I did not expect to see what I saw today. Not only had my mango tree started to sprout new growth, but at the beginning of the day it had one baby-stage inflorescence. At the end of the day, in the photo here, a second green budding had grown enough that you could see that it was pointed, unlike the third–suggesting that we’ll have two sets of flowering coming out of there. If you scroll down on the Wikipedia page to the gallery, there are a lot of photos of what will be.

The secondary branch has two green buds where it had been pruned, although so far they look like they’ll be more branches. Sounds good to me.

Forty-four degrees outside, 59 at the mango. (Edited to add, woke up to 37/58.) We’re going to have to get a bigger cover soon for nighttime. I like that problem.

(Edited Sunday night to add: now those look more like they’ll be leaves. I’ve got a lot to learn and I’m having great fun doing so.)

Looking at airline tickets to go meet our granddaughter, we decided we needed to wait till I feel better than I do today. Talk about incentive, though. Blenderize those grapes in that orange juice and go get a good night’s rest.

Two weeks. So much older.

Ross Douthat at the New York Times wrote THE article about the events in Paris today that most needed to be written.

We are all Charlie.

We got a phone call tonight: having been frustrated by the problem for some time, our daughter was finally appealing to her tall dad to help her with some burned-out lights. They needed to be reached so she could see them and know what size to order and she felt too unsteady to risk trying. There were I think six in her kitchen ceiling and three by now had gone dark.

We went over there and helped her unscrew those bulbs. Then asked, why wait on shipping? There was a hardware store almost around the corner.

It seemed to me it wasn’t just the lights–it was that her injuries having been re-ignited last Friday, she needed to fix something to brighten her day that was within her power. Especially today. But she was not up to going to the shop, maybe multiple shops, to look for new ones, and she hadn’t been about to risk another fall by trying to even start the task alone.

Well, we could go, we offered, glad to help. And so we bought new bulbs, a grand total of $12 for three flood types, in LED no less–boy have prices come down–and came back over. With her big strong daddy again holding her steady standing on a chair, she screwed those new lights in herself.

I turned the switch on on the wall. We looked upwards in great satisfaction. Such a difference!

The darkness is a very small part of the world but it tries to claim great power. It deceives only itself. We are greater and we shine everywhere. Every good person in every religion or none who is trying to live by love. Love for those we know, love for those we don’t, love to all simply because we share our humanity and find it good.

We bring the light. We are Charlie.

A pronouncement of 20/30 so far at the eye doctor’s and then I dropped him off at work. Back to normal life.

Home was so quiet, but that was also a perfect chance to knit more than just in that doctor’s office and my queue is long. I turned on the stereo and picked out a CD from its list, because if there’s music going at home it compels my fingers to knit in time to it and me to sit and pay attention. To both.

Uh, dear, we forgot to wire the speakers back up to that thing when we moved everything back in this room after the carpetbaggers left.

Unlike the eye-doc-in-the-box we once saw in New Hampshire 30 years ago, the local surgicenter thankfully does not have closed-circuit TV to the waiting room whereby the patient’s family can watch their loved one’s cataract surgery. I mean gee, I always wanted to… (Or not so much. Gack.)

We tried to schedule it before the kids coming home and the wedding and the birth of the baby and everything else, but today was the day and he needed to see.

An hour and a half after we got there, we were on our way home with me at the wheel and him exclaiming that dark cover-up glasses and all, he could already see so much better. SO much better! He was looking at everything with a delight that reminded me of when I got my first pair of glasses in third grade. Comparing his eyes. Taking it all in.

When Holly and George were here, she told me that it’s better to wait to have it done (like we did) till it really has to be done: it makes it easier to put up with the adjustments that come with it. You know what you’re not having to go through anymore and why you appreciate the skills of that eye surgeon.

He does, oh, he does.

(p.s. My new Mac gave up on trying to change the word yarnovers in an email I was typing to the word earners; now it’s auto-corrected it four times to carnivores instead. And having typed that word, it’s done it six times more. Trying again. Yarnovers yarnovers carnivores carnivores carnivores –okay, that’s funny. It left the first two and last one as I corrected them to and grabbed the ones in the middle that I had previously gotten to hold still and I am just going to leave them on display for now. As presented by Apple. And now it’s grabbed the last one and I don’t even know when.)

Yarnovers yarnovers yarnovers I WILL win this one.

Richard wanted, and got, a weather station for Christmas, but I’m the one who most watches it like a hawk: it turns out we are consistently a little cooler than the Wunderground pages say for this area, but then, the breezes off the Bay have a nice straight shot at our end of town.

The thing is saying that the lowest temp recorded in the last week was 24 degrees last Friday.

And yet my tropical trees continue to do fine. As I said to my sister today, they’re what I have now that need close watching over and care and attention. Much though I’d rather be immersed in the day-t0-day of watching our grandchildren, this is what I’ve got. (I’d be one of those babysitting grandmas in a heartbeat.) I do love the idea of our children and their children picking fruit at our house like the time in September when I got to hold Parker high to pick the last two apples of the year; that’s what it’s for most of all, them.

And for sharing of our abundance with the people around us: God’s handknits, created quietly day by increasing days until after all the happy anticipation at long last they’re ready. There is nothing like a warm summer peach ripe right off the tree.

I can’t wait to meet Madison in person.

Seated a ways behind her, I snapped pictures of the bride’s grandmother in a wheelchair, hands high and clapping enthusiastically. Snapsnapsnapsnapsnapsnapsnap and then looklooklook oh yes I did manage to capture the action after all–with three or four shots in between that looked like she was holding still.

It was only fair to go introduce myself and show her her photo. She has email? Cool, could I send her this really good one?

Not that I could hear that address over the music–I handed my phone to her granddaughter, who typed it in, I added a subject line since it was going to be coming from a completely unknown-t0-her address, and together we hit send and the three of us grinned at our success.

The bride and groom were lovely and that love was utterly contagious. A wonderful time was had by all.

And then a number of our relatives adjourned to Michelle’s house with us to keep the conversation going over even more good food. Much laughing, with nobody wanting it to end. We got well into the yawn zone.

I looked around the room, wondering when I would even get to see some of them again. Our children are getting older with more responsibilities and more dispersed.

But Richard’s other sister has a son who just announced his engagement, so, hopefully, not too long.

We got up early and dropped John off at the airport. And it is very, very quiet around here.

If I say it was a crabfest it’ll sound totally wrong–people were totally good to each other.  It’s a Bay Area tradition to serve newly-caught Dungeness off the docks to celebrate the new year. The (non-sun-avoidant members of the) groom’s family tried providing some of those themselves, the Texas contingent adventuring for local flavor while they’re here, but Grampa told me the sea lions got most of the bait. The fishermen didn’t mind helping out, I’m sure.

There’s a whole lot more than a calendar becoming new. Two families together, the young and the old and the in-betweens. A rehearsal dinner and almost done.

The father of the bride smiled warmly as he told me, See you tomorrow!

Outside temp: 29. Mango tree reading under that bag: 47. Hoping the sensor isn’t too close to a light bulb, but, so far so good.

Happy New Year!

So we had strong hands to help, it had been 17 days, and you’re supposed to put it to ground between two and three weeks after its arrival. For us, today was the day it needed to finally claim its spot in the yard.

I knew it was cold and I knew it was windy. I did not know that tonight is supposed to be the coldest night of the year and 34 degrees, along with those 40 mph winds that have been going on–uncovered and Christmas lit, in its protected spot on the patio the mango tree had kept a good nine to fifteen degrees warmer than the surrounding outside temps.

At least it came tied to a stake taller than it was. “Put one of those big heavy black plastic bags over it,” opined my sweetie, and I did and the thing was just barely long enough to let me put gravel over the bottom edges of the plastic. Yes the bag is touching the leaves, which is a frostbite risk, except that there’s warmth under there. The remote-read thermometer that I put on the ground but away from any lights is saying 53. Outside air is 45, having dropped by three degrees since I started writing this while the other has not. Good.

I’m thinking a second string under there might be the way to go if this weather keeps up. But the mango and the mandarin will, hoping those covers hold in place, make it through this night.

(Baby photos to come as I get permission to share. They’re kinda busy over there. Can’t wait to take my own.)

Edited to add–it went down to 27 that night, as it turned out, and 24 the next.)

The master bath suddenly sprang a fast faucet leak last night, which you don’t do when you have a drought but you can’t do much about late on a Sunday night, so Richard and John started off their day playing plumber and handyman with several trips back and forth to the plumbing supply shop and the hardware store. They picked out the faucet that I would have had I been there. Well done.

The old one that our contractor had chosen had had exposed sharp under-edges just out of sight that I more than once had cut my fingers on. The new single-center-handled one is flush with the countertop and could never do such a thing.

Saturday the wires that are twisted up into a steely yarn running from the bottom through the top of my bird feeder suddenly simply broke when I went to go fill the thing.

The menfolk didn’t tell me they were going to work on that too but all the sudden there they were out there next, figuring out how to thread the new wiring up through the plastic center part. Yes of course they’d picked out the screws and wires while they were out there to replace the old–done. I didn’t even know they’d checked it to see what they would need, much less paid any attention to it.

Next thing I knew they were on the roof. Nope, can’t set this up on that metal flashing, you need a piece that…

They finally sat down when we met up with family at a restaurant for dinner.

And after all that, the new carpet is still clean. Even by the door near the bird feeder.

Children, cousins, aunts, uncles, greats, Grampa my FIL–a happy get-together of fifteen of us tonight to start off the week of the wedding. Not all who are coming are in town yet but the ones who were got a chance to catch up on each other and we got to show off pictures of Dad’s newest great-grandchild.

Time to crash. Calling it a night.

A glitch. Richard to the rescue. My mail is working on the new computer now.

Things are settling in where they belong.

To every person who took part in knitting and piecing together my get-well afghans (and the Congratulations on finishing your book! one from my Campbell knitting group is in the other room, it should be in the photo, too) I just wanted to thank you all over again. You wished me back from the edges of life and I think of you all every time I see what you created for me. Every time. All that time, all that love, all that good yarn, offered in hope, taken from string in a skein to one-of-a-kind works of art. It is something to try to live up to and to be worthy of. (Hey RobinFre–“Same as it ever was.” Nails it.)

We got to see a video of our granddaughter sneezing. I tell you: there is nothing like the sights and sounds of a newborn, even across a screen, and we are utterly besotted.

No clutter. (In here, anyway. Definitely incentive to keep going on that.)

No dust. (Repeat row 1 from here to finish.)

No more 20-year-0ld blue carpet. It looked nice–once. But this matches the furniture and the tile in the entryway and it just makes me so happy to look at and to squish my toes in and the fact that the installers were wonderful started off its presence here with happy associations. Richard having thrown his back out between the quote and the installation, we needed more help moving stuff than we’d expected. They tried not to let us pay extra for that. I finally got a better number out of the guy on the extra labor–and then I about doubled it. They’d earned it, and I wanted them to be happy to come back to do the living room later.

No more 12-year-old Windows XP computer, either. When Microsoft said they would no longer support a system that was on about a quarter of the world’s desktops and on machines sold as recently as two years prior, my reaction was, Go ahead. Mac my day.

We’d been saving our pennies for months to replace both ours and now we have.

More baby pictures: Parker admiring the baby, then, Parker holding the baby, looking rather dubious about this. Or studious and trying to do it right.

I can’t wait to see Madison crawling and later walking on this. It’s finally here and ready for our grandchildren.