Last Tuesday was the first half-day of school for Lydia and Caleb; Joseph and Hester put in a full day. The younger two came home all excited, first one and then the other telling me all about the morning’s activities.
That afternoon I visited Mama; her freshly-cleaned house looks very nice. She showed me her new wheelchair and hospital bed. She is ever so happy to be back home again.
That evening, the children went to the library. When they returned, there was a fast run on all the showers and tubs in the joint, and, wouldn’t you know it, we ran out of hot water. Joseph had already finished (which gives you a clue as to whom the Waterhog culprit was), and Hester had just worked up a good lather with the shampoo when the water ‘lost its heat’, as Dorcas used to say when she was little. Hester hastily rinsed her head and exited, shivering.
Lydia, not knowing about the deficiency, started the tub and stepped in.
She promptly skedaddled right back out, turned the faucet off with a good hard thump, and donned her fluffy robe and some warm socks. Out she came, indignant as a banty hen with wet plumage.
I got out three of my very largest pans, filled them with water, and began heating them. The biggest one just fits in the oven, so long as the middle rack is removed; and the other two together cover the top of the stove. Such big pans of water take quite a while to come to a boil, long enough that the water heater is usually starting to catch up. But this way, I can pour two pots of hot water into the tub, and run cold water into it until it’s the right temperature, while someone else can take a turn in the shower. That depletes the hot water supply again, but by then the humongous pot in the oven will be hot, and into the tub it will go. Larry has to carry it; when it is full of water, I can barely lift it, and I don’t care to be stumbling along in my bare feet carrying a sloshing pot of boiling water.
In the meantime, I informed Joseph that, should it again so happen that all the children are needing showers at approximately the same time, he will be the last one in--and I won’t be heating water on the stove, either. As soon as he looked properly sheepish, I went back to the sorting of books in Teddy’s bookcases.
Lydia, Victoria, and I have had colds this week. Victoria had a fever Tuesday and Wednesday, so I stayed home from church with her Wednesday night. I don’t like to miss church, because Robert’s sermons come in series, and I don’t want to lose any vital part of it. And his sermons are NOT like the comic ‘Mary Worth’, that one can skip reading for a month at a time, pick up again, and discover one has not lost the least bit of the plot, since it has not thickened. Starchless, that’s what it is.
Bobby, Hannah, and Aaron came after church to show us the video they’d taken Monday when they toured Gavin’s Point Power Plant at Yankton, South Dakota. They also went to Niobrara State Park.
Early Thursday morning, I took a Benadryl. When the kids went to school, I stumbled wearily back to bed, glad Victoria was still asleep, thinking I would get up in an hour. But that medicine conked me out for two hours instead of one. And then, when I combed my hair, tarantulas ran up and down my spine and the back of my head. That, because I’m allergic to antihistamine. But now and then I prefer the tarantulas to the cold. Funn
y feeling! Have you ever tried it? :-P
Victoria is such a silly little goose. She pretends her food is talking while she is eating it:
“Hey! Who chomped me!”
“Well, I think it was that bratty little girl.”
“Yeeoooouch! That hurt!”
“Well, what did you expect? Look what sharp teeth she has!”
Thursday evening I was working in Teddy’s room. Teddy came in to put new sliders and rollers under his drawers. He started with the one and only drawer in the room that still had all its molecules, the one and only drawer in the room that actually slid out nicely and didn’t suddenly and without warning tilt down and bonk into one’s kneecaps and empty its contents all over the floor. But he couldn’t get the rollers and rails in quite right, and was soon sure they would never work.
“Go ask Daddy,” I told him for the second time, and this time I was adamant about it.
He went to get his father. As usual, Larry was not long in figuring a way to make them work. But it was getting late, so the job was left for Saturday. Supposedly. I’ll bet they’ll get back to it by the year 2050, what do you think?
Friday I finished cleaning Teddy’s room and proceeded with the mending, which was nearly done. Next: Dorcas’ room. I hope to be done by the year 2010.
After school, Hester got all her insects out of the freezer and counted them: she has over twenty different kinds, the minimum required amount. Now she must categorize them, write it all down, and mount the critters on something.
That night, we took the littles (minus Hester, who went with Teddy and Amy) for a drive. We stopped at the Higgins Memorial (Andrew Jackson Higgins designed the WWII landing craft) so Lydia could see it (she was with Teddy and Amy the last time we looked at it).
Did I tell you, the Memorial was not even a week old when vandals sprayed black paint all over the boat, the engraved bricks, the newly repainted underpass, and the plaque with the picture of Andrew Higgins? The high school teacher, his students, and many volunteers spent an entire Saturday cleaning it all up. The bricks had not yet been sprayed with water sealant when it happened, so it was difficult to remove all the black paint. The teacher was the one who first had the idea of making the memorial, and all his students participated in it. There was a picture in the paper of them scrubbing bricks and boat and so forth, and a couple of them were crying.
Isn’t it awful, how disrespectful some young people are? They have no regard for the sacrifices made by our forefathers, so that they themselves might know freedom, and they care not a fig for the time, money, and effort expended by others.
But I don’t imagine they expected such a public outcry. After all!--kids have been putting graffiti all over the underpass for years without consequence! But this time, the underpass was painted gray to match the boat, and the words “Higgins Memorial, 1942” was printed on the slanted retaining walls. That very day, someone started a reward fund for anyone who could offer information that would result in the arrest of the vandals, and the amount increased every day.
A week later, they were caught. Let us hope they are rigorously taught that crime does not pay!
As we walked along the wall wherein are the bricks with the engraved names of all the donors, Lydia spotted some familiar names--names of friends of ours who own various companies, and several members of their family. People ‘bought’ the bricks, and their names were engraved on them, and whatever they wanted them to say (provided there was room, of course), and the money was used to finance the memorial. Many bricks said, “In Memory Of ---.”
As we were driving away from the park, we went over a particularly rough railroad crossing.
“Whew!” I exclaimed, “I sure hope that didn’t damage the undercarriage!”
“Undercarriage?” queried Caleb. “What’s that?”
Victoria knew the answer, and whirled around quickly to tell him. “It’s something you put your stuff in and put underneath your car.”
It’s been rainy this week, but so far it has not rained enough to make up for the extremely dry conditions the area has suffered for the last several months. There was a tornado, or perhaps a downburst, this side of Des Moines, that knocked down trees and tore the roofs off of buildings.
Dorcas went to stay with Mama Friday night, and stayed until Saturday evening.
I couldn’t sleep that night, first because an interesting book got in my way just as I climbed into bed, and second on account of the fact that every time I laid down, I couldn’t breathe properly because of this cold I have. (‘Properly’ can in this case be interpreted as meaning ‘through one’s nose’.) I finally fell asleep about 6:30 in the morning--and then here came that goofy Socks, right on time, bringing another of his hummingbird moths into my bedroom and waking me up pouncing on it. I couldn’t catch it, but I shooed it out to the kitchen--so Socks went out the window and got another one, which he brought straight into my bedroom again. Aaarrrggghhh! He brought in no less than three that morning.
One day Hester walked into the kitchen to find three--yes, three--small garter snakes under the table, courtesy of Socks. One was coiled, and his tongue was flicking in and out, and now and then he struck at the cat. Socks, intrigued, curious, and unconcerned all at once, sat calmly just out of reach, and every time the snake stretched to the extent of his reach, Socks shot out a paw, quick as lightning, and swatted him hard on the back of the head. The snake was fast, but Socks was twice as fast. Two or three times of that, and the snake was dreadfully woozy. We dispatched the reptiles to the great out-of-doors where they belonged, posthaste. The cat, we kept in.
Saturday afternoon I finished the mending, except for a dress that needs a new piece of lace, and a skirt that needs some elastic at the waist. Meanwhile, Larry, Keith, Teddy, Joseph, and some friends played football, in spite of the drizzle coming down. They returned home decidedly damp--and hungry. We bought a couple of New York pizzas for supper. So many people were ordering pizzas, Pizza Hut only had one kind of crust left--pan-tossed, our least favorite kind. When Larry went to pick it up, they were refunding lots of people’s money to them, because they couldn’t keep up with demand, probably on account of so many people wanting to eat pizza while they watched the big football game on TV. The game was between Nebraska and Notre Dame.
A hummingbird moth just came to life a few minutes ago and started fluttering around the room; I caught it and put it in the freezer. Hester will have the largest hummingbird moth collection of anyone in history. We didn’t even know so many existed around these parts!
And now, I am tired of coughing and sneezing and blowing by node an’ zlurping on coughdropsh, so I think I shall take byself and by code do bed.
P.S.: As suspected, the Changing of the Rails (similar to the Changing of the Guard, only having to do with a different sort of bureau) fell by the wayside, thoroughly eclipsed by the Nebraska/Notre Dame football game. Final score: Huskers, 27; Fighting Irish, 10.
And Teddy’s drawers still unload their contents on poor unsuspecting souls’ hapless feet.
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