She was fairly confident the x-ray would show a hairline fracture, but it proved a 404: Not Found. Swelling only.

She exclaimed over my green Mecha hat on the needles, and I thought with a grin, now I have motivation to finish it.

She very much approved my Birkenstock clogs (she has the same ones.) Nice and solid bottom to them, good for this. But even better, this boot would keep me from flexing my foot while walking around and yes I should wear it to speed up the healing quite a bit. She diplomatically did not say I should have come in two weeks ago.

So I’m wearing it. My gift to Near-Future Me. It looks like a mini black snow shovel with straps.

Happy Birthday to our Maddie, and a Merry Christmas to all!

We’re supposed to get an inch and a half of rain overnight. That’s a major storm for us.

They had tented the drop-off area but it wasn’t needed just yet.

There had been two piles of stuff, good stuff, useful stuff that someone will love that I had deliberately placed in view of my knitting perch.

It was stymying me to have this thing that I wanted to get done left undone. With clouds low and darkening and after checking their times, I loaded up the car and finally made that Goodwill run. Nothing gets one going like a deadline. I did it! I beat the rain!

Look at all that cleared space to look at, opening up those creative juices.

At last I can really go knit.

My childhood self is feeling as gleeful as those little kids with their bells yesterday: look what I found! No Christmas is complete without a dose of Snoopy and the Red Baron. I bet one of my siblings can tell me which one of us officially owned that record but we all played it over and over.

The incoming storm was dark yet the yard vividly bright in contrast. I found it a surprisingly hopeful metaphor.

And there is nothing like a group of small children given bells to enthusiastically ring as they sing their best Christmas songs up on the stand in front of everybody. Their arms go, Look, I can hold mine higher than you! Well I can hold mine wider than you! Well my stuffed bunny can ring mine better than you can! Well I can sing louder and roll my eyes better at you because I’m two years older!

The adult grabs their attention by waving her arms a little more vigorously and they all focus a little more on Silent Night-ing with their voices and un-Silenting their enthusiastic bells. Rrrring!!

Little kids. They’re so human, and so funny.

A grandson’s 15th, my mom’s 95th, my cousin’s (who was named after my mom) 67th: Happy Birthday!

We just hung up and I walked away feeling incredibly privileged. How many people get to spend an hour on the phone wishing their mom a Happy 95th?

So the latest and greatest in the tire world is that you order what you want for the car you have at costco.com, they ship them to that Costco, and you wait for an appointment. No more of their stocking random everythings and hoping they’ve got people covered.

Seventeen days.

I showed up 40 minutes early, which confused the guy but I wanted to drive there before the projected eight straight days of rain began. I wanted only dry pavement under those old tires, glad for the heads-up from my mechanic that they needed to go.

Man, it felt good to have that taken care of.

I sent off a couple of texts and got no response. C’mon, pick up your phone, hon.

I came home to news of an ambulance ride hastily followed by (he’d just gotten off that phone) And everything’s okay now. People had gotten a little overexcited at a fainting over a needle draw.

Okay then!

Suddenly, sitting in the chair at Costco’s Optical Department knitting for two hours while people wondered who the heck you were and why you were  sitting there demo’ing green yarn didn’t seem at all like a hard way to have had to spend the time.

I guess it was the day to be a spectacle.

Christmas party, dinner served, chocolate tortes consumed, an announcement made, a young friend unexpectedly grieved, stories shared of good friends and good memories, it ran late because it suddenly had to. G’night.

Sepsis.

Love your loved ones. Love your loved ones. Please, please, love your loved ones.

It was time post-op to see where things stood.

Got a new glasses prescription today from the optometrist I’ve been going to since our kids were little.

It has always amazed me how eyes are not a static thing: that they can change just a little bit from one year to the next, and then the changes change as you get older, from ever a little more nearsighted to noticeably less so but take off the glasses if you want to see to knit or read.

And then of course the recent surgery after two years of one retina being damaged but stable till suddenly it wasn’t.

Knowing how much I would enjoy it, at the end the guy said, Oh by the way, this is how you see this line now…and this is how it’ll look with your new glasses.

OHMYGOSH!!

He laughed for joy. That sense of discovery, of recovery, of you mean it not only gets even better yet but it gets that much better?! all packed into one word, and he totally got that. And it made him so happy.

—

(Title inspired by Jackson Browne’s Doctor My Eyes and his participation in Playing for Change with artists across the world.)

I love our flowering pear this time of year. In the low light of December every leaf is an exuberant Christmas light.

I saw the guy ever so briefly past the window. I went outside.

It was a mailman I’ve never seen before–tis the season for extras–and he looked to be in his 80s, a stooped old guy. That was a surprise. I picked up the mail he’d just left and hearing me, he turned around to offer one more thing.

Because you cannot risk leaving a to-be-cherished Christmas present out where someone could just walk off with it, is all I can guess, and maybe those last steps to ring the doorbell at the end of the day at the end of the route felt like a bit too much? He was clearly relieved to be able to hand it directly. He loved my, Oh cool! when I saw who it was from.

It held a single skein of hand-dyed yarn from Karida Collins of Neighborhood Fiber Co in Baltimore. She had taken a break and dealt with health and when she re-opened her business I’d ordered that one little bit just to cheer her on.

Clearly, whatever was in there was too valuable in the old mailman’s eyes to be left unguarded. Neighborhood. Fiber. Good things!

Karida’s going to love that.

I haven’t opened it yet. That mailman’s smile convinced me it’s for Christmas.

They sang happy birthday at church. They offered me (and other December babies) a (Safeway?) cupcake with a huge swirl of frosting decorated with sprinkles.

Topped, inexplicably, with a bright red plastic ring with a cartoon hero on it. Captain America? Something like that, anyway. And thus the text with this photo to the good folks next door: the cupcake had sadly met its fate (Richard and I had split it) but the good Captain lives on. I asked if there was any chance they’d like to let their three-year-old play with it?

She laughed and said sure.

And that is how I ended up next door when they had good news to share and were ready to share it, with someone they knew would be excited along with them.

So I need to finish the baby blanket that kind of went on the back burner so that I can launch into their new one.

That definitely worked out!

I untangled the two old dead strands of lights off the mango tree yesterday before running out of sunlight. It was a job. I got a single new string on today, wondering whether I should just think, hey, heat rises, or whether I should add a second. I didn’t want future me to have to go through that much trying to separate leaves and branches and lines again.

But the point is to take care of my tree so I’m probably not done yet.

For the record, blue lights are the least intrusive for nighttime. The only ambient glow I can find is through the camera lens.

I stockpiled when incandescent bulb sales were banned. All I want is the heat. There’s a whole market waiting in this climate for someone to come up with a safe non-light warming system for tender trees: old-style Christmas lights have been the standard off-label use for decades.  There are a lot of citrus trees around here. C’mon, Silicon Valley, you can figure out a way.

Clara Parkes asked today if there was a time when darkness, however one might choose to define it, had made the light more clear.

I answered with the following story from 2003. I probably said it here years ago but in case not I want to make sure my kids have it, so here goes.

—

I was in the hospital fighting for my life and a nursing assistant was assigned to me who was a mess. She was clearly depressed. She had a thick accent and hated that I had a hard time hearing her (hey, I have a hard time hearing anybody.) She hid her badge to avoid her name being reported for lashing out at patients.

I resented the fact that at a time when I was so ill and in so much pain I should be stuck with someone like her.

But I also had time, while there, to think about it. I couldn’t do anything about whatever her situation was–but at least I could say a prayer for her. It couldn’t hurt. Why hadn’t I even thought of it earlier.

The next time she came in was at a peak moment of difficulty for me and in spite of all my best intentions I snapped at her. Before she’d even said anything.

To my surprise she didn’t snap back–instead, she looked terribly, terribly sad and turned and fled the room.

I felt terrible. I was the one with the good life and support structure and I was taking things out on someone else?

The next time she came in the room the nurse who also happened to be her boss (I didn’t know that) also happened to stop by steps behind her. I apologized to the NA in front of her, and said, I was mean to you and you were nice to me in response. You didn’t deserve that. I apologize.

I later told that nurse that I was glad that the woman had had her there to witness my saying she’d treated me better than I’d treated her.

That’s when I found out the NA was already in the process of being fired for her treatment of patients. The nurse knew it was depression and had been trying to find a way to reach her and help her. And here the two of us were presenting the NA to herself as being better and kinder than how she’d been seeing herself.

I later went back to the hospital with a stack of handknit little items for the people who’d taken care of me. I assumed the NA was gone by then, but just in case, I had a hat for her.

She wasn’t. She saw me from down the hallway and came RUNNING and threw her arms around me! Wow!

She was saved by my having lost it.

It was a quiet day spent keeping my foot up a lot. I got up this morning thinking, Oh, that’s a lot better than I thought that was going to be. Yay.

And thank you all for the kind words and thoughts.

Meantime, it’s been 36F the last three mornings. I really need to get out there and replace the eleven year old incandescent strand on my low-growing mango tree. Removing it from the tangle of limbs and placing the new such that it doesn’t constrict its growth–I’ve been avoiding it.

To be honest, I think for a semi-irrational fear of getting ticks on my head. It’s not been quite, quite cold enough to kill them off.

See, this is why nearly-white hair is a good thing: you can see them, or rather, the tall guy will. Right?

My portion of my late dad’s art arrived today.

I had previously had a few paintings shipped to me and they’d arrived carefully cushioned inside thick cardboard boxes. So that’s what I was expecting.

After I’d pre-paid the shipper he happened to mention that it was not going to be delivered inside. The driver’s contract stops at our garage door. Although, I could hire their other guys at our end to bring it in for us.

Sure, how much?

My brain refuses to remember how much above $600 he said because I instantly said no. I could call in friends if need be; I could carry those boxes myself, even if it might take me awhile with a bad back. Could they give me a warning once they actually hit the road with them, since the delivery day was uncertain. I knew it was a twelve hour drive.

They did not do so.

This morning, there was their delivery guy in my driveway with three big wooden boxes just past the sidewalk. Heavy and nailed shut. Holy cannoli. And I thought I had it all planned out where the items were going to go. As if.

I walked back in the door with the guy’s piece of paperwork and said to Richard, who is limited by having once broken his own back, We’re in trouble.

Walked back out and shook my head as I read the weights Sharpied onto them: 207 pounds, 201, 109. Clearly, the boxes themselves were a great deal of that weight. Someone with the skills could easily rework them into furniture.

The young driver was blown away at being met by only this little old lady. He just couldn’t leave me like this. He insisted.

I had found yesterday (because I so seldom use them) that I was out of checks–that was stupid–and he’d gotten there before I had any chance to head to the bank for replacements like I’d planned.

He simply said, Pay what you think is right, and started working that first box forward, twist and push, twist and push.

Wait, I said, running to get the dolly. It helped for the first two, with me helping as best I could, but he thought it too small for the third and put it aside. The low raised step into the house was the biggest challenge. Even he had to stop and breathe a moment, but he did it, he got them all in just inside the door. I thanked him profusely and emptied out my wallet as he watched me searching for one last ten or twenty to throw in there, but at least there were quite a few. Richard added his twenty.

I’ve iced and stretched my back while praying for that guy’s all day long. He didn’t have to do that. But he did. I so much want him to be okay.

Richard got the drill out after dinner. He wanted to make sure everything looked good in there, and he removed all the nails along the tops.

Those guys did a good job protecting everything.

And then, immediately after saying out loud that I was going to have to be careful not to drop that heavy board from the biggest lid on my foot…

We know the drill by now: if I did break it it will hurt worse and more specifically tomorrow, and with that we did not go to Urgent Care. Yet.

What I most want out of those boxes is the painting that I had loved but that had had a several-inch tear in the canvas. My brother has the skills and he repaired it for me and touched up the paint there. You cannot see where and would never know if you didn’t know. That one means a lot. I want it on my wall first.

I think we’re done lifting for tonight.

(Ed. to add in the morning, I don’t think it’s broken. Yay.)