Sure enough, Lydia took good pictures with my video camera at the wedding last Sunday night. Dorcas took some, too, and managed to record Matthew, Bobby’s brother, giving his ‘thank-you’ speech. At the tail end, apparently running out of things to say, he thanked “whoever it was who brought the Mt. Dew,” and everyone laughed, for they all know how much Matthew likes Mt. Dew.
The next day somebody told us that it was Regina--his very own wife-to-be--who brought it. Guess she knew what her future husband likes!
Hannah came visiting Monday, bringing Aaron with her, of course. She had a videocassette of all the baby birds that have fledged around her house, so we all stopped what we were doing and watched it. Have you ever noticed how demanding a baby robin is? He hops along behind his mother, almost as big as she is, and if she doesn’t hurry up with the juicy worm morsels, he rushes forward and gives her a good peck right on the back. But just let him try that too many times in succession, and Mama Robin will whirl around and return the favor, sometimes knocking poor Baby right off his props.
As the video was playing, somebody opened the refrigerator, and I suddenly remembered that Larry had told us we needed to get the fish out of that bowl in the refrigerator and put it into the freezer...and we hadn’t. Wheweeeeee! Fish gets fishy fast.
Sooo...I got it out to put it in the freezer, decided I didn’t want a giant lump of fish all frozen together, reached for the sandwich bags, changed my mind, and baked them right then and there. Mmmmm...I like bluegill. And it made an excellent breakfast; I understand how campers can catch fish early in the morning and eat them for their first meal of the day.
After that, the refrigerator no longer smelt fishy, but the whole house reeked of it. But at least it was cooked fish.
Joseph came in starvelous and fixed pizza--at only 5:30 p.m. While we were eating, both Larry and Teddy arrived earlier than usual from work, so it was a good thing we’d fixed supper already. Afterwards, Larry, Caleb, Victoria, and I went off on several errands. We were marching down one of the aisles in Wal-Mart when I spotted a giant tennis ball--the size of a soccer ball--and absolutely had to get it for Lydia, whose eleventh birthday was the next day.
We gave her a musical snow globe, a blouse with pastel flowers embroidered all around the bottom, a Bible dictionary, and the aforementioned jumbo tennis ball. On the side in big black letters, where the brand name is usually printed, it says MONSTER Tennis Ball. She was quite taken with that ball.
Tuesday, I spent the afternoon doing bookwork, mending, and washing clothes. The kids picked a few mulberries, and I had big plans of making mulberry/strawberry/rhubarb pie, for a friend of ours had given us some rhubarb from her garden. She also took Mama and Dorcas some banana bread fresh from her oven.
Lydia climbed the mulberry tree to get to the biggest, juiciest mulberries--wearing her new, pristine white blouse and her new, spotlessly white tennis shoes.
I don’t suppose I need to tell you what happened to her clothes, do I?
After giving both items a liberal dousing with Spray ’N Wash, I washed them in the very next load of clothes. They came out almost clean...not quite... So I picked up the jug of bleach and put a little dab right on the spots. Wonder of wonders, the purple stains disappeared like magic. I tossed the blouse into the dryer with the rest of the clothes.
Half an hour later, I went back downstairs to do the next load. I pulled clothes out of the dryer--and found Lydia’s blouse, with yellow stains all over it. Aarrgghh! What happened???
I looked at the tag.
“No bleach.”
Aaaaauuuggggghhhhh! Now what?
Well, I thought perhaps if I put it right back into the washer with a whole cup of bleach, at least the entire thing would be yellow, instead of just those spots.
Into the washing machine it went then, along with the bleach. Fifteen minutes later, I went to see what the unhappy thing looked like.
Ewwwww, it was bad. It was yellowish-brown all over, with the first yellow spots darker than ever.
Lydia looked at it in despair. “Oh, why did I ever wear it to pick mulberries?”
“And why didn’t I read the label before bleaching it?” I lamented.
We gazed at it in silence for a few moments, wondering if we should put it out of its misery, give it a decent burial, and be done with it.
“Well,” I decided, “I’m going to try washing it in hot water one more time. If that fails, perhaps I’ll be able to dye it. Or maybe we’ll find another one for you somewhere.”
But I didn’t know where, because that blouse had come from the Goodwill, meaning it was probably a one-of-a-kind. Its previous owner could have purchased it in George Town, West Malaysia, for all I knew.
Into the washer it went, with an entire cup of detergent.
Half an hour later, I pulled it out to see what the next Mode of Maneuver should be.
To my complete amazement, that blouse was as glowing white as it had been when I bought it. The pastel embroidery was back to its pretty colors, and there were no yellow spots to be seen. I could hardly believe my eyes. I didn’t risk putting it into the dryer, though; instead, I hung it to dry.
And wasn’t Lydia glad to have her new blouse back, bright and sparkling! Moral of story: Only use bleach on black things, never white.
Late that afternoon when I was washing clothes--and there were only a couple of loads left to do--suddenly, for no good reason, my right shoulder and side of my neck threw a tantrum, with all sorts of accompanying pangs and pingles and twitches and twattles, especially when I tried folding the jeans that had been in the dryer and then carried them up the stairs.
I’d planned to cut out something for Hannah after the pie was done--but all my plans got sidelined. So I plopped down and crammed a pillow under my neck, and there I stayed until Lawrence and Norma came.
Norma had made a German chocolate cake with coconut pecan frosting, and we had ice cream with it. I sat in the recliner the rest of the evening with a dogbone pillow behind my neck, in a state of partial paralysis. Once again, I proved I am not ambidextrous.
Hannah and Aaron came; Hannah had bought several pieces of pretty fabric, and had the patterns to go with them. Rats! I wanted to get started.
Wednesday, I cut out a top--sliding the material toward me as I cut, since I couldn’t reach out to it--and mending a few pairs of jeans, which is a difficult job in any case. Then I sewed all the rest of the strips together for the quilt I started last week, winding up with four large fan shapes and four small ones. That wasn’t too hard, since the pieces of material were small, and I was only sewing straight seams.
Soon it was time to get ready for church. I got a dress out of the closet, reinjuring my shoulder (one of the side effects of having a closet so jam-packed it takes a combination of pry bar and winch to get anything out of it), and then I couldn’t lift the iron (and clothes that are that squished in must be ironed)...so I gave up and stayed home.
Next time I want something out of that closet, I think I’ll just use dynamite and blow it out.
Thursday, I sewed Hannah’s red top. It turned out pretty, and it even fits her, into the bargain. And then I was ready to make the strawberry/rhubarb/mulberry pie.
I got out the box of strawberries.
There were only three left in that big box, the moppets had eaten all the rest, and those last three were moldy; so there would be no strawberries in the pie.
I pulled out the bag of rhubarb, washed it, and ran it through the food processor. I put it into a big pot of water with plenty of sugar and turned it on high.
I got out the bucket of mulberries.
They were moldy and fermented. Mulberry hooch, anyone?
I threw them away and sent the kids out to get more. Soon they were back with half a bucket full, about three quarts, which I added to the almost-cooked rhubarb. Mulberries don’t take nearly so long to cook as rhubarb does. Several gloop-gloops of lemon juice...a pinch of salt...some squirts of red food coloring...a cup of cornstarch...a box of tapioca ...three boxes of Wild Berry jello...and the filling was done. While all that simmered on the stove, I made the crust and baked it. Upon retrieving it from the oven, I poured the filling into it and sprinkled on a streusel topping of flour, butter, and brown sugar. I drizzled corn syrup over it and popped it back into the oven to broil till the topping was a shiny golden brown. I had just enough of all those ingredients to make a smaller pie for a friend of mine whose birthday happened to be that day.
Bobby and Hannah came by, riding their bikes, Aaron in his little carriage. His carriage, unlike Victoria’s, cannot be used as a stroller, and it’s smaller. When Victoria rides in it, her head bumps the ceiling; and, of course, she thinks it’s funny. But it’s just the right size for Aaron, and is easier to pull than Victoria’s is.
On Wednesday, Victoria was thrilled to receive a piece of mail addressed to her--and it was an invitation to a birthday party!!--her first ever. Life gets excitinger and excitinger.
The party was for Melody Joy. She is the daughter of Malinda, my friend who died last November. Melody was born almost three months early, and weighed only two pounds, two ounces. For a while, nobody knew whether or not she would be all right, and the doctors cautioned that there was a chance she would be ‘developmentally disabled’.
But Melody is anything but ‘developmentally disabled’. By the time she was two, she was well above average, both in her motor skills, and also in such things as speech and comprehension. The doctors were amazed. And we who love that sweet, beautiful child are ever so thankful. Melody is five now, and will be in Victoria’s kindergarten class.
Victoria knows the story of Melody weighing only a couple of pounds at birth, and I reminded her again how glad we should be that Melody is alive, healthy, and bright.
Victoria nodded in earnest agreement. “I just can’t imagine life without Melody!” she declared with conviction, although she rarely has a chance to play with her.
We went to Wal-Mart to get a present: a pair of bright green rubber thongs with big green and white carnations on the toes, and a little teddy bear pin on which I put letters spelling ‘Melody’. Melody later told Victoria that she had never before had anything to wear with her name on it.
There were at least half a dozen other little girls at the party, and they were quite pleased with the confetti-sprinkled cupcakes and ice cream they were served. They trekked outside to see the baby chicks while Helen (Melody’s grandmother) gathered the eggs, they played on the swingset, and they played in a playhouse in which was a child-sized kitchen set. The refrigerator, freezer, and oven were well stocked with pots and pans and foodstuffs, and there was a telephone on the wall. There were even little buckets of flowers decorating the tiny house. Victoria was enchanted.
Baby Daniel, who was born the day Malinda died, is a healthy, happy baby, cute as can be. It’s still hard to believe Malinda is gone; it’s been 7 ½ months.
Victoria was totally delighted with that birthday party. She’d won second prize for her Pin-The-Tail-On-The-Donkey exploits, even though her efforts at putting the tail in the proper location had caused the poor donkey to wind up with a tail tacked good and hard to his left hind leg--but that was closer than some of the other attempts, one of which wound up on the donkey’s astonished muzzle. Victoria’s prize was a small resin raccoon in a cute little box made to look like his den.
She’d gotten full when they were eating, so she brought part of her chocolate cupcake home in a sandwich bag. Even though she was full, she carried that booty with her everywhere she went for the next couple of hours, until she finally found a small hollow inside large enough to hold it.
That afternoon, I cut out a couple of dresses and a jumper for Hannah. She stopped by for a few minutes, and took home the red top I’d sewn.
And then we went for a drive, heading south to check out a few State Parks and State Recreation Areas, just to see what they looked like. We crossed the Platte River and looked down at a riverbed that was not much more than a dry sand bed. Only a few trickles of water still flowed through. West of Lake McConaughy on the North Platte River, from now until July 14, people may catch catfish any way they can, with no limit on the amount they take, because the poor fish are going to die, anyway. There just isn’t enough water for them, and they keep winding up in dead-end channels.
It was 102° in Seward that afternoon, with humidity of about 70% or thereabouts, so we didn’t hike around the parks much; we mostly stayed in the Suburban. We came upon two State Parks that were not on the map, one of which was quite nice, with a big lake that looked fully fishable, to me. (Any water looks fishable, to me. After all!--we’ve spent most of our fishing stints hanging hooks into water that didn’t yield up any fish, anyway.) These parks were new, evidently newer than my map. One whose name was printed on the map in big letters was nothing more than a short gravel drive with not enough room to turn around at the end, beside which sat two picnic tables, a large dumpster, and a pump with no handle. On the ground beside the dumpster lay a mattress with its stuffing going the way of the wind. Stupid humans; why do they do that??
If we could’ve just crashed through the locked gate at the end of the drive and continued on a bit, we would have come to the Big Blue River, a pretty river with bluffs and all sorts of trees lining it. If it wouldn’t have been so hot, perhaps we would have walked down to the river. But it was almost too stifling to breathe.
At Walnut Creek S.R.A., another park not indicated on my map, we found a big lake with a place to launch boats, picnic tables, and toys (this, according to the littles, is the real authentication of a park: toys).
The kids grabbed fishing poles and ran for the water’s edge. Hester drew back, cast--and was left holding the handle and nothing more, while the pole with its tackle ker-splooshed into the water and sank.
Hester stood staring at the rippling surface of the water, then gazed down at the handle in her hand.
“My pole broke,” she announced unnecessarily.
Luckily, it wasn’t so far out, or so deep, that Joseph wasn’t able to get it. He snagged it with his own pole, and drug it in. Soon we’ll know if Larry really can fix anything, as Lydia averred when she was only two.
In the meanwhile, I’d been taking pictures. The lake, lying in a small valley with rolling hills all the way around, was surrounded with trees, many of which were evergreens of one type or another. In a tree near me, a Northern Bobwhite gave his clear, whistling call. I recorded his song, but I never could catch a glimpse of that reddish-brown bird.
As we drove home over hill and dale, northbound on County Rd. 103, to our east we could see the capital building in Lincoln, some fifteen miles away, shimmering in the dazzling sun.
When we arrived home, it was time for supper. I stuck some chicken fillets in the oven, and fixed stuffing and peas. There was still enough mulberry/rhubarb pie left for dessert. Mmmm...hit the spot after all that trekking around in over-100° weather!
Dorcas came home and told us that she’d just heard that my Uncle Kent had died. He was my mother’s sister’s husband, and lived near Fargo, North Dakota. He’d been unwell for several years.
As the sun sank low, the boys collected their fireworks and headed outside. Dorcas bought a big packaged set of firecrackers and poppers for the littles, and they took some of those out, too. The Mexican children from down the street came to watch--and to ‘help’ Hester and Lydia play with the water balloons Amy had given them for their birthdays.
One of the little twins, Yanna, age six, was sneaking up on her bigger brother, Andrico, age thirteen, when he turned around and caught her at it. Grabbing her, he lifted her hands--and the balloon in them--up to her face, and then he squeezed the balloon and popped it, nearing drowning the poor child.
“Hey!” I cried, “You’re being mean!”
He shrugged up one shoulder, grinned, and looked sheepish.
“You’re a big bully!” I informed him. “You’re not nice!”
He grinned at me nervously and shifted from one foot to the other. “I’m nice, really,” he attempted to convince me, nodding his head.
“He’s not,” I told Joseph. “He popped Yanna’s balloon right in her face!”
“I’ll get even,” offered Joseph, dashing into the house for his water blaster.
He was soon rushing back out, pumping the gun up as he came.
Andrico ran.
Joseph dashed after him, rapidly getting close enough to let him have it...and then Andrico was wetter than Yanna. All his brothers and sisters were laughing--and Andrico was laughing, too.
“Don’t squirt him in the face, Joseph,” I called, “And don’t make him fall.”
Andrico beamed at me. I’d gone from reprimander to defender in the space of about thirty seconds.
It wasn’t long before the children were all back on the front sidewalk lighting firecrackers--and then Andrico burnt his thumb. I ran in the house and soaked a small piece of paper towel in aloe vera, took it out and wrapped it around the misfortunate digit. Then I trotted back in the house, cut several small pieces of pie, and put them on saucers. I gathered up some spoons and, with Lydia’s help, took the pie out to the Mexican children and one other little neighbor boy, Tatum, who had helped picked the mulberries and had been promised a piece of pie when it was done. (I didn’t know that until after I’d given him the pie.)
Ballooning, blasting, and banging came to a dead stop while the kids ate their pie.
I’ve been held in High Esteem ever since. Admonisher, protector, nurse, chef. I’m a Very Important Person.
That’s how I handle the neighbor kids: bawl them out, tell them what I think of them . . . and then give them pie.
Or cookies.
Or a slice of homemade bread, still piping hot from the oven, lavishly slathered with butter.
Or a piece of paper towel, dripping with aloe vera.
Works great. They like me, they know I like them. The perfect system. Oh, another thing: they really like the AaaOOOOga horn on the Suburban; that helps the general cause, too.
Larry was in the back working on the six-wheeler during all this rumpus. After taking a few pictures of everyone, I left them to their fun and came inside to work on Hannah’s dress.
Saturday morning, I cut my hair. It’s much easier to take care of, especially in the hot summer months, when it is shorter.
The Schwan man came. I only bought a few things--all icicles or pops--and he always acts crabby when I don’t get much. He needs to have a course in public relations. He acts like a jolly Santa when I order over $100; a couple of weeks ago I got more than usual, and he actually gave us a half-gallon of ice cream free. He’s a fickle Philistine.
I finished sewing Hannah’s white-and-flowered dress and started on the next, a dark green with dusty rose and pink flowers. Time out to sew a heart for Lydia out of the pink material from her birthday dress; she wants to make a little stuffed heart of unknown intent.
Keith came to visit after singing practice at church, telling us all about taking a jet ski out on the lake. Yikes! I hope he doesn’t drown. He is not yet a skilled swimmer.
Hester made scalloped potatoes, and I baked some sausage patties from Schwan’s. Mmmmm, good. Joseph wanted muffins and eggs and cheese with his sausage; but, alas, there were no muffins. So later that night, when he was once again starving, as he is oft wont to do, I went to the store for muffins. I also got 9-grain bread, hazelnut poppyseed bread, and potato bread. I like the first two, especially hazelnut, best; the children like the potato bread best.
“You’re all going to look like potatoes, eating so much potato bread,” I told them.
“And just imagine what you’re going to look like,” retorted Hester, “Eating all that hazelnut bread!”
I wadded up a towel and threw it at her.
Joseph made sandwiches for everyone: sourdough muffin, sausage patty, American cheese, scrambled eggs. He put oodles of butter on the muffin (the only appropriate amount of butter for a sourdough muffin; I’ve taught him well) and fried it in the pan with the eggs and the sausage, then stacked it all together, slapping the cheese on the sausage and crowning it with the other half of the muffin. Mmmmmm, yummy, I tell you, that was scrumptious. Halfway through mine I decided I’d definitely had more than my quota, and gave the rest of it back to Joseph, who gladly pounced on it and devoured it whole.
I’m moving to Mars; I’ll only weigh 38 pounds there.
Today was another scorcher, and there is no end in sight. The Fourth of July threatens to be near the 100° mark, and there is no rain forecast for these parts for who-knows-how-long. The wheat crops are less than half of what they should be. The corn still looks good, but that is because it is so well irrigated. If water for irrigation is restricted, the crops might not look so promising.
Think of all the water in all the rivers that are flowing relentlessly into the seas on all sides of us... Couldn’t they construct a giant funnel to channel some of that water from the floodplains into the drought-stricken regions? Seems sensible enough to me.
Larry decided to make his delicious French toast today, since I had purchased a plentitude of bread. I thought the hazelnut poppyseed French toast was absolutely out-of-this-world ambrosial, but everyone else much preferred the potato bread, silly people. Ah, well; that leaves just that much more for me, yes? Trouble is, I get full after only one piece, while the small local urchins can put away slices like you would never believe. Unbounded. Measureless. Infinite. Innumerable. Incalculable. And in spite of their appetites, they stay skinny! Life is inequitable and inscrutable.
I stayed with Mama tonight. She is sometimes a little forgetful, but knows she is. It worries her a bit, but she nevertheless laughs about it, and is as sweet and cheerful as ever.
Bedtime! Please send water, if you happen to have an excess.
P.S.: Please steer clear of Nakhla, Egypt, if you don’t want to get hit by a meteor. That is the site of the only known casualty caused by a meteor, ever.
It was a dog...in 1911.
Bye-bye, Fido.
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