L |
ast Monday, Victoria wanted to go to school; she said she was feeling ‘lots ’n lots’ better. Her temperature was normal, but she still had quite a cough. But I let her go. She hasn’t missed a single day yet, and she is bound and determined to get to the end of the year with a perfect record of attendance.
“And it’s almost summertime, so I only have five more years to go till summer vacation!” she enthused, paging through the calendar. (She meant ‘months’.)
And it was 60° outside.
Goodness! At this rate, Caleb never will get a chance to try out his new skates. Several people around these parts have tried walking on frozen lakes and even the rivers…and they’ve fallen through, ker-SPLOOOSH, too. A few nearly lost their lives.
V |
ictoria wore her new pink ski gloves to school, the ones we gave her for Christmas, for the first time. I had been disappointed that I couldn’t find some closer to the right size; these are a bit too large. But they were the only ski gloves there, and she could wear knit gloves under them, and at least they would be warm, which was most important.
Well, when school was over, here came Victoria bounding in the door, yelling as she came, stumbling over empty boxes, full boxes, and boxes in between, in a tremendous rush to get to me quick:
“Mama! Mama!!! Look at my gloves, look at my gloves, look really really really fast, look at them!”
A pink glove was waving in front of my face. I looked at it.
All the little white snowflakes and whorls on it had turned blue--but even as I looked, they changed back to white again.
Victoria cackled gleefully. “They change color!”
She turned and dashed madly for the door. “Here, I’ll show you--” and she held the glove outside for a few minutes before repeating her floundering race through the stacks and strawings of boxes to show me the blue snowflakes before they faded back to white.
“These are my best gloves ever!!!” she emoted happily, holding them against her cheek.
H |
annah and Aaron came to visit that afternoon. Aaron starts saying, “Hi! … Hi! … Hi!” the minute he sets foot in the door, and then down the hall he trots, saying, “Hi! … Hi! … Hi!” until he finds me.
“Here I am,” I call from some remote corner, practically buried alive in boxes.
“Oh,” answers a little voice, and I hear him working his way toward me.
“Right over here,” I direct him, peeking through the boxes and waving till he spots me.
Then he sees me, grins, and parrots triumphantly, “Hee yam!”
I showed him a little book about a kitten jumping on a table, spilling a girl’s pudding and milk…splashing it into her hair… The girl mops the floor, wipes the table, washes her bowl. She sits back down to eat. The kitten jumps onto the girl’s lap, stretches up, and licks pudding off the girl’s hair.
“Lallop, lallop, lallop!” I said, pretending to lick Aaron’s hair.
And that book was a hit.
The next time he came, he spied the book, brought it to me, and, with little pink tongue going in and out, he requested, “Lallop, lallop, lallop?”
So I read it again.
I played animal sounds for him on my computer, and everyone laughed 'til their sides hurt over the goat clip. “Maaaa,” says the goat. “Maaaaa!” he adds. And then, gathering every cubic centimeter of air in his lungs, and dreadfully overmodulating his vocal chords, he bellows,
“MAAAAAAA-AAAAA-AAAA!!!!”
And then, as if in afterthought, or maybe as if he frightened himself, a meek little, “Maaaaaa?”
Anyway, it certainly taught Aaron a new noise to imitate!
W |
hen the children got home from school, we drove out to see The House. It was sitting way up high on big blocks of wood crisscrossed this way and that until the house was more than one story off the ground. Lange Movers were just leaving when we arrived; they would roll it onto the basement the next day.
A |
t the library that evening, I borrowed three videos telling how to build decks, patios, and walkways. One about decks was so elementary, I fast-forwarded through it after only about two minutes. It was much more illuminative and informative, I think, in rapid motion.
The other was helpful, especially when they thoroughly described and showed how to build an elaborate deck on a second story, complete with staircase with landing, and several jogs and niches and angles here and there. I want it more than functional; I want it pretty. I want it unique.
Next, I watched the video on brick patios and cement sidewalks. I do not want cement sidewalks. After suffering through seventeen years at this house where the backyard is about sixty percent cement, I do not want cement. I want brick walkways. Or maybe even stepping stones. Sooo much prettier. I think I can do it myself; Larry thinks I absolutely, positively cannot. Well, we’ll see about that.
Larry plans to put two more peaks with windows (wonder what those things are called?) (Victoria says they are called ‘pointed sticky-up things’) on the bedroom above the garage when he builds it, which will make four across the front. As for the back of the house, I recommended that we put in a sloped rise similar to the roof over the stairs, on the new part, to make things symmetrical. After first acting like I was nuts, he then reconsidered… We’ll see. Maybe we won’t get that addition built for another year, who knows?
When we got home from the library, Teddy’s pickup was in our driveway. We started to climb out of the Suburban--and the pickup honked, making several of the littles jump out of their hides. Teddy had been lying on the front seat, hiding. He’d brought us some cookies Amy had made. I told you it’s the right thing, to teach your sons to marry girls who can bake.
T |
uesday, I went out to The House, hoping to film it rolling its way onto the basement--but I was too late; it was already there, and the workers were gone. They must have come very early in the morning.
I packed a box with Victoria’s knickknacks, and then accidentally and entirely involuntarily tumbled into bed. Hester and Lydia were sick. Hester had a bad earache, Lydia a headache, both with accompanying fevers and miseries, and they spent all evening lying down or perched in the recliner or on the loveseat watching videos such as Clifford, The Big Red Dog; Moody Bible Science; Madeleine; Old Fashioned Rival Hour; and Little Rascals. Caleb had a headache, too, and Victoria still sounded as if she had pneumonia. And I was having sympathy pains with all of them.
C |
harles L., our house mover, called to tell me that the pockets for the beams in the walls of our house weren’t deep enough; they couldn’t get their beams out. I told Larry when he came home, and suggested that they try the Willie Lump-lump Method: just jerk the tablecloth out from under the dishes, leaving the dishes all upright, neat as pins in their places on the table. (Well, at least that was the plan.) (However, when the scheme was carried through, there was quite a lot of tinkling and clattering and crashing, and the hostess did sound rather aghast and horror stricken.)
Larry headed out with his cement saw to cut the pockets deeper. However, after looking it over, he decided not to do that after all, because that would ruin the brick-face walls, and he thought that the movers could use their jacks to lift the house enough to remove the beams, and then they could set it back down. He fixed a cord to plug into his inverter so that he could plug into the battery on his pickup and have lights in the house. Thus, he managed to get lights in the basement and main floor. Would you believe, the bare bulbs that hung from the ceiling in the old basement made it all the way here, with beams slid all around them--intact.
Our neighbors out there are not real close, at least not nearly so close as we are used to here in town. We each own approximately ¾ of an acre…so you can figure out, maybe, about how far away we are from each other. The man who sold us the lot, Jim C., lives a short ways farther up the hill, and owns quite a few acres. He has a farm/ranch, on which he keeps horses and the Angus bulls and cattle he sells. He specializes in top-of-the-mark bulls.
We have just learned that, down the hill a ways, live some people who have some children. We don’t know their ages; but I’ll betcha our children will soon find out.
I |
n the meantime, I typed a report for Hester on Charles Haddon Spurgeon, ‘Prince of Preachers’, also known as ‘The Great Orator’, who preached in The Metropolitan Tabernacle of London from 1861 to 1892. The Tabernacle seated 6,000 people, and it was full to overflowing every service.
Hester had filled quite a few pages in her notebook; I typed what she had written.
W |
ednesday, despite being sick and having a high fever, I took a check for the movers out to The House. Charles L.’s son showed me that the floor jacks--four of them--that Larry had bought at Menard’s that morning were not strong enough to hold The House, and they were bending alarmingly. "What shall we do?" he asked me.
I stared at those jacks and backed toward the door, the hairs on the back of my neck rising.
“I’m not a good one to ask for advice,” I said, gazing upwards, expecting The House at any moment to give a last tired sigh, and pitch with a crunch and a roar straight into The Basement. “The best thing I know to do is to ‘RUN!!!’”
I was pleased that I made the idiot jump out of his hide. Aren't house movers supposed to know all about these things, and refrain from allowing houses to collapse into basements??!
He let me use his cell phone to call Larry, who was in Omaha; Larry told me to go to Menard’s and get four more jacks.
So I said, “Who, me???”, which seemed like the most intelligent thing to say at the moment. In fact, it seemed like the only intelligent thing to say at the moment.
Larry assured me that somebody at Menard’s would help me, and when I got back to The House, one of the movers would help me.
So back to town I went, empty jack box in hand in order to get the right thing.
I stopped at the service desk and told the lady behind the counter what I wanted. She called for help over the intercom--and along came a young woman to help me.
‘Hmmm,’ I thought, ‘What if those jacks weigh a hundred pounds each?’
She led me back to the department where the jacks were kept, and easily picked up the three jacks--one at a time--left on the shelf and put them into my cart. (But she was about 5’11”, and probably weighed about 160 pounds.) Then she shinnied up a nearby ladder, plucked one off the top shelf, leaned down, and stuck it into the cart--nearly making it do a handspring, since she tilted them all out the front end.
Now, I don’t know how much each of those jacks weighed; but I do know that, together, it was all I could do to hold my side of the cart down. I put them into the Suburban myself, since no one offered to help, making yesterday’s sympathy pains protest. Once out at The House, I started driving down beside The Basement, but met a forklift with a stack of timber. I backed out of the way till he went by, then headed back down the driveway.
Along came a big truck who, since he was bigger than my Subdivision, seemed to think he had the right o’ way. Not knowing how many more vehicles and conveyances would soon be trundling around the corner, the Subdivision gave up and parked in the north hayfield, which meant that I then had to carry those jacks all the way down to The Basement. And I did it myself, since everyone else looked busy and disinclined to help. Indeed, it probably never occurred to anyone that I might need help, as those jacks felt like nothing more than toothpicks to them.
I carried two at a time, because that was easier than trekking that distance four times in the cold, bitter wind. Ugh; those things are too heavy for me.
M |
arley’s Ghost was there. Well, Marley Somebody. Unless he was Somebody Marley. In any case, he was working on the breaker box, and his pickup said Marley’s Electric. He got the basement and main floor all wired. Now Larry can use his inverter for the upper floor until that floor is wired, too, and he has lights for every floor.
By the time I got back home, yesterday’s sympathy pains had become today’s sympathy pains, and the bed looked utterly inviting while the hungry, gaping boxes did not.
T |
hursday, I looked at the calendar and launched back into washing clothes, packing things, and cleaning out the fish tank with mettle, sympathy pains or no sympathy pains. I got several more cupboards cleared out--and now we have to wash our plates immediately after we use them, or there will be nothing on which to put the next course, because I packed all but six. If we have visitors, they will have to share the breadboard.
We had sloppy joes and broccoli for supper. It had been a long time since I made sloppy joes, and everyone was delighted. I had virtually none of the usual ingredients (I like picanté sauce or Ragu in them), so I searched through bare cupboards, and this is how I made the sloppy joes:
2 ½ lbs hamburger
small can chopped green chilies
2 T chopped black olives
2 t salt
¼ t black pepper
1 C brown sugar
3 C ketchup
2 T chopped onions
1 t garlic powder
Something like that, anyway. I never actually measured any of that except the green chilies, and I only know how much I used of that because I used an entire can. I don’t often have measuring cups and spoons to wash when I’m done cooking, because I simply put in a pinch of this, a dash of that, a handful of something else, a gloop-gloop of this, a blop-blop of that, and a heap of something else.
L |
arry got a wall built for the basement that evening after work. I worry about him when he’s out there at The House, especially when he’s alone, tired…when I pray, and ask the usual “keep Larry safe, please, Lord”, although I never rattle it off lightly, I now make the request with fervor.
We got a letter from Larry’s Aunt Virginia, in which she enclosed a picture of a ‘sugar glider’, a 5-oz. animal with black, white, and brown striping, costing $300…Uncle Tex had bought himself one. They named it Judy, and Aunt Virginia said they just love it. Have you ever heard of such an animal? I had not.
F |
riday, finished with the kitchen (for now), I started packing clothes downstairs. Three times I filled the Suburban with things I figured we could easily get by without, and took them to the used clothes dropbox. In the shelf room, I went through one long rack, nearly had it cleaned off, then sorted another rack, putting all the things Hester and Lydia can wear now back onto the first rack…and then, all of a sudden, the first rack was full again.
I’m doing worse than going in circles; I’m merely running in place.
To add to the troubles, I proceeded to pink one of Hester’s white socks, so I had to pink the other one. I tried pinking it first with the maroon jumper that doesn’t fade, mistakenly thinking it was the dark red jumper that did. I finally found the jumper that does, after which I pinked the second sock more than the first, after which I had to repink the first, after which I repinked it too much, after which I repinked the second…and finally, after a good deal of seesawing between and betwixt, I got ’er right. So Hester has a new pair of pink socks. {“You’re ever so very welcome, Hester.”}
T |
hat night, Teddy and Larry put a couple of big wooden posts in place under the floor joists. Amy and Lydia went along, in order to serve cookies and hot chocolate. And help eat them.
At 11:30 p.m., I decided I really should go see if The House had fallen on them, or what.
Only Larry and Teddy were there; Amy and Lydia had gone to Teddy and Amy’s house to make more hot chocolate. I tell you, it was cold out--and in. Larry had an electric heater running, but it could hardly be felt, even when one was standing directly before it. It was 10° outside, and it wasn’t much warmer inside.
Larry & Son, Inc., were trying to jack up on the big floor joist--the one that the movers cracked by jacking up on it in the wrong place, right where it was spliced--and things were creaking and popping frightfully. Larry laughed at me because every time something groaned or cracked, I backed toward the patio door with all haste.
Soon Amy and Lydia returned with the hot chocolate, and we all had some, along with another cookie. Larry decided to quit for the evening and come home.
And then his pickup wouldn’t start. And he just put a new starter on it! It was a rebuilt one; somebody had done something wrong on it. Dropped their jelly beans into it or something. At least it is under warranty for a couple of years; he’ll be able to get a new one. He tried jump-starting it from the Suburban, but that didn’t work, which confirmed the idea that it was the starter causing the trouble, rather than the batteries. So we left the pickup and came home in the Suburban.
T |
he stray cat that has been residing under the playhouse behind my sister’s house next door has a cut or sore on its back leg, and doesn’t put any weight on the leg. Hester put triple antibiotic salve on it. The kitty cried, and the children nearly cried right along with it. We kept water and food right outside its hole for it. When it heard the children coming, it would quickly come out to see them, hoping for a treat of one kind or another.
Lydia went out to feed the cat Saturday morning and give it a fresh, unfrozen dish of water--and, lo and behold, there was another cat in the hole! It was a black one with white up the side of its face, sort of like it had spilt its milk on itself, and it had little white paws, too. It reminded me of a kitten we once had; we called it Tomboy. Well, I suddenly decided we just couldn’t leave those cats there. The fluffy charcoal stripe had been there three weeks or so. It had a bit of a cold, and so did the black cat. The black one looked like it might have been limping, too, but perhaps it was the cold, cold ground causing it.
And it is cold. Too cold for a cat to be left outside--especially the black short-haired cat; he was shivering terribly. He ate like he was starving, and although he was friendly, if anything spooked him, he fled for the hole under the playhouse.
“We really must,” I told Lydia, as I dialed the Animal Shelter.
Soon a woman--the local dogcatcher--arrived. I’d picked up the fluffy cat so it wouldn’t escape back into its hole like it did the last time. The minute it heard the dogcatcher’s vehicle, it launched into a mad scramble to get away from me. I wound up hanging onto the poor thing by the nap of its neck, because there didn’t seem to be any other way to avoid those frantically flying talons.
When I handed the cat to the dogcatcher, it suddenly decided I was better than that new person after all, and the little beast whirled around and grabbed hold of me, hanging on for dear life. I had to extricate a set of claws from my arm just as you would extract a fishing hook from a trout. And didn’t the poor lady have a time getting the frightened cat into the animal carrier! It looked like an octopus, with so many legs churning and grabbing hold of anything and everything.
Meanwhile, the black cat had rushed back into the hole, but eventually the woman was able to coax it back out. It didn’t get nearly so upset when she picked it up; in fact, in a few minutes it was purring and bumping its head against her.
Now, let’s hope the poor things find nice adoptive families. At least now they'll be warm and well-fed.
L |
arry didn’t have to work for Walkers’ that day, so he got a couple of walls set up in The Basement, and he put a new starter on his pickup. It’s taking longer to put the walls up than he expected, because the floor joists and beams are so uneven, and big beams must be jacked up so that posts fit underneath, and they move only by the tiniest increments at a time.
H |
annah stopped by for a few minutes; she was in something of a tumult because Monday was going to be The Day, and she still had 1,001 things to do, including cleaning the house, stocking up on groceries, finishing a blanket she was crocheting, and logging scientific data relating the curvature angle of the horns on the African black rhinoceros to the poor function of its eye in translating the electromagnetic vibrations of light into patterns of nerve impulses that are transmitted to its brain.
(Or was that something I read somewhere?)
I gave her a little Winnie-the-Pooh divided dish I got for Keith when he was a baby; two sections are heated, one is not. It’s the neatest little dish you ever did see, and it still looks like new.
T |
hat evening, we had roast for supper, roast that Bobby’s parents had given us. I baked potatoes with it--some of those huge potatoes that were being sold so cheap around the country because some grower somewhere let them grow beyond all bounds. He must have thought he was growing watermelons; they’re huge. Many weigh up to two pounds. They aren’t the best-tasting spuds I’ve ever tried, though; it takes milk, salt, and pounds and pounds of butter to make them edible.
That day, I got many more boxes packed with clothes, and lots of clothes washed. I took apart the fallen-down enclosed clothes rack and hauled it all out to the garbage. What a waste of money those things were! I took apart the one that didn’t fall; it’s now residing in the living room, taking up space where space was sparse in the first place. (Wheee! I just done Dr. Seuss proud!)
I |
t was bathtime Saturday night. I thought the water might be slightly too warm for Victoria… But when I laid her back to wash her hair, and she said, “Brrrrr! That water is cold on my head!”
‘This child has a fever,’ I thought, and when we were done, I took her temperature.
Sure enough, it was 100.5°. Hester was still sick, too. She could hardly hear, even if we talked very loudly to her. I decided a doctor visit was definitely called for, come Monday.
It takes Victoria a few extra minutes to get ready for bed these days, because every night before she goes to bed, she has to warm up her rice bag.
S |
unday morning I was just ready to go out the door to Sunday School when Caleb informed me--in a voice barely a whisper--that his chest was hurting, his throat was tight, and he was having a hard time breathing. He’d been coughing, and we’d been wondering if he should go… I sent him back to take a treatment on his nebulizer, fast. He wound up staying home all day, along with Hester and Victoria, and Larry to babysit for them. (Unless it was the other way around.)
Larry fixed Belgian waffles for dinner. Mmmmm…
I stayed with Mama that night. She’s getting a cold; that always worries us. She isn’t strong enough to cope with a bad cold.
* * *
A |
t 8:20 a.m. Monday, Bobby called. He likes to build suspense.
“Well,” he began, and cleared his throat, “Hannah is back in her room.” Pause. “She’s feeling okay,” he added, and waited a while.
I waited, too.
I pretend to notice nothing unusual about the way the story is progressing with these sorts of blokes; it foils their purpose, you see. If I am unruffled this time, maybe next time there is News of Great Value he’ll just go ahead and tell me, without trying to torture me first.
And then, finally, “…and we have a new baby.”
I waited with all my might and main.
“It’s a little girl,” said Bobby, said he, and paused. I’m pretty sure I heard a distinct, but muffled, chuckle. “Her name is Joanna Christine, and she weighs seven pounds, two ounces.”
She was 19 inches long, and she has medium-to-light brown hair, and quite a lot of it.
And then he offended me extremely by telling me that he’d already called the school!!! -- before he called me!!! Of all the nerve. Sons-in-law need to get their priorities straight! Why, there could easily have been 90 schoolbrats who heard the news before ME!!!!
Well, I promised to call Keith, Dorcas, Teddy, and Loren, and told Bobby how thankful I was everything had gone well.
W |
hen that job was done, I finished curling my hair and then went out to Cornhusker Public Power to get our refund check. Would you believe, after charging us $8,500, they decided to refund us $3,733?!! Imagine, an electric company doing such a thing!
I stopped on the way to fill the Suburban with gas--and it took almost $60 to get it clear full. I committed the crime of 1) leaving the Suburban running while I filled it, and 2) climbing back inside as it filled. Believe me, that cold wind was bitter. It was only 10° that morning.
Home again, I paid a pile of bills. By then, Victoria had awoken, so I helped her get dressed, and then we ate breakfast.
I |
fixed Victoria’s hair in braided pigtails pulled up into a loop, like Kirstin of The American Girl dolls fame. Victoria was tickled pink; she kept it that way the whole day, and hardly wanted to take the loops down at bedtime.
After Lydia, Caleb, and Victoria went to school, Hester came upstairs to eat something--finally. She’d eaten hardly a thing for days. She was feeling a little better, but was deaf as a post. I practically had to shout to get her to hear me.“Get ready,” I told her, “We’re taking you kids to the doctor. And…we’ll go see one new baby while we’re at it!”
“I won’t get to see her,” Hester mourned.
“I’ll show you the video I take,” I promised.
Then off I went to Wal-Mart with a purpose: I planned to fill a cart with tiny pink things!
I got four adorable sleepers, a cute Christmas dress of red taffeta and black velvet, lacy tights and socks, three soft knit mittens, purple fur slippers with pompons, a sooofffft white stuffed gorilla (I know, I know; you don’t give new baby girls gorillas; but I just knew Caleb would love to give that to her), a sooofffft variegated teddy bear of brown, purple, and lavender, three tiny beanie dolls, and a Precious Moments doll that has a recording of a small child reciting, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. May angels watch me through the night, and keep me in His loving sight (something like that). Amen.” The little child says it ever so cute, although I’m sure a steady diet of that prayer would get on one’s nerves. We also got a lacy pink shawl blanket with a Precious Moments applique, a pink chenille blanket with a beautiful openwork design, a pink fleece blanket that is so soft it makes you want to curl up on it and go to sleep the minute you touch it, and a pair of satin shoes with mounds of lace on them.
Is that all? Oh, yes; I bought a Winnie-the-Pooh card. Pooh is yelling, “Hooooray!!! It’s a new baby! Let’s hop! Let’s skip! Let’s dance!” and Piglet says, “Shouldn’t we be quiet, so as not to wake the baby?” “Nah,” replies Pooh, “Babies never sleep much anyway!” Then, to top it all off, I got a huge Winnie-the-Pooh gift bag, and three rolls of Winnie-the-Pooh wrapping paper.
And after all that, I even remembered to get a colored ink cartridge and my pictures from the photo lab.
Good thing we got a refund from Cornhusker Public Power, eh?
I raced back home, showed all the loot to Hester, having to shout in order to have her pick out what she wanted to give baby Joanna. She helped me pick things for Lydia, Caleb, and Victoria to give the baby, and then I wrapped them all.
The children came home from school before I was quite done. We grabbed everything we needed--“DON’T FORGET THE CAMERA!!!”--and roared off to David City. By then, I was starved again, so I ate handfuls of Honey Bunches With Almonds (my favorite) and drank orange juice as I drove. After I got full, I opened my packets of pictures and looked at them. I like to do lots of things at once, you know. I did run over quite a few compact cars and clobber several pedestrians, but no one’s caught up with me yet…
W |
e got there four minutes late, but it didn’t seem to matter; no one looked to be sitting on the edge of their chair waiting for us. The doctor--Dr. L.’s assistant--checked over Hester and Caleb, and also looked in Victoria’s ears. They all have ear infections, and Hester’s lymph nodes are swollen quite a lot. He began to think it might be mono, but she never had a sore throat, so maybe not… He had the test taken, and it was negative, to our relief. He wrote out no less than five prescriptions.
“Are you allergic to anything?” he asked Caleb.
“Yes!” responded Caleb hurriedly, “Yes, Amoxicillin--the last time I took it, it gave me the measles!”
And the man didn’t even laugh.
But I did.
He was trying hard not to; I could see his moustache twitching. “Hives,” said the doctor and I, both at the same time.
Caleb giggled. “Hives,” he amended.
D |
one with that, we wasted no time in snatching my camera from the Suburban and galloping headlong into the hospital. On the window in the nursery, there was a paper with Aaron’s picture on it, and it said, “I’m the big brother.” The paper was right above an isolette, but the tiny basket was empty. The nurses directed us to room 203 without even asking who we were, and there they were--Bobby, Hannah, Aaron, and baby Joanna Christine.
Hannah was holding the baby when we entered, but soon Bobby had taken her and handed her to me. Oh, dear little precious bundle!
I took a few pictures, and gave Hannah the presents. Bobby carried little Joanna to the waiting room so that Hester and Caleb could have a quick look at her. They’d stayed there on account of their colds. Babies have a certain immunity for a little while after they are born…but Hannah doesn’t, and we sho’ ’nuff don’t want her getting sick. I didn’t want either of them holding the baby; that was tooo close. But they could stop breathing, look quick, and then Bobby could run away, fast.
So Hester wasn’t mourning quite so hard as she had been.
We soon took our leave, meeting Bobby’s mother Bethany and her youngest boy, James, in the hallway as we departed. James had bought Caleb a can of pop. He’s generous like that.
S |
ince our stomachs were rubbing our backbones, we stopped at a convenience store for crackers, brownies, Doritos, cookies… I got coffee; the kids got what I thought was hot chocolate. We went to the checkout stand.
“What’s in the cups?” asked the clerk.
I opened my mouth to say, “Hot chocolate,” just as Hester said, “Three cappuccinos and a hot chocolate.”
Three cappuccinos! Aarrgghh, those kids.
Halfway home, I took a couple of bites of my Hershey’s with Almonds--and discovered it was sour. Yes, sour. Ugh, yuck, pew, bleah, YUCK! Botheration. Have you ever run across a sour Hershey’s bar??? Imagine chocolate milk left to sour until it had turned stiff.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaauuuuuuuuugggggggggghhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!
I gulped hot coffee with all my might and main (I did several things with all my might and main that day, didn’t I?), in order to get that dreadful taste out of my mouth. BLEAH!!!
L |
arry was home when we got here. He wanted to head straight for David City to see his new little granddaughter. So, while he showered, I took the five prescriptions to Walgreens.
“They’ll be ready in 20 minutes,” said the girl.
I picked up some super burritos at Taco John’s. By the time I got home, Larry was ready to go. Hester and Caleb, not feeling so well, stayed home this time. The rest of us headed back to David City. We stopped to pick up the prescriptions; it had been 30 minutes by then. They were only just beginning to fill them. It took another 20 minutes before they were ready…and they cost $265. Yes, that’s what I said: $265.
Good thing we got a refund from Cornhusker Public Power, eh?
We met several members of the Wright family leaving the hospital as we arrived. John Wright, Bobby’s father, admonished Larry to keep in mind what that little girl’s last name was.
Bobby had taken Aaron home to bed. Larry held the baby, and he didn’t share her, either. I took pictures and videos, and then we left; Hannah was probably badly needing to sleep. Actually, she was feeling pretty good, considering.
A |
fter we got home, I took my videotape and ran over to Mama’s to show her The New Baby. I’d zeroed right in on her sweet little face and held it there for a while, so Mama got a good look at her. She proclaimed her a beautiful baby, and we all concurred.
I went home, and we watched the video again, trying hard to get Larry to stay awake long enough to see what he looked like when he blew a bubble right into the camera’s face (do cameras have faces?) (“Mama laughed at you!” I informed him)--and then it occurred to me: the library videos were due back. Aaarrrggghhh! I wanted to sit down, relax, and finish my letter!
Instead, I had to gather up videos, make sure tapes were in matching jackets, and trot them back uptown to the library. And it’s cold outside. But I done it.
D |
id you ever feel as though you’d spent the entire day with a jetpack strapped onto your back? Well, that’s how I feel. It’s twenty after eleven, and I feel as though I’ve been run through a wringer. But, mind you, I’m as happy as if I didn’t know better!
And that’s the truth of the matter.
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