After several false starts and a whole lot of stitches the hat is begun.

Okay, that’s my obligatory bit for the day. What you really want to read, if you haven’t yet, is Stephanie’s post.

If you already did you know that her sister-in-law lives in Madagascar and that once a year she flies home to Canada and buys all the yarn for the next year. (I. Cannot. Imagine. A woollessly-enforced cyclically-stashfree life? All planning no sudden hey-I-could? Yow.) Likewise, once a year she gets to give out all those things she has knit in happy anticipation of sharing her love in ways that will stay when she has to leave, waiting, waiting to be able to give  out that wealth of knitted happiness.  A sweater’s sleeves that were made for toddler Lou with memory of his arms around her neck in a hug, as Stephanie writes. The new baby in the family who needed warmth against the Canadian cold…

And that was the suitcase that went missing July 31st.

After her trying every possible method of extracting it from the airline and then giving the okay to her sister-in-law, Stephanie finally put the word out to the knitter world at large last week.

I know I’m not the only one who said prayers. I also believe in a God who answers anonymously through the actual doings of people to encourage them to look out for each other, and sometimes there’s simply someone out there who needs to know enough to act on a hunch or enough to know to do some looking. They just have to get the word.

Whatever, however.

That suitcase came home to Canada today.

A year’s worth of near-daily work. Safely home.

Y E S !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I did it.

I deliberately put on my purple skirt this morning. Now, this purple skirt and I have a problem. It shades slightly towards the brown side, unlike the supposedly identical broken-zipper one it was replacing that I’d loved, while the top I’d ordered to match it does not.

They clashed. I overdyed the top and I love how it came out but it still doesn’t match the skirt and my eye is not happy with them together.

So yeah, I wear plain white with the skirt that arrived not quite the right color. The price of hating going shopping.

And the reason I mention this is the scarf. The long, soft, endless, boring, pretty, repetitive, densely knit, heavy, I’m going out of my mind scarf that I’ve been desperate to get off my hands and off my needles so I can dive into the baby stuff before my granddaughter arrives, because I know if I abandon it again it will stay abandoned and my cousin’s move from warm California to chilly England was postponed so she doesn’t have to have it this month after all and that makes it way too easy to say oh no hurry then, whenever.

It is purple. And it is a prettier purple than either of the two in my outfit and yes I did put on that skirt and that top. Deliberately. By putting on that combination I only love separately I knew I was making it so my eyes would want all day to reach for the shade that peacemakes between them. The scarf is actually also two different shades playing together–only they really do, the Malabrigo Arroyo in Borrajas and the heathered mink laceweight, calm and steady and setting off the best in each other.

You would think those yarns would work up quickly. You would think wrong. In all these weeks I’ve knitted and knitted and I’ve blackholed it the whole time.

Till at last calling towards the other room tonight: “Did you hear that snap?”

“What snap?”

“The snap when the yarn breaks.”

“It’s bad when the yarn breaks!”

“Not when it means you just finished your project.”

And that, that, is how you get a two month long stinking endless dragging scarf project off those needles. Make it be the place where your eyes get to rest. (And turn on the stereo for some music relief and laugh out loud when you discover how much fun the little grandsons had moving all those pretty tiny buttons around on the stereo equalizer.)

Pardon me while I measure the thing for gauge-swatching and cast on the matching hat, quick, before the day is done. I’ll wear that skirt again if I have to but next time the top is going to be white.

(Pottery by my friends Mel and Kris and sons at mkwares.net.)

I was typing away, the afternoon nearly gone, Richard off to the office for a meeting and just me at home in the quiet house.

Motion with a hint of size caught at my peripheral vision. Oh I hope! Knowing to move slowly, I reached for my glasses, put them on, and turned carefully sideways.

The low light didn’t do his coloration justice but it was enough.

The vertical beam between windows half hid him, as raptors prefer. It was the Cooper’s hawk, now perched on the handle of the dolly that’s been left just on the other side of the window from the couch specifically for him.

He–and by those long lean lines and smaller size he was most definitely male–watched me and allowed me and stayed. We took each other in. I had needed it and he had come and he allowed me to love him all the more for it for at least a full minute.

And then in easy leisure he spread his great striped wings and with no particular speed–and believe me Coopernicus can speed–he flew away in curving sweeps that let me follow his going all the longer.

(There are photos of him on it from earlier this year here.)

Last night was the first night I slept since this started, just a few coughing spells. Today was the first day I was able to eat without having to use anti-nausea meds to make it possible. That’s real progress.

And I wound up the next ball of purple yarn for my project. I almost did it last night but thought, do you want to blow all your energy standing winding for twenty minutes and then be worse tomorrow because you’re already that tired, or do you want to wait till it’s easier so it gets done *and* you still feel well? I waited and today it was no problem. Wow what a difference.

Getting tomatoes out of those boxy cages is a real pain–and the guy who comes twice a month to do some of the outside yardwork that I can’t saw me coughing just before I headed back to bed to read awhile, not talking to him because I didn’t want to share the germs. Richard was working from home: another sign I was sick. The guy saw that things hadn’t been weeded for at least a week and there were now tomato branches growing through and blooming well outside the bird netting.

He got that one ripe heirloom tomato out of there for me and put it where we couldn’t miss seeing it the next time we looked out the window. Nobody had asked him to. He just did it. I got up soon after he and his partner working next door left, too late to say thank you or even to be sure which one of them had done it.

Looking forward to tomorrow. I like this getting-better stuff.

When my daughter moved to Alaska I wished I knew more about the place and my brother-in-law suggested I read James Michener’s “Alaska.”

Being sick is a good time to catch up on reading and I am finally plowing through it, even if it’s as endless as the coastline of that state. I like that at the front he has a list of, this is historical, this is fiction.

But man oh man he drives me crazy. Describing the Great Hunt that nearly exterminated the species, I want  to tell him, river otters wouldn’t have seven foot long pelts, dude, are you crazy? They’re cute little things. It would be quite a stretch for sea otters for that matter. If you didn’t ever go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, couldn’t you at least have cracked open an old-school encyclopedia? Then, oh oops, mid-chapter he switches the description of what they’re hunting to sea otter without mentioning it and river otters are never heard from again.

Wikipedia on Sea otters: here. 

And river otters: here.

History is his thing, and he does give a lot of it.

But Michener’s character development too has had me going Nah AH a few times and actually laughing out loud this evening. C’mon, how is this supposed to be believable? Sorry, but if a woman (an Aleut) was sold into slavery and then repeatedly (he describes it most delicately) gang-raped and beaten and later one of the thugs wants to marry her to keep him from being shipped to certain never-to-return well north of the Artic Circle, having her faint in ecstacy at the preaching of the Russian Orthodox priest, making it so she willingly saves her primary tormentor’s soul (after having gotten away from him for a good long time) by marrying him and entering a life of saved Christian bliss while with that conversion severing from her life the shaman who had been her life support through all her trials because he was of the wrong religion now–James, James, honey, it just ain’t happenin’ for me.

Haven’t gotten to the end of the chapter yet but she did turn her back on her people and did marry the evil man she’d so hated. I’m hoping for a better ending on that particular subplot.

But what Michener did do was make me want to go sort out more details on what actually did happen then between the Russians and the Aleuts and all the other countries that in the 1700s were trying to move in on the lucrative otter pelt trade while claiming territory.  Yes, the Russians did enslave and kill many of the Aleuts. Not just the animals.

Not only did they nearly exterminate a keystone species in the marine ecosphere, the author says that 70% of the otters the white man shot simply vanished down into the ocean before they could get to it, destroyed and gone.

Now that I believe.

We’re still working on recovering that species. We’ve got a ways to go. A bad die-off a few years ago made headlines when they said toxoplasmosis from house cats finding its way down to the coastline was the culprit, and they were working on it.

Well, that’s one for the history books.

I snoozed through most of the first session. I tried.

I was feeling much better during the afternoon one and knitted through most of it–except for a few minutes there when the phone rang, checking first, and then the doorbell did. Glenn!

He was here for a business conference. He moved to New York City a few years ago and he wanted to stop by and say hi while he could. I waved through the window while Richard went outside to chat and to meet Glenn’s girlfriend; there was no way I was going to expose them to my germs. Sometimes it’s just not the day.

But at the end we did open the door between us, and standing well away from each other exchanged at least some actual greetings before they left.

And I…have run out of purple Malabrigo that’s wound up. I need to get up the oomph to wind the next ball tomorrow; today there was just no way.

Tomorrow I need to make the call to my GI doctor like the ER doctor had wanted me to do. This morning was worse, not better, and she made it clear that, even if I didn’t want to hear it, she thought the Crohn’s symptoms were actually caused by, y’know, my having Crohn’s. Flu does that.

Or maybe it will all clear up together. I’m hoping.

So, today.

My oldest got hit by a taxi. She assures us no serious injuries, but yow. I’m grateful it wasn’t worse–while fighting my mama bear instinct to want to scream at the guy, What did you think you were DOING!!!

Ahem. And. At noon, Michelle showed up bearing hot chocolate from the shop where we’ve been meeting up with her and her cousin many a Saturday morning, wanting to make sure that, flu or no, we didn’t miss out. I couldn’t drink much but what I did was great and the rest is in the fridge in happy anticipation.

And. The doorbell rang, 5ish. A friend from church bearing dinner, and she had absolutely no way to know I’d been craving pasta and cheese and Italian sausage and a good substantial sauce all day. No way. I hadn’t even said it to Richard. And yet–there it was in her hands: a very good ravioli, lots of sauce that appeared to be homemade (I very much want the recipe) and with a lot of Italian sausage in it, and I could not have imagined up better than what we were offered. Susan! We both had seconds, and for me this week that’s really saying something. Happy us, there were leftovers.

Carrot cupcakes, cut-up watermelon, multi-seed-and-grain bread (that last would have to be for Richard.) She took the time to make that and bring that while arranging her 98-year-old mother’s funeral and affairs and I’m just kind of blown away.

And.

I knitted. Not a lot, two 45-minute segments where I was going v e r y slowly but making noticeable progress on the interminable purple cousin scarf. (Yes it’s still going on.)

Because today was the first of two days of the General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, two two-hour sessions two hours apart and tomorrow likewise at 9 and 1 our time, and knitting during Conference has always just been a given, and Conference projects always have their own bit of meaning (even if that meaning more than once has been, while I was doing it, finally something that sat me down in my seat long enough to finish this!)

I listen and get my priorities back in gear and feel spiritually charged up while at the same time, and peripherally to it all, create things to make someone out there happy. ‘Oh, I made this one during Conference’ makes it a happy thing indeed.

I think Sunday afternoon we shall have a purple scarf at last and the beginnings of the hat to match. See? That’s the other thing Conference offers: an abiding sense of hope again.

I even started to forgive the taxi driver. I still hope he got caught, if only so he won’t repeat the errors of his ways.

Uh, yeah, so, I’m still working on that one. Good thing there will be more knitting time  spent listening to wise and loving older people telling their stories and of their trusting God’s love come Sunday.

Pulse oximeter’s lowest reading last night: 90%. Way better.

Saw a black squirrel on the fenceline just beyond our property today where the fences intersect and its behavior caught my eye. It was both relaxed, laying down there, and…not. Its legs dangled lazily in the record heat (90! In October!) while its head kept bobbing up and down.

Gauging, gauging, gauging. It stood up quickly and

“HOLY COW!”

Richard, working in the next room: “What’s holy cow?”

It had taken a massive leap to the neighbor’s tree and that tree was ten, maybe even twelve feet away from it. There was the slight arc upwards and a swiftly-sharpening arc downwards as it sank, front feet stretched far forward tail straight back. Whether it had enough momentum to manage to desperately grab on near the bottom of that big tree or not I couldn’t tell because my fence was in the way but it was sure going to be a close call if it did.

Y’know? All it had to do was amble down alongside my cherry tree and the tree it coveted would have been right there.

You just don’t have to do it the hard way.

Oxygen at 81% at night: I am not a fan.

And yet.  Got my hair washed today, got the birdfeeder filled, got a husband working from home this week taking excellent care of me while I try to take excellent care of him as best I can.

Ran a load with your socks, hon, I knew you were getting low.

Oh. I was?

Not anymore.

Tomorrow I might even put them away.

The curious thing about yesterday is that the nurse told Richard emphatically NOT to bring me in to Urgent Care at the clinic: they would just ambulance-transport me straight to Stanford ER anyway.

They either had a lot of staff out sick or were swamped with patients or both. I would much rather have gone there–given my medical history they always take me right in and get me going on that IV. Going to the ER meant over two hours (and I knew it) of sitting up in a wheelchair.

But at least I had that IV in the second hour of it and I went from utterly limp ragdoll to sitting up and opening my eyes. The power of a little fluid.

I was planning on getting my flu shot yesterday. I got the flu instead. Trying not to sound whiny as I type this, but, this is a really nasty bug–please don’t get it. Get your flu shot now.

Nurse on the phone to Richard: Take her to Stanford ER.

Me: What?! No.

Richard: I think you should go.

Me, barfing repeatedly a little later: Let’s go.

Woke up sick, y’know, the ordinary germy type. Hoping hard I wasn’t contagious Saturday. Or yesterday, for that matter.

And one more photo: Hudson found the squirt gun and ran to it.

Now, they don’t make’em like they used to, not at all–the powerful zappers from my kids’ childhoods were probably lawyered off the market. But the thing does squirt. Mildly. As in, perfect for his age group.

He intuited without being told that one sprays the water outside, not in, and when it was all empty he brought it to me for a refill–with a word and a try and almost a two-word sentence, along with lifting it towards me, it was a Here, Grandma, you’re the one who knows how to fix this.

How did he know it was mine? Indeed I do, little guy, indeed I do.

Hudson went straight for the organ.

Parker went straight to the new digger toy his Grampa had bought a few days earlier and had set free from its packaging, battery in and ready to go so it would make a nice growly rrrrrrrr rrrrrrrr rrrrrrrrr. Grampa had it set on the floor not in but in front of the toy basket: couldn’t get any closer to neon signs with PARKER!!! written all over them.

Making memories.

They only had a few minutes–there was so much family get-together stuff going on this weekend on my daughter-in-law’s side of the family, and rightfully so: you only die once.

Her Grandpa John, who’d lived maybe a mile from us, had slipped quietly away in a good old age, a life well lived. I sent off a photo from the kids’ wedding of him bent way down and a small child happily high-fiving him.

The kids were here a month ago while he was in hospice care and I told them, remembering my own childhood, It may surprise you how much Parker might remember of seeing his great-grandpa.

We got some Dr. Seuss time in, Parker and me and then Hudson climbing up so as not to miss a thing. Fox in, what else in a knitter’s house, Sox.

I had been saving two last Fuji apples, expecting they would not become overripe and they didn’t, twins growing on opposite sides of a limb, the longest any had ever been able to last critter-free in our yard. I clipped the tape on the clamshells–two layers–and as they fell, lifted Parker up so he could reach. An enthusiastic snap! Snap! and they were off! Ripe, sweet, the seeds inside brown and mature now.

Parker doesn’t love having his picture taken, but just before I sliced those up I asked him if I could take a picture of the apples. He thought that was a great idea. He held them out high so I could get a good shot.

I handed out slices, and when my son, playing the piano, didn’t get to his and hadn’t eaten one from the first apple either, Parker felt it his work and fair game and he’d waited, too. But you do not let such treasures go to waste. He pulled it off the music book on top of the piano and, with a nod and no complaint from his daddy, devoured it.

A few minutes later, he surprised me with a big hug from behind and then ran away to tease me; Hudson gave me a hug from in front, and we all walked together to the curb and waved goodbye goodbye bye bye as our son snapped them into their carseats and finally away.

And this time Hudson didn’t burst into tears when they pulled out. He’d seen this movie before. This time he knew they’d be back. (Or we’ll come, little guy, when your sister arrives, believe me, we’ll come.)

I was 31. They did tell me cerebral vasculitis. Nothing at all to compare to what this woman went through, but at the same time so many parts of her story sound so familiar.

I was someone who never forgot a face. Suddenly I wasn’t remembering them instead, even having trouble, when I was tired, recognizing my own husband’s. I suddenly couldn’t spell anymore, my short-term memory was gone, and I remember the time I ordered something over the phone and had to have the sales clerk read the numbers back to me to make sure I’d read those squiggly things correctly: Tell me the name of the item back to me, too, just to be sure. Letters were far easier. Still, I could tell which numbers they were just fine if she told me first what they were, kinda hard for her to do, y’know, so we did our best. (Online ordering didn’t exist yet.)

It helped clinch my lupus diagnosis.

Read what Christine Hyung-Oak Lee can write now. She’s amazing.