Sunday, May 24, 1998 - Last Day of School, and Radiator Calamities

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My format is now changed: that is, my letters will have a different, not-so-interesting, but easier-to-read, appearance from now on, on account of the fact that I am going to take a copy of each one and put it into a big notebook. I began playing all my old letters out, starting with the first one I recorded on disk with my old word processor, which was December 28, 1994.

I plan to do something with these letters; I’m not just sure yet.

I wonder if any of our older relatives have any of my old letters, dated before December 28, 1994? And, if they do, I wonder if they would mind if I took copies of them and gave them back to them? And how much do you suppose shipping and handling would be for such a stack of papers?

I’ve printed out approximately 300 pages, and it’s made a stack about an inch and a fourth thick, and it’s heavy. So it wouldn’t be cheap to mail a big pile of letters.

Monday and Tuesday evenings, we ate supper at Pawnee Park, after which we played softball or football. There was a wood duck in the trees, but all the resident fowl were heckling him so badly he kept flying off, making big circuits over the Loup River and some nearby woods, then re-alighting. I wonder why all the little birds took such exception to his presence? Or was it the kestrel that was causing all the upheaval?

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Teddy called my name softly, and pointed up. He was watching a Northern flicker going in and out of a hole in a dead tree. I waited and waited, but never did get a picture of it. I gave up and took Teddy’s picture instead.

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I showed Victoria how to blow a dandelion, and she promptly stuck one straight into her mouth, then rumpled her nose and made a face. I howled, and plucked out seeds and fuzz. Then, explaining things in explicit detail, I carefully demonstrated on two or three dandelions. I handed her one--and this time, she did it right, afterward looking terribly pleased with herself.

Monday night after the children went to bed, Larry and I rode our bikes to the bank, post office, and library. Caleb, hearing of our plans, suggested that he could ride his tricycle! haha Those poor little legs would be worn to a frizzle-frazzle before we got a block away from home.

One evening Hannah went with Bobby and his family to the Sirloin Buffet for supper, to celebrate Bobby’s graduation. Did I tell you that he won a hard-cover, unabridged, Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary for getting straight A’s from ninth grade through twelfth grade?

Last Saturday, Bobby’s brother Jonathan, working in the garden, unearthed seven baby bunnies. They figured the mother would desert them after having her home demolished, so they’ve been raising them themselves. (I’m not so sure the mother wouldn’t’ve come back; I think perhaps if they’d just left them right where they were, and put the dirt and grasses back the way they’d found them, she might’ve done just fine.) Anyway, they got special milk from the vet, and fed them with an eye dropper every two hours. Two bunnies died, but the other five seem to be doing fine, and have even started eating grass. Hannah sometimes helps feed them. They are just beginning to jump and hop, and they are terribly cute. Bobby brought them over to show us, and they were all snuggled into a donut box.

Bobby had no sooner departed than Caleb announced, “I’m hungry for donuts!”

This week I finished my dress, mended several things, patched a few jeans, and started on Hannah’s dress. I think, if I want to finish all the Fourth-of-July sewing in time, I’d better speed up!

Hester and Lydia finished school Tuesday, the 19^th, at noon; and the other children’s last day was Friday, the 22^nd. They had a picnic at Pawnee Park that day, and, although rain had been forecast, it didn’t rain until the picnic was over. Several years in a row they’d been rained out, so everybody was glad they finally got to go to the park.

Late Tuesday night I went to the grocery store. Although I knew we were in line for a severe thunderstorm, I thought I had plenty of time to get everything I needed and return back home before the storm arrived. But I didn’t reckon on the brainless turtle at the checkout stand who couldn’t seem to get anything to scan at all. Give her credit for being patient, however; she calmly ran each item baaack and forrrrth, baaack and forrrrth, over the scanner, until she either accidentally tilted it to the right angle (at which point the scanner scanned twice, on account of the slowness with which the item was traveling over its electronic eye), or she gave up and, slowly and methodically--but not necessarily accurately--punched in the entire bar code number by hand, checking and rechecking.

Aaaaaarrrrrrggggghhhh! In the meantime, I could see out the front windows that the storm had indeed arrived, and was getting worse by the minute. By the time everything was bagged and sacked (and that took forever), it was a fierce downpour.

I got totally soaked, right down to the skin. Brrrrrrrrrr. But what I was worried about the most, was that large hail had been predicted, and the last thing I wanted was hail dents on my pretty Suburban! Boy oh boy, you should’ve seen me driving home that night. I tell you, you’d’ve wondered why in the world a little thing like a slimy, muddy road in the New Mexican Outback would’ve ever fazed me.

As I rounded the last corner to our house, a handful of hail fell all around me; but I never heard a single hailstone hit the Suburban. I raced madly up the driveway, skidded into the garage, and shut the door. There! Safe.

Teddy brought a box of computer disks home from Wrights’ house to try them on our computer, and make copies of several he liked. Friday night Hannah and I were experimenting with some disks, and we found one programmed for making cards with all sorts of pictures on them, banners, signs, calendars, and so on.

“Oh,” I said, “We never gave Bobby a graduation card yet! Here, I’ll make one.” Hannah knew I was teasing her, because we both were of the opinion that our dot-matrix printer was incapable of doing anything more than print type, such as this type you are reading here.

I wrote a few obnoxious remarks, hit several buttons. . . . Hannah laughed at me. And then, suddenly, we nearly banged heads as we both rapidly leaned forward to see what on earth the printer was doing!

It was printing.

Furthermore, it was printing exactly what I’d typed! I'd paraphrased a saying my father used to have: “If his brains were made of rubber, it wouldn’t be enough to make a mosquito a pair of boots!”

Friday Norma brought us a big box of frozen steaks--rib eye and T-bone. We fixed them for dinner Sunday, and they were really tender and juicy.

We took our flowers to the cemetery Saturday afternoon; the place was already covered with flowers. Upon our return, I discovered that the mail lady had left a small box with some poppies from Michigan Bulb Company. So I planted them, and then I pulled a small forest of weeds which had sprung up during the week, no doubt because of the moist, overcast weather we’ve been having.

Sunday afternoon we went for our first drive of any consequence in our new pickup, garnering an overabundance of attention everywhere we went. The littles kept up a steady stream of giggles, refueled each time somebody’s head spun around for a double-take.

Today we’ve all been packing and getting ready to go to Oklahoma to get three pickups we bought some time back, but which we’ve been unable to get, not having a pickup that could pull that 48-foot slant trailer loaded with three big pickups. Just a little while ago, Larry completed the last task, carefully shut the hood--and wondered what sounded funny. He opened it back up and discovered that the hood had bumped a battery cable, which bumped something else, which pushed the radiator into the fan, creating a large gaping wound in that brand-new $500 radiator. And, this being Memorial Day, there is no place open where we could buy a new one; and, anyway, Columbus doesn’t have such radiators; they must be ordered from Omaha. So we couldn’t get one until tomorrow morning, at the earliest.

Poor Larry; that’s disappointing, after spending all day working on the pickup, and finally getting done! But he didn’t give up; he hunted around in some of our other pickups, and came up with a usable radiator. He’s just about got it in now; if it works, we’ll soon be leaving. If not, we’ll wait.

Such is life!