A Shaun the Sheep ad for wool, just for fun and so I can find it again.

Remember when I named a lace pattern (after not finding it anywhere else) Rabbit Tracks? Search engines having had their limitations in 2003, I looked for pictures of actual tracks made by rabbits to see if it fit and found no definitive answer–drawings in children’s books didn’t count–so I just went with it.

Well, I got a little help today after looking a little closer at the lace pattern certain claws and teeth were making in the mud out there. Again, it wasn’t quite definitive but it looked like a decent approximation. Alright then.

My yard looks like it has chicken pox and I’ve never seen anything quite like it out there.

So I had this post hopping around in my head gathering momentum about how I guess the whole rabbit thing is okay because they’re eating the weeds that I’ve been trying to fight off ever since the first time they told us not to water our lawns for the previous drought. The grass died. The weeds held a rave.

Worse: a few years ago, my neighbors planted an invasive but decorative tall grass that grows in impenetrable clumps with a bajillion poofy seeds that fly off like dandelion puffs, and all the sudden last summer it was everywhere in my back yard. Everywhere. Despite zero watering. The roots go deep and I found out the hard way that the stalks rip your skin off if you don’t wear gloves and when they’re growing under the thorns of the low-branching pomegranate tree and threatening to outcompete its roots, I had me some doubt as to how far this was all going to go.

Apparently, non-native flora or not, those rabbits really go after the stuff.

And the grass, our grass, real grass, is actually starting to make a comeback because the critters don’t touch it.

I was thinking, hey, I can live with that, as movement caught my eye and I looked across the yard.

A third one.

All in view, point A, point B, point C.

Three. And spring is a long way off yet.

Yow.

Well, they’d better get back to work, then, those shoots aren’t going to get any younger nor more tender. (LEAVE MY FRUIT TREES ALONE.)

Just before Christmas last year our doorbell rang: someone had put a box containing a beautifully-done buche de Noel down on the mat–but then had made sure we would know so it wouldn’t just sit out there. Not everybody risked touching the bell but he did. Hopefully with his elbow.

When I described the person whom I’d called out Thank you! to just as he was reaching his car, and the delight in his face as he turned and waved back, Michelle affirmed that yes, that sounded like him. One of the owners of the bakery. She knew we’d like it.

We did, it was very good–but I have to say that even so, my favorite part was his getting to see the expression on my face as I opened that box and went WOW at their work of art. It was a privilege to see him getting to see how much I appreciated that gift, both from our daughter and from his shop in their efforts.

So you know what happens next, although I didn’t: the doorbell rang today.

Now, one really ought to take the picture before the first pieces get cut off, but, hey, y’know.

There was a tag stapled to the top of the box this time. Door Dash.

And I thought, the world has changed in this last year, hasn’t it. I’m glad that bakery is still here! And glad the guy was able to have help with the delivering this time and that he had too much to do to do it himself.

But still. There was a twinge at not getting to see that friendly face again so that I could say how good these taste, not just look.

We kind of skimped on lunch a bit so we could justify seconds.

(Older picture of it.)

I got an email yesterday that our project was finished. Was there anything I wanted to mention?

Yes, I answered: the big window (about 4’x7′) is lying in the back yard. If you could get that. Plus a bag of debris the painters stashed in the monster philodendron, and a tray that I’m happy to toss or recycle, whichever applies.

And so I got to say thank you to Armando one last time, a tad wistfully, and to wish him and his hat-loving daughter a merry Christmas. I’m going to quite miss all of them.

Tomorrow, though, for the first time in nearly seven weeks, I can sleep in. Mid-week. No alarm. No having to get everything done and my hair dry enough for hearing aids before their 8 a.m. start. We’ll actually have the house all to ourselves!

The final bill popped up and it instantly settled any question as to whether we’re going to dive right into doing the kitchen and the flooring next–I am going to have a little time for sorting and donating and clearing out first.

Somehow I’d found that hard to do with a bit of an audience.

A few hours after Armando left it started to rain and the ten-day forecast chart is a beautiful wobbly wall of blue. Already the inch-age-ness is less than originally hoped, and yet, unlike some of the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge years, the clouds made it on through and past the ocean and the water is coming down. We so, so, so much need that. Go rain go.

Happy Birthday to my grandson Parker! And my mom! And my cousin Carol! And my friend Carol! And my friend Sterling! And my friend Jessica! And my friend Lisa! And my friend Julie’s dad!

Okay, who am I missing here because at one point I was counting ten. Clearly, 12/20 was the day to come discover what this life is all about.

(And on a side note, it suddenly occurred to me a few minutes ago that the paint is certainly dry by now and that it was okay to put the wreath back on the front door. Bonus: no pine sap in that one, which is good, because I manage to brush my hair with it every time I walk through the door, and every time I think, And I knew it was there, too. Do other people manage to do this? Or is this just me?)

I’m totally going to quote Afton here, with her permission.

Her husband was…

“…up and drinking his coffee.

As he was standing on the porch, at 6:35, AM, here comes the postal truck.  To drop off a package filled with very lovely yarn from Alison Hyde all the way from California.  As the startled tall one accepted the package he asked the bleary-eyed postal worker

“Are you the early shift or the late shift?”

And the slightly weaving man answered after careful consideration

“I’m not sure.” And

Turned around, slid into his truck, and sped down the street.

As they said on Hill Street Blues

Be careful  out there”

All the noise and random people walking around didn’t happen today and it apparently seemed safe to venture forth. Look who’s grown some winter fluff.

You know it’s a quiet day when the best you can do is take a picture of a rabbit.

I did get a hat doorstop-ditched to celebrate a friend’s retirement; his wife has bronchitis so I didn’t ring the bell. Instead, I went around the corner afterwards and texted Richard so he could tell the recipient (since they were already on the phone together) to go find his surprise.

Not the party we would all have wanted to throw together, but hey. Love finds the expressions it needs.

The last thing was taking off and painting the door. As it was laid out in the back yard across the sawhorses I popped my head out and offered them a hairdryer, joking.

Turns out they had one and it is fair to say it was a tad bigger.

Painting company boss man showed up in the late afternoon and we did a walk-through; he caught things I didn’t, I caught a few he didn’t, and the workers took care of all of it.

And then, at long last, they reinstalled that door. (Afton, the plant is the one you sent me when my dad died and it still blooms all the time and greets everybody cheerfully.)

What he’s doing in the second picture is he’s got this flat rubber-ish thing that he slid under it, with his friend’s help, and then there’s a bulb attached that he pumped up to pufferfish that thing into just the right height and angle so that nobody had to try to hold it absolutely perfectly still for longer than humanly possible while the other guy ran the power tools on the hinges.

Y’know? That door had been ever so slightly off probably since it was originally installed. And now it’s perfect.

On the outside.

And with that and a cleanup, this crew was done with my project.

I don’t even have an estimate yet for painting the inside but we’ve been talking about it with the contractor.

Once you start fixing up or remodeling, the challenge becomes how do you manage to stop.

Those little pressboard squares with the white sort-of-grippy side that holds onto the glass until you pull at them just so: clearly those were for helping protect the new window in transportation.

The first thing I peeled off was that big label at upper right, and then, and surprisingly reluctantly, those little squares. Or at least the ones I could reach. Why on earth didn’t I want to?

It took me awhile to figure out why they so charmed me: they’re as close to watching the snowflakes fall as we’re going to get here at Christmastime. We have memories of turning on George Winston’s December album, turning the lights off, and sitting at a slider glass door far away from here with our babies in our laps watching the unique, repetitive, cold, blanketing snow reflecting in the dark off the layer that had settled before it as it floated and stirred gently on its way down.

Although. (Picking one up.) These’d be great for extra blank squares in a game of Scrabble.

The skylights are all in, the last piece of siding got installed, the windows that needed to be replaced have been now (that upper blob on the big one is paint that got smeared because it was coming out anyway) and now the painters can do the last side of the house.

I looked at how the previous contractor had framed the narrower window with that splintered-off piece of wood and thought, yup, that’s him, that’s how he worked.

They took the mailbox off the wall.

The moment I saw it it struck me hard: I don’t have to live with that anymore. Why have I been putting up with that. Out with it. It had once had two curved lower arms to hold magazines, but one fell off some time ago and the mailman learned to jam them anyway till the second fell off.

Then the lid. The hinges died of rusty old age. We’ve been carefully balancing it on top of the box for about a year now, and the mailman helpfully tosses it to the ground rather than covering the mail from the rain. Except on occasions so rare as to be noticeable.

A mailbox. A wall mount mailbox. A locking wall mount mailbox. A decently-designed locking wall mount mailbox. A decently-designed, big enough to actually hold stuff locking wall mount mailbox.

No not 30″ tall! Ohmygoodness. Start over.

I headed out for a quick trip to the grocery store wondering what our guy would do without a regulation mailbox at regulation height. One of the crew had wondered about him finding it, too, and pointed out to me how he’d brought it back to right below where it had been affixed, its topless self opened upwards.

When I got back the worker was gone for the day–and the mailman had leaned over and put our mail carefully in. That was nice of him.

And then, after all that, my husband insisted. I thought it was silliness. He did not want another slumped grumped Christmas and insisted on wrestling the garage for the tree, with the help of Michelle, who is ever so briefly in town on business.

You know what? They were right. We needed that.

It rained hard yesterday and early this morning, it’s going to rain hard tomorrow and then hopefully/probably all week next week (we need every atmospheric river, creek, and meandering little stream we can get) so after a late start, today was an all hands on deck day. The painters–let me just say here that they are heroes, they were willing to reach into the 4″ space between a towering spiky prickly holly bush and the house to do the job right–told me they want to be done by Saturday and were disappointed the windows weren’t replaced yet nor that piece of siding because they couldn’t do those parts till they are.

While I thought, well, but you were here all last week and you knew the other crew wasn’t while they waited for the parts. And that the problem with yesterday was that it rained cats and dogs.

Half-literally: with the help of the mud for the digging I looked up at one point to see the neighbor’s new dog romping in my yard, thrilled to explore new space (happy birthday to you too!) and then suddenly stopping to stare at me, like, Wait. You’re not my owner. This isn’t my house?! He raced around back to the other side. I stepped out the door over there now. It IS that lady’s house! And he scrambled over to the newly-enlarged gap we’ve been talking about getting fixed and back to his side of the fence.

Just as well there weren’t any open paint cans or precariously-leaned glass yesterday. So many opportunities missed. Right?

The siding is done. So are half the skylights. No on the windows, sorry.

I walked around to admire the work after they’d all left in the late afternoon and went, Wait. They left the stickers on??

It seems to me there are two types of glue: the type that dissolves right away if water touches it. And the type that immediately pitbull-jaws onto whatever it’s stuck to. And those are at roof level.

I don’t expect anybody to show up tomorrow, but the rain will.

And that is actually quite a lovely thing to be able to say after the extremity of the drought.

The doorbell rang at one point. The guy came in to make sure the skylight with the inner screen in the kitchen was squared up from the inside as well as out, and asked me, How does it open?

I grabbed the extender thingy that reaches way up and hooks onto the bottom of it so you can crank it open or shut when you’re trying to avoid the smoke alarm going off.

No, no, he meant which side do I want it to open from?

I guess this side like it was so the water doesn’t come in when you open it, except that you wouldn’t open it if it were raining anyway so I don’t think it matters except that we’re used to it being this way.

Great. That way it is.

So I was submitting a happy memory of a story yesterday to somewhere that asked for submissions of such (if that somehow doesn’t go nowhere I’ll let you know) and their questionnaire asked you to tell them your age.

They’re on the east coast. They wouldn’t be reading it before morning.

I stared at that screen for a minute or two, trying to decide: do I answer what I am as I’m filling out their form, or with what the answer will be when they see it?

What the heck, why not, and I aged myself a dozen or so hours forward and called it good.

In the springtime before Covid my niece Emily, who hadn’t had a flu shot, caught the flu and ended up in the ICU for some time with sepsis. It cost her the last joints on most of her fingers and her toes, but she beat the odds and survived.

She’s a piano teacher.

She adapted an old Christmas song for how her hands are now and played it as an offering to the world for sheer joy and gratitude and I thought, how many kids get to have a teacher who has so much love and so much for them to learn from.

It’s not just the ability to play, it’s the power to share your innermost music with the people around you.

The forecast said a small-scale atmospheric river Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, about 2.5″ worth.

The boss man showed up at the end of the shift yesterday, gathered everybody around out there and clearly polled them.

And then came and asked me a favor. Would it be okay if they worked Saturday rather than Monday? So as not to be painting in the pouring rain?

It made a lot more sense, if they didn’t mind, sure!

And that is how, with curious eyes on the other side of the glass quietly noting the afghan’s growth, I have two layers of dreidels vs Thursday’s one (I’m counting 9512 stitches per pattern repeat) and having started it Tuesday, it’s past 15″. It’s hit that magical point where it’s self-propelling now. It’s past the, I can’t see how this could ever be finished in my lifetime stage to, ooh, this is pretty, this is so cool, I can’t wait to see this all done!

The house is looking pretty good itself–like it’s brand new out there on the parts that are finished.

(A non sequitur p.s. I blew an order. Chocolate Alchemy‘s default setting is whole beans, I ordered two types, and forgot to change the Zorzal to nibs so we get to finally figure out how to do the entire process of bean to bar by hand. Neither of us would have chosen that extra work but both of us are intrigued. Wish us luck. And I will learn from this to always always remember to change that box from here on out.)

High-frequency hearing loss is by far the most common type. And what it means is that you lose pieces of words, because consonants are done tongue against teeth and at much higher pitches than vowels’ vibrations in the throat.

So you hear the song of someone’s voice but not the lyrics, and more so the more background sound you add. This is one reason why the hearing impaired are good at picking up other people’s moods rather than what is being said. A crowd is an orchestra warming up. (For Bartok’s Etudes at times.)

I remember sitting on my brother’s bed when we were teens while he played some of his music collection and worked through with me what Elton John was actually singing. And then a song from the next artist and the next but one can only do that for so long in a day.

Now the words are all out there for the reading, and I have to admit I’ve had some serious disappointments on some really beautiful music. Not to mention it’s a pain to have to go look up my earworms before humming them out loud because you never know what they might mean to someone else who can actually, y’know, hear. Being a deaf musician has drawbacks.

So.

There’s been a crew of five prepping and painting our house all week. The kid across the street 35 years ago who bought a paint sprayer to set himself up in business and got our former owner to hire him to douse the house really quick? Uh, no: these guys power wash, scrape, scrape some more, primer, paint, second coat of paint. By hand. And it looks fabulous where they’re finished.

One guy out there in particular is quick to laugh, quick to sing, and occasionally whistles. Now, I wouldn’t know what he was singing anyway and I don’t think it was in English and as I sat there knitting away, singing being a compelling thing, I had visions of adding in a tune or two myself.

In French. Because then the words would be as nonexistent for them as any in English or Spanish might be for me and we’d just meet at the purity of where the tune carries us. Right?

Except the only French song I can remember the lyrics to are–I apologize in advance–Frere Jacque.

Think Chopsticks on the piano.

How about I not.

It was the last of that jug of milk–it tasted off. I tossed it out, sorry I’d swallowed a swallow and hoping I wouldn’t get sick from it; at least it had been early in that process. I opened a new one.

It was the same.

I wondered if it was the brand/the cow/the feed or what and did those two come from the same place?

Today was the same, only something else tasted not quite how I expected and it hit me with a clue-by-four.

Propafenone HCL side effects, I googled, not sure I wanted to, sure I would find out things I didn’t want to know but I’m one who has to know anyway, so, yeah.

Black box warning? Not my first such. No grapefruit with it? I am definitely not going to cry, although I will miss lime added to things because lime has a lesser amount of the same substance in grapefruit that interacts with various meds. Oh wait that probably means I can’t try my ripening tiny Page tangerines: they’re a quarter grapefruit.

But what I also read is that for people with structural heart damage, the drug is more dangerous, and for people with supraventricular tachycardia, it seems to be definitely less so–and starting it early on in the disease before the muscle weakens is a good thing. (Ya think?) This is all according to Dr. Google, so take it with however much salt you like in your dish.

I had not realized how often how off the beaten track my heart had started to be. The improvement is a welcome relief.

Oh, and, re the knitting: does this kind of sort of look like a spinning dreidel to anyone else?