Journal: from Tornadoes to Chihuahuas

 

Last Tuesday was Keira’s 6^th birthday.  It was an exciting day, because there were multiple tornadoes and funnel clouds, all around us, some only 5-10 miles away.  Someone took this shot a few miles to our north.

 

It got very windy Monday night, and we brought in the bird feeders so they wouldn’t get demolished.  It was still windy Tuesday morning, then around noon everything quieted down, and I put all the feeders back out.

That seemed to be the signal.  Tornadoes promptly start springing up.  It’s the ‘Wash Your Car/Make It Rain’ Syndrome.

Hester invited us to a birthday party for Keira Friday evening.  However, since Tuesday was her actual birthday, I sent her some birthday greetings with animated cats and kittens.

Hester then sent pictures of her cat, Wolfie, writing, “This is what sits next to me at every meal.  Sometimes he reaches up and grabs my hand or the spoon.”

 

Meanwhile, the tornadic weather continued.  This one was about five miles to our northwest.

 

Making sure my weather apps were up and running, I headed upstairs to my sewing room to work on appliqués for the Farmall Scenes quilt.

In between stormy skies, the sun peeked out a few times later that afternoon, and I saw a Clouded Sulphur butterfly go fluttering through the yard.  That’s the first one I’ve seen this season.  (Picture is from the Alabama Butterfly Atlas.)

Where we live, weather usually comes from the northwest.  That day, however, most of the bad weather was coming from the south.  As it continued north, it then curved and took a northeasterly track.  Someone near Creston, about 20 miles to our north, got a video of three funnel clouds descending at once.

Hannah sent me several photos she took of funnel clouds north of Columbus.  Here are a couple.  In the second shot, the skies are dark, especially for shortly after 1:00 p.m.; but you can see the tail of the tornado swinging toward the left, on the left side of the picture.

 

We heard reports of property damage, including a couple of homes, some barns, and a few outbuildings that were destroyed; but there were no reports of injuries.

After I posted on Facebook this picture of my progress on the Farmall Scenes quilt last week (below), some Helpful Hattie informed me, “It needs something in the middle...seems strange without a square or something to make it whole”

 

Alrighty then!  😂🤣

I thought I’d just use string or something to hold those blocks together.

And... if I put a ‘square’ in the middle, can I leave all those other ‘squares’ empty??  Whataya think???

No, I didn’t say those things.  I was nice, and responded, “Ve haff only just begun!”

The lady did not reply.

Victoria called to see how I was doing out here in tornado land, as she usually does when there’s bad weather, especially if she figures I’m by myself.  We chatted for a while.

Afterwards, she sent me some pictures of Baby Arnold, who was just waking up at the tail end of our conversation.  He’s smiling happily in each picture.

“He’s happy his Mama didn’t forget him!” I said.  Then, “(Is that what babies think, when they wake up, cry, and their Mama immediately shows up?)”

“I think so, 😆” answered Victoria.

He's smiling, eyebrows lifted.  “What shall we do now?” he’s thinking.  And, “Is any food forthcoming, I wonder??”

Or maybe babies just think, “My Mama is the prettiest Mama in the world!”

I thought that about my Mama.  Here I am with her, when I was about 5.

 

I can still remember how itchy that wool skirt was.  Aarrgghh.  People around these parts did not have the faintest notion that cheap wool itches; good wool does not.

Quilters’ Dream wool batting is very soft and fine.  But there are some people who still believe any wool batting is horrid.  “I’m allergic to it!” they proclaim, having never touched that nice batting in their lives.

I remember those shoes, too – black velvet and black leather saddle oxfords.  I loved them – and I ruined them. 

It happened when someone had poured a thick slab of fresh cement behind our church, where new condenser units would sit.  I had not seen them pouring the slabs, and did not know they were there.  Nor were they marked in any way – and the condensers, of course, were not there yet.

I came dashing around the corner (what other way is there to come around corners??) – and stepped right in that fresh cement.  I sank into the murky stuff, ankle-deep.

Mama was horrified, because she would have to tell the workmen that their job needed to be repaired (and, to a lesser extent, because I had ruined my shoes).  I was horrified, because I had ruined my shoes (and, to a lesser extent, because my mother would have to tell the workmen that their job needed to be repaired.

Siggghhhh...  Such calamities as can befall children just innocently trying to dash around corners!

Here’s a picture someone got of the aforementioned three funnel clouds side by side.  A couple of them strengthened and touched down; the other weakened and pulled back up into that cloud.

 

As the storms headed farther north and east into South Dakota and Iowa, things cleared a bit here.  Soon the birds were again flocking around the feeders.

We have downy woodpeckers, red-bellied woodpeckers, hairy woodpeckers, northern flickers, Eurasian collared doves, mourning doves, house finches, goldfinches, house sparrows, field sparrows, song sparrows, cardinals, blue jays, common grackles, red-winged blackbirds, juncos (the juncos will soon head north), robins, and starlings.  Out in the fields to the south, there are meadowlarks, killdeer, and other ground-nesting birds.

Oh, I forgot the purple martins (the neighbors have a purple martin house) and the barn swallows!  And now and then a Cooper’s hawk or a red-tailed hawk swoops through, and then we are one songbird short.  😬🫤😧😖

Bald eagles soar over sometimes, too.  I need to put out my bluebird house, and see if any bluebirds will come!

A couple of years ago, there was a juvenile robin, still sporting all its speckles, that would sit on the deck railing, fly up to the suet feeder, and, flapping madly and trying its bestest to hover, peck at the suet.  Then gravity would get the better of it, and it would land back on the railing, usually with a big chunk of tasty suet in its beak.  It particularly liked the suet with berries in it.

Meanwhile, perched on the railing over on the other side of the deck, the young robin’s mother would watch her young’n, often with a worm that she’d been all prepared to feed him dangling from her beak.  If you think birds don’t have expressions, well, then, you never saw this mother robin.  She’d stare at her baby, and that look on her face clearly said, “Kid, are you nuts?!  You’re a robin, for pity’s sake, not a nuthatch!”

These days, there is an adult robin – and, near as I can tell, just one – that partakes of the suet in the feeder.  I’ll betcha it’s that baby robin of two years ago, whataya bet?  If it is, it’s still hale and hearty, despite being the ripe old age of two.  Robins begin breeding when they’re about one year old and usually live for two years, though one wild robin was recorded to be 14 years old.  Reckon this robin will teach its offspring to eat from suet feeders?  

 

I like robins.  I like feeding robins.  😊

That evening, Levi texted me:  “I got a nice picture of Jacob.”

And here’s the picture he sent.  The picture was taken at our school.

That kid has his hood pulled up, strrretched over his head, and tied so tightly, not a particle of his face is showing.  His hood will never be the same again.

 

I told Levi, “That gives me claustrophobia, just looking at the picture.”  😄

Victoria was telling me about a team from Early Childhood Development, a free in-home therapy program, coming to see Willie after his recent surgery for a tethered spinal cord.  This was in the days immediately after they’d returned home, and Willie was not yet walking again on his own, having gone back to crawling (though that didn’t last long).

As they were assessing him, one lady wanted to see him stand up to see how his leg strength was.  “Show me how tall you are!” she encouraged him, holding out a Duplo block.

Willie reached for it.  She held it just beyond his reach.  He looked at it, and then crawled away to do other things (or so they thought).  No sense in struggling for something that was clearly out of his reach!

The ladies went on conversing, momentarily forgetting about Willie and the Duplo block.

Then they heard a series of thumpity-thump noises, turned and looked – and there came Willie, crawling back to them, dragging the big old stepstool with him!  He had even managed to get it over the bottom rung of the open baby gate.

One way or another, he was going to be tall enough to reach that Duplo block!

He used one of the ladies as a support in order to climb onto the stool and reach up high.  Laughing, she said, “I will just give it to you!!” and so she did.

The therapists were more than impressed with this funny little two-year-old.

“He’s so smart!” said one lady.  “And good at problem solving!” said another.

This reminded me of a story about Victoria, which I told her:  When you were little, instead of saying ‘short’ and ‘tall’ like most kids (and people) do, you’d say, ‘small’ and ‘tall’.  I’d often say the ‘right’ word for you kids; so after a bit (it was too cute to change too quickly), I finally said, “It’s ‘short’ and tall.”  You looked at me for a moment.  Then, “Doesn’t rhyme,” you informed me.  You were much too little to know what that meant! – or so I thought.  😂

Victoria told me a little story about Violet, who had just heard the Winnie-the-Pooh story ‘The Heffalump’.  “I know what heffalumps are,” she said.  “They’re elephants that are fat!”

Something funny:  ever since I placed the picture of myself with the cowboy hat as my profile picture on Facebook, the offered auto replies under comments from friends include, “Thanks, y’all!”  😂

 

I spent all of Tuesday and most of Wednesday, up until time for our evening church service, on appliqué prep work, and there was still quite a bit more to do.  Good thing I like appliqué prep work!

By noon on Thursday, the temperature had only gotten up to 47°.  The expected high was 56°.  One of these days... one of these days... it’ll be warm enough in the morning to work outside in the flower gardens!  Maybe tomorrow.

My sister is not doing very well.  It probably won’t be very long before she will be unable to live alone any longer.

The accumulated trauma of losing first her son David to a drunk driver who smashed into his house several years ago, then her husband John H. two years ago, son Kelvin fighting colon cancer, and daughter Susan passing away from cancer in February of this year has been difficult for her.

In the last year and half, I have tried a few homeopathic pills that are recommended as helpful for Benign Essential Blepharospasm.  So far, I haven’t noticed them helping.  But! – I recently read an article on a homeopathic webpage that said caffeine can reduce or, more likely, totally counteract any effect the pills might have. 

So... on the chance that this might be the case, I switched to decaf coffee and have started another regimen of the homeopathic pills that are supposed to help this condition.  The first full day of decaf was last Thursday.  As usually happens when I switch (or skip coffee altogether), I noticed no ill effects.  This is probably due to the fact that I like flavored coffee made somewhat weak.

However! – Friday morning, I awoke feeling ill, and with a bad headache.  Did I have a delayed caffeine-withdrawal reaction, or did I just get a short-lived case of the stomach flu that so many of my family have been suffering with??  Who knows.  I tried a bowl of oatmeal, but only managed two bites. 

I took an hour-and-a-half nap that afternoon, and awoke feeling nearly normal again.  The lack of caffeine – or stomach flu, as it were – has not bothered me since.

I scurried upstairs to get on with the appliqué work.  Too bad I can’t work on two appliqués at once, to make up for lost time! 

Did you know that James Garfield, our president from March 4, 1881, until he died September 19, 1881, after being shot in July (assassinated at not quite 50 years old), could write Latin with one hand while simultaneously writing Greek with the other?  He campaigned in both English and German, and knew several other languages, too.  As you can imagine, his intelligence quota was off the charts.

Those Gingher duckbill scissors in the picture were given to me by my sister Lura Kay.  Duckbill scissors are used for trimming seams, appliqué, and other sewing projects.  They have a wide, curved, flat blade and an angled handle that allows you to cut fabric close to stitches without cutting through the fabric.  The duckbill blade glides between layers of fabric, preventing you from cutting stitches or the fabric.  The angled handle allows you to hold the scissors at the conventional angle while the blade is flat on the material.

 

Have you ever noticed how children ‘mishear’ things, interchanging words that they know for words they don’t know?  Carolyn recently thought ‘Ozark Riverway’ was ‘Noah’s Ark Riverway’.

My friend Penny, just like I did when I was little, thought that the lyrics in Away In A Manger were, ‘And stay by my cradle, ’til morning is night!’  It’s supposed to be, ‘’til morning is nigh’.  When I was four, I needed to memorize all the verses in that song for our Christmas program.  That’s when Mama, realizing I was saying the wrong word, explained it to me:  “It’s an old English word, used a lot in the Bible.  It means ‘near’.  ‘’Til morning is near,’ it means!”

My mother’s explanations were always perfectly satisfactory, in my opinion.

Later, Victoria wrote with more funny stories:  She’d heard Violet saying to Baby Arnold, “You’re cuter than a baby pig!!”

“I hope so!!!” exclaimed Victoria.

Violet looked at Victoria, eyes wide, and protested, “Pigs are cute!!!!”

haha  She’s funnier’n a barrel of monkeys.

Next, Victoria heard Willie saying, “Hi.  Hi.  Hi.”  She looked – and there was Willie, sitting in a basket.

That reminded me of Teddy, at that same age.  I found him sitting in one of the girls’ flimsy plastic-and-cardboard doll beds, blanket in hand, thumb in mouth.

Here he is in a box... and there he is in one of those cradles.

 

By 6:45 p.m., I was almost done gluing down all the little pieces for the tractor appliqué blocks.  Soon they’ll be ready to sew down.  I still need to make a cow appliqué; I’ll do that before I start the sewing, so I can put away the appliqué tools and do all the sewing at once.  

We went to Keira’s birthday party that night.  The little girl who started out at 2 pounds, 8 ounces, is 6 years old.  All our local family was there, and most of Andrew’s family, too.  We always have an enjoyable time together.

Keira is such a sweet little dear.  I love the way she treats her little brother.  And her cousins.  Everyone, really.  She’s a sweetheart.  So is little Oliver.  It certainly shows, when children are raised in a loving home!

Hester sent us home with a bag totally stuffed with leftover taco ingredients, and a generous piece of banana cake.

The new air springs for the Mercedes arrived that day, but Larry didn’t have a chance to put them on until Saturday afternoon.  Since this coming Wednesday, April 24^th, will be Joseph’s and Juliana’s birthdays, we made plans to meet Joseph and his family at the Pizza Ranch in Omaha.  Joseph will be 39; Juliana will be 10.  I texted and asked if he’d rather meet at the Pizza Ranch in Council Bluffs, as it might be a shorter drive for him.

“I try to stay out of Counciltucky,” he responded.  haha

When I was a teenager, my friend Penny and I were working at spelling things oddly, using various strange English spellings, and we came up with this for Council Bluffs:  Kownsill Bloughce.

We gave Juliana a Sew Fast game.  When they were here at Christmas time, Hannah and her family came, too, and Hannah brought this game and showed Juliana how to play it.  Juliana caught on fast, and really enjoyed it.  I ordered one as soon as they left, to save for her birthday.

 

Since I’d seen Joseph watching her play, then picking up the box and giving it a good look-over, I thought I’d better let him know I had ordered it.  Good thing I did.  I barely got him told before he ordered it!

Juliana tore off the wrapping paper, saw the box, and gave me the biggest smile.

I brought along a big Schrade pocketknife and leather holder that used to be Loren’s to give Joseph, but it needs some serious polishing and oiling and sharpening.  When we stopped at Sapp Bros. in Fremont, we got him a pocketknife with a camouflage-print triangular handle and a utility carabiner with paracord, sort of like this:

 

He told us of how they used to get giant rolls of paracord – 1000-foot spools – when he was in the Army.  The ends of the spools were cardboard, and if they got wet, those cardboard ends would fall off – followed by many coils of paracord.  This invariably created a terrible, knotted disarray, and some of the officers thought there was nothing else for it, but to discard the whole mess.

 

Joseph had other plans.  He saved it, and then when soldiers under him got themselves in trouble and needed some sort of penalty, he set them about untangling and rerolling that paracord.

Paracord is stretchy.  Regulations say it must stretch by at least 30%.  If it gets wet, it shrinks as it dries.  If the cardboard holding the stuff got wet, the paracord usually got wet, too.  So it was not only tangled, it had become tightly tangled as it dried.  Untangling that stuff is not a task for the easily daunted.

As Joseph put it, privates thought twice about pulling the same stunt twice.

One of their Chihuahuas, Brittany, died, so they gave Juliana a new little Chihuahua puppy for her birthday.  She named it Lucy.  It’s the cutest little thing.  It was chilly that day, and when they got her out of their pickup to show her to us, the poor little thing was shivering.  They kept her all cuddled up, but still she shivered; so they soon tucked her back in the pickup.

 

Poor Justin, 12, had pinkeye.  After leaving Pizza Ranch, they headed to Walgreens to find some good eyedrops for him. 

On our way home, we stopped at Sapp Bros. again, and this time we got a birthday gift for Jeremy.  He is now 37.  We got him a skinny LED flashlight, an extendable tool with a strong magnet on one end, and a skinny screwdriver with a bunch of extra tips.  All these items are shaped about the same, like extra-large pens.  

 

The Mercedes rides and drives better than it ever did, with these new air springs on.

Last night after church, we picked up a grocery order at Wal-Mart.  When we got home, we had tacos made with the leftovers Hester sent home with us Friday night.  Mmmmm, that was yummy.

 

Tomorrow I plan to visit Loren, since I didn’t see him a week ago on account of the blown air spring on the Mercedes, nor did we see him Saturday, since there wasn’t time before meeting Joseph and his family.  I don’t want to wait until next Saturday; I don’t like to miss seeing him for that long of a stretch.

These days, I think, Uh, oh; I’m getting dementia! if I forget my coffee in the microwave.  And I congratulate myself for my mental acuity if, like Owl, I can spell my name (albeit ‘Sarha’) (he spelt his, ‘Wol’) and the word ‘Tuesday’ (so that you know it isn’t Wednesday), though his spelling went all to pieces over delicate words like ‘measles’ and ‘buttered toast’.  Likewise, every once in a while I am stumped over whether a suffix should be ‘ible’ or ‘able’.  Then I remind myself that I have always gotten stumped over that, at least once in a while. 

I’m fine, I’m fine!  Just feel my nose.

 

At the moment, I’m sipping decaf Cherries Jubilee coffee by Amana.  The flavor is no different than its caffeinated counterpart.

This morning as I was listening to the news, I heard a glowing ad for a lawyer—and then came the disclaimer:  “Please know, a lawyer should not be chosen by listening to an ad.”

Well, then, why’d they go to all the trouble of making the silly ad, huh?

And now I shall appliqué!

 

 

,,,>^..^<,,,          Sarah Lynn          ,,,>^..^<,,,