Tuesday, October 4, 1994...Word Processor

I am now the proud owner of a Word Processor! I’ve been having lots of fun playing with it and writing letters to everybody I could think of. It can justify the right margin ... and it even has a disk drive.

Last night Larry went to Denver to get a couple of smashed vehicles: an S-10 Blazer, and a Ford Windstar. He is now almost home, and it is 1:30 a.m. I just talked to him on his new cellular phone. Now, that’s a marvelous invention: when you are worried that your husband is falling asleep after driving too long, you now have options other than lying awake worrying: you can call him on his mobile phone and wake him up when he’s just decided to have a short nap at a roadside rest area. Or you can wake him up when he’s just begun napping at the wheel, making him jump out of his livin’ hide and drive promptly into the ditch. So you can see it is a very handy device.

I just cut out Hester’s Christmas dress. The top is dark blue crushed velvet, and the three-tiered skirt is a lavender/blue/periwinkle floral taffeta. If I’d quit playing with my word processor, I just might get it sewn!

I finally got done with my last roll of film from our vacation and had it developed. I accidentally got double prints. I'm looking at them, remembering some things about that vacation that I'd forgotten.

Here's Bugaboo Point. There is a Blazer up there at the base of the point, and that tiny black dot to the left of the vehicle is a black lab! Aleutia must have telescopic vision, because she suddenly spotted that dog, although it was nothing more than a speck, and she began huffing and snorting, making all the kids laugh.

We drove down into Flaming Gorge. The children all wanted to take the runaway ramp, just for the fun of it, but for once their father was not game. There was a big pasture full of mules next to a lake. Could you guess the name? No? But, of course!--it was Brayer Lake!
Caleb is learning to pull himself to a standing position. He'll be walking soon!

Teddy caught a baby mouse. It toddled from hand to hand, trying to escape, and finally it laid its little ears back, squinted, and tried to sink its baby teeth into Teddy’s finger, which ticked and made him laugh.

Well, everybody’s stomachs are rubbing their backbones, so I’d better go stir up some grub.

There are three reasons why there are no pictures of me from our vacation:

I am as finicky as a cat with an ulcer over this state-of-the-art camera of mine, and I hand it over only to Larry, and that with reluctance, although I know perfectly well he is every bit as careful as I am, and sometimes even more so.

I brought along my tripod, so as to take pictures of all of us together in front of a piece of magnificent scenery; but, the truth of the matter is, . . . I forgot.

And, last, but not least, is the small matter of my nonphotogenicality. (That’s not in Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, but it certainly ought to be, and if he’d have seen my picture, he’d’ve no doubt thought of it.) I don’t mind if I am ugly; I just don’t want to look uglier than I really am!

In my wallet, my driver’s license, with a picture of me that looks as if I’m dying of anorexia, and plenty mad about it, too, is directly across from an adorable picture of all the children. Thus, when I must show my license, as identification, I can see the disconcerted look on the face of the cashier:

“How did that poor woman produce such cute kids!”

And then they get a comprehending expression, and look hopefully behind me to see the husband that surely must be the most handsome devil around, in order to cancel out all those ugly genes which I donated.

Well, as Eeyore said, “We can’t all, and some of us don’t.” Anyway, if anybody ever takes a picture of me that even vaguely resembles me, I’ll be sure to send you a copy. In the meantime, … >>>>>>>>