We just
finished supper – chili, grilled cheese sandwiches (compliments of Victoria),
apple salad, and, soon, muffins (also compliments of Victoria). It’s 34° with a wind chill of 24° – not as
cold as it has been recently, but
still cold enough to make chili taste mighty good, especially to Larry, who’s
been working outside most of the day. He
just headed back out to work on his scissor lift. He’s very much regretting renting it
out. Those men messed up the wiring, and
he hasn’t got it back in good working order since. It now runs,
and the lift can be raised and lowered – but only manually, from the ground,
which is no good, if one is using it by one’s self, unless one carries a
parachute with himself as he ascends.
Last Tuesday, February 24th, was Victoria’s 18th
birthday. She’s
been wanting a hope chest, but we didn’t think we could afford a nice one
(solid wood, cedar lined), because most are $400-$1,000 (or, if you get really
fancy, $2,500+). So
we’d just about resigned ourselves to getting a ‘cheapie’ at Hobby Lobby – and
even the fiberboard ones are $100. But
Larry talked to a man for whom he has done snow removal, Darrel Mckathnie, who
owns an antique store – and he had a hope chest. Larry went and looked at
it – and it was a nice one. There are a few scratches, but they are not
deep, and will be easily fixed. AND – the man let Larry have it for only
$175, $10 less than the price on the tag, which is a very good price indeed.
Victoria is pleased with it.
Larry made my hope chest
for me in high school shop class. It’s quite big, made of dark walnut,
sports fancy doors on the front, and is lined with cedar. The top part was made to hold my cassette
player, 8-track player, and record player. We’ve adapted it for our DVD
player. The old speakers – big things – are still in it; Larry made
everything to fit my components exactly. Those old speakers still work
and have a nice tone, but we haven’t used them for a while. Someday, he
plans to remove them and put shelves in the large openings instead – maybe for
books, or perhaps for DVDs. He gave it
to me for Christmas when we were 17. The other kids in his shop class had
made an end table.
Even my mother, who wasn’t sure her baby should have a boyfriend
yet, was impressed. 😀
One evening, Victoria was
at Bobby and Hannah’s house. Hannah played
the piano, and Victoria and Joanna sang – Victoria on soprano, Joanna on
whatever counterpart struck her fancy; she switches around to whatever makes
the prettiest harmonies. Nathanael does
the same – and Levi is just starting to, though he told me seriously, “However,
I prefer soprano.”
They recorded Singing I Go, and Hannah sent it to
me. Those girls harmonize very well
indeed, as relatives so often do. Victoria had started the piano, but finds
it a bit troublesome to play and sing at the same time. Her descriptions reminded me...
I can play and simultaneously
sing alto, soprano, tenor – but just let someone try talking to me
whilst I’m a-playin’! 😬 Daddy tried that once, right at church.
I hadn’t been playing for
church too long, maybe a year or two. He
didn’t give it a thought, coming over to ask me something – he’d often done
that when Lura Kay played the piano some years before, and she’d carried on
with aplomb.
Not me.
Believe me, I done larnt ’im
a lesson – he never did that again.
Come to think of it, his talking
wasn’t what caused the trouble. It was my attempting to answer that made my piano playing skip
and lurch like a drunken jackrabbit. Daddy looked amazed (and I probably
did, too), said “Okay” quickly, and scurried himself back to his chair on the
platform. I grinned at Sandy over at the organ (she was looking at me as
if I’d sprouted another head), and started in at the beginning, since I had no
earthly clue where I’d been when I capsized.
“What was Grandpa saying?” asked Hannah when I
recited the story.
“No idea,” I replied.
“I doubt if he knew, either, after that fiasco.”
Loren has been cleaning and sorting things in his
house. He gave me something he found
that I’m not completely sure what to do with:
a roll of 35mm 200-speed 24-exp film from PhotoWorks.
I no
longer have my Minolta SLRs – we have nothing to put film into. I offered it to over 6,000 ladies on the
online quilting groups – and didn’t get a single nibble. I wondered what to do with it ... and then I
found this page chock full of crafts made with old 35mm film: Pinterest
Film Negative Crafts
Do I really need
another project?? And... shall I
make my brother a bow tie?
A friend wrote, “You know
biscornus are addicting.”
It’s true! It’s fun to sew a couple of offset squares
together – and wind up with this cute-shaped little thing.
Wednesday morning, snow
came down at a brisk rate for a little while; but it had tapered off by
afternoon. The wind was blowing at 30
mph, which neatly removed the half-inch of snow from most of the high ground
and flat areas. It was 30°, but the wind
chill was only 17°.
I put a load of clothes into
the washing machine... watered the indoor flowers... fed the cats... took three
little Jackson kiddos to school at a quarter ’til one... and picked them up
again at 3:30 p.m. The road to and from
the school seems shorter than usual, when the children are in the Jeep –
because we can never finish telling all the stories we think of in the amount of
time it takes to drive it!
Between and after these excursions, I hunted through my bins for color-graduated fabrics with which to make a table topper for my sister and brother-in-law. Lura Kay and John H.’s 51st anniversary was yesterday, March 1st.
Between and after these excursions, I hunted through my bins for color-graduated fabrics with which to make a table topper for my sister and brother-in-law. Lura Kay and John H.’s 51st anniversary was yesterday, March 1st.
Just
before church, Hannah sent a text with a quote from Levi: “I need something going down my throat.”
“Couldn’t he just say ‘I’m
thirsty’?” asked Hannah.
hee hee That made me think of Lydia, and some of
the funny things she said when she
was a wee little think. Such as this:
“I need a drink, because I’m thirsty of juice!” and “I need a piece of bread
with anything not on it.”
Silly little kids.
Since Bobby and Hannah
& Co. were going to attend a Bible Conference in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma,
where Robert would be preaching over the weekend, and would not be home for Hannah’s
birthday on the 28th, I gave her her present that night – a scissors
holder, biscornu pincushion, and needlekeep. She exclaimed over it quite
satisfactorily – and had to stick her hand inside the scissors case to feel the
leather (naugahyde,
actually), which she’d read about on my website.
Larry still had a bad cough
(it’s still hanging around, though he’s better today), so he stayed home from
church. I told him
he should go to the doctor, but he said, “Not yet.” He said his “doctorin’ kids” were either
going to cure him or kill him – Teddy gave him vitamins that, if one followed
the instructions on the bottle, would cost $30 every five days or so (and, if
one followed the instructions, I’m pretty sure one would acquire hypervitaminosis
[yes, Mr. Gates, that is a word; just
ask the good doctors at Mayo Clinic]: jaundice
from an overdose of vitamin A, diarrhea from an overdose of vitamin C, hypercalcemia
from an overdose of vitamin D, and giddiness from an overdose of vitamin B12). Lydia has some drops from the chiropractor
that she’s going to give him, and Andrew told me about an OTC medicine that
helped him (he still has a bad cough, too).
I planned to work on the
table topper after I came home from church, but I went to the grocery store
afterwards and did a marathon shopping excursion. I was done in 45 minutes flat, but I wiped
out three li’l ol’ ladies, two young burly men, and a small child. Then I had to load it into the Jeep in 7°
weather – and with the wind whistling through at 35 mph, the wind chill was
-12°. The lady who bagged my groceries is about my age, but she gamely
pushed one of the carts out through the swirling snow and helped put my bags in
the Jeep. (I had only one cart when I got to the checkout stand.
Granted, it was heaping-full-to-overflowing, but everything expanded
when I got it out and set it on the conveyor belt, and there was no way it
would’ve fit back into the cart from whence it came.) Anyway, I thanked
her profusely; she had to have been colder than me, for she only had on
a hooded sweatshirt – and no gloves!
Home again, I wrapped my
scarf around my face, tied my hood, and carried in the groceries. Larry
came and helped, though he has a dreadful cold, and the wind and cold made him
cough.
We got everything put away,
I threw another load of clothes into the dryer and started one in the washing
machine, and then I washed a ton of dishes that had been accumulating all
day. Well, maybe there were only three-quarters of a ton (I hate to
exaggerate) (no, actually, I love to exaggerate) (but I try to make it
obvious enough that there’s no question, heh). We gobbled down some
cheese curds with a few honey mustard pretzels, ate a cherry turnover for
dessert, and then I retired to my recliner. Soon I was all snuggled in
with a soft, thick, purple microfleece blanket my sister gave me for Christmas,
Caramel Crème French Vanilla coffee steaming away on the coffee warmer beside
me, and my laptop on my lap.
Tabby came and sat on the
arm of my chair, staring beseechingly into my face, trying to pretend he was
starved and needed his soft food. He was obviously hoping I had forgotten
that I fed him (or tried to feed him) a scant 20 minutes earlier.
He’d turned up his nose, having already gulped down some of the other cats’ dry
food (I get the kind that comes in small round pieces, so that when Tabby
swallows it whole, he won’t choke, and he’ll get some nutrition from it,
besides). His fluffy little head bobbed; silly kitty was about to fall
asleep.
I found a website where the
50 cities averaging the coldest weather are listed. I was surprised to see that four Nebraska
cities made the list: #39, Lincoln, with an average monthly minimum temperature
of 14.5° F and an average monthly maximum temperature of 65.6° F; #38, Grand
Island, with an average monthly minimum temperature of 14.4° F and an average
monthly maximum temperature of 64.7° F; #29, Norfolk, with an average monthly
minimum temperature of 12.1° F and an average monthly maximum temperature of
63.6° F; and #24, North Platte, with an average monthly minimum temperature of
11.1° F and an average monthly maximum temperature of 60.4° F.
The laundry
was misbehaving – it was refusing to end!
I spent most of the day working on the table topper – while the birds worked
on the newly refilled feeders, clustering
in frantic froths around them. They
certainly go through a lot of seed, on these cold, cold days.
The owner of our Internet Service called to say that we’d used 50 gigabytes for
the month so far, and they had shut down our Internet. So much for the ‘infinite data usage plan’,
huh? I’d noticed the Internet was off a
few minutes earlier, though my audio book had kept playing, as a good deal of
it had already loaded. Out of the
goodness of her heart, though, she was going to reset it for me. But if we keep this up, we’ll see additional
charges on our bill. Naughty,
naughty. (But why is the data usage so
high, anyway?) And the data won’t even
come in well, a good deal of the time.
Ustream plays in fits and starts, making it difficult to listen to our
church services. Bah, humbug.
Lura Kay has not been well;
she’s had a bad sore throat and cold, and now she’s having trouble with a very painful
hip, thigh, and knee, until she can hardly get around. She went to the doctor Thursday, and he took X-rays. He thinks the trouble is a slipped disk, and hopes
it will gradually get better on its own, as is sometimes the case.
I wrote to her, “Do you
need to borrow my cane? It’s a nice one,
from Tooleys. What would’ve caused the
slipped disk? You were moving
furniture? Carrying an entire bookcase
to school?”
She
replied quickly, “No, I do not need a cane!
I prefer to just hobble around...it gets more sympathy.”
The
doctor asked if she knew of anything that she could have done to cause a
slipped disk. She couldn’t think of a
thing, but as they were going home John H. mentioned that she had lifted some
heavy boxes of pans a few weeks ago, and she did have a sharp pain in her back
for a short while. Also, she carried
quite a few books over to the school – “...but it wasn’t a whole bookcase!” she
informed me. “And that was also a few
weeks ago. But if I really, really, need
that cane I’ll let you know. John H. has
one, but it looks like something some old shepherd used out on the back 40.” 
When I
called Loren that day to ask if he needed anything for supper, he told me that
his supper was cooking away in his slowcooker – beef roast, potatoes, and
carrots. And he had a lettuce salad in
the refrigerator. “Would you like some
apple salad to go with it?” I inquired.
He would,
but didn’t want me to drive all the way across town (it takes ten minutes to
get there) just for apple salad. I
quickly manufactured a reason why I had to go to Wal-Mart, and then of course I
had to go there after delivering the apple salad, so as not to make a liar out
of myself. I did actually have a few things I needed: printer ink, Noxzema, Aussie shampoo, and
Q-tips. Vital necessities.
Friday, I got the top part
of the table topper finished.
That day, Loren drove to Beemer, 70 miles to our north,
to pick up a fuel pump that was being repaired there. That evening, he and Larry put it on the
forklift and tried to get it started. It
finally fired once, but it never started.
Machinery can certainly be recalcitrant and refractory objects at times!
A little after 4:00
p.m. I got a text message from Victoria:
“Can I get a Betta fish? *pleeeeeaaase*
I’ll take care of it allll by myself!!”
I
replied, “Like you take care of the upstairs litterbox all by yourself?”
Me: “SOMEtimes
it is. :-O And the poor kitties that use it ARE alive.”
I sent
another before she could answer: “Okay...
but I’m not touching the thing. Or
cleaning its tank.”
Victoria: “Okay
:P I can handle a little fishy.”
She
didn’t bring home a Betta. She brought
home a GloFish Starfire Red Danio, a Peruvian Altum Angelfish, and an aquarium
catfish (scavenger). She had a 2.7-gallon tank, a filter/aerator, and fish
food – all purchased with her employee discount at Earl May Gardening
Center. The fish are now whizzing about
in the middle of our kitchen table.
In their
cute little 2.7 gallon tank.
Saturday,
she went back to Earl May for some plants (one is even live!), a log sculpture,
a thermometer, and a small heater. Today
she took a small sample of water to the store, and they checked it for her to
see if it was the right pH balance. She
got frozen brine shrimp for the angelfish.
(The
catfish picture isn’t mine; I got it off the Internet. I couldn’t get a
shot of the one in Victoria’s tank, because he hides in the log.)
I imagined a quick completion of
the table topper that day, sandwiching top, batting, and backing, quilting it,
and then binding it. Instead, I spent at
least two hours trying
to get my printer to print a pdf manual for Larry. I thought it was settings on my printer or
Adobe that were causing it to print in extremely light gray. Turns out, it was the cartridge. At least, I hope that’s what it was, and not my printer. I did once put a cartridge in it without
removing the little tab over the inkwell.
Siggghhhh.... Because the printer messed up the page order,
I need to reprint the whole manual, and they don’t number the pages, the troublesome
dummies. This makes things difficult.
Larry spent the day trying to get his scissor lift to
work – but he didn’t get it fixed. He’s
sorry he ever rented it out.
Now I’m
putting together a small piece – a mosaic sailboat – with the one-inch squares
left over from the Mosaic Lighthouse quilt, putting them on the gridded
Pellon. It’s about 100” x 100” now, and
will be about 50” x 50” after I sew the vertical and horizontal seams. I will then give it a try on the HQ16 and find
out what the machine thinks of that, and
if it can quilt through many layers of fabric, possibly two layers of batting,
and gridded pellon. The answer to this
question will determine the next steps on Mosaic Lighthouse quilt. If all goes well, I shall proceed with the
Mosaic Lighthouse quilt as planned. If
not, . . . . . . a new course of action
must be plotted. Any and all ideas as to
what to do about quilting, should the machine balk, would be greatly
appreciated.
Sunday morning I discovered my
website was down. I have no idea
why. It had evidently gone down about 11:30 p.m. Saturday night, shortly
after I uploaded pictures of the Braided-Star table topper. A lady had told me she couldn’t get to the
page, and I had assumed it was because of her slow dial-up service. I emailed support at BlueHost, and a couple
of hours later, the website was back up and running. They didn’t seem to know what had happened,
either. Perhaps too
many tried to visit the site at once, and crashed it?
In answer
to several questions I received about this table topper, I didn’t keep track very
well of the hours I spent making it, but I suppose... maybe... 15 hours? I’m guessing.
Since I
wanted a table topper instead of a potholder, I just kept cutting the pieces
steadily bigger as I went along.
Here’s a
funny: when translated from Spanish with
Google translator, the first line goes like this:
“Hey guys!
Here I am happy to poke his nose again for the blog ... wanted to tell you I’m
fine... and above all wanted to thank you messages of affection who wrote me,
how much nice people there, thank you for so much love and so lovingly in my
absence !!!!!”
When translated
with Bing, we get the following:
“Here I
am, happy to look again the nose on the blog...
... I wanted to tell you that I am well... ...and above all I wanted to thank you for
the messages of affection that I wrote, how many nice people that there is,
thank you for so much love and so much mimo during my absence!”
Hmmm. She’s quite a nice lady; I seriously doubt if
she poked anyone in the nose, looked up anyone’s nose (or down her own), or
stuck her nose into anyone’s business.
Either
she’s glad I poked my nose into her blog, or she’s glad she is back again,
poking her own nose into her
blog. Something.
Sunday night, I think Victoria
may have discovered what has been using so much data at our house. We bought Larry an Amazon Fire box for Christmas
– it turns our big screen into a PC/smart-phone/tablet/iPad monitor, and can
play youtube videos on its own. Well, Victoria just found this:
Amazon is working to fix
this problem. In the meanwhile, we’ll shut our Fire box down when we’re
not using it, rather than let it go to screen saver. We were really
enjoying the pictures it was drawing from the Internet, and had often commented
that those pictures were mighty high quality!
I sent the information to
the ladies at Megavision. Haven’t
received an answer – this is why customers get irritated with that Internet
Service Provider! — they often don’t reply to emails or return calls.
I think we’re going to
switch ISPs, so I’m changing the email address in a bunch of accounts here and
there from the Megavision addy to a gmail addy –
sarahlynn.jackson2@gmail.com.
I now have that gmail set up to download into Outlook. Outlook is
becoming a bit of a muddle, on account of rules that cause email
duplications. I’ll wade into that after a bit. I have over 100
folders with rules set to direct email... so when things start being directed
into them from gmail, ... well, it’s sort of like this:
Ethiopia Intersection – Worst
in the World (For
some reason, that video strikes me so funny... Notice
one truck that goes through with a person in the back. Did he intend to be in there?! )
Victoria made us grilled cheese
sandwiches for supper, and we had the last of the chili with it, along with
apple salad. Now she has made some
muffins; they’re in the oven. Larry is trying
out my new rotary cutter blade sharpener on some dull blades.
I still
haven’t cleaned the litterbox... was going to do that first thing this afternoon. At least I ordered a birthday gift for Andrew
– a glass ‘storm predictor’ and a sand picture from Bits & Pieces.
Gotta hurry – I want to get back to that
mosaic sailboat quilt!
P.S.:
They weren’t muffins, after all: they
were Molten Deep-Dish, Chocolate-Filled Sugar Cookies! And therefore there is no milk for breakfast
tomorrow morning.
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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