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?

I wrapped presents for eleven people this afternoon, got them into five boxes, addressed, sealed–yes we do have another roll of packing tape (the starting edge shreds mercilessly) whoops that’s a no yay there’s another!

Had it all planned out down to the long-unused walker in the trunk to get all of those into the post office without losing my mind.

Says me.

Somehow the thing shrank markedly when confronted with all those big boxes, and the swinging backbar kept shoving them off by the side of the car.

A young man saw the little old lady with the walker and came to the rescue, thinking I had three boxes, and was determined to carry the big one in for me. Which is cool, but then I reached back into the car for more boxes (oh) and so he helped me reverse-Jenga those with the others on that thing.

Except for the big one still in his hands. Having offered to help carry it in he wasn’t giving it back. Cool, thanks!

At the counter, the one on the bottom had wedged in there by now and didn’t want to come out and the clerk motioned a plea to–the same guy, it turned out, who ran to help again.

If I’d had a hand knit hat in my purse he might have gotten one on the spot. Or a crocheted scrunchy for his man-bun? (Um, probably not.)

That was likely the earliest I’ve ever gotten everything mailed that needed to be mailed, kids, grandkids, grandkids’ Christmas-week birthdays, sibling and spouse, but then this is the year you don’t want to procrastinate on the post office. Right?

Got home. Sat down. Turned around.

And saw the box I was supposed to mail to my friend Afton two weeks ago.

Fan-wise I’m more James Taylor and Joan (edit: Judy, silly person, Judy!) Collins than Mick Jagger, but, I saved this video while the spotlight was on next door because start it up it was never going to stop and all that.

But mostly just because this is hysterical.

I exercise every day, my weight is good, I eat lots of fruits and veggies and I get to feel like 62 sounds weirdly old for one more week.

Someday I’m going to want to look back and see which day was the day, and it was today, so sorry for this but here goes.

It has been surprising to me how well I’ve held up despite all that intense sleep deprivation I’ve mentioned the last few days; for years now, once you get past two or maybe three nights’ worth my autoimmunity starts to take off. Not this time. Yay.

I hoped really hard that that would hold.

You know where this is heading. Except that I didn’t at all.

This morning started with a small tachycardia episode. I waited a bit, then got up and was doing the usual when suddenly I had to lie down quick before I might faint, only, too bad for you no can do not till this is done (opening the Eakins seal fast.) Ileostomies are a tyrant.

I managed to hold off long enough to get all that done and then after about five minutes in bed, got up again, doing okay now, and re-started my day: watching the clock as it slowly slowly stretched towards 9 a.m. when that office opened, at the speed of a cat that you wish would do something.

The new crew showed up at the door to start the power washing and prep work. Their boss was supposed to stop by with paint chips for me to choose from but I had to say, Sorry, I’m out of here.

They got me right in.

The cardiologist asked me about that big episode: when was it? How long was it?

October. Eleven pm to 3 a.m. I described the symptoms.

His eyes got big. He’d had no idea, and it confirmed for me that I should have gone in right after rather than relying on messages with his nurse playing telephone. I mean, I did, to get the heart monitor he ordered, but I didn’t see him and it wasn’t enough.

And how is it going now?

Mostly okay but the occasional yow. Nothing like that, though.

And then for all the times I’ve wished he would tell it to me straight, that he would scare me when I need to be scared rather than soothing me when that makes it all the easier for me to blow off symptoms as no big deal when they really do need to be paid attention to, he gave it to me straight, in the most soothing and calming way one could ask for because that’s how he rolls.

He drew me a heart. He told me the med I take to raise my blood pressure slows the heart up here and here in the upper chambers. Where the problem is now is down here in the lower. He debated doubling my dose.

I reminded him he’d tried that once (and I wasn’t sure I was going to live through the day. It was that bad.)

Right, that doesn’t work. So, and then he told me about another patient of his my age who’d been on the same med and then gone through the same new symptoms and then had to have this other med too and she’s been on both for twenty years now and she’s doing great!

I noted that he was not telling me the side effects. I also noted that he had previously told me all the others had more side effects than the one I was on, but I did not mention that because hey, if you have to you have to and just be glad there’s something they can do about it.

So tonight I am to start the new med.

I asked about pacemakers, having long thought that like my grandfather and I think my uncle that that’s where I was eventually heading.

Oh, that wouldn’t address it at all, he told me: the next step–

(he totally, utterly blew my mind)

–is a bypass.

A picture of the transom windows snapped at 5 a.m. because what else was I going to do bored and wide awake at that hour. If only the rest of the room had been as dark as that looks.

I went to get the paper this morning. Nothing in the driveway next door.

We left for church. A car!

Got home from church. Still the car.

As I’d said to one friend, I am so. tired. I’ve had this fear of calling for fear it would come out all wrong when it’s not about me, the important thing is my neighbor. I don’t want my fatigue to be the boss of me. I also don’t want my neighbor to have to try to talk loud enough for me to hear–I’m not what she should be spending her energy on.

That car was still there when we got home and there’s no telling how long it would be and if there were ever a time to deal with it, the feeling pushed at me that now’s my chance and I would so regret it if I didn’t.

I picked up that phone and dialed her number.

It was a very bad connection but it was the caregiver. Oh thank heavens. She couldn’t hear me very well, which was kind of funny, and her voice sounded enough like my neighbor’s that I wasn’t sure which one I was talking to at first.

There’s no light, she tried to tell me in confusion. What light? Where’s your house? Oh, is it over by the laundry room?

I thought as I walked over to Richard so he could help me hear, who knows? I know where the laundry room was before they remodeled, but…

She wasn’t getting it, so I talked louder and he added a bit and I explained again about the streetlight-bright spotlight on our bedroom for nine nights now–and she found it!

“It’s off now!”

“OH THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!”

She gave this delighted laugh for sheer joy that she’d been able to make such a profound difference to us so easily.

And with that our short acquaintanceship over the phone came to an end for now because she needed to attend to our mutual friend. Who I imagine was trying to ask her what all this was about.

I went outside and pulled down the ugly bird netting tents off my coffeeberries (picture taken before church.) Let the sun shine in!

After being an hour late for the annual December Birthday Club party because I overslept by two and a half hours (!!!) I had to do something. The party was great fun even if I missed half of it.

I was at a loss.

I’d been thinking poles set up somehow inside the long tall line of coffeeberry bushes with frost covers hitched over them, but I didn’t have poles and I don’t even have a car that would be easy to transport them with if I bought any because we’d be talking nine feet tall, easily.

I was standing at the window, watching the rabbit eat the weeds now that my pomegranate tree has no fruit to raid, wondering if it has mange on its back, poor thing–when it hit me.

I found a single big black plastic bag, and it was way too small to go over the smallest bird netting tent, even scrunching it up. But I have yarn and I have a needle. Hey. I laid the garbage bag flat across the front of the thing and sewed the edges just barely around the back with the yarn continuing to where I attached it on the other side, kinda sorta like the lace and tongue on a shoe. I walked into the bushes the rabbit had fled into, told it to watch its step here I come, and set the thing awkwardly and swayingly on top of the flowers and leaves over my head. It tilted but it stayed.

I walked over to our bedroom and turned: nope. Needs to move about four feet that way. Tried again. Looked again. Tried a third time and felt like I’d gotten it, but that it wasn’t wide enough. So I grabbed another cage and put a double layer of white frost cover over it–not great but I have it, so try it. I hauled a chair over there (one leg sank into the ground, whoops, try again) and managed to get that one up there without knocking the other one down. Or me.

They are Not Pretty. They definitely make a point about why they are there–assuming there’s anyone over there to see it. I’m not sure there is. I’ve begun to think the interior lights are on timers because I know they’ve used them for traveling in the past. For that matter, code says the exterior light must be on one, and oh if only.

If we get a stiff wind those could blow into either yard.

I’ve got more birdnetting tents.

The thing is, if one of the kids took their mom home with them or to assisted living, that light would likely be on till well past the rest of their mother’s life.

Deep breath.

Okay, so, we’ll see how that goes tonight.

About a year ago, the good folks next door were the ones whose house had the hammering and the pounding going on for several months.

They had decided to expand and divide to use a bedroom and the new space to create an Additional Dwelling Unit along the side of their house closest to us so that they could have a caretaker in their old age who could have their own apartment, taking advantage of California’s newfound enthusiasm for ADUs.

Their two kids have stayed there while visiting but I don’t think a full-time caretaker ever did because Jim was still well enough to carry the load.

He died at 86 a few months ago.

She has cancer, he was her caretaker, and I quite worry about her but she is not one to share details to non-family nor to want to be helped.

Thanksgiving brought lots of cars for a few days.

And one of those people turned on the light that got installed at the side of the house during construction. (That’s a daytime picture.) The light that Jim had turned downward a little bit after we’d requested, back when it was new, but it’s still bright as ever.

I was looking at the super-bright LED street light yesterday, then theirs, and back again, and decided the street light was indeed  louder–but not by a lot. It’s simply bigger.

Theirs is a spotlight straight on Michelle’s face at night when she’s here and it lights up our bedroom, too. And I mean really lights it up.

So we have now had a full week of restless sleep for him and almost no sleep for me as I look at the clock every single hour, hour after hour, wishing I could shut that thing off while I toss and turn. In all the years we’ve lived here, in all the city light reflected off the winter fog, it’s never been like this.

Yes I could wear an eye mask–but I’ve never found a comfortable one and the recent cornea flare makes me highly reluctant to put something on that will have my eyelashes brushing against both it and my eyes all night.

Yes I could put up black-out curtains, heavier than the two-layered ones we have now–but we have transom windows as well and to cut those off would imprison the room entirely. I like waking up to tree branches and birds in the morning and a chance to check out the clouds. The architect designed that added-on room to be free of neighbors’ lights. At the time.

I sent her an email. I didn’t know if she could even walk across the house to her computer to read it, so I was really glad to see her slowly walking to her door a few days ago with two people carefully watching, arms out, ready to catch her at every frail step, and that she was upright or at least was just then–for her sake, because it’s so much better than being bed bound.

But it made it clear the answer to my question was, not really. Not readily.

The light stayed on.

I dropped off some of the other neighbor’s homegrown persimmons yesterday and a condolence card (with a short aside of, about that light, that I hoped wasn’t horribly misplaced) hoping that a caregiver would stop by and pick them up for her.

The persimmons didn’t move.

I checked: did I have her kids’ phone numbers? I had her daughter’s.

No response. But then who answers strange numbers these days. I was afraid to call my neighbor herself because I know how important rest is when the body absolutely demands it; I’ve been there. And how would she get up the energy to talk loud enough for my ears?

The light stayed on. It bounced off the white walls and the mirror and straight into the eyeballs.

I googled for ordinances about light pollution, and it may in fact be in violation, although residences have more leeway than businesses. But I know what it’s like to be in sheer survival mode when very very sick, and getting up to flip a switch a few rooms over is I’m guessing from what I saw just too much energy to expend with too great a risk of falling.

I can’t imagine living alone like that, though.

I finally fell asleep last night before 3 a.m., and that would be a small triumph and great improvement, except that I don’t hear my alarm clock and don’t always feel the vibrations either and my husband knows that and he knows I have to deal with all the ileostomy dressing/shower/get ready stuff before the crew shows up to work and walks around our roof with the skylight in the master bath, etc etc, so in his sleep he helpfully gave me a small nudge, and then another, to help me wake up in time. It’s our routine for when my alarm is waking up the wrong person.

Because sunrise is to the left side of the room and the left side especially was lit up nice and bright just like it had the previous six nights as if it were past dawn, even though by now I had barricaded the farthest window with a very large flat box and a big green plastic cutting board, the kind you use with roller scissors; it wasn’t much between them but at least it was something.

So here I was at 3 a.m. for the seventh night running. It would have been the blissfully dark night of a new moon but for that stupid light. I did not fall back to sleep in the slightest and at 6:45 gave up and got up.

You know, I really really don’t want to try for a second heart attack. This is getting old. So. Tired.

Those persimmons and note disappeared from her door today, finally. I can just picture the note being slid over by a caretaker to somewhere where she can read it when she has the energy to. Which she might well not.

The light was still on.

I noted the trashcan was still on the curb since Wednesday and nobody had taken care of it for her. I pulled it up against her shed. I had offered before and Jim had always turned me down but he’s not here now and that, at least, I could do for his beloved wife.

It appears someone is in the ADU right now.

The light is still on.

(And now you see why I needed that happy picture of my dad yesterday so much.)

Went to the Relief Society Christmas party tonight, the first one at church for me in two years. Real conversations in real life!

And then instead of coming home and blogging I came home and started a batch of pumpkin orange cranberry sourdough bread because I’d just been surrounded by sweets I was avoiding and wanted to make something really good, too (but not fattening). The enthusiasm there over everything just spilled right into my kitchen here.

And so, so you wouldn’t be disappointed about my not writing a blog post tonight (oh wait) I thought I’d share this picture from a few years ago that I stumbled across yesterday of my folks. Because this was so my dad.   

Everybody got their second hat to give to someone they loved and got a chuckle out of that.

And.

Behind the downspout where the walls do a right hand turn in this zigzaggy added-onto old house, where nobody had noticed before–and we’d all looked all around for such–I found a new damaged spot at the bottom of the old siding a few days ago. (To Mom: outside Sam’s old room.)

One of the men poked it with a metal bar and said at least it wasn’t mushy in there.

I’m wondering if I should call the termite people back on their warranty first.

Chris came out and looked at it this morning.

Me: “Do we have to”… (Thinking, there goes another eight grand or so.)  –edit in the morning after getting the estimate: the siding will be far less than that, assuming there’s not more going on behind it. One definite yay on that.

He understood, but answered what we both knew to be the truth: “It’s only going to get worse.”

Meantime, the roofing people called yesterday. They’d been bumped off till later and later to the point that they were going to patch the bubbles in the foam and forget about it till spring because they were booked solid.

But what about the rain?

That’ll be enough for now, it’ll work, they assured me.

But the good part: we had signed a contract for a recoating of the foam layer. They’re going to redo it altogether, the entire roof (not skipping the part under the solar panels) at the contracted amount to make it up to us.

Okay, but I want that in writing.

Called that one right.

The guy who chose the bright purple hat was the only one who was not here yesterday, but then the only one who was today. So I got a chance to ask him in private: did you pick that color to make someone else happy? And can I have you pick one for you?

His daughter, yes, and, YES!

So he got the Prussian Blue that had just come off my needles (bypassing its camera moment altogether.) I told him, Now to be fair, the others need to pick one for someone they love, too, and his face lit up in happy anticipation for their sakes as he told me he’d let them know.

This hat is now done, a dark blue one after it nearly so, there’s a multiple-browns skein waiting that needs to stop being in a hank so I can get to it next and the crew again got to watch me working away as they did, too.

The damaged board is gone, so are the telescoping metal temporary-support poles, and my awning is back in one piece looking brand new because some of it is.

But the one who’d chosen a hat in a color so as to put someone else above himself was not there today so no surprise round two happened. It may yet; I hope so, but if not I’ll be grateful for the incentive to get those done wherever they may end up.

The wood of the new siding is not down flush against the patio like the old was, and the guy went over with me all the other ways they had protected that part of the house from future rain (as I tried not to think how the original contractor should have done every bit of that.)

After four weeks, the trailer was full, the cover was pulled across the top for roadworthiness, it was hitched up to the pickup, and off it went towards the dump at long last.

The house looks so, so much better.

Still waiting on the new windows. Still waiting for the skylights to arrive. Still waiting for the exterior painting. Still, someday, the kitchen do-over and the 27-year-old vinyl floors and the driveway….

Still waiting for the new roof to happen.

Still waiting for the rain.

But it’s a start. We got a great start.

The California Coffeeberries are in full bloom.

The tall Anya apricot totally gets this changing seasons idea. (And if it’s this big growing in a pot from a seed in January, how big would it be with two years in the ground?)

One of its siblings, less clear on the concept, just started pushing out another new set of leaves. Well okay maybe.

Given the dozens of cartons of them in our driveway every Christmas when I was a kid that Dad had had trucked straight from Florida to our house for a fundraiser for charity, I thought I’d post a picture for my mom of my seven-year-old Page orange tree. A serious windstorm blew through and stripped most of the leaves away but it is determined to get some offspring out into the world. By the looks of it I don’t think it’ll get another chance after this. Can the fruit sugar up without the leaves? I’m doubtful, but curious. They’re supposed to be quite small but not that tiny.

Meantime, as I type this, I realize the hat I was working on today is the colors of the Page’s yellows, greens, and a bit of the dirt below. Of the skeins I bought yesterday, that one was immediately compelling and I had to write this to find out why.

(The colors are better than my phone claims.)

I finished another hat for the work crew; I’ll run the ends in when they’re here so they can feel like they got to see part of that one happening, too. Man, it feels good. And I did get to Cottage Yarns in South San Francisco and stocked up on guy colors and started in on the next.

The skein that’s still in the hank is the one that arrived as expected from Imagiknit, along with the usual business card.

But the other side of it is no longer blank.

Imagiknit got bought out this past summer by one of its former employees, and one can only wonder in astonishment at what some customer must have said to elicit this.

And then I laughed, hard, thinking who this got sent to, because, yeah.

Imagiknit let me know my Pocion Mecha yarn is on its way. I bought a single skein to leave the possibility open of getting to a LYS tomorrow and picking out more hat yarn in person but I wanted to know that that colorway would be here before the workers return, and tomorrow it should be.

On a random note of practicality: I read somewhere that the best way to freeze unused sourdough starter is to spread it out on parchment paper and then as soon as it’s frozen, crumble it into a small freezer container, giving it an easily-accessible form for later. So I just did that, wondering if it would pour out all over the place but it didn’t and finagling the parchment into the freezer space contained the starter, so, cool.

And randomness for its own sake: the Washington Post offers its subscribers a scanned-in shot of what the front page was the day (please fill in this form thank you) one was born.

Okay, I figured that was just trolling for data, but still, I was curious.

Below the fold, there was a story of a judge who’d had twenty young azalea bushes stolen from his yard while he was having a weekend at the beach, carefully spaded out of there.

It lists his home address, notes his tony neighborhood and the prices of the houses, and says the thieves even got the ones behind his ten foot fence.

Who on earth is allowed to have a ten foot fence?

His neighbors were hit that same weekend, and they, too, were at the beach. Their roses too were left untouched.

A truck was pulled over near that street with a hundred azaleas in back, and the authorities were requiring the driver to offer proof of having purchased them.

Okay, today, that would mean the newspaper doxxed a prominent judge–on the front page, no less.

The kicker is that the date on that newspaper? I was a crawling baby aspiring to walk. So per them, I was, in fact, born yesterday. And more than.

—

Edited to add: since I wrote that they have corrected the link.