Monday, January 17, 2000 - Elephant Stew

My niece Susan’s baby, Danica Jo, is home again, since Saturday, after a rather difficult week. She was in Children’s Hospital in Omaha all week. Many tests were conducted, but the doctors never did really decide exactly what was wrong with her. They gave the poor baby a spinal tap, and an MRI--requiring them to sedate her, during which time she had to be put back on the respirator, since she stopped breathing when she was sedated. During the early part of the week, when they first were able to remove the respirator and the IV tubes, and Susan was able to feed the baby, she was immediately much more content. My sister Lura Kay called me about 4:00 p.m. Saturday afternoon to tell me she’d just talked to Susan. Charles and Susan, with baby Danica, were just getting into their car at Children’s Hospital, and were now on their way home. Danica had stopped breathing several times at the hospital, so they were bringing a monitor home with them. Lura Kay’s third boy, Robert, used to do that. Once he would hardly start breathing again, and nearly died. Every time that happened, it scared Lura Kay to death. And of course they didn't have the technology to take care of babies like they do now... there are things to be thankful for, living in this modern-day world of ours, aren't there?


Last Sunday, my brother and sister-in-law, Loren and Janice, went to Omaha to be with Charles and Susan and the baby, since Loren was still unable to preach anyway. That evening, they were on their way home, when the fuel line broke. Luckily, they were just a little ways east of Columbus. They called an SOS to Larry, who scurried off to help them. Since they wanted to use their motor home the next day, and Larry wouldn't be able to work on it in the morning, on account of his job at Quail Run, he took apart his pickup to use parts off of it to fix the motor home.

This, I think, is how Larry puts things together from things taken apart: First, he removes the binnogue from the bycocket, which is connected to the paludial wombat. He then friggles the pigmew wochua in order to harang the purfled psephism, which of course swaggers the tarwhine on the berigora. Once that is accomplished it is an easy job to expedite the malapert glacis. Then, just a small adjustment to the sirgang, and Voilá! Done!

{Explanation purposely simplified for those who know nothing about such things.}
Our Kitty has been catching mice right and left. She just caught one a few minutes ago, as I was beginning this letter.

Last week Larry was busy improving, fixing, and repairing the house: first, he put up a new light fixture in the bathroom. Next, he made a slide-out shelf for our scanner in the left side of my computer desk. It’s really neat, and so much handier…before we had the shelf, we had to pull the scanner out and rest one end on our kneecaps, the other on a small bookshelf inside the cupboard, risking sending the whole works crashing onto the floor.

One evening several of us were having a conversation…and about the time we all laughed, Teddy came around the corner. He looked from one to the other, raised his eyebrows. Then he asked in his best woebegone, all-left-out voice, “What game are we playing?”--making us all laugh again.

He said that, because…

Once upon a time, when Lydia and Caleb were ages 5 and 3, Lydia told Caleb, "Okay, you go down the stairs, and then come back up, and knock on the door.....and I will open it and say, 'Why, hello, Caleb, where have you been?’"

So Caleb happily answered, "Okay!" and headed off down the stairs. Up the stairs he came again, knocked on the door... Lydia opened it and said, "Why, hello, Caleb, where have you been?"

And Caleb replied, "hee hee hee! I've been downstairs!"

"Really?!" exclaimed Lydia. "Do it again," she whispered.

So Caleb agreeably trotted down the steps again...came back up...knocked on the door...Lydia opened it. "Why, hello, Caleb, where have you been?!" she exclaimed.

"hahaha," he said, "I've been downstairs!"

"Do it again," whispered Lydia.

Off down the stairs he went. Finally, after about the fifth time up and down the stairs, Caleb's poor little legs were getting quite worn out. He said in a just-beginning-to-get-forlorn sort of a voice, "What game are we playing, Lydia?"

So that's what we've said, ever since, when we are trying to be clever, and we accidentally lose somebody in the mix: "What game are we playing?" (Yes, Lydia was duly given a small lecture on being more considerate of her little brother.)
Larry went to Omaha Tuesday for a meeting with city administrators--everybody who has anything to do with golf courses, city parks, lawn care, soccer complexes, and such like. They had all sorts of new turf equipment on display. John Deere, and other companies had trucksters, mowers, and other equipment on exhibit. There were classes on herbicides, fertilizers, leasing equipment, maintenance, and so forth. A man was there who goes around changing the looks of golf courses: he does it first on computer, and then his client decides just exactly how they want the terrain revamped by looking at the computer image of the course. They had a few contests, golfing and this and that, and Larry won a pair of leather gloves and a hat. There was a machine there that measured how far and fast a golf ball went. They all tried it out. The farthest the ball was hit was 255 yards, by a veteran golfer. Larry, who doesn’t play golf, hit it 177 yards, while only concentrating on actually hitting the ball, rather than hitting it as far as he could, for fear he’d miss entirely, or throw the club through the wall or something, and humiliate himself.

The men laughed and told him, “Boy, we sure don’t want to teach you to play with us!”

What they don’t know is that a year ago last summer when we were in Minnesota, we stopped to eat at a little roadside park beside a golf course. It was early in the morning, and there wasn’t a soul around. There was a small abandoned log cabin nearby, and inside was a golf club. One of the boys climbed in a window to retrieve it…and, once they were in possession of a club, they were in definite need of golf balls. So all the children, and Larry, too, went on a scavenger hunt around the hills of the course. The search was successful: they found dozens of golf balls. They all headed for a range where there were signs at periodic intervals, telling the number of yards the ball was hit.

After a few practice shots, Larry wound up from the shoelaces and cracked that ball with all his might and main. We watched a small yellow missile take flight, climbing higher and higher into the blue sky, then arcing gently back towards the green hills of the course. It cleared the 300-yard sign and hit the ground quite some distance beyond it, but the hill curved down, and we couldn’t see exactly where it landed. And that’s what those men won’t ever know, because Larry sure isn’t going to be the one to tell them.

The city of Columbus would pay for a motel room for their employees Tuesday night, since the meeting was going to continue the next day; but Larry, not wanting to stay away from home for so long, drove back, returning to Omaha again the next morning.

We canceled church Wednesday night, because there were still many people sick. 50 people were gone last Sunday. Yesterday, only 32 people were missing…so, as a whole, we must be improving, although one could not tell it from looking at our house.

Larry likes to help himself to my pop, even though I never take his. Well, almost never. Not very often. Well, maybe sometimes. That is, there are times when I don’t. But I am rather possessive about my pop, because, you see, when I drink it, I sip at it, and it lasts a looooong time. On the other hand, when Larry drinks it, he guzzles. And down it goes, in just a few long gulps. So, when he tried to take my pop yesterday, I hung on. He pulled. I hung on, which collapsed the sides of the bottle until it came mighty close to creating an artesian well. He always lets loose in a hurry when I do that, for fear the pop will go shooting all over the place.

Joseph has been helping clean the school several days a week. Ironic, considering the state of his room. But he’s been enjoying the work, and putting himself out to do a good job, too. (No, it has not helped the status of his room.)

Since several of the children were a bit under the weather, and our Schwan man had given us a bag of chopped chicken (not to be confused with chop suey), we were suddenly hungry for chicken noodle soup. Dorcas trotted off to the store for frozen noodles, which taste mighty similar to home-made noodles. We added cream of mushroom soup and milk to the chicken and noodles, and then didn’t we have scrumptious soup. Mmmm, yummy. And just about the time the soup was done, the cinnamon raisin bread was ready to be taken from the oven.

Larry calls my Birds and Blooms magazine Birds and Bloomers. One day it arrived in the mail, and Caleb, trying to imitate his father, brought it to me, proclaiming, “Mama! Here’s your Birds and Bloopers!”

Our new church organ will be arriving soon. Meanwhile, the music company has loaned us one similar, although smaller, which we have been using for about three weeks. The church gave Keith and Esther the old piano from the basement, the one that was replaced with the wonderful Roland electronic piano, the one that they offered to Bobby and Hannah, not knowing Bobby had bought Hannah a brand-spanking new one already.

One evening Victoria climbed into a big basket in her room--we use it to store toys (it’s supposed to be decorative, but it usually has such a motley array of things in it, it’s anything but decorative; it would’ve been better to get something with a lid)--and Hester and Lydia pushed her down the hallway and out into the living room. There were a few stuffed animals in the basket with her, and she looked so cute, both Hannah and I scrambled for our cameras. Victoria put on her camera face. So, Caleb said to Bobby, “Can you make faces at Victoria, Bobby?”

One night at the store, we found cereal at smashing bargains--it was one of those ‘truck-load’ sales. We filled the cart plumb full of Cheerios and Honey Nut Corn Chex.. Would you believe, the kids bypassed the scrumptious Honey Nut Corn Chex for those plain ol’ Cheerios, because there was a colored plastic spoon in a colored plastic holder in the Cheerios box??

We went for a ride one evening, going out on Shady Lake Road. We saw dozens of deer in the harvested cornfields. This year’s fawns are getting so big, it is sometimes difficult to tell the difference between the adults and the young ones.

Teddy does not like to call anybody on the phone to tell them anything; he does not like to take anything back to a store for a refund; turns him wrong side out. Recently a customer of Larry’s borrowed Teddy’s little white blazer. Teddy was worried about the man smoking in the Blazer, and asked Larry if he could ask him to not do that.

I said, “Oh! Yes, Teddy, he should be told; that could cause you to have an asthma attack! Go call him right now, and ask him to please not smoke in that vehicle.”

Teddy’s face looked just like it used to on the first day of school, when his stomach was upside down from sheer dread and panic. Then he said, said he, “Okay, I’ll go get the phone for Daddy.” And that’s just exactly what he did.

Dorcas has a new dress she got at the Goodwill, which she wore to her Graduation Dinner Friday. It had a tiny pen mark on one sleeve--and its tag said “dry clean only”. She showed it to me. “I tried to get it out with White Soap, but it won’t come out.”

“We’ll have to take it to the cleaners,” I said, inspecting it.

“Shall I just not wear it?” she asked, mindful of the many cameras that would be attending the dinner with their various owners.

“Nah, go ahead and wear it,” I told her, “it hardly shows.”

Hannah’s eyebrows were up. “And anyway, you don’t worry about big spots,” she said, and then suddenly pointed at a large glob of goop (spilt pizza) on the front of Dorcas’ dress, “like that.”

“Hahaha!” said the littles.

“Oh, hush!” said Dorcas, frowning in mock annoyance.

“HAHAHA!” said the littles.

At Jr. Choir Friday night, Penny took us down to the basement to show us some songs she had played and saved on the Roland electronic piano. I had brought a floppy disk, on which we recorded the songs. When I took it home, I stuck it into my computer--and played it, slicker’n a whistle. I called my mother and played it for her--so she could then say she had actually heard the new electronic piano.

Victoria has a new favorite toy: an ice cream bucket. She toted it around all day Friday, with the components periodically changing character. Sometimes it was filled with a variety of powder puffs, face loofas, small pieces of soap in all shapes and hues, and little bottles of lotion; now and then it was the receptacle for numerous beanie babies; and occasionally it brimmed with a motley assortment of doll clothes, Matchbox cars, and small wooden carpenter’s tools. She went into the restroom (carrying her bucket)…a few minutes later, she called, “I’m done!”

I answered quietly, so as not to arouse Larry, who was sleeping in the recliner, “Okay, I’m coming.”

She, not hearing me, called the louder, “I’m done!”

“I’m coming!” I replied, a little louder, but evidently not loud enough; for she emptied her bucket, put it over her head, and shouted, “I’m DONE!!!”, her voice echoing all down the hallway, just as well as if she had used a megaphone. She’s such a funny child.

Larry bought a video player at the pawn shop for $135. It’s nearly new, and some just like it at Wal-Mart cost $175. The first night we had a grand time listening--and watching--the Old Fashioned Meeting.

Someone emailed a recipe to Hannah, writing in the subject line, "Just what you need for a wedding."

Elephant Stew

Perfect if expecting a crowd

1 Elephant
2 rabbits (optional)
Salt and Pepper to taste

Cut the elephant into small, bite-size pieces. This should take about two months. Add enough brown gravy to cover. Cook over kerosene stove for approximately four weeks at 405 degrees.

This will serve 3,800 people. If more are expected, two rabbits may be added, but do this only if necessary, as most people do not like to find hares in their stew.
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Time out from this letter to tape Lydia's homework page back together; Caleb just cut it apart with his fancy craft scissors. (Or 'siccors' , as Joseph's kindergarten teacher once wrote on a note to us.) (Caleb thought he was cutting on ‘scratch’ paper.)

Saturday morning, Larry took our Kitty to the vet. Hannah had come upstairs and awoken me to tell me that the poor thing was coughing--and sure enough, she really was, a very bad cough. She has a virus of some sort, and now we have to give her medicine drops again, twice a day for 10 days. Did you know it's hard to give cats medicine drops?

I think the best way to do it is to let somebody who doesn't like cats do it FOR you... they could stand on the cat's tail, and when the cat howls, you squirt it in.

No, no; I couldn't stand that. I LIKE CATS! -- especially OUR nice little kitty. She doesn't like medicine, but she's never nasty about it. I was brought up well knowing that verse, "A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast, but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel." Proverbs 12:10

Dorcas, Teddy, and Joseph had their graduation dinner Friday--Papa Murphy’s pizza. We at home had more of that chicken/cream of mushroom/noodle soup--those scrumptious frozen noodles (well, we cooked them first, of course), and Grands Buttermilk biscuits, the kind in those peel-and-pop-open cans. Caleb was helping me open them. He peeled off the paper, squinting and blinking, and muttered quietly to himself, “I’m not going to get scared, now,” --- and then handed it to me to finish opening.

That afternoon, Victoria was busy ironing with her new little ironing board. After she finished each item, she brought it to me to fold. Between the two of us, we got quite a stack of laundry done. Too bad it wasn’t the real laundry.

A couple of days ago, Teddy asked me if I had some money for gas. “Yes, in my purse,” I told him, not looking up from the bookwork.

He opened my purse and took out my wallet. “Is it okay if I take a ten?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied, vaguely thinking, I didn’t know I had a ten.

“One of these with the extra zero?” he continued, and I realized I was right, there were no tens --only a couple of hundreds.

Friday evening, Bobby brought three videos for us to watch: Great Escapes (animals chasing prey), Alaska, and Polar Bear Family. We watched them all, one after the other. Just as we’d begun on the first one, some friends and several of their children came, bringing us a ‘pop-corn cake’ (made with marshmallows, butter, M&M’s, and gumdrops); then Keith and Esther turned up, bringing us a pan of homemade buns; then Lawrence and Norma arrived, to get their Christmas card that we’d only just found. It must’ve slipped through the side of the rocking chair Lawrence was sitting in, and landed on the floor under the chair.

Saturday I cut out two dresses for Victoria for Easter, a three-tiered skirt for Hannah, a dress for Hester, and a blouse for me.

The Wright’s quartet sang In A Land Where We’ll Never Grow Old Sunday morning, and I sang The Theme of God’s Love Sunday night.

Joseph and Hester both stayed home from church yesterday, Hester with fever and headache and cold, and Joseph with toothache. Loren was back again; he is quite a bit better. His voice was wearing out by the end of the evening service, though.

Keith and Esther, and Bobby, came for dinner. We had Schwan’s pizza (lots of it, you can be sure, for this hungry crew), lettuce salad with those little grape tomatoes, (Victoria kept getting mixed up and calling them blueberries), applesauce, cottage cheese (which some people put on their salad, and some people put on their pizza, which made other people turn green around the gills), strawberry cheesecake ice cream, and tin roof sundae ice cream. And now I have made myself hungry, and it is suppertime, anyway.