Larry, Teddy, and Joseph have been spending a good deal of their time at the ‘new’ shop seven miles south of town, and they’ve hauled heaps and mounds of vehicles, parts, and tools out there. One day they used the lathe to shorten the driveshaft on Teddy’s pickup, a job that usually costs $75 to $100.
Last Saturday afternoon, Larry went off to play football with some of the boys at the school grounds across the street from Kenny and Annette’s house (his brother and sister-in-law). He was on a fierce, fast pursuit after a boy, leaning forward to tag him, when the boy’s feet slipped out from under him and his head flew back and smashed right into Larry’s nose.
The impact cut it and broke it. It was badly swollen for a couple of days. When the swelling went down, we could see that it was crooked. Luckily, he’d left his glasses in the pickup; glasses don’t repair themselves as well as noses do. Well, that is, noses don’t always do such a jolly good job of repairing themselves, I realize that; but at least they do it less expensively.
So now we are being extraordinarily careful that we don’t inadvertently bump into each other’s noses. I told him that was what he deserved, for not coming home when he could’ve that day, after being gone all week long. Everyone laughed, because Larry had earlier told them that that was exactly what I was going to say.
That night, I needed to go to the store, but Larry couldn’t seem to get himself out of his recliner to either give me some money or to come with me, and I didn’t have a dime to my name. After asking twice, I gave up and stalked off to the computer in high dudgeon. He did rouse himself enough to ask what we needed--bread and milk?--and I retorted acidly, “No, bread and water.” But he fell asleep hardly registering my cleverness. Poor guy; he really was tired.
Whatever it is he ever thinks we need, he is completely sure we need precious little of it. Today at dinnertime I told the children that their father is the sort who, if I should pick up half a grape in the produce section and ask, “Reckon this will be enough?”--he will say, “Ahhh, we don’t need that much; I’m sure a fourth of a grape will do.” And... What?? We need light bulbs and Kleenexes?? Phooey. He doesn’t need light bulbs; he’s always asleep when he’s at home anyway. Kleenexes??! What’s wrong with a handkerchief?? Come again?! We need cat food??! Let them catch mice!!
Well, the cats had enough food for the night, or I might’ve used the ol’ ice-cube-down-the-back-of-the-neck trick. Instead, after typing for a while, I went to bed. Larry, stirring himself enough to move into the bedroom, set his alarm for a quarter after seven and promised to get the groceries--at least, the ones we absolutely had to have, whatever those were--when he got up.
In the morning, he finally struggled out of bed at a quarter after eight, made his way to the store, and bought a few of the very barest of necessities.
Ah, well; we have not yet starved.
We have now graduated to the next Sunday School class, both of us having turned forty. I told the kids it was the Old Fogy’s Class. Our first and oldest deacon taught the class that first Sunday. He hasn’t been able to do that for quite a while, because he rarely feels well enough to do so. We enjoyed it.
This class is held in the main sanctuary, and everybody moves forward as soon as the others go to their classes. But!--I didn’t know how many pews all the people would take up, so I went to one I thought would be near the back, behind the other people, since Victoria usually needs to take a trip to the rest room. I was wrong...there were more people in that class than I had reckoned. We had to scoot toward the center, when more and more people came to sit in that pew...and then of course Victoria had to go to the restroom in the middle of class, so I had to climb over everyone’s feet to get out. I wasn’t about to climb over everyone again when I came back in, so I sat in the second pew from the back and determined to stay two rows farther back, next time.
Keith and Esther came after church that night, bringing chalupas from Taco Bell to belatedly celebrate Larry’s birthday. Mmmmm, yummy! And they brought packets of hot sauce--including a really hot one called Fire. You can be sure, I snatched that one up quick. Mmmmmmmmmm! I mean, Mmmmmmmmmmmm!
Bobby brought a big roll of sausage for Larry, which Larry shared with all of us, even giving Bobby some of it to take back home again. After everyone departed, Larry and I went to Sapp Bros. for coffee--there is no better coffee anywhere than theirs, even at other Sapp Bros. truck stops throughout the state--and then to the store for some of those things I thought we needed. And I discovered that I absolutely had to have some malted milk balls.
Hannah spent part of the afternoon here; she’s crocheting a ‘lapghan’ (slightly smaller than an afghan) from dark purple chenille. I plan to buy it from her to give to Mama for Christmas. It’s so soft, just the sort of thing Mama will like --especially when she finds out Hannah made it.
Hannah brought a black chenille pillbox hat on which she had affixed a large red velvet and chiffon flower. Dorcas had ordered it from Hannah’s hat magazine, a wholesale catalogue from New York, to wear for the Christmas program. To order from this catalogue, you must have your own business...so, under Business Name, we wrote Columbus Auto Sales. I wonder, does it give anybody pause, there at the Hattery (not to be confused with the Hatchery) when Columbus Auto Sales orders a dozen hats??
I did a bit of mending...and a whole lot of clothes washing. I had just finished with the mending and started on a new household venture when I noticed: Victoria’s hem was out. This subject to be continued...
Monday afternoon, IT SNOWED!!! Our first snow! Big fluffy snowflakes came drifting down...faster, and faster... Too bad most of it melted.
Caleb brought home a spelling paper on which was a big red star for getting everything all right--except everything wasn’t all right, because he’d spelled the word ‘their’ as ‘thier’. I informed him so, and then he and the little girls told me that on the pretest he had spelt it as ‘their’ and gotten it marked wrong! I made a big production out of making a large checkmark and writing ‘WRONG!!!’ beside it, while he giggled his contagious little giggle.
I then showed him the old trick of remembering the spelling of those words:
‘Their’: remove the first letter, and you have ‘heir’. Remember “The heir will inherit their money.”
‘There’: remove the first letter, and you have ‘here’. Remember “Here and there.”
The last one, ‘they’re’, is easy, because it’s a contraction, and all you have to do is put in an apostrophe where you leave out the ‘a’ from the words ‘they are’.
“Simple, Simon!” I said, and Caleb giggled the more.
Victoria, listening with interest, looked at me seriously. She took a breath and stepped forward. “But his name is Caleb, Mama,” she enlightened me.
Morning dawned with more snow on the ground. The schoolboys, including Teddy, were out early, scooping the walks.
Teddy let Tad out; it was the cat’s first experience with such a thing as snow.
He trotted out onto the porch, ears forward, looking with cautious curiosity at the cold newness of the landscape. He carefully sat down on the top step. Then he got up quickly, moved over a bit, and sat down again. Getting up hurriedly, he gazed back over his shoulder at the spot he’d so recently sat upon, doubtless wondering why in tarnation the seating was so shockingly cold. He gingerly reseated himself and got back up.
By this time, we were all howling with hilarity, and Tad looked utterly offended, body and soul. He lifted his little white-bearded chin in elegant disdain and reproach, glanced up at us with his eyebrows lowered into a straight line over his bright green eyes, and mrrrrooowwwed a long yowl of reproof and rebuke. Then, meticulously shaking each foot as he came, he marched arrogantly back into the house, fluffy tail aloft.
And that ended his yen for an al fresco foray that day.
Deciding to spruce up Hester and Lydia’s Christmas dresses, and make them a bit smaller in the process, I cut off the short black velour sleeves and put long black puffy chiffon sleeves in their place. Lydia tried hers on--and we discovered that the sleeves were too sheer. I had to sew one more layer of black chiffon into the armholes, which meant that I had to buy another yard and a half of chiffon. Humbug.
I sewed a large black and gold beaded medallion on the front of Lydia’s, and will do the same to Hester’s as soon as the second medallion arrives. I shortened the skirts and added black lace to the underskirt, so that a couple inches of lace show at the hem, and I sewed the same lace to the ruffled sleeve cuffs. Now I am in the middle of making four red satin fabric rosettes, which I will affix to each shoulder. Voilá. That should do it.
Next, I cut out and sewed myself a bright gold metallic skirt. What is this material?? It’s rubbery and thin. When held up to the light, it looks sheer, but it feels thick. I decided to cut it a little longer than the pattern...and so I did. In fact, I cut it eight and a half inches longer, evidently assuming I had grown several inches since the last time I looked in the mirror. I finished the skirt and tried it on. It fit perfectly. I walked over and looked in my cheval mirror.
Uh, oh. That thing hit me at the ankles, it sho’ ’nuff did. Hmmmm. Guess I haven’t grown taller, after all.
Well, I didn’t want it that long; just imagine me tramping gracefully up the steps to the piano at the Christmas program, accidentally stepping on the skirt, tripping, and sprawling flatter’n a pancake under that Baldwin Grand.
No, thank you. I cut two inches off that skirt.
The mail came, and with it a card from an elderly friend of ours who lives in Texas. She is the widow of a missionary or evangelist who worked at a Servicemen’s Center in Killeen. She is Irish from head to toe, and emphatically states her mind without a moment’s thought... although she sometimes regrets it, once it’s been stated. Well, I like her. I like people who say what they’re thinking, right to your face... as opposed to those people who talk behind your back, and I’ve known a grand plenty of those. Mrs. Chizum’s sort is infinitely better. Anyway, she cannot understand for the life of her why in the world I need to make new dresses for the girls for every last occasion that comes along. Good grief!! I’m going to get ‘burned out’ before I’m forty!
Uh, Mrs. Chizum, my dear, I am forty. Mrs. Chizum just had her 80th birthday...and she is still certain I could not possibly be a day over 19.
Larry and I went to vote at 7:30 p.m. We arrived at Columbus Christian School, our designated voting location...we walked up to the door of the auditorium...and read the handwritten sign: VOTE HERE.
Larry nodded briskly. “Okay,” said he, and pulled his pen from his pocket. He was going to vote--right there on that handwritten sign.
(No, we didn’t accidentally vote for Pat Buchanan.) (We voted for Dave Barry, of course.)
(Oh! Sorry! It was Borge Goosh! How could I have forgotten.)
Bobby’s Aunt Linda, one of my best friends, sometimes gives us bakery items she gets at a daycare she occasionally cleans. Tuesday evening, she sent over another big box full of all sorts of bread products. So there were the kids at one end of table, opening a bag of parmesan bagels. Teddy took a big bite just as Larry, at the other end, said, “Toss me one of tho--” and that was all the farther he got before whump! --he was catching one, right in the ol’ breadbasket (where else)--the very bagel Teddy had just chomped a big bite out of. Good thing he’s got quick reflexes. Joseph, too, had brought his hand up to throw a bagel, but he was a split second too late. One must be fast to beat Teddy...at anything.
While the children headed for the bathtubs and the showers, we listened to the radio. I sewed...and typed notes about the election in my journal. The lamp beside my sewing machine was making sizzling, frying noises, as if the wires were all bare and touching each other. The light often flickers...and flickers again...and periodically goes out. It’s rather dark in that corner of my room, and when the light is off, I can hardly see a thing.
“Something’s got to be done about this lamp!” I informed Larry.
He immediately reached over and turned it off. “There you go,” he said, rubbing his hands together with satisfaction at his bright (well, not so bright, really) solution.
I scowled and flung my pincushion at him--but he, expecting an onslaught of one sort or another, was already ducking, and I totally missed him. I snatched up my tape measure and snapped it in his vicinity, feeling smugly satisfied when he yelped. (But I did lose my coffee mug in the fracas; and I did notice that not long afterward Larry’s breath did have a decidedly coffee-like aroma to it.)
A little later, I decided I’d done enough sewing for the day, and went off to get Victoria ready for bed. As I followed her into her room, I saw it: her hem was out. To be continued...
Tom Osborne (Nebraska’s football coach before Frank Solich, the current coach) won the Senate seat in Nebraska by 81%!!! He’s a good man, and everyone knows it. He professes to be a Christian, and indeed he acts like it.
I stayed up late that night, listening to the election results...hearing the announcers vacillate from Bush to Gore, then Gore to Bush, as our potential president elect. Just look at the history I wrote in my journal:
Florida’s votes are still being counted…94% are in…Bush is only ahead by 1%--first 102,000 votes, now only 70,000. Oooooo… a nail-biter. In the very beginning, Florida was Gore’s…but then it changed. But Miami--Dade County is not in yet--along with two others--and they are usually Democratic. 82% of the votes in Dade counted now, Bush ahead by 600,000. Now 96% of the vote in Florida counted…and it’s 12:41 a.m.
Washington State went to Gore…17 electoral votes. Bush--Nevada, 4 electoral votes. Bush ahead in the popular vote. 246 - 236 electoral votes ahead… Congress is looking to be Republican…
Hillary Rodham Clinton beat Rick Lazio for the Senate seat in New York. Bah! He was a good man. What’s wrong with people??
GOP extends majority in the House by a seat or two. Only 400,000 votes ahead now--1:01 a.m. 57,000 votes ahead in Florida. *** 54,000 votes ahead in Florida now --1:03 a.m. *** 1:10--still 600,000 votes separating Bush and Gore. 5 states still in play--Wisconsin, 13,000 vote spread…Bush ahead. Oregon, Gore ahead by 24,000. Quite a few went to Ralph Nader in Oregon. Probably would’ve been Gore’s. *** 1:33--George W. Bush has been declared the winner! Whew! 271 - 249 electoral votes--Bush - Gore, respectively. Bush won Florida, contrary to previous news. Republican president, republican senate, republican house, but just barely. ***
It is now 3:00 a.m., and the news stations are saying Gore is going to ask for a recount. There is only a 630-vote margin of difference in Florida. Gore conceded…then decided not to concede after all. Florida is Bush’s by only 1/30 of 1%. By law, there must be a recount.
And that’s what I wrote, while listening to the radio that night. And we have yet to know the end of the matter! Aarrgghh!
It turns out that the cracked floor in the cargo trailer and the cracked corner of the one Teddy bumped into the tree branch in Illinois (we didn’t know it was cracked; we only thought it broke a small marker light, which Larry fixed), may cost Larry the total amount he would have been paid for hauling that last load--$1400. And we needed that money so very badly.
He hopes to have another load of cargo trailers to haul this week. There are still tons and heaps of stuff and things to haul from the old shop to the new, but that doesn’t bring in any money...
After church, several of us were having Sundae cones. I was sitting at my desk, typing awkwardly while holding the cone in one hand. Beside me stood Victoria, watching operations, calmly licking her cone. She is usually banished to the kitchen with dripping items like that, but there was no one else out there, so she had wandered back into the living room. A small piece broke off my waffle cone and fell onto my lap. I picked it up and stuck it into my mouth.
Victoria raised her eyebrows. “You,” said she in a splendid imitation of her mother, “are spilling ice cream cone all over yourself.” She shook her head in exasperation. “You need to take that thing straight into the kitchen!” she instructed me.
I promptly pulled one sweater sleeve down over her hand in retaliation. She backpedaled fast, laughing--and suddenly I noticed--the child’s hem was out of her skirt. To be continued...
Wednesday, Larry changed the oil in the pickup he’s been finishing. Teddy then drove it... and when he went back to the shop, oil was all over the engine, and it was making a funny sound. (The engine, that is; not the oil.)
“Turn it off, quick!” said Larry.
Teddy did so, and they hastily lifted the hood and looked to see what the trouble was.
The oil was GONE. It had all drained out, every last drop. Larry thought he must not have gotten the new oil filter tight, so he tightened it up with his wrench, and filled the pickup with oil again. He only had three quarts on hand, and the vehicle takes four, so he sent Teddy to buy more.
A couple of hours later, Teddy again drove the pickup to pick up Amy and bring her to church. The rest of the family happened to be driving behind Teddy on the way back to church, and they told him, upon their arrival at church, that the pickup was smoking like everything. A brand-new pickup--smoking!
Sure enough, when Teddy parked it on our driveway, the last bit of oil (not much, since most had already sprayed out) drained all over the driveway. Eeewwwww... it was a mess. Larry thought the new filter he’d put in was faulty, and he was going to get a new one from Wal-Mart, and ask them to pay for all the lost oil, too----but then he discovered that it was his own fault, sort of, after all...because--when he removed the old filter, the rubber gasket that is supposed to be attached to the filter stayed on the engine, so when he put the new filter in, along with its own gasket, two rubber gaskets wound up right together, one atop the other. And that DOESN’T WORK. The oil blows all over the place. Anyway, at least the motor still seems to be okay, thank goodness.
On Thursday, we were told that it could be days and days and days before we learned the outcome of the election. President Clinton came up with another of his brilliant remarks: “The people have spoken!” (pause) “It’s just going to take a little while to figure out what they said.”
I always think the funniest things about President Clinton’s funny remarks is that he did not at all mean to be funny; he was trying to be intelligent and dignified.
Thursday evening, I made fifteen dozen chocolate chip/but-terscotch chip/toffee chip cookies. A heaping platter full was for Hester and Lydia to take to school the next day, for Saturday was their teacher Helen Tucker’s 60th birthday, and they had planned a surprise party for her.
One night Victoria, having hunted up all sorts of bedroom slippers, was busily trying them on: red teddy bear slippers, white bunny slippers, white teddy bear slippers with a green and red Christmas hat...and then she found three identical bunny slippers, and went into gales of mirth.
“Look, look, Mama,” she exclaimed, “somebody must’ve had three feet!”
She put her feet into two of them, and her hand into the third, and proceeded to go along on feet and hand, like a mechanized tripod. And then, I noticed it: her hem was out. That did it. I went and changed her into her nightgown, took the dress into my room, where the other four dresses and skirts were awaiting my attention, and I sewed the hem back into all five.
There! Reparations done. (But how did the child tear out five hems in no less than five days???)
Friday afternoon, Victoria was busily mixing food for the people of the Li’l Tykes populace. Deciding I needed to join the party, she put a bowl and spoon on the slide-out where my mouse is. “Here’s your honey nut Cheerios, Mama!” she told me, and went back to serve a meal to the hungry Family Li’l Tykes.
I continued typing...but suddenly there was Victoria beside me again, peering into the bowl and saying, “Oh! Mama! You forgot to eat your cereal!--and it’s all soggy now!”
So, in between each sentence I wrote, I pretended to gobble up invisible cereal, smacking and slurping and “Mmmm!”ing in fitting fashion. Presently the first course was over, and my small hostess was doling out popsickles.
“Hurry!” she implored me, “It’s about to melt!”
Before I knew it, the imaginary meal was over, and Victoria was tramping around with a large toy pan on her head, looking entirely too comical for words. Three-year-olds are such fun!
Lawrence and Norma came visiting Friday night, belatedly bringing a Dairy Queen cake for Larry’s birthday. Evidently Norma really does think a person can’t properly turn a year older without a cake. Or at least that’s what we accuse her of.
Hannah came...then, later, Bobby, who’d gone back to the job site to cover some newly-poured cement walls, joined us. Larry, Teddy, and Joseph spent the day taking things to the new shop. Among other things, they took the big forklift. Larry started it up, headed for the trailer on which he was going to haul it... CRUNCHCHCHCH!!! The rear wheel sunk right into a hole where water had washed away all the dirt under the blacktop. And there he was, stuck tight. He had to pull that heavy forklift out with his big pickup.
Saturday morning I awoke up to discover...Teddy had cleaned out the ashes from the fireplace, and started a fire! He’d even left a few logs on the hearth rug for me. Woowoowoowoowoo!
Dorcas took a Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation class that morning. Some people came to the daycare to give the class, and Dorcas only had to pay $5.00--her boss paid the other $5.00 (it’s a $10 course, unless taken at the college, in which case it’s about a $20-25 course). Those who have taken the course stand to get paid more on the job, and it’s a jolly good thing to know, in any case.
Nebraska’s football game was in Manhattan, Kansas, this week, against Kansas State. And we lost! 29-28, we lost. Waaaaaah. About the time the game started, bad weather began. While it was snowing here, it was much worse there: first it poured rain, then it snowed like everything, then sleet came down in sheets. And it was cold.
One of the radio announcers for the game said that all those big football players trying to run on that icy turf--even with their ‘grippers’ on (special shoes for ice and snow)--looked like Clydesdales on ice.
Here, it snowed cats and dogs, cougars and meese. Perfectly wonderful weather; nothing miserable about it at all.
Weather like that calls for a drive. So, after tucking the littles in bed, Larry and I went to Sapps to fill our coffee mugs and get Hershey’s with Almonds. Then, sipping hot Farmer’s Bros. coffee and munching chocolate, we drove out on Shady Lake Road. The deer were back in their favorite field again. The road was slick...and I thought sure Larry was going to land us in the ditch, backing around in middle of the road, shining his lights into the field to look at the deer. But four wheel drive brought us out of it nicely, and we proceeded on...
We turned down a gravel road where not another vehicle had gone since the snow began, and Larry went weaving from one side of the road to the other, leaving a track like this: v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^.
I wonder what the person who next came upon it thought? Certainly not that a couple of 40-year-olds had done such a thing. And they surely won’t think the person(s) who did it were three sheets to the wind, either, because the trail was done so perfectly.
The main highways were slippery, and the police were busy that night. Larry recently put new tires on his pickup--but they are practically worthless on the snow and ice. He came up over the viaduct (we say the viaduct, because in the small city of Columbus, there is one viaduct, and one viaduct only), shifted--and the pickup slid sideways. Of course, he pulled it out of the skid with no problem...but what if he gets into a really dicey situation with a loaded trailer??
When the chocolate and coffee were gone, we reluctantly headed to the store for groceries for Sunday’s dinner, then home to make three cherry cheesecakes. By then, it was getting ever so late, and I wondered why I always do this on Saturday nights, instead of starting things a wee bit sooner, such as early Saturday afternoon. But when I was done mixing the filling and pouring it into the crust, and I got the beaters out of the mixer, and there was not one little soul around, smiling at me sweetly and saying, “Could I lick that off, do you think?” --it occurred to me that perhaps I was more clever than I had thought I was, making cheesecake at 2:00 a.m. I put the cheesecake into the refrigerator, picked up a beater, and licked the whole thing clean without a single person to notice when I accidentally smeared some on the end of my nose while trying to curl my tongue around the blades.
If one was good, two was better... So I licked the other beater, and finished by swiping out the bowl with a spatula, and licking that off, too. Mmmmmmmmm.
Bobby and Hannah and Amy came for dinner Sunday. We had beef/potato stroganoff, fruit salad (peaches, apricots, pineapple, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, and mandarin oranges), buttermilk biscuits, chef salad (with everything under the sun added to it, including broccoli, cauliflower, hard-boiled eggs, cheese, and...aauugghh! I forgot the cucumber! [just a minute; let me go cut myself a sliver of cucumber]), and cherry cheesecake.
Keith and Esther were planning to come, but Lawrence and Norma invited them, and they decided to go there, since they hadn’t been to visit the grandparents for a while. Then, just as they were heading out their door, the phone rang, and it was Esther’s parents, asking them if they wanted to come eat dinner there! I told them they’d made a serious mistake, by declining the invitation to our house and to Esther’s parents’ house.
“What you should’ve done,” I instructed them when they came visiting Sunday night after church, “is this: Keith should’ve gone to Lawrence and Norma’s, telling them, ‘Esther is too sick to come; would it be okay if I took a plate of food home for her?’ Meanwhile, Esther should’ve gone to her parents’ house, and said, ‘Keith is too sick to come; but would it be okay if I take a plate of food home for him?’ BUT! Before all that, you should’ve told us, ‘We are just too sick to come; do you suppose Dorcas could bring us a couple plates of food?’” I shook my head at them. “Won’t you two ever learn?”
And now, although it is altogetherly too late, I believe I shall trot myself over to the church to practice the piano.
Yours truly,
Mr. and Mrs. Bentbeak
And the seven little Beakers
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.