That was the strong feeling.

Urgent Care had told my husband to follow up with a podiatrist on Tuesday and he wasn’t up to driving yet so I was there, too.

Three different medical specialties use the same check-in desk, which is why that familiar face of a perfect stranger was there. I sat down by her. She was about my mom’s age.

We instantly started talking as if we’d known each other forever. I told her, You live on our street! We go past and kind of wave at you all the time, you’re where the road does that steep turn. Do you remember Larry and Terry? We bought their house almost 30 years ago.

She did, and she was pleased to find out why we looked so familiar and exclaimed, I just love our neighborhood!

I do too!

It was only natural in that setting for her to soon start telling me a little of why she was there. First she told me the good parts: that she’d discovered some kind of pooper scooper where she could keep walking her dog without having to bend over.

Does that help?

Oh yes! She told me of some half-way measure her doctor had been doing for her–because she (clearly very much) didn’t want to have a knee replacement.

My mom had that! I told her. She was, let’s see, 83 and it’s been a couple of years; she’s always taken long walks every day and she couldn’t and now she can again and she loves it. No pain!

At that the woman stopped and looked at me like that was something she’d been afraid could never be, so sure of it, had not let herself see how badly she wanted it. I think she’d needed not a doctor but someone who’d been there (if only via second hand.) Someone else who liked to take walks, someone who had made it through the difficulty of surgery and downtime and physical therapy and recovery at that age, who knew it had been worth it. There was this sudden fierce hope in her eyes that didn’t want to let mine go.

Right then they called Richard and I told her how glad I was to finally get to meet her and hurried off after him.

A few more thoughts on Saturday: my hubby wanted the traditional family Emergency Room Medicine–which means a cone of ice cream on the way home. I had no interest but he’s the one who went through all that, so, hey. Tradition. Sure. I stopped at a Coldstone Creamery, ran in, got his favorite and ran out.

Then to the drugstore to get his phoned-in prescription at the only pharmacy for many miles around that was open at nearly 8 pm on a weekend.

Your insurance will refuse to cover it, they told me, because we’re not in their network.

You’ve filled it already?

They had. CVS *might* still be open, he said. Probably not. (The doctor had said he was phoning it to that Walgreens because he thought they were the only place in four cities that would be.)

And if it’s not… And even if it is. I was so very very tired, and more importantly, his very life might well depend on getting that med in him quickly. “It’s under a hundred? Fine. Go.”

I got back in the car where Richard was still trying to keep his foot propped up as best he could in that space and went off to Trader Joe’s: we had to do some grocery shopping, and we had to keep going while we were going because collapse was so close.

The innocent clerk with the gentle smile asked me, “And how was your day?”

I will forever be grateful for that and for his listening; I tried to keep it brief.

I started loading the car and Richard said Michelle had gotten stranded and had been trying to reach us and we had to go get her right now. He was worried and pushing me to hurry.

I stopped right there, having not had lunch yet and the sun was nearly set on this fine summer evening and said firmly, “I am going to drink something and I am going to eat something or I am going to burst into tears.” I considered what I’d just bought and realized it was his favorites to make him happy with–but no drink. I have this drink 8 oz every two hours or your kidneys fail thing going on for life, this was serious. The clinic’s drinking fountain had been awhile ago at this point.

He handed me a ten and I dashed back inside. I grabbed a mango smoothie and another clerk saw me coming and opened a line just for me and got me out of there fast (blessings on her! I think she’d overheard the earlier conversation.) I chugged it fast, we got to Michelle in no time, and then at long long last we made it home.

Where I wondered why on earth I hadn’t bought one of those two-minute bags of microwaveable dinners they sell, and generally pretty good, too.

Actually yeah I did. Richard found that grocery bag the next morning after it had been left out all night.

Chuck.

And then.

Then there was the respite of the rest of Sunday. Church. Old friends, new friends, the services themselves.

A couple was visiting from out of town and I had this flash as the man’s eyes briefly met mine, of, Wait. I know you. Weren’t you at BYU with me? (I didn’t quite say it out loud. I’ve pattern-matched wrong on faces before.)

And thought, naaaah, couldn’t be, that guy’s way too old.

….. *blink* ….

But surely he…the Wilkinson Center, yes…

As it sank in: Wait, *I’m* that old. (Did you forget that little detail, hon? I mean, really?) Helped by the fact that meantime he’d done that same double take and flash of recognition.

Oh well, by that point it was too late to chase after them with any sort of dignity, so, that was that. At least now I know he grew up to be someone with deeply kind eyes. His wife does, too. It helped so much, and they could never know.

This morning the deep purple in the toe area, the fierce swelling in the reddened foot and lower leg: those are gone. His color is normal, normal everything as if all that hadn’t happened. He was still wiped from fighting back the infection along with the antibiotic, but he’s going to be okay.

It was one of those times when life says, Take nothing for granted. Hug your dear ones. Be kind. Be grateful.

IRhythm, it turns out, has nothing to do with music.

Me, Tuesday evening: So it’s really cool, see, the new ones, you don’t have to have a landline to phone in the results every night and there are no wires or anything! (Having done this twice before in 25 years.)

Richard: That means memory has improved and gotten cheaper.

Me: Not to mention the rest of the technology. (Wondering if this was my friend Alan’s startup, it being his kind of thing. Silicon Valley can be a small place.)

I said to the tech at the time, Tell me, how does it stay on for two weeks? I have to change my stoma barrier for my ileostomy every three days or it starts to give way. Granted, it’s got digestive enzymes coming at it all the time, but still, three days vs. two weeks? Doesn’t the skin shed it by that point?

It should hold, he answered. If an orange light comes on that means it’s not right against the skin and if that happens we need you to tape it on. Do you have anything that would hold it well…?

Uh yeah I’ve got some old stoma barrier stuff I can cut up no problem there.

They saw that pulmonic heart valve being officially “moderately” antsy on an EKG once years ago. The next time they EKG’d it it was fine. I’ve had a right-bundle-branch block, I’ve had it almost disappear while I was on an anti-tumor necrosis factor med. Lupus is ever the hit-and-run disease.

To back up a bit: I had a longstanding routine appointment Monday with the cardiologist and a cardiac cough episode that happened on cue the day before got his interest. “You haven’t had that for awhile, have you? You go sometimes six months without an episode.” (Meaning, you and I both know how hard it is to catch this in the act.)

Yeah, I do usually get a bit of it in the summertime though because there’s always a little more UV exposure no matter how careful I am.

Then he said all these soothing and comforting things about how it wouldn’t damage my heart.

And then he ordered the heart monitor, which was installed the next day after the insurance agreed. It came with a booklet to make notations in about when, much how, and how long and I was assured it was okay to write down more than what it had room for if I had too many incidents.

Oh goody.

Five days. No orange light yet.

But again, this is all same-old same-old and I’ve debated saying anything here at all. Till I realized that the next time I have to go on the latest and great in heart monitors I’ll want to look up when the previous time was. So you’re stuck with this. Sorry about that.

The bottom third of the Indian Free peach is tucked in because that’s where the birdnetting hit the top of it this past spring and after an initial tight squeeze, it grew right on through. Looks kinda like a compression sock on a tree.

And yes that fence is six feet tall and yes it’s eighteen months old.

Meantime my somewhat far-fetched goal for a Saturday had been to do a sixteen-row pattern repeat on my afghan (3856 stitches’ worth) but as we got past noon and there were all these errands to run I was resigned to the idea that it just wasn’t going to happen.

Turns out it was the errands that weren’t going to happen after he got out the red laser pointer thermometer thingy: the next thing you know, he was making a dot on my wool-socked feet. All it needed was a cat chasing it. What?

Then at his.

Why are you…?

Actually, it was pretty genius. His foot with the wound was ten degrees warmer, consistently, and that sealed it: he finally called the doctor.

The doctor: Go to Urgent Care. Now.

Turned out there was swelling above the ankle now and it had gotten much worse over the course of the day.

H o u r s later I finished that pattern repeat a half-minute before the nurse finished winding that white netting tape around and around. But the important part is, another day and he might well have been on IV antibiotics and it looks like we came in soon enough.

Yay $5 laser thermometers. Not just for measuring caramel sauce temps. Yay geek geniuses. Yay for antibiotics that still (hopefully) work.

Last year they had a drought and a poor crop and weren’t selling the seeds and I just had to wait.

But guess what I just got in the mail. They even came with two empty seed packets to save your own in later. If you want heritage varieties, this is definitely a heritage variety: a soft-shelled watermelon that was the best-selling one of the 1800s and considered the sweetest.

Until the arrival of the railroads induced breeding that was shipping-centric at the expense of flavor (sounds like tomatoes) and the market bottomed out for these.

Just this one family kept growing their ancestors’ variety, 170 years on their land. They got discovered. It had been thought to be extinct.

You can read their story here. And the Bradford Watermelon’s Revolutionary War history here.

They say they get an average of one watermelon per plant. How many gallons of California water to grow a single one? I’m not sure I want to know but I know I want to try. Re saving the seeds, they can cross-breed with any squash plants that might be around and although that might make for some really odd and curious future food I’m not sure I’m that adventurous. Half Bradford and half zucchini? Wait–it IS intriguing…  Baseball bat size for the win! (Yeah, but.)

I’ve got almost a year to figure out how I’m going to keep the critters from eating them.

Another ripe fig, and again, very very good.

On a totally different tangent, that title is both a pun and a statement.

I remember a conversation with my favorite high school teacher, Bill Cormeny, the one time I got to see him after I’d graduated from college, gotten married, and, you know, all that grown up-type stuff. He taught history, my mom was in the school’s English department and I was back visiting that day.

He found out my husband was in grad school and thoroughly approved: being married and in school? That’s the way to start out! Teaches you what’s important! Teaches you humility! Teaches you–he chuckled knowingly–poverty.

Man ain’t that the truth. I think this was when we were living on $600-something a month, rent on campus was $200 and we had been married a few years and had an infant. The memorable splurge of a year was when we bought a carton of ice cream. Many times over the years since I’ve reflected on his words and reminded myself to keep holding onto his wisdom, to not let materialism trip me up, because he was right.

That child of ours sent a link today that reminded me of that good man. I’m sure he would love to hear this little bit of new history.

Missouri’s governor with his vetoes was not obeying Missouri’s state constitutional requirement to keep the public defender’s office funded.

I wonder if he ever had to make do on a fellowship with a wife and child, if he ever learned… At least in grad school you have the relief of knowing it’s a temporary thing, but still.

After a lot of wrangling and being ignored, the head of that state office finally hit on a novel solution. The law said he could appoint any member of the bar there to take part if the poor were going unrepresented, and so he did: he ordered Governor Nixon himself to serve in a case.

I like it.

I said something about her lug.

“What’s a lug?” asked Catherine, picking up her flat of Kit Donnell peaches.

We had already eaten the entire flat of them that I’d bought Friday, the morning after our trip home from Texas (they were that good), and with Catherine wanting some as an excuse went back down to Andy’s today and got more: some for her and some for Michelle and some for us.

“That is,” I told her.

She exclaimed over them, sniffing one in her hand and declaring it was like an eastern peach! Here, smell this! I knew just what she meant. Back home. I thanked her for being someone who was as enthusiastic over a perfect peach as I was.

After she left, though, finding myself unsure about that definition, I went and searched around.

One site says it’s slightly less than a bushel.

Another says it’s a way of packing peaches in particular and can include several layers’ worth. (Nope! Just one, but they were cushioned.) Another said that it was an old Southern term and generally meant a big flat, like what I sent her home with.

Whatever gets that juicy, fragile fruit home safe and sound.

Just because they can doesn’t mean they should keep at it. Their only reward is seeing the boxes tumbling down.

But clearly the sport appeals to them. At this point we have a lot of green Fujis in the fridge and not a lot left on the tree and what you don’t see there is the ends of the branches that were broken in the act.

On the other hand, stepping a few feet to the right, the squirrels have not yet realized that figs are food–or rather, there was one bite in one very green ditched one on the ground awhile ago and that was that. I left it there so its buddies could all taste it and go eww, too.

And so Richard and I split our first-ever homegrown summer fig today and that, my friends, was exactly what a fig aspires to be. The depth of flavor, the sweetness, the intensity that gives one last did-you-catch-that? at the end. Two more are becoming reddish brown and starting to droop and I’m really liking this idea of my forty-nine more taking turns ripening one by one.

Oh, and, the afghan? Debby’s friend’s ‘what if I wake up stupid?’ comment is exactly why I have to rip immediately when I have to rip.

It’s so good to be able to say I got way beyond those rows today. The yarn held up well to the abuse, too.

Suddenly wondering what knitting needles made out of applewood might be like… I know, I know, don’t encourage them.

I goofed a row in the waiting room apparently at the point when a woman walked past, considered, came back and exclaimed over my knitting. I liked that part.

The rows after built on that mistake till at last it dawned on me tonight. Fudging didn’t work–I tried.

I laid that afghan on the floor and ripped out a thousand stitches. It hurt. And it felt deeply satisfying: it will do what I say because I said so and I will thank me later for it.

I reknit the goofed row right and was quite done with it for the day. But always get past the horse where it threw you if you can, I figure.

Thank you, everybody. Pilgrim is the name of the butternut variety I bought. I went looking, and found a site with photos of a butternut that looks like mine (scroll to the bottom.) Well, yay, that is definitely encouraging!

So hopefully the coloring is just an idiosyncrasy of that variety and it really will be what we want and not an offspring of the gourds next door. Our Vermont maple syrup and butter wait in happy anticipation. I should mention, the wateriness in yesterday’s picture is because I steamed those two halves in the microwave, trying a little too hard to soften the ends.

The critters have stopped raiding them (they made off with the first two) since I guarded the edges with those thorny stalks mentioned earlier; we now have two new and one fairly large one in among the leaves. The plant is nearly twice the size it was two weeks ago and I expect there will be more squash to come.

Monday, I will ask Burpee. And hope.

I had to know. I had to know what to do with them, leave them growing or harvest them small, so I finally cut a little one off and opened it up.

My squash seedlings got eaten as they came up a few months ago so I set out some much-anticipated Sharlyn melon plants in the same spot. Three times.  And the squirrels devoured them all–except that last one.

Clearly it was a new squash plant coming up late from the earlier seeds, because this is no melon.

Butternuts grow like this and turn washed-out-yellow later, right? Or is this yet another squirrelled volunteer? Because I know my neighbor on the other side of that fence grew gourds at least one year and I have no desire to commit my water to growing those.

It tasted sort-of zucchini-ish but was already a bit hard in the handle end. Any experienced gardeners reading this who’ve grown butternut?

Richard Thompson. Here.

And here. (The strip. Don’t miss it.)

He didn’t get to draw Cul-de-Sac for enough years. But I’m so glad for how he saw and what he gave us in the time that he could.

A hawk, possibly a Sharp-shinned or maybe even a Cooper’s, circled close overhead as we sat in the rental car in front of my father-in-law’s a moment this morning and set the GPS for the airport. And again as if tracing the cul-de-sac in the sky. As we pulled out, it went ahead of us a bit and circled one last time in good-bye and then away, and I exclaimed to Richard that it was the perfect ending to our visit with his dad. It had been *so* good to see him this past week and the hawk coming so close was like a connection between Texas and home, a sense of till-the-next-time.

There was more to come.

On the flight leaving Dallas before ours, there was a family–a dad, a mom, two little girls about four and five and a baby–who got to the gate just in time to preboard but it was clear it had been a hustle and a hassle making it at all in time and they were stressed. Their flight was late, which had helped a lot. The dad was trying not to be cross. But his face gave him away.

It was a risk… I didn’t want to be putting him on the spot and I didn’t know how he would react when all I knew about him was that he was not feeling overly charmed by his cute little girls in just that one little moment. But who would want to be judged forever by those public moments when you’re not the perfect parent. I wavered.

But by then I’d already found two cute ones in the depths of that purse and they spoke for themselves: these were, first and foremost, for the parents. A pink flamingo with black beak and eyes and a black condor, the tips of its wings and tail edged in white.

Meanwhile, the guy looking at their boarding passes was finding something not immediately right and making them stand there and stand there and stand there while everybody else was waiting to go on that plane (no pressure!) and what that did was create a sense of anticipation while giving me enough time to get me over my fear of reaching out. So there you go.

A small tap (it was the dad, I couldn’t reach the mom without falling over a trash can or a kid), his turning around, and suddenly his face lit up and then at me in wonder and then the mom’s too and they were surprised and thrilled and the wife said, “These are so cute! Thank you! Did you make them?”

“I wish, but no, I buy them from Peru but they are hand knit. We’ve had little ones,” I smiled, nodding at their children, who hadn’t caught on yet that these were for them.

They thanked me again and it was like that was what the no-nonsense airport guy needed to be done with them and he sent them on their way past the gate.

As they headed away I was relieved and glad to have seen the best in both parents having immediately come to life. That was the gift they gave to me.

Watching the DNC convention.

The Democrat in the room heard a not-a-Democrat say, Now there’s a man who speaks with conviction.

One of my sisters wants a black cowl, and I figured that if my eyes were going to be working in black it was going to be a yarn that of itself made me want to work with it despite the difficulty in seeing the stitches. Plus, this was my sister; I wanted to make her something really nice.

And so I bought the last two skeins of black Woolfolk that Purlescence likely will ever sell.

I finished all but the cast-off as the plane landed Friday–if I were going to stop at one skein, and it would have been a very nice if smallish cowl. Given the iffy lighting on the plane and the splittiness of the yarn, this was very tempting.

Tonight, though, I finished it the way I wanted it done, after using up as much of the second skein as possible. My father-in-law was in the middle of Facetime talking to our niece and I showed it off for her briefly–I was really proud of myself for persevering and doing it right: generously sized, thickly knit, and warm as well as soft against the northeastern chill.

And that yarn really, really is soft. A cousin got an earlier one-skein wonder out of Woolfolk and couldn’t believe it wasn’t cashmere? Nope, merino, plain and simple. Matter of fact, Deborah’s ecstatic reaction was why I bought more.

So.

I put it away, Dad continued his chat, and afterwards he asked me, What did you call that?

A cowl. Or sometimes, an infinity scarf because of its being round.

He grinned: Looks like a bib!

When we laughed, he added, Or a hoodie. (But not wanting to waste the opportunity for a good tease, he went back to) A bib! Like, y’know, you eat lobster with!

Me, laughing: Can I quote you?

Him: Sure!

Actually? Lobster would be a dish worthy of such a thing.