Tuesday, the previous day’s migraine
slowly faded out and triggered an arthritis flare-up (or at least that’s what I
thought, ’til later). That’s easier to
cope with than a headache. I managed to
finish my delayed letter, get the wash done, clean the kitchen, and put in a
few hours of embroidery, too.
Wednesday morning, Amy sent me a picture
of Victoria, writing, “Finally found a way to get Victoria to come visit!” Victoria was holding not one, but two
kittens. The kids are delighted. Even their big yellow lab likes the kittens.
I changed the water to new areas
outside, walked through a couple of spider webs (it’s becoming my hobby), and then
lugged quilt, lamp, and various sundries down to my sewing room. Let the
embroidery begin in earnest! (Again.) The windows on the lightkeeper’s
house were done... roof lines were half done.
I went out to change the water for the
third time, spotted a bunch of ripe tomatoes, took a bag back out and picked
them. The sweet little cherry tomatoes alllllmost made it back into the
house... not quite. Mmmm, mmmm.
I got up early Thursday morning – but
not to go to various quilt shops as I had thought I might do. Instead, I went to the Urgent Care Center to
see a doctor and get a prescription, then to Walgreens for the medicine. I got cranberry pills, too. Cranberry
juice seems to help, but we haven’t had any for a few weeks now. Maybe
that’s the problem! – I need to get some more.
And yogurt – we’ve been out of yogurt for a week. Mother Hubbard’s
cupboard is bare!
I do believe the migraine was the
precursor of this, rather than the tail end of that.
I got a few other necessities while I
was there, then trotted home and took my medicine.
As I was sitting in an examining room
at the Urgent Care Center waiting for the doctor to come in, my phone
rang. It was an unfamiliar but local number. I answered it... heard
a vaguely familiar voice -- --- -- Lo and behold, it was the lady who was a
teacher’s aide in my Jr. High Home Ec class, Margie Sergent! She was such
a dear lady; I always loved her, though she did have a penchant for sneaking up
behind me as I sewed lickety-split, and whispering in my ear, “Just because the
pedal goes all the way to the floor, Sarah Swiney, it doesn’t mean you have to
step on it and hold it there!!”
And then she grinned at me, because I
whirled around and stared up at her with an ‘astonished look’, as she put
it.
“But I did get that seam sewn pretty
fast!” I remarked.
One time she came and said in my ear, “How
fast are we going today?” and I replied, “Flank speed emergency!” which
made her laugh aloud, and then I was embarrassed, because all the girls turned
to look.
Anyway!!! – She and her husband had
been to the State Fair, and they were looking at my quilt, and all of a sudden
she spotted my name on the tag and said, “Oh! I know that girl!” (She must still think of me as 12 years old,
heh.) Mrs. Sergent quilts, too – I saw a lovely quilt of hers on display
in one of our LQSs.
Well, she called to ask me – get this –
if I would bring my quilt to her quilting group, and teach them how to do
appliquéing the way I did it on that quilt.
In fact, they’d like it if I brought a bunch of quilts to the meeting,
and had a trunk show! :-O
I told her I was delighted to hear from
her... thanked her... and said I’d think about it. I would like to – but
the biggest problem is the Benign Essential Blepharospasm that plagues my
eyes. And being nervous makes matters worse. Remember, I’m
shy! (Really! You don’t believe me, I know... but that’s just
because I’ve learned to camouflage it.) I’ve never been to a quilting
group before. I have no idea what all this would entail. I’ve
taught Sunday School to little kids... Bible studies to young people... I do
enjoy teaching. Especially if I know what to say.
I saw Mrs. Sergent once when we lived
in town and she was taking around pamphlets for one of the persons who was
running for public office. She knocked on our door, handed me the brochure,
smiled, walked off across the street toward the school – and all of a sudden I
leaped down the steps and flew after her, calling “Mrs. Sergent! Mrs.
Sergent!”
She turned around laughing and exclaimed,
“I thought that was you!”
 |
| Platte River |
I said, “But I didn’t tell you who I am
yet!”
“Your exuberance and brown eyes gave
you away!” she told me.
By the time I got home from the UCC, Victoria
had mowed the front lawn. I ate breakfast
and tried to work up enough energy to go downstairs and embroider. Then I
threw in the towel and took a little nap – and slept for an hour and 45
minutes.
Meanwhile, my brother was worrying me,
because he was taking down a big ol’ double-trunk tree at his house (another
that the pine sawyer beetles killed)... and he had a bit of troubles getting it
down. A rope kept breaking – and it was
95° outside. He would’ve waited until it was cooler to do it, but he has
a crabby neighbor lady who kept fussing over his three dead or dying trees (“They’re
dropping pine needles all over my grass!” – though one couldn’t see them until one
was standing right over them, and there was only a small handful that fell
during a thunderstorm) – the same neighbor lady who threw a screeching fit when
a small branch from a tree he was taking down a couple of years ago landed on
her side of the property line (in the lawn, hurting nothing, though it did
scatter a few pine needles, which Loren of course raked up).
He told her he wouldn’t take the trees
down while nesting birds were in them, and that got her all hot
under the collar, too. She peered fleetingly
up into the tree and then snapped, “I don’t see any!” (She doesn’t like birds, rabbits, cats, dogs,
you name it, any better than she likes people, especially men.)
Wouldn't you know, the day Loren
decided the birds had all fledged, it got a whole lot hotter than had been
predicted.
He’s 77 years old, for pity’s
sake! He works hard to keep his lawn and landscaping looking
beautiful. And he would never knowingly harm his neighbor’s property,
even if she is a crabby ol’ biddy who doesn’t have the faintest idea how to
talk nice to anybody.
But I will add that, upon seeing him
working out there, she did go ask him if she could help – probably the very
closest she could bring herself to an apology.
He assured her he didn’t need any help.
“You were heaping coals of fire on her
head!” I told Loren, laughing.
Here’s the whole verse: “If thine enemy
be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to
drink: For thou shalt heap coals of fire
upon his head, and the Lord shall reward thee.”
(Proverbs 25:21 & 22)
‘Heaping coals of fire on someone’s
head’ simply means, ‘do good for someone, the better to make him be ashamed and
repent of his wicked ways’.
That evening, I finished all the embroidery
on the lighthouse quilt and started putting on the Hotfix crystals. The
Continental dry iron I ordered from The Vermont Country Store had come just in
time. With the flat-bottomed iron, I can
affix handfuls of crystals at once. I
couldn’t use a pressing cloth with it, though; the glue on the crystals didn’t
get hot enough through the cloth. So I
had to be careful not to leave the iron in one place too long and scorch the
fabric. By 10:30 p.m., I’d used up every
last Hotfix crystal. That means I’m
done, right? Right??
I fired up my sewing/embroidery machine
and started designing the quilt’s label, but it’s a slow process, and I gave up
in the middle and went to bed.
Fortunately, the machine has a ‘sleep’ feature, so I would be able to
pick up where I left off. That is, if I
didn’t forget that I’d put it to sleep, and stupidly turn the main switch to
‘Off’, thinking I was turning it to ‘On’.
Yeah.
I do things like that.
I stacked three spools of thread, one
atop the other, smack-dab in front of the switch, so that if I absentmindedly
reached for the switch I would find it booby-trapped. Then I hung a Kleenex from the bobbin winder
so that it covered the screen display.
Hopefully, hopefully, that would be enough to kick the molecules of my
brain into working order and prevent me from losing all the work I’d done. I can permanently save designs on that machine,
but if I do it before the design is complete, I cannot then add to or change that
design.
Friday morning, I called Mrs. Sergent
and agreed to come to her quilters’ group meeting.
Then I got back to my quilt label. My reminders worked; I remembered to ‘awaken’
the machine, rather than flip the switch to turn it on. I have to save each line of my label separately,
and the machine saves soooo slowly it makes me feel like I’m back in the days
of dial-up Internet, and someone has just emailed me half of their hard drive. It stalled out several times, and I pushed a
few buttons here and there, thought I lost the whole works, and finally got it
to resume saving. It finally saved all
but the last line; I had run it beyond its limits.
So I threaded the machine with my
metallic embroidery thread and hit ‘Start’.
I would add the last line after the rest played out.
Several people have asked me what I
plan to make next. I think I’ll make
something for my great-niece for her wedding in October. And I’ve been
wanting to make a Christmas tree skirt, using my smocking/pleater to make the
tree inserts.
One lady wrote, “Eventually, you will
have a difficult time finding projects that challenge you, as you are always
reaching for the max.”
Well, fortunately, I like all kinds of
things, and have a loooong ‘want-to-do’ list, and some of those things are even
quick and easy. I’m ready for something simple. Maybe I’ll make a one-patch mug rug. heh
Larry called at a quarter ’til one to
say we would leave for the State Fair at 3:00 p.m. “I’d say that means no earlier than 4:00
p.m., whataya think?” I remarked to a friend.
He got home at 4:25 p.m.
It was a little late to see much, but
we looked at the quilts and some of the animals. I love the baby lambs – a set of twins, only two
days old. They’re so long-legged and
gangly, they had troubles staying upright on their skinny pins.
A little Black Angus calf was even more
fresh-hatched than the lambs: he’d been
born just the day before. Yet he was
sturdy as could be, all bright-eyed and bushytailed, and now and again he’d
kick up his heels, spin around, and skip and hop around his mother, even though
there wasn’t all that much room in their pen.
She patiently went on bathing her rambunctious baby. When she got to his neck, her long tongue
reached all the way underneath it and clear over to his opposite ear. The silly little calf look surprised, flapped
both ears, shook his head vigorously, and suddenly leaped a good three feet
backwards. He then uttered a loud
protest: “Moooommmm!!!” (Or at least that’s what it sounded like.) She merely lumbered forward a step or two and
reconvened the bath.
My quilt did indeed get second place in
the Best of County category. They had so
many quilts, they had to overlap them on the hanging rods. Ladies with white gloves held back corners of
quilts so people could better see quilts hanging partially underneath, if
anyone desired.
We exited the building, stopped to look
at the brochure to see where we should go next – and someone rushed up behind
me and cried, “BOOO!” It was Lydia, with
Jeremy, Jacob, and Jonathan close behind.
I’m not jumpy. But I’ll betcha if
I had’ve whirled around and yelled back, that girl would’ve jumped and
screamed.
:-D
:-D
The little guys acted totally delighted
to find Grandpa and Grandma, of all people, at such a big, strange place so far
from home. Jonathan, age 1 ½, held out
his arms for me to take him. I did – and
he promptly held out his arms to Grandpa, who was on the other side of me. Little scamp! – he was just using me for a
stepping stone to Grandpa! ;-)
1 ½-year-olds are not overly skilled at
containing their enthusiasm, ever notice that?
Jonathan, all happy and pleased, whopped Grandpa with his brochure, upon
which his Mama admonished him to be careful.
So Jonathan tipped his head, gave Grandpa the full effect of Bambi eyes,
then grasped the sides of Grandpa’s head in his two wee hands and proceeded to
smother his face with kisses, while Grandpa laughed.
They’ll accept it. ;-) Time
to start planning an excursion to Florida!
We have to see Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse, for one thing. There are several nearby State Forests, too. And it’s only 55 miles from Daytona Beach to
old St. Augustine. It was founded in
1565, imagine that. Hmmmm... maybe Larry
would like to go to the Living Legends Auto Racing Museum?
Saturday, I went to Hobby Lobby and got
fabric to make a pleated table runner and matching placemats for a wedding gift
for my great-niece and her fiancé, Jamie and Mark. I found some long Hotfix crystals to put into
the lighthouse panes, and a Prismatic ink dye pen that I thought would work
crackerjack to blot out the few embroidery stitches where I accidentally sewed
clear through to the back. And of course
the thread is very dark; the back is very light. Problem:
the ink dye doesn’t cover anything.
The dark brown thread looks just as dark brown as always, but damp from
the dye. Dye soaks in and blends; paint
covers. I will have to get an off-white
paint pen. I put the Prismatic into my
box with my silk ribbon and beading parapher-nalia; I’ll use it when I’m
embroidering with silk ribbon someday.
Next, I found the AQS tutorial that
gives the exact measurements and directions for making a hanging sleeve, cut
it, sewed it, and affixed it to the top of the quilt. This last step must be done by hand, and it
seemed to take forever to sew those 156 inches down.
Larry worked in the morning, then spent
the remainder of the day helping Caleb get his pickup and the Jeep he’ll tow on
a trailer ready for their vacation to Colorado.
Late Saturday night, Lydia sent me a
note: they were taking Jonathan to the
hospital, because he was wheezing and having troubles breathing. He got a steroid shot and a nebulizer
treatment, and was feeling a little better by the next day. Yes, the poor little boy has asthma. :-\
Friends from Victory Baptist Church in
Kansas City visited our church Sunday, and their Pastor Justice preached for
our morning service. Since we had
visitors, we extra music, including a medley on viola and violin, and the band
playing during the second service.
We had a ‘brown bag lunch’ at noon, and
since the Fellowship Hall is torn down now while construction of our new school
and Fellowship Hall is being done, tables were set up in various rooms and the
library.
Then we went back for the next service
– what normally would be our evening service – at 1:15 p.m. Before the last song, Amy’s brother Kyle
played his trumpet, and Penny played the piano.
Speaking of piano-playing for
church... Back in the Old Days, I played
the piano for church {♫ ♪ Long, Long Ago, ♫ ♪ Loooong Ago ♫ ♪ }. Every now and then, one of my favorite
blunders would show up anew and afresh: there
I’d be with the book right straight in front of me, people singing the words,
so I should’ve been able to clearly see what verse we were on and how many were
left – but sometimes I must not have wanted the song to end yet, because I launched
into verse 5 when there were only four verses on the page.
The really embarrassing time was when
there were already five verses to a looong song, Haven of Rest, and I started
on verse 6.
All eyes rolled piano-ward.
Loren was leading the song
service. He turned to me and asked, “You
think it wasn’t quite long enough?”
Everyone laughed.
Ah, well. I wasn’t awfully stuck-up and conceited that day,
at least.
We went home for a couple of hours
after the service... then went back to our friend Tom Tucker’s shop, Precision
Unibody, for supper. This is the downstairs
and balcony area; there is another big room upstairs, too.
I took a picture of Grant, Leroy, and
Josiah after the supper, then showed them the photo on my camera screen, pointing at each of them,
starting with Josiah, and said, “This is Scalawag 1, Scalawag 2, and Scalawag
3.”
Three little heads, close together,
watched my finger. When I got to Grant,
he exclaimed, “No, it’s a firetruck!!!”
(in the front middle of his shirt)
Today, Labor Day, we headed off to the
Sandhills. Destination: Nebraska National Forest at Halsey.
I’m tired. Last night every time I allllmost fell
asleep, either Larry’s snoring, Teensy’s meowing, a mouse’s chewing (stupid
thing! – he’s in the wall somewhere!), and/or my own pain in the neck (literally)
woke me up. So I finally got up at 4:00
and got ready to go. I was ready by 5:00
– and that’s when Larry’s alarm went off.
We planned to leave at 7:00 a.m.
But Larry had to go to Caleb’s house to get the trailer he would haul
the four-wheeler on, and by the time he came back home, loaded and strapped
down the four-wheeler and kayak, and we got all our paraphernalia loaded, it
was 8:00. I didn’t complain too loudly,
though, because it gave me the opportunity to take a nap from 7:00-8:00.
It’s a dark, foggy morning. I like fog.
It reminds me of a book I read when I was young, in which the fog was
described so poetically, I could hardly wait for it to be foggy at my house, so
I could imagine the author’s words all over again.
It rained a bit, and then we saw blue
sky. Larry got turned around
(direction-wise) in the little town of Taylor after we stopped at a convenience
store, and drove north on Rte. 183 instead of continuing west on Rte. 91. After some time, I wondered vaguely why we
weren’t there yet. Then we came to an
odd junction that I didn’t remember seeing on the map. I picked it up, looked for Basset ... and found
it, 86 miles northeast of the spot where we should have been.
Oh, well. It was an extra hour of driving, but we got
to go where I had wanted to go in the first place: Smith Falls.
We drove through a campground near Long
Pine – just across the road from the cabin we stayed in last April – to see
what kind of accommodations they have, should we want to return someday. The road was bumpy, and the trailer, laden
with ATV and kayak, rattled noisily.
“Trailer dump,” Victoria read on a sign. “You can get rid of it over there.”
We bought some Reese’s candy bars to
tide us over until supper. Aacckk, they
were too, too, cloyingly sweet.
“Ugh!” said Larry. “Do we have something else to eat, to get
that taste out of my mouth? Can you hand
me the potato salad or the yogurt?” he asked Victoria.
She peered over the seat into the back
of the Jeep. “Can’t reach the cooler,”
she informed her father. “Just suck your
thumb.” haha
The old Verdigre Bridge has been
reassembled over the Niobrara River as a footbridge to Smith Falls, Nebraska’s
tallest waterfall at 63 feet. As one
walks along the boardwalk in the canyon toward the falls, the sound of the
waterfalls, both the Smith and a couple of shorter, unnamed falls, echo through
the trees. The temperature starts
dropping until, rounding the final curve on the walk, one sees the falls ahead,
and starts to feel the spray from the water.
By the time we left Smith Falls State
Park, we were half starved half to death.
We hunted for a restaurant in the little town of Thedford, population
204, but all two of them – The Cowpoke, and The Lonely Grill – were
closed. So we got our supper at a
convenience store: burritos (waaaay too
much dough – I ate the insides and left most of the gooey, undercooked stuff behind),
yogurt with big sliced strawberries and chunks of granola bar (best yogurt I ever
tasted in my life – it almost made up for the gooey, undercooked burrito), an apple
fritter, V8 cocktail juice, and cranapple juice. Larry’s burrito shouldn’t have been undercooked;
he left it in the microwave too long, and it blew up. :-D
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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