Sunday, August 11, 2002 - More Floods & Sphinx Moths

The first few days of this week were spent removing part of the ceiling in Hester and Lydia’s room, taking out the furniture, and clearing the floor.

Tuesday, while the girls worked on their room, I cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom, finishing by mopping the floor.

Then Teddy and Joseph came home from work.  Victoria was drinking distilled water from a pop bottle she’d rinsed out.  Teddy, who is planning to grow up and get married in two months, poked a hole in the bottle with a pin and started spraying everyone.  The siblings yelped and scattered and threatened revenge.

Joseph actually took it.  Revenge, that is.

All of a sudden, without a word of warning, Joseph, who was across the table from Teddy, tilted his big two-gallon water jug over, sending a tidal wave rushing down the table and straight onto Teddy’s chest and lap.  But the jug was fuller than Joseph had thought, and he quite inundated the whole kitchen.

Teddy, meanwhile, scrambled madly to his feet, but not before he’d become quite a drowned rat.  The siblings, of course, thought justice had been served, and served royally well, at that.

The littles were in the throes of merriment over Teddy’s chagrined face, and Joseph was more jubilant than courtesy would allow, when their mother arrived on the scene.  There were two big boys mopping and drying the kitchen in short order.

“But I didn’t dump all this water!” protested Teddy.

“No, but you started it,” I told him.  “Now, mop.”

He mopped.

“But I didn’t start it,” protested Joseph.

“No, but you didn’t need to get so carried away,” I retorted.  “Now, mop.”

He mopped.

They might be bigger than me, but I’m still The Big Boss.

Tuesday evening, Keith and Esther left for a short vacation to Missouri and Illinois.  The original purpose of the trip was to attend a meeting by ReLiv, the nutritional supplements they sell.  They visited several of my uncles and aunts while they were at it, and went up in the St. Louis Arch.

Wednesday morning, Socks brought a hummingbird (or Sphinx) moth into the house, his first of the season.  It flew to a dark corner and stayed put all day.  Then, being nocturnal, it came to life that night about the time Teddy and Amy came in after church.

There it was, flying around all over the place, making Dorcas screech and dodge.  We tried to catch the moth for Sharon, my great niece.  She’s in seventh grade this year, and the seventh-grade science class requires a large insect collection early in the school year.  We’ve caught quite a few bugs for her already.

Caleb got the butterfly net for me, and I tried to catch it.  I did catch it, several times; but it flew right back out of the net.  Once I caught a few hanging crystals on the chandelier, but they escaped, too.  It was diving at my head (the moth; not the chandelier) and I was ducking, and Dorcas was helping to put in the motions for me, and the sound effects, too...and then I realized everyone had suddenly gotten very quiet...

Teddy pointed toward the hallway, and there stood Larry, videotaping me.

I abruptly stopped with the gymnastical gyroscoping.

Teddy then managed to catch the thing with his hand, and into the freezer it went.

Thursday evening, we went to my mother’s house to see my Uncle Howard and Aunt Evelyn, who had come to visit Mama.  Uncle Howard is a jolly good storyteller, and we never get enough of his stories.

He told about when he and some of his cousins were little, and they were bothering some bumblebee hives in old cars.  The bees liked to build nests inside the seats, which were filled with Spanish moss.  The bees chased them...they ran...

The older children had told the younger ones that if a person would run straight, as fast as they could go, then hang a sudden turn around a tree, the bee would lose sight of them and fly on.  But Uncle Howard was the youngest, and he couldn’t run as fast as the others.  He didn’t get to the first tree before he got stung, right on the forehead.

Now, the children had not been where they were supposed to be, and they feared lest they get into trouble, so they all decided not to tell.  The problem was, there was that humongous goose egg right smack-dab in the middle of Uncle Howard’s forehead.  It was so swollen, he looked like he had a nose that stayed a nose until it got past his hairline.

They’d all decided not to tell...  But they didn’t need to tell.  Everyone knew.

He told of putting an airhorn on his powerchute.  Now, that made people stare skyward.

That night, I cut out a woolen suit for Hester for Thanksgiving.

Friday, I spent the entire day cutting out things.  First, Hester’s lining and blouse, then a matching lined suit and blouse for Victoria.  I hope I can make it look like I made the skirt the way it will be on purpose; I had to cut it out with two pieces running with the grain, the other two against the grain, because I was plumb out of material.  It’s rather a loud plaid of white, black, lime green, rusty orange, and turquoise (doesn’t that sound purty?), and there is a definite louder stripe crosswise to the grain.  I think I shall make the narrower pieces look like a placket front and back, slightly lopping over the edges of the seam, and then put big black buttons down the front in two rows.  I will sew a narrow black band all the way around collar and hem, and at the cuffs, too.  The blouses are rust-colored satin, with several rows of tucking down the front.

Lydia thinks the stuff is awful.  I agree, it’s not the most beautiful plaid wool in the world, but it was free.  It’s been sitting in my material closet for several decades or centuries, waiting for those colors to come back into fashion--and now they have.  So I decided to make good use of it.  And I used one of my favorite patterns, so I hope it will turn out cuter than anyone ever expects.

For Lydia, I cut a cotton suit, a small check of dusty blue, pink, and off-white.  The short jacket will be dusty blue, with the collar out of check.  The blouse is pink.  The girls had better stay away from each other that day; they shall clash horribly!

In between all the cutting, I washed clothes.  Joseph brings home scads of sand all over his jeans.  It doesn’t seem to bother the washing machine; it goes ahead and washes the sand, too, so that when the cycles are over, there is a layer of nice clean sand in the bottom of the washer, along with a liberal amount strewn amongst the rest of the jeans.  Sooo...I put them through another double rinse and hope that’s good enough.

My dryer cannot cope with sand; it doesn’t filter it out well at all.  I have had the barrel replaced once, and am having it replaced again, possibly this week.  Some of the new parts arrived last week.  (Yes, I managed to call just days before the warranty expired, imagine that.)  But the menfolk of the house will continue to bring home sand...I will continue to think I got rid of it by shaking the jeans out beforehand or by washing them in the washing machine...the sand will continue to hide in the pockets until it reaches the dryer, at which time the jeans will automatically empty themselves and the sand will wreak havoc on the dryer barrel...

Maybe jeans should trudge out to the saggy clothesline outside and hang themselves.

Teddy, Amy, and Lydia went to Omaha Friday afternoon.  Teddy bought a big tool chest that was on sale, one he’s been needing for some time.  They then went to Nebraska Furniture Mart, where they purchased all the furniture they will need.  The Mart will ship the furniture on October 2, giving Teddy and Amy just enough time to set it up and arrange it before their wedding.  It just so happened that Nebraska Furniture Mart was offering free shipping that very day!  They certainly don’t do that very often.

Saturday, I had big hopes of launching into all that freshly-cut fabric, but my sewing machine cabinet was buried in mending, so I did that first.  Then a nephew of mine came to visit from Texas, so I took him around town for a bit to show him where various relatives lived.

At one house, I inadvertently entertained everyone by thinking a large rubber turtle in their almost-empty wading pool was real.

That afternoon, Walkers’ crews were all working diligently putting the new playset on the playground across the street and down the block a short ways.  It’s really something, I tell you, bigger even than the toys at Pawnee Park!  It was purchased entirely from donations.  Larry used the boom truck to set up the big pieces.  There are swings, slides of all sorts, tunnels, bridges, everything imaginable.  Gehrings supplied the cement to anchor everything into the ground.  All that’s left to do now, I think, is to cover the ground with twelve inches of wood chips; they had already dug it down a foot for that purpose.  It’s the law; new playgrounds must have mulch at least twelve inches deep.  They’ve installed a drinking fountain, too.

I didn’t stay with Mama this evening, because I have a cold--one of those first-rate doozies, complete with sore throat, earaches, headache, and sinus infection.  We don’t want Mama to get that.  Several of the children have had various versions of it; all but Joseph are better today.  I think they each gave me their germs, so that I wound up with the best set of all.  But of course everyone always thinks their own ailment is worse than the other guy’s, don’t they?  

Now I hear my bed calling me, and I think I shall go see what it wants.