However, what the teacher didn’t know, was… doing outlines, cards, and summaries first, before writing the paper, using all those as props, didn’t suit my style at all. I prefer to just start writing, putting down whatever enters my head, using references at whim, taking off on tangents whenever I feel like it…sort of the way I write letters, eh? So you know what I did? I wrote the entire 20-page composition first, doing the footnotes as I went, then typed up all the cards, outlines, summaries, and so forth, afterwards. Worked great; sho’ ’nuff did. The only drawback was that the bibliography cards were due first, after that the note cards, then the outline, and then the summary. The cards were due two and three weeks, respectively, after the assignment was given--and we still had our daily assignments! The outline and the summary were expected consecutively, a week apart. The thesis wasn’t due until the end of the semester…meaning, we had about a month and a half to get it done.
But I got it done in one and a half weeks. I didn’t tell anyone, however, because I didn’t want to arouse suspicions. So, I handed in my bibliography cards three day ahead of time, the note cards a couple of days after that. I handed in the outline two days later, and the summary a couple of days after that. Then I waited a whole week (with difficulty; I never was a patient person) before I gave the teacher my essay. The look on his face was really too, too funny…he told me no one had ever turned in their dissertation that fast. I smiled innocently.
Some of the teachers at our school require this sort of thesis on some subjects; but since each teacher has several different classes, their time is severely limited. So we have many volunteers reading and checking. Hannah is going to teach the reading class for the sixth grade this year.
My brother has an underground hot wire all around his property to keep his big dog, Bullet, corralled. He’s a small moose. (The dog, that is; not the brother.) (Bullet is Aleutia’s son, as you may recall; but she refuses to take responsibility for the way he turned out.) Anyway, they keep the wire turned up as high as it will go, and it still doesn’t always keep him in. He has figured out where the current is weakest (either there is more earth over the cable, or it is farther from the electrical source), and, every now and then, if the mood strikes him, he gathers himself together, squints his eyes all up tight, and lopes and bounds headlong over that wire to the field on the other side. If Loren or Janice call him to come back, he then paces back and forth on the other side, looking worriedly across the lawn, whining, as if he can’t possibly cross that cable.
We went shopping at Wal-Mart so often this week, it’s a wonder they have any merchandise left at all. Monday I got myself some sandals, since my old ones were falling apart at the hinges, and various other necessary clothes, since I was beginning to rattle when I walked from all the safety pins holding me together. We also bought school supplies for Hester, Lydia, and Caleb, who are in a state of High Excitement because school starts Tuesday. Dorcas, Teddy, and Joseph started last Monday, because the older children are required by law to have more hours of school than the younger ones.
While we were at Wal-Mart, Larry and Teddy went to Keith’s house to help him with his well. Sunday afternoon he asked his neighbor if he could hook up his garden hose to the neighbor’s house, because Keith and Esther didn’t have any water at all, unless it was a small, brown trickle. Sunday morning Keith had to wash his hair in distilled water, warmed on the stove. The neighbor was glad to help them out.
After a discouraging struggle with the hand-held auger, they had succeeded in digging only three more feet. They had to do everything by hand since they were digging the well in the basement. Teddy came home earlier, in order to go to bed; but Larry didn’t get home until 1:00 a.m. His arms were tired from hauling bucket after bucket of sand and mud out of that well, which was now seventeen feet deep. Keith wanted it twenty-three feet deep, in case the water table should fall.
Larry left Tuesday morning at 9:00 to go to Denver and Caspar. He took two vehicles to Lincoln Auto of Denver, picked up our four-wheeler trailer and a car, and then headed to Caspar, Wyoming, to get another car. One of the vehicles he took to Lincoln Auto was in Burlington, Colorado, just over the Nebraska border, at the Ford dealership. They knew he was coming, but when he got there, guess what? They’d loaned that very car--and it wasn’t theirs any more, since Lincoln Auto had already paid for it--to a farmer whose car they were repairing. Furthermore, the man lived 35 miles out of town.
So, while Larry cooled his heals, a couple of the workers went and retrieved said vehicle. Oh, well; not too dreadful of a hardship; there was a Subway deli just down the street a ways, and he had not yet had dinner. Larry called from Cheyenne that night; he’d checked into a motel, and planned to arrive in Caspar about the time Klode’s Auto Auction opened in the morning.
He called Wednesday afternoon from Chadron, Nebraska, shortly after my mother informed me that there was a tornado near Scottsbluff.
“So I know Larry will be in that vicinity!” she said.
haha It does seem to work that way, doesn’t it? Although Chadron is nearly 100 miles north of Scottsbluff, he had come through some bad weather, with wind and rain and nasty-looking clouds off to the south. In Caspar, he’d learned that they had a 1999 Dodge Intrepid and a Honda Gold Wing motorcycle that belonged to someone in Yankton, South Dakota. He called the man, and made arrangements to deliver the car and motorcycle to him that night. That would pay another $350, so he was pleased.
In order to squeeze all these vehicles on the slant trailer, Larry placed one of his ramps sideways between the Intrepid and the next vehicle, a Suburban. The man who was helping him then set the Honda onto the ramp, using Klode’s large loader. The Intrepid’s rear wheels wound up right on the very edge of the trailer. Larry tied it down firmly. He uses steel-belted straps, chains, and the steel cable from his winch.
How’s that for a full load?--three vehicles, including a large Suburban, a big motorcycle, and a four-wheeler trailer. That slant trailer was chock-full. And the route from Caspar to Yankton is often on narrow, winding roads, over hill and dale.
He got to Yankton at midnight. It took him a couple of hours to unload. He called me again, at two a.m., to let me know he was on the way home. He told me he’d had a tough time unloading the motorcycle, wedged as it was between those two vehicles.
The man for whom he’d hauled the car and bike was nowhere to be found, so he’d done it by himself. He couldn’t back the Intrepid off the trailer, because one of the ramps was in use. So he had to get the motorcycle off first.
He fastened his other ramp in place at the side of the slant trailer, and set about trying to take that big bike down the incline. However, the cowling kept catching, making the job difficult, and Larry wound up getting rather scratched up.
That’s what he told me. That’s all he told me.
He got home at four a.m., dog-tired. I did think the dreadful bruise and scratch on his side was worse than he’d let on, but Larry never does make a full complaint of injuries or illness.
However, the following evening, I walked in on him telling my brother the real story. This is what happened:
He fastened the ramp onto the side of the slant trailer--a difficulty, because it is made to attach with a bolt, which slides through a hole on the ramp and then into a hole on the trailer. But since he couldn’t do that, he fastened it on somehow with one of his heavy-duty straps. Then he tried to roll the motorcycle off the trailer and down the ramp.
It wouldn’t go.
The cowling, as I said, was hanging up on the edge of the trailer. So, Larry started the motorcycle, rocked it back and forth a bit, and then gave it the gas. This lifted it enough that it came unstuck, and forward it went.
However, all that rocking had shaken the strap loose that was holding the ramp. It was too dark for Larry to see this, but just as the front tire of the motorcycle hit the ramp…CRASH!--down went the ramp onto the ground. And it was too late to stop--that 900-pound motorcycle was on its way down, from five feet up, with Larry its unwilling rider.
He immediately let up on the throttle, knowing that if the motorcycle should land on the curved ramp with any speed at all, it would make matters all the worse. He held on until the front wheel hit the ground, which flipped the bike hard to one side. Larry fell off, started scrambling away, and then felt that big motorcycle coming down on top of him. He kicked it away with all his might and main, which sent it tumbling over onto its other side. But it had already hit him on the side and the back of the head. He also hurt his ankle and scraped his arm. He looks mighty similar to a rainbow nowadays, he sho’ ’nuff does. And he’s stiff and sore, too.
I threatened to drop a big motorcycle on him, if he ever tries such a stunt again. Or if he ever pulls such a stunt and then neglects to tell me, the rogue.
My mother hurt her back this week cleaning out her distiller, carrying gallon jugs of water, of all things. I didn’t find out about it until she called one evening and asked Joseph to come put the cover over her bird for her. The cage is too high for her to do it easily, but she insists on doing it anyway--unless she has hurt herself. You’d think she and Larry were directly related, wouldn’t you?
Tuesday night we went to Mama’s house to watch a video. Afterwards, I proofread my father’s sermon notes one last time; I think they are now ready for final printing.
Wednesday afternoon I cut Victoria’s hair. It looks so cute!--and now she looks more like I used to than ever. Hmmm…that didn’t come out quite right, did it? Well, what I meant was, she looks oodles cuter than I ever did. There; did that sound humbler? She kept trotting into my room to look in the mirror, and we’d find her standing there grinning at herself, evidently entirely pleased with her new appearance.
Monday afternoon, Caleb started having another of those asthmatic episodes. We gave him the medicine the doctor had prescribed the last time this happened, and it helped, but by Wednesday, I decided we needed a real, honest-to-goodness checkup. We managed to get one for the next afternoon.
Keith and Esther came to visit after church. The siblings all greet them so exuberantly the instant they step in the door, regardless of whether or not it’s been any length of time at all since they were here last, that I can’t imagine they’ll get tired of coming, any time soon.
Teddy rushed off to the store and bought ice cream and root beer…so we had floats. In the middle of all the fun, I checked my email. Among the items I received was a post from my Uncle Howard, who lives in Rogers, Arkansas. He types using his little finger, so his posts are never long. This time it was even shorter than usual--only one line: “Were plesently surprised with company this evening and nite, but they were in a hurry to get to Little Rock and wouldn’t stay. Howard”
We scratched our heads diligently over that, and came up with zero, until I started typing my reply. I was just writing, “Who was it? Who was it?”--when it dawned on me: it was my very own brother and sister-in-law, en route to Little Rock with my very own poems and children’s stories! They had gone to show them to a publisher. A friend of mine is now doing the illustrations for the children’s book series.
Thursday found us at the doctor’s office in David City. Hannah, Hester, Lydia, and Victoria headed across the street to the park, while Caleb and I went into the clinic. Caleb either really truly has asthma, or else very bad allergies. Sometimes it's a bit difficult to tell the difference between a bad allergic reaction to something-or-other, and an asthma episode. It is definite that he has allergies. He most likely has asthma, too; time will tell.
The doctor gave us a Vanceril inhaler with a chimney-type 'spacer' of some sort into which the medicine is squirted, then inhaled. It works, and Caleb can get it inhaled fine and dandy. We had tried giving him a puff with Hannah’s inhaler, but all the medicine just went shooting straight out his ears, I think. When he breathes into the spacer, it inflates; when he breathes the stuff back out, it deflates, twisting into a spiral as it goes, making a funny whistling noise.
So he calls it his 'party whistle'. He's such a cheery little boy, never complaining, always happy. Dear me, dear me, I don't WANT him to have asthma! Hannah and Teddy having asthma were ENOUGH.
The doctor also gave Caleb an antihistamine, hoping that it won't trigger an asthma attack (antihistamines trigger asthma attacks with Hannah, something awful, while Teddy can usually take them without trouble), but rather that it will tame down the allergic reactions and keep the asthma attacks from occurring.
Everyone is different; it's hard to tell ahead of time just how a person will react. Medicine is still somewhat an art of trial and error. Anyway, Caleb seems to be on the mend, now.
We played ‘Guess the Song’ in Jr. Choir that evening, which the children always enjoy: two children stand up together, I start playing a song, and whoever says its title first is allowed to stay standing; the other child must sit down. Then the next child in the row rises, and I start another hymn. The children always enjoy the game. After that, we had ‘choices’; this is when the children choose the songs we sing. That day I somehow ran out of time to practice the piano until Victoria was already in bed, so it was a good thing I played for an hour at Jr. Choir!
One night Hannah downloaded lots of pretty old hymns, piano playing, from a Web site we found. So now we have a full file of hymns right on our computer. We can even send them along with our emails.
Teddy discovered one evening that Wal-Mart was having a sale on shirts--they were only $3.00 each. Teddy had already bought himself three, and that was all there were in his size, and the other sizes were going fast, too. So we hurried off to Wal-Mart, where we got two shirts for Joseph and one for Caleb. And that was all they had in those sizes. I noticed that there was a sale in the purse department, and, since the purse I carry to church (which is mostly full of small board books, a little New Testament, a small doll bottle, and a notebook and pencil--all for Victoria) looked sort of like something the cats might’ve drug in, I scampered right over to take a look. Imagine: I found an off-white patchwork leather purse, regularly $20, for only $7!
When we got home from Wal-Mart, we learned that Loren and Janice, who were home from Little Rock, had come looking for me. Thinking I was at Keith and Esther’s house, where Larry was working on his well, they’d gone there. So I went there, too. Poor Esther, we all converged on her house without warning! But she is always pleasant and hospitable, notwithstanding. Their puppy, Duke, is getting to be a big dog. He is delighted when we visit. He invariably finds himself banned from the house some time after we arrive, by getting himself into an Attitude of Intense Rowdiness.
Loren showed me the literature he’d gotten from the man who owns the publishing company in Little Rock. It isn’t cheap to self-publish. We are hoping that, as soon as the illustrations are done, the publisher will be so delighted he will pay us, right then, pronto. Maybe, maybe.
Larry and Keith finally got the new pump running in the new well, and it actually pumps water. Lots of water. Lots of pressure. Keith and Esther are pleased and delighted and relieved. Now they will have enough pressure for the new underground sprinkler system Keith recently installed.
Our friends’ gardens are beginning to mature, and we are in receipt of the benefits. One lady gave us many bags of green beans, tomatoes, and squash. Another one gave us green beans, peppers, and tomatoes. Yummy! Nothing is as good as fresh-picked tomatoes; they make the grocery store variety taste like Styrofoam, by comparison. I cooked the green beans one lady gave us, slightly concerned about the size of them; they were huge. I mean, they were enormous. Furthermore, that lady is known for letting her produce grow…and grow…and grow… apparently she goes by the maxim, the bigger the better. But sometimes tree bark would be more palatable.
I was right to be skeptical: I might as well have cut down Jack’s beanstalk, thrown out the beans, and chopped up and cooked the stalk. Bleah. Neither chewable nor tasty. Anyway, the dear lady meant well; she is always a generous, kindhearted soul. Fortunately, we thanked her properly before we tried to eat it.
Friday night Larry finished painting the wicker chair, and it looks very pretty in its new, all-white frontage; one would never guess the sad figure it once cut. I will reupholster the cushion tomorrow or Wednesday, and then perhaps on Thursday I will take Dorcas’ senior pictures, using the chair for one of our props.
Once again, the next day, we made a trip to Wal-Mart, this time for a battery for Victoria’s Winnie-the-Pooh watch. She walked all the way from the jewelry department to Wal-Mart’s front door smiling, with her arm up by her ear, so that she could better hear the watch playing the theme song from Winnie-the-Pooh. So that trip was well worth it.
I spent all that day doing bookwork. I am now relegated back to the kitchen table with my ledger and adding machine, since my roll-top desk is full of computer, CD box, printer, speakers, keyboard, e-tower, scanner, and telephone. And the other computer desk is full of the other computer, and all of its components. Bother.
Saturday I copied music from a CD for the song Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken, which I wanted the Wright’s quartet to practice that evening. In the end, they wound up singing a song entitled To Glorify Thee for the morning service. We often like to save a new song for a couple of weeks or so, practicing it often, until it’s old hat, before subjecting the audience to our foibles and flaws. Listen to the words of the first verse and chorus:
O may my life be to Thy praise, O Father,
In all I do, may Thou be magnified;
Thou chosest me before the world’s foundation,
Thine own to be, that Thou be glorified.
To glorify Thee, this is my plea;
Work out Thy purpose, Thy plan for me;
A yielded vessel, Thine own to be,
Thy praise and glory, to live for Thee.
At the evening service, our girls’ octet, in which Hannah sings alto, sang You Cannot Hide From God. Following are verses one and two:
You cannot hide from God, though mountains cover you;
His eye our secret thoughts beholds;
His mercies all our lives enfold; He knows our purposes untold;
You cannot hide from God.
You cannot hide from God, though quietly you go;
He notes your footsteps ere they fall;
He hears your silent heartful call; His knowledge rules high over all;
You cannot hide from God.
We always enjoy listening to these young ladies sing; they do it with spirit and talent.
While I was curling little girls’ hair Saturday night, Victoria was combing mine. She sneezed.
“No sneezing!” I announced abruptly.
She immediately combed my hair backwards, from neck to forehead, up and over the top of my head, then leaned over my shoulder and looked into my face, smiling, to see how I liked that. I frowned ferociously. She giggled. Funny how such a small child can tell if you mean business or not.
Keith and Esther stopped by on their way back from Meskethine Lake near Stanton, Nebraska, a town about 60 miles north of Columbus. [I’m not sure how to spell the name of that lake; the State Department’s sign says Meskethine; the carved wooden sign over the entrance says Maskathine; and the sign in town giving directions to the lake reads Muskatine. Hmmm…] They'd caught plenty of fish…but Keith has never cleaned a fish in his livelong life. Larry showed Keith how, entirely finishing one for him. Keith headed for home, all prepared to complete the duty on his own. We soon received a phone call: what in the world should he do with the ones that were still alive?!
Teddy, who was sitting close enough to the phone to hear the question Keith asked his father, replied, “You put them in a bucket of water, set it in the back yard, leave it sit for a year or more, and then you take the lid off and look inside.”
haha! He said that, because that’s what Larry once did with some fish we caught. (Accidentally, to be sure.) (I think.) I took the phone from Larry to tell Keith what Teddy had said.
Keith howled, “NO! I’M the one who found those awful fish, the next year!” haha
The next morning after church, Larry asked him if he’d gotten his fish all cleaned. Keith looked sheepish. “Well, uh, … er … I, that is…”
Esther interrupted. “I cleaned the fish. Keith couldn’t stomach it.” :-D
Sunday morning we discovered that another expedition to Wal-Mart was in order, as soon as possible: Lydia’s shoes were much too small. So, after our French-toast feast just after noon {Larry makes spectacular French toast} we headed for Wal-Mart. There were only two decent (what do you think I mean by ‘decent’?) pairs in her size, one of which was almost too small--and then we noticed the other pair: they were on sale for only two dollars!
It was a beautiful sunny afternoon, with the temperature just exactly right, for once. That’s a sure sign fall is coming. We decided to go for a drive to Platte Center, stopping at the Wilkinson Wetlands on the way. The ducks and geese aren’t returning in any numbers yet, but we did see a few white egrets, green-winged teals, sandpipers, and a great blue heron.
if you could tell me any info about the author of the song O may my life be to Thy praise o Father it would be greatly appreciated. thank you so much, steve williams at williamss@beloit.edu
ReplyDelete