Last Monday, it rained most of the day, but Larry and Joseph worked anyway. Larry comes home in fairly good shape, but Joseph invariably comes home drenched and looking like he was a contestant in a mud-wrestling convention. How do those boys do it? When Teddy and Joseph worked at the shop, they’d come home giving the impression that they’d wallowed in a grease pit all day long. Larry didn’t look nearly that bad. Not that he looked good.
A week ago, my niece, Susan, brought us cream of potato soup, seven-layer salad, and orange juice. Mmmm; scrumptious. Hit the spot. Yummy. She said she was repaying me for all the clothes I gave Danica--but did she forget all about the piles of clothes she’s sent for Hannah, Dorcas, and me? And how shall we ever keep it straight who’s repaying whom?
Dorcas says that at the daycare, if there is any little bump or bruise or scrape, they get out the ice or a Band-Aid, one or the other, and the child usually thinks he’s all better, pronto. The ladies were laughing at one little girl who’d bumped the back of her head, but was holding the ice bag on the top of her head.
I remarked to Dorcas, “Perhaps she had a headache, and it was the top of her head that hurt.”
Dorcas laughed and said, “I’ll bet it was! Nobody thought of that.”
One cute little girl, Samantha, rushes up to Dorcas now and then and says, “I want it! Holdjoo?”--meaning, she wants Dorcas to hold her.
We got our refund back from the IRS--minus $1000. They say we made a mistake in our calculations. Of course, if there was a miscalculation, it was the fault of our CPA… The IRS is always right, isn’t it? There is little reason to argue. Argue, and they set you up for an audit, next year.
Hannah and baby Aaron came visiting that afternoon, bringing me some pictures. Yesirree, all pictures are accepted with glee. There is an ever so cute one of Aaron smiling, just a little bit, but a smile, nonetheless. He is such a bright-eyed little baby.
Larry got off work early Tuesday afternoon, so he worked on his Bronco again. Reckon that thing will ever find itself in good working order?
Later, Larry, Caleb, Victoria, and I took a pile of shoes and boots to the Village Cobbler, and then donated several bags of things to the Salvation Army.
We used to know a man who almost every morning stopped at a used-clothing drop-box and rummaged about for a ‘new’ shirt to wear to work. There’d he’d be, the top half of him stuck into the drop-box, trap door bumping on his behinder, a-digging like everything. Directly he would emerge with a wrinkled bit of cloth, and, quicker’n a wink, he’d shed his own dilapidated--and none too clean--shirt, don the ‘new’, and off to work he’d go.
As we were heading back toward home, Larry said to me, thinking he was talking over Victoria’s head (she was sitting between us), “Shall we go by Wal-Mart and get a couple of batteries for that pink thing?”
He learnt without delay that he was only talking over the child’s head literally--certainly not figuratively.
Victoria, who was sitting between us, popped bolt upright and exclaimed, “YES!!! For my--uh, what’s it called---” She thought for no more than five seconds and before triumphantly announcing, “--my motorized jeep!!! That’s what it is!” She grinned up at her father. “Isn’t it?”
“Uh, yeah,” he responded, nonplused at being found out so easily.
“OH!!!” replied Victoria, making a surprised face. “I didn’t even know what you were talking about!”
We went to Wal-Mart, got the batteries (they’re made of gold, did you know that?), a new watch for Caleb, and some batteries for my camera, which had informed me it was running low that afternoon when I was taking pictures of the baby birds. Those four little finches were crammed into their nest so tightly I don’t understand how they could breathe. We diligently kept the cats in the house during the day, until the babies fledged, and we figured they could fly well enough to escape our taloned beasts.
When we got home, I began trimming dead limbs from my rosebushes with clippers that were razor sharp last week. But now they will hardly cut a small branch! Teddy used them to cut down the part of my Honeysuckle Magnifica that winter-killed…what did he do after that, try to cut a new fender or shorten a driveshaft or something with it?
More trees, bushes, and even grass winter-killed last winter than I have ever seen before. The top branches of my red maple are dead. The crepe myrtle finally came up from the roots…and the pink dogwood has no leaves on it; I suspect it has died. This, I suppose, is because it was colder for a longer period of time than usual. Global warming, eh? Ha!
Larry, Dorcas, and I went for a bike ride after supper Tuesday, with Larry pulling Victoria’s carriage behind his bike. Larry and Dorcas both seemed to dawdle…and dawdle…and dawdle…I’d suddenly realize I was a couple blocks ahead of them, so I’d coast…and coast…and coast… They’d finally catch up, so I’d start pedaling again--and soon there’d I’d be, then, way off ahead of them again. We went and filled our tires with air, and then we could all pedal better. But there was everyone way back behind me still.
Eventually Dorcas gave up and headed for home, because it was chilly, and she was getting an earache. I would have been, too, but I was wearing rabbit fur earmuffs--a funny thing to be wearing on an evening in June; but you must remember: this is Nebraska.
I slowed down…Larry caught up with me…and I asked, “Why are you going so slow?”
Usually he can whiz off and leave me in the dust, even if he is hauling a heavy load. He used to pull a cart with all five of our oldest children in it, when they were little (ages one through six), and leave me behind with not the slightest problem. He could easily pedal hard enough to bend any sprocket.
And then he told me that he was going as fast as he could go, and that when he’d first started, the left side of his chest was hurting. I would have thought that, after all the months he’s been doing such hard work on the construction crews, he’d be able to ride a bike without any troubles; but he said that his chest also hurts sometimes when he is working. For some time now he has had troubles with his arms getting numb, especially when he is sleeping. Oh, dear…he doubtless needs a physical…whom shall I get to help me drag him to the doctor’s office?
I’m still cleaning the basement. I hung a bunch more clothes in the enclosed clothes rack--and now the metal rod is swaying in the middle alarmingly. Have you ever filled a rack completely full of clothes, only to have it suddenly go south, and deposit all the clothes in a heap on the floor? Well, *I* have. More than once, too. That is indeed what you call ‘a revoltin’ development’.
The best thing for a wife to do in such circumstances is to go calmly out of the closet and shut the door, and let her husband wander into the closet and find it like that. He will assume that he caused the disaster by opening the door, or by treading too heavily, and he’ll figure he has to fix it, since he broke it. Do not disabuse him of the notion.
I’ve been washing piles and piles of sweaters…you’d be surprised how many sweaters can be crammed into one big cabinet. There are many sweaters that must be laid flat to dry--and I am running out of room to lay them all. Soon I’ll be obliged to head outside, and the neighbors will look out their windows in amazement at sweaters lying on the lawn, on the bushes, on the Suburban, on the roof… When all these clothes are washed, they will be stored in plastic bins, not cardboard boxes or open cabinets.
When it gets close to time for church Sundays and Wednesdays, we make sure the cats are in the house, and then we shut the kitchen window (that’s their ‘pet door’, you see). Our cats have been known to climb on people’s cars during church, and they were less than impressed (speaking of the people, not the cats). Imagine!--such persnickety, finicky people as to not consider kitty pawprints just the cutest little things--! (That’s a joke. You can laugh now.)
Late Wednesday afternoon, I asked if Socks was in the house.
“Yes,” said Caleb, “I saw him eating a little bit ago.” He reconsidered. “Well, maybe it was a little bit longer than a little bit ago.”
One must be precise about such things, you know.
Deciding that something must be done for Hester’s hair, which was most often in a state of misshapen disarray, I layered it, and then put curlers all over her head, instead of only one vertical row at the bottom, as I usually do. A few hours later, she took the curlers out, and voilá! It looked much better, very pretty.
Keith and Esther came over after church. They’ve lost one of their babies--they gave the gray and white kitten to the Schwan man. There are three left. Later, as we walked with them out to their car, we saw my sister, Lura Kay, on her way back home from my mother’s house. I told her about Larry’s chest hurting and his arms getting numb, so she asked us over to her house so we could take his blood pressure with her kit.
His blood pressure was 145 over 91, and his pulse 63. The bottom number is too high, and the pulse is lower than it usually is. I decided to call the doctor the next day.
We went to UnSmart Foods after kids were in bed, and there I found something I just had to get for Dorcas as an early birthday present: it’s a small ceramic pot of red flowers and fernery. The pot has raised stars on it, and there is a little ceramic figurine of a girl inside the pot dressed in red, white, and blue, holding two tiny ceramic flags. Dorcas’ birthday is on the Fourth of July, and you’d better believe she gets lots of things in red, white, and blue.
One afternoon a phone company called and offered me a smashing bargain on long-distance rates, much better than I was getting.
“Yes!” I exclaimed to the telemarketer who called. “Yes, I want it, please. Sign me up.”
“Huh?” he said in thunderstruck surprise. “Excuse me, what did you say?”
“I said ‘yes’,” I repeated, “I want to switch.”
He cleared his throat. “Oh, uh, well…” there was a bit of silence, and then, “You see, I, er, um,” he took a breath and spit it out. “I’ll have to get my supervisor; I’ve never sold a subscription before, and I’m not sure what to do next.”
hahaha Poor bloke! ’Bout time someone took pity on him.
So the supervisor came on the phone line, and signed me up.
Thursday evening we went to Walgreens to get Mama’s medicine for her. While there, since it was Hester’s birthday the next day, we got her a set of four pastel-colored gel pens and a little notepad of dark paper on which to use them. Then I spotted a big box of gel pens, blo-pens (as in ‘blow’ pens), cards, stencils, and various other things for craft purposes. It was neat; I knew Hester would like it.
I decided to give Hester her birthday presents that night, thinking Larry would like to watch her open them. We usually wait till he gets home from work before giving the children their presents, so he can see them open them…and I didn’t want her to have to wait until the next evening to have her things, especially the pen set, since she would enjoy using them all day on her birthday.
“Let’s give Hester her gifts,” I said, rousing Larry from his napping status in the recliner.
He opened his eyes and sat up. “Okay,” he mumbled groggily.
I brought out the presents, and Hester began removing the wrapping paper and ribbons. I turned and looked at Larry-- Guess what. He was sound asleep. He slept through the entire present-opening. Ah, well; I tried.
In addition to the pen sets, we gave her three fancy barrettes; a set of hot rollers; a tin with pillow cases to embroider; a blue Tupperware box with lots of little partitions for storing embroidery floss, needles, and thimbles; all colors of floss; a notebook with a kitten similar to Tad on the front; and a couple of folders with cute kitten pictures on them.
Friday after supper, we took the children to Pawnee Park, and Dorcas brought along the RCA video camera she got at a garage sale for $10.00. This camera was made in 2000, so it’s only a year old. It has hardly been used, and it shows it. It’s a big one, which is why the lady was selling it--it was too large for her to handle well, and it hurt her shoulder. The viewer is in color. We bought a battery for it, and it works perfectly. The lady was probably planning to ask more for the camera, but her children were playing with the price tags on things in her garage, and the camera had a sticker of 50¢ on it. So she was rather intimidated to ask for more. She started to say ‘fifty dollars’, then stopped and looked Hannah, Dorcas, and baby Aaron over, smiled at them, and said ‘ten dollars’ instead. Now we need a battery charger, and we’ll really be in business. Well, a set of constructions (ala Caleb, age three) would be nice.
Teddy, Amy, and Amy’s brother Charles, one of the twins, came to the park while we were there. Teddy and Amy were walking; Charles was riding his bike. We departed when the music (?) at the nearby Armory blasted us out. I’m not sure what the name of the singing (?) group was, but, judging by the sound of things, I think it was the ‘Root Canals Without Novocain’.
And they were definitely not playing the cornemuse, nor the cornamute, either.
After leaving the park, we drove all the way out to Sapp Bros. for coffee, slushies, and gas (listed in Order of Importance)--and then I remembered: I didn’t have my purse, and Larry didn’t have a dime to his name.
We went back home for the checkbook, and then Lawrence and Norma came, so we didn’t get gas after all. We did make fresh coffee; and the pistachio pudding cake Norma brought more than made up for the slushies. Mmmmm…good.
Norma sewed Hester the cutest three-tiered skirt and western blouse; it’s made of Daisy Kingdom border-print fabric, mostly white with a sparsely scattered red polka dot, with red children (Sioux, of course) and sailboats printed on it (what? You didn’t think the Sioux had sailboats? Goes to show how much you know. Why, somebody {it wasn’t the Apostle Paul} even wrote about those boats in the Mormon Bible). She’s making an outfit just like it for Lydia. The girls will have new dresses for the Fourth of July, after all.
President Bush was in Omaha Friday night; he threw out the first pitch for the College World Series. The State of Corn is not being neglected by this president!
The baby finches fledged that afternoon; for a while they were all sitting in their little pine tree, strewn about in the branches, well hidden. When we walked too close to the tree, the parents flitted anxiously about our heads, chirping and fluttering. We assured them that we did not care for Herbed Finch Au Gratin, nor Scalloped Cranberry Finch Con Queso, nor yet Broiled Cornish Finch Divan, nor even Creamed Almond Finch Dijon.
“But the cats!!! The CATS!!!” squawked Mrs. Finch, and “They’ll get the babies!!!” put in Mr. Finch.
“Oh, don’t get your tail feathers all ruffled,” I reassured them, “The cats will be in the house until dark.”
Feathers settled.
That night, I was busily scanning pictures when I heard a rustling noise at the kitchen window and a thud. And now, heeeeere’s Socks, I thought.
“Mrrow!” said an unfamiliar voice.
Izzat Socks? I thought absentmindedly, continuing with the scanning.
“Mrrow! Mrrow! Mrrow!” said the cat, lurking somewhere behind me, just out of sight.
Suddenly I thought, What cat is that??! and jumped up to go find out.
It was Kitty--mouse in mouth, wondering what to do with it. She’s so plump, she doesn’t eat them nearly so well as she used to. She let it go under the table and chased it around, batting it under the table leg--that’s her favorite place to ‘hide’ her toys--and pretending she couldn’t get it.
I grabbed it by the tail, rushed out onto the front porch (with Kitty meowing along beside me), and slung it far and wide. Bye-bye, mouse. Ugh. Horrible things!
Dorcas went garage sailing with Hannah and baby Aaron Saturday morning. They went to a house where lives a lady who brings her little boy Andrew to the daycare. Dorcas likes Andrew--and the little boy likes her. Cindy was worried about him joining the toddler room when he turned 18 months, and then relieved when Dorcas started taking care of the toddlers. Now Dorcas is caring for the babies--and Judy (Dorcas’ boss) allowed Andrew and another little girl, Samantha, to go back to the baby room to be with Dorcas, whom they much preferred. They cried all the time after she went in the other room, and the other lady didn’t know what in the world to do with them.
Well, last week, before Andrew was allowed back in the baby room, an older boy, Tyler, bit him. The daycare workers are not to tell parents the name of a child who hurts their child. This, parents do not like. They want to know--maybe so they can bite the other child back? Or so they can bite the other child’s parent? Cindy told Dorcas that when she read the report about her child getting bitten, she went to talk to the young girl who cares for the children.
The girl said it happened when Dorcas was caring for them.
But Cindy knew better and told her so, and the girl’s face turned red, then pale.
I told Dorcas not to take it personally; the girl just got scared and was trying to get herself out of the fan. Anyway, as we have seen, girls who blame other workers for things they themselves did, or were responsible for, rarely last long. Before we know it, they aren’t working there anymore.
Saturday afternoon, Larry, Lydia, Caleb, Victoria, and I went for a bike ride. This time, I pulled Victoria’s cart. Several blocks from home, I rounded a corner lickety-split, swooped down into the gutter just to hear Victoria laugh--and immediately met up with a friend of ours pulling her little girl in her cart, with her little boy pedaling along ahead of her. They were traveling at a nice, sedate clip, and they stared at me in amazement as I barreled around the corner at such a headlong rate of knots.
“Hi!” I said.
Victoria suddenly realized we were passing friends, and shouted, “HEY! THAT’S MARCUS!” loudly enough that the entire western half of Columbus knew Marcus’ general whereabouts.
Since the family was coming for dinner the next day, and Teddy had just cut Mama’s rhubarb and brought me an armload of it, I decided that what we needed was a rhubarb strawberry pie. So I put it through the food processor--uh, that is, I put the rhubarb through the food processor, not the pie--started it cooking, and went to the grocery store. By the time I got home, the rhubarb was almost done.
I tasted it…added more sugar…tasted it…added more sugar…tasted it…added more sugar…tasted it…added more sugar…tasted it…added more sugar…tasted it…added more sugar…tasted it…added more sugar…tasted it…added more sugar…tasted it…added more sugar…tasted it…added more sugar…tasted it…added more sugar…tasted it…added more sugar…tasted it… You get the idea. (Don’t you?)
When it was exactly right, I added the strawberry jello.
Now, you would think that a person who has been cooking for almost a quarter of a century would know: if an item is exactly right before additions are made, it cannot possibly be exactly right after additions are made.
And it wasn’t.
The rhubarb flavor was nearly gone--and the rhubarb is what gives it the flavor I like so well. Bah, humbug. It was much too sweet to suit me. I added a couple cups of lemon juice to make it tart again, and thought maybe it would be okay since I let it cool off a long time before I added the sliced strawberries, so they would still be tangy and crisp.
When I opened the cupboard to get out the big pans for the pies, I discovered that several families of mice that I had run out of the basement had taken up new quarters in that cupboard.
Sooo…out came all the pans. I then vacuumed and scrubbed out the cupboard, and washed all the pans.
I went back to the store for the dishwash detergent I’d forgotten (none of us would be pleased to wash all of Sunday’s dishes by hand). I raised the garage door, jumped into the Suburban, started it, put it in reverse--and Socks came skidding down the windshield and landed on the hood. He’d been on the roof. Did the garage door shove him off? It comes mighty close to the top of the Suburban. He sat on the hood and peered reproachfully in the window at me. I put the vehicle back into park and climbed out to retrieve the poor pussycat--but he decided he could get down nicely by himself, thank you, and he bailed right off onto the porch. Stupid cat! He made pawprints all over my nice, clean Suburban!
[Uh, what did I say earlier about persnickety people?]
I let him in the house and proceeded on my way.
Returning home, I put the pans all back into the cupboard, and was happily remarking on how well they fit, when they’re all in order--and then Larry reminded me that I’d filled the dishwasher clear full with things from that cupboard. AAAaaaaaaa… How would I ever fit them back in??? And there was company coming! There were still groceries in bags all over the floor; the floor was dirty, the table was full… And it was late. I let the kitchen fend for itself and went to bed.
The next day, everyone pronounced the pie absolutely delicious, and wanted to dive into the second pan (I made the equivalent of four pies--two in each big pan), but I wouldn’t let them. After going to all that work, we can jolly well make it last two days.
Dinner was later than usual--because Larry and I had a wee bit of a miscommunication in the morning: from the kitchen, where he was putting the chicken into the oven, he called, “What should I set the oven on?”
From the bathroom, where I was curling and combing three girls’ hair (consecutively, not concurrently), I answered, “300°.”
“200°?” he queried, and I with my ‘plugged-in ears’ (ala Caleb, age two) thought he said ‘300°’.
“Yep!” I called back.
Did you know that chicken doesn’t bake at 200°? The fact is, it barely gets warm.
Upon arriving home from church, I rushed into the kitchen to get the chicken from the oven, that it might be cooling down so I could soon remove the skin and bones from it and pour in the Cream of Mushroom Soup. I looked at the temperature setting: 200°.
Hmmm, I thought, Larry must have checked the chicken between Sunday School and church, and it must have been done, so he turned it down.
Wrong.
I pulled the roaster from the oven, removed the lid--and stood looking in consternation at raw chicken.
“AAAaaauuuggghhh!!!” I exclaimed in an exclamatory sort of tone. “Why is the oven set on 200°??? The chicken isn’t done!!!”
Larry stuck his head around the corner. “Because that’s what you said to set it on.”
“No, no, I didn’t!!!” I cried, rapidly throwing the lid back on, shoving the pan back into the oven, and cranking the temperature up to 400°. “Nothing cooks at only 200°!”
Larry nodded. “That’s what I thought,” he said sagely. “That’s why I repeated it back to you, just to be sure.”
Sighhhhhhhhh. (Done with exasperation, thought, and style.)
Dinner was lip-smacking good (when it was at last done, which happily didn’t take as long as I’d thought it might): baked chicken with cream of mushroom soup, mushroom and onion stuffing, chef salad with green eggs and ham (well, the eggs weren’t really green) (but the ham was) and grape tomatoes, cottage cheese, peaches, almond poppy seed muffins, and rhubarb strawberry pie with New York vanilla ice cream.
The floor didn’t get swept or mopped…but life went on, regardless.
Today, wonder of wonders, Larry actually went to see Dr. Luckey. Hester, Lydia, Caleb, Victoria, and I went along--but we didn’t see the doctor; rather, we went to the park. I was hoping to find a Canada goose family, as we often do, at the lake…but no such luck. The lake has been almost entirely drained…perhaps to raise the level of water in the Platte, so that people may use yachts, rather than the universal Cornish airboat? Or possibly to provide drinking water for the myriad peoples of Berea, who are languishing on the arid plains of Box Butte County, located in the Panhandle of western Nebraska?
The results of Larry’s checkup:
a) EKG: fine and dandy (which proves not a thing except that nothing bad was happening at the specific time the EKG was being done).
b) Cholesterol: tests not back yet.
c) Treadmill test: to be conducted (with the requisite accompanying pomp and ceremony) Wednesday at 6:30 a.m.
We drove through the country amongst the bluffs southeast of Columbus on our way home, taking several courses along minimum-maintenance roads, which are always the most interesting. Especially when they are muddy, which they customarily are. They were not muddy today, however; evidently draining the water from Lake David also drained the groundwater right out of the bluffs. We stopped to take pictures at a farm where they raise elk.
There have recently been troubles with pseudo-rabies in Nebraska, involving a few elk herds and a whole lot of hog confinements. One local man lost upwards of $200,000 when his entire herd of pigs was decimated by the disease. It’s a sad story when such things happen, isn’t it?
And now everyone is clamoring to go play--of all things--horseshoes at Pawnee Park.
Goodbye!
P.S.: What?! You don’t know what a cornemuse or a cornamute are? Tsk, tsk. As any good Scot knows, a cornemuse and a cornamute are musical instruments similar to bagpipes, and are wielded adroitly in the Cornhusker State -- where else?
So now you know.
And yes, you must wear a red plaid kilt to make them play properly.
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