Monday afternoon I went to a play, ‘The Prince and the Pauper’, put on by Lydia’s class. Part of the time Lydia was the narrator, part of the time she was the hermit, and part of the time she was one of the royal couriers. Quite a combination, eh?
Tuesday afternoon the children had Christmas program practice. It snowed hard for about half an hour that day, and Victoria, looking out the front window, laughed and laughed, she was so delighted. “Look at Grandma’s roof!” she exclaimed. “And look at the roof of the church!” She laughed some more. “Look at the Suburban!”
I took her hand, pulled her out onto the front porch, and let her stand there a minute. “Now run look in my mirror,” I told her, and soon she was giggling at her reflection, snowflakes sparkling on her head.
While we were eating supper, Victoria suddenly announced, “I’m cold ’cause it snowed!” In point of fact, she was cold because somebody had left the window open.
That day, I actually remembered to take Joseph’s suit to the cleaners, and I had been remembering so many things lately that I harbored grand hopes of also remembering to go pick it up in time for the Christmas program. I washed every stitch of dirty laundry in the house and forced the resident urchins to clean their rooms whether they were inclined to do so or not.
Wednesday was the first day of Christmas vacation, but it didn’t feel much like a vacation; not at my house, it didn’t. That morning at 8:30, Caleb came upstairs and told me he was having trouble breathing. I gave him his medicine and let him lie in the recliner. About noon I gave him another dose of Albuterol and his Flovent inhaler, but that never helps in an emergency; it’s more of a ‘maintenance’ medication. He wasn’t getting better, and I soon decided we’d better get in gear and get him to the doctor, quick. I called the David City clinic, and we (Caleb, Victoria, and I) went there about a quarter after two. I was glad when the doctor treated the problem with a good deal more aggression than had the last doctor to see Caleb, who seemed to think it was not much more than allergies causing the problem.
The doctor sent us to the hospital to have a treatment on the nebulizer, a machine that pumps a mist of air and Albuterol Sulfate that can be breathed in through a mouthpiece or a mask. We walked over to the hospital, which is about half a block away--and that was a mistake. It was cold and windy, and we were walking straight into the wind.
By the time we arrived, poor Caleb could hardly get a breath, and he could barely take one more step. He grabbed onto the counter and hung on for dear life, all hunched over, with his shoulders up high, trying to breathe. I snatched a wheelchair that was sitting in the waiting room and helped Caleb into it.
The lady at the desk told us to go right on back without registering. “He’s scaring me!” she said.
He was scaring me.
We got back to one of the emergency rooms--and that’s when we discovered that the nurse who usually helps with the nebulizer machine wasn’t there, so a certain nurse Ellen May (names have been changed to protect the ignorant) would be doing it.
Uh, oh. We know Ellen May. She should have been a vet.
No! I take that back! I would not want to take my beast to her. She is terribly rough, and she is every bit as bright as she looks--and that’s not very bright. Fortunately, she had nothing to do to Caleb but hand him the mouthpiece after she’d put it all together, so that was okay...but it took her a year and a day to come into our room, get the machine set up, the medicine put into it, and Caleb started breathing it.
Before he was even done with his treatment, he was breathing easier‑‑and so was I. The doctor had given us a prescription to rent one of those machines, so when we got back to Columbus, I dropped Caleb off at home and then went to the drug store. A lady there showed me how to work the machine.
I gave Caleb one more treatment that evening, and he was much better. What wouldn’t I have given to have had this machine for Hannah! Ah, well; she can use it now, and so can Teddy. I let Caleb sleep in the recliner all night, partly because I wanted him where I could hear him, in case he started having troubles breathing again, and partly because he can breathe easier when he isn’t lying flat.
He was even better the next day. That machine helps immensely.
Thursday, Larry put the other pet door in the door between the garage and the kitchen, and the cats are pleased as punch. Just like Eeyore’s balloon in Pooh’s honey pot, they can go in! AND they can go out! The kitchen is snug and warm once again, since we don’t have to open the window now and then to let the poor cold cats back inside. Once again, Caleb slept in the recliner.
That night, I lined some sleeves on a black velvet suit for Hannah, altered my red suit, and took in the waist of Teddy’s suit pants.
When the children went into the kitchen Friday morning to eat breakfast, they opened the refrigerator to get the milk--and discovered a present in bright green printed wrapping paper, with lots of curly red ribbon holding the top together. In it was a bale-top ceramic jar with the word ‘Cheese’ inscribed on the side, into which I’d put a cheddar cheese ball covered with almonds. I planned to give it to Bobby. Under the Christmas tree I had put a card telling him of the whereabouts of that gift, since I have been known to forget all about wrapped gifts in refrigerator and freezer, only to discover them after the purported recipients had long since gone home, no doubt wondering why we’d been so chintzy with the presents that year.
Caleb and Victoria thought it was pretty funny, finding a wrapped gift in the fridge.
That afternoon, I took Victoria’s dark green satin dress with the white Venice lace to the cleaners to have it pressed, fervently hoping my feeble brain could remember to pick it up the next day.
Friday evening, we visited my brother and sister-in-law. Their dog Bullet is always delighted to see us; the silly dog remembers us from when he was a puppy. (He was Aleutia’s pup, you know.) (There were times when she refused to claim him, though, and those of you who know Bullet will understand why.) Loren and Janice took the opportunity to give us our Christmas presents, and I wished we would have brought all of theirs, but the rest of their things are under Mama’s Christmas tree.
Loren is #1 in sales for the NFIB (National Federation of Independent Business), same as always, and we are glad that he is doing so well.
Upon leaving their house, we drove around looking at Christmas lights, and I took a few videos of them while Larry did his best to sabotage my tape by singing idiotic words to every goofy Christmas song he could think of. I kept turning off the camcorder in the middle of his loony tunes, so now I have a video with a song something like this: “Adolph, the green-nosed reindeer, had a very Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, O how you better watch out, you better not shout; you better not pout up on the mousetop reindeer sneeze; out falls poor old Santa’s cheese; well the weather outside is delightful, but the fire is ever so frightful; so as long as you deck the malls with cows of folly, waa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Don we now our jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way! Oh, what fun we three kings of Orient are; tried to smoke a rubber cigar; go tell it on the mountains; ding-a-ling; hear them ring! Soon it will be God rest you, furry gentlemen!”
Now there’s a Christmas song and a half, let me tell you.
In the meanwhile, Joseph, who’d gotten up early that morning to go to work, was periodically telling us that his pillow was calling him, so we went home quicker than we would have. Caleb was well enough to sleep in his own bed that night.
It snowed while we were sleeping, and the temperature dropped. It was windy, and icy branches from our bushes kept screaking [screeking (skrēk’ iŋ) vi. - to screech or creak with an unpleasantly shrill, high-pitched noise painful to the hearer] against the windows, making the cats’ tails bushy and the fur along their spines rise.
Saturday, amazingly enough, I remembered Victoria’s dress. Teddy picked it up for me--and also got a humungous pile of clothes we’d left there some time back. I’d forgotten all about them. Many were Dorcas’ things, but one was a black suit that fit Caleb perfectly, and it was an even nicer suit than the one he’d been planning to wear to the program. So we changed our plans, and Caleb wore the black. There was also a navy jacket with three big gold buttons, and it fits him, too. It will look sharp with his white pants. These are clothes I found when I was cleaning Joseph and Caleb’s room. They are hand-me-downs, but they don’t at all look used, and to Caleb they are every bit as good as new.
The children had their last Christmas program practice at 4:00 Saturday afternoon. At about 5:30, Victoria came rushing home through the snow and the ice, getting it all over her shoes, and you know what happens when snowy shoes hit warm floors.
“My feet are all slippery and slobbery!” she exclaimed, slowing her velocity a fraction.
About that time, Keith came to show us his poor pickup. Earlier that day, some lady had run a stop sign and hit the side of Keith’s pickup, damaging the entire side and bending the axle. She didn’t even glance his way before pulling onto the road. By the time Keith realized she wasn’t going to stop, he couldn’t stop, either, on account of ice on the road. The insurance company totaled the vehicle. Fortunately, nobody was injured.
We cleaned the house with a vengeance that day. When Teddy was vacuuming and I was dusting, I noticed that Caleb was breathing rather too hard. He’d been rushing around putting things away, and he’d been up and down the stairs a few times, too. I sent him into the kitchen to play with his little cars and trucks on the table, which was fairly clean, for once. Asthma is nothing to piddle around with, believe me.
Dorcas wanted me to put the hem in her purple suit...I decided to do it the next afternoon, since it was late, and I still needed to go to the grocery store.
The children had no sooner gone to bed than Larry did what he is oft wont to do: unable to wait another minute, he gave me my Christmas present--a Black Hills gold watch. It’s beautiful; something I’ve always wanted.
Sunday morning I discovered that Dorcas wanted to wear her purple suit to the morning service, not to the program in the evening. Too late. And then we found that the pretty black sweater with all the embroidered flowers Dorcas was planning to wear to the dinner Tuesday had holes in the sleeve. I gave her my word that I would fix it for her.
I stayed with Mama that morning during Sunday School and church. Our evening service was at 7:00, and the program began after a not-as-long-as-usual sermon. Victoria, who’d been the very essence of propriety throughout every practice session, suddenly found it a difficult job to keep a big grin off her face as she sang. I tell you, she enjoyed herself from head to toe, and from toe to head.
Afterwards, the young people doled out the gifts around the tree, and then Keith and Esther, and Bobby, Hannah, and Aaron came to our house to exchange presents. We had a big pot of beef stew simmering on the stove, and its fragrant aroma wafted through the house. The children must have been hungry, or the yummy smell more than they could resist, because several of them abandoned their gifts for a bowl of soup.
Soon everyone was clearing off the table to spread out the Triopoly (three-dimensional Monopoly) game Keith and Esther had received from Lawrence and Norma. And that’s why on my video tape of Lydia playing Christmas carols on the piano, Aaron playing with Victoria, and Socks sprawled in comical disarray on the rocking chair, one periodically hears boisterous shouts of, “RENT!!!” issuing from the kitchen.
After the married personalities departed for their own abodes and the local denizens tramped off to their berths and billets, I commenced with one of my favorite pursuits: looking at all the pictures friends had given us with their Christmas cards. I wound up with enough pictures to fill 25 pages in my album. We have an awful lot of friends with beautiful families, and that’s the truth of the matter.
Monday we muddled around through the wadded wrapping paper, admiring our gifts, playing with our toys, running batteries down, and delivering boxes of gifts to the relatives. After supper, we went to Mama’s house so she could watch the children open their gifts from her. I helped her unwrap her gifts from us, which included the best rubber-handled hand-held can opener I could find, for I had discovered she needed one the day before when I tried to open a can of green beans for her dinner.
I first tried the electric can opener.
“Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm,” said the contraption, and obstinately refused to turn the can.
“Stupid thing,” I told it in a low, threatening tone, but it regarded me with an offensive lack of concern bordering on scorn.
I dug up a metal-handled opener in one of the drawers, and managed to puncture a hole in the top of the can before it rode up the edge and came off. I tried again, making another hole, and squeezing the gizmo with all my might and main as I turned the balky crank.
It came off again.
“Contrary thing,” I snarled.
I gave it my worst scowl and flung it back into the drawer, where it crouched down and prepared to ambush its next innocent victim. I looked in another drawer and pulled out one of those little metal widgetries with a swinging doodad and a crank, the sort of can opener that makes me tear frantically at my hair before I figure out which end is up, and whether or not I should point my nose due west or due north and stand on one leg when using the dingusjigger. I believe these gadgets were invented by a sadistic sergeant in the army for use in punishing contrary troops.
But I eventually got the thing hooked onto the can, and--wonder of wonders--I actually kept it there while I painstakingly turned the wink around...and around...and around...and all of a sudden, the lid popped up and was open, and there were the green beans, dancing about and cheering their emancipation.
“Obdurate fiend,” I growled, putting the contrivance away and determining to get my mother a new can opener that very afternoon.
Monday evening, we drove out along the Loup River to the south, shining spotlights across the harvested cornfields, and looking at the deer as they gazed back at us with their big, bright eyes.
We returned home, and there was a furious run on the showers and bathtub. I curled the little girls’ hair--and then it occurred to Hester that we had not unearthed any dresses or sweaters and skirts for her and Lydia to wear to the dinner the next day. So we trotted downstairs to the shelf room and started looking in bins and on clothes racks. We finally settled on a light blue prairie skirt with a light blue lacy-knit sweater for Hester and a dark blue cotton jacquard with white chiffon collar, Venice lace, and red ribbon roses for Lydia. Trouble was, the cuffs on the dress were too tight for Lydia, and the skirt hung clear down to Hester’s ankles. I promised to have them both shipshape by morning--and suddenly I remembered the gaping holes in the sleeve of Dorcas’ sweater.
Aaauuuggghhhhhhh, groan.
The skirt had a white eyelet insert all down the front and an eyelet ruffle at the hem, so I put two one-inch tucks in the skirt and hoped the length was right. Then I ripped out the buttonholes and took off the buttons on Lydia’s cuffs. Of course, this left a gaping wound in the cuff. Hmmm...
I zigzagged the buttonhole shut, turned the cuff to the inside until the stitches were hidden, and sewed it down.
Two down, one more to go... I thought I had saved the easiest for last.
I was wrong.
I carefully took the first stitch--and the hole grew bigger. I caught another yarn loop--and the sleeve came right apart, just as if I had found the end of the yarn on a piece of knitting or crocheting, and was pulling on it.
It was only after I made a deep tuck in that sleeve that I was able to pull it together so that the hole was no longer visible. The other two holes were no better. When I finished making a shambles of Dorcas’ sweater sleeves, I went to bed.
Tuesday morning, I sent Teddy over to Mama’s house, where Dorcas had spent the night, with her sweater and half a dozen of mine to choose from, although we don’t wear the same size. Luckily, she already had another sweater of her own with her, and it matched her skirt, so everything came out peachy.
At 1:00 p.m., we had our Christmas dinner at church. This year there was ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, pistachio salad, corn, dinner rolls with strawberry jam, and a choice of pecan or apple pie. As soon as people were done eating, I popped up and embarked on my collection of pictures of my friends’ children, to give them for Christmas 2002.
Lawrence and Norma came that evening, along with our married kids, and we exchanged gifts with them and watched a couple of science and nature videos from Moody Bible Institute. It’s nice to watch a video that doesn’t blabber evolutionary garbage at us throughout its duration, but rather tells us Biblical explanations for wonderful phenomena of nature.
And now...there are clothes to wash, a pile of things to mend, and supper to fix. And I received a couple of jars filled with cookie mix--and I’m downright hungry for a piping hot chocolate chip cookie, straight from the oven.
Maybe two chocolate chip cookies.
Goodbye, goodbye! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas, and will enjoy many blessings throughout the New Year.
Maybe three.
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