Victoria likes to pretend she is going to school. Evidently, the most important part of school is Show and Tell. So she spends a good deal of time marching around the house with a handled bag, looking for things to put in it to take to ‘school’ for ‘Show and Tell’.
One day, after playing this game a while, she came and told me, “There! I Show-and-Telled everybody!”
A rain lamp? Why, a rain lamp, my dear uninformed friend, is a combination of two separate entities, the first of which, as you might suppose, is “rain”; and the second of which, believe it or not, is “lamp”.
Now, ‘rain’ is a funny word that can be transposed (definition: ‘to invert the letters’) into the French word ‘nari’, which is quite nearly the same word as our ‘nary’, meaning ‘absolutely nothing’. That is, the word ‘nary’ does not mean absolutely nothing, because of course it does mean something, and that something is ‘absolutely nothing’.
‘Lamp’, on the other hand, according to Noah Q. Webster, whose middle initial stood for “Quirky”, and whose motto could be read on the bumper of his Mercedes: “I Know Words”, means ‘a source of knowledge, intelligence, wisdom, or spiritual strength’ (3rd preference).
Therefore, when you put these two words together, you come up with the definition, “absolutely no intelligence”, or, more simplistically, “dimwit”.
So now you see that we have given you a wonderfully disguised insult for those acquaintances to whom you would love to give a first-class, affrontive indignity, but cannot, for a variety of reasons, including but not exclusively limited to the fact that they may be larger than you, or perhaps they are smaller but just plain meaner.
Merely say (in properly respectful tones, of course), “You are such a rain lamp!” and they will go away wondering exactly what you meant, possibly a wee bit suspicious when they look over their shoulder and see you convulsed in great throes of mirth; but unable to prove a thing.
And that’s that.
Then, deciding that perhaps I would tell my poor friend exactly what a rain lamp is, I wrote:
All right, if you must know: A rain lamp is a lamp that is suspended from the ceiling, inside of which is not only a light, but also a pump, with a reservoir for oil at the bottom. The pump brings the oil to the top of the lamp via three decorative brass tubes, and then the oil is sent back down through little holes at the top, on thin strands of nylon cord. There are two circular rows of cords, one of which runs straight up and down, while the other goes at a diagonal. The oil drips down these cords, looking much like rain in the illumination of the bulb at the top; and in the middle of the lamp is an old mill amongst bushes and trees. Its wheel is turned by oil running through a little tube that travels up through the mill house, and pouring down onto the blades of the water wheel.
And now I have spilt the beans, and you know what a rain lamp is. Ours hovers over the right corner of my desk... and I have the dents in my skull to prove it. (No, I don’t often rise to my feet slowly.)
Tonight, as I was typing, Victoria was playing nearby with her doll. She pulled its hood up.
The doll, in quite a high-pitched voice, inquired fretfully, “Why are you pulling my hood up??”
Victoria answered in her best motherly tone, “Because you need it up!” to which the doll whined, “But whyyyyy???”
“Because it’s windy out!” responded Victoria. “Now HUSH,” she told the hapless doll.
Thursday afternoon, Hannah brought us three packages of chicken-fried-steak-that-should-be-called-steak-fried-chicken-on-account-of-the-fact-that-it-is-not-steak-it-is-chicken-and-one-should-modify-the-noun-not-the-adjective, a bag of tomatoes, lettuce, and a package of cheese to make sandwiches with the overabundance of large dinner rolls she knew we had, compliments of Linda, Bobby's aunt, who spends a few evenings each week working at a daycare center (not the same one where Dorcas works) after she gets off work from her primary job. She is the recipient of all their leftover breadstuff (if that wasn't a word, it is now), and she often shares the bounty with us.
Meanwhile, Caleb and Victoria went outside to make use of their little snow shovels. When Victoria came back in, she informed me that she'd "just about scooped up the whole countryside!" Then, with a tip of her head, she amended, "Well, the whole snowside, anyway."
Later that evening, Lawrence and Norma came visiting (well, that is, they visited with most of us, most of the time; but there were those of us with whom it was nigh to impossible to visit with as the evening wore on, given their reclined, snoring state) (we won’t mention any names, but it wasn’t me, and neither was it the children), and they brought us molasses cookies and brownies, to which we added chip mint ice cream and fudge chunk ice cream. I'm not sure what the occasion was; I kept wondering if someone was having a birthday without my permission. How am I to know these things??
Teddy has been making all sorts of things with his scroll saw. He has quite a few delicate miniature clock-frames done now... he's getting pretty good at it. The first thing he made recently was a heart-shaped frame for a tiny clock. It was so pretty…with little heart-shaped flowers and leaves cut out all around inside it--and then today, when he was carving out the hole where the clock was to go, the saw caught on an edge of the hole, and broke the entire heart in pieces. Nearly broke Teddy’s heart in pieces, too; he’d spent a long time working on it! But he glued it back together again; and I think, with a bit of stain and varnish, and maybe a little woodburning, it shouldn’t be noticed that it was broken.
I am having periodic interruptions by Victoria, who is playing with her new china tea set... she keeps bringing me several little cups of this and that, and I am required to drink from each one. She just brought me "Amberretto (her word) coffee, blueberry juice, orange juice, and crockermocker juice." (I do hope that last one doesn't give me the hiccups, or make me giddy, or something.)
She is telling me to be verrrrry careful, because she accidentally filled the cups too full…
Friday it was bright and sunny, but there were dangerous wind chills of -30 to -35°. The high was only 10°. Larry got off work early, so we went to Grand Island to go shopping at the Goodwill. Teddy and Dorcas did not come; Dorcas had not yet gotten off work, and Teddy, of course, had a date, and dates take precedence over everything except getting your personal digit sewn back together again, which seems to be somewhat of a necessity, regardless of whether the errand falls on a date night or not.
On our way, as we headed west, we drove straight into such a blinding yellow-orange sun, not a cloud in the sky, that when we turned our heads to look out the other windows, we could seed nothing but spots. Luckily, the sun sets quickly this time of year.
We stopped at Wendy’s in Central City for supper, going through the drive-through in order to save time. Victoria announced that she wanted Candy Crooper with Cheese. I informed her that Candy Crooper was bad for her health, and how would she like chicken, instead; it was not only good for her, but also quite tasty. She would, and it was.
At the Goodwill, we found a whole raft of brand-new stuffed animals--including a bunny that sings, for Victoria. I buy any stuffed animals that are new, and save them for Christmas presents. They are usually priced from 25¢ to 75¢. We bought quite a few clothes, and also got several pairs of shoes--two for Hannah, one for Lydia, one for me. Well…one pair, that is, not one shoe.
Then Victoria found some Fisher Price roller blades, and was ever so excited.
“I could have these,” she exclaimed, all breathless, “and I could really skate so very well, and--” she stopped to take a big breath, and I said, “You can have them.”
But she was in the middle of a spiel, and couldn’t be stopped. “I would use them all the time,” she continued, still trying to convince me, “except I wouldn’t wear them to church, …”
She suddenly realized I had already agreed. “Oh,” she ended, and put them into the cart.
She also found a tiny stuffed lion and a lamb, which I told her she could have. On the way home from Grand Island, I told her the story about the lion and the lamb that will lie down beside each other, after Jesus comes back again, and there is a new heaven and a new earth. And then if she didn’t love those little stuffed animals! She’s been carrying them around with her ever since, and she even took them to both church services yesterday.
We no sooner arrived home than Teddy, Joseph, and Larry were playing (or trying to play) a car race game on the other computer, and trying to get the ‘new’ steering wheels properly connected. We bought them for only $4.00 a piece at the Goodwill.
I asked, "Do they work?" and Teddy replied, "One and a half of them work!"
We also bought a foot pedal set…but it doesn't work at all. Lucky thing it was only $5.00. That's the trouble with buying those sorts of things at the Goodwill--you never know for sure if they will work. After all--there MUST be a reason why somebody gave them away.
Saturday we listened (and watched) (sort of) George W. Bush’s inaugural address on the computer. Half an hour later, articles rating his ‘performance’ could be found all over the Internet…and of course, everyone is the World’s Best Critic, and they have plenty to say. That’s disgusting; they could be a little bit respectful. Why, I don’t even like it when they are disrespectful to President Clinton--and you know what I think of him.
That evening, Dorcas was playing the piano, Larry was singing--Leaning on the Everlasting Arms,--and Joseph was playing a truck game on the other computer while Caleb watched. He kept turning the computer up louder... louder…LOUDER...(it's right beside the piano, and of course the lid is wide open)...so Dorcas and Larry kept singing louder...louder...LOUDER...
Hester was taking a bath, Teddy was in the shower, and Lydia, who was already done, was having her hair curled. After that, it was Victoria's turn.
When all the hair was curled (no, not the boys'), I read to everybody. We have been reading about Joseph, when he was in Egypt, and his brothers came to buy food when there was a famine in Canaanland. We just finished the part where he let his brothers know that he was, indeed, Joseph. They were so afraid, because the last time they had seen him, they had thrown him into a pit, and then sold him to the Midianite merchantmen.
We are also reading a book called "Martin Luther Had a Wife". Martin Luther liked his solitude…his wife Katie did not. (This was in the late 1400s, early 1500s.) Once he stayed in his room studying for three days…and finally Katie had enough of THAT, so she had the door removed from his study! And that was the end of his staying in his study for hours on end.
Saturday night I made apple caramel bars and bread pudding in preparation for the entire tribe to converge on us the next afternoon. I used my very largest pans. You know, I have always had a problem, when cooking. It is the same dilemma, even after all these years of cooking experience…and it never gets better. In fact, it gets worse. Lots worse. The complexity is just this:
They don't make sideboards for baking pans, nor yet mixing bowls, nor yet cookie sheets. And I never make a small enough amount of anything to fit into the dish I've elected to utilize.
I put a dish under the mixer beaters…turn on the mixer (full bore, of course, that I might mix it faster)--and the refractory stuff tries to fly onto the ceiling and all over the end of my nose. I put cookies out to the edge of the sheets--and the wayward things attempt crawling off the periphery and right into the proverbial fire. No matter what size the pan I choose for soup, I invariably put in one too many gloop-gloops of this and a couple glug-glugs of that too many, making it almost impossible to stir the goulash without slopping it over onto the stovetop.
Pies and tarts always run over. (I like thick pies.) (Fruit, thank you.) (No, not coconut cream with meringue, fruit. Whoever decided dirty clouds tasted good, anyway??!)
Ah, well…thank heavens for self-cleaning ovens…and thank heavens for baking soda, which puts out most oven fires.
Now... where's the squirrel cage fan, to blow the smoke out of the house?
My Uncle Howard is out of the hospital! We got an email from him entitled, “Home at Last”. When I mentioned that I was making bread pudding, he responded, “Would you eat a big serving of bread budding for me. When I was a bachelor I tried to make it twice; one was runny, the other was like toasted cement chunks. That was the end of my bread pudding, so I switched to upside down cakes; you can't mess that up. Howard”
I promptly wrote back: “So you think you can't mess up upside-down cake…Well, Uncle Howard, then I must say you never knew a certain friend of ours…She brought us pineapple upside down cake---made with fermented pineapple!!!! HICCUP.”
We had a missionary, Rick Barry, from the Georgi Vins ministry visiting today; they aid ministers and congregations in Russia. I found their site on the Internet; if you would like to see it, go to www.russiangospel.org. In the morning, the text he used was from Nehemiah. Sunday night, he showed us slides from Russia, and he preached from Acts, about Cornelius. It was all so interesting; we enjoyed listening to him.
For dinner we had roast beef, baked potatoes and carrots, applesauce, bread pudding, apple caramel bars, and chocolate brownie chunk ice cream. You should've seen Joseph’s face, when he thought he was getting a bite of some sort of apple bar…and wound up with a big bite of bread pudding--which he does not like.
After we ate, we all gathered around the piano to sing.
Victoria is still carrying her little lion and lamb around with her everywhere she goes as she goes clattering along on her ‘new’ rollerblades, a frightful peril not only to herself, but also to all standers-by…
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.