Just for fun: my cousin Dan, a math teacher, got his puzzle published in the New York Times.

While I marvel at the political puzzle of the day, political junkie that I am. Eric Cantor, the man so close and so desperate to be Speaker of the US House, down in flames, defeated in Virginia’s primary today by an unknown with almost no funding.

One commenter on the Washington Post explained his vote between the two Tea Partiers: his neighbor recently stepped into a local shop and did a doubletake and exclaimed, It’s Eric Cantor! (Surely expecting a handshake, because that’s what politicians do on being recognized by their constituents, right?)

“That’s *Congressman* Cantor.”

Interesting times.

If you’ve got a primary still coming up or a runoff, vote! Eighty-six percent in Virginia did not, and by staying home today they made history. And elected a Brat, perhaps this time in name only. (Edited to add, or maybe they painted themselves a Rep. Brat who’ll become an old master at the fine art of politicking.)

It totally caught me by surprise. I had forgotten all about it.

I was cleaning and organizing and there, hidden away towards the day was the Christmas present. Now, it’s a family joke that I hide them so well that I find the smaller ones especially throughout the year after people were supposed to get them, but this one. Tears leaped into my eyes–I did not expect that. Stop that.

But it staggered me a moment. I had ordered it for Michelle, wondering if she would like it, if it would be too Mom, but it seemed such a useful little thing.

It was, basically, a lunch bag. In the form of a small canvas tote, insulated, offwhite with blue handles, a mini-me of my then-knitting bag (before The Purse that I got for Christmas). She’d had issues with the cafeteria at work via staff who didn’t get that allergic to dairy means butter, cheese, milk, every possible form and that yes just a little bit does matter. The safest thing was for her simply to bring her own, and so, very often she did. An insulated bag would make it easier and I’d thought this one was cute without being cutesy.

It came.

And I think it was the very next day…

I looked at that little tote and it hit me all over again how deeply grateful I am that my daughter is still alive and I once again said a prayer for all the others, the families, the other injured, the dead, the cops and the firemen who had had to see it all.

Last week she finally was able to begin to work again. Part time. From home. The commute would be bad enough, driving home after sitting for hours too much, but oh, at long last, as she’s so much wanted, she has started to begin again.

Hey kiddo it’s yours, you want this thing?

We were out taking a walk this evening and went a square block further over than we have in awhile.

Someone else is living my dream. We had no idea this was there and we wondered how recently it got set up (probably very recently) but, we not only got to see one in person finally, it’s in our own neighborhood!

And it had a steady light inside so one could read the titles in the dark. Well done.

There was a couple inside the house it was in front of and it was pretty clear that, while they were trying not to be seen seeing us and we were trying likewise to respect their privacy, they were enjoying how thrilled we were.

So, so cool. And I’m wondering what titles we have that are good enough to offer up to it. (Hey, any knitters in the neighborhood? I mean, that don’t already have…because I know there are two and they do.)

Meantime, it hit mid-9o’s today and these plums declared themselves done and fell to the bottoms of their clamshells, and oh, the smell of sun-warm newly ripe fruit. I saw a squirrel looking longingly up at that tree, thwarted.

I want a bumper crop and I want to make jam and I want to leave it on a certain doorstep with a thank you note. (Grow tree grow!) Ah well. I might have to settle for something else, like, you know, knitting or something.

I almost… I was tempted…

I thought about giving my son some Calvin and Hobbes books for his birthday, maybe even the entire boxed anthology (of which Bill Watterson once said was like looking at a coffin of his career.)

And I remember that same then-little boy wanting me to read those books to him and when I diverted him to something else, not quite wanting to give him any ideas, him studying those pictures on every page and really not needing to know what the words were.

I decided not to do that to my daughter-in-law re Parker.

I was never quite sure whether Calvin was implicated when my two oldest climbed a tree with the garden hoses, one of them tearing a brand new pair of pants in the process, and loop-de-looping, at least two per seat, they made swings out of them. Did a good job, too, with the hose ends well secured by totally mummifying that tree and they had so much fun that we left them up there for I think the whole summer.

One particular strip showed Hobbes asking Calvin if he’d asked his mom first if he could try to fly from his second-story window using his blanket as a parachute, and what Calvin shot back became a line for the ages in our family: “Questions you know the answer to, you don’t need to ask, right?” (Aside always added to the kids: YES YOU DO.)

Followed by Hobbes looking down and tsking, “His mother’s going to have a fit about those rose bushes.”

When Watterson was just getting started as a cartoonist, to be accepted into syndication he was told he had to sign on to allowing the syndicate to make extra money off his creation should his strip become popular. A lot of it. Hobbes dolls, bumper stickers, whatever they might think of.

Then when Calvinball really did take off, the syndicate started pressuring Watterson hard.

He didn’t want to see a million badly-sewn tiger dolls mocking what he’d worked so hard to create in the vivid imaginations of his readers; it would be a betrayal. Hobbes was always shown as real only around Calvin and a simple stuffed animal when his parents or arch nemesis Suzi were present.

And so he did what Sandra Boynton did when her publisher insisted on stocking her delightful greeting cards alongside their new line of porn ones: he stopped. If they couldn’t treat his artistry with respect he was done creating for them.

Richard Thompson eventually began his Cul De Sac strip that shows life through the eyes of small children, and like Calvin and Hobbes, it was masterfully done. There is such a need for being able to understand how the very young human beings around us think–we need more of this.

But those are reruns now–Thompson was stopped by young-onset Parkinson’s. The brilliant insight is there but the hands, not so much. There is fundraising happening in his name towards research into the disease.

Turns out Bill Watterson is his fan. And so in a less-than-six-degrees-of-Pearls-Before-Bacon moment, with an eye towards funding that charity, wonderfulness happened. The Washington Post scooped the story but reading Stephan Pastis himself tell the tale of how he got Watterson to draw again after 19 years–at least a little so far–along with Pastis’s being so thrilled to get to co-create with his hero is a great read.  Here you go.

There is nothing in the world like watching your child parent his children along with the best daughter-in-law in the world with love, compassion, understanding, and patience.

Happy Birthday!

Happy 88th Birthday to my dad! Take those two numerals, run a straight line across the centers and you’ve got a toy car in a toddler’s hands: Vrrrooooom! Go go go!

And happy birthday to my niece Laura, too, born on her Grampa Lawrence’s birthday.

My Tropic Snow (link to wholesaler’s descriptions) has seven gorgeous peaches tucked inside the plastic clamshells, having thrown off early in the season any extras that were too much for such a young plant. I water, I fuss, I watch each day’s progress, they’re almost ready.

Got an email from the kids yesterday of the Eve’s Pride tree (link to retailer) I gave them as a housewarming present, with their okay. “Despite my best efforts at killing it” said the note with the photo.

Look at all those peaches! A dozen! Like mine, that’s a 17-month-0ld tree, pretty immediate gratification if you ask me. Cool! And you gotta love that 6’9″ vantage point.

My second thought was, if they let the baby see that those pretty pink balls detach from the tree they might get some help with the harvesting.

Trying not to be too glued to the election returns. The utterly incompetent judge is behind but not by enough. Etc. The few people I really badly wanted to win, it looks like they probably will, and I’ll just have to wait like everybody else to find out the rest.

And in the middle of that came an email from a church member: a seven-year-old child, vanished, this is what she was wearing, and they said what busy public area she’d disappeared suddenly out of with a fervent plea for searchers and prayers.

Every parent knows that heart-stopping brief moment and this was so much more.

It was a quick walk from our house much less via the car (turn the corner and there you are) and who would know the area better?

Seven ten pm. UV would be about 2 out of 16. My safety vs a child’s, no contest. My sweetie had an intense migraine just then and could only offer the best of intentions and prayers but I could go.

But I had promised an errand with Michelle and I stopped a moment to try to reach her and somehow, as she didn’t respond right away, it became a long five minutes later.

Enough, go!, and I stopped to check the computer for any last updates as I headed out the door–

–just as they hit send on the message that she’d been found. Safe and sound.

Our community knows how lucky we are. And that she is.

We were going over elections materials together in anticipation of voting Tuesday. He rolls his eyes at one or two of mine, I roll my eyes at one or two of his and we both fervently wish Jerry Brown, who’s going to win anyway, would drop the crazy-talk high-speed train that will do nothing but broadside a few stray cattle. Oh, and they hope to run it across the designated bike paths to about a dozen schools in our city about $99 billion from now.

But that judge who, in court, asked a criminal defendant for his phone number and a date?  Who assessed a $40,000 fine on a construction laborer for letting his worker’s comp insurance lapse? Whom the local bar association declared unfit? Out out out.

Amidst the prose and the impossible be-all-things-to-all-voters attempts, now that California has no gerrymandering and open primaries (YES!!!), the state Voter’s Guide shared the official statement of one Republican: “Most qualified for Controller.” The end.

Well, THAT settles it! Of course! Who else could we possibly have imagined?

Muttering puns about controllerfreaks…

VOTE!

A wistful, I didn’t get to show him my grandsons.

So many old memories today after getting the note from my mom that Alan Moorehead, my old Sunday School teacher, had died this past week. All I could think in the first stunned moment was, but I didn’t get to say goodbye!

And then the memories started flooding in.

The group of teenage boys my age who had been so defiantly obnoxious that two teachers (and we’re all volunteers in the Mormon Church) had quit in three weeks–they didn’t have to put up with this.

Alan said, surely with a grin, Lemme at’em.

He totally turned that group around.

He told us his first memory was of being taken to a house of strangers and watching, glued to the window and sobbing inconsolably, as his mother drove away: he was three years old and in his world suddenly bereft and alone and stunned while she hoped she could get back on her feet for him. Foster care.

He had a rough teenagerhood.

He joined the Mormon Church as an adult.

He married Kathleen and raised a family with love and appreciation for his fine blessings and taught us all just exactly how important that was. He still marveled at her for choosing him and putting up with him. He said, frequently, “If the Lord didn’t want His children spoiled He wouldn’t have given me any.” They had five little ones. I used to swing toddler and then preschooler Katie around and around till “We all fall DOWN!” I don’t know if she remembers, but I do; their kids weren’t spoiled, they were a joy and it’s hard to put yourself down when a small child squeals with delight on seeing you.

And he understood why some young men would swagger and treat themselves and others cynically and he helped them see their future selves beyond that false front. He was his own Exhibit A.

I remember a particular Sunday, standing in the doorway talking to him after class was over, the others dispersed and I almost was, when he thought I needed a moment (and I desperately did, close to tears for reasons I do not remember.) What I thought were my failings he told me, No, those are your strengths: “Yes, you’re emotional. You wear your heart on your sleeve” (that was  the first time I’d heard that phrase, and with the literal thinking of the young I mentally imaged a little pink cartoon of a heart dancing to the beat at the end of my wrist and tried to parse just what he meant so I wouldn’t miss a thing.) But he told me it was a power for good that I was capable of blessing others with and he made it sound like not everybody else was so lucky to be that way. God would be able to use me well because of it, he encouraged me.

That unshakeable belief in each of us–in me personally–from someone who wasn’t my parent and didn’t have to spend the time of day worrying nor caring but simply chose to because that’s who he was–made all the difference.

We were supposed to get a new teacher with the new year after that, but he asked permission, got it, and stayed with us. And the next year too, till we graduated from high school. They asked him to do other callings and he said, Only if I can keep my kids. Meaning us.

He told us how important it was to keep a journal, and as a history buff and particularly a Civil War history buff he said it was the journals that brought people to life and gave perspective to their times when we in our own day are in utterly different surroundings. Our grandkids (and yes there would be grandkids, believe it, think ahead) would want to know who we are now at each stage as they themselves went through them, too. We all do. It’s just the circumstances around us that change from generation to generation. Write.

And he challenged us to bring him blank paper for him to make into journals for us to do that writing in. He asked us several Sundays in a row, with a deadline. How much? He wouldn’t give us a number, it was up to us.

Three of us did. (I remember asking my folks quick at the last minute for some printing paper–for the mimeograph?–out of the basement, almost forgot, phew.) Quite a few didn’t.

It wasn’t till some time later that I found out what he’d done: he’d handed the pages we’d given him to his kids to doodle on and he and Kathleen had packed everybody in the car and had driven to Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia–we’re talking two and a half hours each way with small children!– where they bought acid-free, archival-quality paper and paid for the bookbinding process on their antique press and made the three of us beautiful journals at a time when you could not buy one of such materials. He wanted to teach us how important it was that these things last–and he took the three of us out to dinner to thank us for living up to what he’d hoped we would do.

He accepted no payment on any of that.

Writing this, I realize that by going to such great effort without telling us just how great a gift he was going to create he was also teaching the others in the most benign way that if they passed up a chance to do something good because they didn’t see the need for it or didn’t get around to it the moment would be gone forever. And it could never be quite the same.

I filled that journal. I looked for acid-free paper when I went to start the next one. And eventually…mindful of all that he taught me, I started writing here.

Just about every day. So that my grandchildren and theirs would know who I was. Brother Moorehead taught me this.

Till we meet again, dear friend. I owe you so much. Thank you.

A stick in the ground and a year and a half. It amazes me.

That middle peach didn’t fit in there, but the boxes clearly give the critters nothing to hold onto to get at it. Looking good.

(Moving slowly. Still a bit under the weather.)

Oh, and before I forget: a few really cool pictures here of the fledgling falcons among the skyscrapers of San Francisco (scroll over a few to that ninth one. Perfect.)  There were three females…and now there are two, who’ve had much better luck coordinating landing on a wing and a prayer.

Got a message from a friend. There is a teenage member of her family who is giving her mother a very hard time, the father has left the picture, and there was a reaching out for support.

I asked re favorite colors….

And as I sat knitting tonight, trying to get that silk shawl out of the way because there’s a few more people now that I need to get to work for after this, I remembered. I would likely not have remembered that my sister said it but I will never forget that my daughter did.

My mom always said that my oldest sister was an easy teenager to raise. I mentioned that to Marian once and she said that when she got too mad at the world or at Mom she would retreat into the bathroom and soak in a long, hot, luxurious bath.  Time alone. (As the fourth kid of six, I could add, hogging the bathroom, making the rest of us go to the one downstairs, silently ruling the roost. Except that I don’t remember it at all so clearly I wasn’t too traumatized.)

I can just picture the whimsy of the occasional splash, observing the droplets as they fell, adding more hot as the water gradually cooled, keeping it going. She would always come out feeling all was well with the world now.

My girls were teens when she told me that and I just, y’know, happened to mention it to them.

You never know if your kids are listening, but there was this one day that my daughter emerged from the bathroom (good thing we’d added on a spare one by then), hair soaked, fingers wrinkled, and exclaimed, “Your sister is a GENIUS!”

Skipped out on Purlescence tonight due to a sore throat–a mild one, but why share. Took it easy today.

Re the free range plum, I’m amazed it’s still there, given that I didn’t have enough clamshells to cover them all. (And that clamshelled one might need same tape for when the raccoons show up.)

Things are coming along.

Oh and: this school of rays photographed by National Geographic is amazingly beautiful. But the background music–I’m debating whether it should be nananananananananananananananana BATMAN!!!

Or Jumping Jacks Flash.

Seven. If I put the blog down and race back to the needles (having iced my hands for the third time today, the eyes being enthralled but the wrists and fingers not so much) I can get an eighth row done today and that will be a record with this project.

It ain’t heavy, it’s my bother. Re the joints. But worth it.

(Edited to add the picture and to say, nine! I wanted to see if I could get one more full row out of that cone before I splice in the next one at the side, and I did! Icepack again and call it a night.)

I once read a Dave Barry essay on how women are far braver than men: as proof he offered the fact of his wife sticking her hand down into the kitchen disposal to get something out that was gumming up the works. *He* would never put *his* hand down in that smelly thing, he said; she was his hero.

Totally topping that tonight.

Note to the resident ileostomy patient: you never, never, ever hit that thing before you’ve finished closing the clip. Ever. (I knew that.)

But I did. I’ve been dropping things a lot lately, and that 3.5″-each-way hinged piece of plastic was suddenly the latest, and yelling NOOoooOOO! at it did nothing to dissuade it from washing out of sight.

I don’t even want to touch that horrid snake thing in the garage, but he was willing to. And so we don’t have to spend $150+ on a plumber after all. (It worked. Phew.) And not once did he say the slightest negative thing to me over any of it.

The Barrys ain’t got nuthin’ on my guy.