There’s got to be a word for the type of wide shipping box that opens like a lid and closes with flaps at the end tucking inside their slots.

Turns out that if you’re little enough, and the present is still inside the box after the lid has been opened all the way and it’s heavy enough to counterbalance you, you have an impromptu slide just your size and then you do it again because that was fun and the people on the screen are clapping and cheering you on and this box is the best present ever!

The phone is being its usual slow self re photos but meantime here’s last night’s glamour shot of our Christmas stockings before the Chocolate Cherry Fantasies and Sugar Plums from Andy’s got tucked in there.

With the neighbor’s trees overhanging our house gone now, the holly has berries for the first time in so many years that I’d forgotten it could.

The Christmas tree isn’t up: a few years ago we bought the widest-but-one, fullest, heaviest tree at Balsam Hill for its lack of allergens but this was just not the year for struggling with it.

Which means I didn’t go sorting through the ornament boxes in the garage to find the one with the stockings in it. I asked him his feelings on the subject and he said, apologetically, Well actually bah humbug?

Oh good. Neither one of us had to feel guilty about it, then. (The lights but one have burned out in the garage so it would be one hand on a flashlight and one hand moving and opening boxes.)

We did have a great time of a Christmas Eve, though, wishing Maddy a happy sixth birthday, talking to Mom, and later Zooming with her and my aunt and a whole bunch of cousins–one of whom I hadn’t seen since her wedding in the early 80’s. Aunt Joyce has always thrown a Christmas Eve party for whoever in the family could come and now we all could from wherever we were.

Emily played The Holly and the Ivy on the piano and it was all I could do not to burst into unexpected tears: with her fingertips gone, there were missed notes–but there was so much feeling, so much living, so much rejoicing in those notes, so much forever the musician no matter what and it was a privilege to be able to witness.

Writing that just now led me to Alison Kraus and Yo-Yo Ma’s beautiful Wexford Carol rendition–I have that album. But my CD player did the 2020 thing and repairs have to wait till after the pandemic and yes of course computers and all that but I’ve simply gotten out of the habit.

It hit me that I have needed more music. It has been missing, and a bit of me with it.

As for the stockings: I had to have something, because I’d bought some great treats at Andy’s Orchard to put in them and whatever with the garage, they refused to be denied.

I was standing in the kitchen…

When in Romaine do as the Romaineians.

It’s awfully handy of oven mitts to come with a loop for hanging them. A few long paper/wire twisties that the vegetable crisper doesn’t need anymore, the long thick wire under the mantle we always hang the stockings from waiting for the new set-up, and there you go. No Santa that doesn’t mean your cookies are in the oven and you have to take them out yourself but thank you for offering to help.

I was leaning over the chair taking a picture of the mitts and smashed the back of the rocker into the underside of my nose because 2020 is into slapstick comedy like that.

Next year will be all about the grandkids. As it should be. I can’t wait.

Wait, what?

Two dozen Costco hard boiled eggs: shelled, so at least there’s that.

It was supposed to be liquid egg whites so I could more easily experiment with cake recipe amounts for my yarn-ball Silikomart mold. Going to be just a bit hard to whip those.

(This one’s a buche de noel for weavers. Just linking to it because, clicking on that yellow cake to embiggen the picture, wow. Hey, I could pour some homemade chocolate into that in a big flat bar, I have lots of friends who weave.)

Two two-packs later we still have twenty freaking bouncy hard-boiled eggs in that fridge. I wondered if you could freeze them and googled: turns out the whites become super rubbery and at the same time super hard. Which is exactly what we already have.

What does one DO with such things? Other than, y’know, throwing an Easter egg roll for all the raccoons and skunks and possums. Cuisinart them into an egg loaf? That just…doesn’t… yow. Those whites do not want to be chopped, not by your knife, not by your fork, not by your teeth.

I did my best to mash them with some Durkee’s and sharp cheddar on toast and settled for, frankly, more like strips.

Texture, the texture of those whites in this, it was a little like… Like…(I really don’t know if I should say this…) my sister’s description of her brother-in-law’s wedding where the caterer served escargots but forgot to cook them first.

A random question to throw out there: does anyone else find that all the sewn masks, no matter how perfectly symmetrical, just aren’t once they’re on?

I always figured one ear was a little higher than the other because opticians are always going, huh, and straightening out the sides of the glasses ever so carefully as they tilt their arms. But it never occurred to me that one might be further forward than the other.

The masks that arc upwards at your nose?

They favor one nostril. All of them do.

Anyone else?

The other thing that happened yesterday.

With socially-distanced love from our niece, who texted us afterwards to tell us what she’d done to make sure we would see it before the next rain. Surprise!

Today my mom is 90 and our oldest grandson is 10.

Parker got a promise of one toy on the way that had gone late in the package crush out there, and one copy of Sibley’s new What It’s Like To Be A Bird. He plunked down with it and was reading it and showing us things from it by Zoom.

I asked him about loons, just so his daddy could tease me later, and he eagerly looked them up and showed me the large, detailed picture.

There was some surprise in my voice as I said, “That’s beautiful!”

For Mom, all her generations were invited to a family reunion by Zoom where we talked about our favorite memories of her.

I talked about studying her hands as a kid, fervently wishing mine could do what hers did as she knit an aran sweater for my older sister. Of her teaching me how to knit at ten on a car trip around the country and all my dropped stitches going back and forth between me in the far back of the station wagon and her in the front seat for help, and then at 16 when I picked something out of her knitting magazine and asked her to make it for me, she told me, “It’s not your turn. Go make it yourself!”

I was a teenager. I was not about to admit I didn’t remember how.

I did admit I couldn’t remember how to cast on, because there was no getting past that deficit, but after that I went in my room and tried to remember how her hands did it–surely I should know! I used to do this!–and fiddled around till I got it.

Having no idea I’d invented my own way that was completely different from hers–but that would serve my hands much better later in life in terms of arthritis and repetitive motions: I grab and drop the yarn with my right hand every single stitch. Open and close thumb and forefinger lightly, no wrist-twisting and less motioning.

If you’ve ever watched Stephanie Pearl-McPhee knit you know that any claim of my way being just as fast as anybody else’s is absolutely laughable–but against most knitters, I do a definitely respectable pace. But whatever, it’s what works for me to be able to keep going so I’m glad I didn’t ask for help way back when. I could never have known that then.

Mom never gave the slightest hint that I was doing it wrong or even that I was doing it differently because clearly it worked just fine.

Mom didn’t just teach me to knit.

She taught me to see a ball of plain string as all the things it could become–and then to narrow the choices to one, to put in the time and work to make that vision into a real thing and then to use the outcome to bless others.

She taught me that creativity requires perseverance to live up to its potential. That it both teaches and demands ever more learning. That it is worth ripping back to get it right and even that how easy that is depends on what you’re working with.

I’m thinking of her description of buying two sweaters’ worth of pure plucked angora yarn in postwar France, having no idea what that would have cost her back in the States, starting to knit my sister a sweater in the round, finding the yarn felting just from running through her hands and rustling around in her knitting bag–and then finding out she was knitting an inadvertent mobius strip. The world’s softest most incorrigible mobius strip. But she did it, she frogged it. It took her awhile. You see the little moth-eaten yellow ball at the top of this blog and the three scarves I knit out of its leftovers after boiling them in dye to kill the little monsters? That was the last of that angora, decades later. Turns out one of my sisters was allergic to her sweater.

I remember the January in high school when the school district decided to save money by turning off the heat. I had glommed onto Marian’s regretfully handed down (she loved it, she just couldn’t wear it) green angora sweater and walking around in a cloud puff of fur, marveling at how warm it was while everyone around me shivered.

Mom stormed the gates at district headquarters by phone and demanded they turn the heat back on in those schools–and they did!

To this day when joining stitches in the round, be it hat or sweater, I think, no rabbit-hair mobius strips, okay?

Mom looked around at all those gathered around their screens, her children (except one who was out of cellphone range), most of her grandchildren, some great grandchildren–Mathias waved hi uncertainly at all the strange faces and Lillian with cheerful certainty and charmed the socks off everyone for their few moments onscreen–and Mom marveled at how nice we all are. To her, to each other, to everyone. Nice, nice people.

Of course, Mom. You knit our lives together with love. You never said an unkind word about anyone. We’re still all hoping to be like you when we grow up. Happy Birthday!

And Happy Birthday, Parker! You can play some loony tunes on the piano next time we get to get together.

People who live in glass houses (floor to ceiling along one and a half walls of this room, but at least it’s double-paned)…

Him in his standard daily year-round boring blue oxford shirt this morning (white on Sundays), surprised: You’re wearing two sweaters!

Me, surprised back, guffawing: I always do. I’ve been wearing two sweaters every day for what, six weeks now? It’s cold.

We’ve both been here all day every day thank you pandemic and it wasn’t like I was sneaking them past him. Men are so funny. I’ve been randomly chuckling all day. I think this particular combination is going to go down as Two Sweaters, linked forevermore.

A dear friend is an attending physician at Stanford and was just offered the Pfizer vaccine.

He has talked about its jaw-dropping success.

He turned it down. Oh yes he absolutely wants it as much as anybody and to protect his wife and kids and he thinks the FDA should have approved those first two vaccines sooner.

But there is such a thing as ethics. He is not on the front lines dealing with covid patients. He’s dealing with a lack of beds for his patients, sure, but he is not directly exposed day in day out one-on-one to a monstrous rush of ferociously infectious people needing so much care and the constant extra shifts and the pressure and the intense grief and lack of sleep and even more exposure.

The residents, the interns, the nurses and the janitorial staff in those areas are, and as headlines all over the country pointed out today, some pointy-haired boss allotted all of 17 shots for those thousands of front liners and saved the rest of their first shipment for People Who Matter More Than You. People who were not working with covid patients at all. Some telecommuting only. People who were as safe as any of us can be right now.

When called on it they blamed it on the computer.

Yeah no. Not his turn. Give his to someone who’s putting their life on the line for their patients and then comes back the next day, and the next, and the next, and the next, to do it all over again.

At 9:55 this morning there was one customer being helped and three clerks, the easiest December post office run ever. I told Anne her apricots were on their way and she told me those are the best she’s ever had, she can’t wait. She made my day.

That was just the start.

This afternoon I got a text from a friend: he’d heard Richard was sick; how was he doing?

Definitely getting better, thanks.

Next thing you know there was a second text saying he’d dropped off a little something for us.

I opened the door. He was already gone–which makes sense, because, exposure. There was a bag with eggs, veggies, grits, butter, juice, milk, just because he could. Wow! I was gobsmacked, and so was Richard.

His stomach’s still a bit tender, eggs are easy on it, we were running low, and now we aren’t.

A little history: years ago I got sent to Urgent Care with what was clearly the start of a Crohn’s flare. It’s not like I didn’t know what that was at that point.

To my great surprise the doctor who saw me was dismissive of anything I had to say about that; all he wanted to know was, had I eaten raspberries.

A day or two ago…

He insisted I had salmonella poisoning from Mexican raspberries (who says they weren’t US grown? There was no recall nor mention in the press in either case) and he sent me home without doing anything about the Crohn’s, which is indeed what it was. My GI doctor rolled his eyes with a bit of suppressed indignation at that when I ended up in his office, which made me want to say oh thank you thank you.

So. I found myself thinking, well, you know, though. My husband does not have Crohn’s and he did eat a lot of raspberries when I didn’t.

We had more of them. I wasn’t taking any chances–I baked them into a clafoutis, with some blueberries to get it up to four cups of fruit. Cook’em. They’re probably innocent but this way I wouldn’t have to worry about it.

The recipe calls for whole milk. I substituted the last of some cream 50/50 with the 1% that’s always around and was surprised at how much of a difference it made–it definitely improved it over my usual low-fat ones.

And it’s a good way to get fruit and protein down a whiny stomach.

Thanks to our friend, if Richard wants more, and he’s quite fond of it, I have whole milk in my fridge now and I can make it come out that way again tomorrow.

Clafoutis recipe: butter a 9″ deep-dish pan, not smaller, whip three eggs a goodly while, add 1/2 c sugar, beat, then 1 c whole milk, still beating, a small pinch salt, 1 tsp vanilla, a tbl melted butter, still beating, and then at the last beat in 1/2 c flour. Pour it in the pan quickly, put the fruit on top, bake about 40 minutes, 45-50 in my ceramic pan or till a knife in the center comes out clean. (Ed. to add: oven at 350.)

And then try to wait till it cools, but I won’t blame you if you don’t.

We seem to have talked the hand splint people into restocking. Good, and thank you for the help. If my husband should ever happen to step on one and explode the beads everywhere I know where to go, and I’m glad others can get those, too.

Meantime, I walked into the main post office about 4:00, looked at the long line of people stretching across inside the building and starting to double back, masked, but, Nope! Nope nopeity nope, not today.

My family of origin does a round-robin at Christmas, one sibling each each year. There are six of us.

I can never remember whose turn is whose–except that Morgan, when offered, loved the idea of a peach tree for his new house last year and proudly told us this summer that he’d eaten his first three Kit Donnells from it already: they were small but great.

One of my older sisters had a huge pine fall in a big wind storm a few months ago. It missed the main part of the house but there was a crane involved in lifting it off the destroyed patio awning and they did some remodeling in the aftermath.

So there was this big bare newly sunny spot in her back yard.

I asked her what she thought and got a good bit of enthusiasm back and so a bare-root Baby Crawford peach tree will be coming her way, a variety that ripens a few weeks off from Morgan’s so they can extend each other’s seasons in the sharing–and I sent her a pound of Andy’s dried extra-ripe Blenheim apricot slabs to hold her till it comes in a few months.

That Baby Crawford variety exists thanks to Andy. My siblings have/will have the varieties I most love from his farm.

So. I was all done with the Christmas shipping and I recycled a bunch of boxes I’d been saving just in case anything else popped up.

My little sister happened to mention on my birthday Sunday just to make sure I knew it that it was my turn to give to her this year.

Wait–but I thought–

–she was right.

Thanks, no trees for her–what she *really* wanted was some of those apricots. She knew how good they were.

She clearly had been really looking forward to them.

I’m quite glad I got it wrong because trees need all the head start you can give them and I would have wanted to give that one anyway and Christmas gave me an excuse, so, no regrets–more like total glee that two of my siblings get to grow their own peaches now, three, because the oldest already has her own.

And that is how I ended up back at Andy’s today.

I picked up a bottle of poison oak honey there, too, because that deep caramel not too sweet flavor and how else would she ever find out it existed? Or trust that with a name like that it would be okay to even try?

I don’t know how often the Honey Ladies rescue bee hives from that particular plant or want to and that is the only variety of honey I’ve ever succumbed to utter squirrelhood over: there’s a half gallon bottle of it buried deep in the cabinet to make sure I never run out.

Which I keep sure of by occasionally buying another small jar to actually, y’know, eat. But this one’s going to Anne.

Tomorrow. Along with three pounds of apricots. Hopefully there’ll be a less busy hour to ship them out.

Maybe I should add to that last post that after 40 years of marriage we’ve learned we each know best what we want and so “go buy it and it’s from me” is the norm here re gift-giving. Yes it’s great fun finding that one most perfect thing–but there’s no reason to sweat over it.

He was working again today, sitting up. His feet were getting cold, so I’m going to give a shameless plug here for my friends Ron and Teresa’s bison silk socks, because they were that one most perfect thing I found a few years ago and after trying them out he asked for more. He had a pair blended with merino, no silk, but after that first softer upgraded pair that was all he ever wanted on his feet again. Socks for Christmas was a longtime in-joke between us–until those. It’s still an in-joke but with definite appreciation thrown in now.

You can throw them in the dryer as well as the washer, but I don’t, and they were hanging where I’d left them drying waiting for him to be up to needing them again. I ran and got him a pair.

It was nice to have something so easy to do to make him so much more comfortable in his day.

My 6’8″er is a big guy and he’s been walking around the house in those pairs of socks since our quarantine began in February and they show no signs of wearing out. I’d say that over time they’re proving less expensive than wool ones.

Did anybody watch that trailcam video of a possum shoving a skunk into a pond and running away that I linked to yesterday?

Although really, that was just for me. It was that kind of a day and I needed anything to make me laugh. My husband woke up so sick–I spent the day trying to get fluids down him and increasingly wondering whether I should be calling for help, having gone through dehydration a few years ago so bad I ended up at the ER myself.

You really don’t want to go there right now if you don’t have to.

The kids called and I told them how it was. My friends Phyl and Lee came by with a birthday cranberry coffee cake, not coming in, not coming close other than to hand it to me outside and we visited a moment. I confessed to feeling overwhelmed at that point.

A whole lot of prayers started going up besides my own.

At 9:30 pm to my astonishment he sat up and drank a bit of apple juice and even ate a little bit of soft food. He wanted custard? Absolutely, and I ran and made custard. He ate a little. Today he finished off the lot of it as he worked.

The doorbell rang in the afternoon with a birthday present. He helped me eat some of that, too.

Deep breath.

Oh wait. I forgot to tell him that Sak had a pandemic-induced $75 postpaid price on that gorgeous tooled leather zipped tote that is as close to replacing my beloved cabled-knit-stitch-embossed one that is just too far gone now as I am ever going to find and did he know he got me a really pretty purse for my birthday? A bit hippy-dippy but then so am I.

Let me run go tell him that. He’ll feel great knowing he got me something so cool.

(Runs and tells him.)

He grinned and joked and teased and laughed and man it’s good to see him feeling that much like himself again like that.

George Schultz, who turned 38 the day I was born, turned 100 today and wrote a beautiful essay for the Washington Post.

He writes of attending a wreath-laying ceremony in Leningrad years ago, where his Russian counterpart and the interpreter found themselves in tears.

He answered their unexpected vulnerability with, “I, too, fought in WWII, and had friends killed beside me,” expressing his gratitude for all those who’d fought in this battle for having defeated Hitler–and with that he turned to the graves before them and gave them a crisp soldier’s salute. Their sacrifices and their loss mattered to him.

And with that he won the Soviets’ trust and by that trust the treaty to reduce nuclear warheads later got signed.

One man, in the right place, doing the right thing because it was the right thing to do and it changed the world.

Offering hope that in our own politics we can do a bit better than the possum and the skunk.

I’ve mentioned a few times the hand splints I wear at night that gave me back the use of my hands when I was hit with an onset of what was at first assumed to be rheumatoid arthritis thirty years ago and that are still essential to my being able to knit. Custom made. But they wear out. That’s gotten hideously expensive.

There had to be something out there, there just had to be…

Flipping through the pages. Carpal tunnel. Nope. Or rather, yeah some but that’s not most of the problem, those are way too short. For broken hands. Nope. Don’t want it past the middle joints of my fingers but I do want it up to that point. For stroke. Nope nope nope.

Many Amazon search results later, I finally found some off-the-shelf ones that were what I was looking for, just about infinitely sizeable and with the functions I was going to that physical therapist for (details in the review), and my relief was so intense that I wrote the highest-praise review they could ever have asked for–but not till I’d tried them for several nights running to be sure. I’m sure.

These are better than my old ones. I did not know that was possible. That beanbag pouch!

If you knit (or even if you don’t) and have had any problems with your hands, these were $13.99 each and at the moment it says they’re almost sold out. Get a pair. You’ll be glad you did. Hopefully they’ll restock. Let’s talk them into it.

I’m still lining mine with old thin cotton socks with the heel and toe cut out, just like I did with my plastic ones for thirty years, because old habits and all that.

Edited to add, this one looks very close to it (even if the initial picture doesn’t) but I haven’t seen it in real life yet to tell for sure.

Edited 12/16: The ones I bought are being restocked now.

Rain. Glorious, cold, shivery rain. Not the hundredth of an inch of a few weeks ago but an actual soaking that promises to continue on into the next week. It’s about two months overdue but better late than never.