Sunday, January 09, 2000 - Hash Ibbybubby Sheen By Teesh?

One day last week, the kids had a first-rate snowball fight, a much-awaited event planned and premeditated for months, but not executed, on account of the fact that --- there was no snow. Afterward, they came in the house, took off their shoes, and padded around in wet socks, making a dreadful smeared mess of the wood floor. Caleb, suddenly noticing the floor, said, “Oh, look! What in the world is all over the floor??!! Is it toejam??”


I got out broom and mop, and swept and mopped the floor.

Last Sunday, Loren still couldn’t talk because of laryngitis, so other people preached.

As I write, Victoria is on her way to Wal-Mart (in her imagination) to get some ‘groshies’. Among the things on her list are bread, blueberry jelly (she loves blueberries), milk, dog food, cat food, ‘cat box’ (she means, ‘cat litter’), and dryer sheets. Known only to Victoria are the reasons for this motley assortment.

Tuesday, Hester went to Jr. Fire Patrol, and Joseph went, too. He’s her self-appointed bodyguard, I guess. Actually, I just think he enjoys going.

Nowadays, when Victoria wants somebody to get her from her bed after she wakes up, she calls, “Yoohoooo!!!!”, and it gets progressively louder until I open her door. Then, grinning just a bit sheepishly, she says in her usual low-pitched voice, “Hi.” And then, after telling her she could get up, she explained, “I needed somebody to get me up really bad.”

I’ve made it all the way to Chapter 10 in my ‘book’ now, and am a third of the way through that chapter. Soon I shall have to quit again and do some sewing for Easter…and then for a certain June 25^th wedding! And that will be a big job. The thing that really makes my hair stand straight up on end is thinking about redoing Hannah’s dress. What if I demolish it? Yike!

Although Victoria has been ‘trained’ for a year now, she still wears diapers to bed. This is probably necessary because she sleeps about eleven hours each night. I don’t worry much about such things; what I worry about is whether or not I have a sweet, happy child who knows she is loved dearly. One night when I was putting a diaper on her, I said, “Goodness. These things are just about done for…there are huge holes in every single one!”

And she replied, “Oh! Do you have to glue it?”

Bobby and Hannah got their new washer and dryer Wednesday---but the man who delivered them dented the washer badly, so Hannah, although she felt rather sorry for the poor man, didn’t accept it. He was completely agreeable, and ordered another, which came Friday. My mother on Saturday gave Hannah money for a new stove. Hannah protested that that was unnecessary, because they were planning to use our old one, which was in perfectly fine working order, except for one element that needed to be replaced.

But Mama insisted, and my mother has a way of winning all those sorts of arguments. So Bobby and Hannah will soon be shopping for a stove. Bobby is making noises about getting Hannah a dishwasher, too. She keeps telling him she doesn’t need one; he tells her just as often that he’s going to get one. We shall see who wins that dispute.

Larry has been having toothaches again, and doesn’t feel well. Wednesday, he came home after work at Quail Run, and slept and slept; he didn’t go to his shop at all--a rarity, for him. He has made an appointment to see a specialist on the 20^th of January. We are all fairly certain that he will be told that he must have his teeth removed. While it sounds like a horrible nightmare to me, and makes me shiver just thinking about it, he invariably makes a big joke out of it. He told the children, “I’ll soon be saying, every morning, (and here he pulls his lips in all funny as if he has no teeth) ‘hash ibbybubby sheen by teesh?’” (That’s, ‘has anybody seen my teeth’, just in case you can’t decipher it.)

The older ones, having been to the dentist and having discovered that, most of the time, it is not at all nice, shudder to think of it.

Joseph, it seems, has inherited his father’s inclination for tooth troubles. He was complaining last week about a toothache, but we thought it was probably hurting because of another molar on its way in. But then I noticed an infected sore at the side of his mouth, and I thought, Uh, oh. I think I know what that means.

I took a good look, and sure enough, there was a cavity in a back molar. I made an appointment at the dentist’s office. Just as I was afraid, it was an abscessed tooth. Also, he had a couple of other cavities. Our dentist would have done a root canal on the tooth, but it hasn’t yet grown clear in. So he cleaned it out and put medicine in it. The root canal will have to wait for a couple of years.

Church was canceled Wednesday evening, because so many people were sick. Sixty-nine people were gone from church last Sunday morning. As far as I know, that’s the most that have ever been missing. Today fifty were gone, and it still makes the sanctuary look half empty.

Just after midnight Wednesday night, my mother called. She hadn’t been feeling well, but, of course, as she always says, she was feeling ‘much better now’. But she wondered if I had a key for her house, so I think she was a bit worried that something might happen to her. We found the key, and I went over to make sure it was the right one, to lock her door for her, to give her an aspirin, and so forth. She thought her troubles could’ve been from some chili she ate, but then again, perhaps she’d pulled a muscle a few days earlier. We didn’t know exactly what the trouble was, and we hoped it wasn’t her heart, or a stroke. As she insisted she was getting better, I came back home.

I always think I can tell by looking at my children's eyes whether or not they have a fever. Of course, the smell of their breath is a dead giveaway.

One morning I thought perhaps Victoria had a fever, so I said, "Let me smell your breath," whereupon she said "HAAA" right in my face.

After I got back up again, I said, "Okay, you're fine," and she beamed and said, "Didn't it smell good?"

We had a rip-roaring fire in our fireplace nearly every day last week. It’s been cold! Thursday we had Jr. Choir for the first time since the week before Thanksgiving. Everyone had lots of fun, even though quite a few children were gone. We sang many of the children’s favorite songs, and we played a lively Bible quiz game.

Friday morning Mama got so sick, and was in so much pain on the left side of her lower ribs, that she pressed her LifeLine button a little after five. The hospital, upon receiving the call, first calls her. There is a speaker phone box on an end table in her living room, and it is sensitive enough to detect a person’s voice even if they are in a bedroom at the other end of the house. Anyway, after she told them she was sick, they called me--both of our numbers--but I was dead to the world and didn’t hear a thing. However, the cat awoke Hannah, who then heard the phone, and came and awoke me. As I was jerking on my clothes, Lura Kay came to our door, wanting the key to Mama’s house--they weren’t sure where theirs was. As is their procedure, the hospital had called Lura Kay immediately after dialing my numbers.

We gave her the key, and, shortly thereafter, I joined her at my mother’s house. John and Lura Kay were there; Larry came soon. We debated on whether or not to call an ambulance, but Mama finally decided that she would be okay, and we left her, about a quarter after six, to sleep. We made sure that somebody was there to help her the rest of the day, after she awoke. Dorcas stayed with Mama Friday night. She wasn’t feeling very good again, and when she took a nitroglycerin, it made her head hurt.

I think perhaps she is getting over whatever it was; I sure hope so. A person never feels quite old enough to lose their mother, do they? (Or their father, for that matter.) Mama is 82 years old.

Hannah went to her house Friday morning to let in the people from the appliance store who were delivering her new washing machine--without a dent, this time. When she arrived home again, she was trying to tell me what they had told her as to why an electrician would need to put a different outlet in for the dryer.

“It’s something about too many amps…” she started, petering out at the end. She shrugged. “I can’t talk in that language.”

Yesterday Victoria was looking through my hymnbook, picking out songs and asking Hannah, “What’s this song?” So Hannah would tell her the title, whereupon she would promptly launch into song, using only those words that Hannah had said, and getting higher and higher each time she repeated it in a sing-songy little chant. As soon as she wound up too high to keep singing, she turned to another page and started over.

Victoria is pleased as punch, because she is able to find Jesus Loves Me in just about any of our hymnbooks. None of us knows how she does it, for she pays no attention to the page numbers; she only looks at the titles. Once she came upon the song Victory in Jesus, and she exclaimed in thrilled excitement, “Oh, look! It’s a song just for me!”

“How could you tell what it said?” I asked her.

She gazed up at me for a moment, clearly puzzled as to how to answer such a query. “Because I’m almost three,” she finally replied.

Saturday, I did two months worth of bookwork. Next month, I will also have the year-end bookwork to do.

Kitty has now learned to keep her claws sheathed when playing with us; we very rarely feel the slightest hint of a talon. Today, after a little jaunt outside, she came back in the house via Teddy’s bedroom window. She must’ve had quite a long jump from the window to the nearest piece of furniture, but she seemed none the worse for her acrobatics.

Saturday night, I went to church to practice with the Sr. Choir--the Big Stage Kids, according to my friend’s little boy. We were singing Dare to Stand Like Joshua, a favorite of mine, and we planned to sing it for church Sunday morning.

At 7:30 Sunday morning, Susan, my niece, called from Columbus’ emergency room. Her baby, Danica, who’s had a cold, was having trouble breathing; Susan thought she had stopped breathing once, and they called the ambulance. The baby’s oxygen level was very low, so they gave her oxygen, which brought it up. After getting her stabilized, they life-flighted her to Omaha, where they are better able to care for babies with breathing troubles. By late afternoon, they had turned the respirator down, and the baby's oxygen levels were staying up where they belonged, so we are all hopeful she is recovering, and will continue to do so.

Anyway, I wound up playing the piano instead of singing in the choir.

Sunday afternoon, Larry made his specialty--those scrumptious pancakes. We took one to Mama, who promptly called back to tell him that they really were scrumptious.

Hey! The mail just arrived---and I’ve got pictures!