Went to my lupus group today and it was a small one–just four of us.

In a long conference room at El Camino Hospital that utterly swallows sound, with that few people, it was easy to ask them to repeat and speak up when I needed them to; I wasn’t depriving any new patients of desperately needed information or of their chance to vent by taking up too much of our allotted time, I didn’t have to worry about impatience, it was just old friends coming together again. One woman in particular I have never seen so relaxed, laughing. We reminisced. We caught up on each other and marveled at how some things had turned out okay after all (Joe and the furnace spewing carbon monoxide, I’m looking at you–thank you all over again.)

And I looked around and thought, we’re survivors. And this is why we come: to show the young patients they will get through it. We did. We do. So will they.

But today we could just simply be, and be together.

It was just what I needed.

The after picture, then the before one again–just amazing.

The guy pushed the button, that home page popped up for him, then he turned it around to where I could see it to show me the work his hands had done today. He clearly had been looking forward to seeing the look on my face and it is safe to say he was not disappointed.

My knitting, meantime, had been stumbling for a few days over a puzzlement in a pattern I’d been creating.

After dropping the Ipad off for repairs, I went to deliver a project a half hour north I’d done in superfine Malabrigo Finito. I’d been waiting for Kathryn‘s vacation to be over; I knew there had been two funerals in her family since Thanksgiving, and making her something as soft as possible from yarn from her shop had felt absolutely compelling. And now after all that happened in our own family in the past month, finally I could get it to her!

She was disbelieving. Thrilled. She’d even put on an outfit this morning that totally matched it, and I went home and dove right into the next project. That’s all it took. After a good start on that I put it down, eyed the problematic piece, finally knew what it needed and got on with it. Kathryn did me a great favor that she had no way to know about.

The new project will be the carry-around mindless one that I knew I was going to be needing tomorrow and had been trying to push myself to begin. And now I have–with more Finito she gifted me right back with. It makes me happy to look at.

I waited for the call.

It took two and a half hours and the going rate of $129.95 plus tax for the parts. My sweetie was ecstatic to see how perfect his Ipad looked again so fast.

And we are good to go.

The bigger they are the harder they fall. He walked in the door upset with himself.

I thought it made a pretty pattern, actually–quite a useless one, but you look for beauty where you can find it, right? Turn it sideways, see that riff on Van Gogh’s Starry Night? (Says the daughter of an art dealer.)

I told him how glad I was that his Ipad 2 had taken the impact, not him.

Then I went and looked up repair places, giving him a break from dealing with it for a moment. $129.95 plus shipping time and two years’ warranty on the new screen? He uses it for work–you do what you gotta do, but those places are out of state. Anyone local who knows anyone local who’s good, let me know. Thanks.

Meantime, Happy Birthday to my sister Carolyn!

I’ve only ever seen her a few times. Her mother is a member of our church and so today she wheeled her in.

I was surprised to see a touch of gray in the daughter’s hair. It happens, though, doesn’t it.

We threw our arms around each other, the daughter and I. Neither of us asked the other anything like, now what is your name again? I held the mother’s hand a moment; she was lucid, which has not always been so, radiant, even.

It isn’t easy to be responsible for a parent, and from a young age at that, no matter how sweet the personality of both (and they are.)

And I found myself deeply glad I had done that knitting years ago: to do my small part in caring, too, to try to let the daughter know forever that she was not alone.

—————

On a separate note: Bashie just passed away at 98, it was announced today. The woman whose father was a rider for the Pony Express after Abraham Lincoln asked Brigham Young for riders and the last, as far as we know, surviving child of a Civil War soldier.

See how innocent it looks. Not a soupcon of suspicion. (Chicken noodle soup on the side for his foggybraining head cold.)

BPA-free package, the Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Soup box said. The flap was solid across, no indented dots, just, Squeeze in at the four corners to open. Odd.

My hands just plain weren’t big enough and clearly weren’t strong enough. I would just have gone and gotten the scissors and been done with it but curiosity got the better of me–was that really the right way to open such a thing? Thwarted, I didn’t see how it made sense.

My friend Lynda was talking about words that the English language needs to have.

He didn’t get up and come into the kitchen, he just helpfully took the package from my hands. He didn’t read the instructions, he just queried me and I helpfully parroted again what the thing said, so, okay: and my 6’8″ husband with his great big hands gave that little box a good short hard squish suddenly with the bottoms of both palms in the very instant that I knew too late to beg him to forget what I said and not, just, not.

English fails for when you’re suddenly helpless, crying, laughing, quite unable to stand upright, utterly dissolved–but at the same time also very sorry that you’re totally losing it in front of someone who’s paying for the source of that mirth and incurred it for your own sake and you know it though he would never say it and ohmygoodness.

Mentos and coke. Snowblowers hitting a row of jack o’lanterns. Think redhead with highlights, spaghetti sauce around toddlers, the shirt, the pants, the hair, the chair, the desk, the floor: nailed’em all.

Bless him, he thought it was funny, too, though honestly perhaps not quite so much. (Where do you want me to put these, dear? Washing machine, right? Yes please, I answered, trying to be meek and thanking him for helping me. There have been random snorts of laughter all evening since. Geysers! I’m sorry, honest I am. Butbutbutbut. !!)

I think that Amazon gift certificate from my brother might need to go to a new keyboard, maybe for insurance’s sake while we can still get the ergonomic ones cheap, but so far his still seems to be working after all.

After he got cleaned up he was even willing to eat some of that soup.  What fell back into the box was still left.

I opened the door at about 8 pm in the dark.

“I’m not selling anything, I’m not here about anything political or religious.”

I’m a Mormon. The guy had no idea why I laughed.

“And your neighbor Dave over there and Sarah over in the cul-de-sac said that you wouldn’t have any dogs barking or biting to worry about or anything and that you were cool, so, I’m here to tell you about some fundraising I’m doing for” (names a cause that sounds good) “and I’m here from Chicago and helping by getting credits for” (selling these magazines but claiming it was all for donations’ sake.)

I smiled and said I was very familiar with (his spiel, basically) that we hear it several times a year. But I wasn’t interested in buying any magazines.

But I hadn’t closed the door yet, and I did let him show me a page listing some of those magazines, so he continued in great pretended earnestness, and when I apologized for the No Solicitors sign he told me he had a problem with reading, he was so sorry (and yet you want me to write down all my financial information and name and address that you say you wouldn’t be able to read.)

Etc.

What he didn’t know is that he completely gave himself away in the second sentence, not that I needed him to. He was counting on neighbors not knowing neighbors–but we do, we have a much-celebrated annual block party that has expanded over the years as people in the next block and the next have asked to be included; we all wear name tags. There is no Sarah and there is no Dave, those were as fake as the rest of the guy’s come-on.

Nor did that voice sound like it was from Chicago.

Maybe I was as fake as he was by not saying any of that but I can definitely live with that.

My husband, hearing from the next room, complimented me afterwards on how nice I was as I finally got him to go away (was he checking to see who was home and who was still away on vacation?) But then, it was cold out there and what I really wanted to do was just go find the guy a much warmer sweater than that thin one he had on.

But not so much so as I’d knit him one, y’know?

Object constancy: something squirrels don’t have before adulthood.

The older squirrels knew I leave them alone if they leave the awning pole next to the birdfeeder alone, and besides, there’s nothing there worth investigating.  Safflower seeds–they won’t even bury those.

The little guy thought that if he couldn’t see me, I couldn’t see him, and so he hid on the far side of the pole so that I no longer existed. With four little gray feet clutching tight around the two corners. I could have painted his toenails.

It is amazing how far those things can jump when you say boo from two feet away. There was an explosion of gray fur and tail straight up and then (oh oops, I’m sorry) straight down as I took a step back, then sprinting away from me (oh good, he’s not hurt.)

That was yesterday, and though the little gray squirrel with the distinctive off-center brown smudge spot on his nose came back today, he behaved like all the others now. Sniffing around through whatever seeds got kicked out by the chickadees, not bothering the feeder, wishing I would finally, finally put something tastier out there.

I do actually have a peanut butter jar that needs cleaning out if I wanted to encourage them. Hmm.

He remembered! The old miscommunication.

He was reading a good book and I was trying to redesign a pattern that had been almost good enough for way too long–Christmas knitting was over, it was time to get down to work.

At one point I announced into the quiet, just to get it out of my system, that I had just been counting stitches (and ripping) for an hour.  And then I got right back to it, glad to finally be on my way with the thing.

Till I got to–oooh. Oh that doesn’t work, does it, I mean you could, and I did last time, but, why? No way. The only thing to do was to go back almost to the beginning, and so I ripped and ripped yet again, the fifth time now, my determination to have that soft, gorgeous Tahitian Blue come out perfect being my one solace in all this.

And as the long waves of phone-corded baby alpaca/silk piled right back up in my lap my sweetie looked up from his page.

“But aren’t you using Frog Free yarn?”

Thank you all for the support; I’d been putting off saying anything but I really did want to be able to go back and remember when the Graves’ was diagnosed. Hey, if it distracts my immune system away from other stuff while being so treatable, good.

Meantime, we had someone drop by today and when he rang the doorbell, I asked the guy, You want to see something?

And so he stepped inside and followed to where I was pointing and there was the hawk on a post, framed by the sky, and I got to see the moment of wonder in his face.

He left and Coopernicus finished his meal–then flew not away but closer, landing at a nearby spot on the fence, shaking out his feathers a bit against the cold and basking in the last of the sun.

Then to the other side of the window, right there. I didn’t get anything done for a little while but just sat and enjoyed being with that beautiful bird. I had moved something out onto the patio and he had to explore every inch around it, gauging distances, hiding places. Hopping up on the metal seed can at the last and simply people watching me back.

I later came across some long-stashed possum/merino yarn I’d had no idea was still kicking around–thought I’d given that away. And yet, at last, it was just the thing: I’d wanted something with no dyes to crock that I could put on my hair when damp, having lost my white one, so when Richard asked what I wanted to do for New Year’s, feeling a bit under the weather, I answered simply, Knit a hat.

And so I did.

And without realizing it till I finished, I knitted the stripes in the tail and the beat of the wings.

A Happy New Year to you and may all of 2014 be a blessing.

(Oh, and, my New Year’s resolution? To finally get around to correcting that time stamp re Daylight Savings. The night is young.)

I got to see my hawk yesterday–twice. The second time, he flew in to just outside the window and perched awhile, choosing to be eye-to-eye for several minutes, a wild thing taking my measure. It made me want to measure up. He had a meal waiting below the window, but first things first.

And I saw him Sunday after the kids and grandkids left, right on cue.

As if he knew.

Christmas Eve more blood tests were run and the day after Christmas, they told me.

Who knew that feeling energetic was a symptom of disease? Fine, can I keep it? It can crash the heart? Oh. Okay. I remember when George HW Bush, his wife Barbara, and their dog Millie were all diagnosed with this at about the same time and some thought the change in him as they tweaked the replacement hormone levels after killing off his out-of-control thyroid possibly cost him reelection.

I know they often name diseases after the person who got the press for describing them first, but I just have to say as an editorial comment on the word: Graves’ is a really, really laughably-stupidly-unhelpful thing to call what you’re going to tell patients they have, don’tcha think?

Autoimmune diseases! Get them here! Collect them all!

This is as close as we got to trying the digger sweater on him. Kim really wanted me to get to see him in it in person, but it’s okay. Note the flashlight in his hands: Parker is big on flashlights, he’d found one of Grampa’s super-duper ones, and no piece of clothing no matter how perfect was going to get in the way of holding on tight to it for every moment he was allowed to have it. Let there be light! And heavy!

All in good time. The sweater may well be better off washed and dried first anyway, with hopes that it might felt together a bit against inquisitive fingers; being superwash, it won’t shrink.

Hudson was back to happily snuggling into my shoulder today. (Grandma pro tip: wear a cashmere sweater for sensory bribery, handwashed a few times to increase the softness. A seven-dollar hand-me-down worked just fine.) He and Parker giggled at the antics of a finger puppet in their daddy’s hands at church–and then they all flew off for home.

And a good and far too brief time was had by all.

(Photo taken Friday.) One sick feverish normally-easygoing baby screaming nonstop from 9 pm last night, right after they left here, till at 2 am they headed to the ER, getting out of there with an ear infection diagnosis at 5 am.

We got a brief visit today. They were exhausted.

There is nothing, nothing in the world like having a baby decide that your shoulder is a safe haven to take a good nap on.

Or a big brother happily entertaining him when he wakes up.

Or watching their daddy remind the older one, You can share but you can’t take it away–you have to give him a toy first.

Right, right. Rules are still the rules in a new place, gotcha.

It’s all good.

The digger sweater: Parker gave it an appreciative Oh, that’s cool! look and would not take his eyes off it for a moment there, but, it being clothing and he being three, did not offer to try it on. But he was very glad that it existed and that it was his.

At the time they rang the doorbell, I had woven in all the ends and was sewing up the second side as fast as I could. About twenty seconds of work and tadaaah!

I had the first sleeve on the needles but it was claimed as it came, a vest instead, which makes sense for their climate. Parker and I threw great bunches of colorful yarn confetti into the air to celebrate, again and again, all those snipped-off ends.

My daughter-in-law swooned over that sweater, just couldn’t get over it. She is every knitter’s dream recipient, I tell you, just the best.

Toys: the $12 Costco dinosaur in the toy basket for playing with at Gramma and Grampa’s was maybe a little too big right now: Parker picked the monster up with no complaints but just hauled it to the bathroom and firmly shut the door on it. Banished. He did, however, find the ukulule that was the survivor of the four $10 instruments we bought our kids back when they were little, a tad dusty, a string loose that Grampa quickly reattached for him and there you go. His daddy was playing with the guitar; he’d found himself a Parker-sized version.

And then they were off to Kim’s grandparents’ for dinner.

I need to start figuring out what Hudson’s sweater is going to look like.

Dinner at Nina, Rod, and Gwynie’s. Good friends, good food, good times,  (looking at the clock) g’night, and can’t wait till the grandsons tomorrow (got one sleeve cast on, at least.) Merry Christmas!