The pen is mightier than the sword…

…And if you look at “sword,” it’s “word” with its plural having wandered around to the wrong place.

I spent too much time in the sun yesterday dealing with the contractor when he needed my attention, and my lupus let me have it last night. It is summer, UV levels are high, and I’m super reactive to it. I debated going to the ER in the middle of the night and would have but I wasn’t sure enough that I needed to, and eighteen years of having it suggested that my symptoms were all in my head before the right doctor knew right away what I had to this day leaves me needing to be sure I don’t cry wolf in their eyes. There will always be a time when it’s worse. Save it for then.

The only way that way of thinking has served me well is in the doctors who know me knowing I don’t complain. And if I do…

My body kept forgetting to breathe on its own. It could if I made it, it just didn’t want to bother. This is how, twenty years ago, I ended up in a tilt table test in the hospital to stress my autonomic nervous system to see if the lupus was attacking it. 63/21 blood pressure/40 heart when they stopped it (it may have gone lower but that’s the last I remember) and alarms clanging and people running down the hall and bursting into the room (I could still hear, even if I couldn’t respond) said that yes, in fact, it was.

One doctor apologized to me afterward: he had considered ordering that test himself but had swatted away the thought because it was just too rare. Brainstem involvement? He’d only ever even heard of one other case.

I’ve found a number of other patients online–all of us having had doctors who didn’t believe it at first because it just doesn’t happen.

Except it does.

That complication faded out over about a year. It’s been so nice to have it in remission for so long.

I woke up this morning glad to wake up this morning and thinking, You know what? I want a pastry from Dandelion, darn it. I do. Calories be d****ed. But covid is up and exposure is dumb and San Francisco is a bear to drive to and through and it certainly wasn’t going to happen. So I didn’t say a single word to anyone.

Michelle woke up this morning knowing nothing of this little flare of mine with the thought, You know what? We should take Mom to Dandelion Chocolate.

She texted her father with the idea and could we pick her up on the way? They had a dairy-free option now that she really likes so there would be something for everybody.

Did I want to go?

Was this a trick question? They could drop me off right at the door there and, sure!

Turns out the block was closed off to car traffic, but we found a spot close by with a walk in the shade, at least. I had on my sun jacket and wide hat, doing my best not to be stupid that way.

We had such a good time. We splurged. We bought extra for tomorrow’s breakfast to look forward to. We had their hot chocolate. We enjoyed the by-now familiar faces behind the counter.

It was the perfect antidote to that brief siege of feeling sorry for myself.

(Edited to add: Saturday night was so much better. So much!)

Another day, another $495 spent on the house: a contractor who came at 8 a.m. sharp and got those roots and stump dug out of there so that we can finally get the fence repaired. It was a spot where the neighbor’s tree had fallen on our tree which had punctured our roof while upending the section of fence with its roots so that it eventually, after some years of precariousness, simply toppled over, too.

The guy’s boss had broken his foot in the minutes before he was supposed to drive over to our house Monday to give me an estimate. After explaining, he showed up on crutches the next day with someone else driving him. He was having surgery on it the next day. So I’m hoping for an easy recovery for Mr. Kelly, and I’m glad he had someone else on hand to do the actual removal because there was no way, poor guy.

My one selfish hope was for the employee to be done in time for me to drive to Andy’s before traffic started picking up again, and that proved to be no problem at all.

Because I had promised some Andy’s peaches for that small sewing job. They’re here and they’re waiting. Happy weekend!

Wow that Jan 6 Commission hearing tonight!

There was that little aside with the Capitol Police grousing that Josh Hawley’s infamous fist pump revving up the huge angry crowd about to break in was made possible by his being behind the line where those cops were protecting him.

The commission then played the security camera video from a few hours later of Hawley, and at a time when members of Congress were streams of humanity fleeing together for the safe room and looking out for one another, he was alone but for the cops watching him go, running down the hallway from the mob he’d helped incite. While again those cops were where they were to protect the likes of him.

They had it on repeat in slow motion the second time so that you could see just how high his feet rose as he was beating it out of there.

Yeah, I think he’s a one-termer now.

The neck was way too big and the tie too flimsy on this one to be trusted to hold it together for long; I considered undoing the top edge, pleating it, cutting the bottom off to cover the new top edge–

–Nah. I ran a narrow elastic through the casing and tacked it down with my sewing machine as a quick fix. That was easy.

Oh wait no it wasn’t, as I saw that the machine had jammed a whole wad of thread on the underside that pulled right off, and whoops, one edge of elastic was going swoop! into the inside there.

I managed to stab at it with a sewing needle till I pulled it back.

I do not use my sewing machine enough to justify taking it in for a tune-up; those were $80 twenty years ago. $100 to do this?

Bribery was definitely the way to go.

I messaged this picture to a friend who’s good at sewing: would she be willing to do that small bit of tacking down for me on her machine, in exchange for a pound box of peaches from Andy’s come Friday?

It is safe to say we have a deal.

The neighbor thanked me yesterday for the peaches, saying her son had been having a teenage funk moment and that had helped.

Me: Teenage boys are harder because they don’t have the words to their feelings. And teenage girls are harder because they do.

Her: This!

Me: And yet it is so cool watching them turn into thoughtful wonderful people.

It’s a very old med, quite inexpensive, said my cardiologist when he prescribed it last year for my then-new covid-induced (in his opinion) tachycardia.

Good thing.

My insurance gives me three months’ worth at a time and that’s more than fits in the standard bottles, so I get it in two. Also a good thing.

Thought I as I stood there, a brand new one in my hand, staring at the soapy sink now covered in large white dissolving pills: every one of them but the one I thought I was just going to be holding while screwing the lid back on.

Not a good thing. With apologies to all the fish in the Bay those were heading towards.

I had to get this med refilled that had just been refilled because you don’t ever skip out on taking those. Let the paramedics get some sleep, right?

I called CVS. They apologized that out of pocket was going to be $200, and I said simply, I have to have it. I mean, I’ve got the other bottle, but… So they jumped through whatever hoops and I got the automated call that it was ready.

Meantime, given the discrepancy between what they’d said and what the doctor had said, I’d gone looking.

There was a Singlecare coupon you could print out by which CVS would sell it to you for $51. Hey. So I did. Costco, the site said, charged $19 with that coupon. Printed that, too.

But the local CVS had already called the insurance company and the doctor and filled it and done work on my behalf after I was an idiot, and the pharmacists are trying to keep their jobs while corporate is cutting stores all across the country. Ten times the price, though? I wasn’t that loyal.

So I went to see what I was in for for real and was pleasantly surprised when they rang it up at $91.

“Online it says CVS charges $51, does this apply?” as I showed her the printout.

Her face was saying yes. “Can you come back tomorrow?” She seemed willing to save me the money but not to make the guy in line behind me wait for me while they did the paperwork near closing time, and I’m cool with that.

So I guess the moral of the story is, if you have to pay out of pocket, always check online first.

Sunday School. Old Testament. Male teacher. Hezekiah rends his biblical clothes at the bad behavior of his people who were refusing to follow G_d. It is not mentioned quite strategically where and that’s probably a good thing, but, he does.

Me, raising my hand: Maybe this is a little close to home because I’m wearing a shirt that was hand-embroidered in Ukraine during this war, but, making clothes back in the day was no small thing. You had to harvest the fiber, rhett the flax if it’s flax, spin the fiber, dye the fiber, weave the fiber–hours upon hours upon hours of work for each item.

And it’s women’s work, I added.

Peter’s eyes flew wide as he saw where I was going with this. I didn’t have to say, Did they ask their wives’ okay for such back in their day? Did they mend the clothes afterwards? Who? Did they help out with the work to make the replacements?

So what I did add was, So tearing your clothing was like tearing your heart open to all the world to see. Because everybody knew. They knew.

“I hadn’t thought of all that,” he answered.

Ronni Spoll, if that message was indeed from you, it was great to hear from you! But there’s a typo in your return address and I almost remember what it should be but don’t quite.

——

Meantime, a neighbor’s kid who’s just starting out on that big growth spurt kids do was sitting in his front yard, looking bored and alone for some time and needing cheering up. Probably he was on weed-pulling duty, but even chores could use an occasional excuse for a break.

I went out there with a peach from Andy’s for each member of his family and said if they needed any more to let me know. “I went to a local farmer,” I told him.

He looked up at me.

“And they’re good!”

His face perked right up at that and he looked me in the eyes and then, without a word, got up to go take them inside to share and I thought fondly, I remember the teenage boy years: they don’t instantly find the words for everything they’re feeling, but love and food and time and they come out their best on the other side.

He’s a great kid.

Over at San Jose City Hall, the female of our two young peregrines appears to have caught her own meal yesterday, which is the final task the parents have to teach their young before they disperse out into the world.

One of this year’s UCSC student falcon cam drivers offered a visual summing up of the season from newly hatched to post fledge in one quick video recap, and that last picture conveys how close the siblings have continued to be so far.

It almost made me miss being one of the camera volunteers. It’s been a dozen years. But it was knitting or cam time for my hands and after one intense season as other volunteers dropped out one by one and more and more fell on those of us remaining, it was my turn to go be creative again.

But I’m quite grateful for the experience. And so glad for the volunteers and the college kids who take the classes to be able to show those falcons’ world to ours.

I bought some Hemskirke apricots at Andy’s for my friend Nina on Tuesday and she dropped by tonight to pick them up.

The muffins were cool enough to offer. I’d looked up the raspberry cupcakes in Sweet and even though they’re great, I wanted less fat and sugar, so I thought I’d play with it a bit.

They’re not too sweet, I warned.

I like not too sweet, she answered.

One bite and she really wanted that recipe. I told her I’d have to go write it down quick, I had winged it on the fly. So before I forget what I did, here goes:

Oven at 350, I used paper liners in my 12-muffin tin

1 c flour

1 c almond flour

1/2 sugar

1 tsp baking powder

about a half tsp salt.

Mix.

Separately, whisk:

5 tbl melted butter

1/2 c Greek Gods Plain Traditional yogurt, which is quite thick and has zero runniness

2 eggs

1/2 tsp almond extract

Mix the wet ingredients into the dry, spoon out into the muffin tin, put three or four raspberries on top of each (that have been carefully patted dry with paper towels after rinsing) and sprinkle across the top with turbinado sugar or, what I had on hand, Costco’s organic sugar.

I checked them at 22 minutes and took them out after 23 after a toothpick test.

Nina said they had a bit of a marzipan aspect to them, and I said, Yeah, I like that, and she said she did, too.

And then she happily took her apricots home along with a muffin for her husband, with me saying, If you have more than you can eat, make those muffins–only put a cut-side-up apricot half on each one. (Let the skin of the apricot hold in the juices because Andy’s Hemskirkes have a lot.)

She was looking forward to it.

And a good time was had by all.

(I should go look around here to see how similar this is to the last time I did a batch along these lines.)

Edited to add, and if you ever wanted to hear Sandra Boynton’s voice, here’s your chance. Avec des petits pois.

I went out quite early this morning after seeing remains of peaches on the fence to see how my trees were doing, and three black squirrels–Momma teaching her young where the food was?–suddenly burst out of the leaves and scrambled for the hills.

I took the useless produce clamshell they’d somehow pried open and put it on another peach, hoping that one would have better luck. Went inside for the grape koolaid squirter and went at’em again because, oh well, it was something to do.

Walked back inside, wishing hard. Stepped out of the room, stepped back in, and now a big gray squirrel was sprawled on top of the bird netting cage over my single tomato plant not even far from the door, trying to figure out how to get to those. I gave it a what-for too and scared it away, took a deep breath, and headed inside yet again.

They had stayed away for so long. I wanted them to stay stayed, darn it.

There was almost like a tap on the shoulder.

I had long, long since forgotten that when the moving van had shown up with boxes near to the ceiling and halfway across the living room with my late parents-in-laws’ belongings (we were expecting a set of china for a daughter and not much more), that amongst all those items were what I took to be child toys. Really ugly child toys. From the father-in-law who once painted a homemade plaster of paris ornament as an orange Jack-o-lantern and proudly hung it on the Christmas tree every year when my husband was a kid.

My MIL, I am told, carefully made it so that that would be the thing most likely to break the next time the cat pulled the tree over, but it never worked.

Why, DadH, why, and I put the bouncy little crawly ickies over by the kid zone toy basket in the family room to let the grandkids tease each other with them. Or something.

Look. At. Those. as I strode across the room.

DadH had been an avid gardener.

Rubber snakes. Coiled. Two with mouths wide open and eyes fierce, with forked tongues sticking way out.

DUUUUUUH….!!! Thanks, Dad!

If I’d gone looking for them I would never have found them but there they were right there on top demanding to be noticed.

There are none in the Baby Crawford tree. No point anymore, although at least I’d picked one early to make sure we would get one single one. And that’s all we got. There are two snakes in the August Pride peach and one in the Thomas Jefferson-named Indian Free (as in freestone), which are small and hard and green for now.

I went out tonight to check.

The peaches are being left in peace again.

I haven’t seen a single squirrel since the snakes went out there.

Thank you, Dad, you’re a genius.

So I sent off that note. She sent me a sweet note back.

I decided to add a detail I hadn’t mentioned: that the consul’s American counterpart had taken my picture. That my hair was not having a good day at all but I still felt like I looked good because of how good her blouse looked on me.

She told me she’d laughed, and thanked me.

Which means I just spent the whole day (even through the Jan 6 committee hearing) quite delighted that I’d made someone in Ukraine have a good chuckle at the world.

Meantime, I was working on this. 

The obvious thought occurred to me today, and I sat down and wrote a note to the lovely woman who’d made and mailed this vyshyvanka in the middle of the war.

I cannot begin to imagine how that was for her, but I am grateful she did that for me.

I told her I’d worn it to the General Consul’s talk last night to quietly convey my support for Ukraine. To show good thoughts but also individual actions towards their country’s well-being.

Ukrainians are going through the worst and yet I find they’re just the nicest.

The second speaker put up a slide that stated that war intensifies and quickens deeper human connections.

That instantly rang true.

I figured I was typing away in the middle of the night the seller’s time and that she would get to wake up in the morning to that, and the thought of her happy surprise she had coming just made my day. She had so earned it.

The General Consul of Ukraine in San Francisco was speaking at the Mormon church the next town over at 7 pm tonight, followed by a woman who had done humanitarian work there. For ten years, if I heard right.

He came in at the beginning with an older gentleman who sat down at the opposite end of the second row from me as the Consul went up on the stand.

He came back down and sat by his friend during the woman’s presentation as she talked about ways to help Ukraine and mentioned how important supporting their businesses is to the war effort as well as their daily lives.

I quietly hoped my dark blue vyshyvanka from Sumy was helping her point. It’s one of the prettiest things I’ve ever bought.

At about 8:00 pm, the two men conferred quietly with each other and the Consul left for another engagement.

There were snacks and time to visit afterwards–there’s an old joke about needing six Mormons to change a lightbulb because there have to be five to serve refreshments–and I took a friend aside and said, I have a mild case of face blindness. Do you see him? Is he still here?

I was sure of the answer, I just didn’t want it to be the answer, but no, the Consul wasn’t there.

I started to head out but by the entryway were two chairs and in one of them was a friend I hadn’t seen in ages.

After the initial exclamations of delight, I told her my disappointment.

She knows about my deafness, and she said, But the guy he was with works with him. He could take care of it for you, and he’s right there, she said, pointing him out.

So I turned back that way and waited for the man to be done with whom he was speaking with, and then explained: When the war started, my reaction was to find as close to the colors of the Ukrainian flag as I could find and knit a hat and then as soon as it was done I immediately made another one. I did not know who they were for, just that I felt compelled to make them. Could you get one to him?

He was surprised and very happy.

And, I added, could I give you the other one? Or the two of you can decide together who it’s for, I leave it in your hands.

His eyes were shining now. Yes. Thank you!

Wait, he said–you can’t just walk off. You have to tell me your name. You have to let us know where to thank you!

But he just had… That’s all I needed, since clearly there was no question he would get the one to where it most needed to go and both were going to be appreciated. Already were.

I looked, though, and finally told him, I had a book published 15 years ago and used to always have a card in my purse but, um, I don’t anymore. (An aside as I type this: well now there are! Fixed that! Still had a few left.)

He was not to be deterred. He handed me a pen with a smile. I had nothing to write on.

Wait, I did, I had the very crumpled instructions for the Flame Chevron baby afghan project in my purse. I didn’t need those directions, they were kind of a just-in-case mental crutch, but I did suddenly need that paper and there you go.

I wanted to protest, But I didn’t do it to be thanked!

The thought that it might be an unkindness not to let them is how he got what he’d found himself suddenly hoping for after all.