Sunday, May 16, 1999 - Viruses, Birds, Birdbrains, and Stupid Idiots

This week, Caleb had quite a bout with some sort of a virus, and wound up missing every day of school since Monday. Monday evening he was having such a dreadful time breathing, he sounded as if he had asthma, just like Hester did last Thanksgiving. Lydia wasn’t doing so well, either; but she only missed school Tuesday. We got some medicine for Caleb, and he gradually got better. We tried giving him a puff of Hannah’s inhaler, but I think most of it shot out his ears, or something. Five-year-olds aren’t usually too good at using inhalers; they just automatically don’t suck their breath in when something is sprayed into their mouths. He might’ve quit wheezing sooner, had he just slowed down a bit! Throughout the week, I often ordered him to “go get on the couch, and stay there,” and then piled books and color books and matchbox cars all around him. Poor little guy; that’s not much fun, to be halted so abruptly when you’re used to going at everything with all your might and main!

Monday night, when I was so worried about him, Caleb said, “It’s all right, Mama; I think I’ll be just fine, because I was fine yesterday!”

Daddy’s sermon notes are progressing nicely; I’ve worked my way through Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, I and II Thessalonians, I and II Timothy, and Titus. I’m just ready to start on Hebrews, and I’m a little more than two-thirds of the way through this notebook.

Each time I complete a book of the Bible, I send it via an email attachment to several friends of mine who have email service. They are eagerly awaiting the next installment, and their anticipation is partly what keeps me going at it tooth and nail, hammer and tongs.

One evening, after a full day of typing on Galatians, I ‘minimized’ my document and went off to wash one of the littles’ hair. While I was away, somebody tried ‘saving’ my document for me, in order so they could play a dumb, stupid motorcycle race game, and they only managed to save what I’d typed the day before. All the pages I’d done that day went to Uranus. Or Venus, or somewhere. There were only seven pages of typing, but that came from over twenty pages of Daddy’s notes, and I’d done a lot of studying and hunting and searching to find all the right references, and such like.
You should’ve heard me: “~!@#$%^@*+*@#^%$#@!~!!!” Something like that.

Well, maybe you shouldn’t’ve heard me. No, no; I didn’t say anything bad; I just said it loudly.

One night, the sermon notes were put on hold while I typed a report on glaciers for Joseph’s science class. I came to a word I thought couldn’t possibly be right: bergschrund. Bergschrund. I scratched my head, and wondered if I was misreading Joseph’s handwriting, or if he’d copied something wrong. All the encyclopedias were back at the school library, way off across the street..... I picked up a CD-ROM that contains the entire 1998 Encarta Encyclopedia on it, including many pictures, animations, and videos, along with an unabridged Webster’s dictionary, and looked up ‘glaciers’. I found page after page of information, and pictures from all over the world.

And a bergschrund. Sure enough, Joseph was right; a bergschrund is that half-circle-shaped crevasse at the base of the glacier--that is, between the glacier and the cliff wall where they abut, and which is formed when the glacier begins its slow descent to lower altitude as it melts. Imagine: a little circle of plastic as big as your hand, containing more than a large set of encyclopedias could ever hold.

As I sit here at my computer, I have windows on both sides, and I’ve been watching birds of all sorts eating at my feeders, and building nests nearby. I can see a pair of crows in the enormous Douglas fir tree by the school; they’ve built a very large nest almost at the top, and they spend the entire day, from sunup to sundown, feeding their babies. Every time they land, we can hear those babies squalling in loud, raucous disharmony. What a ruckus!

The chickadees really are staying year around, this year; and, to my surprise, a pair of chipping sparrows, who usually head on north into Canada, are building a nest in our little blue spruce in our front yard. Thursday there was a Baltimore oriole sipping nectar from the blossoms on our buckeye tree; and then I noticed a gray bird, about the size of a robin, but with a longer tail, with a black-capped head and rusty-red rump, hopping about in our back yard, pecking up seed the smaller birds had spilt. It was a gray catbird! It’s been years and years since I’ve seen one. They make a funny mewling cry that sounds remarkably like a cat, and sometimes exactly like a kitten.

Larry spent several days working on the clutch on his pickup, because he needed to drive it (meaning, the pickup, not the clutch) to Indiana the latter part of this week to get an extended-cab pickup and two twenty-foot cargo trailers. When he tried to remove the clutch disk, it wouldn’t come out, because it had welded itself to the bearing housing on the transmission. So he had to use his air chisel to get it apart, and he had to replace the bearing housing, since it was totally beyond repair. This all occurred because Larry, in a misguided attempt to improve things, had put a bigger clutch disk in it. Just as soon as he cranked the engine to start it, the disk was pushed into the bearing housing, and what with the great torque and heat combined, everything went to wreck and ruin.

Anyway, he got it all fixed back up again (by putting the old clutch disk back in), and the trip to Indiana and back again (he left Thursday at midnight) went off swimmingly, except for one incident where he was working underneath his pickup, prying away at something (per normalit`e), when his wrench slipped suddenly and he whacked his hand on the pickup’s frame, making a rather nasty cut on the back of his hand, and filling it with grease and grime in the process. Having neither soap nor water nor Band-Aids, he scrubbed it out good and proper with some wet cloths that are especially for removing grease. (Oooo, shiver.) If that wouldn’t happened to me, by today my arm would be gangrenous, and early tomorrow morning the doctor would be removing it at the elbow. But today that cut is already healing nicely.

Saturday afternoon, Larry called to tell me he’d just finished loading his trailer in Elkhart, Indiana, and was heading for home. As usual, he’d underestimated the size of the two cargo trailers and one big pickup he was retrieving, while at the same time overestimating the size of his slant trailer. So he wound up chaining his steel ramps up at the top of his trailer and then extending the pickup he’s hauling, back end first, up and over his cab. The last cargo trailer stuck out so far behind, he had to wire it up so he could use its taillights, instead of the lights on his slant trailer.

He had over 700 miles to go to get home, and there was that big extended-cab pickup, bouncing along over his head. Well, almost. Upon hearing this, we all took a few minutes to ask the Lord to send him an extra guardian angel for the return journey. Well, actually, we were a bit more respectful than that; we just prayed that the Lord would keep him safe, please. He did, and we were not forgetful to thank Him.

Larry arrived home at 5:00 a.m. this morning, showered and tumbled into bed, then got himself back up again at 8:30 and went to church. Thank goodness for Sunday afternoon naps!

One afternoon we were coming home from Walgreens, where we’d gone to get a prescription for Caleb. On the way home, I got hot and removed my sweater. Caleb picked it up and buried his nose in it; he likes to smell my perfume. This time, however, it smelt of Icy Hot all around the collar, since I’d earlier rubbed some on my neck. Caleb jerked his face back quickly.

“Wheeeew!” he exclaimed, “I shouldn’t’ve sniffed that so hard! It made the smell come out really fast!”

That evening, Hannah was making banana bread, a new scrumptious recipe with lemon juice and mashed bananas (smashed bananas, according to the brothers) and powdered sugar mixed together for the frosting. Caleb stood watching her, looking peaked and forlorn, and groggy from the Ventolin syrup and Robitussin he was taking. He looked at the little hand-held electric mixer she’d gotten out of the cupboard, then peered into the bowl.

“Hannah,” he asked, “are you going to use that little ready-mix.....” he trailed off slowly, then, trying to collect his thoughts, continued, “...truck?” without seeming to realize what he’d said.

Hannah, of course, couldn’t keep from snickering, even though she had oodles of sympathy for her poor little brother, and tried to answer him nicely. He looked up into her face, smiling because she was smiling, and puzzling over just what she thought was so funny.

Today we had Larry’s famous pancakes for breakfast. Larry seems to think they are frisbees. Sometimes when somebody at the other end of our very long table asks for another, weeeeeeoooooooosssssssshhhhhh! down the table it goes, skimming over glasses of milk, bottles of syrup, and butter dishes alike, to land, almost invariably, SSSSPPPPLAAAAAATT! right in said person’s plate. Of course, all the siblings tee-hee merrily over such happenings. And people have learnt to swipe up their syrup before requesting another pancake, because the SPLAT gets rather sloppy if the plate is full of syrup when it lands.

Larry once lobbed a big scoop of ice cream way off down the table into some kiddo’s bowl (who’d just complained that he hadn’t enough)--and it landed fine and dandy, too. Let me tell you, that child looked surprised. And everybody else burst into hilarity. Then there was the time he was prying away at impossibly hard-frozen ice cream, when suddenly the spoon went in, the ice cream came out, and flew wildly onto the stalactites of the ceiling, where it hung precariously for a few seconds before descending onto an amazed spectator.

Dorcas has been earning a bit of money doing some babysitting for my niece Susan’s little boy, Matthew. That is just her sort of a thing; she loves children, and they in return are terribly fond of her.

Hannah decorated a couple more hats this week, putting big tiger lilies and carnations all around the crowns, and large bows with many loops in the back--plum and white on the light lavender hat, blue and white on the light blue hat, both of which are an open-weave straw. She copied some hats we saw on a site on the Internet. Boy, oh boy, did we ever find the hats! We never saw so many hats in our lives. Some were enormously spectacular..... some were just enormous. But most of them were just the sort of thing I’d line my closet shelves with, if I had as much closet space as Princess Diana. If I had as much money as Princess Diana. Yes, I like hats.

This morning I wore the blue one to church, wondering if I looked like an old lady trying reclaim lost youth, or if I just looked like a funny old lady. With a flower pot on her head. Hmmm. Well, I liked it, so there.

Friday night, Lawrence and Norma brought us a dessert: crushed vanilla wafers (with butter, maybe) for the crust, then a layer of vanilla pudding with bananas, after that a layer of strawberry jello with bananas, and whipped cream on top. We also had a dessert from my mother--rhubarb sauce. I sent Dorcas to the grocery store for vanilla ice cream, and then didn’t we have a feast. MMmmmmmmmm!

Last night just about the time Larry called to tell me he was just coming through Des Moines, about 11:30 P.M., it started hailing here. Goodness! It sounded like we were in a war zone! Some of those hail stones were three inches in diameter. Our vehicles around Larry’s shop received some hail damage, but, luckily, my mother had been listening to the weather report, and called to tell us we could put Hannah’s car into her garage. We got it in with thirty minutes to spare. The hail demolished my bird bath, and broke off the biggest branch on the little rose bush Dorcas gave me for Mother’s Day. She felt quite badly about it, but I assured her that, with the roots still healthy and intact, the little bush would actually grow even sturdier and more vigorously without that branch. I did poke it back into the ground, on the off chance that it might sprout roots; but I’ve never had a plant do that yet, except for those hardy desert plants, ‘Hen and Chicks’, which Teddy calls ‘Chin and Hicks’ in order to amuse his younger siblings.

The hail awoke all the children but Hester and Lydia, and they came rushing up the stairs and peered out the front door in fascination. And then they discovered---cinnamon rolls. I’d just finished icing them. So, down the hatch went about five cinnamon rolls.

Joseph, trying to talk around a big gooey bite, said, “Boy, I’m glad that hail woke me up!”

This afternoon, before taking that much-needed nap, we drove around Lake Babcock. And there beside the water, we found two families of Canada geese, four parents with about a dozen goslings each. Oh, they were so cute! I took lots of pictures; I hope they weren’t blurry; it’s been a dark, overcast day, and I didn’t have my camera on a tripod, nor did I have fast film loaded, and I was using my 600mm lens. Sometimes it comes out okay, because the lens is a mirror lens, and it is short and wide, and lets in more light than the conventional kind. We’ll see.

Red-winged blackbirds clung to last year’s cattails, and wrens sang vivaciously from the fragrant lilac bushes.

Tonight I stayed home with Caleb; I think going to church this morning and then going for a ride this afternoon wore him all out again and made him cough. This morning I came home fifteen minutes early with Lydia, who started coughing and couldn’t seem to stop.

I’ll be glad for summer, when, not being in proximity with so many children, germs won’t be handed about so freely, and my children won’t have so many colds and viruses and such like.

Friday is the Spring Program, and everybody has been in high gear, diligently practicing songs and verses and poems. Hannah’s finger hasn’t recovered as quickly as we’d expected, and she is having a difficult time practicing her violin. But I think she’s determined to play, regardless of what her finger feels like.

Last night Keith and Esther came visiting, needing to borrow.... our hot water bottle. And an old baby blanket. What do you suppose you do with hot water bottles?? And old baby blankets???

You tuck them into lonely puppies’ beds, that’s what you do with them. Yes, they’ve gotten themselves a puppy. He’s a German Shepherd/retriever mix, and I’ll have you know, that’s one mighty cute puppy. He’s just eight weeks old.


P.S.: I just heard a story from Larry about his travels that I had to tell you about: He was driving through Chicago on I80, on an eight-lane interstate. The far right lane was designated for trucks. Bridges abounded. As usual, the truck lane was extraordinarily rough, full of potholes and canyons and ravines and gullies and aroyas. Larry decided he was a pickup.

So there he was, traveling along nicely, passing a few, being passed by a few, when he noticed, in his rear view mirror, that the ‘lady bear’ he had been hearing about on his CB (‘BC’, according to Keith when he was a small tot) was traveling directly behind him--and she was impersonating a Christmas tree, what with the pretty red and blue flashing lights. Uh, oh.

Since Larry was in the far left lane, and there are approximately 3,534,098 cars per square mile in Chicago, it took him some time to get over to the right, where he could pull over onto the shoulder. He finally got it accomplished--after speeding up to pass several in-the-way vehicles--on a bridge. (Yes, there was a shoulder there.)

And then the nice little lady cop made use of her P.A. system: “YOU STUPID IDIOT!! DON’T STOP ON THE BRIDGE; YOU’LL GET ME REAR-ENDED!!”

After momentarily considering backing up and pushing said lady (?) policeperson off the bridge and into the Chicago River, he pulled forward until he had cleared the bridge and given Ms. Bossy Policeperson room to park, too.

She walked to the right passenger window then, and said, “I’ve been following you for the last two miles!! Don’t you ever look in your rear view mirrors?!! And what do you think you are doing, driving in the left lane?”

Larry replied, “I didn’t know I was supposed to be in the right lane.”

She informed him, “With all that junk (he had two brand-new cargo trailers and a ’96 Dodge extended-cab one-ton dually) on that trailer, you are considered a truck, and should be in the right-hand lane.”

She sent Larry back to fix a broken tie-down strap (not any main tether holding everything together; those were still intact) while she wrote out a warning ticket. She told Larry that the trailer looked like it was swaying all over the place. That trailer doesn’t sway; it was no doubt bouncing, but it doesn’t sway. And since the trailer, with that cargo trailer sticking out behind, measured fifty-six feet, it probably did look a bit wiggly.

Shall we report her? Or is that normal in Chicago, to call people ‘Stupid Idiots’?