I went to the audiologist this past week, concerned that perhaps my hearing was getting worse?

Looking the thing over, it only took him a moment: no, actually, the problem is this is broken.

With my pair of hearing aids, there’s a speaker in the aid itself, which is normal, and one in the earmold too, which was a novelty when these came on the market three years ago. (Maybe it still is, I don’t know.)

The tiny filter piece had gone missing, I knew that, and for all I knew it was still in my ear. He looked: nope. But under where it was supposed to be there was supposed to be a spring keeping that first speaker at a particular distance but that speaker was quite dislodged. The only thing for it was to replace the whole thing.

No earwax in the way, good: and so he injected my ear with pink blob and had me wiggle my jaw around while it dried to help shape it so as to be comfortable when I’m talking or eating. The model got sent to the manufacturer and the whole process would take about a week.

I had him make two, as long as he was at it, both of them going further into the ear than my current ones. We know from three years ago that doing this delivers a lot more sound. But also that they hurt to wear if I’m not really really careful, because of the whole connective-tissue-disease thing that wants no pressure anywhere especially from hard objects like these. No fiddling with the things. This time, at least, I know all that going in: if I irritate anything it means several days of not wearing them at all while it settles down and maybe even having to give up again and go back to shorter ones, so let’s just not. I want to hear everything possible.

This could actually be the start of things being much better–I think I need to tamp down the hyperactive hope a little bit because after all, once I get used to them they’ll simply feel like normal. But a much better normal, hopefully.

So you heard it here first: when it comes to hearing aids, I totally broke the mold.

Growth happens at the top and the tips.

So, y’know, you kind of squint at that first peach tree, picturing the possibilities of, if you prune here and here, how will it shape its future self in response. The bud on this side of the limb will grow in that direction, the one a little lower on the other side, that’ll grow in the other and you don’t want that because you want the center opened up so light will get in and help make all the fruit sweeter. The sun is magical like that.

I need another growth bud over thisaway and honey there ain’t one.

That top got pruned last summer and still it’s way too high now but they say you don’t want to take more than a third of the tree away and there’s a lot of it up there.

You consider all these things and walk back inside with none of it done. Monday. Monday for sure. I need more staring time first to try to picture it all so I do it right.

(Well, that sounds good, anyway. I think I’m just a little afraid of it, and writing that out loud makes it sound as ridiculous as it is and easier to just get to it. Thanks, blog: I needed that.)

Really? Polyester and it’s not wash-and-wear? The site had said, simply, washable, the little stinkers.

Part of me was actually pleased, truth be told, it meant it would look new a lot longer.

I hand washed a whole lot of things today.

Water at tepid, (cold is for silk, never wool) suds revved up, put the sweater in and cause as little agitation in the water as possible, let it soak awhile, remove from the sink while the water drains and refills so it’s not subjected to the rushing motions around the tap and the drain, lay flat and pat into shape to dry, preferably on a mesh screen or the like. Repeat with merino skirt.

It occurred to me yet again the thought that this is a luxury of middle age, to be able to wear so many things that need to be handled this way, requiring individual care and time. There is no baby to interrupt the proceedings for hours at a stretch or to pull themselves up via the iron’s electric cord, no three-year-old to grab the drying sweater and fling it around lasso-style over their heads galloping down the hall pretending to be a cowboy, no teenagers slamming their backpack down on the kitchen table needing soothing words and the surprise of ice cream and the presence of someone who cares no matter what.

Just me making sure this comes out without shrinking or twisting and with that smudge of peanut sauce from last night carefully removed from that white silk-and-cotton. Then washing that silk shirt and that one and putting them in the washer at the last only so as to spin them out in the no-spray cycle. (Habit. Woolens are the ones that need not to have water spray coming at them.)

It’s a luxury and a loss all at once.

I picked Richard up a little early as the traffic time estimate climbed. Somehow, for all the craziness that is rush hour between San Francisco and south of there, we got to Afton and Neil’s hotel within a minute or so of what we’d planned on–how, I don’t know. I’d left home over an hour and a half earlier.

Our friends who scuba dive in Bali love this one Indonesian restaurant in the City and that sounded good to them. (And it was!)

I’ve known Afton via online knitting groups for at least 15 years, probably more like 20, but the only time I’d gotten to see her in person before was when I went to Stitches East ’08. I’d never met her husband nor she mine.

Stories were swapped and good food shared and a great time was had by all–and then Afton swiped the check rather than letting us pay our share. The little stinker. I got back at her, though: I reached into my purse and pulled out the edges of two cowls and of a ball of green yarn that was becoming a third one, without even saying what they are because color is everything: Choose one!

Ohmygoodness I didn’t bring anything for you!

You gave us dinner!

Well, okay, then. She debated, loved the green (and it matched her handknit sweater) but went for the navy Epiphany.

There’s no more of that yarn to be found, I told her–Cascade discontinued it after its second mill run. Royal baby alpaca, cashmere, silk. By way of saying, this really is a one-of-a-kind.

Looking on their website, they do seem to still have some inventory in an earthy–gold? How would you describe that one? (The dress is white and gold! No, blue! Never did get that argument–the dang thing was purple, or at least the cropped version I saw back then.)

Anyway. And then I handed her a skein of undyed light brown cashmere, the first yarn plied on my new electric spinning wheel. Just because I could. So there.

We had only just gotten started when we dropped them back off at their hotel. So glad for the time. So wishing there were more.

I have missed my treadmill time. The doctor forbade it after my concussion Thanksgiving night for as long as I had symptoms. I tried a few minutes here and there the last week or two to see if it felt okay, and finally today I did nearly my normal amount. It was surprising how slowly I had to start.

But man that felt good.

My endocrinologist retired and before he left, recommended the Sweet Young Thing coming in as his replacement.

Today I saw Dr. SYT to get acquainted and go over a little medical history.

I did quite a bit of knitting as I waited in the exam room, picturing her stuck skimming through that little encyclopedia.

We talked bone densities and past steroid doses for Crohn’s and the fact that I have autoantibodies for hyper- and hypo- thyroidism and what was showing low right now (oh it is? Wasn’t, last time they checked.)

Tell me, she said: Do you feel cold all the time?

I so did not expect that. It was all I could do not to burst into laughter so loud the nurses might come running in to see what was wrong. Oh honey, asthma-attack-force guffawing if I let it escape. Oh. My. Goodness. !!! I pictured the floor-to-ceiling windows all over my house, the silk t under a silk-blend nightshirt under how many layers of blankets, including wool, and not my usual one but two handknit wool hats on for a few nights there and loose wool socks on my feet and still not being able to fall asleep for hours for the deep chill till I finally rebelled and said, Dude. Our utility bills right now are a quarter what they used to be. Can we PLEASE turn up the heat?!

Sure, no problem! It hadn’t occurred to him. It was cold?

Lesson learned: never, never go to the post office on the first business day after New Year’s. I hope the guy behind me in the 20-minute line (with zero sense of personal space) didn’t catch my cold and I sure hope I didn’t catch his.

One woman, turning away at last from the understaffed counter, looked for a sympathetic face in the crowd and exclaimed to me, “Twenty-five minutes in line!”

(I was nearly up, clearly I was getting off easy, myself.) More fun than worrying about the loud guy on the phone with the loud cough was getting a chance to answer her. Pointing at one of the boxes I was dealing with, I said that my five-year-old grandson had left his most favorite rock, his pet rock, at Gramma’s. It had sparkly bits. I had it wrapped up as pretty as I could in lots of colors and it was going home too now.

She loved it! It was exactly the relief she’d been looking for when she’d said that. Made her day, which made mine.

I didn’t say that it was Parker’s gold-panning souvenir, that he’d been told he could take one (just one!) home, although that does definitely make a good Californian story. But we were there when he got it, and I was here to get it back to him.

Finished a cowl, rinsed and spun it out, laid it out to dry and went looking.

My needles have all this yarn and nothing to wear.

I know exactly the shade of blue I want to start in on next and why and I have it, too, just, in a worsted weight when I want to start with something lighter.

Hmmm…

There was this sweater. This screaming-hot-pink-fuschia sweater, 70/30 silk/cotton, and though it would have been just the right color on someone, that someone wasn’t me. 

Enough other people thought the same thing that the price dropped to something like $15 and I thought, I know how warm and comfortable and useful those are and I do have a dyepot….

And then it sat there for a year, nagging me. Every now and then I would pull the little UFO out and hold it up to my face in the mirror, look a moment, think, you wish!, and put it back. And feel guilty.

My daughter Sam is knitting these days, and Colourmart had a big sale on some vivid red dk weight cashmere that was the mill ends of the mill ends. I checked with her and then bought her a monster cone for Christmas on the grounds that if she didn’t like the color when she got here I would overdye it for her.

You see where this is going?

Now, I can’t do a thing about that yarn right now because of the current lack of a functional niddy noddy. (Where DID that piece go?) But I could play with the concept, and I’d be better off if I did–I have black dye in my stash but I use it very very very seldom and am less familiar with how it plays with others than I’d like to be when dealing with precious cashmere.

That sweater had never been worn, just to make sure it would be totally clean when I got to it. I handwashed it to get any mill residue off and to get it good and soaked (silk resists water at first) and then, wooden spoon in hand, I put/pushed it into the ready, simmering darkened dye bath as all-at-once as I could get it to go, stirring immediately to open it up to avoid streaks.

And it came out really evenly.

Or not.

This is really weird.

The camera flashed it back to closer to its original color, which is funny, and it shows as darker where it’s wetter after being spun out, but in real life it is one solid reddish rose slashed by darker lines in a very regular pattern.

How on earth did they spin their yarn? Because this wasn’t my doing, this was the manufacturer’s: my solid crewneck is now striped. How did that happen!? Okay, the cotton wasn’t going to take up the acid dye, just the silk and I knew that going in, but one would expect the two fibers to have been combed together, not partly combed but mostly alternated. Huh. Well, none of it is the original color now so some silk did get dispersed throughout. But it’s the strangest thing.

What’s also strange is that it is blissfully soft now in a way it wasn’t before. I have an old book somewhere on the properties of silk and I need to go find it.

Then, just because I was curious, I threw some more black dye in the pot, since the first seemed to have all been taken up, and threw in a red sweater to tone it down a few shades. 60/40 silk/cotton on that one. From the same company, a few years older. Came out a more subdued red and as evenly and perfectly even as if it had been sold that way, exactly what I’d hoped for.

But that first one. So strange. I will definitely wear it, even though I’m not a big stripes person. But I’d love to know why it came out like that.

I got the Christmas stockings put away in their bin.

The hearth looks so bare.

I was going to start in on the tree… Looking at it a moment, I instead turned the lights on and let it glow. One more day won’t hurt.

Negative on the giardia, just a regular stomach bug and it’s almost over.

But still, we were going to fly to my nephew’s wedding tomorrow but there is no way we’re risking spreading that germ.

Southwest has the most customer-friendly policies out there, and the end result is that the day started off in profound disappointment and gradually, email by email, morphed into one of oh I can’t wait! And I’ll not only get to meet the bride after all, but see people dear to me that I wouldn’t have otherwise. Good times coming, definitely.

Happy New Year!

Beaver’s Disease–what the Alaskans call it (I learned something new this week.)

Giardia–what my microbiologist daughter calls it.

And in a moment of supreme irony, since none of us saw this coming when we were talking about it…

A possibility–what the doctor called it today (“Have you been up in the mountains?” Yes) as she wrote out the lab order.

Parker exploring Grampa’s spinner toy over the weekend. A fellow enthusiast!

Today was our last day with the happy couple, the other faraway kids having already flown home.

It’s so quiet.

Alright, so, one little boy’s favorite rock needs to go in the mail back to him, stat. Are there any small boxes we didn’t recycle already? And that long-de-glued niddy noddy that I always had to put the one piece back on the top and that was always a pain for the first few yards of winding hanks of yarn on because it wanted to flip off–thankfully, the little boys discovered the thing and that piece is nowhere to be seen and gosh darn, I’ll just have to buy a new one! So sad. Not.

There was another great joy that took place this weekend that I haven’t mentioned till now.

There were airplanes today, lost luggage, and now we just have the last two for a few more days.

Michelle drove John to the airport for us while the four of us took off after lunch for the coast.

He (I forgot to ask permission to say his name) had never seen the redwoods before. We hiked through Memorial Park a bit through the towering ancient trees, having the place nearly to ourselves in the cold.

They went a little ahead down to the creek, where he splashed his hand in California water and pulled the one piece of manmade this-does-not-belong-here out to let the water be freed of it.

We followed the signs along the trail in search of the park’s tallest redwood: there, up ahead, thirty-nine feet around, 225 feet tall and 1600 years old, solid and sturdy and lasting through storms and lightnings and fires, steady through every blessing and every stress of life.

It seemed the perfect place to take a newly-engaged couple’s photo.

There was a name on the bench with a fresh soft yellow rose by it. Should that family ever see this photo, please know that we bowed our heads a moment at your loss and moved the rose back to its rightful place at that center spot afterwards. It bore silent testimony that love is simply who we are and what we have.

From there we took him to see the ocean as we get to see it, warning him that no, it’s not warm, not at all. Again, he touched it and made it a part of himself too now.

He is so good to our daughter and they are so happy and we are so happy. We get to have him in our family! So. Much. Joy.

Yesterday, Parker wanted to go out to see his apple tree. His daddy explained that we have winter up here and what that meant but he wanted to see, and being ever ready to share the joy of my backyard orchard, especially with a grandchild, I went outside with him to inspect how the Fuji was doing.

It did still have a very few leaves left clinging. The other deciduous trees were bare now but one. So we talked about all the fruits and each in their season and all that was fine with him for it to be that way, he wasn’t disappointed like his father had been a little afraid he would be–he was simply learning new things. Winter bare, not from a book but in person. The leaves fall. Spring will come back when it’s time.

There was actually some fruit and greenery over to the left but he knew what those were and they didn’t interest him.

Today seemed like the right day to ask him: “Would you like to pick a lemon?”

His face lit up. “And make lemonade?!”

Me, grinning back: “And make lemonade.”

The Meyer happily had a few right in his reach. I mentioned it had thorns and to watch out for them and he was fine. He walked around the back of a peach (the Tropic Snow) to get to–oh wait, he liked that one next to it even better. It only just now hits me that I had said a lemon, so a single lemon was all he expected or took. Unlike sharing apple slices around the room, this was just going to be between him and me.

It took some pulling and a bit of branch coming with it because the lemon tree wasn’t entirely ready to let it go yet–but this early, they’re closer to pure lemons and less orangey. He skipped a little happy dance all the way back inside to the kitchen in great anticipation.

I found a cup-size strainer and showed him, bringing it down to his eye level again and again, how it caught the seeds and let the juice run through. See? More seeds on this other half of the fruit, too.

I added some water and sugar. Don’t skimp. He’s only just turned five. I poured half the lemonade into a second cup for me, tasted it, and added more sugar to his cup. Mine was sweet enough and very watered down and his definitely sweet and with great enthusiasm he pronounced it wonderful.

Meantime, Hudson was the ever-cheerful, outgoing little boy he always is even when he’s tired. Always ready to laugh. Always willing to wait his turn when I pay attention to his sister a moment. He’s an amazing little two-year-old.

As I sat on the floor, Maddy crawled up to me, patted me on the leg to get my attention, and held out a hand expectantly in clear expectation that I would blow on it. I did. She grinned. A few minutes later she stood up with her mommy holding onto her hands, let Kim let go, and instead of plopping right back down to safety or the highly tentative shifting of her weight onto the next foot forward she actually took two solid steps on her own coming towards me, falling down finally on the third. So close.

And given the sudden wail of frustration out of her that took us by surprise, I think she suddenly realized that she actually wanted to walk. That this was going to happen even if it meant giving up the comfort and safety and speed of the crawl. She needed this.

Soon, little one, so very soon.