My nephew has a mother-in-law unit downstairs that walks out to their garden, a beautiful spot; last Monday my sister and her husband were there from Atlanta helping our mom to move in. Mom is great at taking care of herself but at 94 she needs not to be alone anymore. Her young great-grands are looking forward to having someone who’s not their mom helping them with their homework and reading to them, and my niece-in-law is a treasure. So’s her husband.

They also own a house in southern California that is a rental, which I totally get: it is an aphorism here that if you ever sell your house in California you can never afford to move back. So. It had a plumbing problem.

So said nephew left Gram in his wife’s good hands and flew with his folks to fix that thing and my sister was looking forward to a little California in January.

Which is how she found herself taking pictures today as the smoke came closer and they were packing the car and then suddenly the fire itself leaped over the mountain top and came barreling down at them from less than a mile away in the Santa Ana winds as they rushed to evacuate. They were turned back three times because of the spreading flames. Official guidance: Go this way! No, no wait, don’t! Traffic was gridlocked.

It took them four hours to get off that mountain and get the wildfire behind them. But they did it. Our niece, meantime, had booked them a hotel room from the get-go so they had a place to land.

I debated adding one of my sister’s pictures here and thought, nah, the last thing she needs right now is me pestering her for permission, that is just not something she should have to worry about right now.

I don’t know how long it will be before we know if the house is gone–but they are safe. As of this typing there are zero known deaths from the fire. Praise be.

Octopuses: how the oceans doodle fireworks displays.

Two rows a day, I promised myself. About 45 minutes each. That’s all you have to do. And I have. A right-side row then a wrong-side row so that you’re ready to see it clearly on the right side again the next day and to plan any new colors or motifs from there.

It surprises me how much shows up below my needles when I just keep doing my one small part for the day. I have finished two fish.

I also know that the further along it gets, the more I see how it’s coming out, the more I’ll be able to see how I want the rest of it to come out and the more I’ll be working on it. So it’s okay to be slow in the initial discovery process.

(Photo: about a third of them.)

There’s a big zipped storage bag that’s been moved around again and again these last four years. It had the leftover yarn from the original ocean afghan. It had the added deep royal skeins for the background of the coral reef one. It had the leftovers of any Malabrigo Rios seen coming or going since those were started.

Some of it had become a tangled mess.

Today was suddenly somehow the day to just go deal with it.

Every ball that needed it is now rewound. Every tangle is banished. Every yarn is ziplocked away squished in with its nearest peers and only then put back into that big bag. I know now what I have, I know for sure what I don’t have, I know none of them have room to run around and cause problems again inside those, and I know how to find exactly the color I want amongst the dozens of others. Greens here, blues here, purples…

And it all started with wanting a close but different shade for the next section of coral. All the times I’d gone through that bag, I stared in amazement, I had not seen that one; how could it be so.

Then a sense of determination: so what else was hiding in there?

And now they’re not.

Cottage Yarns (they have more Malabrigo than anyone I know) is a few miles down the freeway from San Francisco Airport. I dropped Michelle off and then went to go make up for the fact that I ran out of Mecha yarn for Zoom mindless hat knitting at Thanksgiving and had not been up to making the drive in all that time. I could now.

Three future hats came home with me. I resisted so much temptation. But that Mecha is part of my usual Sunday evening Zoom knitting group: I can read the captions and be part of the discussion and knit at the same time.

I glanced at my email after I got home and there was the tail-end of a discussion that had started New Year’s Eve’s Eve, fellow knitters promising not to buy any more yarn for the rest of the year because they had enough in their stash. Then today, someone so proud that she hadn’t bought any yarn this entire year so far! (Keep the joke running!)

I laughed–and then suddenly went, wait a minute. I did!

And then was surprised that that surprised me.

And yet. It wasn’t online nor impersonal clicks. Face time with friends you know and love and want to support doesn’t count towards one’s skein count. Right?

There will be more knitting time after her plane leaves tomorrow, but that doesn’t make it any easier to see her go.

She was describing the weather she’s returning to and I grinned, Yeah, when we were heading back to Logan Airport from our house hunting trip out here and the pilot announced what the temp was in Boston, I muttered under my breath, Turn that plane around!

She laughed. Brrr. She was totally with me on that one.

Happy New Year!

Begin as you mean to go on, I told myself.

For so long I really didn’t want to do this but I really wanted it done. Now I was actually starting to want to work on it. That made the turn of the year a great reason to dive in.

I untangled all the balls and finally actually didn’t just stare at the thing but did that first row on the resumption of the coral reef afghan for New Year’s Eve, and then again today. Forty-five minutes a row. Five rows to the inch.

If only I hadn’t lost all my sketches and early chart-outs. If only I could see the end from here it would never have been left waiting like that.

But–I’m beginning to. Just a little bit, but the surprising thing about doing that one first row was that the two areas where I had no idea what I’d been doing several years ago or how those blobs were supposed to make sense, suddenly I did. Glad I hadn’t ripped it back. All I had to do was go at it and wherever it was in my brain knew. It just knew.

The Miyoko (vegan butter) had come to room temperature for the cookies, but she’d forgotten and suddenly realized she had to do XYZ before leaving for the meet up with her friends and–oops.

I can bake them, I offered.

She texted me a recipe to squint at and, being so much my child, told me of the things she does just a bit differently. Triple the cinnamon. Double the vanilla. Use chocolate chips instead of raisins. One cup of flour, one and a half cups of oats, old-fashioned, not quick (did that). Half sugar, half brown sugar.

Then she ran to do that errand that had to be run.

Even embiggening it I had a hard time reading it and my phone kept turning itself off fast.

Every cookie recipe everywhere says one teaspoon of vanilla, so okay, I put two. And then found the recipe said a half? Who puts a half a teaspoon of vanilla in a batch of chocolate chip dough? Too late.

The Miyoko went squish when I tried to cut it. Much better to have a bit much than not enough if you’re not sure. Cold butter you can displace in water to check the measurement, but warm Miyoko? No. So let’s add maybe that’s a tablespoon but who can tell.

The big Costco brown sugar bag had never been opened but nevertheless was fairly dried out. I mostly filled the measuring cup from it and used a little white sugar to fill in any gaps–so much more flavor than plain white. Plus I wanted to squish as much as I could of the rest into my small OXO container for it and be able to securely tie off the rest of that bag.

It calls for baking soda and baking powder? Why do people do that to perfectly good cookies? (I actually went looking for the baking soda but I so dislike the taste of it that all I had is that five pound bag under the bathroom sink along with vinegar for clearing out drains and darn if I was going to pick that up to wreck a perfectly good batch of cookies. Double the baking powder it is–like the vanilla, it had only called for a half teaspoon of each in the first place.)

The second sheet of cookies came out of the oven just as she was walking in the door to get ready to walk back out the door.

She tasted one. She pulled a face.

Did you triple the cinnamon?

Oh! Dang. Sorry, no I didn’t.

Weak, she pronounced them. Needed more cinnamon.

But quadruple on the vanilla! They’re vanilla oatmeal chocolate chip cookies!

I did not tell on myself over it being almost all brown sugar. Some dire secrets are meant to be kept close.

Man, it’s good to have family visiting! And man did I get a lot done. Kinetic energy squared!

My hubby helped overbuy on frozen foods on Thursday, I told C at church, and there was no room for the chocolate torte in there anymore. It got moved to the fridge, where there wasn’t really space for it either; it had to go. Could she take it off our hands?

She couldn’t believe it. She told me if I wanted to cut off a slice for myself/ourselves first she was totally fine with that. Were we sure??

Her kids are home for Christmas break and I knew that getting rid of the whole thing was not going to be a problem and that it’s one of her favorite desserts.

But what I said later as I dropped it off at her door was, My daughter’s in town. She’s allergic to dairy–but she remembers how much she once loved these.

Ah. We were not eating it in front of her. Got it.

She sent me off with some oranges she’d just picked from her tree in happy anticipation of sharing back. They are so good.

You know, I thought to myself yesterday while cleaning out the back of the fridge of stuff that had been ignored while I was sick from Thanksgiving until a week ago, The chances of someone showing up at the door go up astronomically when you wash something really stinky down the sink (turning on the disposal to try to be fully rid of it and debating tossing the washable Rubbermaid containers. Where’s the baking soda.)

Those were pretty bad. The stuff in them should never have been saved over the five days we were going to be out of town at the time, much less since then but were because I had been too flattened to do any kind of a deep dive in there after we got home.

It felt so good to get to it and have a clean fridge at long last–even if the kitchen didn’t quite smell like it yet. Yow.

I stepped out of the room a moment and didn’t hear that doorbell and wasn’t the one who answered.

I am told it was the new next-door neighbor, showing up at our door for the first time, bringing oranges from her tree and not just homemade chocolate chip cookies but ones with grated peel from that tree and man were they good.

There’s a pocket door between the front door and that sink but it’s almost never closed, so we’re talking a few steps apart. First impressions and all that.

I imagine it’ll be a story to laugh over with her and her husband for years to come.

She’s home, she’s home!

I hadn’t heard of the Cube Rule of Food? Oh, Mom, she told me, you’ve got to see this!

And now you get to.

It was a day when friends rallied ’round without any idea how much that meant and how vital their timing would be or even any idea that I needed them.

Debbie had spent some time on her sewing machine and these two beautiful pieces showed up in the mail with a lovely card.

Afton decided out of the blue to text me.

Other friends emailed to say hi.

We were going along having a perfectly normal day when suddenly Richard at work in the other room heard me gasp.

My cousin Kathryn, the oldest of the 29 grandchildren on that side and the cousinly matriarch to us all by her warmth and love and hospitality, died in post-op Christmas day after lung surgery. I was stunned.

Having the later afternoon off, Richard told me that I’d been so wanting to go to Andy’s Orchard before they close at the end of the year: their holiday stuffed figs have long been a favorite. But being sick and then not being sure I was up to doing that drive had kept me away.

Who cares about traffic. Let’s go, he offered.

And so we did.

There was an atmospheric river coming in and the skyscapes were glorious as we came around each bend in the road. It looked as if the ocean had jumped the coastal range to produce tides and lakes and ponds of clouds surrounding the road but clear sailing down the freeway itself.

We got the slab apricots that are so good, fresh persimmons, daisy mandarins (a new variety to me; my own trees aren’t ripe yet), a jar of honey. Sour cherry syrup to whip into some cream and add to almond muffins, or some such to come.

But the apricot- and honey-stuffed figs were sold out. They did have some small plain dried figs. I bought a box as my consolation prize.

The lady who works there carried my stuff to the car, having no way to know how much my back appreciated that, and gave me a fond farewell with a “See you next year!”

The car needed gas.

Richard did a search for a Costco gas station between there and home and somehow, the route that put us on had us turning…south. Ten miles? We live north of there. I was thinking, Stupid Waze tricks. Richard’s response was, Do you want to be on an adventure? Or not?

That suddenly sounded like a really good antidote to the day–more time together meandering through rolling hills greening up from the previous rain–even if it was going to put us in the middle of a big southbound traffic jam for awhile that we would otherwise have dodged. Sure! Why not.

The not-till-midnight rain for our town started up intermittently down there. We were not planning on it nor on it turning cold that soon. It was okay. We were on an adventure.

Filled the car. As long as we were right there, we went into the Costco–and the one thing we were looking for was cheaper than at our own Costco. Lower rent in farm country, surely, and we had insulated bags in the car, so that worked out great.

Waze warned, Do not take 101 through San Jose at rush hour–go around.

Richard marveled, It never tells me to take 85! It’s longer!

We’re on an adventure, I reminded him. It was a prettier route, too. The undeveloped hills to the west–and the skies had spread out to layers of blueness towards lightness above. Paintbrushed.

And so we ran away from home and came back again and started in again on setting it in order for Michelle’s arrival tomorrow.

And so the living continues on.

Family time via phone and computer. Chocolate Bouche de Noel for breakfast. Celebrations. Love. And I finally got a Cuisinart 14C replacement for the food processor that died and can make hazelnut tortes again. Yay!

We got to talking phones with our older son. I told him I’d figured out that the retail price of the iPhone 16 Pro Max is $20 more than the quite-a-bit smaller, lighter 16 Pro, but if you pick the Max, Verizon charges you $200 more over the course of those three years, so, no, I’m back to wanting the Pro.

Your Mom’s hands fit the smaller phone anyway, his daddy chimed in.

Which cracked the kid up. If you’ve ever played Rachmaninoff on the piano, an octave is my limit and forget the rest but an octave and throw in a bunch more notes will do him just fine. He in fact has the 16 Pro Max via a previous such promotion–and overheard someone saying to someone else that that really big phone on my 6’9+” son looks like a normal sized phone on anyone else. Like it had been scaled up just for him. And it’s true, he said, it’s the perfect size for me!

But you’re a teeny little thing, he teased.

Am nawww—oh right. I guess to him a 5’5″ woman would be.

Pick a skein, any skein. Rios? Great. Start the ribbing.

Get bored. Doodle.

Try to figure out where the doodle wants to go from there because it’s kinda floating around untethered up there.

Look at the thing awhile, consider that today is the rare matchup of both Christmas Eve and the eve of the first night of Hanukkah, and realize you could do this many rows straight up from this point and then put a couple of knit stitches upwards at the tops. It would turn them into what some people would instantly recognize as dreidels and others would have no idea. Thank you to my childhood friend Wendy, now fighting pancreatic cancer, for teaching me as a kid how to play dreidel.

(Examine front side and back, reversing vs not reversing it.)

Almost do it.

Consider that you don’t want the hat to only be worn eight days a year. Skip the tops. It’ll be our secret–but I could, now, next time.

Continue on.

Wishing a very Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, blessed season of the solstice and every joy and celebration to all. May there be peacemaking on earth.