Last Sunday, Bobby and Hannah came and shared Larry’s famous waffles with us. But first, there was a little order of business to tend to: the key for their garage was in Hannah’s purse. The purse was inside her car. And the car was inside the garage.
So Larry got an old credit card out of my desk, and he and several of the children walked over there to recoup the keys. He can break into just about anything—including cars with no visible locks anywhere. Beware your valuables, ye unwary!
One day last week our electricity was off for about forty-five minutes because a squirrel got into a transformer. Hannah came to visit five minutes after it went off. Her electricity was out, too, and she’d heard the transformer blow out.
She walked in the door and said to Victoria, “Did all your lights burn out?”
Victoria replied adamantly, “Yes!! We really need new ones!”--despite being told quite a few times that it was the electricity that was out, not the bulbs. Such things are a bit deep for a three-year-old.
Larry, Teddy, and Joseph left for Ohio after church last Sunday night, hauling two more Demco trailers that he’d picked up in Beatrice a couple of days earlier. The very next morning, we read in the newspaper that there had been an earthquake in a town in Ohio where an earthquake had not been felt for over a century. Was that because of the clip at which Larry went barreling through town with that big pickup and trailer, do you suppose?
My mother’s tooth was still bothering her quite a lot this week. She’s taking antibiotics for the infection, and I think that helped the pain subside somewhat.
Monday the littles made peanut butter cookies--six batches--in order to use up the Skippy peanut butter that was getting a little too elderly to suit us. That day, once again, my sister-in-law, Janice, got us Daniel’s sweet corn from a roadside stand, and we had it for supper. It is extra good this year.
“Caleb,” I said, “do you suppose you could husk the corn?”
He looked doubtful. “Well, I’m not sure I know how,” he began, and was abruptly interrupted by Victoria saying, “You do it like this!!”—and she grabbed an ear of corn out of the bag, got a good grip on the beard and husks at the top of the ear, and with one fell swoop she jerked off a good three-quarters of the husks, pulling the silks off with them, and leaving that ear clean as a whistle. “Like that,” she said matter-of-factly, disposing of the small piece of husk left on the ear.
Caleb commenced husking corn, with plenty of help from his little sister. They had that job dispatched in less than ten minutes.
Larry called about 11:30 p.m. that evening, telling me they were at the same motel we had stayed at a week and a half earlier, thirty miles east of Columbus, Ohio.
They’d averaged fifty miles per hour, and had already gotten the trailers unloaded, because they’d found somebody who was on duty until midnight. So they will leave in the morning for Elkhart, Indiana, where they will collect three enclosed trailers to bring home with them.
One afternoon I was handing out piles of folded clothes for the littles to take down to their rooms. Victoria wanted to take some, so I gave her Joseph’s, wondering aloud if the pile was a little too big for her to manage.
“Is this a little bit of a whole bunch?” she asked, giggling.
Our house is so hot; the air conditioner barely puffs out a breath of air, even when it’s not frozen up. So we tote fans around with us everywhere we go, and try not to get into heated discussions… But when those individuals who work at the shop all day come home and tell us how nice and cool it is in the house, we do get rather hot under the collars.
Victoria has been having loads of fun filling up all sorts of bottles and small jugs with water from the distiller. The refrigerator is all full of little carafes and flagons, and anytime someone gets one out and takes a drink, Victoria is sure to say, “I filled that up for you!”
Tuesday afternoon, the littles did dishes. When they were done, Hester and Victoria took out the garbage—a job Victoria, for some reason, particularly likes. Just for the fun of it, she ran around to the front door on their way back in. The door was extremely hot from the sun shining on it, and she started telling me, “When I came in, I suddenly (her word for the month) burned my hand on the door!” just as I said, “Okay, you can all go out and play now.”
“Okay!” she exclaimed, whirling around and rushing back down the hall. “I want my sandals on, and I want my gloves on, so I don’t burn my hands again!”
Larry called from Elkhart Tuesday evening. He didn’t get there in time to load that day, so they got a motel. He and the boys, having time to kill, went to a small park, where they rode bumper cars and boats. After talking to me on the phone, they went to a big hunting supply store to look around.
Wednesday morning, Larry finally got loaded at 11:00. The place opened at 6:30 a.m.; but, even though he had called to tell them he was coming, they had neglected to get the trailers ready for him. But once they got started, they made good time, getting home at 12:30 a.m. Larry is very pleased with his new glasses; he can see better, and his eyes are less strained, so he doesn’t get as tired when he is driving. (And I am very pleased with his new glasses, too, because he doesn’t put the hymnbook right smack-dab in front of my nose when we are singing in church.)
Hester made bread in the bread machine one afternoon. When it beeped on the last kneading, the signal to add ingredients, if you want to, I poured in half a container of raisins, and lots of sugar and cinnamon. Mmmm! Was it ever yummy! I made sure to save a slice for each of the wayfarers. They’d no sooner come in the door than Lydia came rushing around the corner with a bag with nine peanut butter cookies that she’d saved for her father and brothers, unbeknownst to the rest of us, who were trying our best to scarf them all down.
Thursday, our Schwan man came; he comes every other week. He brought a man with him whom he is training, telling me that he had been promoted, and this man would be our new Schwan man. We will miss our old Schwan man.
I bought some new ice cream ‘Smores’—chocolate-covered graham crackers and ice cream. Caleb soon had as much on his face as in his mouth. I told him to go wash, and Victoria, observing this, asked me, “Is my mouth dusty?”
The littles have been busy practicing their skating—well, uh, that is, for the first few days, Caleb, it seemed, was practicing his falling. I declare, every few minutes, down he went again! More than half the time, last Monday and Tuesday, he was going along with his back bowed, looking rather like a half moon, while his arms performed rapid rotations at his side. But it didn’t take long before he’d improved immensely.
Victoria, in the meantime, was clacking around in her plastic Fisher Price skates, looking only slightly less hazardous than her brother. I have had my shins banged into and my toes run over three or four times already—and, of course, I am always barefoot; it is obvious that, if this craze continues, I must invest in steel-toed boots.
Thursday, Janice got us more corn. She drops it off at my mother’s house, and then Mama calls for one of the littles to come get it. I wonder…is it Janice’s idea, that we should have corn till it is coming out of our ears, or is it Mama’s?? Ah, well; as I said, it is good. MoooOOOooo.
Hannah came to visit that day, bringing along a bunch of rhubarb to run through our food processor. While she was here, she copied several recipes from our favorite cookbooks. Hannah’s siblings, both old and young, are always delighted when she comes, and greet her like a long-lost friend.
Larry didn’t get home that evening till a quarter till nine. He came and found me, and asked me to come outside to see something. Lo and behold, in the shed was a pair of shiny new gold and forest-green twenty-one-speed Schwins—a belated anniversary present for us! I promptly jumped on and went tearing off down the street—and the straight skirt I had on is now a little the worse for wear, sporting a gaping wound where gaping wounds are not supposed to be. I made a big circle around several blocks, and then came back…and, finally, Teddy and Larry caught up with me. (Yes, I had a big head start.) Then Larry and I rode over to Hannah’s house to show her our new acquisitions…and there was Dorcas, already there with her bike, so we all rode home together.
I made photo albums out of my illustrated stories, on my computer, in PhotoWorks. I sure do need more memory on my hard drive. Strange things start happening when I use up too much memory: Fatal Exception windows fling themselves in front of my innocent nose at random; Program Errors pop up without the slightest provocation; and Curriculum Calculation Calamities haphazardly hurl nasty dialogue boxes onto my hapless monitor at the drop of a hat, without bias or prejudice. When all these begin to transpire, I reluctantly delete a folder or two of pictures, and the poor ’puter calms down and politely lets me type my little epistles.
After a supper of pizza Friday evening, we went for a bike ride. All the kids but Dorcas came. Her knee is still weak, and, when she exercises it, it hurts enough that she didn’t know if she could keep up, or go as far, as the rest of us were planning to do. It is much better; we are very thankful for that.
There is a new bike trail out by Lake Babcock; we will have to try it soon. It is infinitely easier to pedal my new bike than my old one; I can go much faster. I like to fly like the wind, going around corners leaning so far that the sprocket is mere centimeters from the tarmac… Wheeeee! This is fun! I haven’t had a new bike for 20 years!
If you hear a big SPLLLLAAAAATTT sometime in the future, that’ll doubtless be me.
I thought surely, with this new bike, I could give Joseph a run for his money; I knew better than to suppose I could get anywhere close to Teddy; he’s a hurricane on wheels. I set out to try… Admittedly, I cheated. I gave Joseph no warning that I was planning to leave him in the dust; I merely let him get some distance ahead; then, when he was pedaling along leisurely, I blew past him at Mach speed, calling back over my shoulder saucily, “Catch me if you can!”
He smoked by me in less than half a block’s distance, flew around the next corner, and was gone with the wind, just like my conceit.
I decided to race Hester.
Yesterday, Kitty was lying on the floor a couple of feet away from her food dish. Every now and then she glanced at her bowl and flapped her tail, whomp! whomp! on the floor, pulling her ears back in aggravation. I looked to see what was causing such indignation: there was a large matchbox car in her bowl! Larry took it out, and she got up and went to eat, throwing a fleeting look back over her shoulder at him and saying, “Mrrrrow,” as if to thank him for removing the alien article from her dish.
Saturday afternoon, the littles and their cousins played in their wading pool in the back yard; after a while, they trekked down the block and played in Jodie and Sharon’s pool. It was a hot day, hovering somewhere between 95 and 100°.
Tad got sap on his stomach, legs, and tail from the Blue Spruce across the street. He had a terrible time trying to groom himself, getting all stuck up something awful. His little pink tongue licked the sticky stuff, then came out farther and farther as he lifted his head, trying to pull loose, seemingly stretching the poor tongue to its limit. hee hee Poor little cat! He didn’t appreciate me laughing at him, either. “Mrrrrowrrr!” he told me, and turned his head away disdainfully, switching his tail.
Dorcas went with Hannah to several garage sales Saturday morning. She found a big bag of silk flowers for $.25. One stalk of the same flowers at Wal-Mart costs at least a dollar, so she got quite a bargain. These, she used to decorate a wreath she was making.
Larry didn’t get home until 9:45 p.m. Saturday evening. The Ohio trips just might be a once-a-week occurrence for some time into the foreseeable future; there are plenty of trailers to haul, and the trips do pay well.
Later that night, we went to the shop so Larry could clean the clear-coat out of his paint gun. By the time we got there, the clear was already hard, and it’s a difficult job cleaning out paint guns after paint or clear-coat has hardened. I saw a trailer he is putting together, using aluminum ramps that a friend of ours found alongside an Interstate somewhere. They had fallen off a J. B. Hunt transport truck. The truck number was imprinted on the ramps, so the man called the company and told them about it.
“Keep them,” he was told, “We’ve already turned it in to our insurance company and gotten our money for them.”
Larry traded a little black pickup-box trailer and a pickup topper for them. They are worth $600 a piece. (!) Larry will be able to haul two of the recyclable trailers on this trailer, and he will be able to haul two of the enclosed trailers from Elkhart and tow one more behind.
Saturday, Hester turned up with Fifth Disease—all broken out in splotches; but at least she didn’t feel sick, and she’s still fine and dandy. Today, Hannah discovered she had it. The lymph nodes are swollen on the back of her neck, and she doesn’t feel very good. Seems to me that the older a person is when they get it, the more likely they are to be sick from it.
Now my sister Lura Kay has a very bad toothache from an abscessed tooth. Last week a tooth on the other side of her mouth was causing troubles. And she and her husband were just ready to go to Kansas City again, on a little vacation! Last year the same thing happened, but they went anyway. She was in abject misery, the entire time.
This time, John said, “We aren’t going until we get that tooth fixed!”
A friend of ours is coming to visit; she will be here tomorrow. So we have been having another session of Stir the Dust around this joint. My sister and brother-in-law loaned her one of their cars to drive while she is here, so that she can travel about as she wishes.
Tonight after church, Keith and Esther, Bobby and Hannah, and Lawrence and Norma came visiting—and each and every one of them (well, of course I mean each couple) brought a dessert with them. And a present. This, because…Teddy is 17 today! He has been looking forward to this birthday…I shall tell you why, sometime in the future… We gave him some money, and a tall lighthouse/waterfall that has sounds such as a foghorn, seagulls, and breakers crashing on the shore. It is filled with water, and then a little pump in it pulls the water to the top and spills it over, creating a waterfall.
Teddy poured water into it, and the littles drew near to see what would happen. He clapped his hands, and the sound sensor started the little pump. Water rose to the top as the foghorn blared, seagulls cried raucously, and the surf roared. The water brimmed over and tumbled down the front of the sculpture. Three small noses leaned closer…and then, all of a sudden, the water splashed onto the tiny sloped roof of a lean-to beside the lighthouse and sprayed outwards—right onto those three inquisitive noses.
Three young voices yelped a short song of surprise, and three noses were moved back to a dryer clime.
And now, I think I shall move myself off to more feathery clime.
Goodnight!
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