Some friends on the online quilting
group to which I belong were talking about clearing out their parents’ homes
after they passed away, and how they were touched to find such things as notes
from grandchildren from years gone by.
Among some of the many cards and
letters my mother had saved, I found a letter from my paternal grandmother,
written to my mother when I was 12. We had been to the funeral of my
aunt, who had died of cancer at about age 40. She was my grandmother’s
youngest daughter, and beautiful. I heard my grandmother say to someone
after the funeral, “It should have been me, not Ada.”
Anyway, in this letter, Grandma was
asking my mother to please apologize to me for her, because she felt that she
had not paid me enough attention, what with the trauma of losing Aunt
Ada. She was particularly sorry, because we only visited two or three
times a year, as we lived some distance away.
Mama never breathed a word of this letter to me, doubtless because,
first, she knew I would have understood my grandmother’s grief over her
daughter’s death, and second, because she wasn’t likely to do anything that
might encourage me to think selfishly in any way. As I was growing up, I didn’t
give my mother enough credit for teaching me to be compassionate. Because she did it so quietly, one never even
realized she was doing it.
I was quite touched by that letter,
written in my grandmother’s neat handwriting, just thinking how thoughtful and
loving she was – and realizing why my mother would not have shown it to
me. Grandma passed away later that year, and though we knew she’d had
heart trouble for some time, people said that she didn’t do well after Aunt Ada
died.
Because my father was a pastor for 48
years before he passed away, he got a lot of correspondence. I was
surprised and moved by some of the letters my mother had kept.
On the quilting front, the verdict is
in: I like my new Fasturn tool. Tuesday, I cut several yards of 1” bias
strips, and then tried out the turning tool, making wrapped cording, drawing a
skinny cord into the fabric tube as I turn it – and it works, it works, it
works! (I would try it with the skinniest [and most difficult] tube...
but that’s the size I wanted my covered cord to be, so...) Things are so much easier when you have good
tools for the job.
Late that night, I sat down in my
recliner, turned on the Biomat, and started adding some old posts to my clothing blog. The front windows were open, and all was
quiet outside – until I heard the telltale call of a great horned owl in a tree
right out in the yard, hoo-hoo-hooing away.
I think that’s really neat. Wish
I could’ve seen it. Now and then it (or
another one?) made a few high-pitched noises ... sounded funny. Almost like a hoarse little dog. I didn’t know they did that! I found the sound on www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Great_Horned_Owl/sounds,
and the sound I heard is called ‘Female squawk’ (scroll down to ‘Calls’).
I hoped the bird didn’t get it into its
head to try for a taste of Teensy. The
other two cats were in the house – and Tabby was craning his neck at the door.
But some time later, Teensy came
strolling through, none the worse for wear.
Wednesday afternoon, I went to Hobby
Lobby to get more skinny cording to insert in the fabric tubes I was making. I’m so glad they finally opened one in our
town! (A Hobby Lobby store, not a fabric
tube.)
Some
of our parishioners who have large equipment and machinery for their businesses
were taking down the Fellowship Hall that day – the part that used to be our
old church before we built the new one in 2005-06. Larry was there with
the big boom truck helping on Tuesday, and Robert gave him all the gutters,
which were only a year old. There are plenty for our house – and we’ve
been needing gutters! Larry says they’re worth about $1,200.
We are building a new Fellowship Hall
with a nice kitchen, along with numerous schoolrooms. It will be two stories
high, plus a basement.
After church that night, we went to the
store, and then stopped at Bobby and Hannah’s house so Victoria could care for
their guinea pig, as they were vacationing in the Ozarks. We each held
him and petted him and fed him carrots and lettuce, and he made his happy
little purring and ‘chirr-chirr’ noises.
By the time we got home, we were
starving, so I fixed fire-roasted potatoes and vegetables with gravy, and
broiled chicken breast filets. Mmmmm... hit the [very empty] spot(s).
We don’t usually have time for supper before church, as Larry barely gets home
from work in time to get ready and fly out the door. So we have a light
late-night supper. Or a heavy late-night
supper, whatever suits our fancy.
I ordered Schwan’s food online that
night, as the Schwan man would be coming Thursday. The cut-off time for
ordering is 11:00 p.m. Wednesday night – and I didn’t get the order submitted
until 11:07 p.m. Would they accept it? We’d find out the next
day!
(They did.) It’s quicker to order online – quicker for
me, and for the Schwan man, too. Also,
there are discounts and online sales and ‘reward points’ that make it well
worth ordering online, as opposed to ordering at the door when the man arrives.
Thursday afternoon, Victoria picked up
Ethan and Jeffrey and took them with her to watch deconstruction of the school
and Fellowship Hall. They stopped for a snack... got a cap for Ethan...
an orange super ball for Jeffrey... and then they came here and helped Victoria
in the flower gardens for a little while. (Jeffrey allowed as how work at
Grandma’s house seems a little more like fun than work at home. hee hee) Victoria fixed them scrambled
eggs and bacon when they got hungry, and Ethan played some songs on the piano.
Friday morning, it was evident that
Victoria’s aquarium snail wasn’t acting right.
He wasn’t hanging onto the sides of the aquarium, and twice Victoria
found him upside down on the bottom of the tank. If they are left upside down in water, they
can drown, as they lose the air that is stored in their shells.
“He’s about to kick the bucket,”
lamented Victoria, “and I didn’t even get a picture of him!”
“I did; I’ll send it to you,” I said.
“That’s good,” she replied. “We’ll need a good one for his obituary.” :-D
As mentioned last week, my dryer went
kaput, and Larry hasn’t had a chance to take it apart and see what the matter
is with it. I’ve been paying close
attention to the weather, so as not to waste any sunny days when I could hang
clothes outside to dry. At least the
washer still works, and I don’t have to use a scrub board and wringer!
“What?!” wrote a friend, “No scrub
board???? Where’s the fun??”
“Carrying water is fun, too,” I
retorted, “but I don’t have an open well. And so is using an outhouse –
but I don’t have a privy. I’m so deprived!”
I typed ‘Worst chore in the world’ into
Google, and look what I came up with: Laundry. There are all sorts of historical interesting
facts and tidbits in that article.
Last week one day I hunted down an
airline ticket for my blind friend Linda.
Just for the fun of it, I typed in various destinations to find out the
price. Someday soon, I will have the
Mosaic Lighthouse quilt done, and I hope to enter it in a quilt show
somewhere. If it gets accepted, this
makes a good excuse to go there, don’t you think? Well, the cutoff day for applying to enter
the October Des Moines AQS show is June 5th; that’s too soon. After that, the next AQS shows are in
February – one in Phoenix, the other in Daytona Beach.
But! – if I get a quilt accepted in the
Daytona Beach AQS (American Quilter’s Society) quilt show, and then say we have
to go there, well, ... he sorta kinda lets me start researching the matter
without too much complaint and protest.
So research I am. It’s what I do best – research. Victoria in particular hates to drive long
and far, and now after buying airline tickets for my friend and two of her
friends, I’m extremely well experienced at it (heh!), so I am looking into the
matter, ... just in case. And, oh, the
things I’ve learned! I’ve never been on
a big plane before. I’m learning about
food you can take on a plane (airline fare is higher’n a kite – in price, that
is) (elevation too, come to think of it), how big of bags (and how many) you
can take, what to do for a footrest, and where to sit in order to get the best
pictures. Some airlines have Wi-Fi...
some free, some not. (Camera and laptop
stay with me – or I don’t go.) I’ve
found cheap motels... expensive hotels... rustic cabins... and I know how much
it costs to rent a variety of cars (not all at the same time).
Phoenix is the bigger attraction to
Larry, because we would go by land (and Jeep), through the mountains, and see
the Grand Canyon while we were there.
But... not in February, thank you kindly! May!
The month of May. May would be
better. I’d like to either hike or ride
a donkey on some of the paths into the canyon... maybe not all the way, in
deference to me po’ old bones, but at least... a little way.
I know perfectly well I would find it
more relaxing to travel with our Jeep Commander than in a jetliner. I enjoy staying in cute little cabins way out
in the wilderness. Or maybe, just for a change, a tall hotel with
excellent room service. (Can’t afford that very often, though.) We
try to travel as cheaply as possible. But we love just being out in the
mountains, or beside a lake somewhere... and guess what? There’s a large state forest just west of
Daytona Beach, and there are smaller state forests and national shorelines and
wildlife refuges all around the city.
Plus, they have wild animals, including black bear, bobcat, warthogs,
and the occasional puma. Now, there’s a
draw that made Larry stop, perk up his ears, and think about it for a moment or
two. :-D
We have had good experiences and bad
with cheap motels. Some are a bargain,
some are a bomb. Most have been very
nice. The worst was one that smelled
terrible – and the carpet was a filthy mess.
I think the last people who stayed in that room had bedded their camels
down in it, and the rinky-dink vacuums the staff used couldn’t pick up the
hay. That was one of only about two
times we requested a room change. The
other was when the supposedly smoke-free room absolutely reeked of cigarette
smoke. Not only do we hate that smell
and not wish to collect it on our clothes and hair, but we had three children
with asthma, and that’s nothing to piddle around with. Both times, we wound up with a bigger, nicer
room. Once, we were apologized to and
taken to a large suite, with three bedrooms, a living room, and a kitchen!
“I wish we’d wind up in messy rooms all
the time,” remarked one of the children, looking around appreciatively.
Here’s one of the four solar garden
lights Victoria brought home from Earl May and installed along the front
walk. They shine and sparkle in the
sunlight... and at night, they glow like bright moons.
I took my brother some supper – ancient-grain-encrusted
cod, mixed vegetables, and apple/grape/ banana salad — and he gave me a handmade
oak quilt bar! It’s so pretty... now I need to make a quilt to hang from
it.
I took pictures of it and posted them
on my quilting blog, entitling the post, “Quilt Bar”.
A friend wrote, “I couldn’t imagine
what a serious, church-going woman would do with a bar! I’m glad I
looked...”
So I proceeded to tell all those nice
quilting ladies about my one and only experience with alcohol:
The closest I’ve ever come to alcohol
was the time when I was three years old and found a six-pack out in front of
our house, sitting there on the then-graveled street in the sun on a hot summer’s
day.
What in the world, I wondered.
(That may have been the first time I ever saw a beverage in a can; dunno.)
I pulled a tab.
Spszzzzzzztttttttwhooooooshhhh!
It sprayed all over me.
My word, I thought. Do they
always do that? I pulled another tab.
Spszzzzzzztttttttwhooooooshhhh!
That one sprayed all over me, too.
I headed for the house at a trot to
tell my mother of those strangely behaving things out there.
I did not get a word out edgeways
before my ladylike, gentle mother made a terrible face and exclaimed, “Oh, pewwww,
oh, my goodness, what have you gotten into??!” and before I could answer, she
swooped me up, rushed for the bathroom, and threw me into the tub, clothes and
all. She started the water, grabbed a small pitcher, and began dumping
water over me, exclaiming over the stench all the while.
I had never been so insulted in my
whole life, and certainly never by my mother. (And she was probably
astonished that her most-fastidious small daughter would ever get herself in
such a predicament.)
After a bit, she removed my sopping wet
clothes and rushed off to the washing machine with them, then scurried back and
gave me the scrubbing of my life, exclaiming and remonstrating the entire time.
And that’s my alcohol over-indulgence
story.
A lady on a quilting group wrote, “I’m
sorry, but that ‘ancient’ cod doesn’t sound very appetizing! From
which pyramid did you extract it?”
I replied, “Haha! The cod isn’t
ancient; the grain is! It can also be called ‘heritage grain’. Read
an interesting article about it here: What
in the World Are Ancient Grains? And
here: Ancient
Grains. And this is the scrumptious
cod from Schwan's: Ancient-Grain-EncrustedCod.”
Saturday, I received two messages from
Dr. Luckey – the clinic now has a ‘Patient Portal’ website, where you can get
the results of medical tests and suchlike online. Here’s what he wrote:
“Sarah. Your metabolic panel is excellent (they were
specifically checking for blood sugar levels). This includes electrolytes, kidney function
studies, liver function studies, calcium and protein.”
Message #2: “Sarah. The thyroid level is normal. We did this because we were concerned about
the palpitations however I think they were related to blood pressure drop as we
discussed. Thank you for using the
portal.”
I looked up metabolic panel (yeah, I
like research – ’cuz... I like to know what people – including myself – are
talking about): “A comprehensive metabolic
panel is a blood test that measures your sugar (glucose) level,
electrolyte and fluid balance, kidney function, and liver function. Glucose is a type of sugar your body uses for
energy. Electrolytes keep your body’s
fluids in balance.”
There.
How do ya like that? I’m normal. The doctor said so! Ha!
I’m normal! So there.
I spent most of the day in my sewing
room, cording and tabbing. That is, cutting strips for fabric-covered
cord and pieces for the tabs that will run along the edges of the quilt with
the cording connecting them. I cut the
little pointed tabs from as many different leftover fabrics (left over from the
one-inch squares) as I could. Sewing the
tabs will be a piece of cake, in comparison to this skinny covered cording! They will all be interfaced, probably on both
sides.
Since this was the only ‘sewing’ or ‘quilting’
I had to take pictures of that day, ... ... ... I took pictures of it! I’m
up to exactly 500 hours on the Mosaic Lighthouse quilt.
If you think I’ve spent a long time on
the Mosaic Lighthouse quilt... there was that Graceful Garden quilt I
made a couple of years ago that took almost twice as long. 936 hours were
put into it. However, it didn’t get interrupted with other projects as
many times, so I finished it in less time (calendar-wise, if you know what I
mean) than I have this one. I was wondering, Why is this thing taking so
loooong? I must be really sloughing off... So I looked back at my
list of projects, and then I felt all industrious and productive and
stuff. ;-D
When Larry got off work in the middle
of the afternoon, he finished putting together the rototiller that attaches to one
of his tractors, and then rototilled the front yard. It needed another going-over, and then it would
be ready for grass seed.
A quarter after nine Sunday morning
found me coiffed, clad, and collected.
It was almost time to head to church. I was sitting at the table,
laptop in front of me, a piping hot rice bag behind me. It’s a cute
little bag with a hand-knit wool ‘sweater’ on it. But... I sure
hoped I didn’t arrive at church smelling like overcooked rice.
I’m looking out the window as I type,
watching Teensy. He’s lying on the
sidewalk out front, wiggling around now and then, enjoying the feel of warm
cement under him. Now and then he
scootches forward, the better to get to a newly sun-warmed spot, looking quite
a lot like a big ol’ walrus lumping along over big boulders.
!
I just watched a blue jay cram at least 35 sunflower seeds (unhulled)
into his gullet! He looked like he had a
goiter when he got done.
The medicine our doctor gave me for
inflammation in my neck and has helped, but I don’t like a steady diet of
pills. I have three Meloxicam (anti-inflammatory) pills left. I
think I’ll go ahead and take them (it’s not like antibiotics, where you should
take the entire prescription)... then lay off of them and see what
happens.
Osteoporosis doesn’t improve with
age! I don’t know what other options besides the anti-inflammatory
medications there are. Nowadays they can do things with lasers that they
never used to be able to do. Maybe someday they’ll be able to give me a
little zap, and I’ll be all well, presto-ka-zing. In the meanwhile, I’ll just go along my merry
way, slathering Pain-A-Trate, IcyHot, Absorbine Jr., Old Goat, Capzacin,
BenGay, and Tiger Balm on me. (And watching people tipping over in my
wake, from all the fumes.)
Well, I have now been snookered into
making matching dresses for Victoria and her friend Robin for the Fourth-of-July
church picnic. I don’t mind... but will
I ever get this lighthouse quilt done??!
It was 79° this afternoon, bright and
sunny. I’d just gotten the last load of
clothes off the line when Victoria remembered she had to wash her clothes, as
she needs work clothes for tomorrow. They’ll
have to stay on the line overnight and dry in the early morning sunlight. Fortunately Victoria doesn’t have to go to
work until noon. Larry remarked when he
was home at noon that his shirt smelled good.
Either he likes Gain better than Tide, or he likes Fresh Country Air! J
After he got off work this evening,
Larry worked on the front yard again with the rototiller.
It was getting dusk out when I clipped a
clothespin to the last sock and brought the empty clothesbasket into the
house. I pulled the screen patio door
shut and looked around at the houseplants, making sure I’d gotten each of them
watered. The Phalaenopsis orchid is
still blooming profusely.
An odd noise drifted through the
screen. Screaming? Yelling?
What in the world? Were the
neighbors yelling for their dogs? Had
someone gotten hurt? I stepped closer to
the screen and listened.
“TURN IT OFF!!! YOU TURN THAT OFF!!! RIGHT NOW!!!” screeched a woman’s shrill
voice. She was yelling so loudly, her
voice was all distorted.
It was the neighbor lady, screaming at
Larry, who was even then steering the mower/tiller to the other side of the
house to park it.
Now, it wasn’t quite dark, and the
rototiller is not too awfully loud. We
live in the country. There are often tractors
working fields next to our houses both before and after the sun is up, sometimes
through the night.
She has done this two or three times
before – once when Larry was removing snow off the front lane after a big
blizzard (the lane they would need to use, mind you), and another time when he
was dragging the lane to fix the deep washboards farm machinery had made
earlier that day. Each time, she acted
so irrational, so strange, I could hardly think it was the same lady who is now
and then friendly to me as we are both working in our yards. Finally it occurred to me, These hippy-type
people – a year or two older than we are – are using something a little more
mind-bending than alcohol. Having
thought of it, I now see other signs of it.
It could be my imagination, of course, but... well, something’s plenty
odd about her behavior.
I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to
show up when she’s screaming bloody murder at Larry. They throw fits and tantrums because his
projects take so long to get finished – but they obstruct him on those rare
occasions when he does have time to work on things. Do they work 65+ hours a week and then come
home and work on their house and property?
I ran down the deck steps, across the
drive, and popped around the fence – still on my own property – and there she
was, not ten feet away, bellowing her head off, mouth stretched wide open, neck
tendons sticking out alarmingly. “YOU’RE
A DIRTY SHAME!” she shrieked. “YOU
SHOULD BE ASHAMED---------” She saw me
and jumped. Didn’t take her long to
regroup and address me instead of Larry, who was long gone anyway.
“HE SHOULD BE ASHAMED!!!” she
screamed. “I’VE HAD IT UP TO HERE WITH
YOU PEOPLE’S ---- !!!”
She continued on without letup for a
moment, but as soon as she paused to gasp in a big breath, I said, “You’re
awful.” That made her stop in surprise,
but not for long. She went right back to
screeching, so I spoke in a low-pitched voice, but loud enough she could hear
me, even through her own cacophony.
“I’ve never heard such a dreadful noise in my life, as you’re making.”
She screamed the more, a few bad words
thrown in, and when she paused and gulped for air, I remarked again, “You
really are awful.”
She made an incomprehensible noise and
stepped forward, pointing at me and shouting, “YOU SHOULD LOOK IN THE
MIRROR!!! YOU SHOULD LOOK IN THE
MIRROR!!!”
If she kept coming, she was going to
walk on her own flowers that she was so proud of.
I put my hand on my hip and looked at
her. I ain’t skeert o’ no banshee,
huh-uh, nosirree. She stopped, changed
her mind, and backed up. Funny how that
works. Bullies bluff... but if you don’t
flinch, they retreat. She can’t faze
me. I’m normal, remember?
She turned around and walked off, still
yelling. “YOU PEOPLE ARE FILTHY!!! FILTHY, FILTHY!!!” I would’ve told her no, I’d just had a bath
that very day, but she went into her garage, motor-mouthing all the way, nearly
ran into the back of her vehicle, dodged around it, and hit the button to put
the garage door down.
And that was the end of that. For now.
So now I know what her husband meant,
when he told Larry he couldn’t mow some tall weeds growing at the corner of the
ditch next to the road (Larry offered to do it for him, thinking he was afraid
his smallish mower would tip on the embankment), because his wife wanted to do
something with that corner, and if he mowed there, “she’ll yell at me!”
We believe him. She’s obviously had more experience than just
yelling at us; she’s well-seasoned and practiced at it. Otherwise, she’d have made herself hoarse
long before she toddled off to her house.
Good grief.
Maybe I could go over and offer her a
throat lozenge tomorrow? Will she even
remember anything that happened this evening?
We’ve tried to be friendly and considerate neighbors – it wasn’t us who
played the dreadful hard rock at earsplitting levels every Saturday and Sunday
afternoons, so that even when we closed our house all up and turned on the air
conditioner, it rattled the windows and shook the pictures on the walls. (They did build a small ‘music studio’, on
the other side of their house, so now that racket is somewhat contained.)
For dessert, we had sliced strawberries
on shortcake, with a healthy dollop of whipped cream.
And now it’s bedtime! Tomorrow, I must cut Fourth-of-July dresses.
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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