Monday, a friend of ours who lives just across the alley from my mother gave us three large butternut squashes (squashes? -- is that a word?), which I fixed for supper, to several people’s dismay. And I even put lots of butter and brown sugar in them, so they were extra yummy! Picky people.
That afternoon, Larry brought home a little charcoal metallic ’92 Isuzu Stylus, four-door. It will be for Dorcas, just as soon as he fixes its rumpled front fender. It was only $600, and it is in excellent shape; but here’s the problem: there are only six cars like it in the entire United States, so spare parts are higher’n a kite. Would you believe, $250 for a fender??!! It’s Dorcas’ early birthday present, and she’s delighted. (It wasn’t supposed to be early, but.....that’s Larry for you.)
Tuesday we got an email from Pablo, who’d made it home to Buenos Aires safe and sound, and was glad to be there, too. He told us that, after he finished his work stint in Dillon, Colorado, he’d traveled to the Grand Canyon, Bryce and Zion Canyons, Sedona, Las Vegas, and San Francisco, among other places, with two or three friends from Argentina, who’d come to vacation and then go home with him. They finished their tour in Miami, where they would catch a plane home.
And then his friend’s car was broken into. Pablo’s backpack, which contained his camera, eight rolls of undeveloped film from all those aforementioned places, clothes, and other things, was stolen, along with his friends’ passports, airline tickets, and numerous other belongings. Pablo was very sad about the loss of that film.
We promptly packed up a large stack of CountRy and CountRy Extra magazines, each chock-full of beautiful pictures of mountains, canyons, and so forth, as many as we could cram into a Schwan’s pizza box (did you know you can squish a three-inch stack of magazines into a one-inch high box?), and shipped it off to him.
One afternoon, there was a huge rabbit in our alley. Hannah, with Victoria on her knee, knelt down slowly and held out her hand. The bunny came closer... and closer... and closer... He stretched out his neck to sniff at Hannah’s hand... And then Victoria, all in an Excitement, said, “Ha!” suddenly, made the poor unsuspecting thing leap backwards a couple of yards in one quick hurry. But he just lippety-lopped a few paces away, and then thumped the ground vigorously with one hind foot. Hannah wondered if it could be the mother of those baby bunnies across the street; but I think it’s more likely he is somebody’s escaped pet. We haven’t seen him since. He should be okay, so long as he doesn’t get himself under the nose of one particular Husky from the Aleutian Islands. You know, if I happen to be out in the yard when a rabbit runs down the alley (we have oodles and caboodles of bunnies around here, much to the detriment, impairment, and havoc of the neighborhood gardens), Aleutia’s ears go down limply along the sides of her head, she hangs her tail guiltily, and she turns her head and looks far the opposite direction. She’s quite a Catholic, I guess--willing to pay penance ahead of time, even; but, of course, not willing to give up Rabbit for Refreshment as a Sinful Little Snack.
At Jr. Choir Thursday evening, we played one of the children’s favorite games, Categories. In this game, I have one row at a time stand, and working our way from one end to the other, each child must name an item in a specified category. Sometimes we do ‘Men of the Bible’, or ‘Children in our Church Under the Age of Seven’, or ‘Kitchen Utensils’, or whatever else we happen to come up with. This time, we did something we haven’t done before: each girl was to state a flower name, while each boy was to state the name of a vehicle. Now, that was funny. We’d go along down a row with these sorts of words: “Datson.” “Mustang.” “Buick.” “John Deere.” and then, incongruously, “Pansy.” haha That sure made everyone laugh.
A friend sent me, via email, the Christmas picture of our kids. You see, we don’t have a scanner, so we can’t download it, ourselves; but she can scan it for me, and then send it to me. So we can put it as ‘wallpaper’, which means that the picture will pop up every time we start the computer, or we can put it into all sorts of programs on the computer, including attachments to our email. Well, I put it into my Paintbox program, and then, with Caleb standing beside me, I picked up a ‘paintbrush’, dipped it into the blue ‘paint’, and colored Caleb’s hand. (This is all on the computer screen, you understand, and I use my mouse to move the paintbrush around.) Caleb laughed over his blue hand, and I progressed on up to his face and put on a big red grin. It was still a ‘good funny’, as Lydia used to say, until I made great big purple eyes with black pupils in the middle, which, of course, immediately turned Cute Little Caleb into Clancy the Clown.
Caleb stopped laughing. With a slight smile still on his face, he said in an almost reproachful tone, “I wish Mama was on the picture.” And everybody burst into laughter.
I made a printout of my completed version of our Christmas picture, which Larry entitled “The Misfits.” The picture on the computer has the same vivid colors as the real pictures, but when we print it out, it loses some of the quality. After completing my paint job, I sent it back to my friend, asking her why she did such a dastardly deed as to deface our nice Christmas picture like that--as if she had done it, and it had arrived in my ‘mailbox’ just that way. I received a return email right quick-like: “My, you have quite a bunch of clowns over there! And you blame me??!!”
I was already hard at work on another version. (If you ‘save’ each piece of artwork you do under a different title, you don’t mess up your original.) This time, using the cut and crop feature, I removed everybody’s heads and switched them around. Then, using a ‘syringe’ to collect paint samples, I carefully ‘spray-painted’ around everybody’s head a matching color of background, so it would look as if each head really belonged in its new location. I made a printout of that, too. It’s not very good, because, unfortunately, I think I’m already running that poor printer out of its brand-new color-ink cartridge. And each cartridge costs over $10! Yi. But I didn’t use it all; Larry used quite a bit, too, printing out pictures of wrecked vehicles from Lincoln Auto of Denver. (Now, do you think that was as necessary as these captivating pictures I’ve done?!)
Yes, yes; this ‘toy’ is wasting lots of our time; but, goodness! -- what fun we’re having! I even took the liberty of cutting Keith out of the lineup, and then putting a big black sombrero on him, complete with Indian-print band and big gold medallion. I added an imposing handlebar mustache, redid his hair, adding large sideburns, gave him a pair of large blue eyes, and pinked up his cheeks. Then I entitled it, “Ten-Gallon Hat” and sent it email to a friend of his with the following query: “Greetings from South of the Border! Recognize your old chum, hmmmm?” Keith received the following reply Friday night when he was visiting: “Dear Ten-Gallon Hat: Ist dat you???? Pedro???!!”
I have finished typing my father’s sermon outlines on I and II Corinthians, and am now on Galatians. Friday afternoon I took a break from all that typing, and made the equivalent of six deep-dish strawberry/rhubarb pies, which I put into two large rectangular pans. I got one of those pans from a truckstop here when it went out of business, and it’s the largest rectangular baking pan I’ve ever seen--just right, for us. Dorcas ran the rhubarb through the food processor before going back to school that afternoon. I told Hannah, “Just toss it into my biggest pot (it’s proportionally comparable to a witch’s brewing kettle) and cover it with water.”
She did. I mean, she did. By the time I was done slicing three quarts of strawberries and making the crust, I had discovered the already-cooked rhubarb, swimming valiantly through enough water to float a battleship. To dump out the liquid would’ve been to discard of lots of flavor, to say nothing of the valuable vitamins and minerals and what-not. So I added strawberry jello and cornstarch, trying to compensate.
It wasn’t enough. It should’ve been called “Fruit Soup.” I relabeled it “sauce”, and sent Dorcas to the store for vanilla ice cream over which to pour the stuff.
In the meanwhile, Lawrence and Norma, and Keith and Esther had come visiting. Fortunately, we had enough dessert for everybody, and even my mother and Bobby, too, when he brought Hannah home from their date.
Yesterday, I poured the other ‘pie’ back into a big pot, heated it up, and then added four packets of Knox gelatin. So we had real, honest-to-goodness pie, with whipped cream on top.
Once again, Teddy seems to have run out of summer shirts. So, we went to the Salvation Army and discovered that, once again, they were having a $.99 sale on shirts and blouses. This time, Teddy came, too. I tell you, we chose the wrong middle name for him; it should’ve been “Picky-picky”. Somehow, though, we did wind up with a dozen nice shirts, in spite of himself. He also found a chess game and a Parcheesi game, and the littles discovered all sorts of fabulous stuffed animals. Hester even found a brand-new, old-fashioned, crinkled-fur teddy bear in a cute little outfit. We also got a kitten that had a computerized music box inside it, and a sensor on its stomach. It had no batteries, so we had no way of knowing if it worked or not, but it was only $.49, so I figured it would be no great loss, even if it didn’t work.
It worked. It not only plays an extensive collection of songs, it also moves its paws around, and its tail wags back and forth. It’s cute as a, well, as a kitten.
Today was Mother’s Day. Thanks to the littles, I’ve been celebrating it for three days now.....they just can’t wait, you see. Friday, Hester, Lydia, and Caleb brought their handmade presents home from school, and, of course, gave them to me right away. Hester made a pretty little frame and covered it with dusty blue flowered wallpaper, and put a very cute picture of herself in it; and Lydia and Caleb each decorated a terra cotta flower pot with that rubbery puff-paint and then planted a petunia in it. One is already blooming, a dark velvety burgundy color.
After church, Lawrence and Norma stopped in so we could give Norma her gift--a hanging planter with pink begonias, and a couple of photo albums. Before Sunday School in the morning, we’d pinned a corsage on her--one that Hannah made of silk flowers in shades of ivory and light pink. There were roses, poppies, carnations, and other small flowers on it, and it turned out really pretty. Hannah made one for my mother, too. We gave Mama a planter full of all different kinds of blooming plants to put on a little table between the benches on her redwood deck; and a couple of albums.
Keith and Esther gave me a big purple umbrella, which was just what I needed, since Winnie the Pooh (or somebody) went sailing in my old one and crumpled one of its ribs; and they also gave me a set of pens with rubber grips, which was just what I needed, since all my other pens have sprouted legs and gone off to sea.
Hannah gave me one of those nifty little clips with fancy chains and crystals that you can use to hold your sweater together, or clip onto the back of a jacket or dress to nip it up snugger, along with a couple of leather thimbles, which were just what I needed, since I’ve worn my old ones plumb out. From Dorcas, I received a yummy strawberry candle in a little hexagon jar with a lid, and an old-fashioned miniature yellow rose bush, which was just what I needed, ever since I saw one in my gardening book. I’ll try to coax Larry into planting it for me tomorrow.
Teddy installed a nifty clip onto the top corner of my computer, which was just what I needed, to hold papers to copy type from, and it folds back to the side when not in use. Joseph, who spent all his money on his new stereo CD and cassette player, informed me that I could plug a mike into it any time I wanted to, and record some songs, which was just what I needed, since my tape player bit the dust a while back. I also discovered several digital postcards on my computer with beautiful pictures of flowers, and short notes from the children.
And, last but certainly not least, Victoria is a Mother’s Day gift just by being Victoria, the dear little thing! She’s just what I need.
Well, the truth is, that’s the way I feel about all my children. Keith somehow seems to have gotten all growed up since he got married, and is more enjoyable to converse and visit with than ever. And Esther fits right in, just like she always belonged. Friday night she taught the children how to play Joseph’s new game, SkipBo. Even Norma joined in, and they all had quite a merry time.
After dinner, Hannah and Bobby migrated toward the piano, and soon Hannah was playing, and Bobby was singing tenor. All of a sudden, my ears perked up: they were singing one of my favorites, “Not by might; not by power; by my Spirit saith the Lord of Hosts!” I trotted off to the piano, posthaste, and added alto to the blend. Another half of a minute, and we had the entire group clustered around the piano, Keith on bass, Teddy and Joseph joining Bobby in tenor, Hannah and Hester adding more alto, and Larry, Esther, Dorcas, Lydia, and Caleb combining their voices in soprano, while I took over the piano playing. Now, that is an enjoyable pastime! One thing about having an entire brigade of kids: the older they get, the more spectacular the Mother’s Days become!
Now I’d better get back to typing those sermon outlines. I’m in the middle of Galatians, and nearly in the middle of this big notebook I’m working on. So, the work progresses, in spite of nifty Paintbox programs on intelligent computers!
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