Have you ever had lasagna hamburger helper? We did, last Tuesday evening for supper. Let me assure you, lasagna hamburger helper is not at all, at all, in the same category as homemade lasagna. But it was less work.
What with the making of muffins, and a few things still scattered here and there from after-school snacks such as grilled cheese sandwiches (or ‘chilled grease’ sandwiches, as Bobby’s family is fond of saying), egg omelets, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, the kitchen was a terrible mess, with pans and big bowls piled high everywhere. The usual dishwashers--Hester, Lydia, and Caleb--had scads of homework, so I quit with the sewing after only four inches of one seam (and that’s as much as I sewed that day) and got on with the dishwashing. I loaded the dishwasher, started it, and filled the sink with water to wash the rest. After a while, Larry took pity on me and pitched in.
It felt like old times, it sho’ ’nuff did, for when we were first married, living in a nice mobile home west of town, we did the dishes together every evening after supper.
We worked for a good long while, and finally had a spotless kitchen (that is, if you don’t count the east counter).
Now I suppose you want to know if I didn’t think that was nice, and shouldn’t I give up the dishwasher, and the Dishwashers, too, and do things the cozy, friendly, old-fashioned way.
Well, yes, that was nice, and we did have an enjoyable time--until our feet started hurting, our legs got tired, our backs started aching, and we got a first-rate pain in the neck, literally and figuratively, both. So...in answer to that question, Larry and I both say--
NO.
The next morning everyone came for breakfast in a kitchen that glowed in the dark. Well, actually, it wasn’t dark, but it would’ve glowed, if it had’ve been dark.
Did anyone appreciate the clean kitchen, and the fact that they hadn’t had to clean it?
Apparently not; no one said a single word.
That afternoon, Larry went to Madison to get some parts for his Jeep Cherokee so the passenger window will roll up and down properly. He put it together the next day, and now, when we go for a ride in the Cherokee, I will be able to roll my own window without Larry having to hop out, run around the vehicle, and ‘help’ the recalcitrant thing whichever way I want it to go.
The church has now bought the two houses north of my friend Penny’s house, which is right next to my mother’s house across the street. They will tear the houses down and plant grass, as they did with the two houses on the north end of the block. The furthest house to the north is a little flat-topped thing that we’ve called The Boxcar for decades. There is a large piece of fence next to this house on which the man who lives there has painted in huge red letters, ‘HUSKERS’!
I’ve wanted to repaint that eyesore with the word ‘LOSERS’ ever since it first went up, not necessarily because the Huskers are losers, although they were at their Rose Bowl game, but just to irritate the dumbo who painted the unsightly thing in the first place. But any day now, that hunk of ugliness--The Boxcar, the sign, and the dumbo, all three, will be bye-bye, done gone.
There will be a bit of landscaping done, trees, bushes, and such, and a pretty fence put up. Someday, we will add on to the church. The Great White Fathers down at City Hall are pleased as punch with the succession of events, because they don’t like the run-down houses at the end of the block any better than we do, and unsavory individuals are the habitual occupants of such hovels and shacks.
Some friends of ours have bought our neighbor’s house immediately to our north. We’re going to miss those neighbors; they’ve lived there since I lived at home with my parents...but Aaron and Karen are certainly going to be jolly replacements. We will be delighted with them as neighbors.
The Sandhill cranes are already coming back to the Great Platte River Valley. Once in a while, during migration, we see a small flock of cranes over Columbus. But, for the most part, we are fifty miles too far to the east to see many. In a couple of weeks, there should be about 250,000 cranes along the Platte in an area about 75 miles long, and perhaps 15 miles wide. Some Saturday afternoon, we’ll pack up and take an excursion there, cameras in hand.
Every day, I hear geese; sometimes they are flying very low overhead, and I can tell what kind they are. Yesterday, it was Canadas; today, they were Snows.
Wednesday night after church, I was suddenly starving for pecan pie, in spite of the fact that I’d just finished eating a bowl full of Bear Creek potato soup, which is downright scrumptious (unless you ask Teddy, who is not of the same persuasion). Larry, agreeing that pecan pie sounded positively toothsome, took Lydia with him and went to the store for one of Mrs. Smith’s pecan pies.
Now, I know perfectly well that Mrs. Smith, although she is an excellent cuisinier, simply cannot make pecan pies to hold a candle to homemade pecan pies (particularly one from my Blue Ribbon Cook Book). But...I had neither the ingredients nor the time nor the energy nor the want-to for making a pecan pie, and when such is the case, I keep all unflattering comments about Mrs. Smith and her skillet skills (or the lack thereof) strictly to myself.
Since some of the kids don’t like pecan pie (you’d think they were adopted), Larry said he would get something else, too. He must have been hungry: he got a box of Ranch-flavored Wheat Thins; a box of Herb-flavored Triscuits; a package of thin-sliced beef; a tall marble cake with gobs of icky sticky white frosting with caramel and chocolate drizzled all over the top, and nuts sprinkled thereon; a coconut cream pie; and, of course, the requisite pecan pie.
But!!--the pecan pie I so badly wanted was frozen and needed to thaw for two hours. We set it on the table and launched headlong into all the other food.
No, I didn’t eat pecan pie that night. It wasn’t long before I wasn’t a bit hungry any more. I wasn’t even waiting anxiously for the pecan pie to thaw; I saved it for the next day. UGH, I was stuffed.
Somebody robbed Columbus Federal Bank Thursday morning. That’s okay; they deserved it, because several years ago, they stole $25 from each of our four older children, and refused to give it back. What happened was, after we had withdrawn all but $25 from the accounts in order to start accounts at another bank, they charged the accounts to death with interest, which is illegal when the holder is a minor under the age of eighteen. I did not discover what they were doing until three months later, when I went in to close the four accounts and collect the last of the children’s money.
It was gone.
The bank president wouldn’t answer my letters, my phone calls, or talk to me when I went there to see him. And before I had a chance to really get tough, they sold out to another banking firm, and, presto ka-blip, there were no more records of Keith, Hannah, Dorcas, or Teddy Jackson at all. They might as well have never existed.
And now the wiseacre banking officials have gotten their just desserts. So there, na na nanana.
Okay, okay; don’t get your tail feathers all ruffled; I don’t really think that. Bank robbers are heinous, horrendous criminals, and ought to have their toenails jerked out, one at a time, without benefit of that anesthetic preparation of procaine commonly known as Novocain.
Especially since whoever he is hasn’t brought us our rightful $100.
This week, I finished sewing Hester’s green/blue plaid sailor dress and started on another for her, one that will somewhat match the one I made for Victoria. The skirt is dark teal green with tiny pink flowers strewn about on it, and there is a border print of pink and mauve roses which I made use of at the bottom of the short sleeves and also on the bodice. The sash, collar, and piping are of pink check with a tiny dark pink rose and teal leaf print.
About the time I was half done with that dress, it occurred to me that the next day, the 22nd, was Keith’s 22nd birthday, and I didn’t have a thing to give him. I decided to make him a shirt, despite knowing that he recently said he disliked homemade shirts because they made him feel like a sore thumb. That, because of the shirts I’ve made him for our Fourth-of-July picnics, where a good percentage of the boys, including those of his age, sported shirts sewn them by their mothers! Bah, humbug.
One Fourth of July, a couple friends of Keith’s even sewed their own shirts, westerns of red and blue print. They did fine and dandy jobs of it, too.
From my handy fabric closet, I pulled a piece of navy, maroon, and tan wool woven in a small hounds-tooth pattern, tan fine-waled corduroy, and dark tan silk for lining. I trotted out to the garage with the fabric to ask Larry’s opinion. He peered up at it from his vantage point under his Cherokee, where he appeared to be attempting the removal of its entire exhaust system by way of a hacksaw, but who am I to say, since I know nothing about Cherokees, other than the fact that they used to live in North Carolina and northern Georgia, nor do I know anything about exhaust systems or hacksaws, either one.
He was in favor of it--the shirt, that is, but then he likes me to sew shirts for him.
Hester, looking on, helpfully suggested, “Just take a tag out of one of Daddy’s good shirts and sew it into Keith’s, and he’ll like it just fine.”
I spread the material on the table and started cutting. I cut the collar from the corduroy; the rest was of wool. Soon it was ready to sew...but it was time to turn the cutting table into a supper table.
While soup simmered on the stove, I made lemon poppyseed muffins, which was a jolly good thing, since Teddy didn’t like the soup, picky kid.
When supper was over, I read to the children the story of Deborah and Barak going to battle against Sisera, captain of Jabin’s Canaanite army. This is one of the more unusual stories in the Bible--well, truthfully, there aren’t many ‘usual’ stories in the Bible; they are all wonderful and amazing and fitting for principles of life today, for the Bible is old, yet ever new. Deborah was the fourth judge; Barak was the fifth. Deborah was the only woman in the Bible to go to battle--and the funny thing is, Sisera himself was killed by a woman, Jael, whom he thought he could trust. The story is in Judges 4; you ought to read it. Don’t neglect to read Chapter 5, too; it is the song of Deborah and Barak, and will give you details that are not found in Chapter 4.
When the story was finished, the older children rushed off to the showers while I read a few chapters of Uncle Arthur’s Bedtime Stories to Victoria and Caleb.
Afterwards, I returned to The Shirt. When I figured it was about half done, I went to bed.
Hannah and Aaron came for a little while the next day. Aaron is learning words fast; he has even put two or three together in short little jumbled sentences, and he is always delighted when we know what he said.
I went on sewing Keith’s shirt.
There wasn’t much left to do, and I thought it would be a breeze. I put the pointed plackets on the sleeves...and then cut the slit right up toward the point instead of to the side, because I followed the fold line rather than the cutting line.
Aaauuuggghhh.
I took the ruint plackets off, cut new ones, and sewed them back on.
Ah, perfect. It was the first time I’d sewn that kind of placket. I ironed them neatly, and jubilantly went off to bake cornmeal muffins.
The day stretched on, with all the usual interruptions, plus several more. I learnt that Keith was not home, and would not be home until the next day, having gone to Lincoln for a meeting concerning the nutritional supplement, ReLiv, that he and Esther are selling. That meant that The Shirt could loiter about the sewing machine a little longer, if it so desired, and nobody would even care.
Dorcas went to Taco John’s to get us Sierra Grandé chicken tacos. (I like softshells better, but I am definitely in the minority.)
After supper, I returned to my sewing machine to sew the cuffs onto Keith’s shirt-and that’s when I found that I’d sewn the left placket onto the right sleeve, and vice versa. Or maybe I’d sewn the right placket onto the left sleeve, and vice versa, who knows. One thing I did know: if I continued the way things were, we would have the cuffs buttoning bottom over top, and Keith would be absolutely, positively convinced that he had excellent reason to despise homemade shirts.
Botheration, grrrrr!!!
I ripped the unruly things off again and transposed them. Finally, I had them right. I ironed them, put on the cuffs, made buttonholes and attached the buttons, and there we were, then, done.
After a moment or two of reflection, I went into our closet, conjured up one of Larry’s newest Wrangler shirts, and carefully removed the tag. Then into Keith’s corduroy collar it went, nestling right in and making itself at home, just as if it knew it belonged there.
Next, whether because I was proud of my sewing, or whether I didn’t want to too badly misrepresent the facts (I leave you to decide), I pulled out one of my own tags that read, “Handmade by Sarah Lynn”. I collected a piece of white dungaree, rolled it into my typewriter, and typed in bold print,
MACHINE
WASH COLD
HANG
TO DRY
NO BLEACH
It looked quite professional, if you ask me, and you did ask, did you not? On a side seam near the hem, I sewed the two tags together.
There. Done. Finìs. Complét.
I put the shirt on a hanger, hung it on a cupboard handle, and backed up to admire it.
One pocket flap was higher than the other.
After banging my head against the nearest wall a number of times, I turned out the light and went to bed.
Saturday, Victoria put on a dress that was way too big for her.
“Oh, that’s much too big,” I told her, “We’ll have to hang it up and look for one that fits you better.”
She leaned forward and looked down at it, which of course made the hem nearly drag the floor.
“Wooo!” exclaimed Victoria, “It sure is!” She giggled. “I wonder why I didn’t even notice?” She frowned thoughtfully and then brightened. “Do you think that tomorrow when I’m five this dress will fit just right?!”
About that time, Hannah came in the door, all worn to a frizzle-frazzle from carrying Aaron all the way over here--she’d locked herself out of her house. Yes, again. Furthermore, the garage was also locked, so she hadn’t even been able to retrieve Aaron’s stroller. Teddy, coming home from work about that time, went off to find Bobby and the extra set of keys.
In the meanwhile, I showed Hannah The Shirt, pointing out the crooked flap with a sigh of exasperation.
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” said Hannah airily, “Keith stands crooked anyway.”
I laughed. “But what if he stands crooked the wrong way?!” I demanded.
“Hmmm,” Hannah pondered. “Then he would look whoppyjaw, wouldn’t he?”
I took the flap off, repositioned it, then sewed it back down. There. Finally, the shirt was just right.
Soon Bobby arrived, collected his wife and son, and they went off to let themselves back into their house.
Larry and Joseph worked for David Saturday until about 3:00 p.m.; then Larry split wood till sundown. It was 73° that afternoon. The children played outside most of the day, even Caleb, although it probably wasn’t good for him, since he was sick with asthma troubles all week, and he was coughing quite a bit after he came in. He’s taken several treatments on the nebulizer; that thing certainly is a lifesaver. I’m sure it kept him out of the emergency room at least twice this week.
I took videos of Caleb and Victoria riding their bikes that afternoon. Victoria has figured out how to get herself started; she no longer has to rely on someone to help her at the onset.
I took pictures of Larry splitting wood, too; he always clowns for the camera and provides all sorts of entertainment. When the logsplitter’s wedge came down on a humungous log and then got itself stuck, pulling the log right up with it when it rose, Larry proceeded to climb up on the log and jump up and down on it, trying to get it loose. It wouldn’t come. So he took his maul to it, swinging at it with all his might and main, and it finally came loose and fell to the ground. That was one tough log, I tell you; Larry’s ax would hardly penetrate it. It came from an old dead cottonwood, and I think it was only a millennia away from turning into petrified wood, I’ll betcha it was. But by turning it round and round, letting the logsplitter lop small chunks off of it, Larry finally got it whittled down to size. He cuts the sections of wood small enough that I can carry them; what do you suppose that means?
Two people came to look at the Bronco that afternoon. Both of them wanted it, and I think they spurred each other on, which was good for us, since we didn’t have to drop the price as much as we might have otherwise done. While one man went off to discuss it with his wife, the other rushed off to get the money, and came back posthaste with it all in cash. So he got the Bronco, of course. Sorry, Mr. Nice B. Husband; but nice guys don’t always finish last; you’ll just have to keep trying.
Bobby and Hannah brought Victoria her present Saturday night; her birthday was Sunday, and she was five years old. Hannah sewed a dress for her, and made a matching dress for one of her favorite dolls, the little doll we found at Pawnee Park. Her grandparents and a couple of her brothers gave her some money, and she is all excited because I told her she could start a savings account, and I would take her to the bank tomorrow. No, not Columbus Federal.
The cupboards, the freezer, and the refrigerator were bare, other than a few quarts of frozen shredded zucchini, which no one wanted to chew on raw, the finicky people; so I went to the grocery store for food for supper. I got frozen egg noodles, a vegetable mix with potatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, and a packet of spices, and a package of chicken. I baked the chicken a little bit, until I could cut it off the bone and get the fat and skin off it. I put the chicken back into the oven with the vegetables, then cooked the noodles. After a while, I added the noodles to the roaster in the oven, and baked it all some more. When it was done, it was flavorless and dry, so I made chicken gravy and poured it into the pan.
There. Just right. Well, almost just right; surely there is a better vegetable mix than that? Teddy and Joseph were unimpressed.
When choir practice was over that evening, Bobby, Keith, and Teddy all came into the house at the same time. Keith spotted The Shirt hanging there on a cupboard handle, with his birthday card tucked into the cuff. And yes, he liked it. He exclaimed over it, remarked favorably about the collar in particular, and made all sorts of additional compliments about the shirt in general--and then I told him to look at the inside seam, down near the hem.
He looked--and there was my name tag, ‘Handmade by Sarah Lynn’.
Hee hee Now there was a funny expression on his face, ’twas.
Dorcas brought home some ice cream and a box of cones, along with candles made to look like little Crayolas. She spooned ice cream into a cone for Victoria and then, while Caleb held it, she stuck five candles into the ice cream every which way, and began lighting them.
First, she nearly burned herself with the match. Hearing an exclamation, I turned around to see what was happening, saw Caleb in this perilous situation, opened my mouth to say, “Stop!! Don’t do that!!”--just as Caleb jumped out of his hide and yelped, “OUCHCHCHCH!!!”
Sure enough, the wax had dripped off a candle and landed on his finger. Good grief.
Larry cut Teddy’s hair that night while I curled the little girls’ hair.
Then I enlarged the neck of Victoria’s new dress, so the child wouldn’t turn blue when she wore it to church Sunday.
In the morning when she got up, I loudly sang to her, “Happy birthday to you, you belong in the zoo! You look like a monkey, and you act like one, too!” She giggled, still half asleep.
After church, we gave Victoria a doll I’d bought from Hannah. She’d crocheted a ruffly blue and white dress for it, with matching booties, bloomers, bonnet, and headband. The doll comes in a clear backpack with purple trim, and has two pockets, one big and one little, and is filled with baby bottle, pacifier, lotion, powder, sippy cup, and the clothes the doll came with. Victoria was delighted, and hasn’t parted with it since, except for letting Aaron use the sippy cup, which he took a real shine to.
After gobbling down Larry’s famous pancakes, we gave Victoria the rest of her presents: a chalk board, white chalk, colored chalk, a ‘Miracle Eraser’, colors in a little tin, a teddy bear color book, and gold play shoes with marabou trim. Victoria thinks the shoes are the cat’s meow. We’ve been hearing the clop-clopping of those heels ever since.
Then, with Victoria’s purple backpack in tow, we drove out to Lake Babcock to take pictures of the geese on the lake. The robins were back Saturday, but I’ll bet they’re feeling sorry today; it’s cold. And tomorrow it will be even colder--down to 4°, perhaps, with the wind blowing hard.
Before church, I started a loaf of honey oatmeal bread in the bread machine. Then, just about the time everyone came home from church, there was hot bread, in the final stages of baking. Mmmm, it hit the spot. Bobby and Hannah brought over hot chocolate and popcorn, and it seemed like a festive feast, it did.
I stayed with Mama during church. She was weaker than usual, once needing help to get out of her chair.
As I write, Victoria and Lydia are playing with the new chalk board, and Victoria has on her gold marabou heels, and they have discovered that the Miracle Eraser isn’t. I went to help Lydia erase the stuff she couldn’t get off the board, and found that with a good deal of elbow grease and quite a lot of scrubbing, the Miracle Eraser That Isn’t eventually smudges the chalk enough that one can write over the top of the first batch of scribbles. Brother.
Victoria is in high spirits, because I promised that tomorrow we would go to the library to get her a library card; children must be five years old to apply. She is quite adept at choosing good books in the library for herself, even though, in my opinion, the majority of children’s books are for the birds, and a good many of them I wouldn’t want to catch sight of in my house.
One time I was with her in the children’s section, trying to find a few books. One after another, I picked one up, paged through it, and put it back on the shelf. One after another, Victoria picked one up, brought it to me, and announced happily, “Here’s a good book!”
And it was.
“How do you always find the good books?” I queried, rejecting yet another.
She shrugged. “Oh, I just look for the old ratty ones, and there they are!”
Sure enough... those books she was finding were old ones, and the books I kept pulling out to look at were shiny and new.
I changed strategies.
Larry, Victoria, and I stopped at Sapp Bros. one night to fill our coffee mugs. That is to say, Larry and I stopped at Sapp Bros. one night to fill our coffee mugs, and Victoria was with us. Victoria does not fill her coffee mug with coffee. On the contrary, she fills it with milk.
It was cold and windy, and I had my scarf pulled up around my nose and mouth.
“Do I look funny?” I asked Larry in quite a muffled tone.
“Only half of you,” said Larry, “And the other part, I can’t see.”
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