If your grandmother was like my maternal grandmother, she had small, mostly round, decoratively molded soaps in her guest bathroom in soft pastel colors, heavily perfumed and slippery as heck in your hands, bouncing off and around the sink when you were trying to actually use them.

She would know if you had indeed washed your hands for dinner as she’d asked you to or if you’d tried to get away with skipping out on that step (not that I ever did.) While the scent interfered with your tasting your food.

And that is why I think of Gram every time I take one of my new heart med pills. It smells strongly, and tastes strongly, of good old-fashioned lavender soap. Why, for the life of me, I do not know. And you try to swallow it fast so it doesn’t leave that lingering soapy taste on your tongue.

Chocolate is the antidote.

My longtime arborist stopped by today because I wanted a quote on some pruning that was higher up than I’m willing to go. He was surprised when I asked him at the end if he liked dark chocolate–why, yes, he does, very much–and then opened the front door and grabbed him one of those plisse’ things and told him what it was. That was fun.

The somewhat less fun but worthwhile thing was going in for a mammogram yesterday.

It created one of those weird moments where the pandemic makes invisible people real, and necessary, where you never knew they even ever were: there was a little window on the arm into the innards of the machine, just a few inches across and with a light inside so you could see how the thing flexed as they moved it in place next to the squish table thingamagummy.

And it was dusty. Quite. Inside an enclosed space with no opening as far as I could see, with that little light at the back showing just how the tiny, uneven, fuzzy bits cascaded down the little diagonal whatever in there. Dust bunny-foot, mid-hop.

I marveled out loud, the tech being an amiable sort, and she knew exactly what I was talking about.

“Oh we’re not allowed to touch those.”

Turns out the manufacturer has people whose job it is to clean those inside parts, which the patients are never exposed to, so, given covid restrictions and workers out sick (or maybe they’d quit) and the fact that it would physically affect nobody to just leave it like that for the moment, there had been no one on hand to do that particular job that I would never even have known existed.

I’m still left with the question hanging of, why? Why did they make it that way?

So that this whole x-ray vision thing can be a two-way street between patients and our non-robot overlords?

Two years from now I’ll be looking to see if it still looks like that. Which is the weirdest way to get a patient to book the next routine appointment ever.

I was afraid I didn’t have enough bar molds, particularly because I like to pour the chocolate fairly thin. It seemed a good time to try my Silikomart Plisse’ mold.

Richard munched one of those and I think the verdict is, they’re big enough to feel guilty over but small enough not to feel too guilty over.

Some years ago, San Jose’s Redevelopment Agency commissioned art for a park that was supposed to be of the god Quatzalcoatl of the indigenous Natives.

Jerry Brown on his second governorship later axed Redevelopment Agencies across the state, declaring them to be how the rich siphoned off taxpayer dollars to fund their private projects at the great expense of local police, libraries, and schools. Which is true, and that banning was long overdue.

So.

The sculptor offered a serpent with wings outstretched. One city counsel member thought it gorgeous. The head of the agency, who basically answered to no one, was afraid its pedestal would invite the homeless to take shelter underneath and he totally nixed it.

Alright then you get the serpent god in its coiled form.

The artist gave that admiring city counsel member a smaller version of it, and hers, made in what looks like weathering copper, is beautiful.

The bigger one for the city?

Plaster of paris, according to that first link, although I would think that would apply to the model but not the finished version; stone, according to the second. But either way, painted black. Hides the facial details nicely.

And yes, the late artist’s mother will tell you the poop statue was an act of revenge.

Someone tried to sue it out of the park by saying it promoted religion, but they lost, and there it stays.

With no more RAs around, the public gets to have public input on public art now. But oh, we do on this older one. A little late, but, we do.

Begin as you mean to go on in the year.

We were down to our last half a bar of homemade chocolate and only still have that because we didn’t want to finish off our supply entirely on our drive home from Salinas on Saturday. It was time.

You start off running the cacao nibs through the Cuisinart to make the pieces fine enough for the melanger. There are professional ones made to last that you wouldn’t need to do that for; ours, I think we’re safer babying the thing.

But it has been a good machine for us.

You put a half cup in, just a little, enough that the stones have something to work against but not so much that they seize up (ask us how we know) and then, a little at a time, gradually add more nibs. There’s about six cups in there now.

There’s a change, audible even to me, when the last of the hard bits suddenly begin to stop spitting upwards and bouncing around and free-for-all-ing in Brownian motion but start to join the slowly liquifying rest as the roughest edges are ground away by the friction and motion and weight of the stones against them. The growl from the machine gives way to humming its steady chocolate song as the cacao rides its rollercoaster up and around, over, down, over, up, around, and back the other way and again. The sharp acidity that hits your nose at the start (some varieties definitely more than others) mellows, even before the sugar arrives awhile later.

It’s meant to be like this, it’s how it makes those rocky little pebbles become what we were looking forward to all along and why we put up with the work and the lifting and the noise.

(I wrote this and then did the math and now .6 lb of sugar joined the 2.4 lbs in the melanger. 80%.)

To be on the safe side because we were exposed to other people yesterday, we didn’t expose more other people to us today: we did church by Zoom.

Which means that during Sunday School I turned my camera off and picked up my needles that had ribbing and a few plain rows and made surprisingly good headway on the next random hat (thinking, and this is why I have a Malabrigo Mecha stash.) I did a bit more afterwards.

Then at 5 p.m. I had a knitting group by Zoom, and brainless patterns are definitely what you want while conversations are going on and you’re trying to read the captions–even when your heart is on that complicated lace-and-cables over there.

And so yet another plain beanie arrives in the world, needing the ends run in but otherwise ready to go. To… I’ll have to find out. But we woke up to 29F and deep frost this morning and someone out there badly needs some soft warmth on their head.

This Sunday hat thing could get to be a pattern.

People were vaccinated. People got tested.

And then we prayed hard, took a deep breath, made the decision, and drove. No airports. Cars only. Except for an elderly aunt in southern California who I don’t think drives anymore, the one we were being the most careful for. Masks on all.

Richard’s cousin was having her eight-year-old son baptized this morning and that is a fine reason for people to get together to celebrate.

Her brother and his family did the twelve hours from Arizona.

We did two hours from up north.

Her in-laws came from I have no idea where.

Etc.

I had missed several of these family gatherings due to having had pneumonia or bronchitis at the wrong times and I hadn’t even met her youngest–and he’s in kindergarten now.

(Who’s that guy with the long gray hair?) From across the room, he happened to turn around. (MICHAEL?? Long!? Gray?!?) I made a point of telling him I loved it, because it was gorgeous, and he chuckled and said his sisters had offered rather eagerly to cut it. But he’d been finding he liked it this way.

And so we had a grand old time, with lunch at his sister’s afterwards.

She and her husband had bought a fixer-upper and after a year of work had pulled off a gorgeous job of it, and I’m sure they enjoyed how much it got exclaimed over.

But the best part of course was the visiting, and the seeing the kids in such different sizes than they were, and how interesting they were to talk to.

That view. I instantly saw why they’d fallen in love with the place. (Avocados 4/$1, said a sign near their street.)

Um, that flying saucer thing? That’s someone’s plate and toasted cheese sandwich photobombing against the double-paned glass. Oops. For when Johnny’s sharing pictures of his day at some point in the future.

The lovely old aunt got talking about now vs back in her day, and turns out she’s a Golden Girls fan.

One of the younger cousins exclaimed, Oh! That was my favorite show when I was a kid!

We had a TV when our kids were young enough to be distracted by Sesame Street while I was trying to throw dinner together. When that died, a friend’s grandma looking to unload her old one fobbed it off on us: picture a huge 1960’s set made to look like built-in wood furniture with a silvery sparkly panel where the speaker was. My parents had one newer than that when I was a teenager. We watched one presidential debate where we debated which candidate was which as they stood there in their wavy-edged shades of green.

When at last we got offered a trip to the dump for it, off it went.

Several years later, our daughter’s friends, finding it unbelievable that we didn’t have a single TV in the house, all chipped in and surprised her at her 13th birthday party with a new one of her own.

The next morning, without texting even being a thing yet, they collectively went, Oh wait–maybe you don’t have one because your parents don’t want one? Do we have to take it back?

We told her, no, it’s fine. But there will be rules. Homework comes first. Etc.

And so our other kids started hanging out in her room with her to watch shows their friends had been talking about.

Later that year, she caught I think it was strep throat–and we had an old VCR still and she wanted to watch a Star Wars movie, so, sure, we dragged it out of the closet and set it up for her.

Look at the colors!!! she exclaimed as the opening started up.

Five minutes in, her low-rung-manufacturer TV suddenly went black. It never came back on. It hadn’t even made it to her next birthday.

We never did get around to replacing it–but our computers eventually pretty much did.

So with that intro: today I found out just how much we all missed out on all those years. Reading about The Golden Girls in random news articles so that at least I knew what it was while it was on the air in no way compares with (and probably everybody but me has already seen this, but) watching The Herring Wars, where Betty White went off script and ad-libbed with a straight face and had her co-stars convulsing with laughter.

Those five minutes were from one of the greats. And she was a lovely, lovely person. She will be so missed.

I’ve never bought a season of a TV series before but it’s time for that to change.

After a day of distractions and things that got done that needed to but that were not knitting, I finally sat down and got a few long rows in on that afghan.

And was surprised at how joyful it felt. Any sense of work or long slog still to go or any of that just fell away and all that was left was, this is beautiful and she’s going to love it so much. So much. I can’t wait.

The record for December snowfall in the Sierras has been 179″ for forty-two years.

We just hit 210″ and the month isn’t over, although the current storms probably are–but there’s a new wave arriving Monday. We’re at 70% of normal for the season so we need to keep going, but it’s been a great two weeks.

Meantime, up in the Pacific Northwest, Little Lily lou-who who is no more than two thinks a half dozen inches or so of snow is a very very good reason to ask for hot chocolate. Nonstop.  I am so proud.

Note to self: next time, finish the row you’re knitting before you go do that flying leap thing.

The top of the freezer is dedicated to ice packs and most of the time I think that’s way overkill but every now and then, just every now and then I think, that’s actually a good thing.

And it really did help. Just hoping my gauge wasn’t too funky while my fingers were frozen. (Yes I did. I’m stubborn like that.)

Meantime, way more fun, a new song for the season: Masked Christmas. Jimmy Fallon playing chess with his golden retriever. Because of course he did.

After all that drought.

When the ground is hardpack-dry, water just rolls right off it rather than soaking in.

But when it’s been raining on and off for a week, never too much at once and yet relentless, it apparently starts doing what you’d expect and want: I saw this big pond this morning, ran across the house and grabbed my camera, came back and outside and snapped its picture.

Huh. And considered a moment–and walked back inside and across the house to Richard to show him how much water there was out there (but thankfully not against the house anymore!) and told him the picture was showing the ponding as being shallower than it really was.

Then I walked back outside. I wanted to see if I could get it to photograph better–to show how I’d seen it.

And now it was that much less.

The ground had absorbed it that thirstily and that fast.

On the other side of the house, I have a plastic trash can under the eaves that had a little garden debris in it and its lid had been left off. The roof is dripping on it, but still: it’s full. Of water. It’s full!

Not that I, for one, need more sweets right now. But I once made a pecan pie with Lyle’s Golden Syrup rather than corn syrup out of sheer curiosity and was surprised to find not only that it worked, it was an improvement on the traditional. Which would be great news to those allergic to corn.

I just stumbled across a recipe for making your own golden syrup. Hey. For a pecan pie, I think you’d want mostly brown sugar in it, and that would merit a close watch but I’ve caramelized sugar enough times to feel I can pull this off. My only question would be, do I buy a couple of traditional lemons or use Meyers from my tree? They have a little orange in their parentage, but then orange and pecans do dance happily.

Stop me now. We’re still only halfway through that Buche de Noel!

Knowing that we are cautious about exposure, and knowing we might say no, our friends Phyl and Lee invited us for Christmas dinner.

We did church by Zoom last week because it just felt like a time not to go; it turned out that an out-of-state visitor contacted the bishop a few days later to say they were so sorry but they had covid. I don’t know how big the outbreak from that is but I do know three people who’ve gotten breakthrough infections so far. But at least their cases are being ameliorated by their vaccinations and hopefully they won’t have to go through what I did when the virus was new.

Our friends had gone to quite a bit of effort to get the tests and they were okay.

We decided to say yes, and what can we bring.

Bring yourselves, they said, the rest is taken care of. And so we did.

Turns out they had bought a pre-prepared dinner from the grocery store so as to be able to just put it out there and enjoy the company.

But when they opened it up, everything but the ham had gone bad, had been delivered already bad, and I guess my instinct to call to offer again to bring something wasn’t far off but having no idea why I should I respected their request.

They put in the unexpected effort with what all else they had on hand and pulled off a lovely dinner, and after all the isolation of these past two years a Christmas evening spent with friends was a feast indeed.

There’s a new Shaun the Sheep Christmas special they played for us afterward that I would have bought it for my grands if I’d known. Those guys are so creative! And funny.

A definitely good time was had by all, with a strong awareness of how fortunate we were to have that time and each other.

Merry Christmas and G_d bless us, every one.

I was kvetching at myself for not getting anything done on the afghan all week.

It somehow snuck up on me that, wait–actually, I finished a hat this week, knit another, started a third, and stumbled across a half-done beaded silk cowl and finished that, too, because it was Christmas week and you never know when you’re going to need extras. (Suddenly thinking, y’know, if I’d knit those hats in stainless steel yarn I could have added an inside pompom for a clapper and made my own carol bells. Cool! Watch out next year!)

A very Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it, and peace and good will and beautiful music to everyone.

With thanks to Margo Lynn for the heads-up, this is really cool.