One afternoon, Caleb was playing a wide-ranging game of make believe, involving Matchbox cars, the older children’s textbooks, his little sister, and several stuffed animals. Joseph was setting up track for the Matchbox cars when Caleb asked him, “Joseph, can we pretend we live together?” --obviously wishing to 'share' those tracks for his cars.
That web page that I wanted to have... it would cost me over $200 to have the programmer come help me set up a page. That was out of the question, especially right before Christmas, when I needed every dollar I could find for presents. So…I found some pages on the Internet telling me how to do it. Aha! Now I’d be In Like Flynn!
The instructions said:
To girder the gibbous gimp, adjust type and compose an abrogate servomechanism. Next, rundle with foison the maught sandblaster. Once the satyriasis skillet is pifferoed, please thwart the epizootic lochia, being certain to crossruff the crankum.
Well, I immediately did all that, but I think I wound up making a Web Page for Inpichi Wang Wump, who lives somewhere in western China, because I certainly didn't wind up with one for me. Too bad. We have found a few places on the Internet where we can post pictures, and dialogue, too; perhaps I’ll try it out--after Christmas, when I have more time.
One Sunday afternoon a few weeks back, I was taking pictures of the trees at Pawnee Park, all decked out in their fall cloaks. They had shed most of their large brown pods, and the ground was covered with them. We gathered up a couple of handfuls for Caleb and Victoria. Victoria immediately said she was going to make soup with hers, while Caleb decided to take the 'peas' out and use them in his little cannon for ammunition. They've gotten themselves into the proper stereotypes, haven't they?
Tuesday night I practiced with the orchestra and band. When we arrived at the church, some of the men had taken the pews out of the choir loft, and put them together into one long bench behind the last row of pews in the center back of the church. Thursday, they put new pews into the choir loft. This, because we’ve been needing more seating, and because they wanted the pews added to the sanctuary to match the other pews.
The men asked if it would bother me if they continued putting the pews in place…I said no, of course not, go right ahead…so they did: BANGBANGBANGWHAMWHAMWHAM-BANGBANGBANGWHAMWHAMWHAMBANGBANGBANG!!!
I hadn’t realized that moving pews entailed pounding the living daylights out of them. We played our instruments valiantly above the racket. Scientific surveys conducted after the rehearsal showed the greater headaches to be in the heads of those administrating the pew transport and redistribution. So there, take that.
For three days this week, while I rushed about cleaning house, wrapping presents, practicing piano, writing music, or Keeping Kare O’ Kids, I had Joseph’s cassette player going on high-speed dubbing, recording tapes of our special singing, with all our different groups of singers, for the Jr. Choir children. I tell you, it takes a good long while to record 33 sixty-minute tapes, even on high speed!
Would you ever believe it!!!---it’s been snowing! And blowing. For several days now, it has snowed a little each day. It almost feels like a real, honest-to-goodness winter storm. Wheeee! Of course, the night of the first snow, I immediately wrote a list of ‘must-haves’ and went to the grocery store. (Anything to get out in the snow, you see.)
I had to write several more pages of music for the horns; we had some difficulty during practice, because I don’t always know where to put the notes--whether in the bass clef, the treble clef, or which octave or register--because I don’t know what each instrument’s highest or lowest notes are. I had the notes for the alto saxes too high, and they wound up sounding something on the order of frightened mice in the rafters. I’ll learn, though; I’ll learn!
I tell you, whoever it was who decided that so many of those instruments should be in different ‘keys’, so that everyone’s music would have to be written differently, was a hostile, sadistical monster whose greatest pleasure in life was making things convoluted and thorny for hapless millions. He is doubtless somewhere in the Never-Never Land of Musical Madness at this very moment, rubbing his hands together in fiendish glee. Aarrgghh.
The morning after the first ‘snowstorm’, our nice neighbor lady, Mary Foreman, cleared their walks of all the snow--a good ¼ inch--at 6:30 a.m. sharp. I wonder… could the reason behind her compulsive cleaning be because she doesn’t want her house to at all resemble the perpetual messy state of the house next door? Or maybe she thinks if she scours and tidies with enough dynamo, we will get the hint and launch into our own swabbing and sweeping. Too bad; doesn’t work. We plog (that’s a combination of ‘plug’ and ‘plod’, and should’ve been in Noah Webster’s vocabulary) along, doing those things first that have deadlines… There are just simply too many other more necessary things to do, for me to entertain thoughts of scrubbing down the bricks on the chimney. Sorry, Mrs. Foreman.
Cleaning. Dusting. Vacuuming. Laundering. Mopping. Several observations:
a) when one lets soap scum accumulate in one’s bathtub for two or three years, it takes a good bit of elbow grease to get it off.
b) Scrub-Free…isn’t.
c) Easy-Off…doesn’t.
d) when one dusts the bottom shelves before one dusts the top ones, one undoes what one has already done as one progresses(?) upward.
e) there is no sense in picking toys up off the floor until we are within three minutes of the first-arriving guests, unless one desperately needs the exercise; for one will assuredly repeat the procedure multiple times.
f) clean, empty counters attract all manner of jetsam and flotsam.
g) freshly mopped floors attract muddy boots.
One cold night, we started a hot, hot, hot fire going in our fireplace, and since it was the first time we'd used it this winter, it STUNK. I mean, it *S*T*U*N*K*. Wheewwwwwwww-eeeeeeee!!!!!!! Kind of like burnt rubber mixed with burnt toast mixed with elderly socks mixed with Essence of Feed Lot mixed with Aroma of Hog Confinement. Aauuuggghhh. I mean, AAUUUGGGHHHH!!!!!!!!! Whatever you do, don't breathe too deeply while reading this.
Someone gave the children blue-and-white-striped candy canes. Victoria was soon a sticky mess, with blue lips and tongue, and Caleb was a close match. They even gave us toys for the cat. Kitty is even now chasing madly after a furry little mouse, batting it all over the living room floor.
Thursday evening, we went to Grand Island to get Joseph some new glasses at Lens Crafters, one of those one-hour operations. He was supposed to have an eye exam, too, at 6:00 p.m.; but there was too much slooooow-moving traffic all the way there, and we were fifteen minutes late. The doctor had just left. So we just had the old prescription refilled. They will do that, so long as a person has had an exam no longer than two years previously. Joseph picked some glasses with frames that are quite a bit smaller than his old ones, hoping they won’t slide down his nose quite as badly. He’d mentioned getting contacts…but imagine Joseph with contacts…mercy, no. The rest of us do not prefer to spend the rest of our youth crawling around on all fours, hunting for small round bits of clear plastic.
While we waited for them to make the glasses, we went to the Goodwill, where we spent $137 on a piled-high cartload of items we found, many of which were brand spanking new--some still had the original tags on them. I wonder why people get rid of some of those things? I use the new things as presents--it’s the only way I can afford to give as many of my friends gifts as I do. Hopefully, I don’t give them back an unwanted item they had relievedly discarded at that very same Goodwill!
After the shopping excursion, we went back to retrieve the glasses. Joseph is pleased with them, and they look very nice. Fortunately, I had a $50 coupon from the Omaha World Herald--the total price was $215!
We were soon discussing where to eat. Several of us chose Arby’s. Victoria, in great excitement, agreed, “Yes! Let’s go to Armies!”
When we were stopped beside the order box in the drive-through lane, Larry asked, “What kind of sandwich does everyone want?” And Victoria turned and cried exuberantly straight into the mike, “Blueberry!”
We drove around a house that is always decorated to the gills. There is a large animated jack-in-the-box; a giant Winnie-the-Pooh who, holding a balloon, drifts upwards until he can collect the ‘honey’ dripping from a tall tree; a ‘plane’, piloted by ‘Santa’, that is powered by a horse walker; and all manner of other animated scenes besides. Circling around the long drive, Hester said, “Oh! Up ahead are the llamas!--there, by the manger scene!” And Victoria, looking every which way, cried, “Where are the mamas?!”
As we traveled home, alternately passing and being passed by trains, Caleb asked me, “Do people sleep in trains?”
Just then it whistled loudly. I answered Caleb, “Yes, but not the engineer; he has to blow the whistle.”
The train whistle blew again, loud and long. Caleb stared. “He was blowing it?!”
Practice went well Friday night. Now, if we could just give a quantity of one loud boy's decibels to some of those quiet little girls… And if we can just get that new speaker and mike system to work smoothly…
Once, I heard it starting to overmodulate…I knew what was going to happen…and then it did: there was a sudden, terrible hisssss, followed immediately by a crashing, rumbling rooaarrr!! The children, not at all expecting such a dreadful racket, nearly jumped out of their hides. It looked as if the entire choir loft rose a good three feet in the air, it did. Each face was a mirror image of the stunned, terrified face beside it. Poor kids. (hee hee hee)
Teddy is not content to give each of his friends a pair of socks. No, he’d rather give them each a Corvette. Or, at least, a large economy set of Snap-On Tools. Good grief. Well, okay; perhaps a $7 pocket knife will do.
“Teddy,” I said, “Do you realize that if we give twenty people a $7 pocket knife, it will cost $140?”
His eyebrows rose in surprise. “It will?”
So…the socks it is. Well, all right; maybe two pairs instead of just one. Will that do? Teddy reluctantly reckoned it would. And that will still be $50! But someday we’re agonna be millionaires and give each of our friends the Corvette, we’re sho’ ’nuff agonna. (Whether they want it or not.) (It’s the thought that counts, you know.)
(Think 'Matchbox'.)
I’ve now typed the program order, and have it ready to put on the printed programs the ushers will pass out. It was the easiest job of it I ever had, doing it on computer--it had been hard, trying to get everything lined up just right on my old Word Processor.
Saturday afternoon, I sat down to eat my faithful old sourdough muffin--complete with about four inches of peanut butter and honey stirred together on top. I poured some milk into my glass…ran out of milk…pulled the tab off a new jug of milk…asked Larry to pour it for me. He picked up the glass and proceeded to start pouring it back into the jug.
“Doesn’t look like it’s going to fit,” he remarked, still pouring.
“Quit it, quit it!!” I shrieked, grabbing at it.
He put it down. He picked up the jug. “Oh, did you mean you wanted me to pour more milk into your glass?” he asked innocently. He started pouring. He kept pouring. The glass overflowed. He put the jug down. He leaned over and peered into the glass. “That glass isn’t deep enough,” he informed me.
After Victoria’s nap, I was putting her tights back on her. She gave them a good look. “Those are almost too little for me,” she said. She looked at the foot, stained a bit from her brown leather shoes. “And they’re almost too icky, too,” she said, “Almost.”
Saturday night, Larry and I went shopping at Wal-Mart. I think (I hope) I now have all the Christmas presents I need.
Okay, now, quick! Catch the next flight to Columbus; you'll arrive just in time for dinner! It's potato/vegetable soup, flavored similar to chili.....and you'd better believe it's scrumptious. Why, even the kids who don't like vegetables like this soup. In the refrigerator is the lettuce salad and the jello/fruit salad (two huge bowls of each), and in the oven---in the oven!--is a roaster full of deer steak.
And, just to make it taste even better, it's snowing again! Lots of great big snowflakes coming down fast.....it's really pretty.
I am staying home with Hester, who has a bad cold, which is why I am writing this on a Sunday morning. Victoria was sound asleep, so we left her in bed, too. I got her up and dressed her and curled her hair just before Sunday School was over, and in between Sunday School and church, Larry came and got her and took her back to church with him. When she awoke and realized everyone (except Hester) had gone off to church without her, she was sad: "Oh, dear, dear. They made me late!"
But when I told her that, if we hurried, she could go to church, she scampered out to the kitchen and shinnied into her high chair as fast as her little legs could go. "I climbed in my chair all by myself!" she told me. "That's because I'm really getting older! I'm really getting taller, and I'm really getting bigger, too!" she said, "I'm almost clear, clear to the ceiling!"
I laughed, and so she laughed too, wrinkling her nose and covering her mouth with her hand. She's so silly and dear. Now, I'd better skedaddle. The soup needs to be stirred...the table needs to be set... As Teddy used to say, "Huey! Huey!"
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