Sunday, June 8 2003 - When Sasquatch is on the Loose

             Last Sunday night on the way home from church, Lydia and I, the only church-goers from the Jackson abode that evening, stopped at Hy-Vee for a few necessities - including a dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts.  Mmmmm…we love those things.  (Yes, we shared them with the home-stayers.)  Good thing we don’t live right across the street from one of the businesses that sells them, eh?

             Monday, I finished filling up Victoria’s cubbyhole; it’s now stuffed.  And guess what.  Just this afternoon, I spotted two more boxes of clothes waaay down in the basement that need to be put with the others, which means I’ll have to get a couple of the boxes of Victoria’s toys out in order to make room for them.  She’ll be pleased, anyway; the toys in her cubbyhole are difficult to get to, once her dresses are hanging in the way of the cubbyhole’s doors.  Caleb’s cubbyhole doors, on the other hand, are at the end of his closet, so there is not that problem.  Those cubbyholes hold a lot.

I put the Christmas tree, boxes of Christmas decorations, and a huge bin full of wrapping paper, bags, and boxes in Victoria’s cubbyhole, followed by several boxes of toys.  Then I vacuumed the closet, scrubbed floor and shelves, and hung up the rest of Victoria’s dresses.  They only just fit.  I put her shoes into the closet, hung book bags and purses on hooks at one end, and managed to stack her multitude of hats onto the shelves at the other end.  We finished straightening and arranging her room, and now it looks ever and ever so very pretty.  We still need to put up the sliding closet doors, though.

             Larry came home about 5:00 p.m. that day because of the rainy weather.  He’d driven several times back and forth between Fremont and Wahoo, and the funny thing was, every time he got out to pick up forms, it stopped raining.  He’d no sooner get back into the boom truck to drive to another location than it would start raining again.  Tricky, eh?  And he’d only gotten stuck once – and then he’d gotten unstuck, all by himself.

Keith came home with Larry, and they spent the evening working on their motorcycles.  Larry brought a couple of carburetors into the basement. Less than a minute later, I smelt it from my position at the piano.  Ugh!  I stopped in the middle of a song, leaped to my feet, dashed down the stairs, and chased the infringers out.  With their stinky carburetors.

Men.

Bobby and Hannah came, bringing us those strawberry/lemon streusel muffins that are my favorites of all time.  Mmmmm…no other muffin in the world can beat them.  They came in one at a time (Bobby and Hannah, that is; not the muffins; the muffins all came in together) to see how we’d been progressing on the house, while the other stayed in the car with the children, just in case by some miracle they hadn’t been exposed to chicken pox.

Bobby said he and the rest of his crew had worked a couple of hours longer than Larry had, in Schuyler – in the rain. 

It was cold out that day.  It rained all day, starting in the early morning hours.  It was a gentle rain, but still washed away some of the dirt beside the retaining wall.

re·tain (rē-tān´) v.  2.  To keep or hold in a particular place, condition, or position.

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Hmmm.  The wall is not doing its job.  But the grass should come up nicely soon; in fact, I thought perhaps, perhaps, I could see a faint greenness already.

Keith was talking to Aaron, who was waiting out in the car:  “Are you cold?” he inquired.

Aaron shook his head.

“Are you warm?” asked Keith.

“No,” replied Aaron, “I’m two.”  hee hee  {Did he think Keith asked if he was ‘one’?}

              Tuesday I finished Hester’s vest and started on Lydia’s navy jumper with the rust-and-tan hearts and the tan blouse.  The skirt is done, and the top of the jumper is almost done and ready to fasten to the skirt.  I attached the trim to the sleeves of the blouse – and there’s where the sewing ended, for that week.

              I hung a few more pictures and emptied out another box.  Yep, just one.  Only one.  Since our living room is clogged with boxes, when I read to the kids we all perch on my big bed.  No backrests, but it’s cozy, nonetheless.

             So much for being a baseball fan; Nebraska lost their next game 7-0, forfeiting all chances of competing in the CWS.  Or was it the NBA?  ABC?  XYZ?  Hmmmm…  Okay, right the first time:  CWS.  College World Series.

There are big boot prints – filled with water – all over our yard.  Hmm.  Now, who in the world could that be?  Bigfoot?  Sasquatch?  Enkidu?  Will running barefoot through the lawn someday mean stubbing our toes on under-grass craters?

             That evening, Kenny was pouring our new neighbor’s driveway (or walkway or something).  The neighbor, who works with Teddy, lives over on old Highway 81, a little ways to our west.  Kenny had some leftover cement, and he offered it to Larry; so Larry and Keith made a little entry at the patio door, being sure to leave it low enough to accommodate the bricks we plan to lay for the patio.  They weren’t quite done smoothing it out when Tabby proceeded to walk straight through it, purring the while.

            Cats.

            About the same time, Caleb bounced a soccer ball onto one of my pansies, dumping pansy and potting soil both right out of the pot.

            Boys.

            Larry helped Keith with his motorcycle, ate supper, helped Keith with his motorcycle, ate a midnight snack, helped Keith with his motorcycle … and then went to bed.

            Keith got an excellent motorcycle helmet for an equally excellent price on eBay Monday night – from someone who lives in Lincoln.  Norma, who happened to be going there Tuesday, picked it up for him.  Keith was hoping to ride his motorcycle home that night – but then the clutch went out.  He has it all shined up, inside and out, and it’s really pretty, what with the metallic dark red paint and all the bright chrome.  It’s a ’75 model, practically an antique, and it’s been sitting unused in a garage for a long, long time.  It was treated well when it was in use.  Keith is pleased as punch with it.  {Or he will be, when it runs.}

           It was damp and cloudy all day; there was no need to water the lawn.  And yes, by Tuesday, it had been confirmed:  no longer is it the LTB (Lawn To Be); it is The Lawn.  Yesirree, there are little green sprouts coming up all over the place.  We have a lawn.  Why, the stuff that came up from the first planting is in dire need of a mowing! 

           All I did Wednesday, I think, was to run errands in town, and then go to church.  That’s all there was, there wasn’t any more.  (shades of Madeleine)

           Lydia The Unspeckled and Caleb The Less Speckled came with me, although from the way the cashier at Hy-Vee stared at Caleb and then glared at me, I’m not sure he was Less Speckled enough.  What did she think, that he had Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever or Smallpox or Rickettsialpox or Tar-Spot Fungus or something, and was spreading it far and wide?  Or did she think I’d burnt him with cigarettes or stabbed him with a fork, or something?  I can recognize a recovering chicken pox victim; can’t you?  [By the way:  have you heard that people have been catching monkeypox – from prairie dogs??!]

           From late morning to mid-afternoon, we ran errands:

1.   Stopped at Cornhusker Public Power on the way to town; discovered that the bill was forty dollars less than I thought it was. 

2.    Picked up the newspapers at the old house.

3.    Went to Columbus Telegram to pay an advertising bill (for something that didn’t sell [humbug]), and to tell them our new address (I cheated and gave them Jim C.’s address).  They promised to put up a box the next afternoon and deliver our paper, too.

4.   Stopped at Columbus Music Store, where, after a short debate, we purchased a beautiful harmonica with two rows of holes (two octaves for each note) in the key of G, with tremolo — for Lawrence for Father’s Day.  It’s an Echo, by Hohner.  It plays with such a rich, lovely tone…  I want it. 

5.    Then went to the post office, where I mailed letters, collected the previous day’s mail, and gave them a change of address – again, Jim C.’s.  Should have done that long ago.  Who cares if it isn’t quite the right one.

6.    Paid the last of our utility bills, bills we will no longer have at our new house.

7.    Then went to Wal-Mart, where we got:

        a.            Birthday present for my sister Lura Kay:  a tiny flowerpot of enamel and cloisonné with gold trim and a wee clock in the front.

        b.            Present for Jamie, Victoria’s cousin and best friend, who lived just down the street from us, and whom Victoria misses playing with every day.  Then, to add insult to injury, Jamie invited Victoria to her birthday party – and Victoria couldn’t go, on account of those awful chicken pox.  We picked out a tiny china tea set for her.

        c.            Half-price flowers for the cemetery next year – and that’s when I remembered:  we forgot to get those pretty red, white, and blue flowers off the graves.  Rats, rats, rats!  They throw them away in a week, if you don’t pick them up.  Well, anyway, I got some even-nicer wreaths with big blue flowers and a ribbon that says ‘Father’.

        d.            Two new curling irons.

        e.            White lacy knit top for Hester, and ladybug appliques to sew onto it, to go with her new strawberry-check outfit.

        f.             Ladybug buttons for Hester’s outfit.  (There were no strawberry appliques or buttons to be found; ladybugs will have to do.)

        g.            A couple handfuls of 25¢ cards of buttons from the bargain button basket, including some for Lydia’s jumper and blouse.

        h.           Three spools of thread.  Did you know that the larger spools cost $2.50 each??!  Sewing Department Robbery, that’s what it is.

         i.             Red and white paint for the shed.  I want to paint it like a little red barn, with white trim.  I already had the white paint in the cart, and told the man I wanted red paint – and he proceeded to take the white paint from me, I thought to match it up with the paint he needed for mixing the red.  Three times I tried telling him that I wanted the white, too; but he, evidently thinking I was so stupid that I thought you bought colored paint right off the shelf, kept informing me in an I’m-being-very-patient tone of voice that a different base was prerequisite to mixing red paint.  He thought I was stupid; I thought he had the IQ of a hubcap.  Which is precisely the IQ most people have who refuse to listen.
                   Sooo…I waited until he had the red paint mixed and put into the spinner or shaker or whateveritis, and then I said, “What about my white paint?”
                   He looked amazed.  “White paint?” he asked incredulously.  Then, a bit shamefacedly, “I’m sorry; did you want that, too?”
                        “Yes,” I replied; so he went and retrieved it for me, then put it into the paint mixer or shaker or spinner or whateveritis.
                   Retrieving the red paint from the mixer, he opened the lid, dabbed a bit onto a white card, and held it out for my inspection.  It seemed to be a bit too pink.
                   He used a blow dryer on the card for a minute, then showed it to me again.  It was just right.
                   “So,” I asked, “if the paint isn’t dark enough to suit me, I should blow-dry the entire shed?”
                   He laughed, and we parted, thinking each other not quite as stupid as we yoosta done.

                   j.             Little packages of Fig Newtons and Nutter Butter cookies.  [I hadn’t had breakfast before we left home.]  {And you can’t eat Fig Newtons and Nutter Butter cookies in front of your children without sharing them.}  [Not without being piggish, you can’t.]

                   k.            Black ink for printer.  (Did you know that the refill kits cost only 1/3 the price of a new cartridge?)

                   l.             Camcorder battery, whether the right one or not, I cannot tell.

                  m.          CD-RW (rewritable) compact discs.  Right now, as I type, I am putting all my documents and pictures onto discs.  It’s slower’n a seven-year itch.  Or molasses in January.  But maybe that’s my fault, rather than the computer’s; I’m trying to transfer a dozen or more folders at once.
                   Looked at flat monitors…  The one I’d like is – get this – only $398.  Whoooppeee.  Get the checkbook, quick!  {Or maybe not.}
                   Looked at scanners (mine doesn’t work; must have gotten damaged in moving).  Most are printer/scanner combinations; the cheapest one is $75.  We left them all behind.  When our ship comes in…

                   n.           New jeans and shirt for Caleb – a $10 Bugle Boy shirt, white with red and navy trim and printing, on sale for $5 – for the Fourth of July.

8.    Went to Corner Stop, where we got a gallon of chocolate milk, which we glugged with all our might and main.  (The Fig Newtons and the Nutter Butters made us thirsty.)

9.    Then to J. C. Penney's to pay a bill and take a quick look at the new store.

10. Went back to Menards, where we got two long white boards for shelves in Caleb and Victoria’s closets.

11. Next, to Hy-Vee.  We didn’t quit until the cart was piled so high I could hardly steer it around the corners.

12.  On the way home, we stopped to pay the rent for the storage unit, which we’ll probably need for a few months, until things are more shipshape around this joint.

And finally, home.  It was 4:30 p.m.  Hester and Victoria had been wondering where in the wide world we were, and what was taking us so long.  It took half an hour to put everything away.  There was barely time to read a couple of pages from the newspaper before it was time to get ready for church.

I left three speckly, but feeling-well, children at home, while I took with me to church the least-speckly, but sick-with-a-bad-cold, child.  (Lydia, that is.)  She started coughing halfway through the service and could hardly stop.  She took one of her own coughdrops – nothing more than candy, if you ask me – but it didn’t do much good.  I finally gave her one of my icky ones, which helped.

When we got home, Larry was putting the shelves in the closets.

Friday, I took the wicker chair with the tall rounded back out onto the white rock on the front drive.  It was flaking from being out in the rain for a couple of days.  I spray-painted white over flakes, dirt, and all.  (Well, actually, I did scrub it down, first.  A little bit.)  Looked pretty good when I was done.

While the chair dried, I put boxes on Caleb and Victoria’s shelves.  And! – I found Caleb’s wide rods in his closet – but then we couldn’t find the clips that fasten onto the wall.  Bother.  Caleb had no idea under the sun what he’d done with them.  Furthermore, he couldn’t even remember what kind of a container they were in.

I got all of Caleb’s big boxes of vehicles – are there six? seven?  More than he needs, that’s for sure – into his closet, and a lot of books in his bookcase.  Now his room is neat as a pin again.  Since Larry sold his gun cabinet, into which he’d inserted shelves so that we could use it as a bookcase, we will be needing another bookcase.

“But what are we going to do with all those books that have been in there?” I asked when I learnt he was planning to sell it.

(It’s one he made for his father in high school, a beautiful piece of workmanship made of black walnut.  He sold it to a friend with the stipulation that he be able to buy it back again someday.)

“Well, put them into other bookcases, of course,” answered Larry.

Of course.  Books belong in bookcases, don’t they?!  Not gun cabinets.  So put them into other bookcases.

“But all the other bookcases were already full,” I objected.

He shrugged.  He evidently thinks that books are something on the order of sponges, and will simply smoosh themselves up to accommodate as many books as ever you should want to cram into the case.

Just when I thought I was done with Caleb’s room, I found oodles and gobs of things under his bed – including the clips for his curtain rods.  So I gladly hung his curtains.  Now…where is the missing rod for the kitchen?

I still need to put the little quarter-round wood trim around the base of the floor trim in both Caleb and Victoria’s rooms; we’ll have to buy some at Menards.  And then…someday…we need to repair or replace all the windows.  They are in rather elderly condition.

There were WWII vintage aircraft – including Chinese and Russian – practicing stunts overhead all day Thursday and Friday:  loops, barrel rolls, free falls, upside-down flying, etc.  I wish they’d go just a wee bit farther afield – not so far that we can’t enjoy their performance, but far enough that, when they crash, they will do it into a field, not into my house.

The boyfriend of the lady who delivers the Columbus Telegram out here arrived, reeking of alcohol and rather disheveled, to give me our newspaper and ask where they were supposed to put the paper.  I told him that they’d told me at the Telegram that they would supply the box – and then it occurred to me that there had been no mailbox on a post on which they could affix the box they’d promised to supply.  Oops.

After Larry got home from work, he put the mailbox on a pole and placed it on the roadside.  It’s the mailbox my brother and sister-in-law, Loren and Janice, gave us for Christmas.  A customer of his painted it.  It’s got a rich brown- and rust-colored background with a bright golden setting sun low in the sky, silhouetting a couple of black angus cattle and a windmill.  I think it’s just about the prettiest mailbox I’ve ever seen.  For the pole, Larry used one of the jacks we got from Menards to help support the house – one of those jacks that were such a joke.  Those things would hardly support a deck, I think, let alone a house.

That night, Keith rode his motorcycle home.  !!!     Yep, it woiks, it woiks, it woiks.

Hester and Lydia went to Keith and Esther’s house early Friday morning to help Esther with her garage sale.  She was taking care of the baby, Victoria G., and needed somebody to mind the money box, ward off cat burglars (a friend was offering free kittens), and care for such matters.

I went to the post office to pick up our mail, but there was no mail there.  They told me that it takes a couple of days for a transfer to go through.  So where is our mail in the meantime?  Vincente López?  San Justo?  Pocotello?  Wagon Mound?  Tafoya?  Social Circle?  Good Hope?  Peachtree Creek?  Ponchatoula?  Cave Springs?  The Lowery Bombing Range?  Fort Hood?  Stringtown?  Mosquito Pass?  Ivanhoe?  Caledonia Springs?  The Purgatoire River?  The Reunion Tower?  The Great Sand Dunes?  Home again, we checked for newspaper and mail (just in case) – and, lo and behold, the Columbus Telegram was in the box!  Wheee!  I felt just like the pioneers must have felt when the Pony Express Riders finally came through.

I’d almost decided to paint the little shed, since there was only a 20% chance of rain; but the wind was blowing so hard that I decided not to, as the paint would splatter all over the place, and, besides—I was getting earaches.  So I went into the corner of the living room, all hidden by piles of boxes, to the recliner that we have, amazingly enough, kept free of clutter, and seated myself.  I tucked a bone pillow behind my neck, covered up with a fleece blanket, and read through two entire newspapers without stopping.  The children, meanwhile, played outside.

Victoria came trotting in, and I soon heard her rummaging about in the refrigerator.

“In case you’re looking for me,” I called, “I’m here in the living room.”

The noise stopped, and then Victoria giggled.  “Did you think I was looking for you in the refrigerator?”

A few minutes later, Keith brought Hester and Lydia home.  Lydia came in and wandered about.

“If you’re wondering where I am,” I called, “I’m over here in the corner.”

“Did you do something bad?” queried Lydia.

Girls.

Along about 6:00 p.m., I decided I’d better quit with the newspaper-reading and get on with the supper-making.  I started with a big chef salad.  I had two bags of chopped iceberg lettuce, purple cabbage, and carrots.  To that, I added celery, cauliflower, cucumbers, tomatoes, tiny purple onions (very thinly sliced, of course), and parsley.  Also soft-boiled eggs, of which I am particularly fond.

When that was done, I peeled, cored, and sliced a five-gallon bucket of fruit, including at least four different kinds of apples, three different kinds of pears, apricots, plums, and nectarines.  To the fruit, I added sugar, flour, sour cream, and cinnamon.  The crust was a scrumptious combination of Crisco, butter, flour, salt, and orange juice, which, after pressing into a pan, was covered with Kellogg’s new Harvest Apple flakes; and the topping consisted of four packets of peach oatmeal, a dab of brown sugar, white sugar, butter, and flour.

Whew; that was a lot of work.  I didn’t take it from the oven until 11:30 p.m.  Larry and I had some when it was done…and I ate waaay too much; it’s absolutely delicious.  ê¿ê

I’d been scuffing about for hours, sock-footed, on a floor on which multitudes of people had been tracking mud and dirt.

Larry suddenly looked down at my once-white socks and asked, “Been farmin’ long?”  ò¿ò

Saturday, Hester and Lydia got up at 6:15 a.m., and Keith picked them up at a quarter after seven.  Lydia again helped Esther with their garage sale, while Hester stayed with Mama so that Dorcas could help with the garage sale.  It rained almost all day, which significantly decreased the number of garage-sale-goers.  Most of the time, it was a gentle rain; but now and then it poured, and we even saw a few mushy pieces of hail.  The little ‘stream’ beside our house turned into a river with rapids.

We checked for mail; still none.  They won’t deliver the mail until there are actual numbers on the box, maybe?  The name is on the box.  I didn’t want to write numbers, because the numbers I gave them will not be the right numbers, in the end.  By now, our mail is probably in the Libyan Desert or the Oasis of Al Kufrah.  Or maybe Clarence Town in the Bahamas.  Or perhaps San Miguel Volcano in El Salvador.  Or Punta Gorda Bay.  Or the Strait of Magellan.  Or Mt. Etna, Sicily.  Or deep in Baffin Bay.

Larry and Keith spent part of the afternoon working on the downstairs bathroom.  They got most of the panel tiling up and the frame for the corner shelves by the toilet built.  Everything but the sink works now.

Dorcas gave Hester and Lydia a shiny red radio/cassette/CD player for their birthdays.  Finally!  We have a CD player in this house that actually works!

Today is Hester’s birthday; she’s fourteen years old.  Tomorrow we’ll take her birthday money {well, I reckon we’ll take Hester, too} to Tractor’s Supply and hunt for something decorative, in a horse-like manner, for her room.  Yep, she likes horses, and that’s how she wants to decorate her room.

Both newspapers arrived in our newspaper box this morning.  If the newspaper delivery people can figure it out, why can’t the mailman???

The frogs are ribbeting (my ’puter doesn’t know that’s a word; it gives me the following options:  ribbing, rebooting, rebutting, or rebating; didn’t anybody ever teach it about frogs?) like anything.  Regardless of what the computer thinks they are or are not doing, they’re doing it all right.

An oriole is warbling vociferously, and now and then a cardinal whistles cheerily.  The robins are singing, doves are cooing, chipping sparrows are chipping…  I like it out here!