The Wheels Keep On A-Turnin' (and A-Fallin' Off)

First, thank you to everyone who gave advice about and commented on the cross-stitch-block quilt I made for my brother, particularly concerning the various cleaning methods for different types of stains and marks.  I am happy to report that every single mark, except for a couple of the darker bloodspots, came out; and the small spots that didn’t are so inconspicuous, they are hard to see if you don’t know where to look.

Victoria came home from work last Monday with a very sore finger – and quite a tale.  The poor finger had sustained a bad bite from a ferret.  She was changing the bedding, water, and food in their cages, and one ferret in particular was all geared up and in a zest of high spirits when he came streaking through his large cage in the funny hippity-hop gait of the Mustelid, and, probably in play, latched onto her finger hard, shaking it vigorously, and refusing to let go.  Victoria quickly lifted the ferret from the cage – still attached to her finger – tapped it on the head, and sternly ordered it to “Let go!  Bad!!!”

It ignored her and hung on tight, resisting her efforts to pry its jaws open.

So she bit it.  Right on the neck, since that was right in handy reach.  The ferret gave a muffled squeak and let go.  Ferrets are smart enough – and these are tame enough – that they should know better than to bite their handlers.

Later, Victoria learned that the probable reason the latest two ferrets at the store are biting is because a fellow employ – one who was once fired for poor work habits, then rehired months later – has been playing roughly with them.  She rolls them onto their backs and tickles their tummies, making them bite and snap and get all frantic, trying to get up.

Aarrgghh, that’s horrid.  I’ve seen people do that to dogs and cats, too.  The cats, especially, hate it.  That’s just so mean... I wish someone would take those people down and tickle the daylights out of them, too!  Box their ears and sock them in the nose while you’re at it, please.  Grrrrrrrrr.

Once you train an animal to bite, it’s a bit difficult to train it not to!

Speaking of cats... we miss Black Kitty.  Teensy and Tabby are much loved, but they don’t butt their heads against us as if they’re trying to knock us out of our chairs.  Teensy pushes his head into our stomachs and pumps his big paws on our laps, but he doesn’t suddenly and unexpectedly ram us from the side, usually as we sat eating at the table, like Kitty used to do.  Nor do the other cats lick us like a puppy, as Kitty did.  Nor do they meow in a dozen different tones as we talk to them, quite as if they were carrying on a conversation with us.  Still, as we lost first one and then another of our four cats, it did make us appreciate the two we have left.

As I mentioned last week, both Victoria’s car and Larry’s pickup were in need of repair jobs.  The car had a leak in the power steering lines, while the mounts on the pickup that hold the ka-jig-a-bob-ka-wanger (technological terminology) had been welded badly by the previous owner, causing them to fail.  This let the clutch fan slip forward slightly, and it nicked the radiator.  Brand new radiator.  Not new no mo’, no mo’, no mo’.  And Larry didn’t have time to fix his pickup earlier in the week, ’cuz the big truck he drives for Walkers’ went kaflooey next.

Early Tuesday morning, Larry thought he would catch a ride to work with Victoria, as she’s been driving to town just before sunrise and going on bike rides with her friend Robin, and sometimes cousin Jamie.  So there was Larry standing in front of the bathroom mirror shaving, when Victoria came trotting down the stairs – and went straight out the front door, out to the Jeep, and off down the lane.  No, he hadn’t yet told her his intentions.

When he belatedly discovered she was actually gone, done vamoosed, he decided that, rather than call her back, he would instead ride his bike to work.  Once he got the bike down from its hook, he saw that the tires, while not used much at all since he bought them many years ago, were quite weathered.  So he changed his mind about airing them up and rode it with the air pressure low and tried not to ride into any potholes, so as to avoid blowing the tires out.  It’s about 6 ½ miles from our house to Walkers’.  Riding slower than usual on account of the tires, he averaged about 15 mph. 

He got a ride with Teddy the next couple of days, and once he drove Caleb’s pickup home.  When Teddy’s crew, which included Caleb, got off work, Teddy brought Caleb out to get his truck.  They came clamoring into the house, thirsty and hot, just after I’d sliced up a big watermelon Loren had given us, and immediately started drooling.  :-D  I doled out watermelon slices.

While Victoria had the Jeep, I stayed home and made like a housewife.  Wife of a house.  And a quilter, which is more fun. 

Tuesday afternoon, I finished the pillow to match Loren’s August Bouquet quilt.  The tucks in the borders are pressed one direction on one side, the opposite direction on the other.  The narrow green border is a flange.  I gave it to him the next evening after church.

When Victoria got off work, she watered all the new trees, adding Plant Start to the mixture.  I was worried about a couple of little trees that looked brown around the bottom, but when I took a closer look, it turned out that it was just dried grass from Larry’s mowing that had gotten tossed onto the bottom branches.

With Loren’s pillow done, I started embroidering the lighthouse on the mosaic quilt.  By evening, I had one line of backstitching up one side of the lighthouse done, and already it looked better, more defined.

That night as I edited pictures and answered a few emails, I backed up data from my laptop to a 2 terabyte external hard drive.  The USB plug is a bit loose in the jack, which I learnt to my dismay when I turned my computer ever so slightly and the dumb thing disconnected.  I learned, too, that this hard drive doesn’t pick up where it left off when it’s in the middle of a transfer.

So I had to delete the partially loaded files and start the transfer all over again.  It takes a long time to duplicate 900 gigabytes, you know that?  Part of that is music... part is photos (a little more than 93,000 of them)... and the rest consists of quilt patterns and programs and all my scribblings from 1994 and on.  

At least the transfer went on nicely in the background and didn’t disturb my photo editing or emailing.  I typed gently and refrained from sneezing, and the loose cord politely stayed connected until the operation was complete.

That night, I finally got the last of July’s photos posted.  You can see them all here.

I spent Wednesday afternoon – and the three days thereafter – embroidering the Mosaic Lighthouse quilt.

Ladies in an online quilting group were debating muffins versus cupcakes.  (This is why quilt groups are called ‘bees’:  we buzz about all sorts of things.)  Several wrote to explain that cupcakes are small cakes, while muffins are more likely to be good for you – quick-bread recipes, sometimes with whole wheat or cornmeal added, along with fruit and nuts.

So the obvious conclusion to all this is as follows:  If you are on a diet but are longing for cake, just make cupcakes ---- and call them muffins!

Larry got home too late to come to church that night, so he mowed the lawn instead.  Or at least he mowed until the belt broke on the mower.  The yard was in crying need of a mowing; it had been two weeks since it was last mowed.  By the next morning, it was in crying need of being watered, and of course the hoses and sprinklers all needed to be put back in place.  Tugging hoses up and down our hillside is not an easy job.  My bum shoulder protests, just thinking about it.  (grum grum grum grum grum)

Amy sent a picture of all the kids on a shopping expedition.

I wrote back, “Looks like fun!  I used to think shopping with all the kids was a jolly good excursion (if you ignored the drain on the pocketbook).”

As we did, she gets a lot of comments when she goes shopping with all the children:  “Are all these yours?!”  (My standard answer for that was, “No, I just rent them to take shopping with me.”)  “You’ve got your hands full!!”  “Must be a daycare!”  (A blank stare is good for those two remarks.)  And to Emma people say, “You’re the only girl???????”

I told Amy, “Teach her to say, ‘All of us are girls but 7.’”

Amy said, “The trouble is, I need to shop, not stop while people count us.  Baby’s a ticking time bomb!”

‘Ticking time bomb’... hee hee.  That was Hester, when she was a couple of months old.  She’d wait until I got to the very back of a humongous store – and implode.  Or explode.  Hard to tell which, when you’re smack-dab in the middle of the uproar.

One time a little boy pointed at us in amazement and breathed in amazement, “Look, Dad!  It’s a ... family!!!”  (I wonder what the magical number was?)

I learned years after the fact that Teddy used to point his toes out and waddle along like a small duckling behind me when we were shopping, entertaining all his siblings – and sometimes getting them to do it, too!  So it’s only fitting that he himself now has a flock of ducklings.

I made some supper for Loren that evening – and he brought me another big watermelon when he came to pick up his food.

Larry worked on Victoria’s car after he got off work.  He finally found the small hole where the power steering fluid had leaked out the second time, in a metal line buried in some hard-to-get-at location.  He extracted the line – shaped like an elongated, curved ‘M’ – and took it to the shop to braze the hole shut.

Some time around midnight, the Aurora was back in good working order.

He also got the ground leveled a little better at one end of his garage, so that his scissor lift will sit more level.  Now, if he just had time to actually work on that building!

That night, I uploaded photos from August 3:  Sulphurs, Admirals, Commas, an Airplane, and a Scissor Lift

Friday, I started the water going on the yard, then went to town for embroidery floss from my favorite quilt shop, Sew What.  Even if I’m not buying much, I like to look at the merchandise.  My friend who owns the store buys only high-quality fabric.  Pricey, but sooo nice.  I just wish she’d have sales a little more often.  I try to buy as nice of things as I can afford, as cheaply as possible.  As ol’ Ebenezer (unless it was Arsène Wenger) said, “I ain’t no skinflint; I’m just thrifty!” 

Next, I went to Menards for a gift card for Teddy; August 13th was his 32nd birthday.  I made a stop at Wal-Mart for a cute copper teapot and a big copper skillet for Hester and Andrew’s and Lydia and Jeremy’s 7th anniversaries.  Traditional gifts are copper or wood.  The daughter and son-in-law with the two little boys would get the cute teapot and the daughter and son-in-law with no children would get the big copper skillet.

(snicker)

Not ... ... ... really.

For supper that evening, we had baked chicken, potatoes, carrots, onions, celery, gravy, blueberry muffins, and orange jello. I took some to Loren – and he in turn gave me a container of ice tea mix, and a big bottle of Avon’s Moisture Therapy lotion.

Friends had requested a picture of Loren with his quilt, so I took my camera with me.  He seemed pleased that I asked for a few pictures (though he thought he needed to clean his room, which is generally already nice and clean).  I was glad to see that the quilt perfectly fits his queen-sized bed.  He showed me how he made sure the label wound up at the right corner, so he can easily show it to visitors.  He’s really happy about this quilt – and I'm every bit as happy, I do believe.

Victoria and a number of her friends played baseball that night, then went to their Sunday School teacher’s house, where they played basketball in his garage.  Victoria jumped to catch a ball, it hit the tips of her fingers, and she wound up with several jammed fingers, including one that got hurt rather badly.  It’s better today, though really colorful, all black and blue.

When my kiddos were babies, as I tucked them into bed I’d often ask, “Are you my little Sweetie Pie?”

So one night I was tucking Lydia, about ten months, into her crib.  That night, I rephrased it slightly:  “Are you my little Sweetie?”

Lydia, already snuggling into her blankie, peeked over the satin edging at me, opened her gray-green eyes wide, and responded, “Pie!!!”

And with that, she rolled over and went sound asleep.

I had a friend who said “Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite” to her little boy – and he burst into tears, thinking there were bugs in his bed.  :-D

When I said the rhyme to my littles, I sometimes recited this entire version:

Good night,
Sleep tight;
Don’t let the bedbugs bite.
But if they do,
Take your shoe,
And squash them
’Til they’re black and blue!

When Larry got home from work Saturday afternoon, he turned off the water so the yard could dry while he put a new belt on the mower and then fixed his pickup, after which he planned to finish mowing.  Of course, he didn’t get done with his pickup, so the yard didn’t get mowed.

Meanwhile, I was slooooooowly making progress on the Mosaic Lighthouse quilt.  It’s harder to tell in the picture than in real life that the embroidery does indeed better define the lighthouse:

I remarked on one of the quilting groups, “I’m ready for a fast pattern!”

A friend promptly responded, “ROFL!  I am pretty sure you can’t do fast.”

“Hummph!” I retorted.  “My nickname was once upon a time ‘Speedy Gonzales’.”

(pause)

’Course, that was in 4th grade, and it involved running backwards whilst jumping rope, rather than quilting.

But I can type fast!!!

Speaking of typing, here’s Teensy in my lap right this minute, making typing difficult.  (Picture taken with the CyberCam on my laptop.)

There are big wildfires not far from where some of my online quilting friends live.  I hope they remain safe, and don’t lose anything to the fires.  I dearly love the mountains... but when they’re on fire, it can be pretty frightening!

A few years ago, a prairie fire got out of hand just six or seven miles to our west.  It was nighttime, and the sky was glowing red, and when we drove over the hill to take a look, we were amazed at how high the flames were shooting up into the sky.  A couple of farm families were evacuated for several hours.  And still I know our little prairie fire was nothing, in comparison to those mountain wildfires that are raging out west.

A big storm was coming our way yesterday, and, according to AccuWeather, it was liable to be pouring just about the time we got out of our evening church service.

AccuWeather miscalculated.

A rip-snortin’ thunderstorm started just as we left home and continued all the way through the service.

When we walked out of the sanctuary afterwards, we wondered what a police officer was doing in the front vestibule, talking with Andrew’s sister Amber.

Turns out, a mostly hollow, humongous tree had fallen on Amber and Jon’s house!  We drove by, and saw where it had landed on one end of their home, a small-to-medium ranch house.  Thank goodness they were not in it at the time, for one large branch came right through the roof. 

As we drove past Teddy’s house on the way home, we saw that nearly his entire property – several acres – has turned into a lake.  Fortunately, his house is at a little higher elevation than his pastureland.  A lot of country roads are under water.

Lightning bright enough to light up the Andromeda Black Hole continued well into the night.

(pause)  Well...  Maybe not quite that bright.

Hester wrote to tell me that none of Jon and Amber’s furniture was ruined.  Their insurance agent is their neighbor, and she was already there last night.  They had asked the city to take that tree down last fall when a big branch fell.  The city declined.  :-\

This morning, friends cut branches away from the house, and then Larry used the crane on his boom truck to lift the main section of trunk off the roof. 

It’s been cloudy and rainy all day, and tomorrow is expected to be the same.  Keeps me from having to water!  Thundering is rumbling right now, and another strong storm is moving in.

Loren hitched up his new pickup to his camper this afternoon during a lull in the rain, and headed west.  He’s stay near North Platte tonight, and plans to visit the big railroad museum in the morning.  It’s the largest rail yard in the world:  http://goldenspiketower.com/.  After that, he intends to go to Rocky Mountain National Park.

And now... I must embroider!



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