Sunday, June 7, 1998 - It's Already the Finch

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Last Monday, as I told you, my Uncle Howard and Aunt Evelyn visited. Shortly before we went to my mother’s house to see them, we heard the dispatcher say, over our police scanner, “...on Howard Boulevard.” (That’s the highway that goes right by our house, about a block away.

Caleb asked, “What boulevard did she say?!”

“Uncle Howard Boulevard,” I told him.

“Hee hee hee!” said Caleb.

One day Larry was holding Victoria on his lap, giving her bites of his food. She choked.

“Oooops,” said Larry, lifting both her arms above her head. (Actually, I’ve never noticed that that technique ever really helps a baby when they’re choking; I think mostly it just distracts them, and they quit coughing in order to better see what’s going to happen to them next.)

Larry then put Victoria down, and she trotted off. She was soon back again, patting on Larry’s leg and looking up into his face. He looked down at her, whereupon she declared, “Choke!” and then proceeded to do a few fake coughs and hold both arms straight up, hands lopped limply over at the wrist, making a funny face and quite tickling her father’s funny bone.

Tuesday my mother sent me off to the grocery store and the Dairy Queen to get strawberries, shortcake, and vanilla ice cream, which we then took to her house to eat and share with her. Yummy! I don’t know if she enjoyed the visit more, or if we did.

Upon exiting the grocery store with an enormous bag of strawberries, we spotted our friend Joe sitting in his car with his little boy, John. So we stepped right over, opened up our bag, and gave John the biggest, brightest strawberry we could find. He beamed and crammed the entire thing in his mouth at once.

Victoria’s dress is now done, Dorcas’ white eyelet blouse is half done, and guess what!—I found the missing back to Hester’s dress. So I won’t have to run around all over the countryside searching high and low for a matching bit of white woven linen. The skirt of Victoria’s dress is printed with little girls and boys. Victoria spotted a few birds on it.

“Weet weet!” exclaimed she, extending an arm over her head and flip-flapping her little fingers in and out in flying motions.

I’ve gotten my old letters played out up to October 13, 1997, finishing all the disks recorded with my old word processor, which has not recovered from all its quawly-fobbles, and threatens to start up new ones. I’ve almost made it to page 700. Pelikan Hardcopy Corporation, who makes the film ribbon my word processor uses, is going to get rich, and that’s the truth of it.

Well, the wild plum jelly I made last Monday was taking its own sweet time gelling, and suddenly I was hungry for plum pie, so Wednesday I poured all the jelly back into a big pan, brought it to a boil, put cornstarch into it to thicken it, and then poured it into a crust, saving some to pour over a pound cake Hester made. When it was set, we covered it with whipped cream and ate it. The next day, there was still one pie left, so Hannah made a crispy topping of oats, brown sugar, and butter for it, which made it even better.

Hester wanted to bake something Wednesday afternoon, and she decided on the recipe “Million-Dollar Pound Cake”. Now, I should’ve told her all the directions myself, but I thought the directions on the card were fairly explicit, so I merely got out the ingredients and utensils she couldn’t reach, and left the child to her fate. And the cake to its.

Guess what she did. Rather than read the instructions as she went along, she read only the ingredient list, pouring them all into the bowl, one right after the other. The butter and sugar were supposed to be creamed first, and then the eggs added and beat thoroughly one by one, until the mixture resembled fluffy whipped cream.

We learned why these steps are vital to a good pound cake: when one neglects them, the cake fails to rise. It tasted good, but it was a lead weight. Hester’s disrespectful brothers called it “Hester’s One-Ton Cake”. She offered to eat theirs for them, but they declined. Like I said, it tasted good.

Saturday, Hannah determined to make the same pound cake, and attempt to do it right. She did. And it was a success. We poured coconut cream pudding over it.

Keith asked, “Is this the same cake we had Wednesday?” to which Teddy irreverently replied, “No, we already ate that one.”

My nephew Kelvin’s entire family is having a bad bout with poison sumac. They live a block west of us in the house where we used to live. When they first started getting it, they couldn’t figure out where in the world they were getting into something poisonous, and they didn’t know what it was, either. So Lydia’s teacher, who’s lived on a farm all her life, walked over and had a look. And there it was: poison sumac, a huge vine growing up a pole in their neighbors’ yard. It had grown pods and ripened, and the pods were popping open and dropping their seeds and spores on Kelvin’s side of the fence.

Kelvin cut the sumac at its base and took down as much of the vine as he could reach, but there was still a good lot left, high above his head.

Friday, Bobby's mother Bethany and her sister had a garage sale. Bethany was selling many of the dresses she’s sewn for her daughter, Esther. Bethany is a first-rate seamstress, and when one only has one daughter, one has a bit more time to make things extra fancy. Anyway, Hannah and Dorcas went there at 7:00 A.M. on the dot, knowing that if they didn’t, dozens of our friends would arrive and snatch and grab all those beautiful dresses.

They got three for each of the little girls for their birthdays. Four are for church; two are for school. They looked longingly after a beautiful light blue dress their Aunt Annette bought for her daughter Rachel; but, no, they didn’t have one of those melees like those Canadian ladies(?) had over that stupid Elmo, in which one lady(?) got trampled to death, and another wound up with a concussion from another lady’s(?) purse. Lydia, hearing about the beautiful blue dress, said, “It’s sure okay if Rachel gets to look pretty, too!”

Tonight after church, Bobby walked in with one of Esther’s most beautiful dresses to give to Hester for her birthday. These are dresses like I’ll rarely make, because the material is in the $20-$30/yard range. Can't do that, when there are five girls in the house.

Last night when we were eating supper, Caleb informed everybody knowledgeably, “We don’t have to eat any fruit, because we’re having watermelon!” And then he wondered why there were so many snickers around the table.

At midnight tonight, the bird clock sang, as it does on the hour. Caleb exclaimed, “Oh, mercy! I have to go to bed!—it’s already the finch!”

Yesterday Lawrence and Norma brought a pretty yellow dress Norma had made for Hester. She wore it to church today.

We went for a drive this afternoon, going along Lost Creek northeast of town. The goldfinches were out full force. Bobby happened to have his key for my nephew David’s shop (did I tell you that Bobby also works for David, pouring cement walls?), so he opened the gate for us so I could take a picture of a killdeer on her nest right in the middle of the parking lot where they park their big trucks, uniloader, and a good number of pickups. Earlier, my nephew Robert had been scraping the lot smooth with the loader after a big rain, and was wondering why Bobby’s brother Matthew, who also works for them, was standing smack-dab in the way, refusing to move. Robert climbed down to investigate.

It was a killdeer’s nest, and there were four speckled eggs in it! So Robert drove a bright orange stake down into the ground there, and they and all their employees (around a dozen) have been carefully avoiding that spot for two weeks. Today, when I was taking the pictures, the bird ran a short distance away, then squatted down crookedly and spread its wings out all cockeyed and cried loudly. I tried to get a picture of her doing that, but she was scampering about so rapidly, I couldn’t get focused very well, and I quit trying after just a minute or two, since I didn’t want to keep her off her nest for long.

As we were driving around Lake North, Caleb asked, “What are those orange things out in the water?”

Joseph answered, “Those are buoys.”

Queried Caleb, looking at Joseph in surprise, “What kind of boys?!”

And Joseph replied without blinking an eyelash, “Chinese!” which made his siblings dissolve into laughter.

Bedtime!