Monday, June 05, 2000 - Memorial Day Stickiness and Tornadoes and Cookies

Last Monday morning, we were all in high gear, getting ready to take a Memorable Memorial Day Excursion.  Several of us were putting things into the pickup, while others were eating breakfast, and still others were bending their hair into a Semblance of High Fashion.

Joseph, coming through the garage, opened the kitchen door to let in Kitty, who was sitting gazing up at the door window in a Let Me In Sooner Rather Than Later attitude.  Kitty rushed in.  Joseph started to close the door behind her--when to his wondering ears came the most dreadful squawking noises of terror and alarm.

Kitty had caught a young blackbird, and she had brought her booty with her into the house!  Joseph ran after her and snatched her up, thinking to put both cat and bird back outside.  But Kitty dropped the bird, and it went flapping off across the kitchen and under the dishwasher, which is missing part of its molecules on the southern side, on account of the fact that Larry never put it back together again after he ‘repaired’ it, just in case the ‘repair’ didn’t take.  Teddy and Joseph tried to get the bird out, only to scare it up the back of the dishwasher, under the counter, where it perched on the top of the dishwasher.  Would we squish it, if we were to pull the dishwasher out?  Oh, horrors.  We decided to wait for Larry to come slide it out, so that we could blame him, if things went awry.

The boys went back to loading the pickup, servicing bikes, and bidding the neighbor dog adieu.  Hester and Lydia did the dishes.  And then, suddenly, they screeched a small duet of surprise and ran in place a foot or so off the ground.

This, because the blackbird had come fluttering out from under the dishwasher and scuttled right over their bare feet, making both little girls jump out of their hides.  The bird flew into the little bathroom, and Hester skedaddled after it, shutting the door behind her.  It was not long before she exited, black bird held carefully and securely in a towel.  She took it out the front door, placed it on the lawn--and it took flight.  Because it was a young one, it was not yet an accomplished flyer.  

Off it went, careering across the street, heading for my mother’s bushes, where it made a rather ungainly crash landing.  Anyway, that’s one bird saved.  At least, he’s saved for now.  

We were planning to go to Smith Falls, but by the time Larry got back from Quail Run, where he worked two and a half hours (from 6:00 to 8:30), and got all the bikes in good working order, it was nearly noon.  Smith Falls, near Valentine, Nebraska, is a four-hour drive each way.  Niobrara is two hours away.  So we went to Niobrara State Park instead--Larry and I, with Teddy, Joseph, Hester, Lydia, Caleb, and Victoria.  

After a stop at the cemetery to put flowers on our fathers’ graves, we headed north.  Larry, having had no breakfast yet that day, soon realized he was starving, so he stopped and got some food out of the cooler:  bread, peanut butter, and strawberry jam.  That’s when I discovered somebody had left the lid loose on the strawberry jam.  It had come off, and the plastic bag holding the jars of peanut butter and jelly were full of strawberry jam.  

I gingerly extracted the jelly jar, winding up with jelly up to the elbows from the inside of the plastic bag.  Teddy stood (or sat) by with the Wet Wipes, handing me one after the other…

I cleaned off that jar and dug out the peanut butter jar, noting with disgust how, each time I put my hand into the plastic bag, it came to life, rather like a Venus Fly Trap, and quickly wrapped its cloying folds around my arm.  I started making sandwiches, using a long-handled spoon to scoop as much jelly as I could salvage from the bag. 

By the time the sandwiches were made and everything was cleaned up, I felt like an absolute sticky mess.  And did you know it’s hard to take a bath with a Wet Wipe?  I was never so glad for hot water and soap as I was at the very next pit stop we made.

Victoria had a bit of a fever all day; so we bought her some Tylenol at a convenience store.  She acted as if she felt fine, however, running and playing with enthusiasm and zest.

Arriving at Niobrara State Park, we first drove around the park on its pretty, curving roads.  A wild turkey walked in front of us with little anxiety, and hundreds of smaller birds warbled and flitted through the trees.  We hiked down a steep trail from a high bluff to the Missouri River. 

As we were heading down the steps to the footpath, Teddy informed me, “Mama, there’s grease on your skirt.” 

“That’s not grease,” I replied, “it’s from a marker somebody left open and laid on it.” 

So he started over, as if he’d never said that first line, “Mama, there’s marker on your skirt.”  

The trail proved to be a bit more rigorous than we expected, particularly for Larry, who carried Victoria nearly all the way.  Teddy, Hester, and Lydia were soon far out of sight.  Caleb, navigating with more caution, did not get too far ahead of me, and I, frequently holding up the procession with short photography sessions, employed him as the subject in a good percentage of my pictures.  Larry and Victoria, behind me, came in for their fair share of the limelight, too.  Joseph, in the meanwhile, having run a third of the way down and then back up again before the rest of us had even begun the trek, went back to the pickup and had an air-conditioned siesta.

When we finally arrived at the bottom of the cliff, we came out of the woods to discover the beautiful panorama of the Missouri River spread out before us, a canoe in the distance.  Just before we started back up the pathway, a Small Hubbub of Commotion occurred when several dozen pennies were discovered scattered amongst the rocks.  When it was determined that every penny had been unearthed, we began climbing back up the steep hill.  

Leaving Niobrara State Park, we drove across the state line on the big Chief Standing Bear Bridge.  Entering South Dakota, we drove east to Gavins Point Dam near Yankton.  Crossing the dam, we spotted who but our very own Keith and Esther fishing just below the dam!  Keith had caught three or four fish.  They’d earlier gone out in a boat, and Esther was so sunburned, especially on her face, that she didn’t feel well at all.  

After visiting with them, we drove to one of the many campgrounds there beside the Missouri River and fixed supper--Dinty Moore soup, and fruit.  Guess what?  We’d forgotten the bowls.  So we opened the cans of fruit, ate it, and then poured our soup into the empty fruit cans.  Where there’s a will, there’s a way!  

After eating, we got the bikes off the pickup and went for a ride.  Caleb, whose bike had been taken down earlier, and who had been riding it lickety-split all over the park, was soon huffing and puffing, and running out of steam.  So Larry rode along beside him, hand on the back of his neck, propelling him effortlessly along.  Caleb’s merry giggles drifted back to me as we pedaled down the curving bike path.

             We stopped to photograph a museum in Niobrara.  There was an old stagecoach office, a jail, an antique store, and several other shops, all in the same log building. 

Lydia asked, “What is that store?” pointing at a large window with many unrecognizable--to her--artifacts displayed therein. 

“It’s an antique--” I started to reply, and quit in the middle of my sentence to fish a filter out of my camera bag, and before I could finish with “store,” Teddy said, “Yes, he sure is!” 

I looked up, and there was an old man, britches sagging alarmingly, making his way across the “town square” in front of the museum.  Larry and I were waiting for him to pass, both of us with cameras in hand--but he turned around, looked straight at us, taking note of the cameras, and slowed down all the more.  He hiked up his chinos and ran a hand over his hair. 

“I’ve got to get myself all prettied up for my picture!” said Larry in a high-pitched, faltering voice, cracking us all up.  “I’ve never been in the movies before!”  He smacked his lips, just as the man readjusted his sweater.  “Okay, howzat?” asked Larry, still in Falsetto Octave III.

The kids screeched with laughter. 

“Don’t make fun of the poor old man!” I admonished, just as the man turned toward us again and nodded his head vigorously. 

The hilarity escalated by teeming degrees.  Luckily, the brats were in the back of the pickup, where they could not be seen, and Larry, who could be seen, steadfastly maintained a poker face.  I slithered down in my seat so that he would not catch sight of my not-at-all-blank face. 

It was a beautiful day, temperatures just about perfect, the sun shining in a bright blue sky.  Shortly after the sun went down, we saw lightning off to the west. 

Just a little south of Yankton, Larry was getting tired, so I drove.  About the time we got to Humphrey, I started seeing what looked like fog ahead--but fog doesn't pelt you with dirt and mud.  And the wind came in abrupt hard gusts, blowing the pickup.  It takes a mighty blast of air to blow that big pickup.  I put on the dims, so I could see better, and proceeded on.  But over the next hill, the dirt and dust and mud blew so thickly and violently that I simply could not see a thing. 

I slowed down, started to pull onto the shoulder--but I could not tell where the shoulder was, so I came to a stop right in the road, which was a four-lane highway.  The cars behind and beside us stopped, too--as did a volley of other cars and trucks on the other side of the highway.  For a little while, we just sat there, hoping a semi didn't plow into us.  Sometimes we could not even see the headlights of the cars immediately beside us.  The right side of the pickup was soon plastered with mud and dirt.  Teddy was in the middle seat beside the door that doesn't have a very good rubber gasket sealing it.  When we got home, he was covered with dust and dirt all over his right side--from his hair and face right down his arm and leg to his shoe. 

Larry and I scooted our seats back and scrambled over the top of Caleb to change places.  (Caleb is only just a wee bit squished; there is hope that he'll unsquish soon.)  Then, when the wind let up enough that we could see the white line on the side of the road, Larry put it in gear and stepped on the accelerator, and drove.  One car followed; the others stayed put.  And I'll bet they were sorry they stayed, because it was only seconds later that the tornado went through, right where we had been.  We learned this when we got the radio tuned in to a weather station, just a minute or so later.  A semi was thrown onto its side, and a sheriff's windshield was blown out.  Imagine being in wind and dirt and mud blowing like that, with no windshield to protect you!  The winds blew 80 to 100 mph, and the rain poured down.  Trees and power lines were down, and the tornado was moving southeast--our direction. 

We sped up, the better to beat the tornado home.  It was still coming our way, but we were outpacing it, and would continue to, if we didn't stop again.  You can be sure, we didn't stop!  We arrived home in about twenty minutes.  The sirens were going off all over Columbus.

While the tornado sirens blared, we grabbed as much of our stuff as we could hold and dashed into the house and down the stairs.  Then I dashed back up the stairs, into my bedroom, snatched Hannah's wedding gown off my sewing machine, and dashed back down the stairs.  Then I dashed back up the stairs, reheated my coffee, and dashed back down the stairs.  Then I dashed back up the stairs, grabbed the day’s newspapers, and dashed back down the stairs.  Then I dashed back up the stairs, retrieved my newest photos, and dashed back down the stairs.  Then I dashed back up the stairs, poked my head out the front door--and stayed upstairs.  

About fifteen minutes later, the sirens stopped.  The tornado had missed Columbus, was heading southeast, and was dissipating as it went, a fact I had previously discerned when I poked my head outside.  The radio told us to expect bad weather in the evenings and nighttime the entire week.  But we would not expect to be sitting in our pickup, out in the middle of it somewhere, thank you.

I always have liked the excitement of storms... but I'll tell you this, when my children are with me, I'd certainly rather not be sitting smack-dab in the center of a tornado!!!  That's a little TME (Too Much Excitement).

That day, Bobby mowed the lawn at while Hannah and Dorcas ironed curtains and canopy at Bobby and Hannah’s house.  They discovered that the canopy was made to go on a canopy frame that is arched--but their canopy frame is straight.  I promised to alter it for Hannah--after the wedding.  

They were invited to eat at Linda Wright’s house that evening.

Mama had called us in the morning before we left to remind us to take the video camera.  Does that mean she would like us to bring the videos we’ve been making to her house and show them to her?  I’ll bet it does…we must do that, soon.  Well, we took the camera… and I even remembered two of the three batteries.  The third one I left on the charger, all charged up with no place to go…  But the worst thing was--Mama forgot to tell us to take a video tape.  And how, pray tell, was I supposed to think of such a thing, if nobody would remind me??  

So I forgot it, of course. 

Luckily, that problem is soon mended; we bought a blank tape at another convenience store.  Now we have not one, not two, but three video tapes partly done!  Before everyone went off to bed, we all watched our newest video.  We’re getting better at it; this is our best video yet.

Tuesday, I got back to the enterprise of Sewing Purple Taffeta Roses.  They are now all done, and sewn onto the dresses, the dresses are ironed, and don’t they look pretty!  I’m pleased; they were worth my while.

I think they were.

After work Tuesday, Larry, Teddy, and Joseph helped Larry’s brother Kenny and his sons Nathan and Charlie finish cutting down the tree they had begun cutting Saturday.  A friend of ours went to help them with his boom truck. 

That night Carey Gene helped Bobby put up a chair rail in their kitchen.  So Martha and Kyle, who were with him, walked to our house, and Martha helped me ruffle some of the aforementioned roses.  Tad, with fascinated face, incessantly attacked the dangling purple strands. 

 

This week, we watched a video about the assassination of John F. Kennedy.  No matter what we think of him, that was an awful thing for our country, wasn’t it?

Kitty caught another bird.  Lucky for her, she seems to prefer blackbirds--I think I would be seriously tempted to throttle her, should she bring home a cardinal or a bluebird.

One of our parishioners preached Wednesday night, using text from Psalms 147.  He told us he was thankful that the Lord had taken care of him Monday; if he’d have followed his usual routine of filling his car with gas first, before his route, he would have wound up right in the middle of the tornado that passed through.  Instead, he was inside a convenience store when the high winds hit. 

At Jr. Choir Thursday, we practiced a song called There Were Twelve Disciples, which we might sing for Father’s Day.  It is the same tune as Bringing in the Sheaves, and the children sing it with ever so much gusto.

I have been reading the Creation Story to the children.  Caleb loves this story.  It’s one of his favorites, and after I have finished reading, he spends a good long while pouring over the beautiful pictures in my big blue Bible Story books by Arthur Maxwell.  My father and mother got me those books--a ten-book set--when I was very young.  They debated long on whether or not to spend the money on the books, for they were quite expensive.  But buy them they did, and I loved them dearly.  I don’t suppose my parents could have imagined how very much use those books would have, before a scant thirty years had passed!  The books are still like new.

Have I told you that Hannah and Dorcas’ penpals, Jennifer and Sarah McDonald, will be coming to Hannah’s wedding?  The girls live in Ontario, Canada.  Jennifer is 21, and Sarah is 20, I believe.  Jennifer plays violin and has taught violin lessons.  She works in a nursing home, as does Sarah.  She loves riding horses, and has her very own young Clydesdale.

Sarah plays clarinet, and a year ago or more acquired her pilot’s license.  There is a younger sister, Anne-Marie, who plays piano and does underwater photography.  She recently entered some of her work in a photo contest in Edmonton--and came away with the blue ribbon.  Jennifer and Sarah will drive here, coming down through Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and then into Nebraska from the east.  They hope to arrive two weeks from today, and we are looking forward with much anticipation to their visit, as we have never met them before.

Some time ago, Jennifer flew with her father and another man, an evangelist, to Cuba, with a cargo of Bibles.  She asked us to pray that the customs officials would not see those Bibles amongst their luggage.  When she returned from the trip, she sent us a postcard on which she wrote, “Prayers answered, thanks be to God!”  We have corresponded with this family for about twelve years.

Saturday afternoon, I went for long walk with Hannah and Victoria.  We saw a mother blackbird feeding her baby--and on the same branch sat a baby squirrel, watching the proceedings with interest.  When I spot little animals and birds, as we are walking, I always stop so Victoria can watch them.  “Oh, aren’t they cute?” she croons.

That night we heard, via our police scanner, that there was another tornado south of Madison--and it was coming south.  But it disappeared before it got to Columbus.

Hannah is almost done with Victoria’s dress.  There are still the appliqués, pearls, and sequins to put on Hester, Lydia, and Esther Wright’s dresses, but Bethany Wright offered to do them, and we took her up on it.

Loren and Janice are still sick from the fertilizer and insecticide the farmers are spraying on their fields.   

We went to the cemetery after dinner yesterday to retrieve the flowers off our fathers’ graves.  Flowers had been blown all over the cemetery from the bad storms this week, making everything bright and pretty; but I’ll bet several people lost expensive decorations.  

My Uncle Howard sent me a recipe for Neiman Marcus Cookies.  The Internet story about the secret recipe, sold for $250, then passed around via email to everyone in everybody's address book, is pure baloney, but the recipe works (I have edited it to encompass my own methods):

NEIMAN MARCUS COOKIES

2 cups butter
4 cups flour
2 tsp. soda
2 cups sugar
5 cups blended oatmeal ***
24 oz. chocolate chips
2 cups brown sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 8 oz. Hershey Bar (grated)
4 eggs
2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. vanilla
3 cups chopped nuts (your choice)

*** Measure oatmeal and blend in a blender to a fine powder.  Cream the butter and both sugars.  Add eggs and vanilla, mix together with flour, oatmeal, salt, baking powder, and soda.  Add chocolate chips and nuts.  Eat Hershey Bar.  Go back to store and buy another Hershey Bar.  Go home.  Open Hershey Bar.  Eat it.  Retrieve wallet, get back into car, return to grocery store, buy third Hershey Bar.  Go back home again.  Do not eat third Hershey Bar, as you probably did not buy Rolaids, and you will probably acquire heartburn, should you eat any more chocolate.  Add grated Hershey Bar to mix.  Roll into balls and place two inches apart on a cookie sheet.
            Bake for 10 minutes at 375 degrees.  Makes 112 cookies.  (No explanation of how you can get 112 cookies on one cookie sheet.)  Of course, you will have 112 cookies only if you roll the balls of batter the exact same size as the person who wrote this recipe does, and since they did not tell you what the diameter of each ball should be, in micromillimeters, you may possibly end up with 113.5 cookies, or, worse yet, 111.5.  We understand the agitation this will cause; but counselors are standing by to help you through the mental distress.

Keith and Esther ate dinner with us Sunday, and Esther brought a yummy green bean casserole.  We also had Philadelphia Steak Pockets, lettuce salad, fruit salad with cherry vanilla yogurt, buttermilk biscuits, and chocolate chip ice cream.  

             Hannah and Dorcas went with Bobby to his house, since the Wrights had just returned from Washington, D.C.  Esther lost out on the very second round, when she misspelled ‘maverick’--she left off the ‘k’, poor girl.  Everyone was well entertained by the hilarious stories Bethany had to tell.  

Guess what, guess what??!!  I have saved the best piece of news till last:  Dorcas got the job!--the job at the daycare center, that is.  The name of the center is All About Kids.  Today was her first day; she started at 1:30 p.m.; I don’t know how late she will work.  She is delighted beyond words, and we all think this job will suit her to a tee, for she dearly loves children, and has done a bang-up job babysitting, any time she did so.  I think this will work out even better for her than the jobs she tried for at the craft shops and flower shops.  She will doubtless be rather astonished over just how differently children can behave from her own small siblings, and her sweet little cousins, but she has been duly warned!  No warning can take the place of experience, however.  We look forward to her stories this evening!

And now I shall sew the appliqués onto Victoria’s dress, and after that--let the house cleaning begin.  We're going to be ready in time for this wedding; just see if we're not!