Monday afternoon we discovered that there were enough leaves to go crunching through, along the curb edges of the streets of Columbus, Corn County. So crunch through them we did, with Victoria leaning over the edge of the stroller, the better to watch them streaming past underfoot (or underwheel, as it were), giggling all the way. (That is, Victoria was giggling; not the leaves.) Caleb, up ahead of us on his bicycle, was pedaling through all the biggest piles he could find, scaring up squirrels by the dozen.
The squirrels nowadays are not sitting calmly, munching acorns and buckeyes and corn; nosirree! They are scurrying about, burying things right and left, and patting them down quickly, their little paws moving so fast they are no more than a blur.
Amongst the piles of leaves are seeds in abundance, and these are what the squirrels are finding. They were hunkered down amongst the leaves, and we could hardly see them until we were right upon them, at which point they dashed up onto the curb, chattering and scolding. And Caleb laughed till he had trouble steering his bike.
Meanwhile, Hester was outside helping our neighbor lady, Mrs. Foreman, with a few chores. Mrs. Foreman has discovered that what she can’t get her own kids to do, she can easily enough get mine to do... and she usually gives them a dollar or so for the little jobs she asks of them. They like her, and enjoy doing things for her... and I’m pleased that she likes us well enough to ask.
When Dorcas came home from work, she brought me no less than four calendars with cute pictures of dogs and puppies and kittens, and one with funny pictures of wild animals. She’d stopped at the Dollar Store on the way home. I keep telling her she needs to save her money; put it into her savings account... but the very next day, she’s liable to bring me something else she thinks I really need. She’s forever buying things for the little brothers and sisters and second cousins.
Teddy and Joseph went off to play basketball or football or somethingorotherball that evening with the Charles and Anthony. Not long after they left, Keith called, looking for Teddy to help him finish putting his pickup together. We told him where Teddy was… and I knew exactly what would happen if Keith left the shop and went to find his brother: when he found him, instead of collecting Teddy and Joseph back to the shop, Keith would join forces with the ball players, and launch another game.
This week I finished Dorcas and Victoria’s Thanksgiving dresses, and made a dress for Susan’s baby Danica to match Dorcas’. So the Thanksgiving sewing is done, unless I decide to make a shirt for Caleb and blouses for Hester and Lydia. Victoria’s dress has a bodice of dark green corduroy, and a skirt and sleeves of dark blue and green and gold plaid with three tiers in the back. Thursday I wrapped a big pile of presents and mended a big pile of clothes.
Now I am ready to work on the Christmas Program!
Teddy got a desk at Wal-Mart, and put it together late Monday night. He was still hammering away at 1:00 a.m. He went out into the garage to put something away; I came walking through the little bathroom that connects my bedroom to the kitchen to see what he was doing. Teddy, expecting me to be in the living room, nearly jumped out of his hide.
All the kids managed to go to school that day, although they weren’t quite up to par. Every one of us has had the same thing this week: a bad headache, high temperature, sore throat, earaches, and aching from head to toe.
Tuesday evening I went to UnSmart Foods with Victoria. She happily got a little cart and went dashing along, usually behind me, making my heels indeed nervous. She is never satisfied she has enough groceries until her little cart is heaping with things. I bought chicken soup and Gatorade for all the sick and half-sick kids among us--Teddy, Joseph, Hester, Lydia, and Caleb didn’t feel good that day. Teddy thought it was just because he was tired, but he looked like he had a fever, what with his glassy eyes and flushed cheeks. However, he’s bigger’n me, so I didn’t take him down and sit on him and force a thermometer in his mouth.
Dorcas has been painting some little wooden toys she bought at Wal-Mart. She’s planning to give them away for Christmas. Hannah came to show me a couple of pretty wreaths--one for Christmas, the other for fall--she’d made. I gave her a big bowl of potato/vegetable soup for Bobby’s lunch the next day, and she gave us a tray of breadsticks from Papa Murphy’s in exchange. They’d bought pizzas, and because they had to wait for their pizza to be finished (two seconds, according to Hannah), they’d been given free breadsticks.
Larry got back from Ohio and Indiana a little after three, Wednesday afternoon. He’d been stopped in Iowa by an officer from the Department of Transportation, who said his middle trailer was too long (for towing double trailers), he doesn’t have a CDL license, and he needs a number of some sort (ICC?) for hauling trailers belonging to someone else. Also, he was supposed to stop at the next town and stay put for eight hours--punishment for not having his log book up-to-date (actually, he hasn’t written anything in it at all); but after fueling up and considering the fact that he would be just as illegal right then as he would be in eight hours, he decided to head for home with his four tickets. The DOT official found several other things wrong; he could’ve written out seven or eight tickets--but out of the goodness of his heart (ha!), he kept it to four. Larry had only just paid the ticket he’d gotten in Illinois (for having the wrong kind of hitch) before he started to Ohio Sunday night. Good grief.
After church Wednesday evening, Larry and I went to UnSmart to get snacks for the little girls for their excursion to Two Lakes Lane--a new bike path that has been made around Lakes Babcock and North--tomorrow with their class. I wound up spending $30…that’s too much for snacks for two small girls! Well…I did get a few extras, so those two small girls’ siblings wouldn’t be drooling too awfully… Then, as it turned out, they didn’t need lunch; they ate lunch at home. All they needed was one small snack, and one small drink. Ah, well; the other children enjoyed all the snacks, too.
Victoria forgot, when using PaintBox on the computer, how to go to File, then New, to wipe the slate clean…so she just pulls up a new PaintBox each time her window gets full of all of her drawings and writings and paintings. Finally, she had so many PaintBoxes pulled up that they weren’t working very well. When she clicked on the “A” for font, in order to type words, it looked like it clicked in, but when she tried to type, it turned into an eraser and started erasing what she’d already typed, everywhere she positioned the cursor and clicked. She howled.
I rushed over to see what the problem was…and there, on the task bar, were about fifteen PaintBox icons. I closed out of them one by one, and as they popped up, I saw that the child had busily typed and spray-painted and made perfect circles and squares and ovals and rectangles and parallelograms in all colors of the rainbow on every window. She’s a quick study.
One afternoon, Teddy loaded the Airport CD-ROM for her. She was excited; she was going to do it all by herself. She grinned at Teddy. “Is it just my size of a game?” she queried.
Later, Teddy was playing a motorcycle race game. Periodically, his motorcycle went past a marker, and the narrator yelled, “Checkpoint!”
Victoria, noting that birds periodically tittered when the motorcycle flew past groves of trees, said, “Oh, look! There’s Chickadee Point!”
Teddy attempted to tell her that the man had said “Checkpoint!”, but Victoria contradicted, “No! He said Chickadee Point, because I heard the chickadees dee-deeing!”
Teddy grinned at her. “Well, maybe he did,” he conceded.
Larry left for Colorado at 4:00 a.m. Friday with his sock. That’s a running gag, started because he doesn’t believe in taking any more clothes than are absolutely, positively necessary--and sometimes less. Particularly if he has unscheduled breakdowns--which are the only kinds one ever has, anyway.
So, when he’s going out the door, I am sure to ask, “Did you get your sock?”
And he is just as sure to respond, “Yes, and I got my sleeve and pant, too.”
Friday night Joseph wanted to go play basketball with several of the boys his age. We went to Glur Park at 7:30--Joseph driving--but no one was there. We went home again, and Joseph called one of his friends. It so happens that the lights at the park don’t go on till 8:00 p.m. So, at 8:00, I took him back. We waited…and waited…and waited… We gave up and went to Sapp Bros. for gas. While Joseph put gas in the Suburban, the rest of us went inside to buy coffee and some malted milk balls that I was dying for.
Lydia pointed to a bag of Hershey Bites. “These are good,” she commented politely.
“Well,” I said, “we don’t need every kind of candy they have…”
A few minutes later I changed my mind and told Hester she could get the Rolos she’d wanted…and then I pointed at the Hershey’s Bites and said, “Those are pretty good,” and Victoria, who’d been gazing silently up into my face, took a big breath in evident relief.
“Yes!” she exclaimed, hurriedly reaching for them, “so we’ll have to get them!”
Back at Glur Park, all of Joseph’s friends had arrived. He jumped out, waved, and was gone. One of his friends would bring him home.
As I drove away, I reflected on how fortunate we are that our children have dependable, trustworthy friends who will bring them home at a decent hour, before I ever start to worry; and if they stop anywhere on the way home, it will be at the Dairy Queen or somewhere similar. I am so thankful for that.
Larry got back a little before noon on Saturday, and promptly headed off to the shop to work on a vehicle. Later in the afternoon, he took the children--except Teddy, who had a fever and headache--to Gerard Park to ride the go-carts. Lawrence and Norma, along with Lawrence’s grandson Travis, came while they were there, and they managed to coax Norma into riding a go-cart! It’s debatable whether Grandma had more fun riding it, or the children had more fun, watching her.
Meanwhile, Nebraska was having a football game that could hardly be called a game. By the end of the first quarter, the score was 42-0, or something on that order. They wound up with a score of 59-0. Well, that’s fine and dandy, but those games that go along nip and tuck through-out the duration, and then wind up in overtime, are infinitely more exciting.
Upon arriving home again, the little girls were playing with Polly Pockets houses, and Caleb was playing with them. There was a neat row of little houses, a few tiny people marching about--and Caleb added his touch by positioning a small army tank beside one house, two firetrucks and an ambulance beside another. Several pickups and Matchbox cars surrounded one, and Polly was about to be beheaded by the hatchback on a miniature Le Car, in which she did not quite fit.
And now it is Sunday morning, and here I am, home from church again. That’s three Sunday mornings in a row that I’ve missed. I’d feel just fine, I think, if everyone would be still and let me sleep for about twenty-four hours.
But the first reason why I couldn’t go on sleeping forever was that Hester and Lydia needed their hair fixed, and who was going to do it, but me? So at a quarter after nine I clambered out of bed, looking like Nightmare Alice’s identical (or, perhaps, Siamese) twin, to curl the little girls’ bangs and brush their hair.
That’s when I realized: Larry had neglected to get Victoria up...and it was too late, by then, to get her dressed, fed, and fix her hair. I let her sleep.
Discovering that Hester looked like she’d drug her clothes out of a RagBag, I ordered her into my room and told her to hand me the poor bedraggled things so I could iron them. By the time I was done with hair and dress, I felt rather like I’d been run through a wringer. Everybody then went thronging out the door with a good deal of noise, leaving Joseph (who feels pretty much the same as me), Victoria (who, being sound asleep, did not yet know what she felt like), and me.
I went back to bed. But I had only just gotten comfortable (and it took a lot of effort, too) when Victoria’s door opened and she came creeping out, peeking into my door and smiling happily at me when she saw that I was awake. I smiled back and scrambled out of bed.
After feeding and dressing the child, I curled and combed her hair... and then the family all came clamoring tumultuously back in the door on intermission between Sunday School and church. Victoria went back to church with them, and I decided I might as well wash my hair.
Kitty is entertaining me by skidding madly all over the floor in ferocious pursuit of a dried-up flower that had fallen off a bouquet I got for my birthday. She just took a flying leap into the second shelf of the bookcase, which is full of all sorts of porcelain and china figurines. Not to worry, though; she never moves anything by as much as a hair’s breadth.
And now the door is boisterously swinging open again, and folk small and large are swarming through the portal…it is dinnertime at the Jackson domicile!
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