Sunday, January 13, 2002 - Important People Write Important Things

One afternoon, I was sitting in the middle of my bed putting pictures into my photo album.  Victoria sat beside me, playing with books, dolls, stuffed toys, color books, and a myriad of Matchbox vehicles.  She carefully perched a soft stuffed beagle on my lap, and then went back to coloring.

A few minutes later, as I was writing names in the margin of the album, my elbow bumped the dog, and he tumbled onto the bed.

Victoria turned quickly and looked at the pup in alarm.  She flung down a Crayola and hastily scooped him up, cuddling him up close to her cheek.

“Arf arf arf!” she said in a high-pitched tone, making the pooch jump with each bark.  “Really?!” she responded in amazement, leaning back to peer into his face.  “Arf arf arf arf arf!” continued the beagle.  Victoria’s eyes opened wide, and she peered reproachfully at me over the top of the dog’s head.  “He told me that you knocked him off your lap!” she exclaimed.

“Well, you tell that flea-bit hound that he should refrain from blocking my writing elbow,” I admonished her.

She nodded solemnly, although there was a slight twitch in one cheek that suggested she was having a bit of difficulty keeping a straight face through this parody.  Lifting the animal to eye level, she gave him a piercing gaze.  “You should know better than to get in the way of important people when they are writing important stuff!” she reprimanded him.

So there you have it; it’s on record:  I am an Important Person, and I write Important Things.  Ahem!  I hereby now demand and deserve respect!

After supper, I went to my mother’s to cut her fingernails.  As I was leaving, she handed me a bill of somewhat large denomination and refused to take no for an answer.  “Goodness,” I said finally, folding the bill in my hand, “Then that must have been quite an expensive nail job, and I should polish and buff those nails till they glow in the dark, to make up for it.”

She only laughed.

When I arrived home, I was surprised to find Teddy, of all people, in the kitchen, busily doing the dishes, and planning to mop the floor.  Usually, by that time of the night, he’s longingly thinking of feather pillows and soft, thick quilts; but he must have had sympathy pains for his sisters, who have had to wash all the dishes by hand since the dishwasher gave up the ghost.

This being the Home on the Range, I gave him an Encouraging Word and then, with Victoria, trotted off to the grocery store.  We left behind Hester, Lydia, and Caleb doing their homework, Dorcas in one shower and Joseph in another.  Since Teddy was being so helpful, I bought a cute white teddy bear holding a giant Hershey’s kiss for him to give Amy for Valentine’s Day.

Tuesday afternoon, Hannah and Aaron came visiting.  Aaron is a loving baby.  When they come in the door and I greet him--“Hi, Aaron!  Did you come to visit us?”--he smiles and leans toward me to press his cheek to mine.  If he is handed a new toy, he studies it gravely, turning it this way and that, and then carefully tries to make it work.  If he gets it to do what he wanted it to do, he looks up at everyone with a big, jubilant grin.

Thursday evening we went to the library--and somehow managed to leave behind a pile of videos and three of our library cards.  We didn’t discover it until long after the library had closed, of course...  This is one of the drawbacks of having too many kids:  Parent I thinks Kid I did the job; Kid I thinks Kid II did it; Kid II thinks Kids III and IV did it; Kids III and IV think Parent II did it; Parent II thinks Cat I did it--and on and on, ad infinitum.

By the time we returned home, everyone’s supper seemed to have worn off, so I made the last of the cookie mix my sister-in-law, Janice, had given us for Christmas, which she had put in layers into a quart jar.  Called Honolulu cookies, they had coconut and raisins in them.  They were gone within ten minutes of exiting the oven.

After not washing clothes for three days, there was a humungous pile of washing to do.  I started Wednesday, kept washer and dryer going for fourteen hours; continued on Thursday for sixteen hours...and finally, at 4:00 a.m., there were no more clothes to wash, except for those in which Larry had fallen asleep.  I stood and looked at him, debating whether to throw the whole husband into the washing machine, just to save him the trouble of taking a shower, don’t you know, or to stealthily take the soiled clothes, leave the husband behind under his afghan, and see if he went on sleeping, just as an experiment, don’t you know.  But suddenly he ruined everything by awaking on his own and blundering groggily off to the shower, where he tossed his clothes down the clothes chute, effectively torpedoing the plot.

Ah, well.  I would have had to hire three large bouncers to accomplish either of the purposed jobs, I suspect.

Teddy’s boss, Tom, and his wife, Rebecca, who is Esther’s sister, had a new baby girl (as opposed to an old baby girl) a couple of days ago.  Tom is the brother of Tim, whose wife, Malinda, died the week before Thanksgiving.  Mother and baby are well, thank goodness, and we are all relieved, because Rebecca had had a few troubles of some concern.

Larry got the new engine he was putting in his Bronco all hooked up Thursday, and it is running like a sewing machine.  Now, if we can just get it sold...

Friday, the junior high and high school had a dinner for the graduates.  Joseph and Hester attended.  Pizza was served--twenty of them, size large.  Joseph and Hester came home with amazing tales of a couple of tall, lanky kids downing ten pieces of pizza a piece.

“I only ate seven!” declared Joseph.

‘Only,’ he says.

Joseph came home early that day because he had a dentist appointment.  He had a cavity fixed, and now, finally, his mouth is all repaired and righted and restored.

Until next time.

That boy has had troubles with his teeth since he was three years old, when he had a cavity right down to his kneecaps.  When the dentist’s aid was ready to give  him a shot to deaden the tooth, she told him, “Now this will be just a little mosquito bite,” and in went the needle.

Joseph held perfectly still and didn’t make a peep until the woman’s footsteps died away down the hallway, although his fingertips on the arms of the chair had gone quite white.  Then he sat bolt upright and stared at me.  “Why did she bite me??!” he demanded.

I laughed.  “She didn’t,” I explained, “She just gave you a shot to make your tooth go to sleep for a little while, so it won’t hurt you when the dentist fixes it.”

He relaxed and leaned back again.  “Oh.  Well, that’s okay, then,” he decided.

After finishing the mending, I began sewing ruffles and lace on a white dress Hannah bought for Lydia; we’ll save it for Easter.  The skirt was double-tiered, but it was a little bit too short, so I am adding narrow ruffles onto each tier.  Sewing rows of 200-inch ruffles take longer than you might think!--I’m still at it.

Friday evening, Lydia made two batches of lemon cheesecake bars, one Betty Crocker and the other Krusteez, so that we could compare them and see which we liked better.  Of all things, Betty Crocker was better, and wasn’t that a surprise.  We are normally highly partial toward Krusteez.  One of my favorites is Almond Poppyseed muffins.  But by far the best muffins we have ever eaten have been those we have made from scratch from a cookbook Lura Kay gave me, Quickbreads.  The recipe we consider tops is one with strawberries and bananas in it, with a streusel topping.  Mmmmm, yummy.

Bobby and Hannah (and Aaron, of course) came that night, and they played our new National Parks monopoly game with us.  Teddy and Amy gave it to us for Christmas.  Well, actually, everyone else played the game at one end of the kitchen, and I washed mounds and piles of dishes at the other end.  Nope, the dishwasher is not yet fixed.

Saturday afternoon we watched a new video we got in the mail--one of the National Geographic series I ordered Larry for his birthday--about Air Force One, the presidential airplane.  This is the third video in the series, a series that covered topics from wild animals to industry to space exploration to flowers.  I’ve always wanted to see what the insides of one of those planes--there are two--look like.

Did you know that James A. Garfield, the 20th president of the United States, after going to school wherever and whenever he could, had this favorite trick?--he wrote Latin with one hand and Greek with the other at the same time!  Quite a feat, eh?  The only way I can imagine that someone could pull off such a stunt is if he were endowed with two entirely separate brains, each of which governed only one side of his body.

I have sometimes managed to play a song on the piano in two different keys--one key with the right hand, another key with the left.  But I often wind up switching to the same key by accident, and I am certain I could never play two different songs at the same time.  I even mastered playing a song in one key while singing it in another.  I learned to do this expressly for the noble purpose of driving my friends bonkers; no better reason.  (I sincerely doubt if there is a better reason.)  (Which is not to say that that reason is good.)

When we watch videos, Caleb invariably has a million and one questions.  I try to answer him, but then I must often rewind the tape so as to see what I missed out on while I was answering.

Dorcas crocheted herself a sweater of dark purple chenille yarn, with black chenille cuffs and big black crocheted buttons.  It’s really pretty, and so soft.

Hester made tuna casserole for supper--a combination of two different kinds, since we didn’t have enough ingredients to make it all the same.  Fortunately, the stuff complimented each other, and it turned out scrumptious.  After supper, Larry went off to get us some Krispy Kreme donuts, but he could only find seven day-old Krispy Kremes in the entire city of Columbus.  These donuts can only be purchased at a few of the filling stations or truck stops around town.  New supplies are trucked in every night at 10:00, and by late evening, there are few of those donuts to be found.  So he also got a variety package of a dozen donuts from the grocery store.

When he put the packages on the table, he told everyone, “You can only have half of the Krispy Kremes,” meaning, of course, half of one piece.

Teddy, as usual, took him literally and promptly pulled out three, then broke one more in half and went off with three and a half donuts, exactly half of the total Krispy Kremes.  Larry howled and went after him.

Lydia has been learning how to knit.  So far, she’s completed a piece about two feet wide, and perhaps three inches long.

And now, those white ruffles and lace and ribbon are calling me.