Remember back in February when Larry was busy replacing all those water pipes, any that looked like they might cause troubles? Well, he missed one. He missed the pipe to the bathtub; he thought it was okay. But that faucet barely spews forth a trickle, and it’s hard to get our hair washed and rinsed properly. If you are planning to take a bath come evening, then you’d better start water running dribbling early in the morning, just after you get up, and maybe, maybe, by the time the sun sets, there will be enough water that you can make a little splash when you get in the tub. So Larry isn’t done with the plumbing after all.
Monday there was no school, so Hester and Lydia unloaded some boxes from the trailer. Three little boys whose father, Paul, was laying brick at a house nearby came to play. The littlest boy is in Victoria’s class.
Monday and Tuesday evening, Keith helped Larry work on Hester’s room. They have most of the Sheetrock up now.
Tuesday, after dropping the older children off at school and running 101 errands, which is something like 101 Dalmatians only not as much fun, we stopped at Wal-Mart to get Victoria a much-needed pair of shoes. We were pleased to find the very kind of white leather (washable!) shoes she likes best – for only $3.00.
At noon that day, Hannah, Aaron, and Joanna came to Mama’s house. Hannah gave me a 5x7 of Joanna that had been taken at the hospital just before she came home, and she gave each of the children a cookie. I wanted to scan and print the picture for you, along with a cute picture of Victoria holding the baby, but since we moved, my scanner doesn’t work. All I get when I click ‘Preview’ or ‘Scan’ is a square of black, and it makes a funny noise when the light slides back and forth, sort of like somebody has it around the neck and is throttling it. Waaaah!
I hung six big family pictures in my sewing room/office; now it feels homier.
We got tacos for supper Tuesday night. Then Hester convinced me that she really did need shoes, too, and she really did need another book for her report on Oceans of the World; so I took her back to town.
Wednesday afternoon, I started a fire in the burn barrel and burned all the garbage. It was a lot windier than I’d thought it was. Hope I don’t start a prairie fire someday! I started getting a few things out of the trailer – I wanted the boxes of curtains and my flower seeds – but it started raining. So much for that; I didn’t want to get everything in the trailer all wet.
Jim C. brought a box full of tomatoes, oranges, and apples – and I do mean full.
“If some are too ripe,” he told me, “throw them into the cow pasture. The cows love all that stuff.” He grinned. “Except the lemons. They tried to eat them, but after a couple of chomps, they wrinkled their noses, pulled back their lips, and spit them back out again.”
And then it was time to go get the kids, and I was having difficulty shutting the trailer doors because the cats kept sneaking in. One came out…another went in…and before he came out, another went in. I finally got all three extracted, shut the doors, herded them into the house (or so I thought), and jumped into the Suburban. I started to drive away – and then spotted Tabby huddled on the porch getting damper by the minute. I went back and let him into the house. And I managed to get to school on time in spite of those contumacious cats.
On the way home, we stopped at Hy-Vee to get ingredients for stuffed potatoes. Then home we went to burn the hamburger.
In our bathroom, there are built-in cupboards in one corner. At the bottom are three large drawers, and above that are a couple of two-door cupboards, the bottom one with three deep shelves, the shorter top one with two. The cupboards go all the way to the ceiling, are painted a color the paint store calls ‘white blush’, and have shiny brass and white porcelain handles. As I’ve said, the ceilings are high in this house, and I cannot even reach the back of the second shelf without standing on a chair. So you can imagine the troubles I have getting to the third, fourth, and fifth shelf. Where are those tall, helpful people when you really need them?!
I wanted to vacuum them and put blankets, sheets, tablecloths, and such like, the ones we didn’t often use, up there. So I gathered up crampons, ice axes, ice screws, and ropes and began the ascent, inching higher little by little, securing the axe as I went while Hester belayed from below.
Once I had the shelves clean, I rappelled [rap∙pel (ră-pěl') v. 1. To descend from a steep height by means of a belayed rope that is passed under one thigh and over the opposite shoulder. 2. To slide in a controlled fashion down climbing ropes.] back down.
We emptied several boxes of sheets, towels, tablecloths, washcloths, and afghans—and they all fit into those cupboards, to my surprise. I climbed onto a chair and then onto the ledge in the middle of the cupboard, and Hester or Lydia handed me stacks of this and that, and I put them away while trying my best not to fall off the ledge. There wasn’t much to hang onto, and the board in the middle of the shelves that would have been the most convenient thing to hold creaked alarmingly every time I got a grip on it, and I thought that if I didn’t do a better job of defying gravity, I’d be sitting ker-BLOOOEY in the clothes hamper, which would not be as soft a landing as you think it would be, not only because I’d recently emptied it, but also because of the altitude from which I would be plunging parachuteless.
When we left for church that night, Caleb announced happily, “They ate it all!”
“Huh?” said Larry blankly.
So Caleb had to explain to him that he’d thrown some overripe fruit into the cow pasture (“It’s not a pasture, it’s a forest,” interrupted Larry. “But there isn’t any such thing as a ‘cow forest’,” protested Caleb.)…and it wasn’t there anymore.
After church, we were sitting in our Suburban waiting for Hester and Lydia, when out the door came Bobby, heading for their car to bring it to the door for Hannah and the children. It was sprinkling just a bit. He popped open his umbrella—then suddenly shot forward, umbrella out front, and ran madly after it, as if the parasol was pulling him along lickety-split and it was all he could do to stay up with it. He disappeared behind the church, still trying to catch up to his parapluie.
Soon he came driving around Mama’s house and out onto the street, toward us. The car slowed. The sunroof opened. All was quiet inside the Suburban while we waited expectantly to see what would happen next.
And then the bumbershoot rose up through the sunroof and opened, and on down the street went Bobby.
The kids roared.
“He should have been a clown,” laughed Hester.
“He is a clown,” I responded.
We went home and ate watermelon, which is a perfect after-church-Wednesday-night snack.
I cleaned out the fish tank (again) (anybody want some fish?) Thursday morning after taking the children to school. When that was done, I got all the stuff out of my cubbyhole, all 18 bins of it plus several suitcases and a couple of boxes. Then I painted it with Kiltz, screwing an extending handle onto the paint roller, which worked like a charm other than the times I rammed the end of the handle into the wall behind me and well-nigh knocked myself nose-first into the paint. I barely had time to clean roller, brush, and paint pan before it was time to take the children their dinner.
When Victoria headed off for kindergarten, ponytail swishing, I noticed something on her head.
“Victoria!” I called, “Come back!”
Sure enough. It was a tick. I removed it and killed it. Victoria shuddered from head to foot. That’s the fourth one I’ve seen this year. Three of them were upstairs here, one crawling down the side of my monitor, a couple crawling on Tabby. This was the first one that was actually attached to someone.
When I came home, I started removing the loose tiles – they’re marbleized ‘white blush’ – around the tub in order to glue them back on firmly and caulk the seams, thinking it would be a quick little afternoon job. But I wound up taking off a whole lot more than I thought I would have to. Scraping the glue off the wall proved nigh to impossible, and I finally contented myself with merely getting the wall halfway smooth. Getting the glue off the tiles was absolutely hopeless. I hunted around for a good scraper to get the old caulking off the edges—and finally found one, a sturdy one with a thick stainless steel blade with a sharply tapered edge. It worked, but, boy, oh, boy, did I ever have to put some elbow grease into it. And I’ve come close to using up all my elbow grease lately. It was 12:30 a.m. before I finished scraping those things.
Larry came to see if I was ever coming to bed. Then he rushed forward and snatched up his scraper.
“My scraper!” he cried in distress, “What have you done to it?!”
I stared at him, then took the scraper and looked at it. That shiny stainless steel blade looked like someone had sawed away at it until it was jagged and uneven: —^~^~^~^~^—
"Uh, well, I scraped with it,” I explained.
“It was my best one!” he told me, “and it wasn’t cheap.” He pointed at the two cheap little scrapers lying nearby, scrapers I’d tried and discarded of because they were practically useless. “Why didn’t you use one of those?!”
"They didn't work," I told him. “What did you buy that for?” pointing at the steel scraper.
He pondered momentarily. “Well, uh, to scrape,” said he.
“To scrape what?” I persisted.
“Um, whatever I needed to scrape,” he replied.
“Well, I needed to scrape tile,” I informed him.
He grinned at me suddenly. “Then I guess you used the right thing!”
Hester helped clean the church that day, and Dorcas brought her home, bringing us scrumptious brownies with cream cheese swirls. The children chose the prettiest, swirliest ones, leaving me with…the ones with the most cream cheese. Mmmmm…
We had stuffed tomatoes for supper. I baked potatoes, too, but they were enormous, and didn’t get done in time, and we were stuffed anyway, which is the right thing to be after eating stuffed tomatoes. I saved the potatoes for dinner the next day, when we had them with gobs of butter and sour cream. Then the lady who stays with Mama in the morning made enough gravy for us, too, so we were in a grim dilemma over which we’d rather top our taters with.
Larry finished my cubbyhole, stapling the last piece of painter’s plastic against the rafters, the better to hold the insulation in place. Now it’s brighter, and smells better, too.
He also put a rod into the pantry (or closet, depending upon its use, I guess) in the washroom; so, early the next morning, I hung all the coats that have been residing in the living room chair into the washroom closet. While cleaning out the pantry and putting boxes and bins on the shelves in there, I set the living room light fixture—a plain-Jane ol’ thing, but a fixture, nonetheless—in the recliner behind the clothes basket in which was another three-shade light fixture. I fleetingly thought, I’d better not leave that there, or sure as the world someone will knock it off and break it.
I then started gluing tiles back around the tub, but ran out of glue. So I took more boxes out of the trailer and put them in the rooms in which they belonged until it was time to get the children from school.
We went to Wal-Mart and got presents for Aaron, both from Mama and from us. Can you believe it?! Our little grandson is two years old already! From us: an ERTL John Deere tractor, a purple-puppies coloring book, and fat crayons. From Mama, the wagon to go with the tractor, a big Noah’s Ark board book with lots of flaps to open, and a dark blue nerf ball. We took everything back to her house to show her.
I also got more tile adhesive and caulking, and when we came home, I finished gluing on the tile – all but one that I can’t get in, because I must have slid some over a bit or put tiles back in different places, so one narrow tile won’t go into place. I tried using a sharp little screwdriver to ‘score’ the tile, and then tapping the end of the screwdriver with a hammer—but I wound up with a tile cracked clean in half, and had to glue it back together again. Rats! Where’s a ceramic scorer when you need one?!
I sent Lydia into the washroom to get her newly-washed clothes—and, just as I’d feared, she upended the basket and knocked the round fixture right off the chair—and it broke into a trillion pieces.
Ah, well; as I said, it was a plain-Jane thing anyway, and I think we are going to put up the fan-and-light fixture that was in the living room at the other house.
There are a couple of things that I especially like about this house:
1) There are two big windows and a door with a window in the washroom. [And someday that door will open onto a big bi-level deck.]
2) There is a window in the bathroom.
Also, I’m pleased as punch with my very own sewing room/office. Wheeeeeeee!!!
When Larry came home from work, Keith came with him, and they cleaned up a bunch of stuff from the front of the house: old carpeting, old boards, branches, and such, taking it to Jim C.’s burn pit. Hester drove the lawn tractor over there with the big old carpet draped over its hood.
We took Aaron his presents later that evening. His other grandparents and two of their children were there. They were all in the backyard and Aaron was playing in his new sandbox. John and Bobby were putting sand into the base of a big sand scoop to weight it so it doesn’t tip over when a child sits on it. Aaron was not so very sure he liked having sand all over him.
“Yuck!” he informed me solemnly, showing me his hands.
Bobby used his air compressor to blow the sand off Aaron’s hands and clothes, and then things were right side up again. Soon the Wrights left, as Bethany said, “to let the other grandparents have a shot at him.” Aaron opened his presents and Larry held Joanna for a while. Joanna especially likes Victoria, much to Victoria’s delight.
Saturday I scrubbed the tub and the newly-reaffixed tiles, then put caulking on the seams. It took most of the day, because I kept getting interrupted. So, in between doing tiles, I washed clothes and carried in several more boxes from the trailer, trying to put them in proper places. Finally, finally, I got to the front of the trailer, and there, lo and behold, was my box of seeds. Seeds! Now I can plant them in the little peat pots I got from Menards!
Somebody unplugged the pump downstairs that drains the water from the air conditioner, so we had a small flood. We should be getting accustomed to floods by now, I should think. {Aaacckkk! What did I say??!!! NO! We are NOT accustomed to floods!!!} It’s about time we got flood insurance, wouldn’t you agree? Do they pay out when you do it yourself? Twice a week? Several boxes of clothes that will soon fit Victoria got all wet. So about the time I thought I was putting the last load into the washer, there was another hamper full of wet and soggy dresses. Good dresses. Church dresses. Ugh.
Keith came with Larry again after Larry got off work. Larry is always so tired after he gets home, I think if Keith wasn’t coming with him almost every day, he wouldn’t get much done. Saturday they brought Walker’s ‘mini’ – a little backhoe and scraper, a mini excavator. With that, Larry dug up several tree stumps, and smoothed the dirt down all around the property. He filled in the ditch, up to the culvert, on the other side of the lane opposite our driveway, so it will be easier for us to back out. Jim Cumming brought Larry a big bucket full of prairie grass seed to sow on the new dirt.
Larry moved the little shed with the mini while Keith seeded the lawn. Larry had gotten two bags of seed, each of which were to seed a 1,400 foot area. He got it all done – barely – and only because he didn’t put seed back through the wooded areas. Larry plans to buy another bag and go over it lightly once again.
Victoria picked a large handful of wildflowers for me. She put them into a glass of water, and I sent her to put them upstairs on my desk, as they smell rather strong, and I know Larry won’t appreciate them in the slightest because of his allergies, and Caleb wouldn’t do so well with them around, either. Nebraska wildflowers are so pretty. Some are teeny tiny, but if you look at them closely, you discover how intricate and complex the diminutive blossoms are.
Socks sings quite a song of protest any time Winston comes around. If Winston acts aggressive, Socks howls the louder, his back humps up, his tail gets bushy, and he stalks toward the dog. If Winston doesn’t retreat, Socks smacks him a good one—and he doesn’t retract his talons first, either. Sometimes Winston snarls, hoping to ward off the nasty feline. Socks marches toward him all the faster. The first time the two met, Socks retreated under the trailer; and Winston made a grave error attempting to get to him. Socks snarled and raked his nose, and retreats no more. Twice now, Socks has without warning landed with a shriek on the dog’s back, make the poor canine yelp and roll wildly, trying to escape. The funny thing is, when Winston comes around, Kitty and Tabby both stick close to Socks, as if they expect him to protect them from the mutt.
Hester made banana bread that afternoon, using applesauce to make up for what she lacked in bananas. I had a wise(?) idea and told her to put the ‘filling’ into it that we put in the sour cream muffins last week – brown sugar and cinnamon. So she did – and we wound up with banana/applesauce bread pudding. But it was good, if you didn’t eat the burnt edges that had dripped over the sides of the pan.
After dark, Larry took Keith home, returned the mini to Walkers’, went to the old house for the mail and newspapers (nope, we don’t have a new address yet) – and found the other hose we were missing. And he bought some milk and doughnuts. Not Krispy Kreme doughnuts, but, rather, some slightly dried-up ones. Mine wasn’t too bad; some sort of cinnamon roll with gobs of chocolate frosting on top. Nothing that couldn’t be improved upon with a microwave and a few healthy lumps of butter. Just what I needed. I weighed a couple pounds more than usual already. But I had to eat it, don’t you know.
Sunday, once again, we discovered that, yep, we can get to church on time. Even early.
While staying with Mama last night, I put cards and letters into my scrapbook, managing to fill it completely. Now I need a new one. I read Mama the School Newsletter the first- and second-grade classes write. It’s funny and interesting and touching and sweet, all at the same time.
Today at noon, while Hester and Lydia made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I juiced two large bags of oranges with Mama’s electric juicer. I think – although I cannot be sure, because everyone guzzled it down as fast as I could make it, and even Mama drank some – but I think those oranges probably made three-quarters of a gallon of juice.
I brought home Mama’s big juicer that I imagine would juice a two-by-four if you stuck it in there. I’m going to run all our apples through it (except the good Fujis). You just cut the apple in half so it will fit into the opening, then push it down. And presto! – you have apple juice. I like fresh carrot juice, too – but only fresh. It’s especially good with one big celery stick to a half pound of carrots. My children’s toenails would probably fall out, however, if I tried to give them a drink of it.
I took Aaron a little blue Bible – remember the story, How We Got Our Bible, that I found in Lydia’s old little blue Bible? And I bought one for Victoria’s birthday last year, expecting to find that story in there? And it wasn’t? Well, this little blue Bible is just like Victoria’s…no How We Got Our Bible story. But Aaron doesn’t know anything is missing; he loves it. He likes the picture of Jesus with the children on the front.
“Dejus!” he exclaimed, pointing at the picture and then looking up at me.
On the way home, driving down Shady Lake Road, I saw huge flocks of herring gulls following the tractors that are harrowing their fields. The white of their wings sparkled and shone in the sunlight as they snatched up all the worms they could find, even plucking some right out of their fellow birds’ beaks, provoking loud squawks of protest.
As I type, Socks is lying in the windowsill, and the doves, Brewer’s blackbirds, and redwing blackbirds are flittering about in the cedar trees just outside. I have the window up, and their cooing, cawing, and conk-a-reeing, along with all the wings flapping, are making the silly feline look as if he has a bad case of epilepsy. I think that if the screen was missing, that cat would leap right out the window – and it’s two stories up.
Earlier this afternoon, I burned my lungs and throat with Iron Out, cleaning the rust from an erstwhile-dripping faucet off the tub. Anyway, the tub is now gleaming white, and I am recovering. When one burns one’s lungs, I have learnt, even if it’s not very bad, one knows it. OoooOOoooOO owie yowie OWie.
After picking the kids up when school was over, we went to Wal-Mart for a couple more fifty-foot hoses, two Y’s so that two hoses at once can be fastened to the faucets, and four oscillating sprayers that are supposed to cover an area eighty-five feet in diameter.
Hester bought me a can of flower seeds for shady places, saying it was my early Mother’s Day present. I’m going to scatter them amongst the cedars. Won’t that be pretty?
Time for supper! It’s Campbell’s Herbed Chicken With Roasted Vegetables. And Ritz crackers. And Fuji apples. And apple flautas. Mmmmmm…
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