Early last Monday evening, everyone was starving, and the cupboards were bare, so Larry, Lydia, Caleb, and I took an excursion to the grocery store. We planned to grab only enough for supper and hurry back home again...but remember, we were hungry.
They say you are not supposed to go to the grocery store on an empty stomach. ‘They’ are goofy. How else can you expect to wind up with all sorts of yummy things?! If I go shopping when I am full, I don’t even get enough necessities, let alone anything for one or two little extracurricular snacks. And heaven knows, man (and his wife and kids) cannot survive on sourdough muffins alone.
We wound up heaping the cart so full, it took a Herculean effort to career it around the corners, and there still wasn’t enough food in it to last three-fourths of the week. By the time we got home, everyone was starving, so I abandoned my hankering for scalloped potato casserole and quickly warmed up chicken ’n’ dumplings soup.
In my sister’s office at school (you’ll recall, she’s our principal), there is a collection of books that the students may buy, and the shelves are replenished with new books often. Lydia wanted to buy a big book chock-full of word searches, crossword puzzles, anagrams, mazes, riddles, and so forth. Lura Kay promptly gave it to her and told her it was an early birthday present. That’s Lura Kay for you.
Tuesday evening, I fixed those scalloped potatoes I’d wanted the night before. I added a couple of cans of ham to the dish, and then wasn’t it scrumptious. For dessert, we had granola and fruit bars. I’d gotten enough boxes that I thought they would last at least four days, but everyone seemed intent on gobbling them up as fast as they could. They lasted two days, no more.
Lydia had another Jr. Fire Patrol meeting Tuesday night. Understand, those are the sorts of meetings where young’ns are taught how to avoid all sorts of hazards. Caleb needs to attend.
He’d decided to come with us to pick Lydia up, and he wanted to take along one of the walkie-talkies. Off he went to get it.
A bit concerned that we might leave without him, he went tearing pell-mell down the stairs, tripped, went sprawling, and landed smack on his face. He hurt his nose and forehead, and bent his glasses all up. I declare, that child needs full body armor about him--on the other hand, that would endanger the rest of us. Hmmm...maybe if we enveloped him in pillows throughout the rest of his formative years?
One evening, we watched a documentary called, ‘Into the Arms of Strangers’. It’s about Jewish children whose parents sent them from their homes in Germany, Austria, Italy, etc., to England during the years immediately before World War II began. The parents hoped to later join their children, or perhaps they hoped beyond all hope that there would be no war, after all, and they could call them to come home. Of course, many of the parents didn’t survive the war, which lasted longer than anyone could have expected. 1,500,000 children died during the war.
There were interviews with some of the children, now elderly, telling of the heartache of leaving their parents and going off to a country where they did not know anyone, did not know the language, and did not know what the future held. Oh, it was so sad.
I picked up the Omaha World Herald Wednesday morning, and was horrified to see that one of the men killed when their helicopter was shot and disabled in Afghanistan (they were actually killed in a firefight with al-Qaida fighters after they exited the helicopter) was Philip Svitak, son and only child of Richard and Roseann Svitak. Richard Svitak used to be our Jewel T man, and we really liked him and his wife, who sometimes substituted for him. Philip was 31, married, and the father of two little boys, ages four and two. They lived in Kentucky. The parents live in Neosho, Missouri, where they moved to a farm in 1991. They were always nutty over that son of theirs; he was a very nice boy, smart and nice-looking. Roseann nearly died when he was born, and she was unable to have any more children after that.
That afternoon, I finished Lydia’s dress and then made a bow for her hair, using the last little bit of trim with crocheted-loop edging of dusty rose thread. Hester seems to like that dress better than her own. We’ll see which dress fits whom the best, I guess; Lydia originally thought Hester’s teal dress was going to be hers... and the hat with the matching trim would only fit Lydia... We’ll see.
Something seems to have gone slightly wrong with my sizing of the things I am sewing lately. Hester’s things were almost too small; Lydia’s things were almost too big. It looks like, after finding out which fabric each girl preferred, I then sewed it for her sister. Bother!
The next day, I started sewing Victoria’s ruffly pale yellow dress. I made it expressly for her to wear under the green and yellow dress Amy crocheted for her, but I put lots of lace on it, so it will look nice if she wears it all by itself, too. By the next evening, it was done. Now...mending, and then Fourth-of-July clothes.
Here’s an excerpt from ‘The Oregon Trail’, which I have been listening to as I sewed, and which I completed Friday:
If one is anxious to place himself in a situation where the hazardous and the ludicrous are combined in about equal proportions, let him get upon a vicious mule with a snaffle bit, and try to drive her through the woods, down a slope of 45°. Let him have a long rifle, a buckskin frock with long fringes, and a head of long hair. These latter appendages will be caught every moment and twitched away by the twigs which will also whip him smartly across the face, while the large branches above thump him on the head. His mule, if she be a true one, will alternately stop short and dive violently forward, and his positions upon her back will be somewhat diversified. At one time, he will clasp her affectionately to avoid the blow of a bough overhead. At another, he will throw himself back and fling his knee forward over her neck to keep it from being crushed between the rough bark of a tree and the ribs of the animal, and when he finally attains the base of the mountain, he will fervently vow never to traverse such topography again.
Larry has been working for David this week--and then, wouldn’t you know, we were hit with winter storms the latter part of the week, so he couldn’t work Saturday.
The storm started on Friday with several hours of sleet and freezing rain, and then it launched into a full-fledged snowstorm, complete with snow coming down by the buckets, and wind blowing at 45 miles per hour. Roads were very slick, and there were cars in the ditches all around Columbus, including several that had rolled. By the middle of the night, the snow had stopped, but the wind whipped up such a ground blizzard that visibility was almost zero.
Friday afternoon, about 4:00, I wanted to go to the library and Wal-Mart and the Salvation Army. I hunted for the keys to the Suburban for 45 minutes, turning the house upside down, downside up, inside out, and outside in myriad times to no avail, so I tried calling Larry, on the happenstance that he was the key-mislaying culprit. I tried twice, but couldn’t get him on his cell phone. Joseph tried, and got him on the first ring.
It turns out, it doesn’t work to leave off the area code, contrary to what I had been told. Well, I did get that nice man telling me that the AllTel Wireless customer was away from his phone; so of course I presumed that the nice man knew what he was talking about; they usually do, don’t they? But he wasn’t kind enough to tell me to try tacking the area code onto the number.
Anyway, Larry suggested that Joseph look in Larry’s coat pocket, which Joseph commenced to do--and there were the keys. It was getting late, and the library was about to close; but we all dived into our parkas and galoshes and skedaddled out the door.
Then we stood on the porch and gazed stupidly at the Suburban, which looked to be one solid ice cube, front to back, top to bottom.
Joseph ran for the antifreeze and a scraper, and soon had the windows clean. Then away we went to the library, arriving at exactly five minutes till five, which is closing time on Fridays. Now, I knew that those librarians would have apoplectic conniptions if they saw me coming in with four kids in tow at that late hour; so I left them in the Suburban (remember, I can do that now, because Hester and Lydia are both old enough to be legal babysitters), dashed in, and grabbed a few tour videos and documentaries, which is what we most like to look at now and then. It’s cheaper than actually going to all those places, you see.
One of the librarians, an elderly lady who is a stickler for Being Right On Time To Lock The Doors, looked up quickly from the work she was doing at the front desk. She glowered resentfully, and her mouth worked as if she were about to tell me a thing or two, but I smiled cheerily at her and raced past before she could get the words arranged and articulated. Her face looked funny when, in thirty seconds flat, I was back at the desk with the video cards in hand.
She immediately forgave me for coming so late, checked me out, and admonished me earnestly to be careful on the icy walks and streets.
I bid her adieu and went out, alternately trotting and then sliding on the glazed sidewalk. I jumped over a big pile of snow at the curb, and landed in snow almost up to the fur at the top of my boots. The wind whipped falling snow into my face and tried to jerk my scarf from my neck.
You know, the truth of the matter is, I just plain like snowstorms. I suppose that’s why I invariably find an errand I absolutely must go do every time we have one.
Next, we went to the Salvation Army, where I found two white skirts and two ivory skirts, one of each color for Hester and Lydia, which saves me the trouble of sewing them, although I will have to take in the waists for those skinny girls. As it turned out, the store was having a bag sale: they provided the bag, and all the clothing items and shoes one could cram into it went for the price of $7.00. I tell you, when I am done cramming, things know they’ve been crammed. That was one strrrrrretched bag, believe me.
As I’ve often told you, any time I find new items there, I get them, and give them to whomever I think they might fit and whomever I think needs them the most. I got shirts for Larry, Keith, and Bobby; a sweater for Hannah; two blouses for Dorcas; Hester got a pair of leather sandals that had never been worn; and I also got a pair of shoe clips that turned into clip-on earrings once I’d gotten home.
Hmmm. I don’t wear clip-on earrings. Dumb things. That’s not the first time I’ve had something metamorphosis in between the place of purchase and home.
Leaving the Salvation Army, which was closing half an hour early on account of the worsening weather, I stopped at the Village Cobbler a couple of doors down and got two high-heeled shoes I’d left there several decades ago to have new little rubber heel thingamajiggers put on. Then to the bank...and then to Wal-Mart, where I got a piece of not-quite-matching lace to go on Victoria’s skirt hem, where I’d run out of lace just 14” short of the finish line, which is a ruffling thing to have happen at the end of a long ruffle.
At the checkout stand, hunger got the best of my better judgment, and I got us each a small Snickers bar. Mmmm...it hit the spot. But it didn’t entirely fill the spot.
We hurried home, and I made tuna casserole, not having quite as much tuna as I should have had, because Joseph had opened one of the cans and given each of the cats a small spoonful. Teddy, even worse, had mistaken the stuff for honest-to-goodness cat food, and used up one entire can; so it will not go well for the next tuna casserole I make, unless I return to the store for more fishy fodder. I threatened to put tuna cat food in their helpings, the ninnies.
Upon putting my repaired shoes into my closet, I discovered something was amiss with the white pump: the cobbler, as always, had put a black heel doodad on it, but its mate, who had been forlornly awaiting its return, sported a tan heel gewgaw.
Lucky thing somebody invented black permanent markers, ’tis.
Dorcas took Norma a present Friday evening (her birthday was Saturday). After she’d been gone a while, I facetiously told somebody to turn up the scanner so we could hear when she had a wreck--and right that minute, a rescue unit called the hospital to say they were transporting a 19-year-old female who had been involved in an accident!
The kitchen grew deathly silent, and all eyes rolled adread toward the scanner.
But the paramedic went on to say that she had been a passenger in an SUV that had rolled, and we breathed easier, although we then busied our brains with pondering over what 19-year-old female we might know who would be riding in an SUV. Eventually we came to the conclusion that, whoever the unfortunate girl was, we probably didn’t know her.
Saturday morning, Lydia was supposed to go to the Platte Community College as an alternate at the spelling bee. I got up at 6:40 a.m. and discovered the weather to be unfavorable, with icy roads and blowing snow and visibility severely limited. Thinking the bee might be canceled, I called here and there and listened to the radio to discover if it was still on, but could learn nothing. Platte College and the Telegram have answering machines taking care of their phones on Saturdays, and answering machines are notoriously unconcerned about people who urgently need information right that very instant. Larry went ahead and took Lydia to the bee.
As it turned out, she wouldn’t have had to go, being only the alternate for her friend Amber. Lydia hadn’t understood that. Nonetheless, she decided to stay, and thoroughly enjoyed herself. She had a hot dog, a chocolate chip cookie, and a bottle of pop for dinner. (bleah)
Lydia did not take the oral exam, but she took the written test and did a bang-up job of it. James, Bobby’s youngest brother, won...yep, another Wright brother, still doing the family proud. They’ve won every county spelling bee contest since 1994, with the exception of 1998, when one of the brothers begged off because they were all tired of going to Washington, D.C., for their summer vacation, and they wanted to go to the mountains instead, and the boy was afraid he’d win the state contest and be obligated to go to D.C., and the family couldn’t afford two vacations in one year. Last year James came in second--because his older sister, Esther, won first place. She is too old to compete this year.
Saturday afternoon, Larry, Joseph, Victoria, Caleb, and I went to Grand Island. Passing through the city, we drove south to the Great Platte River Valley, where we watched hundreds of thousands of Sandhill cranes flying in formation from the cornfields to the river and from the river to the cornfields. Many fields were totally covered with the big gray birds.
I have taken quite a few pictures of the cranes, but I had never taken videos of them; so this time I didn’t even get my Minolta from its case, but only used the camcorder. Now we can hear the cranes, too, in addition to seeing them fly and perform their strange dances, frolics, and gambols. What a lot of noise they make with their rattling cacophony. I got some good footage of the birds flying up from a field, then winging their way directly in front of the bright orange setting sun.
After sunset, we went to the Goodwill in Grand Island, where we purchased a cartload of respectable merchandise for an unbelievably low price. Among other things, I got several stuffed animals, which I planned to save for Christmas presents. Victoria, however, gazed longingly at a soft black and white orca, so I gave it to her.
After we got home, Lydia found the beanie baby puppy named ‘Fetch’, saw that it had cost a dollar, and came waving a dollar in my face, raising her eyebrows in question, grinning at me, and holding the puppy up next to her cheek. I gave it to her.
At a truck stop on the Interstate, Larry and Joseph bought several sandwiches and warmed them up in the microwave.
They were abominable (the sandwiches; not Larry and Joseph).
Having been frozen and then heated, the buns turned into soggy, doughy mush. The cheese overpowered the meat, and the meat was so greasy, it dripped all over our fingers and threatened to run down to our elbows.
I couldn’t bear it. Ugh. I immediately began a fast, and I kept it up until the next pit stop, where I purchased a fruit and grain bar and a bottle of orange pineapple juice. Ahhhh...much better.
When we got home, Victoria, who hadn’t eaten much as we drove, asked for a sourdough muffin (a girl after her mother’s own heart). I sliced one and popped half of it into the toaster.
“Did you check the burn setting?” she asked anxiously, standing on tiptoe to peer into the slot, “because one time Caleb put a muffin in the toaster for me, and when it popped up, it was just exactly all burned up, and we had to scrape it and scrape it and scrape it, and the burnings got in the butter.”
Mama has been sick with the stomach flu since Saturday night. As you can imagine, that is the last thing she needs. She may need to be admitted to the hospital for an IV so she doesn’t get dehydrated. My sister Lura Kay is staying with her today.
We have just finished eating Larry’s yummy pancakes, and I for one am stuffed.
Just as we were finishing eating, Victoria, pointing at a small mole on Caleb’s cheek near his ear, asked, “What is that?”
“It’s a weasel,” he promptly informed her, then frowned and turned to me. “Is that what it’s called?” he asked.
But I was laughing too hard to reply, and Larry, who managed to collect himself before I did, was finally able to give the child an answer. Honestly, I try not to laugh in my children’s faces!
Now Dorcas is playing the piano, Teddy is still at the Haddocks, where he ate dinner, and Caleb and Victoria are playing that game of flattened marbles that are moved along on a rectangular piece of polished wood with hollows carved out in two parallel rows...what is it called? Miggles? Mahjong? Muggins? Hooligan? Hurlbat? Tipcat? Gobang? Gully? Conkers? Cootie? Ringtaw? Bonce? Boodle? Skittle? Skish?
No, it can’t be Skish; that’s a game for fishermen. I wonder how they play it? By skewering fish? Ish.
Hester and Lydia are reading books, Joseph is reading one page of the funnies, and Larry is evidently hoping to absorb the other by osmosis, since he has fallen asleep with it lopped over himself.
Uh, oh. Joseph just finished reading the paper, grabbed a long piece of yarn that happened to be loitering in Hester’s yarn bag nearby, and drug it in front of Tabby’s intrigued nose before dashing across the living room with it. And like a shot, there went Tabby after it, skidding and sliding--and he plowed SPLAT KLINKETY TINKLE CRASH right into the flat-marble game, sending flat marbles flying all over the living room.
Joseph is now down on his knees, picking up flat marbles.
Goodbye, goodbye! Beware the devious weasel!
Sunday night
P.S.: By this evening, Mama was feeling better, and Dorcas is staying the night with her, as usual. Perhaps she’ll be okay, after all. We were all so worried about her.
P.P.S.: Mancala! That’s what the game that Tabby upended is called.
mancala - (man - cal' - uh) n. - This ancient game has been played in Africa and the Middle East for thousands of years.
(I didn’t know people lived that long over there, did you?) (And you’d think they’d die of boredom, playing that one game that long.) (Maybe that’s why they have such awful wars--because they are so frustrated and vexed over the relentless unremittingness of the game.)
Although the rules are simple enough for seven-year-olds, there is endless depth to be developed in Mancala strategy, making the game challenging and enjoyable for teens and adults as well. The 17 ½” solid wood board comes with lots of colorful glass playing pieces. When one begins to lose the game, one can enhance one’s relish of same by boinking those little flat marbles off one’s adversary’s head.
I have only a few moments ago finished playing a much better game with Larry: Scrabble. I like that game. We got it shortly after we were married, and, in those early, carefree days before Keith was born, we often played it into the wee hours of the morning, making it difficult to drag ourselves out of bed a few hours later. (We didn’t know better; we were only teenagers.) ;~)
Nowadays, we are wise middle agents.
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