♫ ♪ Hallelujah! ♪ ♫ Christ Arose! ♫ ♪

Last Tuesday, it got up to 80°, and the birds were singing and building nests (if they weren’t looking after brand-new young’ns already).  I opened the downstairs patio door and window so I could hear them while I worked on Joanna’s Easter dress.

I took Loren some supper, and we had the same, a bit later:  chicken breast filets, mashed potatoes and gravy, and corn.

Victoria, partly because of her job at Earl May Gardening Center and partly just because, is all enthused (again) about gardening, both vegetables and flowers, and just had to get her hands into the dirt.  She has totally cleared out one of the front flower gardens, and fixed up the front porch all pretty.  Several of my decorative pots are now sporting white, lavender, and purple pansies, and she put red candy onions into a couple of other pots.  The large garden by the front porch looks perfect now, neat as a pin, with red cedar mulch spread over it, the lilac tree thinking about putting out little leaves, the double knockout rosebush and the old-fashioned rosebush stems turning green (the old-fashioned rose is one of five, which came from a single root in my mother’s yard eleven years ago – and had come from my grandmother’s rosebush in North Dakota about 60 years ago), crocuses blooming, and daffodils, lilies-of-the-valley, irises, and Autumn Joy sedum coming up.

While I was sewing, I pulled up YouTube, preparing to start another video of Switzerland scenery.  In the corner of the video window was the button for the big screen.  And then I remembered that I had seen that button the night before, planned to check it out just as soon as Teensy exited my lap – but had forgotten.  Uh, oh.  Did this mean we’d been using data for two days, through the Amazon Firebox??

It did.  Victoria turned on the screen and discovered videos had been playing, though the screen was off, and had doubtless been playing since Sunday night, when she had looked at something on it.

This, after having just received a warning from our Internet Service Provider that we were using too much data.  Erg.

After trying and failing to find a spring that would fit my Fiskars snips, it belatedly occurred to me to look online at www.Fiskars.com.  Lo and behold, they have a lifetime warranty for their products (I used to know that, but had forgotten).  All I had to do was fill in name, address, and a photo of the snips on their claims page, and I immediately got a notice that they were shipping new ones to me.

Wednesday, I paid bills, washed clothes, read news, and answered email while a pan of buns rose and then baked.  I finished putting away the clothes just as the buns came out of the oven.  Mmmmm, a piping hot bun with lots of butter and a drizzle of orange blossom honey made a good midafternoon snack.

Then I hurried back to my sewing room to finish Joanna’s Easter dress.  I had only to connect skirt to top, put in the zipper, and put a facing into the neck—and I wanted to give it to her that night after church.

It was finished, and pictures were taken and posted at 7:00 p.m., right before church.  Larry wasn’t home yet, and hadn’t called.  I tried calling him... but he didn’t answer.  So I went to church with Victoria.  Larry was probably coming home from some far-flung area – I recalled hearing him mention taking forms to a barn near Burwell, out in the Sandhills – and was traveling through one of the many areas where there is no cell phone service.  As we drove to town, we took note of the dark greenish-orange sky, and the rain streaks off to the west.

During the church service, it rained hard and thundered somethin’ fierce, and the lightning was spectacular.  At 9:17 p.m., just after we got out of church, Larry finally remembered to send me a text message to tell me he wasn’t going to make it to church.  Sure enough, he was coming back from Burwell.  He got home at about 10:30 p.m. – and hadn’t gotten a drop of rain until he was nearly home.

There was an odd trickling noise downstairs.  What in the world?  We’d turned off the soaker hose... the tub wasn’t draining... the washer wasn’t going...  ?

I looked around, quit worrying about it, transferred a few more posts to Blogspot from my website, and then headed for the feathers.

The next day, I would discover that the downstairs cement floor around the chimney was damp, and the rug leading to the bathroom and sewing room doors was soaked.  So much for the nice clean socks I’d just put on. 

I turned on the dehumidifier and changed socks.

Thursday morning, I washed my hair, fed the cats, opened my ’puter, and was chatting with Victoria when she made like a sudden hurricane:  her boss at Earl May had called and asked her to come in three hours earlier than scheduled.

At 12:30, I took Larry’s suit to the cleaners.  If they didn’t get it done by Friday – or worse, if I forgot to pick it up – Larry would be in a bad way Easter morning.  I continued on to the post office to return the book 500 Traditional Quilts.  It’s one thing to order a used book and know there will be a flaw or two in or on it; it’s another thing entirely to order a brand-spankin’-new book – and find a chunk torn right out of the back cover.  Grrrr.  I probably won’t get back the money I spent to return it, though the seller is paying to ship another new book, and had in fact already shipped it.  I could find absolutely no way to personally contact this particular seller; had to go through all of Amazon’s little hoops instead.

Next, I picked up Joanna’s dress – it was too long.  I shortened it, and took it back that evening.  The second hem job didn’t turn out as nice as the first.  The shorter a circle skirt, you see, the tighter the curves – and the more difficult it is to get a shirttail hem smooth and neat.  Fortunately, hems are positioned down near the floor, and most people are up around face level; so slightly un-neat hems aren’t as noticeable as, oh, say, a sleeve sewn in wrong side out.

Tabby

I stopped at my friend Linda’s house to do a couple of little jobs on her computer for her.  That is, they should have been ‘little jobs’, but I couldn’t get the default to stay the way I chose, as to what program to use when connecting thumb drives or USB cords.  DropBox’s Camera Upload feature kept popping up when we put in Linda’s CompactFlash card or USB cord, no matter how I tried to circumvent it.

I hunted around for instructions, but they didn’t match the options on Linda’s computer.  We had no ‘Disable’ box to check, and no Menu where I could click ‘Do Not Upload Photos’. 

I suggested just shutting down DropBox if she didn’t use it very often.  It’s a temporary memory hog, after all, and uses a lot of computer resources even when it’s idle.  But Linda does use it fairly often.

I installed the new updated DropBox on Linda’s computer, but it didn’t solve the problem.

When I got home, I checked my own settings on DropBox and Control Panel’s Auto Play, and, for the most part, my settings were the same as Linda’s.  I’d had the same problem she was having right after I installed DropBox, but after I changed the default, it never did that again. 

I did find this information:

If you have installed Carousel on your device, the Dropbox app will no longer automatically upload photos and videos to your account; those automatic uploads will be handled by Carousel.

Carousel can be gotten to on DropBox.com.  However, it might very well be like the old woman who swallowed a fly... then a spider to catch the fly, then a bird to catch the spider, then a cat, a dog, a goat, and a horse – she’s dead, of course, lalala ♫ ♪. 

I clicked on Carousel to see what it was, and promptly got an email welcoming me to the Carousel DropBox gallery for all my photos and videos.  Arrgghh, zat bugz me.  I was just peeping in to see what it was; I didn’t say I wanted to become Siamese twins with it!

I really dislike programs whose settings override manually set defaults.  That’s plumb aggravatin’.  I hunted just a little longer for information and possible solutions, and finally found The Answer.  A bad Answer, but The Answer, nonetheless: 

Tech #1:  “Dropbox still has not added an option to prevent this from happening.  I’d suggest everyone that wants it fixed send an email or tweet to DropBox so we can hopefully convince them to disable this annoying behavior.”

Tech #2:  “It appears there is no known way to stop this behavior.  I asked DropBox support about it and got this response:  ‘Thank you for this feedback.  This is part of the functionality of camera uploads so unfortunately there isn’t a setting to turn this off; thank you for your patience with it.  I will pass your feedback onto our Client Development team.’”

The Client Development team is obviously unconcerned.  It isn’t hard to add ‘Disable’ functions to any given command in a program.  But at least that explains why I couldn’t fix it.  And evidently the reason I have no troubles with it is because I exit DropBox when I’m not using it, just because it’s such a data hog.  Actually, it’s more likely that I marked something differently when I downloaded the program to my computer.  Oh, who knows.

Oh, my goodness!  There is a gigantic whirlwind right out in the front yard!  Cornhusks and dried leaves are swirling in a huge circle, spiraling high, high up into the sky.  Whirlwinds and dirt devils are not at all uncommon hereabouts; but the sheer size of this one is spectacular.  When Hester was wee little, she spotted a dirt devil out in a nearby field and exclaimed, “Ohhhh, isn’t that kyyyooooooot! — It’s a baby tornado.”  

Supper that evening consisted of turkey pot pie, a bowl of fruit {mangoes, peaches, strawberries, pineapple}, a glass of 100% cranberry juice {I love that stuff}, and a little bowl of Raspberry Rumble ice cream for dessert.

It was a good thing I got home when I did, because the Schwan man had just pulled into my drive when I arrived.  So... I didn’t go to the store; but the store did come to me.  Hence the abovementioned Raspberry Rumble.  Mmmmm, mmmm.

I washed the dishes and headed to my sewing room to pull out some fabric to use for a wedding gift for Emily (Larry’s cousin {first cousin twice removed, to be precise}) and Mitchell.  Her kitchen is red, so I chose red, black, and white fabric.

Now to search through patterns and pictures and imagination and see what I should do with it.

Before hitting the hay that night, I posted one recipe on Sarah Lynn’s Favorite Recipes – and with that little addition, the recipe blog became active.

I was tired the next day.  That dear husband of mine had snored the night away, and ordering him to turn over didn’t do a lick of good.  I finally went to sleep after his alarm went off a little before 6:00 a.m.  Did you ever see that episode on the Andy Griffiths show, where Andy and Barney went out to the Darlings’ place to try to catch Ernest T. Bass... they stayed overnight, and all the Darling menfolk (that was their last name) snored up a chainsaw contest?  Andy and Barney would get out of bed/couch/chair, go turn them all onto their sides... creep back to bed in the sudden quiet... just start to doze off – and every last Darling would ka-thump back onto his back and go to shaking the earth again.  Well, that’s Larry. 

At one point, I got out of bed for a couple of hours and worked on my computer, adding a few pages to my blog called The Clothes Rack, and getting the doll clothes page and the poetry page ready for posting.  So at least I did accomplish something. 

Someday I suppose we should make sure Larry doesn’t have sleep apnea.  He used to demonstrate more of the symptoms; now, not so much.  He just snores.  

A friend recommended earplugs.  Yes... I gotta get me some o’ them thar thangs.  It’s just that I hate to be oblivious!  I want to wake up if, oh, say, Mt. St. Helens blows again.

Here’s something good for sore muscles and joints:  Extra-Strength Pain-a-Trate cream by Melaleuca, www.melaleuca.com.  Active ingredients:  Camphor, Menthol, and Methyl Salicylate, with Melaleuca oil added.  It smells good, is good for your skin (softens hands as you rub it on neck, shoulders, knee, etc.), and makes a nice glow of heat in the affected area.  When it isn’t strong enough for me, I mix it with Capzacin.  Hot, hot!

(They should pay me for that bit of salesmanship, shouldn’t they?)

Friday, I packed our things for an overnight trip to South Dakota to pick up a skid loader for a man with whom Larry works.  Then, amazingly enough, I remembered to pick up Larry’s suit at the cleaners.  Going to the Easter services in jeans and flannel plaid shirt just wouldn’t’ve cut it.  (Nor would’ve pjs, for that mattuh.) 

And then I did a mammoth grocery run at Wal-Mart.  By the time that was over, whew, I was ready to just sit in the pickup and relax.  Larry expected to get off work at 4, and we’d leave at 5.  Instead, he got off after 7, and we left at ten ’til 8.  So everything was normal. 

I spent the drive to our cabin putting poems on my poetry page:  Rhyme ’n Reason

We got to Long Pine, Nebraska, 178 miles from home, at about 12:30 a.m., and stayed in one of seven pretty little cabins in the Pine Valley Resort north of the town.  We were the only ones in the entire Resort.  After parking the truck and trailer in front of the cabin, we gathered our bags – and Larry noticed that something was leaking from the rear axle.  Having just worked on the brakes, he thought he knew what it was – either a brittle gasket needed replacing... or... perhaps... some of that gunk sealer stuff would do the trick.  He would get it the next morning in Ainsworth, nine miles to the west.

It was 29°, and the floor was a beautiful slate tile that was cold.  I was wishing I’d brought my slippers.  But at least there were loads of blankets.

The next morning, I wished I’d have brought coffee... milk... eggs... butter...  We could’ve had a lovely breakfast in the pretty little kitchen, for there were all the pots and pans and utensils one could ever wish for.

But we ate what we had and headed for Ainsworth, where Larry added transmission oil, put in gasket seal gunk (scientific terminology), and thus repaired the leak in the rear differential.  (The latter description may or may not be entirely accurate.  I’m no grease monkey.  Do I look like a grease monkey to you?!)

This was not an entirely enjoyable employment for Larry, for although it was 55°, the wind was blowing at 36 mph – and we were parked in a gravel (and dust) parking lot.  Our destination was still 150 miles northwest... home was 190 miles southeast... meaning there was still 490 miles to go... and Sunrise Easter Service was at 7:00 a.m. the very next morning.

Ten ’til two found us north of Winner, South Dakota – and the pickup was misbehaving.  It had suddenly come out of gear as we were trucking gaily along over hill and dale.  Transmission leak, maybe?  Wiring problem, perhaps?

Larry peered around, under, and inside the truck, saw nothing glaringly wrong, and decided to limp the 90 miles on north to Ft. Pierre, sans Overdrive.  We shortly discovered that our electric windows didn’t work, which was a clue that maybe, just maybe, that the problem was only electrical, and probably a fuse had merely blown.

Larry took a fuse from a less necessary spot, plugged it in, and we started off again.

The fuse promptly blew.  Something must’ve been shorting out or grounding.  He went in three gas stations or convenience stores to buy more fuses – but they were all sold out of that particular size of fuse.

At Presho, another problem surfaced:  the throttle cable spring wasn’t letting the cable release (another description that may or may not be accurate) when we slowed down, so the slower we went, the more we lurched and galloped (at least that description is accurate), until Larry remembered to quickly thrust the thing into Neutral until we were ready to take off again.

It got up to 65°, and often meadowlarks flew up from the roadside ditches, and sometimes I heard them singing boisterously.  The countryside was not yet green, but it was pretty country, nonetheless.

We got to Ft. Pierre, smack-dab in the middle of South Dakota, at about 3:30.  By 4:00, Larry was loading the skid loader onto the trailer, having given it a short tryout.

Trouble was, it was heavier than the man had said.

It broke the frame on the trailer.

The man took a look and informed Larry, “Well, it looks balanced enough; I guess it’ll be all right.”

! 

350 miles on bumpy roads – with a heavy skid loader on a trailer with a broken frame?!

“No,” said Larry, “I can’t drive it all the way home like that.”

Sooo... the man called a welder to meet us at one of the big buildings that were part of their large business, Morris, Inc., a Highway-Heavy-Utility company.

We’d hoped to get a new spring for the throttle after collecting the loader.  Now, once the welding was done, how were we to find a parts house that was open that late on a Saturday the day before Easter?? 

I wrote to give Victoria a progress report, and asked, “Are you keeping the cats well fed?”

“Yup, they’re fat and happy,” she replied.

The nice man who came to do the welding let me use one of the secretary’s offices without so much as a blink of the eye... and so there I sat at a nice desk in a comfortable room, typing away.  He even asked if I needed the internet, and was going to give me the security code if I did (I didn’t; I bounced off Larry’s smartphone).

We might have things go wrong now and again, but I must say, we have never had troubles finding nice people to help us!  We do appreciate it.

At a quarter after five, the welding man rushed in and asked if I wanted some coffee while I waited, and then he proceeded to make a potful for me.

I learned that he and his wife were expecting their first grandchild any moment – and the 25-year-old daughter who is to be the mother of this grandchild was herself born on Easter Sunday.  

Larry worked on the pickup (wiring, throttle, fuses [he finally found some that would work]) while the man was welding the trailer, and he also welded one side of the trailer while the man was doing something else.  He oiled the throttle spring and got it working pretty well.  He found the problem with the wiring and fixed it, so Overdrive was back in working order again.  He changed the wiring so that if the fuse for the Overdrive blew again, we would at least still be able to roll our windows up and down.  He fixed the wiring on the trailer; it had gotten cut when the frame broke. 

The welder refused to take any money for his work – he asked only a small sum of $25 to pay the company for the metal he’d used.  Larry gave him a check for $50, so he’ll at least have $25.  

It was a quarter ’til six before the frame was fixed and we were heading south again – with a thermos and a tall lidded coffee mug full of coffee, compliments of the welder.  

Good grief, we were running way late.  It would take a good seven hours to get home, providing nothing under the sun went wrong.  Sunrise Service would start at 7:00 a.m.  I just hoped we’d get home in time to sleep a wee bit.  I’d had too many days in a row with not much sleep.  I do so hate to inadvertently say ‘Zzzzzzzzzzzggkkxxx’ instead of ‘Allllayyewwjah’ on Easter morning!

Many’s the time I stayed up all night the night before Easter, finishing sewing for the children.  However, I was younger then!

Ugh.  This is precisely why I didn’t want to go anywhere the day before Easter!  At least we would be driving mostly on roads that get little travel – preferable, when hauling such a thing as a skid loader on a trailer.  The only disadvantage is that stores and stations close early out there in the sticks.

You know, the fact is, I just plain don’t like hauling trailers behind us with heavy machinery on them!

And... the fact is... I’ve been doing it (or riding along whilst it was done) all my married life.  We’ve escaped calamity by the skin of our teeth multiple times.  Our guardian angels have always been active entities!  

We made it back to Winner, South Dakota, by a quarter after eight – and the trailer lights weren’t working right.  Larry jiggled things a bit... and off we went again.  It was still somewhat light out, there were oodles of reflectors on trailer and skid loader both, the trailer wasn’t long, and the pickup taillights were bright and clearly visible; so we kept right on a-goin’.

Either the jiggling fixed the wiring problem, or it spontaneously resolved itself.  Always nice when stuff fixes itself.  In any case, the lights worked, the rest of the way home. 

In southern South Dakota, we saw what must’ve been hundreds upon hundreds of pheasants – alongside the road, in the ditches, in the fields, flying, walking, slinking along hedgerows...  Never in my livelong life have I ever seen so many pheasants.  We saw several antelope, mule deer, and, closer to home, whitetail deer.

Here are the rest of the photos I took Saturday:  Nature’s Splendor  Click ‘Older Posts’ at the bottom of each page to see them all; there are three pages of new photos.  Blogspot divides pages as they see fit, so that it loads faster.  Everyone can look at my photos easier now, and it’s certainly easier to make posts.  I hope people realize they can click the pictures to enlarge them and then use their keyboard arrows to navigate through them.  I never have to make a new webpage; Blogspot does that job for me.  I think I will make one more blog, to put the children’s Bible-stories-in-poem on.

We got home at about 1:30 a.m.  You should’ve seen the house when we walked in – it was sparkling like a new bumper!  Spic and span and glistening, it was.  Victoria had cleaned, scrubbed, swept and mopped it.  

‘A new bumper.’  Have I been around too many menfolk who buy and sell vehicles, or what?!

Victoria’s funny.  Sometimes she cleans a room from ceiling to floor, and fusses at everyone who so much as breathes too hard in that area.  And then she can turn into Gretel, and leave a long trail behind her.  But believe me, it was very nice to walk into a nice, clean house.

We skedaddled to bed, and I was up again by 4:30 a.m.  Good thing I got some Stay Awake tablets the last time I was at the store. 

I’m glad we made it back, and were able to go to the Sunrise Service – and the other two services, too, for that matter.  I wouldn’t miss it for anything – not unless I was deathly ill, or something!  I, like the women who went to the tomb, want to rejoice that my Lord is risen, and that He forever lives, and that because He lives, I, too, will live forever in heaven someday.  I’m thankful for our beautiful music... and for my nephew Robert Walker, who, like the apostle Paul, “preaches Christ, and Him crucified” – as did my father, years ago. 

I took 142 photos at last night’s luncheon after the service, but I haven’t edited them yet.

I’m sick today – swollen throat glands, earaches, headache, fever.  I feel lousy enough that I called the doctor’s office a while ago.  That certainly proves I’m sick, doesn’t it? – I rarely call the doctor’s office.  I talked to a nurse who was quite certain I was not – and never had been – a patient there.  (I’ve been a patient there for 32 years.)  She also informed me I had a virus (she can tell these things over the phone?) (it’s more likely an infection), and told me to take lozenges and drink water.  (Lozenges give me a stomachache.)  (Know-it-all nurses give me a pain in the neck.)

Most know-it-alls don’t know much, ever notice that?

I said ‘thank you’, hung up, and took three Extra-Strength Tylenol.

Amy just brought me a humongous carrot cake muffin with gobs of cream cheese frosting.  I think that will nicely take the place of the Amoxicillin that Nurse Know-It-All doesn’t think I need.  Don’t you?

Now to edit the Easter photos and then make something for Mitchell and Emily, who are getting married in three weeks.  I have just over a month to make something for my sister’s birthday, too.  Gotta git bizzy!

,,,>^..^<,,,     Sarah Lynn     ,,,>^..^<,,,