Trip to Kansas and Oklahoma

Caleb broke a couple of bones in his foot playing basketball last week, and he’s been hobbling around in a walking boot.  Fortunately, there are some jobs he can do at Walkers’ shop, and last week when we were gone, he drove Larry’s truck – he just got his CDL last year.

I was quite pleased with some of the grandchildren’s Christmas gifts that arrived last week (I hope I didn’t run down the battery on that cute police car and police station set, heh)... but I always wonder, what happens if one little person sees one of his cousin’s gifts, and thinks it looks a whole lot bigger and better than his own?  I tried to spend the same amount on each child – but their gifts aren’t the same size, exactly.  One little boy’s present, a wooden work bench with tools, really isn’t big enough.  I’ll order something else to go with it.

One good thing:  at our Christmas get-togethers, there are enough people, and enough things going on, that kids can barely keep track of their own presents, never mind who gave what to which cousin.

Or at least I hope that’s the way it is.

I do try hard to be fair!

Recently, I ordered a kit from www.snorestop.com for Larry.  It comes with tablets, nose spray, and throat spray.  The theory is to use each, then decide which works best.

A friend, knowing I’d ordered this kit, wrote and asked, “How is Larry’s snoring?”

“Larry’s snoring?” I answered.  “Why, it’s fine!  Fine and dandy!  In fact, he’s going at it right this moment, as I type!  ZZZZZzzzzOOONNNNNNKKKKK--bbbbbbbzzt.  ZZZZZzzzzOOONNNNNNKKKKK--bbbbbbbzzt.  ZZZZZzzzzOOONNNNNNKKKKK--bbbbbbbzzt.  In, out, in out, nice and rhythmical.  Heh!”

Actually, the stuff does seem to help – if he remembers to take it.  The reason for his snoring is more likely allergies than sleep apnea, I think.  He used to hesitate between snores, and that really worried me.  But he doesn’t do that so much anymore.  He lost 10-15 pounds a few years back; that helped.

Larry says I snore, too!  I say, Don’t listen to him!  Ladies never snore!  Besides, I’ve certainly never heard me snoring. 

I think the cause in my case (if there is such a thing as ‘my case’) is the osteoporosis that is misshaping my neck.  My throat has become tighter in the last two or three years, making such things as swallowing a little more difficult.  So, in view of that, people should just feel sorry for me if indeed I snore.  Right?  Right??

I’ve gotten used to it, pretty much.  Just have to be careful to eat politely, don’t take big bites, chew carefully, don’t turn my head when swallowing – all the stuff Emily Post would teach us, if we’d ever read her book.  Rub a little IcyHot and Absorbine Jr. on my neck... and I’m in business.

I just slathered my neck with Old Goat pain relieving spray... that wasn’t enough, so I mixed Absorbine Jr. with it.  Ahhhhh... nice and hot.  That’s bettah.

Teensy cat is delighted with the boxes that have been arriving.  A little while ago, he walked from one to the other, where they’re sitting in the living room.  I’d opened them, looked at everything, but put the items back into the boxes.  Nary a one was empty. 

Teensy turned and gave me a piercing stare.  “MmmmmrrrrOWWW!” he stated, and rubbed his cheek on a box flap, still staring at me.

“You need a box?” I asked him.

“Mrrow-ow-rrr-ow!” he affirmed.

I pulled a couple of boxed Lego sets from one big corrugated box and propped the flaps up against each other.  “MrrrrRRRowW!” Teensy exclaimed in delight – and in he went.  He played in and around that box for some time before Victoria kidnapped (catnapped?) him and took him to bed with her.  He peered at me over Victoria’s shoulder as she headed up the stairs with him, long rear legs hanging down, top part of him lopped over her arm and shoulder.  Then he squinted and I saw his paws flexing – a sure sign he was purring.  He’s the biggest cat we’ve had by far, but his purring is ever so quiet.  Little dinky Tabby, on the other hand, purrs like a rusty old John Deere tractor, circa 1932.

I have a Christmas tree story—this is an excerpt from my journal of 11-26-12:

Yesterday, Victoria put up the Christmas tree and decorated it.  It’s now twinkling away in our living room, wondering where its skirt has gotten to.  (Where is that thing?)  (Probably with the tree that got lost, several years ago.)  (Huh?  Haven’t you ever lost a tree??) 

* [Note from today:  this is why I am making a Christmas tree skirt.]

I remember helping set up our Christmas tree when I was little, and getting shards of glass insulation between my fingers from the foamy colored things we put over those big colored light bulbs.  I didn’t like that, but I did like the effect of the soft foamy things. 

When our older children were little, I got bubble lights.  Those were so nifty. . .  I stood there with the kiddos and watched… and watched… 

Lydia, being born on June 25th, was a year and a half on Christmas Day, 1992.  A month earlier, while she napped, we set up our Christmas tree, all the older children helping.  We finished the last icicle and bauble just about the time I heard the baby’s crib squeaking, telling me she was waking up.  I went to get her, while someone turned off the room lights and flicked on the Christmas tree lights. 

I told her, “Our Christmas tree is all set up in the living room!  Do you want to see it?”

She smiled and nodded.  I scooped her up… walked down the hall…  “Just look!” I said.

Her eyes were already big, because all the lights were off.  We walked around the corner, and there was the beautiful tree in all its glory, twinkling away. 

Her small mouth went into a little round circle:  “Ooooo...  Pretty, pretty.”

We all stood silently and looked at our tree admiringly.

And then, suddenly, the star atop the tree lost its moorings, tilted, tipped, and slowly, slowly, tumbled down the side of the tree, to hang upside down near the bottom.

“OH!!!” I cried, “You looked too hard!”

The child’s eyes got bigger than ever, and she turned to stare at me in amazement.  Then the older children laughed, and she realized I was pulling her leg. 

She looked somberly into my face, and said, “Mama.” in an admonishing tone.

The other children howled with laughter.

Ever since, we’ve always told her (whenever it seemed the least bit appropriate), “Don’t look too hard!”  She remembers that happening – probably because no one ever let her forget it.

*   *   *

{A number of the photos in this letter were taken on our trip to Oklahoma Thursday through Sunday, as was this picture of a wind turbine blade, of which we saw many.}

Retelling the above story made me feel all Christmasy and stuff; so I had to look up another story... and here it is:

One Christmas 22 years ago, I got our little manger scene off the shelf where I had stored it.  My late sister-in-law had given it to us the first Christmas we were married, and I treasured it.  The children helped to carefully unwrap the ceramic pieces from the cloths in which I had enveloped them.  They duly admired the pieces, from the majestic kings on their camels to the little lamb that Hester, age 4, placed beside the smallest shepherd boy so it didn’t get ‘losted’.

But the children’s favorite was Baby Jesus.

There was a pause as Teddy, age 10, pulled it from its cloth and they all looked at the Baby’s beautiful face.  The artist who had created the little set had truly done a wonderful job, especially on little Jesus.

Once the figurines were removed from the box, the stable, in which they’d been nestled, could be lifted out and set up.  Keith, the oldest at 13, set it on one of the end tables, and then the children turned to retrieve the small statues from the table upon which they’d laid them.

Hannah, who was 12, put Mary and Joseph against the middle back of the little structure, and Teddy arranged the Wise Men on the right side of it.

“I thought we usually put the shepherds on that side,” objected Dorcas, 11, poised to do so with the three in her hands.

Teddy adjusted one just so and then turned to look at his sister.  “They have to come from the east,” he informed her, and indeed they were coming from the east.

She gave it a moment’s thought and then nodded seriously.  The shepherds went on the left, and Hester scurried to put the lamb with his master, “before he gets scared and baa-aa-aa-aas,” she said, sounding quite like a little lamb herself.

Joseph, age 8, set the donkey, the cow, and the sheep in their places, and then it was time for the Most Important Piece of all:  Baby Jesus.

Hannah reached for it.

It wasn’t there.

The table was empty; nothing was on it at all.

“Where’s Baby Jesus?” asked Hannah.

Hester turned and looked at the table.  Then, all in an alarmed panic, “Baby Jesus is losted!!!” she howled.

“But we just had it,” breathed Dorcas in distressed horror.

Someone has simply misplaced it, I thought, and looked quickly around the room.

There was Lydia, just 2 ½, sitting in her favorite little wooden chair, the tiny figurine cradled in the crook of one arm while her other hand was wrapped protectively around it.  She was rocking gently back and forth, and we had stopped talking suddenly enough that we all heard her singing sweetly, “Little Baby in the manger, I love you!”

Then, realizing everything had gotten very quiet, her head popped up, a questioning look on her face.  Her eyes fell on the stable, and then it dawned on her:  Baby Jesus was the only figure missing.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, jumping to her feet, “Here He is, I has Him!”

As we had done for many years, we allowed the youngest able child to place the Baby in the stable.  That was Lydia, since Caleb was only 2 months old.  Her eyes shone with delight as she carefully laid manger and Baby directly in front of Mary and Joseph in the spot saved for Him.

I went to the piano, everyone gathered ’round, and we sang a few Christmas songs.

*   *   *

A friend, upon reading those stories, told me I should publish my writing.

I have tried publishing this and that, but publishers weren’t interested, the ignorant clods.  heh  I keep writing.  Maybe 500 years from now, one of my 35th great-grandchildren will publish my scribblings and become filthy rich. 

Tuesday afternoon, I baked a Harvest berry/peach pie from Schwan’s.  That evening, I took a slice to my brother, along with some jello and vegetables.  He had roast beef from my sister, so he told me not to bring any meat for him.

Wednesday I worked on the next appliquéd flower for the Buoyant Blossoms BOM (Block of the Month).  I picked up five little grandchildren at school at 3:30... we had a church service that evening...  there were dishes to wash... all the boxes that had arrived via FedEx and USPS needed to be taken downstairs...  and the maid hadn’t come to scrub the tub and sweep the floors.

When we got home from church, Kurt and Victoria were already here, along with his brother Jared, and Victoria had made a yummy vegetable/scrambled egg dish.

Later that night, I finished the Coneflower Appliqué.  It’s here, if you’d like to download a pdf file:  http://sarahlynnsquilting.blogspot.com/2015/12/coneflower-applique.html

I posted the pictures and pdf file, and headed for bed.  That is, I intended to, but ‘had to’ wait a couple of minutes, on account of Teensy making bread on my lap, purring away.  I couldn’t interrupt him!  Not right away, at least. 

Five minutes later, he was still going at it. 

I decided I could interrupt him, and so I did.  It was 4:00 a.m.  I would sleep until 9:30 or 10:00; that would be alllllmost enough sleep. 

If I sleep longer than 7 hours, I’m so stiff I can hardly clamber from the feathers, and I creep around like a wooden puppet for a couple of hours.  Less than 6, and I need a nap later.  I don’t like ‘naps later’.

Thursday morning, I listed last month’s appliqué flower, the Rose, on Scribd.com for $5.00.  A few hours later, it sold.  Wheeeeeeeee!!!  My first pattern sale!  ♪ ♫ I’m a-gonna be rich, ♪ ♫ filthy rich, ♪ ♫ uh-huh, ♪ ♫ I’m a-gonna! ♪ ♫

My patterns probably won’t make any big bucks, but if I get enough of them listed on Etsy and Scribd and who-knows-where-else, maybe I’ll finally have a small trickle.  Small trickles can ward off a drought, you know.  The more patterns I have for sale, the more I’ll sell, right?  So I’d better get more designed and posted!

’Course Scribd took a dollar as their share, and I have since discovered that people often hack Scribd for downloads people are selling in order to get them free; there are instructions plastered all over the Internet.  Soooo...

But the lady who bought it wouldn’t do that.  In fact...  the lady who bought it couldn’t even get it downloaded.  She eventually sent me her email address, and I emailed her the pattern.  I don’t know what the glitch was, on the Scribd page.

Okay.  If I design a million more patterns, and sell one each, every day, I’ll make $4,000,000.00 per day.  Right?  Right.

So I’d bettah get a-crackin’, hmmm?

Oh...  I made an Etsy store, too.  So that means I should sell twice the number of patterns.  Right?  Right.

999,999 more patterns, selling two a day, and I’ll make $8,000,000.00 per day!!!

  You know, there’s no need to design that many patterns.  I could just sell a million of this one! 

I am STBRF!  (Soon to be Rich and Famous)

Thursday, I packed our things in preparation of going with Larry to Wichita, Kansas, and Idabel, Oklahoma, to pick up snips & snails & puppydog tails (i.e., toys for boys) for him and for Maria’s father, Dwight, who owns an auto-body repair/rebuilding shop.

Actually, what we were going to get had something to do with vehicles and vehicle parts:  a 1991 Suburban Larry purchased on an auction, a van door for Dwight, and a loader bucket setup for one of Larry’s tractors.

We had planned to go the previous weekend, but Kansas got an inch of ice, and Oklahoma got at least seven inches of rain, and there was a lot of flooding.  In Kansas, trees were down, entire rows of power poles fell, and there were many accidents.  All told, there were 14 deaths from that storm.  The weather would be much better this weekend.

Larry got home at 6:30 p.m.  We tossed down our supper (think ‘Garfield-style’), threw our bags into his pickup, and were off.  Well, that is, after Larry cleaned his pickup inside and out, we were off. 

A lady on an online quilting group to which I belong wrote, “I wish I knew your route.  I would so love to meet you.”

I had thought about that lady, when Larry mentioned our destination, as I knew she lived somewhere in Oklahoma.  Wouldn’t she be surprised if she got a knock on her door at, oh, say, 2:30 a.m., and found a couple of haggard and bedraggled travelers on her front porch saying, “We need a bed and a bath, and what do you have for a middle-of-the-night snack, hmmm?”

I’m kidding!  I am.  My Mama taught me better than that. 

I remember what she had to say about a little six-year-old friend of mine who was on the front porch one evening waiting for me to finish eating supper and come back out to play – and while she waited, she had her hands cupped around her eyes and her nose pressed hard against the glass. 

At 11:00 p.m., we went through Geneva.  That’s Nebraska, not Switzerland.  Shortly after midnight, we were too tired to go any farther, so we stopped in Belleville, Kansas.  We learned on this trip that it really is a whole lot cheaper to rent motel rooms for two than for three.  This one was only $50!

One drawback:  they didn’t have free breakfast.  We got breakfast sandwiches from Subway the next morning. 

As we drove along, we saw big hawks on poles and fence posts, everywhere we looked.  I saw a huge bird – thought it was another hawk, at first glance – land in a big tree on a huge nest.  I turned around for another look.  The sun was shining on the bird, and I could clearly see a glistening white head and a shining white tail.  Yep, it was a bald eagle.

We got to Wichita at about 10:30 a.m., and picked up the door for Dwight.  Then we drove back northeast a short distance to load the Suburban onto the trailer.  There was a small hangup (there always is) – before he could drive it onto the trailer, Larry had to jump-start the thing. 

But soon it was loaded.  We left the trailer and Suburban there and headed on south toward Idabel; we would pick it up on the way back home.

That afternoon, almost to Tulsa, I chowed down on a Cherry Nutri-Grain bar.  Somebody hand me the V8 cocktail juice!  It’s in the back seat, and I can’t reach it.  It was for this, that we have taken Victoria along! – to reach stuff in the cooler for us.  heh

I like the hilly, wooded Kiamichi Mountains of Oklahoma.  This mountain range is a subrange of the Ouachita Mountains.  They only rise to 2,500 feet in elevation, but it’s pretty country.  This time of year, the evergreens are all shades of green, and the fields are gold and rust, interspersed with a bright green field of winter wheat every now and then. 

But, just for the record, those multitudes of toll booths are a complete aggravation.  Boooo, hisss!

We planned to stay near Broken Bow that night, down in the southeast corner of Oklahoma, with Arkansas on the east and Texas on the south.

Planning and doing are sometimes different species of animals.  Especially when a) one doesn’t have a compass, b) it’s pitch-black outside, c) one is following a Google map – but winds up in an area where there is no Internet service, d) the route numbers on the road don’t exactly match the route numbers on the map, and e) one’s wife, who thinks she has given you all the directives you will need to get to your targeted stop, edits pictures on her laptop rather than watching road signs.

8:00 p.m. found us in the little town of Heavener, Oklahoma, named for Joseph H. Heavener, who settled in the area about 1877.  We were hungry.  Should we eat at Sonic?  La Magia Del Trigo?  Simple Simon’s Pizza?

And then I saw it:  the Southern Belle Family Diner.

The restaurant is in an honest-to-goodness, beautifully restored, 1905 railcar.  But the best part was the scrumptious food they served.  Larry got a catfish dinner and homemade pie, and I got a Southern Belle crispy chicken chef salad that was so big, I could eat only half of it.  They gave me a carry-out container, and I finished it the next day.

We headed south into Talimena State Park on Rte. 59 – and stayed on 59 when it curved east instead of switching to Rte. 259 going south. 

Oblivious to navigational events, I went on editing photos and writing in my journal.

“Rich Mountain, Arkansas,” read Larry in a conversationally nonchalant voice after some interval.

That brought me out of my doldrums.

“Huh?!” I demanded, as any wayfaring wanderer should do when presented with an odd location.  “We aren’t supposed to be in Arkansas!”

Larry allowed as how he didn’t know that we were in Arkansas. 

“Well, Rte. 259 doesn’t go to Rich Mountain!” I told him.

He calmly drove on.

I clicked rapidly on my map, to no avail.  I was offline, as Larry’s cell had no signal, and I’d been bouncing off his cell for Internet service.  There is something to be said for paper maps.

We drove on.  After all this time, it was probably no farther out of the way to continue than to turn around and go back.

Littered all about us were cute little rentable cabins I would have liked to stay in.

But we drove on.

Finally we got to Mena, Arkansas.  Larry chose a motel (after bypassing several, for unknown reasons – which is precisely the way he chooses [or bypasses] parking lot spaces), we paid for a room, and moved in.

I will say that the room was cheaper than the cabins would have been.  The cheapest cabin I could find online was $75 a night – with a two-night stay required.  The motel room was only $56, and quite satisfactory, though, once again, there would be no free breakfast. 

Now, I for one do not mind winding up on wrong roads, for I love to explore and see new territory.  My biggest complaint was that the sun had gone down too soon!

But we were up and on the road early enough the next morning that we got to see the Ouachita Mountains in all their glory, with the light of the rising sun shining on pastures and woods sparkling with frost.

Remember the bright fuchsia shoes Larry got me in October?  Well, there we were in the southeast corner of Oklahoma, and I walked into a junky little Kwik shop, where I got a big, soft banana nut muffin for breakfast. 

A black man watched me walk in, eyes glued to my shoes, never glancing at my face --- and then he grinned a great, big, white-toothed grin, ear-to-ear ....... still staring at my shoes.  :-D

I grinned back, but I’m not sure he saw me, fixated on my shoes as he was.

I don’t usually wear them out in public... but after a look around the town that morning (Mena, Arkansas, where we stayed overnight), it occurred to me that fuchsia shoes would fit right in with the local population.  And my white-beaded leather loafers (which would also fit right in, there in Choctaw Nation) were hurting my toes... so on went the neon tennies.  They might glow in the dark, but oooooh, are they ever comfortable.  

And in any case, it’s fun to make people grin wherever you go, right?  Never mind whether they’re laughing with you or at you.

We got to Idabel, found the business where the loader attachment was, and someone loaded it onto the pickup with a forklift.  Larry was surprised and pleased that he wound up with an extra attachment that he hadn’t known he would get.

We headed north then, and drove through Hochatown State Park and along Broken Bow Lake.  Beautiful country, with all the wooded hills and lakes and rivers!  I travel with my laptop on my lap, and my camera right beside me.

It was 9:00 p.m. by the time we got to Wichita.  Larry had a couple of gift cards for Cracker Barrel, and wanted to eat supper there. 

“Do you want to put the address into your GPS?” I asked.  “I’m offline; can’t refresh the map.”  For some reason, Larry had a signal, but I couldn’t bounce off his phone and get online.

“Naaaa,” said Larry carelessly, “I know right where it is.”

After driving for a good long while, we topped a hill—and only darkness loomed ahead.  The lights of the city were behind us.

“Uh, you might want to rethink that,” I remarked.  “Cracker Barrel is in the middle of the city.  We are north of Wichita.”

He exited.  This meant stopping at yet another toll booth... paying the toll... turning around... eventually coming back through a different toll booth... collecting a ticket...  Somewhere in there, I discovered I was online again and found Cracker Barrel’s address.  Larry pulled over and put the address into his GPS (on his smartphone). 

We finally got back to Cracker Barrel at about 9:45 p.m., and were seated right in front of a crackling fire in a huge stone fireplace.  Larry had a ‘breakfast skillet’, with eggs, bacon, peppers and other vegetables, and grits and ... ummm... ? something else on the side.  I wound up eating the grits, since he tasted them and decided he didn’t like them – without first adding sugar.  (I kept quite still about this omission, since I’d been dying to have grits for days and days.) 

I had a baked sweet potato with butter and brown sugar, steamed broccoli, and a dish of fresh fruit – pineapple, blackberries, and blueberries.  And a tall glass of orange juice.

Larry ordered a slice of apple/pecan pie, learned it was $3.69 for one slice and $9.99 for an entire pie – and got the whole pie.

We proceeded on to White Water, picked up the trailer with the Suburban, went a few miles north to Newton, Kansas, and stayed overnight at the Days Inn, somehow winding up with a second-floor, two-room suite, including a large ‘living room’ with a little kitchenette, without paying ‘suite’ rates, probably because it was one of the last rooms left. 

Looked impressive, at first glance. 

A second glance at the ‘extra’ room – a living room with a small kitchenette and a big half-round window – revealed it to be a bit threadbare, however.  Literally.  The couches and chairs were of a woven fabric whose weave was nearly separated, and someone had stitched the armrest upholstery back together with gigantic, uh, whatever the opposite of ‘blind stitches’ is.  The half-round window had a long, crooked, diagonal crack running through it, although it looked like someone had tried to ‘repair’ it (possibly with Elmer’s School Glue).  One of the plastic strips that was supposed to make it look like a multi-paned glass had fallen off, and when they painted the sill, they got the paint (peas-porridge-in-the-pot-nine-days-old green) all over the pane.  

One wall of each room was the darker green; the other walls were lighter, um, let’s call it ‘corn blight’.  At the corners where dark met light, the junction was not pretty.  (Looks pretty good in the photo, though, doesn’t it?)

But the bed was comfortable, the heating system worked, the water was hot, ... everything we needed was there, and we didn’t have to pay extra for the threadbare room.  One cannot complain about it, when one did not pay extra for it, can one?  (Yes, one can.  I just did.  Didn’t I?)

This time, there was free breakfast.  Larry brought me a waffle, yogurt, and a banana the next morning, since I was curling my hair, and the breakfast area closed early. 

As we travel, Larry periodically asks for a stick of gum.  He likes Extra Polar Ice.  It cleans his teeth – and has enough sizzle to wake him up a bit, too.  Each time I give him a stick, I do something different with it:  twist it into a spiral... fold it into an L or Z or M shape... or roll it as tight as I can get it.  hee hee  I got good practice at this skill when traveling with my parents, and my father liked Bit-O’-Honey.

I got a good shot of a hawk as he flew directly over our vehicle.  He was being pursued by several smaller birds, or he would never have come so close to our loud pickup.  Oh! – red truck, red truck.     I gotta take pictures of lotsa red trucks, ’cuz a friend teased me one time about a couple of red trucks I’d taken photos of, asking if I was ‘fond of trucks’.  I just liked to include a vehicle in shots now and then, in order to give perspective and a bit of ‘life’ – and red jazzes up a picture.  But once she mentioned it, I was then obligated to shoot every last red truck that came along.  Wasn’t I?

I call them ‘ORTs’ -- ‘Obligatory Red Trucks’.  

We got home at a quarter ’til four Sunday afternoon.  That was too quick a trip!  I wanted to explore.  But... Larry needed to be back at work today, sooo...  that’s the way it was.  Oh, well.  I need to get ready for Christmas anyway. 

I can tell you truthfully, though, I was all sat out!

There was just time enough to bring in the luggage, put it away, don glad rags, and skedaddle off to church.  After the service, we stopped at the grocery store for some ice cream to go on the apple/pecan pie we’d gotten at the Cracker Barrel.

I have a gazillion photos to edit! – though, when taken from the bouncy, jouncy pickup, there are a whole lot more to delete than when taken from the Jeep.  Floating mirror lenses have their limits, you know.

I get all primed up to take a photo... waaait for juuuussst the right instant to snap – and when that instant arrives, down goes my finger at precisely the same instant we hit a pothole whose bottom must be approximately in the very, very middle of the Indian Ocean, about halfway between Australia and Madagascar.  (Yeah, that’s the ‘other side of the world’ from here, not ‘China’, like my brother told me when I was 8.) 

So, depending on exactly what part of this trajectory my finger finds the shutter, I either take a picture of a goose cruising south at 29,000 feet, or a yellow-faced pocket gopher crouching transfixed at the mouth of his burrow, wondering why a red and white pickup with a noisy Cummins diesel engine just took a short and aborted flight into the lower stratosphere.

I sold another pattern this morning! – this time on Etsy.  And Etsy only took 20¢, instead of the whole dollar Scribd took.  Craftsy doesn’t take anything at all!  I need to list it there, too.

The way I make my patterns:  I look at a picture... and draw.  I’m no ‘real’ artist; I have to have something to look at in order to draw anything; but I drew it, and made it different from the picture I was looking at, so that I can say it’s really mine.  That’s what I did with each of the flower designs.  I have my original scribbles to prove it. 

Once my picture is drawn, I then put the ‘scribble’ on my lightbox, lay a blank paper over it, trace the outlines, and number them in the order I think will work best for appliqué.

I drew up the irises block for that little ‘show and tell’ stint with the quilt guild here in town – and I was so pleased with it, and the ladies liked it so well, I offered it as a free download – and so many people took me up on it and begged for more, I decided to start a BOM (Block of the Month).  I made the roses block for November, and the coneflower block for December. 

I’m now racking my brain, trying to decide how many other blocks to offer, how to put them into a unique and pretty quilt that’s not so large it would daunt everybody...  And I’m hoping to make a little dab of money on the patterns, by putting them up for sale after they’ve been free for a month, which is what a lot of quilt-block designers do.

Well, this journal is going to be late, because I decided to put together the Christmas letter first (first draft, anyway), since I had all the old journals up, drawing various items from them, and was working on it as we drove.  There were enough documents open that it was making Word run vewy, vewy sluggish.  But I didn’t want to close anything before I’d finished with it, for fear of losing my place. 

The bird feeders are refilled... pictures taken of the acrobatic squirrel getting into the feeder, losing his grip, and going south – with a flurry of seeds all suspended in midair (well, suspended in the photo, at least)... (he did manage to land on the big supporting beams at the edge of the deck, as opposed to the ground, one story down)... and a load of clothes put into the washer... and now I am curling my hair (so as not to frighten the resident felines).  

Soon it will be time to go the bank and then to pick up five little Jackson kiddos from school.  They’re such sweethearts... 

***

And now, suddenly and without warning, it is 7:00 p.m.  All the clothes are washed, dried, folded, and put away.  How many loads was that?  4?  5?  Dunno.

Larry’s workclothes are heavy enough when they’re dry, but when they’re wet, they weigh a ton.  Victoria was laughing at me the other day when I was tugging away at some jeans and a sweatshirt in the washer – and happened to have my foot on a dryer sheet.  The dryer sheet slipped, and I nearly tumbled headfirst into the washer. 

Now to finish my Christmas letter.  The main draft is done, but it’s way too long [of course], so now I must go through it and delete, delete, delete.  I’m going to be giving out right at 130 cards.  Only 30 of them will be mailed, though; the rest go to church.  There will be big paper grocery sacks (remember those?) set up with family names written on them, and those of us who bring cards will sort ours into them (goes fast, since the bags are in alphabetical order and so are my cards)... and then after our Christmas program, the children and young people will dole out the bags to the proper families.

I will tuck the photos I just ordered into my cards, along with a photo/music DVD that I have yet to make – and that’s my gift to my friends.  The Ten Commandments bookmarks that I ordered for Loren to tuck into his cards arrived today; that’ll be his gift to the friends he gives cards to (and my gift to him is the cards, the bookmarks, and the addressing of them for him).

Here’s what’s fun about this:  because I always give my friends pictures, they give pictures to me.  That’s one of my favorite things:  getting photos of my friends – sometimes just the children, sometimes the entire family.  I love going home after the program and plowing through all those pretty Christmas cards and photos.  I work up a rhythm worthy of Peppermint Patty and her true/false tests (remember her getting so exuberant she’d wind up standing atop her desk?):  rip open the envelope, put envelop in this pile, card in this one, photo over here.  Rip! – envelope, card, photo.  Envelope, card, photo.

One Christmas I got foiled, though.  A friend who had seen me doing that, really flying through things at top velocity, ... ... ... filled her envelope plumb full of tiny, glittering confetti in the shape of teensy weensy Christmas trees, stars, reindeer, and wee Santas.

I tell you, I was covered from head to toe with trees, stars, reindeer, and wee Santas, as was the room around me.  It took days, weeks, months, before I got it all swept up. 

Better believe I swept it, too, rather than vacuuming it --- because of course it had to go right back into an envelope for her, next Christmas.  heh! 

An elderly friend of mine used to think that if she packaged up a bunch of photos into an email and shipped them off to me via the big ol’ scary world-wide web, they were then no longer in her possession, and if she still wanted them, I’d probably have to print them out and give them to her the next time I visited.

Hannah sent me a picture of Levi, studiously curling ribbon, writing, “Found a job he can do.”  I remember when Janice, my late sister-in-law, showed me how to curl ribbon.  I was sooo delighted.

{Note:  You know, you’re probably living too easy a life when the biggest aggravation all day is a radio that’s narrow enough it tips over every time you wiggle the cord.  But it is aggravatin’!  It is, it is!!}

Loren has sent us a Christmas gift already – pears, cheese, and mixed nuts from Harry & David.  They bill their pears as ‘the best in the world’, and I do believe they’re right.  Mmmm...

My goodness, I’m longwinded.

There will be a pop quiz later.  

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