Last week one day, I was having a discussion with a
friend who also loves animals, and has had dogs, cats, horses... She is particularly fond of cats. Cats definitely have their pros. (And their cons.) Cats are more self-sufficient than dogs, and
they don’t require so much training, to wind up a good pet. However, I’ve had dogs – Sparkle, a big
Collie-German Shepherd mix that I got as a puppy when I was 12; and, later,
Aleutia, an even bigger Siberian husky we got when Hester was a baby. I
worked hard to train those dogs, and they were grand dogs indeed, though
Aleutia was more stubborn than Sparkle. I’d be hard-pressed to tell you I
prefer any of our cats to either of those dogs.
But! – the very next morning after I wrote that, I identified
very strongly with Jon Arbuckle:
Tuesday afternoon, there was either a white-throated
or a white-crowned sparrow just outside the basement patio doors, picking up
seeds the birds have dropped from the feeders up on the deck. I opened
the patio door to try for a shot of it, but every bird in the county exited to
Guatemala, I do believe. Furthermore, it was only 48° out there – too
cold to leave the door open until the birds return.
I did get a nifty macro photo of a metallic green
mosquito of some sort (turns out, it’s a midge) (that is, it was a midge),
shortly before I committed premeditated homicide on him: Midge,
Mosquito, and Fannia-Canicularis
I quilted on the Mosaic Lighthouse quilt for 6 ½
hours that day, bringing the total up to 455.5 hours. I made it down past the lighthouse and the
keeper’s house to the cliffside and the water splashes from the sea.
I took Loren some supper, helped him with his
computer (he’d discovered AccuWeather video clips – and then didn’t know how to
get back to the interactive weather map), then picked up a few groceries.
Wednesday, I edited some photos and uploaded
them. You can see more here:
Victoria hung out a new hummingbird feeder.
She had the day off, and worked long and hard on two front gardens by the porch. They look so pretty now.
Thursday afternoon, I was watching a Red Admiral
butterfly flitting about the lilacs, when a big fat bumblebee came whizzing
along and joined it. And then I got a
good look at it, glimmering in the sunlight, and realized ------- that was no
bee; it was a little ruby-throat! The hummingbirds are back! The hummingbirds
are back! It went buzzing around the lilacs, sipping nectar from the
just-opening lilac blossoms, and then headed over to Victoria’s new feeder.
I found a recipient for that little teddy bear/lighthouse
panel quilt that I hung on my quilting-room wall about four months ago:
Levi was turning 5 that day, and Hannah assured me that he would indeed like
it. Furthermore, she said that Bobby would like the Mosaic Sailboat quilt
(the smaller ‘practice’ mosaic) to hang in his office, which has a nautical
theme. His birthday is coming up in July.
House wrens are building a nest in the eaves of one
of the second-floor dormers, directly above the kitchen window. As they
flit hither and yon hunting for small twigs and dried grasses, they often pause
in the lilac bush just outside the window to sing boisterously. One flew
over and landed right on the little edge of the screen and peered in at me.
I wonder if everybody ever gets tired of me saying
the same old thing, time and again, day after day? – “It’s Thursday! And I’m going to
quilt the Mosaic Lighthouse quilt!” And the
next day: “It’s Friday! And I’m
going to quilt the Mosaic Lighthouse quilt!”
But... I’ll say something different, come Tuesday:
“It’s Tuesday! And I’m going to make cord for
the edge of the Mosaic Lighthouse quilt!”
Just you wait and see. This quilt will be done in a few more
days! Maybe. Hope springs eternal!
Trouble is, there aren’t enough hours in every day. I was having a great deal of trouble getting
back to the quilting machine, because ... the wrens kept flying past the window
with incredibly large twigs (comparatively-speaking) that caused them to get
blown sideways by the wind. They
valiantly kept at the nest they are building.
And there was always the possibility that the little hummer would come
buzzing back through.
I took Loren some supper that evening, then went to
Menards to get gifts for Levi and Lyle, whose birthdays were that day. Levi is now 5, and Lyle is 8. Levi asked for ‘blueberry cake’, so Hannah
made a bundt cake with blueberries and lemon zest. She put it into a cake pan that was a little
too small, so the batter ran over, and the stuff that landed in the bottom of
the oven burned and smoked up the house.
And the cake took a looong time to bake.
But it was good; that’s what matters.
It had lemon cream cheese frosting.
I gave Levi the teddy bear lighthouse panel quilt,
folding it all up to fit into a camouflage insulated lunch bag. For Lyle, I got a round-top lunch bag (the
top is where a Thermos or lidded cup can go) and a two-foot-long yellow level.
At Teddy and Amy’s house, I held baby Warren for a
few minutes, and he obligingly smiled and cooed and was sweet and delightful. He’s five months old now, imagine that.
Larry got some new work boots that night at The Fort
Western Store. It took him just a couple
of days before a big hunk of metal landed on the boot and nearly cut right
through it. Good thing he wasn’t wearing
any less-substantial footwear!
When he got home, he climbed up on the roof and put
the Internet dish in a new spot where the trees weren’t blocking it, and now we
have very good reception again.
A friend remarked on Victoria’s fashion sense and
well-put-together look. It’s true, she
does dress nice... but I’m here to tell you that it was a learned skill, and definitely
not an innate knack. I remember one time when the youngest four were all
home, all getting ready for school one morning, when I heard Hester and Lydia
go into peals of laughter – and they didn’t seem to be able to stop,
either.
Mothers should check on their kids if things are too
quiet... or too funny.
So I went to see what was so all-fired funny.
They were laughing at their hapless little sister,
who was clad in a plaid skirt, non-matching flowered blouse, and even more
non-matching striped vest. With a pair of socks that matched none of the
above.
Fortunately, Victoria was a good-tempered little thing
who didn’t mind laughing at herself – and besides, she dearly loved her big
sisters, and if they were laughing that hard, it must be funny.
The hilarity had just about died down when Victoria
attempted to justify her choices by pointing out that there was a dab of white
in each and everything she had on. That remark only served to set off
Hester and Lydia all over again.
She did look funny. :-D
I told her, “Okay, pick the piece of clothing you
most want to wear, and we’ll remove the rest and find something else to match
it.”
And that we did.
I quilted a little longer that night and then headed
to bed early for once, since I had a doctor’s appointment in the morning. Me, oh my, if you could’ve seen all the
excess fullness I was attempting to smoosh into subjection in this quilt!
If it hangs at all straight when I’m done with it, it’ll be a miracle of gargantuan
portions. I’ll be totally astonished.
‘Gob-smacked,’ as they say in Britain.
Friday morning I was up a whole lot earlier than I
needed to be, on account of a) Black Kitty meowing at the top of her voice (I
got up and put her outside), b) Larry snoring (I politely roused him – “Turn
over, turn over! You’re snoring, and I
can’t sleep!”) (That’s polite, isn’t it?), c) Kitty squalling again, having
come back in the house, d) Larry snoring, e) Larry’s alarm going off (he can
hit ‘Snooze’ and then pick right up again where he left off in mid-snore). So I gave up and clambered out of bed at 5:45
a.m., after having been awake for 45 minutes.
There was an odd smell in the house. I went around sniffing, but couldn’t zero in
on it. Did Victoria spill RoundUp or
plant food or fertilizer somewhere?? What
was it? No time to worry about it; I had
to get ready to go. And I mustn’t forget
to put gas in the Jeep before leaving town!
Our doctor is in David City, a small town 30 miles away.
Soon it was time to go. I grabbed coffee, camera, and purse... Maybe I should put my shoes on?
The doctor’s appointment went fine. The verdict is, I’ll probably live! It’s a vagus nerve problem, as suspected – it
causes the heart to slow down and blood pressure to drop when I stand up (especially
when I am singing), which made me feel like I was going to faint several times
in the last couple of weeks. It’s
probably caused by rheumatoid/osteoarthritis, which changes alignment of the
spine and neck, and thereby, along with the accompanying inflammation, puts pressure
on the vagus nerve that comes from the brain stem and affects various parts of
the body. This has a fancy name: Vasovagal Syncope. Let’s see...
I also have Benign Essential Blepharospasm (spasms of the muscles in
upper and lower eyelids), which is troublesome when driving... or in public
places now and then... but not so much at home, thankfully.
The older some of us get, the more we need to carry
a notebook listing all our ailments, so we don’t forget any of them! Then when some hapless passerby innocently
asks, “How are you?”, we can whip out our notebook and rattle off one infirmity
after another, complete with symptoms, causes, treatments, and possible
cures. Just think of all the good we
could do!
On the other hand, I recall my dear mother advising,
“When someone asks, ‘How are you?’, they don’t really want to know; they’re
just greeting you! Say ‘fine’.”
A friend’s father, a pastor, sometimes quoted,
“Never mind your indigestion; ‘How are you’ is a greeting, not a question.” “He also said,” added my friend, “that it is
different when a real friend asks. They
really do want to know.”
Dr. Luckey prescribed some medication for
rheumatoid/osteoarthritis. I’ve never taken anything for it before (other
than Tylenol once in a while). I picked it up at Walgreens when I got
back to town, and when I got home, I looked through the side effects. Though the doctor assured me there are rarely
side effects with this drug, Meloxicam, there’s a long list provided from the
pharmacy. It says (ALL IN CAPS!!!) that I am to contact the doctor
IMMEDIATELY for this, that, and the other thing – and half the things in the
list, I already have. So why am I taking it?! If you take a
medication for inflammation that causes ringing in the ears, and then take a
medication for ringing in the ears that causes inflammation, should you then
just gulp down the entire contents of both bottles and let them battle it out??
Hopefully, the anti-inflammatory medicine the doctor
gave me will help. Sunday I would find
out if I could make it through the song service without pitching over onto my
nose (or feeling like I’m about to).
Yikes, that’d be plumb emmmbarrassin’.
I’d do what Piglet did when he got scared by the Heffalump (only it was
Pooh): he went straight home to bed with
a headache. I think I’d put a bag over
my head, too, whilst I was a-goin’.
The house still smelled funny. Victoria had
brought in various things from Earl May, but I smelled each of the bottles and
jugs, and that wasn’t it. I didn’t know what it was, I couldn’t find it,
and it was giving me a headache!
I was soooo sleepy, I took an hour-long nap that
afternoon, and felt better. But the
house still stunk, though not as bad.
Hannah sent me an email with the caption, “Levi isn’t
the only one who needs a helmet when practicing piano lessons.” There was a picture of Joanna playing the
piano, with her bike helmet strapped on her head.
Levi is beginning to sing alto. Hannah sent me a clip of him and Joanna
singing God Be With You ’Til We Meet Again, with Hannah playing the piano and
Nathanael playing the organ.
I was just about that age when I learned to sing
alto – by listening to Helen Barth singing with Al Smith or Ray Felton.
Funny thing was, I didn’t realize what I was doing until Daddy asked me, “When
did you learn to sing alto?”
I was quite surprised.
A friend sent me a video of the ‘Backwards Brain Bicycle‘. An engineer built it with the steering mechanism
reversed, so that in order to turn left, you steer right, and vice versa. People thought they could do it, since they
knew what had been done, and what they needed to do. But they couldn’t. They’d put a foot down before going six inches,
or crash completely. The man who posted
the video finally learned to ride the bike, after working at it for eight
months. His little boy, who had not long
before learned to ride a regular bike, was given a small ‘backwards bike’ – and
learned to ride it in a couple of days.
Problem: the
man went to Amsterdam, where most travel in the city is done by bike – and he
couldn’t ride the bike he rented. People
watching were laughing... wondering what kind of an ignorant, inept tourist he
was... and then when twenty minutes later suddenly something clicked, and there
he was riding again, as if he’d been doing it all along, they thought he’d been
pulling their legs, pretending to not be able to ride.
I once tried riding an adult tricycle that belonged
to a friend of mine who had Down’s Syndrome.
I got to the corner... automatically tried to tilt as I turned left...
the trike didn’t lean – and I wound up going in a complete circle to the
right. My friend laughed and laughed, and couldn’t quit laughing.
When she just about straightened up, I admonished, “It wasn’t that funny!”
– and set her off all over again.
Saturday morning a tiny little bird, only slightly
larger than the wrens, landed in the lilac bush. It was light gray on the back and wings, and
very pale yellow on the breast and abdomen.
It had a thin black beak, and black eyes. Hmmm... a warbler of some type, I think. Juvenile, maybe.
I cleaned up the kitchen and then headed down to my
quilting machine.
It was overcast, and rain was moving our way.
Larry spent the afternoon putting a fender on a
trailer for a coworker. He got home late, and then worked on his mower. He needs to use it with the attachable
rototiller, to till up the front yard in preparation for planting new grass.
In my reading about the vagus nerve problem online, common
advice is to eat a handful of crackers (salted) to raise blood pressure a bit,
and to drink plenty of water. So I asked Larry to bring home some of
those Flip-Side Pretzel crackers.
(Marvelous excuse to eat those yummy things, don’t you think?)
He brought home three bags of various flavors of
pretzels, a large bag of tortillas (with two big jars of dip – salsa con queso
and creamy spinach dip), and two small boxes of not-too-salty crackers:
Ritz and Wheat Thins. But no Flip-Side Pretzel crackers. I tried my very best to polish off the entire
bag of tortillas and the whole jar of salsa con queso, but I just couldn’t do
it.
Later that night, I finished the quilting on the
Mosaic Lighthouse quilt. It took longer than expected, so I didn’t have a
chance to try my new ‘fasturn’ tool. I’ll give it a try tomorrow.
The quilt hangs straighter than I thought it would,
thankfully. It was a job, trying to ease in excess fullness here and
there.
Someone recommended blocking the quilt, if it didn’t
hang straight.
I did that once with a customer’s quilt that was
rather badly whoppyjaw (scientific term meaning ‘kittywämpus’). For some reason, maybe because I was a
novice, the quilting seemed to accentuate rather than hide the ripply, wavy
seamline. Blocking the quilt helped a
lot, and it looked nearly square when I returned it to the customer. I suspect it immediately reverted to its
contorted shape when she washed it – but at least then she’ll figure it was her
fault for washing it, as opposed to my fault for quilting it. heh!
I doubt if blocking this lighthouse quilt would do
much good, on account of the fusible pellon the little squares are all sewn
to. It’s quite thick, and pretty stiff,
too. I interfaced the borders so they
would hang similarly to the rest of the quilt.
It actually measures pretty close to perfectly
rectangular. I think if I get the
binding on just right, it’ll be fine. If
you look for it, though, you can see where I ‘quilted out’ the excess fullness
in a couple of spots.
You know that old legend (which may or may not be
true) about the Amish purposely putting a mistake into each of their quilts? Well, mine are certainly never on
purpose. But they’re there!
Here is the back:
Not so very long ago, I thought I couldn’t do free-hand
feathers... and then all at once I got it (with the help of various books and
videos), and there I was then, feathering away like anything, and having a
jolly good time whilst I was at it. I’m certainly not as good as some, but...
feathers are now fun!
Here’s a funny line a lady on one of the online
quilting groups wrote after trying feathers for the first time: “It’s not that they don’t look bad; they just
don’t look as bad as I thought they would.”
If I don’t give the Lighthouse quilt away, I will
hang it in our new bedroom when the room is finished, or perhaps I’ll lay it
atop the bed (it covers the top of our king-sized bed, with a couple of inches
to spare) and put an ivory-colored comforter under it. It’s not a softly-draping quilt, and it’s
heavy.
More pictures are here: http://sarahlynnsquilting.blogspot.com/
By Sunday afternoon, I thought I could tell that the
medication had already helped my shoulder and arm – I managed to scramble out
of my church duds and into my everyday glad rags without much pain, griping,
and/or complaining at all. However, when
I stood up to sing, just as it’s been doing, my blood pressure and heart rate
dropped, and I felt extremely dizzy. But ... mind over matter! I did the trick I read about online, tensing
leg and arm muscles in order to force more blood up to the head, and I breathed
as long and deeply as possible. I hung
onto the pew for dear life and stayed close enough to Larry that he might
possibly have noticed if I started losing the fight with gravity, and might
possibly have caught me before I bumped me po’ leeto nosy on the pew in front
of us.
We put flowers on several graves after church, and then
Larry made his Supah-Dupah pancakes for lunch.
Mmmm, mmm...
Victoria has been taking care of Bobby and Hannah’s
guinea pig. They, along with a few other
friends, went to visit Victory Baptist Church in Kansas City this Sunday, and
Robert preached there. The Victory
Baptist parishioners will in turn be invited to visit our church in a few
months.
Last night Bobby and Hannah were on a Skype call
with Bro. and Mrs. Parrow – our preacher friend who recently had heart surgery,
and hasn’t been doing very well. Levi told
them about his birthday.
Bro. Parrow asked, “What kind of cake did you have?”
Levi replied, “Blueberry-Lemon Burnt!” – making
everyone burst out laughing.
Hannah said they had a rough Saturday night. They got a suite, but someone else had the other
room. They could hear everything that
happened over there. She had no idea
what was going on; the best way she knew of describing it was this: “The gentleman on the other side of that wall
was probably playing Bounce the Coin Off the Wall. It really did sound like coins hitting the
wall and rolling down to the baseboard. He
had to abruptly pause the game to allow for a coughing fit.”
Today, Bobby and Hannah and the children went on to
the Ozarks, where they have rented a condo for a few days.
Notice I wrote ‘guinea pig’ – singular, not
plural. This, because Hamlet, who was
sold to them as a male, upon closer inspection was found to be a girl, and very
possibly a girl with piggies-on-the-way!
So they returned it to the store from whence it was purchased, which
made everyone sort of sad, since she was a friendly and cuddly little guinea
pig. Besides, she would’ve had to be
renamed ‘Hamlettina’, and then she would’ve had an identity crisis. Nothing worse than a guinea pig with an
identity crisis.
Loren loaned me one of his Biomats and I’ve been using it since Saturday,
and either it’s making me feel better, or the Meloxicam is, or I’m
spontaneously combusting. Er, convalescing. These Biomats produce
negative ions, which surround the body, and they project infrared rays into the
body. I have no idea if it will actually help any of my ailments, but I
do know that the heat it generates feels good on back and hips.
You know, my twubbles aren’t really too awfully
terrible, in the scheme of things; so I shall valiantly press on. Or at least cringe and press on. Or
valiantly cringe. Something.
I think a neck transplant would solve the whole
problem. I wonder if they can do that,
and still leave you with your same head?
’Cuz I like my head all right.
That reminds me of a poem my father used to say:
For beauty, I’d not win a prize;
There are others
more lovely by far;
My face I don’t mind it, because I’m behind it! —
It's those in the front get the jar.
Up to the day he died, Daddy might suddenly quote a
poem he’d learned when he was just a boy – perhaps one he’d recited many times
before, or, just as likely, one we’d never heard before.
Now here’s Victoria describing a lady who came into
the store the other day: “She has frizzy
red hair on the bottom, and frizzy gray hair at the top, so that she looks like
she got electrocuted in two different colors.”
hee hee
It’s Memorial Day today, and Jeremy and Lydia and the
boys have gone to Henry Doorly Zoo.
Larry was going to work on the front lawn – but so
far, all he’s worked on is his mower.
Once, he stunk up the house first with starter fluid, and next with gas
fumes from the mower – because the big garage door was wide open and he was
just outside it. So the day progresses...
At a quarter after three, Loren arrived to see if he
could help... and Victoria’s friend Robin came to help Victoria work in the
yard.
Victoria got her large straw hat, and proceeded to
cram it onto Robin’s head. It nearly came
down to her nose; all I could see was her grin.
“How do I look?” Robin asked in a high-pitched voice.
The front flowerbeds look very nice – though there
was a slight calamity when Victoria took out half a dozen Stella de Oro lilies
with the weedeater by mistake. If you
knew how many times someone has done that to those poor things...
It was a very good thing I decided to do the laundry
and hang it outside today – because when I thought I’d pitch the last load into
the dryer, as it looked like it might rain, the dryer refused to start. It made the humming noise it does when it starts,
but it wouldn’t go. I could rotate the
barrel backwards, but not forwards.
Hmmm... is
the dryer what made the bad smell in the house a few days ago? Maybe a bearing got hot? If so, it’s a wonder it didn’t catch on fire!
Victoria, upon hearing this news, scurried to wash
the clothes she needs for work tomorrow.
If they aren’t quite dry after hanging all night, she can always finish
the job with a quick blow-dry.
We went to Norfolk tonight to eat at Culver’s, famous for their ButterBurgers and
Fresh Frozen Custard. The sky looked stormy,
but the thunderclouds bypassed us. I had
a chicken cashew chef salad and a blackberry smoothie. Victoria had a Rueben sandwich and green
beans – and the rest of my salad, after I got full. Larry ordered a dinner of roast beef on toast,
mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, and a cup of cookie dough ice cream. They instead brought him a small roast beef
sandwich. When he told the waitress, “I
ordered the dinner,” she looked at him a moment, said, “Hmm,” picked up the ticket,
read it, then announced happily, “Well, looks like they wrote it down wrong.”
And, with that problem solved, she smiled at us and
said, “Let me know if you need anything else!” and away she went.
Right.
Larry would’ve just accepted it as it was (after
all, he wasn’t paying for the mashed potatoes, gravy, and green beans he hadn’t
gotten), and gone half-hungry, but Victoria and I encouraged him – actually, we
nearly pushed him out of the booth – to take it back and tell them about the
mistake. We had even heard the cashier verify
that he wanted the dinner, as opposed to the roast beef only.
So he took it back – and wound up with the rest of
the dinner, free of charge.
As I type, old Black Kitty is laboriously working
her way through a dish of Fancy Feast.
Teensy, the big, healthy cat, is hovering next to her, waiting... waiting...
waiting... He looks like a cute, furry
version of a vulture.
Tabby just announced that he wants some Classic
Ocean Whitefish & Tuna Fancy Feast, thank you kindly. So I shall feed the livestock and get on with
the quilting.
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
Outstanding photos, Sarah Lynn. My dear, you do excel at everything!
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