XKCD today. I love how the older memories are in gray, the more recent in black and white and easier to see clearly. Pure poetry. I love the confirmation that his wife is still okay. Beautiful piece and very close to home.

Meantime, over here it looks like all systems are go! We’ve got us some memories to go make.

Scene: the bank, since I was in the neighborhood anyway and I needed to get this dealt with. We had had a very unwanted surprise bill from FedEx for a tariff fee on the heels of a delivery and it was a lot.

Then 47 played Taco Don (Trump Always Chickens Out) and that particular tariff, at least for a little while, disappeared.

FedEx sent us our hundred dollars back. Who knew it could work that way? Only, the check was made out to Self. Do not ask me why. The teller had to ask his manager because that was just too weird–but then this whole tariff/no tariff/who’s got the tariff nonsense is weird. We all shrugged a who knows? and they processed it.

So there we were and then the teller, who up to that point had seemed stressed and probably counting the hours till he could get out of there, said dutifully, Is there anything else I can help you with?

Well, I said: Could you make me a couple of pies?

He cracked up. He smiled warmly. He asked after my Thanksgiving and I wished him a happy one and it was so gratifying to be able to pay forward the gift yesterday from the single dad at church to someone else when they needed that.

A night of very little sleep (too much dark chocolate pie last night but it was good), a morning that started earlier than it had any right to even though it was our usual time, so so tired but it was time to get up.

A few minutes later I saw it before he did.

He had stepped on who knows what, but since he couldn’t feel it he didn’t notice it. It was even a whole new toe to worry about, not the old one. I followed the blood across the hall, across the carpeting, so much on the carpeting, and then where it had obviously started. It was bad.

I’m tired of collecting Southwest future travel do-overs.

He cleaned up his foot while I tried my best to clean the carpet. It was too early to be having to work that hard and that much. I did not succeed in getting it all. It was time to go, and we made it to church on time. Breathe. The meeting hadn’t started yet so I pulled out wool and needle and started casting on a hat because boy did I need my hands to switch to the language of happy anticipation.

He tried to tell me I should be setting up my phone for the Zoom caption. I told him I was doing this (waving the needle) for me. Which was nicespeak for (and we did talk it out over lunch later), I am just barely holding it together right now worrying about you and being frustrated with you and this is how I am not bursting into tears out of sheer fatigue and worry and yes you are right and I don’t want to hear it while I have these thirty more seconds to do this so zip it buddy.

Just then someone dropped a little notecard in his lap and smiled and continued walking on past.

I put my yarn away the moment it looked like the meeting was about to start and, for the sake of the both of us,  just immersed myself in the good spirit that others had brought to the moment. It was there, waiting for me to find myself in it again. And what a story one woman told of the power of Love and the redemption wrought in her life!

After the meeting, we finally opened that envelope.

It was a handwritten note. From a single dad.

Saying how much he enjoyed and admired Richard for this, me for that, and that he had just felt moved to say so out loud.

I sought him out afterwards and thanked him. I told him, You could not have known. You had no way to know. But that was the day we most needed what you took the time to give us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

A pie potluck, 4-5 pm, dinner was not being served, just pie. Anyone who wanted to could grab the mic and say something they were grateful for.

Which is how one woman who’d invited her friend found out that her friend was my neighbor across the street. We all had a great time catching each other up.

I wonder how many others walked in the door at home afterwards and said, Do you still want dinner?

Not really, I’m good. You?

Nah. It was all I needed.

(Embiggen to really see. The picture was taken this morning.)

While so many trees are dropping their leaves and skinny-dipping their way towards winter, the California Coffeeberries are dressing themselves in sweet-smelling blooms, ready to provide: the bees and hummingbirds, for now, the berries to come, everything else. The density of the branches in the spring provides perfect cover for many a bird and nest. This, not the bird-poisoning-berry non-native Nandina, is what everyone should plant here. (It can survive down to -20F.)

I wrote that. Stopped a moment. Considered the thing. I put down the computer and slipped on the gardening shoes and walked outside where it was cold and dark and a bit wet from a storm and leaned into a flower cluster, and oh my word, took a deep breath.

I had been admiring it all day. But I had somehow forgotten to go and take in the whole of it.

60×68″ unstretched. I finally got a satisfying picture that looks like what it looks like. The childhood peach orchard in the rolling West Virginia mountains, first version. I tried to take another with it all smoothed out about five minutes later so that you could see the raptor soaring where the clouds were parted, and maybe even the wild violets blooming, but it was too late, the sun angle wasn’t having it.

I finally made myself sit down and check every end–yes they were all run in, yes I always do as I go along, but what they’d needed was to all be trimmed just so, nice and neat. Done.

I finally feel comfortable post-op driving to the post office.

I finally sewed on the tag that personalizes it.

We’ll talk tomorrow about my finally actually getting to the post office because I considered the rush hour traffic and, no. But the requested muted-colors version is boxed and ready to go to my sister, where it will fit in with her paintings.

Let me just make sure first she isn’t traveling over Thanksgiving.

I hadn’t signed into freecycle.org in months. Somehow it just felt like I should, and so I did today, wondering why I was wasting my time on this.

Wait.

Someone had posted two weeks ago that they were looking for some vinyl or linoleum flooring, not a lot, basically enough for a bathroom redo by the sound of it.

When we remodeled thirty-one years ago our contractor’s wife owned a candy shop and he had put an industrial-grade linoleum floor in it for her and then installed it in our kitchen and down the hall and bathrooms. Ten year warranty. Meant to last.

For thirty-one years we had a rolled up remnant of that stuff tucked away.

I hauled it out of there and gave it a look. Eleven inches at one end and five at the other were a waste of time–too yellowed, too kinked.

But the rest of it, from inside the roll? It laid almost flat with no effort and it would be easy to make it entirely so and the color looked great. Like new, which essentially it was. 48.5″x 98″ before cutting? I think they got the sixteen square feet they wanted.

I remember what it was like to want to do some work on the house while having to pay for that house when we were young and raising kids….

A minivan pulled up.

They were so happy to have it. I was so happy to see it literally gone for good.

It will all flatten and spread out the moment water touches it, but I love how fern lace mimics honeycomb cabling while you’re knitting it, and I miss that once it’s gone. Yarn is Malabrigo Rios in Libra colorway.

Such a cute baby gift idea. (Etsy link.) And not to take away from the crocheter’s sales, but I’m suddenly wondering: could you attach the squares with velcro? In such a way that you could attach them to each other in varying ways? Or maybe flaring out from a joined bottom like a hand of cards so as to be able to rearrange them into an impromptu small blanket on the go, like for tucking in in a carseat? Or not permanently joined at all except in little loops and buttons to make a solid surface across as needed?

Who’s the entrepreneur ready to run with that?

The leaves, crinkled and brown, have all given way to the season on my zucchini plant.

So it was a surprise to look out the window this morning and see brilliant upturned yellow on it. I went outside to check: it had! It had bloomed! How?

But once I got close enough to really see it I saw the rest of the story. Something out there in the night had likewise been delighted to find a flower and nearly all of the lower side of it had been eaten clean off, leaving just the top and the inner edges of the sides to go Ta Dahhh!

I chuckled, glad that my plant was still providing sustenance to the world out there. It didn’t have to be for me.

Thursday I got official post-op clearance to drive again.

Today I headed to Cottage Yarns. I was down to a single skein of Mecha, it’s cold and rainy and the season for making thick soft quick wool hats (read: no-looking no-brain knitting) and not being able to pick out colors in person had been bugging me.

I walked out with six skeins. That’s about six or seven weekly Zoom knitting-group meetings.

Meantime, on day 11 of the baby afghan in Rios worsted weight, I’m at 8.5 full repeats of fern lace so far out of the 15 I’m aiming for at the moment.

I need to go wind up that next skein.

So. Today the wound care doctor had him come in.

He told Richard the other guy was full of it. Don’t do it. A PCC line with antibiotics was his recommendation.

(Note that PCC lines have their own infection risks.)

Richard came home going, Who’s in charge??

Me, pointing out what he knew: Doing the other is permanent.

But after a few more minutes knitting and considering the thing, I went back over to him and made a pronouncement. YOU are. It’s your body.

Okay, wound guy had then said to him, You need to go back to the Infectious Diseases guy and have him….

He saw it coming and had already come to terms with it. I didn’t and it threw me. I’d thought, we fought that back once and we’ll do it again.

The wound care guy two weeks ago had said we’re done here and took him off the antibiotics he’d been on since August.

Four days later the bone infection came back. No (over the phone when he tried to be seen again) you’re fine. Yesterday the visiting nurse called the guy and read him the riot act from our kitchen and asked my sweetie, Who’s in charge of this anyway?!

Well, he saw that guy, and the podiatrist, the family medicine doctor, and the infectious disease guy and the answer was, nobody, as far as he could tell.

So today was all the everybody elses. One appointment turned into three with just enough time for him to surprise me with a text, hurry home and grab a quick bite and me for my retina appointment and then head back to the clinic.

Where, when it was my turn, they took pictures and then waited for my surgeon.

The before and after were up. I had been looking at repeats of the same image through two years of screenings–but wow! That one was WAY worse than those had been. No wonder I was having such a hard time seeing those last few months! I’d had no idea it had come that close to tearing through the retina. I had gotten seen and had had it taken care of just in time, and the recovery was and is much easier because of it.

There’s still a bit of red, though, and he wanted me to go back to full dose on the steroid drops and then start tapering off again. But he was pleased with my progress.

Richard, though.

Suddenly he was getting estimates of one week to three months and they’ll schedule it when they schedule it and let him know.

Any travel plans are entirely up in the air right now. I don’t know how long it takes to recover from a partial toe amputation but we’re about to find out. After all this time that we’d thought we wouldn’t have to. He’s totally okay with it. I’m trying to be.

But at least it’s only part of only one toe at this point, and that is far better than it was.

We picked up his new antibiotic on the way home.

Little goals that push the progress along: I want to split-splice the third skein on before I have to haul this to the retina surgeon’s waiting room tomorrow. Got less than an hour left on this one.

The fluttering orange wings caught my eye.

And made me think wistfully of my late neighbors, who had planted milkweed in their small garden for the monarchs. It’s probably still there; the new family would do the same.

But to the mystery of how monarch butterflies know to follow their migration routes going north and then south across multiple generations to finish the task, there is also this: how do they know, out of all the miles of terrain below, where their favorite food is? Should it disappear, how do they find the next patch nearby?

What is it like to see the world from a butterfly’s view?

Where most human faces turn to see them and smile, glad for the moment.