Excursion Through Northeast Nebraska

{Most of the pictures in this letter were taken Thursday as I traveled around the middle and northeast part of the state.}

A couple of days ago, we got a nice sympathy card from our vet for the loss of Black Kitty.  A day later, we got a note from the local Animal Relief Fund, thanking us for the donation on Kitty’s behalf from our vet.  How ’bout that.

I’d actually have been more pleased if they’d have just made the donation to my account there, and paid for the procedure and the burial; but that sounds selfish and heartless, so I won’t say that.  ;-\

I don’t think Tabby and Teensy miss Kitty, though they look around for her if I say, “Where’s Kitty?”  They know each other’s names.  She mostly stayed inside or on the front porch; they roamed around.

Teensy limped for two or three days last week, but he’s fine now.  Perhaps he hurt a dewclaw?

After writing the Drake Loughlan story last week, I got curious and looked up his name online.  Would you believe, he owns his own business?!  “Drake’s Roofing and Insulation.”  How ’bout that.  I think I knew that once, some years back; but I’d forgotten.

Shall I call him up and ask him to finish the roof and put the shingles on Larry’s big garage that has been sitting half done for a year and a half?  Finish the shingles and fix the leaks on the house roof??

I would like my house fixed.  Fixed and done.

Ever since last Monday night when I hurt ribs and shoulders lopping branches from the lopsided lilac tree, I’ve been tottering around a little slower than usual.  Why must I keep sneezing and needing to cough?!  Ooooo Aaaa Ooooo Aaaaa  OWWWie Yowwie...

Somebody quit throwing the ground peppercorn around!

Those lilac bushes were too close to the house in the first place.  Wasn’t my fault!  It was everybody else’s fault.  First, it was the fault of the man who gave them to us – because he said they were miniatures, and would only grow three or four feet high.  (They’re ten-twelve feet high, and still growing.)  (Or at least the one I didn’t lop down to three feet high is ten-twelve feet high.)  Well, maybe it was Wal-Mart’s fault, first; they told him the bushes were minis.  He got lots of somewhat bedraggled trees and flowers and bushes free, just for hauling them away when they were a little too scruffy to sell – and he gave a whole lot of them away – many of them, to us.

Second, it was Larry’s fault, because he couldn’t come up with anyplace agreeable to plant them.  Nowhere is a good place for me to plant anything, I do believe.  He’d really rather have nothing but grass.  Or maybe nothing but concrete.  So it’s sort of amazing that he himself actually found and purchased all those blue spruce trees. 

If lilac bushes must be pruned, it’s supposed to be done immediately after the blossoms fade, because shortly thereafter they set on the buds for next spring’s blooms.  Sooo...  we’ll see what happens with it, next spring.  I was sad to do that; it was in front of the kitchen window where I often sit with my laptop, and the wrens loved to sit in it and sing. 

Larry said, “But now you have a clear view!” and I retorted, “Yeah, and anyone outside has a clear view in.”  I suppose I should put up a blind.  There’s only a valance at the top.  We had two different types of blinds – our offspring demolished them both.  Caleb would not do well in a china shop.  :-D

I like living out here in the country, even with Ms. Crabbypants a bit too close for comfort.  I have barely seen her since the day I told her she was awful for yelling at Larry for rototilling with a not-too-noisy rototiller when it wasn’t nearly dark yet.  In town, I felt pretty much like I was living in a fishbowl.  Out here, I can walk out on the deck and fill the bird feeder without combing my hair, and nary a soul sees or cares.

Hannah was released from the hospital Tuesday at about noon.  She’s feeling fairly well.  We are hoping it will end the abdominal pain she has suffered with for some years.

Unfortunately, Bobby and Hannah had not yet left Omaha when they learned that Joanna had fallen while roller skating and broken her arm.  Again.  In the same place as before.  She has it in a splint now, poor little dear.  We felt so bad, hearing that!  Poor Joanna... and poor Hannah, too!  Joanna is a big help to her.  When her arm isn’t in a splint, that is.

That evening, I sewed the top binding edge with its loops and tabs onto the Mosaic Lighthouse quilt and began pinning tabs and cording onto the side binding.

Wednesday morning, I opened a new bag of coffee that I got in the mail – huckleberry coffee, flavored with huckleberry oil from huckleberries grown in the mountains around Yellowstone National Park.  Mmmm, mmm, it’s sooo good.

I headed downstairs with a big mug of piping hot coffee to work on my quilt.  I’m using my older sewing machine – the 830 Record – to attach the binding, just because the machine needs the use.  It’s still a wonderful old machine, and runs like silk.  I miss some of the functions of the newer machine when I’m using the 830, but I wouldn’t sell the older one for any amount of money.  When I’m ready for the final binding seam, the one that shows on the back, I’ll be back to my newer machine, because its stitches are a little more precise.

Thankfully, I didn’t need to water that day, as it had rained during the night and early morning. 

I went to town that afternoon to get birthday gifts for Lydia, who would be 24 Thursday, June 25th; for Jacob, who was 6 that day; for a good friend, Linda, whose birthday is on the Fourth of July; and for Bobby and Hannah, whose 15th anniversary was Thursday. 

For Lydia, I got a set of bath towels, hand towels, and washcloths; for Jacob, a car hauler with two Hotwheels cars and a Pee Wee NFL football; and for Linda, a buttercups-and-bluebells scented candle.  The candle smelled so good, I had to get one for me, too.  I lit it when I got home, and before long the whole basement smelled good.

One of the modern gifts for a 15th anniversary is a watch.  Since I couldn’t find a wrist band big enough for both Bobby and Hannah to wear the watch at once, I got a clock instead.  It’s fairly large, with a round, ornate, brushed ‘pewter’ frame, and on the face is printed in calligraphy, ‘Faith, Hope, Love’.

I wrapped a box, put three other gifts in bags, pulled out four cards, signed them, and put them in the Jeep (all but Linda’s) to take to church that night.  I didn’t need to worry about Lydia’s and Jacob’s, though; as it turned out, they, along with Jeremy and Jonathan, were taking a little vacation by Calamus Reservoir.

I went on making knots.  Knots in cording for the binding of the quilt, that is.  By time for church, two sides of the binding were done, and I was making more light-colored cording.  I only had half as much as I needed.

Larry didn’t get home from work in time to come to church that night, as one of Walkers’ trucks was overheating, and he had to tow it part of the way home with his bigger truck.

So we had a late little meal of Pierogies and Ragu with mushrooms and peppers after church.

I saw Joanna tonight after the service, and asked, “How are you doing?”

She held up her splinted arm, grinned, and said, “As well as you might expect a person with a broken arm might be doing.”  She’s such a funny little thing.

A number of quilt shops around the United States and Canada are participating in a ‘Row-by-Row Experience’.  Each shop has designed a quilt row, and a customer may pick up the pattern free of charge.  Most designs are horizontal; a few are vertical.  Many shops have designs specific to nearby Nebraska landmarks; some patterns are more generalized.  Eight rows together make a nice-sized personal throw.  The first person to bring a completed quilt into a participating shop wins a stack of 25 fat quarters (six quarter-yards of fabric).  If the quilter has used that shop’s row in her quilt, she wins a bonus prize.

Now, I don’t have time to make a row-by-row quilt right now (and I am not as fond of that type of quilt as I am of some), but I decided I would make a day of it on Thursday, visiting quilt shops and traveling through the middle and northeast part of Nebraska.  (Have new camera and lenses, will travel for fun!)  I pulled up the website, looked through all the quilt shops that are participating, and began marking the ones I wanted to visit on my map.  Here’s a good map site for putting numbers of markers on maps:  http://www.mapcustomizer.com/#

Hmmmm... Gering, Nebraska, has a very pretty Chimney Rock appliqué pattern – but it’s a looong ways out to the Panhandle; maybe I’ll just draw it. 

Oh!  It’s over 400 miles to Gering.  Yes indeedy; I’ll just draw it.

Other shops have windmills and pastures full of cattle and horses in their rows.  The Fremont store has a paper-pieced pattern of lakes and fish – appropriate for their Fremont Lakes Recreation Area. 

Thursday morning found me grabbing camera... coffee... purse... tripod... laptop... camera... sunglasses...   Oh!  Maybe I should eat breakfast?

I ate some raisin/date/walnut oatmeal, tossed some food in a lunchbox, and was on my way.

I had an enjoyable day, stopping at eight different quilt shops, and meeting a lot of nice people.  It would have been nine, but the shop in Newman Grove, Betz’s Little Shop, closed an hour and a half before I got there for an unplanned family get-together.  Wouldn’t you know, it was one of the shops I was most looking forward to, because I wanted to replace a cute little stone coaster with a quilt block painted on it that I’d gotten there three years ago.  It’s cracked and has been glued three times now.  Guess I’ll glue it again.  The owners (husband and wife) of this particular little shop are trying to sell it and retire.  I sure hope someone buys it and keeps it open; it’s a lovely little quilt (and antique) shop.

The blepharospasm (in my eyes) causes a bit of trouble – but the funny thing is, I have less trouble with it when I’m by myself, since it gets worse when I’m trying to have a conversation with someone.  That’s really aggravating.  It’s a combination of misbehaving nerves and muscles in the eyelids.  Anyway... I don’t mind being by myself.  I’ll change my tune if the car misbehaves, though! 

‘They’ say misery loves company.  I disagree.  When I am miserable, I really dislike company.  But I know that for some, misery doesn’t just love company; misery needs company! 

Near as I can tell from my research, nobody ever gets over Blepharospasm.  Sooo... I shall learn to live with it.  The only treatment they talk about right now is Botox, and there are way too many bad side effects – and it’s not effective enough – for me to even consider that, even if it didn’t cost too much.  I’m not losing my eyesight... it won’t kill me... so I can just be thankful for that.  Worse things have happened!

In addition to the free patterns, I bought a few pieces of fabric that I will someday make into gifts for various members of the family.

I started with the two quilt shops in Columbus, then went to Fullerton, Newman Grove (at least the drive was pretty, even if the quilt shop was closed), Norfolk, Wayne, Wakefield, West Point, and Fremont.  If I go to Omaha and Lincoln and a couple of other nearby towns, I could hit 13 shops in one fell swoop.  Or 13 fell swoops.  It depends on how long each shop sashay takes, whether or not one can lump them into fell swoops.  If the sashays take so long that the excursion turns into more than one day, it loses its ‘fell swoop’ distinction.  Right?

The Norfolk shop, Pieceful Pastime, is run by a friendly lady who told me a story about a recent vacation she and her husband took in Colorado.  They rented a house, arrived at night, pulled into the garage, carried their baggage in, and went to bed.

Early the next morning, the lady saw that there was a beautiful sunrise, with light just starting to top the mountain peaks, so she grabbed her camera and headed outside.  She stood in the drive, took a few shots... turned to walk back into the garage... and thought, It was so dark last night, I didn’t even see that bear statue there beside the driveway.

And then it moved.

So did she.

She dashed for the door, hoping it hadn’t locked behind her.  It was unlocked, thankfully, and she burst into the house, screeching, “There’s a bear!!!” 

Meanwhile, the bruin strolled into the garage behind her.  The lady and her husband pounded on the inside garage-to-house door and yelled, and finally the bear lumbered out, so they hastily shut the garage door down.  They saw no more bears the rest of the week, though you can be sure, they watched for him with caution.

The shop in Wayne, Just Sew, is in a house – and I tell you truthfully, there isn’t an inch to spare in there.  The lady has made many, many lovely things, and much of it is on display.  Trouble is, the house isn’t very big, and the dropped ceilings are so low I think I could touch them if I just gave a slight hop (and I’m a pygmy, you know), so there are beautiful quilts hanging right in front of shelves that are chockfull of bolts of fabric!  There are things on the floor, and you must watch your step, because the aisles are narrow, and there just isn’t very much area left to walk. 

The man is usually in a back room working on something – I think maybe he’s working on sewing machines?  They have a fluffy little white dog who gives one short, happy bark when anyone comes in, and he comes dashing to greet them – but stops halfway, because the man says his name.  So he wags apologetically, then trots back to the man.

At this shop, I purchased a beautiful panel with the first verse and chorus of the song Amazing Grace printed on it, along with several pieces of coordinating fabrics.

The little town of Wayne still has many brick streets.  I love brick streets; it reminds me of when I was little and we’d go visit my Grandma in Shelbyville, Illinois.  The brick streets were wide, and we’d park our camper and vehicle on the street in front of her house.  Now and then through the night, a car would drive by.  That’s a very specific noise – the rattle of car tires on a brick street.  Makes me think of pleasant times with my Grandma.

It was a 288-mile ramble, plus a little extra when I drove around Fremont Lakes.  The advantage to going by myself is that I can go at the speed I like.  A couple of my daughters are dilly-dalliers.  (They would say they merely like to shop – carefully.  Thoroughly.  I usually like to dash through, lickety-split.)  Another couple of them get carsick.  Not when they ride with their father; only with me!  (That could give me a complex, if I wasn’t proud of myself for driving like a racecar driver.)  And it costs more when Victoria is along, because she doesn’t want what’s in the lunchbox, she wants what’s in that restaurant right over there!  And, she’s starving, and can we stop now!!!  Also, she needs this, that, and the other thing.  A cute pair of embroidery scissors?  Yes!  A brightly-colored, fat little seam ripper?  Oh, yes!  A new crocheted doily/tablecloth book?  You better believe it, yes!!  Oh, and here’s the perrrrrfect fabric for a dress, and “Can you make it for me, Mama?”

And then I behave quite a lot like Larry does when Tabby is begging from him:  “Welllll...  all right, okay, I guess so.”

You can see more photos I took here:  Quilt Shop Excursion

Close-ups of the fabric I bought are here:  New Fabric

A drawback to this excursion:  the ribs I hurt last Monday had not yet recovered when I made matters worse with all the driving and the opening and shutting of the car door.  But what really did them in were two or three big, old, heavy (and stuck!) doors to some of those quilt shops that are in located in big, old buildings.  Guess I should have just stood on the stoop crying piteously until someone let me in.  :-D

For the next couple of days, I crept around a bit slowly, trying not to breathe too hard, and periodically saying, “Ahhh-CHOO—OW!!!”  (Why must one always sneeze when one’s ribs hurt?)  Anyway, they’re better today than yesterday, so I reckon I’ll survive.  ;-)

An online quilting friend, upon looking at pictures of the fabric I purchased, wrote, “Some nice fabrics there.  Don’t think I agree with the ‘Dogs are the nicest on four legs’ sentiment, but they are nice.  Cats, of course, are perfect.”  hee hee

I told her, “They had a very cute piece of similar fabric featuring cats that said the very same thing!  A major QSC (Quilt Shop Contradiction), right there on the same shelf.  heh heh”

Here’s something fabric designers should think about:  most ‘doggy’ fabric is in colors suitable for boys, while most ‘kitty’ fabric is in colors suitable for girls.  Don’t they know that girls also like puppies, and that boys also like kittens??!

Since I was gone, Loren fixed roast beef, potatoes, carrots, and onions in his slow cooker and then took some to Larry where he was working in Walkers’ shop.  He sent the leftovers home, too – enough for both Victoria and me, and some for Larry’s lunch the next day, too.

When I got home, I washed a sink full of dishes, started a load of clothes, and then my recliner claimed me.  I downloaded my pictures, scanned through them, edited a few, uploaded a few to my blog, transferred a few pages from old website to new blog, read and answered email, looked through the news, and – most importantly (isn’t it?) – finished reading the day’s comics.  I have no idea what they were about, though; my eyelids were refusing to stay open.  So I toddled off to bed.

Friday, I scanned my patterns and traded with ladies in other parts of the country.  A couple of patterns I received in return were quite intricate – one has 21 pages of instructions!  The Nebraska patterns I picked up are simple, in comparison.  Well, the Fishing Kitties from Claus ’en Paus here in town is quite nice, really.  Some people are better at designing than others... and some people are better at writing patterns and instructions than others... and some people are better at making their pattern pages look pretty than others! 

I spent part of the day editing and uploading the rest of my pictures.  Three years ago, we’d just returned from a vacation to Yellowstone National Park with Caleb and Victoria.  I was laboriously going through my gazillions of photos... and I howled, “Why’d you all let me take so many pictures???!!!”

“We tried to stop you,” replied Caleb with an exaggerated resigned sigh, “but the sound of the shutter drowned us out!”

That evening, it was my turn to take Loren some supper:  salmon, peas, potato soup, apple salad, and apple muffins.

Home again, I made some reservations on a shuttle bus in Orlando for my blind friend, who will be attending the National Federation for the Blind convention next month.  You would think a website for the National Federation for the Blind would be blind-user friendly – but nooooooo!  It’s barely sighted-user friendly, at times.  And look at this:  after putting in various pieces of Linda’s information and clicking ‘Next’, I was asked, “Would you like to make a driver gratutity?” 

You ever hear of a 'gratutity' before?  Neither have I.  So I didn't make one.

I printed the reservation, and gave it to my friend the next time I saw her.  I always hope I’ve done it right, and don’t wind up shipping her to Mongolia or somewhere.

I spent most of Saturday working on the cording for the edge of the Mosaic Lighthouse quilt.  When the binding is done, I have embroidery and hotfix crystals to put on the quilt.  I do hope it winds up looking similar to what I imagine! 

I’m hoping to get it accepted in the AQS Quilting Show in Daytona Beach, Florida, next February.  If I get it done in time, I may enter it in our county fair in late July (don’t know if I can get it done that fast – I want to do a good job on the embroidery and hotfix crystals)... or the state fair in late August.  I learned when I had a quilt appraised a couple of years ago that they are actually worth more, if they’ve gotten ribbons.  I never knew that before.

I’m planning to either hang this quilt in our new bedroom or lay it across our king-sized bed...  it covers the entire top almost exactly, with a little overhang.  I could make (or buy) a fluffy off-white comforter to go under it; that would look nice.

If AQS accepts the quilt, we’re thinking we’ll make plans for a vacation to Florida, just for the fun of it.  Larry is unimpressed with this idea.  He likes the tall, tall mountains!

Phoenix is another option – there is an AQS show there, also in February.  We could see the Grand Canyon!  But... I want to see it when it’s good weather for going down into the canyon at least a little ways, maybe even on the mules.  That’s either in springtime or fall – winter can be dangerous; summer much too hot.  There are a lot of beautiful things in this world of ours, aren’t there?

There is serious talk about Canyon engineers someday making a tram or perhaps an incline cog-rail to take people down to the river.  The native Indian tribes are protesting. 

I wouldn’t want any of the scenery wrecked up either, but the diagrams and sketches they’ve made look great.  It would give people access to more of the park, people who otherwise might be unable to see that part of it.  There would actually be more income for the native tribes – but they’re afraid it would disturb the spirits, greater and lesser.  :-O

Now, if they’d just have a quilt show in Jasper, Alberta, Canada, why, there would be no debate.  In fact, never mind about a quilt show... let’s just go!  But these days, one must have a passport to cross the border.  We’d need three, and them thar thangs ain’t cheap.  At least, not for us, they aren’t.  We watch our pennies.

Larry got something for Teddy’s pond that will help kill mosquitoes – Bti, I think, which won’t harm fish, plants, or wildlife.  The mosquitoes are terrible around there.

Last week one evening, Teddy was swimming in his pond... turned over and floated on his back – and suddenly a fairly large bluegill leaped out of the water right over his face, snagged a mosquito right out of the air, and came sailing back down into the water on the other side of Teddy’s head!  haha  That would be a little bit startling, to say the least.

He added, “And that wasn’t the end of the story.  The stupid fish then decided to take a bite of me!”  hee hee

Loren came and watered my trees Saturday morning; I was really thankful for that.  I didn’t feel like dragging hoses around!

That afternoon, Larry cut some of Teddy’s hay.  He turned the tractor off, and then it wouldn’t start again.  Teddy, who’d been mowing elsewhere on the property, had to go to choir practice.  So Loren went there, and tried pulling the tractor with Larry’s pickup to get it started.  No success.  They gave up on that endeavor, and came here to put down more grass seed.  Loren gave us a bag of blue grass seed he happened have, helped rake up the turf, and then Larry spread the seed and used the roller to press it down a bit.

I spent the afternoon and evening making a pile of cording, cutting it to the right size, and putting knots in some of the strands.

Victoria got a new little instrument – a guitulele (part guitar, part ukulele).  She’s already learned a few chords.  She took it to choir practice that night, handed it to our blind friend Penny – and Penny, who’d never ‘seen’ one before, took it, tuned it (without benefit of a tuning fork or a piano note), and promptly played the song the choir had just sung.

Victoria calls her new little toy a ‘gook-a-lay-lee’.  Or a ‘yook-a-tar’.  I think the main reason for any purchase she ever makes, never mind of what variety, is cuteness.

Larry made buttermilk pancakes for lunch Sunday afternoon.  His Sunday lunches are always a treat.  When he was a preteen in Trinidad, Colorado, he and his brothers and cousins would hike up into the mountains with tent, sleeping bags, and cooking gear – and he was the one who made their breakfasts over the campfire the next morning.  Full course meals, they were – eggs, bacon, pancakes...  He got the job because he was by far the best cook, and actually liked to do it, too.  Good skill to learn!

After church last night, we took Lydia and Jacob their birthday gifts.  Lydia gave us a slice of Nestle’s pie (well, something like that, anyway)... and they gave Larry some chicken and mashed potatoes, too.

Loren came again this morning and watered our trees.  He left sprinklers going in a couple of places, and I turned them off in an hour or so.  We have enough sprinklers now, since Loren gave me so many (he always says he’s ‘loaning’ them to me, so that I don’t try to pay him for them).

Do you have anyone in your family or close associates who has a penchant for wandering into the middle or tail end of a conversation, listening for half of a split second, and then asking, “Who?”

We have a couple who do that – and we have standard answers to that question, too:  We say, “Mr. Beyersdorf.”

Mr. Beyersdorf was an old crotchety neighbor (though he did like us, as we were kind to him) who had all sorts of idiosyncrasies, long since passed.  He looked quite a lot as though he could have been Adolf Hitler’s little brother. 

Another standard response to, oh, just anything, is “Paint it blue!”  That, because Larry once said that in the middle of the night during a dream.  (He used to own an auto-body rebuilding shop.)

One more:  “I already did!  Last Tuesday.”  And that is because, once upon a time when one of my nephews was just two years old, my sister, getting ready to head to the store, told him to go to the restroom – and that was his response.

I’m washing clothes.  Victoria’s load is folded and in her basket (where it will stay until she empties it, one piece of clothing at a time)... another load is folded and put away... next load is hanging on the line... and the last load is in the washer. 

I sorta kinda cleaned out the bird feeders and refilled them, and chipping sparrows immediately landed on the rebar, even though it’s been several days since I’ve had seed in the feeders.  I thought it was best to let it run out for a while, since a few of the finches have conjunctivitis. 

I picked a couple handfuls of cherry tomatoes in Victoria’s garden.  The little blueberry bush Teddy and Amy gave me last year for Mother's Day has handfuls of berries on it!

I was only out there for half a minute, and got swarmed by mosquitoes.  Did you know that the reason mosquitoes immediately come out when clouds cover the sun is because they don’t have suntan lotion and must stay under cover until the sun goes away?

(Most of my idiocy is reserved for the grandchildren.  But every now and then...)

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