and she was backing up against it almost into me with her arms full. Turns out she taught one of the primary classes.

THERE you are! I’ve been looking for you! I pulled her cowl out of my purse, stuffed into a small ziploc.

She almost cried. She told me her elderly mother had been diagnosed with colon cancer this past week to go with her other health problems and it had been very hard. “Your timing is perfect!”

She said it again, marveling, and gave me the hug that was really most of all for Someone looking out for her up there in those moments who knew more and deserved it more than I ever could. Her favorite color was supposed to have been sold out before I ever even saw it listed. One cone suddenly became available at the moment I signed in to Colourmart that day. It’s hers now.

So now I understand why I couldn’t find her earlier.

Oh! I almost forgot–there was a middle-aged woman I didn’t recognize with small children whom I did, and before church started she was trying to calm the toddler down. He was okay while they were in motion but not once she sat him and his baby brother down. Routine was Mommy and Daddy here once a week and this was someone else and not how you do it and he was Not Having It. I mah MAHMAH!

Turns out, yes, they were out of town and yes, she was the grandma holding down the fort, glad to connect with another grandma as I brought him the most colorful finger puppet in my purse, a parrot with bright red-white-blue stripes in its wings and yellow in its tail and beak. And another puppet for his 20-month-old best buddy who’d climbed under the bench and suddenly popped up onto it to stand there next to his sobbing-suddenly-not-sobbing friend. Hey! One for him, too! (In no way was I about to instigate jealousy between the two.)

I was back in the aisle just as 92-year-old Jean was coming up from behind with her walker.

“If I’m really good can I have one too?”

I guffawed. I didn’t even know she’d seen any of that. I dug down in the purse for whichever Peruvian hand knit treasure should come up.

“A honeybee! For your garden!” Jean’s garden is the great passion of her creativity.

I think she really was hoping for one of those bright parrots, though.

Looking at these other two bees just now, I find the stitches were pulled shut at the bottom–oops! Not a finger puppet! That’s a first–clearly she needs a do-over.

I also need to make that other grandma a cowl, quick. Washable looks definitely the way to go.

I apparently broke off the head of one of these via the frost covers going on and off, but I think we’ll do okay. This is the farthest along of the inflorescence, with most of the tiny flowers open.

Not yet over here. Nor below.

There seem to be more buds sprouting out in new places each day that we go over 80F. (Today was not one, but tomorrow will be.)

I’m trying to think up a better way to protect the tree from the cold without having to keep its light cut off until the day warms up enough. Obviously, though, it’s survived just fine on my system. With the tenderness of wintertime fruiting, keeping that constant warmth is the biggest thing. The six–edit, seven mangoes tucked under those leaves (found another one) like these warm days.

The tree is clearly, in our climate, not going to be one that produces everything at once and then makes you wait a year for more–it’s more like every branch takes its turn setting up shop. Which is actually pretty perfect if you ask me.

Anyway. It just makes me happy, so I thought I’d show a few more pictures.

So I have this new homeowners insurance policy, new company, same agency I’ve had forever.

I got a note from the agent: the company wanted to know why I had a mailing address that was different from my street address? Was that where I wanted my mail sent?

Wait what?!  Where on earth did they get that? No, we’ve lived in this house 31 years and have no intention of moving, where did that come from?

And then I looked up the address he’d referenced. Bffffft!

It was, get this, not only in the next town over, it was the chapel there of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. They were billing the Mormon Church for our house.

I emailed the guy back and told him just where that address was.

He burst out laughing, he told me.

Just like I had.

Did the church have a policy through their agency? The insurer? I wondered. I told him, I actually am a Mormon, but I go to the one in my own city. (I didn’t bore him with the details of, except for the biannual stake conference–that’s there. The family history satellite center, too, for anybody at all who wants to access the huge genealogy database.)

He had NO idea how that got into the system, just, none, and neither did I, but he was happy to straighten that out for me, and now he’s got an office story for the ages.

Flu week: when it actually feels good to be able to sit up and pay all the bills. So weird.