Last Monday, I took Victoria in her carriage and rode to the mailbox at the old UnSmart Food Store (they’ve gone out of business now) to mail my letter. I sure hope they still maintain that box; did you get a letter from me last week? If not, let me know, and we will descend upon said hapless mail depository with crowbar and sledgehammer, recover your letter, and send it off in the very next post.
I made sausage/cheese/egg sandwiches for supper that evening. Mmmmm, scrumptious.
After a rather hot day, it got nice in the evening. A huge cloud came blowing in, looking for all the world like a thundercloud. But it didn’t even pause long enough to greet us; it just made the sunset lovely with hues of bright pink, melon, and lavender, and then flew right on north without so much as a kindly salute. Rats.
When supper was over, the kids went outside to light off fireworks. I walked out with my camera just in time to see Dorcas trying to light Caleb’s punk while holding the open matchbox underneath her flaming match, about two inches away, while Caleb had his fingers only an inch from the blaze and right above that matchbox. I rushed forward and jerked Caleb’s hand away with one hand while snatching the box of matches from Dorcas with the other.
They both looked amazed. What on earth could be ailing their mother?!
“You will never be old enough,” I told my almost-twenty-year-old-daughter, “that I will stand idly by while you burn up yourself and your little brother with you!”
Dorcas rather belatedly blew out the match, and Caleb went off to ride his bike, although I’m cannot be certain that that occupation was any safer than the previous one.
Some men from our church planted a dozen blossoming pear trees at the end of the block in the new lots. Joseph went down to help them. He told us that each small tree in its root bag weighed 500 pounds. One man, a real Do-It-Yourself sort, after digging a deep enough hole to plant it in, marched over to one of those trees, got a good grip on it, and, never imagining its great weight, tried to pick it up.
“AhhOOOOOF, ARRRRRRROOWWRR!!!” said Hercules The Second, nearly giving himself a whiplash.
The tree remained stolidly immovable.
Hercules II stood up straight with difficulty and looked around for a better method, which materialized in the form of a forklift that someone had brought for that express purpose, and was in fact how they had gotten those trees off the trailer on which they had arrived in the first place. Herk reluctantly gave quitclaim to the forklift operator.
Each tree needs ten gallons of water each day. They plant them with the burlap bag still wrapped around the roots so as not to agitate the roots, which is the bane of many a newly-planted sapling.
Tuesday, I finished Hannah’s green and rose dress. Just like the one before it, it was too big. I put a wide tuck on each shoulder and solved the problem in two minutes.
This solution is not recommended for gentlemen’s tailored suitcoats.
I have broken another string on my piano; now there are two broken, which makes it impossible to play in a key that will avoid them. Now I must ask Penny for the box of string, and then I will be obliged to light a fire under Larry to get him to fix them for me, and after that I will tune them. And try not to thump them so hard next time I play. I need a Bosendorfer.
One hot afternoon, I was pulling weeds when I came upon a gigantic spider, probably a barn spider. She was evidently lost, since this isn’t a barn, although it sometimes looks like one, and the parochial Curtain Climbers act like they were born in one, what with their leaving the doors open all the time and never cleaning up after themselves and constantly demanding food.
This gargantuan spider, I’m quite sure, was on the Atlanta Beat Women’s United Soccer Association Team, because she had a little soccer ball that she was racing around with, and she definitely had that excellent control of the ball that the Atlanta Beat is so well known for. Another clue was that she was wearing eight tiny Asics, a fantastic brand of shoes for winning soccer players.
“Caleb,” I screeched, blocking the spider’s route with my garden-gloved hand, valiantly playing goalkeeper, “Go get me a butter carton!!” He looked at me in amazed wonder, and I shrieked, “RUN!!!”
He ran.
Mrs. Barnyard Spider pulled up her thick socks and ran at me headlong, unquestionably considering herself one of the forward strikers. I executed an acrobatic leap and headed her off at the pass. She momentarily lost her little soccer ball, raced back to retrieve it, and then dashed upfield--straight into the penalty arc, also known as a margarine tub.
I, abruptly switching positions and taking up the left winger locus, slapped the lid on the carton.
But, alas, the carton and lid, from many washings in the dishwasher, were somewhat flimsier than expected, and my slap shoved the lid right on past the edges of the tub, whereupon Mrs. B. Arachnid back-heeled the ball straight back onto the field, landing it somewhere near the halfway line. Then, having saved her ball from trapping, she made a grand effort to follow it.
However, by then I had recouped the lid, and I shut it just before Mrs. Labidognatha stuck one of the seven segments of one of her legs out of the bowl. I then verrrrry gingerly picked up the Rawlings egg sac--ahem, soccer ball--and, lifting the lid’s edge slightly, chipped that orb right over Señora Araneae’s head and into the goal, and down went the lid again.
The audience cheered wildly.
That done, I permitted myself a relieved shudder just about the time Hester and Caleb, all in one voice, asked gleefully, reaching for the carton, “Can we see it??”
“NO!!!” I responded with spirit, jerking it out of reach.
I handed it to Lydia, who I knew would be less likely to risk a peek. “Go put this into the freezer for Sharon,” I instructed, and she trotted off with it, holding it quite a safe distance away from herself as she went, and watching it warily for any sign of escaping renegades.
I turned again to the weeds.
AAAUUUGGGHHH!!!!! Mrs. Argiopidae’s ten team players had come to defend their mate, and were all converging on me at once! Furthermore, neither the referee nor the linesmen were doing a solitary thing to stop them. I saw a member of the opposing team bringing a new ball, attached as it was to her spinnerets, over the touch line, which was at the moment masquerading as one of my decorator logs.
I lost my cool and administrated a dozen fouls all at once, and quite on purpose, too:
a) I deliberately kicked an opponent
b) I tripped another
c) I struck my own teammate
d) I pushed another one under the touch line and then stood on it
e) I squished all the rest flatter’n pancakes, Rawlings soccer balls and all, for I was heartily tired of soccer, and rugby, too.
“Now they won’t be able to eat mosquitoes tonight,” lamented Hester.
“So what,” I retorted, “Let them eat cake.”
“Uh,” she said, snickering, “I think they won’t be able to eat anything.”
I wonder...next fall, when Sharon takes that thawed egg sac to school, all nestled in amongst her insect collection, will it begin hatching spiderlings from those pearly little white eggs inside? I can just see it: one by one, they will leave their egg sacs through the tiny hole they will tear in its side. They will immediately begin spinning draglines, and travel to other areas, perhaps by ballooning, perhaps by train, possibly by bus (and the water spider prefers submarine)--but never by motorcycle. Spiders hate motorcycles; the wind messes up their chelicerae and pedipalpi, and especially their calamistrum.
In a few short minutes, the classroom will be a maze of spider webs, with teacher and students alike finding themselves wound up in myriad filaments of sticky silk. Aaaiiiyiiiieee.
That evening, we visited Christine for a little while. The children leaped out of the Suburban and were soon having a wild game of tag with their cousins on the front lawn. Poor little Joshua, who will be two this month, is not at all impressed with fireworks. At the sound of loud bangs from the firecrackers the family was watching one night, he shivered violently and said, “Boom! Bang! Mama, Daddy.”
Christine took him into the house and let him watch the colorful explosions from the window. He did enjoy that.
So you see the dear little boy still remembers that awful accident that took his Daddy’s life.
Finally, the man who smashed through their house has been formally charged with felony vehicular homicide.
Later, we went to Wal-Mart, where we got denim-colored flip-flops for Victoria. We had returned to the Suburban and were on our way home when she was suddenly more enamored with those thongs than when we picked them out, because I showed her how, when one tipped them this way and that, two little stars on the insoles looked as if tiny fans were going round and round inside them, and the purple and fuchsia moiré print behind the fans moved like waves.
Caleb got new tennis shoes. I thought sandals might be good, so he wouldn’t get so hot; but Larry’s nose gets all twisted up and rumpled, just thinking about sandals for one of his boys. Cowboy boots are more his style, you see.
My calamistrum has only just begun lying flat again after writing about and remembering all those creepy crawlies got it standing up on end, when I looked down from my typing just now and spotted a humongous spider at my feet. My bare feet, I might add. I grabbed the nearest weapon, which happened to be one of Victoria’s gold-and-marabou slippers, and clobbered it.
It wasn’t five minutes before movement on the other side of my chair caught my attention. I turned my head--and there was one of the biggest centipedes I have ever seen. Aaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiaaaaaaa... I hate those things. Once again, it was Victoria’s slipper to the rescue.
Wednesday, July 3rd, would have been Daddy’s 86th birthday. It will soon be ten years since he died. It’s hard to believe it’s been that long.
Victoria wore her flip-flops so much she made sores between her toes, so off we went to Payless to get the flag-print slides we’d seen the previous day, when Hester and Lydia got themselves some shoes and sandals. I wonder, will she be able to keep them on?
The predicted sunshine for the rest of the week fell by the wayside Wednesday; it was cloudy that day, although the heat and humidity was still oppressive. Early that morning, there was lightning and thunder, but I don’t think any raindrops found their way to the ground.
That afternoon, Joseph changed the oil on the Suburban; it’s needed it for a good long while.
The younger children cleaned the living room. They cleaned, that is, so long as I hovered overhead, instructing every step of the way: “Pick up this piece of lint, sweep up that piece of lint, put away the other piece of lint.” I declare; they haven’t any idea where to put anything.
When Larry came home from work, he told me that a young man he works with had been trying to straighten up a wall that was filled with cement, pounding on it with a sledgehammer to get it into proper position. That is risky, because there are so many pounds of pressure on those forms when the wall is full. The form moved slightly, and a wedge popped out with tremendous force and hit the man right in the mouth, breaking out his two top teeth and shattering the upper jawbone. The blow gave him a whiplash, too. He at first didn’t know what had hit him; it nearly knocked him flat. Then he saw that the wedge was missing, and realized what had happened.
He went to the same doctor he’d gone to when he had a dreadful accident with a snowmobile a few years ago, breaking his lower jaw, jerking those same two top teeth out by the roots, and breaking off several bottom teeth. That time, the dentist had been able to re-insert the teeth and save them. This time, the teeth will not be saved. They were put back into place with plastic adhesive, however; and they will remain that way for three to six months, until the bone heals. Then the dentist will put false teeth in their place.
One time a wedge flew out and hit Larry’s glasses, hitting so hard it chipped the glass. The men have tried wearing safety glasses, but in this kind of heat and humidity, the glasses get so steamed up the men can’t see. That job has all sorts of dangers, both obvious and hidden.
After church Wednesday night, we gave Dorcas her birthday presents. She turned 20 on the Fourth. In the big wooden rocker in the living room, I perched the huge white teddy bear with the blue knitted sweater on which the flag is cross-stitched. A white lidded mug with the flag printed on it I affixed to one of the bear’s paws, and I placed three little red, white, and blue star candles atop his head. From the other paw hung a white bag with a flag design, and in it was an ivory sweater with pastel flowers and pearls. A red handkerchief necklace was around the bear’s neck, and a box of stars and stripes Band-Aids sat on his lap.
Yes, Dorcas likes red, white, and blue.
She took her things with her to Mama’s house, and then we took the children to the Agricultural Park to watch the pyrotechnics. Bobby, Hannah, and Aaron were there, and we managed to wind up near them.
Aaron is not terribly fond of the fireworks, but he did announce, “BANG!!” after each big explosion.At the Park, I saw a couple of men sitting on the tailgate of a pickup. I thought, judging by their looks in the light of the fireworks, that they were some friends of ours who, for privacy and anonymity purposes, we shall call Henry Smith and Beauregard Mulligan. Now, why Henry and Beauregard would be together at Ag Park watching fireworks without their families, I do not know, but that’s who I thought they were. Those two did sometimes eat breakfast together, so why should they not watch fireworks together?
I grinned and waved in quite a friendly manner. ‘Henry’ looked only a slight bit surprised and returned my wave. I was unconcerned; Henry looks surprised a good deal of the time, anyway.
Hannah joined me at the fence.
“Henry is right over there,” I said, gesturing back behind me.
She turned her head and looked. “No, it isn’t,” she said.
“Well, I saw him when those bright white flashes were going off,” I informed her knowledgeably, “and it’s Henry.”She stared behind us for a moment or two, and I glanced back, too. It sure enough looked like Henry to me. And that other fellow, I was certain, was Beauregard Mulligan.
Almost certain, that is.
“I still don’t believe it,” remarked Hannah.
Both men kept glancing our way, especially ‘Henry’, and I thought I detected a perplexed look on his face.
Then the sky lit up with big bright bursts of light, and I, instead of watching them, turned quickly to look at Mr. S. and Mr. M, if indeed that’s who they were.
“Neither do I,” I told Hannah, and then we both spent the next few minutes snickering and not looking behind us.
We stopped at the grocery store on the way home from the Park and purchased the food we needed for the Fourth-of-July picnic.
When we came home, even though it was 12:30 a.m., the Mexican children were all loose all over the neighborhood, running around like hyenas hither and yon. They even sounded like hyenas. Good grief.
I set about fixing food for the next day’s picnic. I made three kinds of jello, discovering that I had gotten the kind with sugar, although I meant to get the kind without sugar. I made graham cracker crust, baking it instead of just chilling it, because after first not putting enough butter in, next I put too much. So I baked it.
Meanwhile, I did one load of clothes after the other, since the menfolk needed jeans, and Joseph needed his best shirt (best shirt for picnics, that is) washed. Thankfully, the boy did a couple of loads for me, which earned him a big, fat, chocolate-covered granola bar. Thinking that I deserved some merit, too, I awarded myself a golden almond granola bar.
After that, I made two dozen Twice the Blueberries muffins, managing to only burn the three muffins I’d made for us on a Top O’ the Muffin tin.
That done, it was time to alter Hannah’s jumper, which was too big for her. I’d cut it out last week, and Hannah had sewn most of it. She’d gotten the top all put together, lining and all, and sewn onto the skirt, when she realized it was altogether toooo big. Being in a quandary as to how to go about fixing it, she called me. As it was getting late, and she still planned to put trim on her blouse, and she also needed to make her food for the picnic, and she hasn’t been feeling too well, I told her to bring it over, I would do it for her.
I picked it up--and discovered I had more than altering to do. On top of the dress lay the zipper, entirely loose and free of any moorings. Aaaaauuuuggghhh! It was getting late.
Nothing for it, but to get myself in gear.
I rushed off to my sewing machine and was soon toiling away with the seam ripper, magnifying glasses perched on the end of my meritorious nose.
And then suddenly I noticed--the hem needed to be put in, too. Hannah can’t put hems in because her newer machine is in the hospital because it wouldn’t zigzag, and the older machine that she’s been using doesn’t have a hem stitch.
Aaaauuuuugggggggggggggghhhhhhhh.
I picked out stitches a little faster, and my machine was soon humming happily away, making jumper top smaller, putting skirt back onto top, inserting zipper, and hemming the skirt. I ironed it, put it on a hanger, and hung it on the chain of our front door where I told Hannah she could find it in the morning, should she need it before we awoke.
And I hoped it would fit.
I tried on my new outfit Thursday morning for the first time; fortunately, it fit. Victoria came groggily out her door this morning, stopped dead in her tracks, stood still, and listened. She could hear her father talking to Teddy, and they were getting food ready for the picnic (green bean casserole, lemonade, jello salad).
She skedaddled back into her room faster’n you could say ‘Jack Robinson’, and in mere seconds was back in the hallway, dressed in her new Fourth-of-July dress and lifting her long curls so that I could pull up the zipper. I brushed her hair, pulled it into a ponytail, and then flipped the ponytail up and around and back through itself with a topsy-turvy-tail tool, which makes a pretty twist of the hair just above the ponytail. The ponytail tumbled down in a long spiral curl.
Victoria’s hair has the most natural curl of any of our children at that age. The three older boys’ hair became curly when they were fifteen or so, but the other girls’ hair is mostly straight. Hester’s is just starting to get a slight wave to it.
Victoria’s hair starts to fall into long ringlets after I wash it, and it keeps getting curlier the more it dries. But...next to her little cousin Jamie, who lives just down the block, Victoria’s hair looks practically straight, for Jamie’s shoulder-length hair is an absolute riot of curls.
After buttoning the child, I lowered my ironing board so that I could press the sash on her dress right while she was in it, which made her laugh.
“I didn’t know you could make a toy ir’ing board out of a real one!” she giggled.
I finished the belts and tied them.
“This always makes me feel snuggly,” sighed Victoria, leaning against the wall, the better to feel the warmth of the sash on her back.
“You like it now,” I told her, “But I’ll bet you will have other words for it after you’ve been outside for a while.”
Yes, it was hot. Hot, and very humid.
Why, oh why, can’t we have our picnics at midnight?? Besides, that’s when I get thoroughly hungry, not at one o’clock in the afternoon. At midnight, I’d really be able to do justice to all that food. But at one o’clock p.m..... I get a serving of fresh fruit and not much else, and can’t even stand to look a pie in the face. (Unless it happens to have rhubarb in it, in which case I throw all caution to the wind and just eat it, whether I’m hungry or not. Thursday, though, I didn’t even go look at the dessert table; I steered clear of it. I just wasn’t hungry, and I don’t want to eat when I’m not hungry.)
I had a few bites of some rather good lasagna (it didn’t have sauerkraut buried in the middle of it like some I got a couple of years ago that killed me dead), and then tried valiantly to help Victoria with her plateful of food when she acquired her usual stomachache from eating when she is piping hot; but I just couldn’t do it, and I gave up.
When we got home, I stuck my videocassette into the player to see the film I’d taken. That’s when I discovered that I’d had things all mixed around for a while: when I thought I was recording, I was not; when I thought I turned it off, I was turning it on. Now, this can be a disconcerting piece of disportment (if that’s not a word, it should be), since it’s when the camcorder is supposedly off that I make all my knowledgeable (or otherwise) comments and tell all my amusing (or otherwise) little sagas and squibs.
Upon listening to my oratory, I decided to leave it on the tape. At one point I was telling about Caleb’s funny face when he saw Aaron’s shirt that I’d sewn, and thought it was his and I’d made it too small. Next, I was talking to poor Brian about his teeth. So the footage stays, even though the visual images leave something to be desired, as they are mainly a) the trunk of a large tree, b) the wood chips of the playground, and c) the sky, which doesn’t sport so much as a cloud to break the monotony.
Ah, well; it’s not quite as boring as later footage, when I taped fireworks for altogether toooo long.
Lawrence and Norma came visiting for a little while after the picnic, bringing a present for Dorcas. They watched my video, although I think poor Lawrence was about to fall asleep. Teddy and Amy were here playing chess with their frosted-and-clear-glass set. That evening, Caleb and Kyle, Amy’s little brother, went with them to Fremont to see a big fireworks show.
The rest of us went, too, but didn’t see Teddy & Co., because we wound up in a different parking lot.
Friday, Lydia told me her mouth was hurting. I looked inside... Lo and behold, the two first molars on the bottom were coming in right under the baby teeth, and the baby teeth were resting on them, still stuck fast to the gum on the inside, turning sideways toward her tongue. I tried wiggling the teeth, but they were too tight for me to hope to remove without hurting the child. I picked up the phone book and started calling.
One after another, I called every last dentist in town. Most of them were gone on vacation until Monday or Tuesday; I only reached their answering service. But those that I did reach were unable--so they said--to squeeze Lydia in for at least two weeks--and she has an appointment for the sixteenth, anyway. One receptionist ‘politely’ told me, in a tone of voice to suggest I was the stupidest person who’d called yet, that permanent teeth growing in under baby teeth was not considered an emergency. Pbth pbth pbth. It wasn’t her mouth that held the whoppyjaw, painful teeth!
I kept trying.
I called the dentists in Humphrey...Osceola...Shelby...Genoa...Schuyler...Norfolk ... I finally found a dentist in David City--and he answered the phone, himself--who could see Lydia on Monday. I made the appointment, and hoped she would not be in too much pain until then.
For supper, I made my famous ‘Dagwood’ burgers, using ground steak patties from Omaha Steak Company. Listen to the layers: toasted and buttered onion bun, Miracle Whip, steak patty with garlic powder and bacon bits, Swiss cheese, crisp slices of bacon, mozzarella cheese, slices of Romanian tomatoes, lettuce, dill pickle, rings of onion, and finally the other half of the toasted onion bun.
Now, after putting all that together, the only thing left to do is to figure out how to open one's mouth wide enough to get the sandwich in.
After supper, Larry, Victoria, and I went for a bike ride all the way to North Parkway, a pretty section of houses on the east side of town where the streets curve this way and that, meandering amongst stately old trees.
“Look at that house!” Victoria exclaimed from her seat in the carriage, “There’s grass all over it!”
We looked.
It was a big old brick house, nearly covered with ivy.
“It’s ivy, Victoria,” I informed her.
She raised her eyebrows, incredulous. “Poison ivy?” she queried.
At the museum on 16th Street, we stopped to look at the sign on the door to find out what their hours were and how much the entrance fee was. ‘Friday, Saturday, and Sundays only, 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.’, and the fee is $3.00 for adults, free for children 14 and under so long as they are accompanied by an adult. Pretty good price, eh?
Our attention was suddenly drawn to a clamor of flapping and squawking near the door, where we discovered a mother blackbird with her young’n--stuck in the wire cage around the air conditioner unit. We looked it over, and found the tiny spot they must have come through, probably chasing a bug or something. We tried to shoo them back toward it, but blackbirds are notoriously birdbrained, and they refused to be shooed in the direction we wished to shoo them. They screeched hoarsely and fluttered frantically, and we backed away so as not to cause them to hurt themselves.
Larry, after sizing the cage up, stepped to the other side, got a good grip on it, and moved it--and that cage moved, whether it wanted to or not. The mother blackbird found her way out first, and, with a raucous cry, made off due northeast for Trondheim, Norway. Finally, with a little bit of directive, the baby followed. He flew straight to a nearby fence, smacked into the wire, and grabbed hold, hanging there and looking round at us with a despairing expression on his avian face, certain that he had escaped one cage only to fly directly into another, although he had the entire world at his disposal, if he would only look up. He eventually spotted a little Douglas fir not far away, and fluttered into it.
Determining that we had been the best Boy Scouts we could be, and hoping that Mrs. B. Bird would prove to be of better motherhood material than Maisy, that bird of Dr. Seuss fame who left her egg in care of Horton the elephant, we remounted our bikes and pedaled away.
Before we got back home, our setters were done sat out, and we started standing up to pedal and coast. Does wonders for the southern anatomy, does.
Meanwhile, Joseph was on lawn duty at the church, and Hester, Lydia, and Caleb were playing with the cousins and the neighbors. Hannah and Aaron were here when we returned, having come on bike and in carriage, respectively. Aaron is busily repeating everything under the sun...the English language (I think), birds, loud cars, trains, sirens...anything. Hannah said he crawled the right way that day, instead of scooting around with one foot tucked under the other leg. But it was entirely too slow of locomotion to suit him, and he was soon up on his feet again, going from couch to recliner to piano to bookcase.
Saturday afternoon we drove to Madison to get part of a dash for Larry’s pickup. We took the ‘scenic’ route home, over hill and dale east and then south to Columbus. The only wildlife we saw was one hen pheasant; even the cows are few and far between. Are the farmers and ranchers selling them all, on account of the drought, I wonder?
That night, I finished Chapter 34 and printed it. It closes on Halloween, 1993, when Caleb was two weeks old. Somebody came into our house that night at 12:30 a.m., but upon spying our Siberian Husky, Aleutia, in the hallway staring at him with intent blue eyes, he changed his mind and exited. I was just around the corner in the kitchen, but I thought it was Larry stepping in to get gloves or flashlight or something.
It wasn’t. Whoever it was didn’t come back. Fright improves nasty people’s IQ, don't you think?
Hannah and Aaron came after church tonight to get her dress. As usual, it was too big. So, while she waited, I sewed a tuck in the shoulders, and then it fit fine.
Aaron started walking yesterday! He talks up a blue streak, saying all sorts of funny things, like, “Bwoing bwing dooey” or “Bwip iddle goink.” Can you tell he’s as smart as I can tell he is???
I have just found purple pawmarks all over the floor of the bathtub. Cat pawmarks. Could somebody kindly explain that to me?
P.S.: By the way, in case you were wondering, Hannah’s jumper did fit--perfectly.
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