And today there were four healthy eyases eating up a storm. Clara the mother peregrine seemed to be methodically feeding mostly one, then mostly the second and on through till all were falling over sleepy. Then she scraped up the gravel to create a berm for extra warmth on one side, the weather having turned cold, scooted them carefully underneath her wings, and took a rest, too.

I had a conversation tonight with a friend whom I’ve known since junior high, who now lives in the town where we lived during our first job after grad school. She said something about taking her dog to go swim in the local lake.

Lake?

A road I’d driven a thousand times was named after that lake, but I couldn’t remember an actual lake.

She thought I was pulling a junior high stunt on her. So I described my old route to pretty much anywhere from our house in New Hampshire.

Then I went to go do my treadmill time for the evening, and it hit me. I HAD turned left rather than right and driven the other direction on that road–once. I didn’t get very far.  I don’t think the whole thing was paved going that way, and what pavement there was was something you could only find in New England-type weather: there was a yellow sign early on warning “Frost heaves.”

This is back when we were just starting our family. I puzzled over how frost could have morning sickness.

And then I saw the huge boulder in the road. Not on the road–in the road, coming up out of the pavement right smack dab there in my way, bursting out from underneath, taller than the undercarriage of my car. It was at a blind spot where there was barely room for two cars to pass even if that thing hadn’t been there, and highly dangerous.

And so I always drove the long way around to get to the other end of town. I never saw the lake from that road.

Wait again–it came back to me. My friend Dottie Peyser had had that lake in her backyard, near the end of that long route around; her place was such a gorgeous spot of the earth. She ran a smocking guild once a week out of her home, and in those baby days I smocked then like I knit now; she was older than my folks and we were great friends. And what a view she and her husband Bill had out back!

I saw Dottie knitting once at our meeting and teased her about it and she said something to the effect of, well but she was a knitter too, and once you’re a knitter you never get over yarn. You always come back to it.

She was right, of course.

I wrote to them after we moved here, checking to see how they were doing. The post office returned it for insufficient address. I wrote on the envelope, by now already fairly marked up: Dear California postmaster. This is going to an old part of a small town, where *there are no street numbers* assigned. The mailman there knows everybody and their house by name and by sight. Please deliver.

They did.

Dottie passed away; Bill had a  heart attack and called me to tell me he’d survived it, and that she was gone. He wanted to know how his semi-adopted grandchildren (ours) were doing.

That was 24 years ago. And somewhere, I still have a picture of my oldest, at three, grinning hugely with their teacup poodle in her lap and her arms around it.

A chance mention by someone from junior high about her dog. It brought so many good memories back after I took a moment to reflect on the treadmill.

And it also got me thinking. I never knew that road went along the other side of the water.  How many things do I miss seeing? Even if I can’t do sun, even if it has to be close to sundown, I need to get out in nature all I can. Walk in the redwoods. Splash in the cold edge of the ocean. Make it so I never, ever forget a lake again.

A day of numbers and budget and paperwork and just plain having to be  a grownup.

Oh, and in case anybody other than me is curious, here’s the abstract of the paper on why prednisone doesn’t work on lupus patients like me (with thanks to my daughter Sam for the link).

I took a break, cranked up the music, sat down and knit. For several hours. Watching something new coming to be in my hands in a color not usually my favorite, but because I know how much the person getting it is going to like it, it can be my favorite for just this little while–that familiar happy anticipation was just what the day needed.

I can’t wait till I can wrap it around her shoulders!

Usually the hatching is spread out over several days, sped up a bit from the timing of the laying, but today, the San Jose nest had three chicks hatch! Little white peregrine fluffballs called eyases. My friend Hilary made the little felted creature in that link for a fundraiser for the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group, and my Malcolm the Falcon shown here last year for me. She is a gifted artist.

Meantime, we had a friend over this evening to work on a computer issue with Richard’s help, and I used the opportunity to make myself sit down with a shawl project that had stumped me–what to do below the shoulders, which pattern to choose–and just simply made myself pick one idea, fer cryin’ out loud, and get on with it.

I had gotten the yolk done and then it had incubated at that stage for about a month, right in sync, come to think of it, with those peregrine eggs. It feels good to see it finally spreading its wings gradually in my hands.

Joanne asked what kind of sundae others were eating. I laughed. Since she’s expecting twins she ought to have two pickles with hers, right?

About three hours later I happened to head out to get the drycleaning, and since the grocery store was right there, thought I ought to pick up a gallon of milk while I was at it.

The clerk chuckled at my cart. Bananas, ice cream, and the milk I’d come for.

It didn’t occur to me till I got home.  This subliminal advertising thing–Joanne, you’re good!

Happy Birthday, Michelle! The sky threw confetti flakes on the day of your birth in celebration!

Yesterday and today were General Conference, wherein members of the Mormon Church can listen to their leaders speaking. One of them, Jeffrey Holland, said that they do not assign topics nor coordinate talks between themselves, rather, they each pray for guidance and for their listeners as well as themselves and take it forward from there.

It’s interesting, but it is a bit of a knitting marathon while we watch four two-hour sessions together over the ‘Net over the two days. Yesterday’s got that Malabrigo hat finished.

Today’s, a new chemo cap for an in-law. I’d forgotten that in my stash was some Rowan Pure Silk DK tucked away, bought on closeout at Purlescence, the only way really I could afford it.

I got it about a year ago, well before her diagnosis, on the grounds that I had no pure silk yarn in my stash, there are a lot of allergic people in the world, and at some point it could well be exactly what I needed even if I had no particular reason for it just then. The color was nice but it was going to be for someone else. There were three skeins on the table, and I hesitated; two seemed the right number for no reason I knew. Three would make a shawlette but that just didn’t feel like quite…somehow…

Two it was.

I can usually talk myself out of that sort of unplanned purchase, but this seemed important.

And then I simply forgot about it.

I found them recently, totally surprised at what was inside the bag–where did I?  Oh! I remember! And I had an allergic in-law whose hair and recent chemo round had not played friends.

And yet Thursday I again did not remember that silk; I grabbed the Malabrigo on impulse while wondering what I was forgetting, and ran out the door.

Had I thought of it then, the Malabrigo hat would never have come to be, and I’m very very grateful it did.

So now tomorrow, just as soon as it would have been anyway, one new silk hat will be in the mail to that good woman to cheer her up amid all that’s going on right now. We talked to her between Conference sessions; light lavender? She loves light lavender!

And meantime, in the entirely silly news department, the new and obnoxious leader-of-the-pack squirrel I mentioned that taunted the hawk taunted me today: all the others know, you do not touch Feederfiller’s feeder and you do not climb the wooden pole next to it. I have them trained.

But this big newcomer not only leaps at the feeder, shaking out just enough to encourage it, but today it hung onto the pole at the jumpoff spot, marking and announcing its territory for all to see that it and it alone claimed this prize.  Mine! Sunbathing vertically right there.

It kept its eyes on the other side of the pole away from the house. That way I couldn’t see it. It was so proud and so sure this was so that it utterly ignored me as I opened the door and raised the supersoaker.

Can you just hear the screaming tantrum of THAT’S NOT FAIR!!! as it tore down that pole and across the yard and didn’t come back the rest of the evening? While another happily took its place and, with perfect black-glove manners, gleaned falling seeds from the birds above for as long as it wanted?

Thursday night, getting ready for Purlescence, I didn’t have a portable project for it.  I’d finished one and hadn’t decided  the next yet–but it was time to go. I grabbed needles and the first ball of merino I saw and off I went.

I got the brim finished by the time I went to bed that night but I kept wondering why I was knitting this. My daughter-in-law has one like it; was I subconsciously trying to knit her back to being here in person? (Oh, and maybe bring Parker too? This picture’s about six weeks old now, we need to take new ones.) She loved hers so much when I gave it to her that it certainly made me want to go do that again.

Well then.

I didn’t work on it much Friday, despite my nagging desire to finish a thing once started.

The phone rang about 9:00 this morning.

2:00? Okay, thank you, that sounds good, we’ll see you then!

I suddenly had two-thirds of a hat to knit, and fast.  And I mean fast! I knew there was no way I could knit one from the beginning in time for the very helpful fellow who would be dropping by, but for his wife at least, whom I’d never met, I had a head start in that lovely Malabrigo softness.

And I knew that the best way to make a good person happy is to do something to honor those closest to them.

So the doorbell rang this afternoon a little after I danced across the house waving the thing to Richard going, I finished! I finished! The fellow handed me the thing he was going out of his way to drop off for us and started to turn away with a wave and a cheerful hi.

I stopped him a moment. Explained what I’d done. I saw someone I took to be his wife (she was) waiting in the car and waved hi to her as he left, hat now in hand. I shut the door after him.

You know that doorbell rang again before I could get across the house.

And so I got to meet a delightful woman whom I felt matched me right down to the longish gray hair and the hearing aids.  We swapped a few hearing stories and laughed together. The whole time I’d been raceknitting, I’d been wishing I could actually meet her, and I got to!

When a ball of yarn leaps onto your needles like that, sometimes you’ve just got to obey it.

Oh, and one other thing? The female Cooper’s hawk swooped across the yard just about the time I finished, me on my perch just then and she coming to hers, the metal dolly ten feet away. My eyes followed her in as she came and I turned. She seemed to approve of that nest I’d built–awfully small, though, don’t you think–and a moment later, with a nod of her head, (birds do that to gauge distances but never mind) she swooped back to the right and away.

The male Cooper’s swooped in, scattering the finches and doves without catching anything: he seems, relative to the female, to be a bit of a klutz at this hunting thing. Or maybe he wasn’t really hungry just then, just grocery shopping a bit for his waiting mate. Or maybe offspring? I know the first of the San Jose peregrine falcon eggs is supposed to hatch tomorrow.

Well then. How about let’s take a look around at the real estate here.

Then he did something I have never seen before. He waddled over to the giant elephant ears plant. (Writing that got me to go learn for the first time that the edible varieties are where taro root comes from, although if you have the inedible type it’s quite poisonous; I think I won’t experiment.) Hopped up on one of the trunk pieces that have always looked like giant spiked snakeskins to me, coiling back on themselves a bit. Then over to another; the plant is many decades old and has the density of a sideways-growing tree. Those spikes couldn’t have felt good on his feet, though.

Off, then.  He peered around the corner of the metal trashcan that is the outside earthquake supplies stash; nope, no ground birds hiding around there to flush out now, don’t see a nest. Well, crum, a fat towhee would have done nicely. Hmmm.

He fluttered a few feet to the left and scooted his head under a chair on the patio. Nope, noone here either. He backed out, walked around the table right in front of me on the other side of the window standing there watching him, came maybe two feet from the sliding glass door and regarded me for a long moment. There is nothing in the world like looking directly in the eyes of a wild thing.

There was the wooden box immediately to my left set on 2x4s. They’re under there, I know it! Maybe he heard a skittering away? The hawk leaned way over to the side as if to peer under, to where I knew at least one Bewick’s wren had taken cover.

He straightened up. That didn’t work, try again. He leaned his head way to the side and down again. Just can’t seem to get low enough. And then a third time.

Nope. That settled it. Can’t fit under there.

He half-walked half-fluttered around the far side of the box to look from that vantage point.

Still only a 2×4’s height up on this side. No go.

But just past the end of the box, on the ground, was a particularly obnoxious squirrel.

Now, the biggest male of them is the alpha of the patio.  He preens his tail often.  See how big it is? Fear the fluffy: I rule! He thinks the others eat under the feeder only when he allows it. He is a bully. He is happy to chase off all contenders, till the day shall come that some upstart who’s faster than he is decides to outbite and outfight him and claim dominance for themselves.

Dang if that squirrel–it was like a toddler told to stay in time out and sticking their toes over the line of the carpet in their bedroom doorway, testing to see exactly how much they could get away with–

–well, the little birds skitter away from the seed when that squirrel takes a step directly at them.

So after looking straight at that hawk, remember, the littler by a third of the resident Coopers, for several moments, he took a very deliberately menacing half-lunge at the hawk, who wasn’t quite looking in his direction.

Yeah yeah whatever dude, and the hawk lazily lifted itself up to the top of the metal dolly out of the squirrel’s reach. Don’t harass me, I’m not in the mood.

I think had that hawk been looking dead-on at that squirrel at the wrong moment that squirrel would have been toast right then and there.

And you know that, now that it’s thinking it’s gotten away with it and that it’s declared itself alpha yet again of the porch even over all things hawk, that squirrel is going to try to pull that one off again. When the hawk is hungrier. Or maybe when it’s the larger female.  Or when the babies in the nest are yammering (are they yet?) for food.

Squirrel on wry.

The boss came.

The idea the other guy floated yesterday about maybe having to jackhammer the entire length of the house? Not so much. The boss ran his camera down and showed me the view on his screen: he’d been able to cut through some of the tree root from the inside and he got things going for now, but there was more there and it was only going to grow; he was going to have to get a permit and whack this big root coming from the flowering pear out front and replace that pipe it was breaking into.

Yup. My tree. And it looked so innocent, holding tight to its snowy-white blossoms through two solid weeks of rain, something it’s never done before.

And then after that root canal, we’ll be done with seeing the plumber as often as the dentist.

The new toilet is in, everything is working, and I can’t tell you how glad I am that all this waited to happen till after I got better.  Taking my long-awaited shower, I thought of all the people in Japan still waiting for theirs.

I went off to Purlescence and knitted among friends tonight in quiet celebration for how good I have it. It felt so good to be back, and they are all such good people there–it had been three weeks and I had missed them keenly. (And Fon, your copy is signed now and going off from there in the mail tomorrow.)

At least I got a small shawl project finished while I waited for them to be done and gone. I have to put the word “plumber” in the post here just so next time I do a blogsearch to see how long it’s been, I’ll be able to find it.

Why I was pouring water over my hands over the azaleas in the dark a few minutes ago, to get the sticky off my hands after scooping ice cream, because boy did the evening call for ice cream:

We’re going to need to install a new toilet, ma’am, I’m so sorry. In the morning. We’re going to have to come back. We broke the toilet.

You broke. The toilet.

Yes, ma’am, I’m SO sorry.

So… (After their two hours of work) are the other ones usable now?

No, ma’am, I don’t think so.

(Just covering all my bases here.) So can I take a shower in the morning?

No,  ma’am, I don’t think so. (He probably wanted to scream in frustration, Are you CRAZY? There’s a hole in the floor! But I hadn’t seen that yet.) But my boss, he’s the one who came last time, he’ll be over first thing in the morning any time you want him to come. Um… Are you good friends with your neighbors?

I winced as I guffawed and he groveled, I’m so sorry, ma’am!

Justice is blind? The Washington Post reports: Antonin Scalia caused a four-car pile-up this morning on the George Washington Parkway, with a former NBC reporter witnessing from the car behind him.  She says he didn’t brake and that that’s an originalist interpretation.

Karma kaze driver.

Ahem.

I had a really good day today, so I threw out the cabin fever and ran a few errands that had needed doing while I was down. On my way home, I noticed at a light that the person behind me was my next door neighbor. I waved hi. She didn’t notice. Approaching our neighborhood, she turned left.

Well, I thought, for once I’ll get a chance to time the difference between that left and turning here at the light. She gets the stopsigns and the twists in the road; I get the wait and then the straight shot forward.

And then we were facing each other head-on, turning in tandem onto our street. Totally a tie.

I pulled in my driveway and got out laughing, calling over to her as she got out. She’d had no idea she’d been behind me; we chatted a moment, glad for some neighbor time.

“How’s the new grandson?” She has triplet grandchildren, she knew how happy a question that was.

But at one point she had to stop me to just exclaim, “You look FABULOUS!”

I was very surprised and blushed and thanked her and admitted I’d had the flu and had lost some weight the last few weeks. (The bod, it’s a flu-zy around germs, picking up on them constantly, don’t listen to it.)

“You don’t need to lose any weight,” she affirmed–“But you look so young.” She said it again:  “You look FABULOUS!”

I tell you. I can never move away. Not with good neighbors like mine.

The San Jose Merc ran an editorial and included this link for telling PG&E’s board of directors what you think of how their company’s being run. Their server was down most of the day when I tried to say my piece, so I saved it, waited till after 5, and it went right in. Coolant heads must prevail.

On a more cheerful note, I love that, by the sound of it, the cops were going to write up a ticket for putting art illegally in public and were going to make them take it down, but wait: you say it’s a craft? Well then! And so we have a yarnbombed London phone booth.

Meantime, my doorbell rang today: a friend with her little girl in her arms, the little one shyly reaching out to me with a fistful of daffodils in one hand, and in the other, a bottle of my favorite mango juice. Just to make sure I’m getting better.

You know that little girl is going to want to do that again to someone else, too–that was fun, Mommy!

It’s the little gestures and thoughtfulness that make it totally feel all better when the big things seem a bit much. Thank you, April!

A comment from a friend about patience prompts this.

My brother, years ago and well before he had his own family, told our mom he couldn’t see himself having six kids like she’d had; he just didn’t have the patience.

Mom stared at him and exclaimed, “Where do you think I GOT it!?”

I am here to tell you, he did just fine. (No, not six, but it was the whole future parent thing he was wondering about being good enough for. He’s a great dad.)

When you’re new at something, becoming really good at it can seem unreachable.  Pick up a violin, figure out which hand holds the bow, go play in the orchestra? But even Elizabeth Zimmerman had to knit her first-ever stitch.

Come to think of it, I know a lot of musicians–people who know what it’s like to spend years getting really good at their craft–who are natural-born knitters.  Reading musical notations is a brain exercise of translating from squiggles on a page to finger and hand movements.

Knitting patterns are simply a second language to the hands. Fluency comes with practice.

Remember this post? Our flowering pear has a nest in it for the first time this year. I guess it’s gotten tall enough and full enough. It’s in direct line of sight of the hawk’s, above and across the yard, brave thing–maybe best to keep an eye out. But it’s there, with new life coming to be inside that little leafy home next to ours.

The hawk usually does a low swoop, but today I saw it zoom over towards the redwood from high enough up that I almost missed it.

Last year, though I didn’t say it here because I was asked not to while I was doing it, I was helping man the remotely-controlled cameras trained on the peregrine falcon nest at City Hall in San Jose, a once in a lifetime experience. I was really dedicated to doing the job well.  Eyes glued to the screen, ready to grab and switch from camera to camera and I got really good at anticipating where they would fly next and capturing the scene for all the classrooms and birdwatchers to see. Those baby peregrines have character and they are adorable.

And there was drama: the eyas that died. The father peregrine bowing his head at his son’s body weeks later, standing still for minutes–and then to my surprise trying to push him under the gravel with the top of his head as if to give him a proper burial. Not with his sharp feet or beak but with his soft feathers.

Who knew a bird could behave so?

Neither of the parents ever stepped on his body at the corner of the nestbox. It was sacred ground.

I went to go see them in person and a fledgling hung over the edge of the ledge above as if waving a wing and grinning at the adoring paparazzi below.

But the cams took over my life, six hours some days of my hand hovered over the mouse, ready to click just so, and it left me unable to do more than the most meager amount of knitting. So many computer-induced icepacks. So many things I wanted to do with my life that got put aside. We upgraded our bandwidth to accommodate the streaming.

They asked me last week if I were going to sign in and get started again? They hadn’t heard from me…

I was quite sick, and the effort of pitching in was absolutely undoable just then. That sealed it. They’d had no way to know how much I had given up to be a part of that, incredible an experience though it was. I mentioned that the computer that had had all the sign-in information had died the death and been replaced, in case that made them feel better, because it was with great regret and a tremendous sense of freedom that I told them no–no, I didn’t think so. I did hedge and offer to do emergency backup, but that’s not what they wanted. And that was that.

This year (thank you Dad and Richard!) I have my Sibley guides. I have my birdsongs (thank you to our son Richard and Kim!) I’m learning about my own birds right here, learning their personalities and quirks, being befriended by the wrens and awed almost daily by those Cooper’s hawks. Paying attention.

How many times did I not see them because I couldn’t look up from the screen last year?

I was given a great privilege that I’m very grateful to have had, and now I have fledged and discovered my own home.

I knew they did this but had never really asked about it before, but it was time. I called the Los Gatos Birdwatcher shop a few days ago and asked about their delivery days. No way no how was I going to be able to get myself down there nor would they want me to.

And so it was that on yet another rainy day today, my doorbell rang and I ran and opened quick as one of the shop owners stood trying to hold my heavy bag of non-sprouting no-millet no-hulls no-mess sunflower birdseed out of the drips. John offered to put it anywhere I wanted and I motioned to right there just inside the door, thank you so much.

And he handed me my little suet cake.  I keep one hanging and another for crumbling into bits where the Bewick’s wrens can reach, replenishing the supply when the one black squirrel that’s taken a liking to it goes after it. (The others wrinkle their whiskers and go ewww, dude, you *eat* that stuff? But in normal life all I have to do is reach over and touch the supersoaker and he’s out of there.)

Although when I was too ill to manage doing even that, I saw one wren actually fly up to the caged one, alternating stabbing away and frantically looking down at the ground and around. Munching high up on the vertical was clearly not in its comfort zone–but one must eat.

Since I’ve been up and about and more helpful again, that’s been the end of that tomfowlery.

John asked if I were doing better now; yes, mostly, but still, I promised not to breathe on him. (Ignoring the autoimmune side to things–but that is indeed thankfully easing off too.)

And it struck me afterwards that just being asked by someone to whom it clearly mattered made me take stop and take stock and think to myself, Wait–it’s true, I AM a whole lot better. Remember Tuesday? And and? And the Tuesday before? Honey, I got nothin’ to complain about.

Just a little moment in a life.  And yet the way he carried it out was beautiful: he wasn’t just delivering a product, he was serving and doing for me what I could not at that moment do for myself, and serving with grace. For my birds too.  Glad to help. There they were, just outside the glass that is the back wall, chattering away at the feeders, and he looked over at them and smiled.

Shame he didn’t get to see the Cooper’s.  But just imagine all the birds he could tell about.

At first glance as the page opens, it’s a rusted-out skeleton of a very old car with its license plate falling off out of sheer age and neglect. Then you look a little closer… Czech it out! If it were another nationality, we could call it an American I-doily singing in the rain.

Spent some time knitting, coming up with a whole cool new lace idea, putting the project at hand aside to go swatch and go write, not finished tweaking, glad I could do a bit more now. Getting there. Mostly.  Since March 15th I’ve lost seven pounds I really didn’t need to lose, but this morning it had stabilized.

Just please keep that Crohn’s away from me.  If tonight is like last night in reaction to eating a good dinner, (look, Ma! no Zofran!), I’m calling my GI.

The Cooper’s hawk swooped in and landed behind me in the late afternoon during a brief break in the rain, the misted sunlight intensifying the colors in her feathers. Gorgeous. We regarded each other a few minutes.  I think things are going to be okay.

(Ed. to add Friday evening: last night was a far better night than Wednesday night. Thank heavens.)