I had a conversation once with my Dr R about another doctor whose nurse wasn’t returning my phone calls over a worrisome subject outside Dr. R’s field. “He doesn’t understand,” I said, “I don’t complain. And if I *do* complain, LISTEN UP!”

Dr R agreed, “You don’t complain,” and I knew what he was thinking: about the time six years ago when I kept thinking I was surely getting better till the morning it all suddenly went south fast and my survival was no sure thing. He made me promise forevermore after that to tell him when I wasn’t doing well.

I’m not doing well. I know, I was, it was nice while it lasted.

He’s on sabbatical. The receptionist said his nurse would ask the other doctors’ nurses if one of them could fit me in today. Five hours later, no phone call–when I called again and said, here, let me add some context to that, I had a total colectomy four months ago, I got a receptionist in what-can-I-do mode telling me she’d told the nurse and the nurse would call me back.

Yeah, I’ve been here before. When that one doctor did not answer me for four days I finally parked myself in his waiting room before he arrived for work that morning and demanded to be seen. It worked.

Abdominal pain as a description may not be a big deal to a gastroenterologist who doesn’t know me, but I know me and random doubling over when I eat or walk is Not A Good Sign. See me. Now.

—————-

Follow-up,  3:30: They blew me off. But at least I made them do so to my face rather than by their having me waiting by the phone for twelve hours.  They told me to go to Urgent Care.

It’s a holiday weekend and clearly none of them wanted to put in any extra time.

You go to Urgent Care to get an IV. You do not go there to get a diagnosis. I got sent there once under similar circumstances and got a doctor who denied I had Crohn’s, denied the reality of the Asacol I’d been on for five years for Crohn’s, insisted I must have eaten raspberries with salmonella, insisted he saw that a lot lately (and on how many others of them were you wrong, too, sir?), tested me, and it came back negative as I knew it would.  He insisted on re-testing me and culturing for ten days because by golly it was going to prove him right!

It stayed negative. Fancy that.

I figure today, well, if I’m healthy enough to manage driving myself there and back, then I guess I’ve validated their demand that I not get sick till Tuesday when the holiday weekend is over.

First thing I saw this morning from here was a bluejay hopping around on the ground around E.’s hydrangea: planted and a solid part of the landscape now.  You could just see its wheels turning: too light and way too low to perch on. What’s the point of this? Who’s messing with my yard?

And then, after flying past the porch a few times to get its bearings, it divebombed. Richard had put the birdfeeder together and had hung it last night.  (It may have helped that I offered to do it and he visualized me with my balance and his drill in hand while trying to use it on something way above my head.  He could reach the awning easily and without falling over. The deed got done.)

Nuts. Missed.  Annnnd… missed again!  The jay thought about it a moment and tried a gentler approach: fly a little slower and try to land on the green perch this time.

The feeder twirled, the jay’s wings flapped wildly, it just couldn’t get its feet where it wanted, and it gave up.

It has not been near it since.

The folks at the Wild Bird Center said the feeder’s for songbirds and is squirrelproof but I didn’t expect it to be jayproof!

Michelle and I went looking today to see if we could find out what this tree is. Like the fig, it’s just something that happened to pop up in the yard courtesy of something that climbed or flew. The natural order of things. I’d always thought of it as a pretty weed.

We narrowed it to an Ailanthus or, to my surprise, a black walnut.  I can guess which ones the squirrels would be more interested in.  She broke off a sprig and brought it in to the computer.  The nut husk is supposed to be green on a walnut; this beginning one among new leaves is a brown wooden bead of a thing with the slightest greenishness at its base. I was surprised; we’d never noticed any degree of nuts growing on it.

Just a random tree in a random place, but I’ve always liked it. I’m an Easterner, I want all the green I can get.  It got me thinking about cultivated trees: how you cut off a twig in the right place from one you want more of, tree-t it right, and it’ll sprout roots and grow upwards and downwards into a whole beautiful new one. When it gets big enough, you can repeat the process again till you eventually create a whole forest or more of trees, all of them part of and connected to that one original specimen.  Which may die of blight or eventual old age, yet still an integral, connected part of itself continues on without end to give to those who partake of the nuts or fruit or whatever good quality that tree has to give.

Plant enough of them and we’ll outnumber the squirrels yet.

Talk about watching things grow… Saturday after I mentioned the falcon cam, I saw a white ball of fluff with just the slightest smudge of gray in its tail watch its mother take off into the air and then flap its wings like crazy to try to copy her, tip right over and go splat on its beak, and then actually achieve liftoff of about two inches’ height, flying forward about a baby bird’s length! It collapsed in a tight huddle on the City Hall ledge as if to exclaim, I can’t believe I just DID that!

I felt so proud. Like my baby had just taken its first steps.

Today they were already about half smooth gray to half fluffy white in a striped effect. They still tend to tip forward but only just a bit when they stretch their wings out and flap; two in succession lifted from the ledge up into their nesting box by wingpower without hesitation, and they are clearly starting to get this balance thing down.  They’re starting to not just accept food from their mother’s beak, but to grab a bit away and hold it down with their talons like she does and pull at it themselves.

Silhouetted against the city lights right now, Clara is keeping watch over her flock by night.

Kids. They’ll grow up and leave you with an empty nest before you know it.

(Hey, wait, I guess I *can* take a picture at 9:35 pm! Flying totally blind, but hey, that’s what flashes are for. Does this count as kinnearing?)

Thank you Dr. R. for telling me if I went ahead and had that colectomy that up till then I’d been so afraid of, that after recovery, I would feel wonderful…

When we were at that hardware store Saturday, I also picked up a few chocolate mint plants.  When we got home, I planted them along a narrow strip at the front where they would be hemmed in by concrete: the walkway ahead of them, the foundation of the house behind, in a small bed less than a foot wide set between. Rinsed mint leaves dipped in sugar is a favorite of mine, and who can resist one that has chocolate as part of its very name? We would get along well.

Michelle asked me later, when she got home, “But Mom, don’t you know mint roots can grow through concrete?”  I knew they were invasive, but as in, right there right into the house?

Huh. Well, my mom says her Aunt Betty’s old house was held up by the ivy that grew clear into the closets on the second floor (wood is wood, right?), and I know that house has been standing since at least the late 1800’s.  Mint smells better than ivy.  Still.  Um.  I might have to eat a lot? We might replace zucchini in the proverbial scenario where the neighbors close the curtains and refuse to answer the door when they see us coming bringing some to share?

I planted two tomatoes out front: I thought that’s where Richard wanted them. He thought it was where I wanted them and that he was being agreeable. Turns out neither of us really wanted them there.  Again, that was Saturday evening; tonight in the dusk (after somewhat more careful consultation) they and the cages that were around them got slipped into the back yard and disappeared from the front.  You know, just messing with the neighbors’ minds a little. It was amazing to me to see how much growth they’d put out in two days of having extra dirt and sun to kick back in, basking in the warmth.

I was careful to take extra soil with the original rootballs.

Someone, I’m not sure who, topped the fig tree last fall.  Why? …Instead of soaring straight up, now it’s growing thickly in two parts from the cut at the top.  It’s right at the fence line.  I’m sitting here thinking at the folks behind us, half for you, half for me.  We’ll see how it goes. Again with the consultation concept: I’ll ask them if they want it there and if not, out it will go and a new one will be planted elsewhere. Having now owned a fig tree, I want a fig tree.

I watered the apple and plum trees, (the Meyer lemon can fend for itself for the moment) noting that despite the blossoms earlier, there was no sign of growing plumlets on the baby Santa Rosa and a few leaves looked well chewed. Okay, I guess not this year. Next year; all the more to look forward to (while I go read up on the subject to make sure it will happen then).

I tried to plant the hydrangea to top the evening off, but I ran out of daylight, since I can only garden outside when the UV risk is essentially zero–but the late evenings are definitely mine now.  Lift a spade full of rocks?  I can do this. For so very, very long, I could not, not the digging, not the lifting, not the carrying the hose from front to back, not the spading-out where I wanted those tomatoes, but now, I can.  All this energy!

At least today I knew where the spade was; those mint plants and the tomatoes in their first spot got planted with a large serving spoon from the kitchen.  Tells you how long it’s been.

In the “everything happens for a reason” department…

I wanted to get that birdfeeder set up that I got for Mother’s Day; we needed a large screw to put into the end of the porch overhang so that I could have it right outside my window here as I sit at the computer. Richard promises not to bump his head on it. And we needed a small metal trashcan to keep the seed in outside.

Every time we made plans to go to the hardware store this past week, which is not even a mile from our house, somehow it just didn’t happen. Till last night.

It was near to closing time and the store was pretty quiet.  We were going up and down the far aisles after we found the small trashcan: chewproof metal with a small hole already in the center of the lid so the seed can air out.  Item one done.

As we looked, there was a man with his own cart looking for something or other; we did the usual not-really-paying-attention-to-each-other as we passed.

I stopped.  Richard continued forward with our cart, but I backed up. I went over to the guy, and told him, “I like your T-shirt.” That stopped him as he did the sudden surprised reaction of thinking wait, which one am I wearing?  Oh, right.  Stanford Blood Center written across the front.

I told him, “Seven people donated blood in January and saved my life.”

He looked in my eyes in wonder and gratitude, then got a faraway look and his eyes got misty.  I added, “Thank you,” and turned at the end of the aisle and away.

(Picture is from the San Jose city website.)

A few years ago, a rare peregrine falcon was spotted staking out the heights of San Jose City Hall as a potential nesting site; UC Santa Cruz biologists attached a nesting box against the wall. Since then, there’s been a falcon cam here as the birds have made happy use of the box. (Biologists rappel down to tag the babies.) The same female, Clara, has returned every year, bringing a different mate each time.  This year’s male was named Esteban Colbert for Stephen Colbert, and it was determined a few days ago that there are three females and one male baby bird in the nest this time.

I love that the fluffy youngsters look big-haired next to their parents at the moment.  60’s hairstyles making a comeback in the bird world! “And the sign said, longhaired freaky people need not apply…” Go peregrines!

Meantime, the City claims to be put out that Stephen Colbert has not lauded them for naming their falcon after him. Nor even mocking them.  Stevie, honey, they’re waiting!

The answer to last night’s dilemma was obvious, once I thought of it: rubber needle tips.  Used’em today at the doctor’s office to keep from dropping stitches mid-row when they called my name. Worked like a charm.

The knitting itself, however, not so much: I had a whole lot more done than this earlier in the day. But there is one row in my Monterey pattern that starts with a yarnover, and I decided to knit in the front and back of the first stitch instead. (Note that I could have done an M1 after the first stitch instead if I wanted to substitute.)  And I went merrily on my way.

That back-and-forthing in the one stitch created a knot-like effect in the silk, much more so than it would have in a different yarn. I didn’t like it. I kept knitting. It bugged me. I finally sat myself down and went, look: if you don’t like it now, you’re really not going to like it when you’ve added 20+ hours onto this.  It will have this one tiny spot that you’ll feel like apologizing to the recipient over when it’s going to be a perfectly gorgeous project and they’ll never notice it. Still.  What if it felt uncomfortable on their neck just in that one tiny spot.  It’s much easier to change it now.

Which is how the afternoon’s work got frogged.

Which means it will be all the better when it’s finished. (And yes, I did the M1 this time. I’ll be keeping an eye on it as the rows add up again.)

Correction to the above: I didn’t twist the bar I picked up, as I think about it, so no technically it wasn’t an M1, it was more like picking up a phantom dropped yo: just a plain pick up the bar between stitches and knit it.

“Begin: the rest is easy.”

Right. So I began a new project today, got interrupted, snagged the mostly-silk yarn getting off the couch, came back later, looked at the mess and frogged it on the spot.

I avoided it the rest of the day.  Don’wanna.  Silk is so lovely but it’s a bit of a pain to work with–you have to watch those needle tips every second so it doesn’t treat them like being on a slide at a water park.  Whoosh and away and hey, now let’s go running!

My favorite cure for not feeling like knitting is Knit Night, Thursdays at Purlescence: the colors and the wool fumes will do it every time, and, best of all, there are the good friends to be found there. Who knit.

I began.  Again.

My doorbell just rang: my next-door neighbor, box in hand.

I instantly knew what that meant–they did it again?

Sandy told me that UPS had come in the ten minutes she wasn’t home and she returned to find this box, which she wasn’t expecting, and when she looked at the return address, then she REALLY wasn’t expecting! But then, oh. It was addressed to me. Silly UPS, they did it again. That’s the second time they’ve left something at her house that was supposed to be mine.

I looked at the return address and went wow, and then, hey, Sandy, you want to stay here while I open this? Heh.

No, no, she grinned, starting to scurry away from it.

We got into a conversation, though, about how her kids are doing; always good to hear.  And about how she was doing.  I love how the UPS guy promotes neighborliness–I’ll have to tell him thank you some time.

I brought the box inside and told Michelle what had just happened. I held it out for her to read the return address, her eyes got big, she grinned and she grabbed it and held it away from me, going, “Mine!”

Hey you.  Gimme that.

Then she offered to help with the packaging tape on the inner container. Okay, back up a moment here: I was at Trader Joe’s yesterday and asked the folks there, Where’s the Scharffenberger? I came to stock up on Scharffenberger and I don’t see any!

Oh, we discontinued that about three weeks ago.

But, but–then where do I get my Scharffenberger fix?! I thought, Trader Joe’s, how could you?  Don’t you know, I was standing there in this store when you got your very first shipment ever, watching your employee open that box, getting the very first bars off the top you ever sold?  That’s my chocolate!

And guess what shows up on my doorstep. Wrapped in reusable icepacks and a styrofoam cooler, with instructions as to where to recycle the styrofoam once it gets just too old to keep using.

Scharffenberger. 48 5g squares, one non-guilty-size bite at a time.  Extra dark, bittersweet, and semisweet.  Could there BE a more perfect form of chocolate?  The note inside was signed, “Chocolate is as important as humor.  –Don”

Wow. I’m speechless (you know one doesn’t talk with one’s mouth full.)  This is beyond cool. Thank you, Don!!

Re the mammogram last week: I told the technician I had one request.

What’s that?

That we don’t have an earthquake while I’m in this thing.

She chuckled, telling me she wasn’t in charge of that one–and then she told me she’d been down south of here when their Big One hit.  A little later, she actually was doing a mammogram on someone when an aftershock hit. She instantly released the woman from the machine, and her patient stood there a few minutes, just shaking.

Then, the technician told me, she put her shirt back on, walked emphatically out that door and never came back!

We laughed as we allowed as how we probably wouldn’t much want to either.

My results came back:  normal. Worth the risk of the earthquake–go get yours done too if you’re due.

I debated quite awhile yesterday whether to tell that story; E. is wonderful, but I knew it was a hard one to read.  Far harder to have lived the beginning of it, as she can well tell you, and the pain can never end; it’s just that love eventually refuses to be drowned out in the cacophony.

Her daughters have now given her adorable baby grandsons.  A.’s name continues on, and a toddler’s smile and small arms reaching upwards to be picked up by a thrilled new grandmother…  Thank goodness for the little ones.

First, happy Mother’s Day to my Mom, a superbly kind woman who deserves the very best every day and always.

Next, a story…

When my oldest went off for her freshman year of college nine years ago, one of her classmates went off to a campus in California.

From where, two days later, his parents got the call no parent should ever have to endure. A frat. A hazing.  Alcohol.  And their son was gone, just like that.

There was a huge outpouring of the community here at his memorial service, filling the local Children’s Theater where A. had performed, growing up.

There was nothing I could do in the face of a loss I could not begin to comprehend, this child who had survived leukemia as a toddler when so few did, this young man who’d volunteered with childhood cancer patients at the Ronald McDonald House to give hope to their parents as a survivor, this child who was supposed to LIVE!

Doing nothing was simply not fathomable.

So a lace stole came to be, in dark navy, soft kid mohair the color of midnight when the stars are faint–yet there. Black seemed too much; I wanted to hold out the promise of a lightening to come, someday and terribly far off but no less real, while acknowledging first the depth of the darkness. I wanted to give his mother a hug to wrap around herself when it was just too hard to take. Which was every single day.  And I knew it.

And then I prayed to know when to take it to the boy’s mother, E., whom I knew but not well.  I didn’t feel an answer to my questioning; the thing sat there for several months. It bugged me.

Then came the day when, as I had done many a time before, I said that prayer asking again, feeling like I was nagging God or something, when the answer came as a sudden emphatic feeling of NOW!

Oh! It was Mother’s Day and we were just about to sit down to lunch–could it wait till later?

But the feeling of Now! was so emphatic that I dropped everything on the spot, apologizing to my family for ditching them this day of all days, and ran with it halfway across town.

A.’s father was outside and told me E. was taking a nap, but he would give the wrapped present to her.   …Meaning that E. wasn’t put on the spot having to appear grateful while trying not to burst into tears; she was able to absorb my note and my gift in private, and somehow, later, that seemed to me to be just as well. I hadn’t done it to stand there to be thanked.  I would say now that the timing worked out perfectly, even though it didn’t seem so at first glance.

Later in the year, Rachel Remen gave a booksigning and I bought a copy of her “My Grandfather’s Blessings” for E.  I explained to Dr. Remen briefly who it was for–there’s a story in there of a mom who’d gone through a similar loss, and I wanted my friend to know there was someone else out there who had gone through this and could understand, far better than I, for all my good intentions.  I told Dr. Remen, “And now I have to pray to know…” and she, looking in my eyes and I in hers, said “when!” in unison.

Again I prayed. Again the answer came to me, at last, on Mother’s Day.  And so I took it over, inscribed to comfort her from the author herself.

After that, I got a clue.  I knew when to go.  I showed up every Mother’s Day on E.’s doorstep. An amaryllis in bloom, the impossibly late last daffodil from my garden, a certain new book of which I was so proud, always something.

My younger daughter mentioned about my illness and hospitalization and her worries on Facebook this past winter, and E.’s daughter read it and told her mom. Which is how E. showed up in my hospital room, bringing me flowers, a visit, and a great deal of comfort that I never would have expected.  She is dear to me.  It meant much.

But she said something that distressed me: she told me I didn’t have to bring her anything on Mother’s Day anymore. But! But!  Although, at the time, it didn’t entirely look like I’d be seeing any more Mother’s Days anyway.

I was on the phone with my son today when my doorbell rang.

It was E. standing there. Bringing ME flowers. And not only flowers, but a blooming plant to put in my yard to remember and think of her and enjoy. She had no idea whatsoever that I’d been wanting a hydrangea anyway in a somewhat bare spot in the yard there–it just happened to be what she felt I might like when she saw it. And I do. Oh, I do!

The light in the colors just bursts through.

I think I see now why my rose-colored yarn had already gradually migrated over to my knitting perch and thus was near the front door when I had no shawl project and had to grab something, anything, on my way to taking Richard to the ER on Monday. I didn’t even see it till today, but then suddenly it was so obvious. The climbing roses along our front walkway.  The color. The pattern I decided on after we got there. Taking the safety of home with me and putting it forward into the unknown.

It’s a surprise. I don’t know a thing about it. I’ll distract you with an amaryllis photo (Lene, that’s yours in the white container, far left).  The thing is all wrapped up in bird-themed wrapping paper over there, right next to the 25 lb bag of birdseed. I wonder what it could be.

Michelle was wondering out loud yesterday what the family should get me for Mother’s Day.  My friend Robin then sent me a link to one of her favorite stores when I mentioned to her that a birdfeeder would be really cool. Our next-door neighbors have one, with the result that I’ve seen a red-tailed hawk right outside our window here, and there was the never-to-be-forgotten moment when I pulled into my driveway, got out of my car, and there, perched at the edge of the neighbor’s roof at the closest point of it to where I was, quite close, stood a golden eagle. It looked at me. I looked at it. It looked at me.  Hmm. A little big for prey.  Came in a crunchy container, and it might get back in and you know how hard it is to undo that overpackaging with one’s talons.

So I wanted something that would help pull the outdoors up closer to my window, a little friendly competition with the feeder next door.

Robin’s link was to the local Wild Bird Center.  Michelle and I hopped in the car today and headed down to Los Gatos.  We were helped by an enthusiastic ornithologist who wanted to know what kinds of birds we wanted to attract?

“Pretty ones.”

She laughed.  Ooookay…  Obviously a fussy customer here.

I asked about the feeder I’d seen online that flips the squirrels off. No, literally. She told me the price of those (yowsers!) and that they have a $30 part that has to be replaced about once a year, and added, the squirrels learn quick to avoid them so then where’s the entertainment?  She doesn’t sell them.

Ah. Well, it was just a curiosity.  Besides, then I’d have to keep the feeder close to the ground and I’d be watching the little beasties anxiously like a mom whose 16-year-old just took off on their first solo trip behind the wheel.

She sold Michelle one that closes up the restaurant at the weight of a squirrel and is perfect for songbirds.

And I don’t know a thing about it till Sunday.  (Michelle wanted me to come with her to make sure the one she got would be one I’d be pleased with.)

I’m all a-twitter.  Heh.