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| Kitty and Hester |
My brother Loren spent several days
here last week, helping watering our newly-planted grass and using his
weedeater. The front yard looks nice
now... but if you wander around to the back, I recommend you make sure the
batteries in your GPS are fully charged, if you have any hopes of getting back
out of there.
As I mentioned in last week’s journal,
I was hunting for our sprinklers, including a brand-spankin’ new one. They had all disappeared, every last one.
At 1:04 p.m., I sent a text to
Larry: “Don’t we have ANY sprinklers,
anywhere at all??”
Five minutes later, he replied, “Yeah,
check by the patio door in the basement in basement.”
(He and his smartphone’s voice-to-text
app have an uneasy truce. Sometimes the
truce is called off and all-out warfare ensues.)
This conversation could have been
completed in 30 seconds, had I actually called, rather than texted. But, once we start...
We doggedly text on. At 1:12 p.m., I respond, “There’s a hose and
a spigot with four ends.”
1:15 p.m., and Larry suggests, “Maybe
out by the air conditioner.”
Six minutes later, I answer, “Nothing
but hose.”
It took him four more minutes to offer
this: “Under the deck maybe.”
“Nope,” I retort. “At least, not that I can see. I looked twice.”
He evidently gave up after that, for he
had nothing further to say.
I asked Victoria if she knew where the
new sprinkler had gotten to. Sometimes
things inexplicably vanish during her cleaning sprees. She hadn’t the faintest idea, and said she
hadn’t moved it from the spot where Larry had put it immediately after buying
it.
She got home from work, went out in the
garage, peered in a box – and found the new sprinkler. She’s sure she didn’t put it there. Larry is sure he didn’t put it there. And of course I didn’t put it there. I think the cats did it. In the garage with the sprinkler. {We’re playing Clue, right?}
Wouldn’t you know, that sprinkler is just
like a couple of sprinklers Loren has – cheapies that don’t work so well.
Victoria’s friend Robin came and tried
on the top part of her dress. Yep, it
fit! Soon, the girls were playing the
piano and singing. They harmonize well
together; I love to listen to them.
It was Hester’s 26th birthday that day,
so Victoria and I took her the Sizzix Big Shot we’d gotten. She has sent me pictures of some of the
pretty things she’s made with it since then.
Larry, meanwhile, helped Caleb put
brakes on his pickup.
Tuesday, I thoroughly watered the new grass
(it’s coming up! – the ground is misty green), the little blue spruce trees,
along with all the flowers in pots on the porch. Loren brought several of his own sprinklers
that work better. I had most of the yard
watered by the time he got here, so he didn’t have so much to do.
My brother will soon be 77 years old –
but he works like he was 40 or so. He is always trying to help... not
just us, but other friends and family, too. So much for what an
acquaintance had to say, when a year ago I mentioned making supper for him:
“Well, you can’t keep doing that forever; he’ll have to learn to care for
himself!”
Yes, he can care for himself (most of
the time)... but I like to help. And yes, we can care for ourselves (most
of the time)... but he likes to help! Paul wrote, “Bear ye one another’s
burdens...” and then, a couple of verses later, “Every man shall bear his own
burden.” Some say that’s just another example of the Bible’s
contradictions. Well, that’s goofy.
It’s so easy to understand! We do
our best to care for ourselves... and when we love others, we help them when we
can, when we can see they need help. Nothing hard to understand about that,
is there?
After leaving the veterinarian clinic,
I went to the Goodwill... found a few bargains... stopped at Dollar General for
a couple of things... and hurried home to move the sprinklers before they made
a lake in the new grass that’s just coming up.
I walked into my bedroom to put my
purse down – and looked to see if Kitty was on the bed. Sigghhhhh...
But Teensy came and jumped on my lap a
little while ago, made bread on my knee, bumped his head against me, and purred
(he’s a big cat – but he has such a quiet purr, it’s nearly undetectable). And Tabby just came in and did his best to
stare a hole through me, which means, “I need food! See me?
Hungry! Me! Food!
Mrrow, prrbbtppt, mrrrw, meee!”
So I gave him the soft food he needs, since he had several teeth removed
a few years ago on account of gum disease.
Each night when I quit with the sewing
or whatever I happen to be doing, I spend some time transferring a few more
pages and posts from my old website to my blogs. The ‘Clothes Rack’, ‘Dolly Boutique’, and
sewing projects (‘Mitered
Corner’) blogs are all caught up, as are the pages for Sewing
Studio and Quilting
Studio. I still need to finish transferring all the quilting, poetry, recipes, and photography posts. I
churn out lots of blither! And blather, too. :-D
A friend wrote, “I saw a 22-inch (more
like 21 ¾”) ruler on your blog with the Braided Star Table Topper. Where does one find a 22-inch ruler? I have seen 12, 24, and 36, but never a 22-inch
one.”
I responded with the following:
One gets a 21 5/8” ruler after one’s
beloved son steps on one’s yardstick, when said yardstick had one end propped
on a bin. It’s all very technological and scientific, getting it to snap
apart straight and smooth, involving type of boot tread, size of foot in boot,
velocity said foot was traveling when it alit upon said yardstick, and weight
of body above said foot.
The best part of the equation was the
look on said beloved son’s face as the following occurred:
Me: “Don’t step on my yard---” CRRRRRRRRACK
“---stick.”
(But he’s a sweetie; he bought me a
new, even better one, and I hadn’t even asked. Further, he sanded the end
of the now-21-5/8” ruler.)
I finished Robin’s dress Tuesday night,
all but the ruffled-fabric-and-chiffon flower at the waist. Victoria’s was half done. I worked on them again Wednesday, and took
Robin’s to her that evening when we went to church. I’d hoped to be done with Victoria’s that
day, too; but keeping the newly-planted grass, trees, and all the flowers
watered took up a good deal of my time. Oh, for underground sprinklers!
Maybe someday...
A big storm was starting, with high
winds and rain, just as everyone was leaving the church, so all I had time to
do was thrust the dress in Robin’s arms and then we all ran for our
vehicles. Fortunately, I’d put the dress in a plastic garment bag.
Soon after we arrived home, Victoria
forwarded this text from Robin: “Btw i
LUUUVVV THE DRESS!!!!!!!!!!!!! Its so cute!!! Please tell ur mom i love it and
thanku soooooooo much 4 doing that!!!!!!!!!!!
Robbi”
Do you think she’s excited????!!!!!
:-D I hope it fits and looks nice on her.
Maybe she hadn’t tried it on yet, and was exclaiming over how cute it
looked on the hanger!
The Fellowship Hall and elementary
school are gone now; there’s nothing but a very deep, very large hole in the
ground, with fencing all around it to keep curious children and unsuspecting
adults (and unsuspecting children and curious adults, too) from walking
straight into it,
The Fellowship Hall was our old church,
which was comprised of the small original church, and an addition that more
than doubled its size in 1969. I was
eight years old when that addition was built.
One morning, workmen were laying shingles. They went away for lunch – and left their
ladder up, leaning against the back of the church.
Now, nobody had ever told me I couldn’t
climb that ladder. Not that I’d
asked. I had more sense than that. I looked this way… that way… and then quicker’n
a wink, I shinnied up the ladder, stepped onto the eave, and skedaddled right
up to the topmost peak of the church.
I tell you, that was a looong way
up. I gazed around in delight. I could see practically the entire town! I could see the courthouse, all the way
uptown, our tallest building at three stories high. I looked down at the street in front of the
church and our house – and all of a sudden I was struck with a panicky feeling
of Too Much Height and Not Enough Net.
A split second later, I was on my
stomach right on that peak, lengthwise, hugging it tightly with arms and legs
and wishing for more. More arms and
legs, that is. I stayed there for
immeasurable moments – and then I saw a man walking on the sidewalk far
below. I watched him, feeling stealthy
and furtive . . . and then it occurred to me that if I could see him, all he’d
have to do would be turn his head and look up, and he would see me. Aaaiiiyiiieeee. That would be mortally embarrassin’.
Almost as quickly as I’d gone up, I
went back down. There was one
hair-raising, spine-tingling moment when I was stepping from eave back onto
ladder, and my blood ran cold. But I
made it. I made it safely back to
earth. And I didn’t tell on myself for
the better part of two decades, either.
Nor did I do any further climbing.
Wanna see what a white goldenrod crab
spider looks like?
These spiders can change color.
When they’re on a bright yellow flowering goldenrod, they, too, will be
bright yellow. They are sometimes called ‘banana spiders’ because of
their yellow color. Their small jaws do contain venom, but their bites
(which seldom happen) are harmless to humans. They are helpful in
gardens, as they consume many pests, including grasshoppers that are much
bigger than the spider. They do not build webs.
This particular specimen, however, made
the error of somehow landing in my sink, on a waiting-to-be-washed saucer!
He thereby forfeited his chance to do good in my gardens. 
While taking the picture of the lily, I
spotted a ladybug look-alike of unknown species. I worked my way down
through Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, and Genus, and there I was stymied.
The pronotum (that part that helps protect the head) is red-orange. Our usual ladybugs have black pronotums.
I posted pictures on the Ugly Hedgehog photography forum and asked if
anyone had ever seen a similar beetle.
A couple of days later, someone gave me
a name of a man who does quite a lot of insect photography and is knowledgeable
about them. I sent a private message –
and within hours, he had answered, and named my beetle. When I mentioned Leaf Beetle, I was getting
close, very warm – I was in the right family, at least. It’s an Argus Tortoise Beetle – Chelymorpha
cassidea.
More pictures in previous post.
Thursday night I finished Victoria’s
dress... so Friday I was back to sewing tabs – 170 of them – onto interfacing
for the Mosaic Lighthouse quilt edging. Loren spent most of the afternoon
weed-eating our yard and fixing a few hoses and sprinklers.
Caleb and Maria came for supper that evening,
along with Victoria’s friend Robin.
It was a late supper, because Caleb
didn’t get off work ’til almost 9:30 p.m. The advantage to this is that
everyone is so starved, the food – no matter what it is – tastes like
ambrosia!
By 11:00 p.m., the kitchen was clean
again, the kids had left, Larry was sleeping, and Victoria was keeping me
totally preoccupied with videos of Roger Bennett and Dino playing the piano...
the Collingsworth family singing and playing various instruments... How was I
supposed to write intelligently and comprehensibly with all that going on?!
I was sitting in my recliner, laptop in
lap... and if that girl would ever let my brain relax just the teeniest bit, I would
work on transferring stuff from website to blog. (No... I never resent
any moments spent with my children.)
As I type, the birds are singing away. A little wren, in particular, is right
outside my window trying his best to raise the roof. (Or the clouds, as
it were.) I hear robins... finches... Northern flickers... English
sparrows... cardinals... doves... and the occasional squeaky-door squawkings of
starlings and their noisy young competing with the cacophony of a few grackles.
Victoria picked up some flower flats –
petunias and such – at Earl May’s for Loren; he wanted to plant them in a few
large pots he has in his yard and beside his driveway. Victoria gets a discount, since she works
there, and her boss has told her that any of her family who shop there will get
a discount, too. Since we suspect he has
no earthly idea just how many people this would entail, she just bought the flowers
herself, thus saving Loren the trip to town, into the bargain.
When I finished putting the tabs on the
interfacing, I cut them apart with a rotary cutter, all 584 of them. I switched back and forth from the Olfa to
the Martelli, in order to save wear and tear on my wrist.
Hannah, with the three younger children
and Misty, came to borrow a shirt pattern; she’s making the boys shirts for the
Fourth of July. I was going through the
pattern file in my laundry room, getting the patterns out, when two smiling
little boys’ faces and one grinny doggy face popped around the corner.
“Hi,
Grandma!” said both Nathanael and Levi in unison, and Misty said, “Pant wag,
pant pant wag!”
Joanna was in the kitchen, and had already
discovered the stack of Sew Beautiful magazines I’d gotten from the UPS that
morning. She was deep into an article. If there’s anything to read, anything at all,
that girl is reading.
A little later, Lydia came visiting
with Jacob and Jonathan. Jonathan gave
me a small stick.
“You’re welcome,” he said, beaming at
me as he put it into my hand.
The poor little guy burnt his fingers
just a bit on my coffee mug warmer – it hadn’t been on, but, unbeknownst to us,
he turned it on, then touched it a few minutes later. I put Aloe Vera from the refrigerator on a
paper towel, and Lydia, after running cool water on the poor little fingers,
put his hand on the paper towel. It must’ve
felt good, because he stopped crying, and put his hand on the towel himself a
couple of times.
Victoria gave him a drink of pineapple
juice, which cheered him ... and he laughed when I wiped a drip of juice off
his face and said, “Wipety-wipe your chinny-chin-chin!”
We walked outside, despite an influx of
mosquitoes. Victoria, carrying Jonathan,
started down the side of the ditch on the east side of drive. It was steeper than she’d expected, and she
wound up trotting down faster than she’d intended.
Sunday morning, I wrote and asked Lydia
how Jonathan’s fingers were. She
replied, “I didn’t see any blister or sore on his hand. Last night Jacob prayed that Jonathan’s hand
wouldn’t get burned again.”
Children can certainly pull on your
heartstrings, can’t they?
Robert was preaching at a church in
Texas yesterday, so Bobby preached for our morning service, and his younger
brother Stephen preached for the evening service.
Larry and I went to the grocery store
after church last night and got all sorts of yummy things. That’s the advantage of going to the store
when one is hungry!
When we got home, we proceeded to behave
just like pigs in a sty, when someone pitches a bucket of corncobs over the
fence for them: they run madly hither and yon, each trying their bestest
to get a big ol’ chomp out of every single cob. Oink!
This afternoon, I went to help Loren
with his computer for a little bit – and he sent me out the door with a handful
of groceries, worrying that he needed to give me money, too.
We’ve finished supper... and now I
shall transfer a few more quilting posts from the old website to my blog.
When we got our first computer, back in
1999, I used AltaVista as a search engine. I’d type something in... and
if I was lucky, I’d get 100 hits – which may or may not have anything to do
with what I actually was hunting for. These days, Mr. Google is throwing
the answer in my face before I even get done asking him.
Actually, that wasn’t the very first computer...
but the very, very first one could hardly be considered a computer. Our kids got it from a friend in, oh, ’98,
maybe... along with a box of those giant floppy disks. I was delighted to
find one that was something on the order of the Excel of today – a ledger program
that would work marvelously, I thought, for Larry’s auto business.
I happily spent the day transferring
data from the printed ledger to the computer—and then discovered it had no hard
drive, whatever that was, so I could not save my work. No writable disk
drive, either, huh-uh, nosiree. No way, José.
I wanted to shoot songbirds, kick cats,
and throw computers out winders. Aaarrrrgggghhhh.
I finally decided, Well, at least
everything balanced, and I turned off the stupid thing and went to bed.
Live and learn! Hopefully.
In the morning, I plan to drown myself
with bug spray and go outside and pull a few weeds. This is no easy morning
task, I’ll have you know, because I am stiffer’n a poker for a couple of hours
after getting up. Furthermore, I prefer
doing things that stay done. Such as
quilting. Sooo... when the gardens look pretty, I’ll take pictures.
At least the pictures won’t sprout weeds.
I hope.
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
Sorry about Black Kitty, but Johnathan looked happy with Victoria. You mentioned the yard stick story. That is a funny one and I really thought it was a special ruler for some special task.
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