Last Monday, since it was such a nice day, I drove to Osceola to let the children play at the city park. The park is in a wooded area, and there is a wooden walk bridge over a little creek--nearly dry at this time of year. Victoria especially likes playing with a big shovel at the park. There is a tractor seat to sit on, and a couple of levers to scoop and dump the sand. Victoria went at it with such vigor, she once nearly tumbled right off the seat.
The squirrels, enjoying the day as much as the children, were diligently employed in the garnering of acorns, buckeyes, walnuts, and the wing-shaped seeds of the maples. The latter they generally ate, rather than caching them away somewhere. Do they know that those little seeds won’t keep for any length of time without spoiling or germinating, while the hard-shelled nuts will remain fresh for a good long while?
When we returned home, we walked into the house to the delicious aroma of the scalloped potatoes Dorcas was making. After we ate, Lydia and I visited my mother and then went to Wal-Mart for material for ruffles for those little tables of Penny’s on which I’d put contact paper. I decided to get enough material to cover a couple of couch pillows, too, and there was just enough fabric--four yards. The only piece I found that matched was ‘Daisy Kingdom’ material--and it was half price. Wal-Mart no longer has pillow forms to cover, so I got a couple of camping pillows. They’re small versions of regular pillows--although on the side of the package, it says “Huge!” haha. Trouble is, they’re rectangular, and I needed square ones.
Shall I just poke them under my presser foot, I wondered, Sew across them, fluff and all, and then chop them off, letting the fluff fly where it pleases? Hmmm...
Tuesday something monumental happened: I finished sorting all the clothes from Joseph and Caleb’s room. I am now in possession of a big bag of socks without mates, as usual. I will sell them to the highest bidder.
...
Okay, I will sell them to the first bidder.
...
Okay, I will give them away. Com’on; some are brand new!
...
Okay, okay: I will pay you to take them.
...
Well, that does it, then. They’re going into the trash.
Larry stopped by to take Caleb with him to Fremont in the boom truck to pick up the forms the other men had stripped from a basement. He helped put them into the racks, loaded them on the truck, and came home again. Caleb was thrilled; he definitely plans to drive a boom truck when he grows up.
I cut out ruffles for Penny’s little tables and the pillows, sewed all the ruffles together, and then put one ruffle onto a table. It looks cute--but rather messy, I’m afraid, because I can’t seem to get the upholstery tacks in straight. They bend this way and that, and sometimes wind up a good quarter of an inch away from the spot I intended for them to land. Aaarrrggghhh!
I gave up and went to see Mama.
Dorcas went to her first piano lesson this week--and, lo and behold, it was a lady who brings her children to the daycare! Dorcas was pleased--and the lady was pleased, too.
Wednesday I worked on the little tables until I ran out of upholstery tacks. So I returned to Wal-Mart for a couple more packages, took some heel-less shoes to the Village Cobbler, and visited Mama.
She told me that that morning when the nurses got her up, she was leaning far to the left without being aware of it, although she did feel as though she couldn’t get her balance. She was dizzy several times throughout the day, and was afraid she’d had another mini stroke.
Just before church that evening, Mama called Lura Kay to tell her she was not feeling quite right--she was dizzy, and wondering if she was having a stroke. John and Lura Kay stayed with her during church. The nurses took several tests: oxygen levels, blood pressure, pulse, and they also checked for kidney infection. Everything seemed to be fine. They suggested that possibly she had a virus that had settled in her ears and was causing the dizziness.
I think, with her history, a stroke is the more likely answer; but the nurses either didn’t think of that, or they don’t wish to say so out loud.
One nurse decided it was probably because Mama had not walked enough that day. Another told a lengthy story about her great stress when once she tried driving to work in a blinding snowstorm, explaining in express detail how the post-storm trauma caused acute dizzy spells for six months thereafter.
In view of that information, I told Mama that she really must quit driving about the countryside in raging snowstorms; it was clearly too much for her. Mama laughed.
Mama could ask for an MRI, but she doesn’t want to spend that much money, and it might only tell the story after the fact, anyway. She has felt a little better in the days since then, although sometimes she says her head doesn’t feel quite right.
Wednesday afternoon, the little girls brought what remained of the food in the big freezer downstairs up to the freezer above the refrigerator. Larry unplugged the downstairs freezer, and we opened wide the door. Let the defrosting begin! It was in bad shape--it was hard to fit food onto shelves, they were so covered with ice and frost.
“Where will the water go?” I asked Larry.
“Into the floor drain,” he answered, securely confidant that melting water knows exactly what to do with itself.
“I don’t think that drain will take water,” I commented.
He was unconcerned. All drains take water. Don’t they?
We went to church.
Baby Aaron got his shots that afternoon and wasn’t feeling well. Hannah told the doctor how Aaron fusses the whole while he eats, every time he eats. She has a very hard time feeding him, and he’s always been like that. He told her to switch to ProSoBe--a soybean milk. Imagine this: that baby drank his bottle without one little fuss, the very first time she tried it. Hannah, worried he might have trouble tolerating an abrupt switch, mixed half ProSoBe and half Enfamil the next time--and the baby fussed, although not as much as usual, jerking his legs up as he does every time he eats. So the next time, she left out the Enfamil--and he didn’t fuss one little bit. He was cured, presto-bingo, just like that. Now why didn’t we think of that before??? Poor baby!
Home again, I verified the following fact: the downstairs drain did not take water, just as I had feared. There was a small puddle of water on the floor, and it was gradually growing larger. Larry gave me a couple of easy solutions: 1) Use Teddy’s shop vac, which entailed removing the filter; or 2) Use a mop and a bucket.
“Well, why didn’t you use the vacuum on it, while you were downstairs?” I asked a bit peevishly, as I was busy sewing.
Larry looked amazed that I should ask. “Because I would wake everyone up!” he exclaimed.
(Of course, he does not worry about awakening the household, should the cause be something of Vital Importance, such as sawing boards for a trailer, pounding dents out of fenders, or putting the blender on High to mix a milkshake.)
He gave me careful instructions for Using A Shop Vac To Vacuum Up Water: Release latch on side of covercle. Raise covercle, which contains motor, from vacuum’s receptacle. Remove filter from cage housing motor. Replace covercle and hankle the clicket. Astert the flueman and pilch the gaskin. Botch the tubule into the eau, and SLOOOOP!!! Into the kilderkin will smarm the bayou. Just be careful not to superflux the sprigger, and everything will be cherry. Unempt the kang and replace the bougie. Put covercle back on and sneck the snick. Voilá! That’ll do it.
After sewing for a while, I took another look at the developing lake. Nothing was getting wet except the floor, so I decided I could safely wait until morning to vacuum up the water. I went to bed.
Thursday morning the house-moving company moved the house at the end of the street, which is approximately two blocks away. When they got in front of Penny’s house, about half a block north of us, they stopped.
Men were sauntering around, checking this and that, looking up at the house, gazing at the truck, and discussing things with each other: “She’s still up there, Mert!”
“Aye-yup; how long you reckon she’ll stay, Bert?”
“Oh, I’ll betcha she’s good for another furlong, Mert!”
“Aye-yup! Okay, then, Bert, let’s give ’er another go!”
I rushed downstairs, awoke Hester, Lydia, and Caleb; rushed back upstairs, awoke Victoria. I thought I had just enough time to exchange nightclothes for dayclothes--but by the time I galloped back to the front door, the house had kicked in the afterburner and was already past, and stopped at the corner of 17th Street and 42nd Avenue, waiting for Loup Power to come move a highline wire. Bother! I wanted to take a picture of it, right smack-dab in front of my house.
Ah, well...I took pictures and videos of it at the corner. I would take more pictures and videos of it going around the corner. The children watched maneuvers from the front porch.
“That truck is sure old and rusty,” said Caleb quietly.
“Well, it does the job,” I replied.
The electric company was planning to arrive at 10:00, so I had plenty of time to wash my hair. I did so...and then thought I had time to blow-dry it...
In the meantime, Hester and Lydia went downstairs, Caleb sat down in the kitchen to eat breakfast...and that’s when Loup moved the line, and the truck pulled the house around the corner and down the street without so much as a ‘by your leave’. Caleb was never the wiser. Three minutes later, when I looked out the door, the house was gone.
Sooo...I grabbed both cameras, and Caleb, Victoria, and I jumped in the Suburban, went to the end of 15th Street, and found the house--in the field right where they’d planned to take it. Aye-yup, it was already done moved.
I took pictures--but not once did I get a video of that house actually moving. Humbug.
“That truck is sure old and dusty,” said Victoria quietly.
“Well, it does the job,” Caleb told her just as quietly.
Sears’ repairman came that afternoon to repair my dryer. He took the boxes of new parts downstairs--and discovered there was only one pad, rather than two, and the drum did not come with all its connecting pieces, which he needed. So he reordered, and plans to fix it next Thursday.
That evening, I took my brother Loren his birthday present: an 8”x10” of three little pictures of Bullet when he was a puppy (yes, that moose really was once a puppy), grouped together, and put into an off-white 11”x14” frame with a gold-edged mat.
As you have no doubt heard, there have been quite a number of people getting bitten by sharks lately off the shores of Florida. An alligator tasted somebody there, too; and, appreciating the flavor, took a good chomp. There have been attacks by a young bald eagle in New Hampshire. Rottweilers and pythons are running rampant in Chicago. Aggressive bears have caused agitation and injury in Colorado. Since the bears are the only critters nearby that might effectuate any vicissitude for us, and possibly for you, too, I thought you might welcome some sensible counsel as to the course of action to take, should you happen to run into one of those shaggy bruins of the family Ursidae, order Carnivora, strolling through your back yard.
It is advisable to intimidate the bear. If it’s an English bear (this is easily discerned by the bear’s tweed jacket), yell loud insulting things about the bear’s lineage in general, and his mother in particular. Wave arms for additional effect.
I heard a Louisville, Kentucky, announcer tell his listeners, “As for sharks, use repellent.”
Repellent? There really is such a thing as shark repellent? I didn’t know that. Do you spray it on like bug spray? Doesn’t it come off in the water? What does it smell like? Essence of orca, perhaps? Or do they make it reek of New Pocketbook Parfum, or New Boot Bouquet, in the hopes that the shark will remember that his maternal grandfather’s hide was made into shagreen, which was then fashioned into such articles as shoes and handbags? Hmmm...
One night, we were all taking our blood pressure and pulse. Caleb, upon finishing his examination, read his blood pressure to us, and then gave the read-out for his pulse: “...and my pulse is 57 miles per hour,” he finished. And then his head jerked up in surprise, and he stared around at us all, wondering what was so funny.
Friday morning, I cut my hair, and then completed Penny’s pillows. All I had left to do was to sew shut the hole where I’d stuffed the pillows into the ruffled covers. The pillows are square now, rather than rectangular: I cut the fabric on them where I wanted them, then crammed all the excess stuffing into the remaining square and sewed it shut. I put the pillows into the ruffled covers and sewed those shut.
We then trotted down the street to take them to Penny, and I took along my camera, so that I could take a few pictures of her with the tables and pillows, in order that she can send some pictures to her family to show them what she’s done with those tables.
That evening I took Victoria for a ride in her bike cart, but it started to rain, so we went home again. “--because I might’ve melted!” she explained.
Every morning for the last four days, Socks has come in our bedroom a little before Larry’s alarm goes off--with a hummingbird moth. He proceeds to let it loose on a plastic bag beside my bed, and then he pounces around on it, making a horrendous racket, and purring loudly when I get up to catch the thing. Don’t those things know when they ought to migrate?! Anyway, Hester is going to be the all-time winner in hummingbird moth quantity when she turns her bug collection in, that’s for sure.
Saturday morning, Larry stopped by to get Lydia and Victoria so they could ride with him in the boom truck to David City to get the forms from a basement David’s crew did there. They came home about 1:30, and Lydia rushed in to tell me what Victoria had said: “Isn’t it fun to ride in the boom truck?” She giggled. “I keep trying not to laugh, but I can’t help it!”
Victoria definitely plans to drive a boom truck when she grows up.
In the meantime, we’d all been scurrying about, getting ready to go to Omaha to see what was left of the air show and to see the big ship--two barges connected together, really--that had docked at an Omaha Marina. It is the biggest vessel ever to come up the Missouri. Joseph and one of the twins planned to go with Keith--but Keith got off work earlier than they did, and was long gone by the time Joseph and Anthony were ready. Anthony’s family had already left to go to the air show. Joseph didn’t know we were planning to go to Omaha because, unbeknownst to me, Larry had said he thought it was probably too late for us to go. Sooo...Joseph decided he would go get Anthony and find something interesting to do for the afternoon.
Joseph headed to Anthony’s house...and that was when I found out Larry had given up on the idea of going to the air show.
“No!” I exclaimed, “I promised the children for weeks that we would go see those airplanes, and we’re going to go!”
So we went. What we didn’t know was that Anthony had gotten himself a ride to Omaha with another friend, so Joseph, not finding him home, came back home to go with us wherever we decided to go...but we were gone, where, he did not know.
He later learned from Hannah where we’d gone. Good grief! Such troubles! So the poor kid lounged around by himself all day, with only the cats to keep him company. Hannah came over while Bobby went to practice, and Joseph had fun playing with baby Aaron, who laughed and squealed at him. That cheered him up. You’d have to be a mighty dull fellow not to be cheered when a sweet little innocent baby finds you absolutely, positively delightful and entertaining.
Hannah told Joseph about a chicken lasagna dish she was concocting for dinner the next day. He was fully engaged in the employment of chop-polishing when she dropped the other shoe: she was making the fare for dinner the next day--at the Wright’s. Joseph was indeed deflated.
It was 4:00 when we got to Offut Airforce Base, and the planes were no longer flying. But we strolled about the tarmac looking at all the planes and helicopters on display, taking pictures and videos and going inside a few of the aircraft. Caleb got to sit in the pilot’s seat of a surveillance helicopter.
The battery in the camcorder gave up the ghost, and I had not brought the other battery; it was in the Suburban, far, far away.
“Well, that does it; the battery is dead,” I remarked, not much ruffled, since I’d taken pictures of most everything I’d wanted to, already.
Caleb made a concerned face. “Are you going to have to bury it?” he asked.
Leaving the airforce base, we went to a grocery store where we bought juice, yogurt in push-up strips, tapioca pudding, Philadelphia cheese cakes with fruit topping (Mmmm!!!), and chocolate milk. Then, eating our snacks, we drove along the Missouri River from Bellevue to Blair on a quest for a barque somewhere between a skiff and a schooner in size. The directions that would tell us exactly where to locate this vessel, dubbed the River Explorer, were at home, fastened to my calendar with a hair clip.
We never found the Ship of the Line; it was long gone down the river. A few speed boats were all we saw. At a little park beside the Missouri near Blair, Larry did his boy-scout deed for the day: a man put his motorboat into the water, climbed out of his pickup, shut the door--and locked his keys into the pickup. So Larry, with the trusty Gerber multi-purpose tool he wears on his belt, cut a thin length of wire from one of the thick cables strung on short posts that lined the park roads; and then, sliding the wire into the pickup’s window, he was able to unlock a door for the man.
We stopped at Runza Hut in Fremont for supper, and ate in the Suburban as we drove. I got a garden salad with grilled chicken and wished for a Swiss cheese and mushroom runza. Of course, if I had’ve gotten a Swiss cheese and mushroom runza, I would have wished for a garden salad with grilled chicken. The only way to avoid such a dilemma, I suppose, is to order both items; and in that case, I would doubtless have wished for an Arby’s roast beef.
After we got home, Larry cut Joseph and Caleb’s hair while I curled Hester, Lydia, and Victoria’s.
When I tucked Victoria into bed, she laid her head down on her pillow--and the lively tune of “The Farmer In The Dell” promptly issued forth, sending her into the throes of merriment. Somebody had tucked her new little Fisher Price music box under her pillow, music notes up. The big blue music notes on the front serve as the ‘ON’ switch.
“Somebody’s teasing me,” she giggled.
Tonight, as I write, Hannah is playing the piano, Dorcas is playing the Roland, and Larry and Bobby are singing. Larry is singing soprano, while Bobby is singing tenor, and now and then adding in a bass. He is holding baby Aaron, and Aaron is beginning to explain that he is tired of this busy Sunday, and would like to be tucked into his own little crib, thank you. Joseph and Hester are scurrying around finding their pens, colored pencils, paper, folders, and notebooks, because tomorrow is the first day of school for the high-schoolers. Yes, Hester is going to be in seventh grade--imagine that.
Caleb asked her a bit mournfully, “Why do you get to start school a week before we do?” and Lydia looked up from her bowl of soup to listen to the answer.
Hester looked down her nose at her smaller siblings with a superior air. “Because the teachers like us better than they like you,” she informed them loftily.
“Hoity-toity,” said Lydia, elevating her chin. “It’s because they’re stupider than we are,” she informed her little brother, “and have to have more schooling.”
“Hey!” protested Joseph.
And now I shall join Caleb and Victoria in the kitchen. That soup smells mighty good, and I’m starving to death. Larry made it, and it has potatoes, carrots, green beans, red peppers, and big chunks of chicken in it.
“Save some for meeeee!!!”
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