Rent a Tesla, they said. Same price as a subcompact.

So we tried out what turned out to be the Tesla Y for the weekend and getting in, thought, Niiiice.

We said to the guy at Budget, How do you charge this thing?

Him, and I quote: “How the bleep would *I* know?” (Hey! Someone who uses my favorite swear word!)

Okay then. The paperwork requires we fill it with gas before returning. Uh, guys…

I do have to stop here and mention the doors. They look so cool but on the outside, you have to put a lot of oomph into pushing in one side of the half-a-pair-of-tongs to pull open the other end with the other hand and it really wants to snap right back on you. Hard. I was honestly afraid we were going to break my 92-year-old mother’s hand with it and I tried to get to it every time before she did. Defiance of aging is not a good design feature.

We found a public charging station–it was across town–and tried to charge it before the funeral. We took Mom home after the funeral for a rest and went and tried again. We spent three bleeping hours on a Saturday out of the two full days we were in town to see people trying to get that car to charge. We couldn’t.

Oh and did I mention that it was 92F, the car was black, and the AC turned off while we were trying because the car was too low?

What I didn’t know is that people pull in to charge, walk out to shop at the strip mall while it does, and get back whenever they get back while meantime other people have pulled up and are standing in line to get the next slot for their about fifteen minutes of time with it. Three of the charging stations were out of order, including the one we had tried in the morning that was labeled as such by the afternoon. Thanks guys.

The second time, we waited for a slot and got one we knew had just worked for the guy pulling out. We spent a long long time again. Trying everything. Trying to reach anyone. Even the teen in the next car tried to help.

Turns out the car belonged to Budget and Tesla was not going to let someone whose name was not Budget fill the d*** thing. It actually said Charging at one point–and then the station turned itself off. Didn’t matter that we wanted to pay for it, we were interlopers.

So then we had to watch where we drove very carefully.

We did not drive way down the freeway to his sister’s for a visit. We couldn’t.

We got it back to the airport okay on Monday, low (it had been at 75% when we’d gotten it, 80% is as full as you’re supposed to do, why I don’t know) and tried to give them a heads-up on what their new inventory was like for their customers. Their car kept us from doing some of what we had paid for this trip to get to do. I missed a cousin get-together after the funeral. (Oh let’s just go fill the car while we wait for a text back with the address.) We ordered delivery rather than dare even going out to the grocery store.

I am going to be keeping a close eye on that credit card bill.

I have often thought one should always rent a car, if possible, before ever buying it.

Which I am now definitely never going to do. If nothing else, I’m not risking my knitter’s hands on those doors.

We had a trip scheduled to go visit my mom, and then my cousin in Colorado whose husband Kevin was killed on his motorcycle announced a memorial service for him to be held the week after, near my mom and where my cousin grew up even if it’s not where she lives now. But it was a central gathering place closest to the most relatives.

So we changed our tickets and flew out Friday.

We got to see not only Mom but a whole lot of people including relatives I hadn’t seen in probably thirty years.

I said to one man there, You have got to be Kevin’s brother! He was very pleased at that, considered it a great compliment, and said yes he was. We shared a hug at the loss and he radiated so much love that I thought, You are absolutely the brother of Kevin.

And then we got up at dark o’clock this morning to catch the only direct flight home and because that particular airport is such a zoo–it once took us nearly three hours to go from returning the car to our gate. Lesson learned. Be very early.

Our Uber driver coming home asked and reiterated and really wanted to know how we were. So we asked after him and his family.

His English was very good. Turns out he was a refugee from Afghanistan. Very grateful to be here, to be alive, to be employed, and he was so wonderful to us. And grateful that we cared about his family members that were still back there.

Of course we do. We are all, every single one of us, in this life thing together.

CVS last night. They recently changed their hours. I was standing in line when a woman came in and the clerk told her she was too late to be served that day.

It’s 5:54, I said, holding out my phone, and you close at 6:00.

She smirked and said the system shuts down at 6:00 and too late. They were only going to ring up two more people.

It’s 5:56. You have time to take care of her. Take care of her.

And then she stood there doing–nothing, as the other clerk was going as fast as she could. Nothing. Just standing there watching more people coming in trying to get there in time, joining the line. Sucks to be them.

The woman was horrified, then pleading, and finally her face crumpled into unwanted tears. She had called everybody and only this store had it and she had to have it tonight.

The clerk looked very pleased with herself as she reiterated, “The system closes down.” There was an undertone of sheer hostility.

I was with the other clerk, saying, Let’s do this fast! She was right there with me.

I should have thought to simply let the woman in more need than me immediately take my spot at the counter, but I didn’t know that I would have time to go back today before seeing my mom and I didn’t think through it fast enough and I very much am not proud of that, but the lovely clerk I was with ran through her screens as fast as she could. I’ve only seen her there in the last month, and she was as horrified as I was at what was going on.

I wanted X?

No, the new Y that was just sent in this afternoon.

Looks like we haven’t filled it yet. Do you want me to–

Thanksnopointwastingthetime. I turned to the next person with Okay your turn!, expecting to see the woman in tears–but no. It was the woman who’d been behind me before all this started, and she stepped forward fast in the same hopes of helping the next person not get shut down on. The one I’d stood up for was standing next to me at the other register. I hoped fiercely that I was right to be relieved, that she really had gotten taken care of after all.

I went back in this morning and thankfully found myself being waited on by the lovely woman. Whose name, I recently told her, matches my grandmother, my mom, my cousin, and my great-niece.

It’s not a terribly common name and she was quite pleased at how much my family likes it.

And it wasn’t till I was writing this just now that I realized that the difficult woman’s name tag is never in view.

So. My med.

They didn’t have it in stock. I thought, that’s okay, I woke up with my eye feeling better all on my own today, but at least it gave me a chance to ask the burning question: had that woman gotten her med last night? The one who needed it so much?

Family Name Clerk did a quick glance to the side to where the other woman was over among the stocking shelves and said softly, “Yes she did.” Nodding her head slightly in that direction, the new employee said of the woman who may well have been her boss, “I made her.”

Good for you!!! I was so grateful.

As I drove home, I wondered of the other clerk: who treated you like that in your life that you treat your customers the way you do? You left where you grew up–your speech conveys that. Why do you not know that you’re safe here, that it doesn’t have to be that way, that you don’t have to be that way?

And then suddenly the thought, is she? What is her life like here, who is she with, and the burning question, are you a safe person for her? Do you create an environment where she can change for the better?

I wrestled with that awhile.

The honest answer is, she frustrates the bejeebers out of me at that pharmacy but I have tried for some time now, and as a deliberate choice for her sake, to always be doing my best at peacemaking. To be patient.

But that’s over her treatment of me.

You don’t power trip over creating suffering in someone else that you could do something about while refusing to ring them up in order to run out the clock on them. And I’m very sorry to say, that is what I saw, and in keeping with previous experiences.

I will call her out on her behavior next time, too, and she knows that now.

The Faustman Lab affiliated with Harvard has a paper out (I’ve seen reference to a 2023 update) on why the vaccine for tuberculosis is proving to be valuable for reversing type 1 diabetes–the type that is autoimmune-based, which is why they’re now expanding their work to other autoimmune diseases.

The then-experimental drug that saved my life twenty years ago dramatically enough that one medical resident changed his specialty so he could be part of that again (Hi Dr. Shih!) was a TNF-type drug. This is far better than my old mouse-celled one that they had to stop after it caused (thankfully temporary) congestive heart failure.

Quote: “Induction of TNF through BCG vaccination or through selective agonism of TNF receptor 2 (TNFR2) has 2 desired cellular immune effects: (1) selective death of autoreactive T cells and (2) expansion of beneficial regulatory T cells”

It sounds like it’s inducing the body to produce its own TNF in a way that does the most good, avoids the damage mine caused, and is certainly well tolerated.

The thought suddenly hits: what if I could travel and play normal tourist and go out in the sun and just do, y’know, normal people type things in the daytime again? Rather than risk setting off multiple organ inflammation via the UV exposure starting the moment I step outside?

That vaccine is out there right now.

It could actually happen in my lifetime and certainly my kids’.

For sanity’s sake these past thirty years I’ve avoided spending time or thought on the what-ifs, but I gotta admit I’m sneaking some peeks their way right now.

Oh, and, meantime, the daughter of our elderly neighbor is in town, we had a good chat, and I mentioned the outdoor light that seems brighter than the LED streetlight and turns our bedroom into daytime all night long; could she maybe change that lightbulb?

She was both horrified and gratified that that was something she could so easily do that could do so much good. She’s on it.

I was looking at skyscapes, and one with cirrocumulus clouds had blue lines of plain sky dividing them into clean crisp rows for reasons known only to nature.

Skip having to weave in white across the backs of every single stitch? And again, ten rows later, and again? Done.

I browsed my Nicky Epstein book, imagining dozens of tiny oak leaves individually made on size 00 needles and sewn on the did-she-mean-to-knit-a-redwood-over-there.

Um, no (on both counts, but it is, isn’t it.)

I’m not liking the gray i-cord chains for the tire swing–they vanish into the background. I’m thinking I’ll redo those in classic black.

The mass of dark greenery across the left side and behind the house in the real estate photo came out like the shape of the nearby lake, and I like that. A lot.

Still gotta add petals to that little flower that I made out of the snowplow-guiding 6′ orange pole. There are several poles and there should be several flowers but at the time, it was taking me four to five hours per inch and I just too much needed that wide open green space to gallop across like a little kid let out for recess.

Getting there, getting there.

Oh wait–don’t let me forget to add a doorknob. Gotta have a doorknob.

One of my friends, a rabbi, posts every Monday the simple question: How’s your heart?

She asks it every week and it always takes me by surprise even though I know it shouldn’t and it makes me stop and think. All the things. Some so good, some not so much; it took a few minutes to sift through.

Then I answered.

“I have been watching a small desert lizard on my patio stretching his face way upwards towards the sun. The wind is blowing the leaves shading there at this time of day, and he takes note of it and from time to time scoots over to where the sun is present again. And again. And–there he goes–again, staying with the light even when it moves.”

Leaving me wanting to ask my friends, too: How are your hearts today?

I had someone I felt I owed a thank you to, who’d been admiring my gerdans at church.

I knew what it’s like to move here with kids while trying to afford the crazy housing costs, even if she would find it laughable if I told her what those numbers once were for us. We didn’t have a dime for extras.

So this week I went through those necklaces several times, trying to envision her reaction to color/style/length and what she had seemed to like the most.

I couldn’t find her. I stopped her teenage daughter: Is your mom here?

No, she’s not, she half-apologized.

I got her to follow me away from the crowd a bit and, reaching into my purse, told her, Your mom is so supportive. Would you be willing to pick one out for her?

I got a polite that’s nice that’s nice that’s nice–and then I pulled out the last one.

She gasped!

We had a winner!

Oh, she couldn’t wait. This was so perfect.

And here’s the thing: suddenly it was all about the daughter being in so much delighted anticipation of making her mom happy. In retrospect it was the most perfect day to have brought it to church.

And I was willing to give up that round white classic beaded Ruth Bader Ginsberg collar because a week ago, when a gerdan I’d ordered from Kherson arrived, the artist had decided to surprise me with the gift of a second necklace entirely: round, rather than long.

Quite like that RBG one. I didn’t need two, and so the one that was simply a bought thing (from Ukraine, so important just the same) went into the bag for my friend/her daughter to choose from.

My friend in Kherson could never have known what she was going to help happen when she decided to do that, surely with much happy anticipation of how delighted it would make me. And it did.

Love, multiplied.

Migraine, could you go without me, sure hon, feel better, and with that I was off on a quick grocery run alone.

At the 5:00 time/place that I’ve been avoiding ever since I ran into that guy.

The one who, years ago, I tried to exchange info with after he hit my car that ended with him pounding his fists on the window of my hurriedly-locked door screaming, “What are you, some kind of damn private eye?!” because I’d taken a picture of his license plate.

The one where a cop later told me the guy had done time for assault.

The one who showed up at that store all these years later whose face instantly contorted with rage on seeing me–but there were lots of witnesses around this time, and he was older now, and he managed to calm himself down as I got out of there as fast as I could. Did he think all these years that I’d somehow caused him that conviction? I have nothing to do with the man. Whoever he is.

I haven’t been willing to admit just how much I haven’t wanted to go back at that particular time and day ever since then. I’ve gone–but during working hours. Just because.

But there I was.

And as I was checking out, I saw, not him, but my dear friends Marguerite and Russ and they waved a cheerful hi and turned and wheeled their cart over to join my line and come say hi.

They totally rescued me. They had no way to know it. I had not known till that moment of extreme emotional contrast just how much I’d needed to be. They just happened to choose that day and that time to come to that store and the love in their faces the instant they saw me was like suddenly I could breathe again.

It occurred to me afterward that I hadn’t even thought to pray for help coping with the fear and the what-ifs because I was trying so hard to believe I didn’t feel that fear.

The choreography of G_d. It is very humbling. And the joy!

The tennis racket bug zapper: it works better on small insects but it was all I had. By what on earth opening had that hornet even gotten in here? It was huge!

And then it was against the window with that bug zapper pinning it down but it wanted to just keep right on going, so I did, too, arm stretched, finger on the button, not daring to let up to check on the thing.

Finally, after a good minute or so, I decided my best bet was to open the slider with my other hand and try to sweep it out of here.

But it wouldn’t go.

I smacked the zapper gently on something outside. It clung. I thwapped hard. It clung. Finally I dared look a little closer, and it had indeed given up the ghost once it had been zapped long enough. Thwap! I got it to fall out and made a mental offering to the birds out there, but it is clear they prefer their meals sushi style. It’s a raw deal.

Okay, so all that happened, and shortly thereafter I went to go water my trees.

Every time I touched the handle on that slider I got a little shock. What?

The first time, I thought, well that was odd, but by the sixth time (I go out and move the hose from tree to tree and set a timer for three minutes, come inside, repeat for each) it was clearly a thing. Huh.

We had that door repaired a few years ago and I’d never noticed that the inside handle is metal while the outside one is plastic.

I started opening the door from inside by pushing along the window, then coming back in using the handle because that side was fine.

I took a basic college course in electricity and none of this makes any sense to me, so I asked the resident geek and it made no sense to him either. Shocking, I know.

So it’s been a few hours now, I typed all this, and had to go see if it would still do that if I touched it. It did not. Well yay.

But still: why? I mean, if you could store electricity in glass who would need batteries? The zapper never touched that handle. So strange.

And just like that, back to normal. Now! With extra flu shot protection! Operators are standing by, order yours now!

And so back to the afghan, too.

Meantime, I posted something on Freecycle.org and on a whim scrolled through the posts. There was

“Wanted:

Yarn and crochet materials of any size.”

You know I have to do a little stash digging first, but you know I have to answer that one. I gave up knitting in college because I couldn’t afford it and it took me nine years to get back to it–I know what it’s like. I will ask questions first, of course, and then we’ll see from there.

My only reaction to the flu vaccine was being tired, and I ended up picking my copy of The Fruit Hunters, found my bookmark, and discovered the delight of Adam Leith Gollner’s writing all over again. So many fruits I’ve never heard of, much less tried.

He describes Andy Mariani as growing the best peaches in America! Okay, so this guy *does* know what he’s talking about. Grin.

Checking: here’s a prettier cover with cheaper used copies.

Mine had been caught in the rain at an airport and the pages are a distractingly curled mess, but I’m glad I finally got back to it. Thank you flu shot.

Highly recommended. Yes, I mean both–of course.

To match the actual barn, I debated on a purl line between the big doors and the loft window and didn’t but probably would in a do-over, but never mind.

The deadline just became Christmas again, so I have plenty of time to work more of that cloud into the skyscape.

I might be taking it easy tomorrow, or it might have no effect on me: I got a flu shot today. Just before spending time in radiology–where so far the results sound good. No ovarian masses.

Yay. I can relax.

The map app took us through San Francisco on a novel route to Dandelion Chocolate, and I was marveling at this building that, This! This is how I remember the Mission District of years ago. I thought it had all long been gentrified out of existence–and for most of the area that’s true.

Post-pandemic there are a lot of closed store fronts in the city and that one building shows it, but this one down the block from Dandelion is beautiful and I wish I’d taken in more of the artwork; I was fascinated by the door at the end of the walkway (and stepping back far enough to frame the view to its left would have put me in the street.)

We got there early in the morning. The store had just changed their opening time and I’m not sure their customers knew it yet: we had the parking and the place mostly to ourselves. We could chat with the two employees without holding up a line. We could hear each other in the quiet. They weren’t yet done putting out the newly-baked pastries of the day but they assured us they had them, pick anything.

For the record, I tried the cacao fruit smoothie made from the pulp that surrounds the beans in the cacao pod, having no idea what a ‘lychee-like citrusy’ and whatever other words they used would actually come out tasting like.

The addiction was instant–man, that was good.

From there we ran the errands that needed to be run, our daughter went off to dinner with a friend, the friend dropped her off at the airport, and our weekend together flew past.

I feel like the toddler who exclaims in both delight and as a demand, Again!!!

Twenty-five rows since I got the blue yesterday afternoon, a record.

Adding wispy cirrocumulus clouds is slowing that right down–but also a sign of thinking I can get this done before my sudden deadline of next week.

(As I start my second ice-my-hands session.)

At 3:10, the yarn came after all: the long-awaited 6-ply replacing the mistake of the 10-ply. How many people get to have custom-milled yarn in their afghans?

At 3:45, the 300 grams had been hanked, scoured, rinsed four times, and was spinning the excess water out in the washer. And yes that means I didn’t soak it in the suds long enough but I was in a ripping hurry.

At 3:45 Michelle walked in the door from a lunch with her cousin to tell me that there was no room in the car for a third person and would I be horribly disappointed if I let her dad do the furniture hefting with her?

She was moving it out of storage–it was far, far cheaper to replace it than to move it to Boston no matter how nice it was–and gifting it to a friend who’s a schoolteacher.

At 5:00 I decided I had maxed out at an hour of holding a hair dryer, enough. (What do people do who can’t turn their ears off for stuff like this, I wondered.) I’d made two hanks and the smaller one was done, or at least I told myself it was, and I stopped and wound it up. I also wound another yarn of much yardage that I thought I was going to knit it doubled with. I swatched. I put the much-yardage yarn back away.

At 6:00 they walked in the door and dinner was started and help was needed and then at last I finally sat down for that long-awaited glorious moment.

Then I tinked back what I’d just done because I was going to need blue on the other side of the barn, too lady, what were you thinki–it’s okay, you’re very very tired, so I then wound yet again, unwinding half the ball I’d just made. Halfsies. Two now. Try again.

And now I’m giving my hands a break after six rows. About seven more I think? before starting the upper window. And then, so soon, the barn will be done and maybe by then I will have swatched ideas for the soaring raptor I hope to put on the other side.

Man, it feels good to finally be able to dive back into this. I can’t wait to see it done.

And the now-slightly-shrunk, hair-dryered 6-ply was just exactly right for it.