February Photos

Monday, February 15, 2016

Cakes, Colds, Conjunctivitis, Crocheting, Kalanchoes, and Cats

Flowers are blooming in my washroom.  These are the tiny blossoms on the Kalanchoe my former boss at Megavision gave me for Secretary’s Day.
Well, we’ve made up our minds... we really are going to Florida next week.
Now, when one leaves the middle of the Cornland in middle-to-late February, heading to Florida, it should be freezing cold here, and nice and warm there.  Right?  Just as, when one leaves middle Cornland for the High Country in the middle of the summer, it should be smotheringly hot here, and nice and cool there.  Right?
Well, guess what?  It’s going to be in the high 40s and 50s – almost up to 60° – here this coming week.  A couple of years ago when we went to the Rockies, we were gone during a particularly balmy week here in Nebraska.  Timing is off. 
One of the things I’m looking forward to is seeing all the birds.  I’ve been looking at Florida bird sanctuaries, wildlife refuses, and admiring pictures of parrots and parakeets in all colors of the rainbow.  Here’s a good website:  Birds of Florida
When Joseph was little, I asked him what he wanted for his upcoming 3rd birthday. 
“A dween wobbin!” he announced. 
So...  I went to Earl May and got him the brightest green parakeet I could find.  A real, honest-to-goodness, living, breathing parakeet.  He was amazed and delighted.  We called the bird Chalcedony (a green gem).
Last week, Norma bought a couple of cakes from Rachel, one of her other Jackson granddaughters, to give Grant and Emma for their birthdays.  Amy sent me photos.  Thinking I recognized Rachel’s handiwork, I inquired as to who made the cakes.
Amy replied, “I’d like to say I made them – but Rachel did!” 
That reminded me of the following story:

Alice Grayson was to bake a cake for the Baptist Church Ladies’ Group she’d recently joined in Tuscaloosa, but she forgot to do it until the last minute.  She remembered it the morning of the bake sale and, after searching through various cabinets, she found an angel food cake mix and quickly made it while drying her hair and dressing and helping her son pack up for Scout camp.
When Alice took the cake from the oven, the center had dropped flat and the cake was horribly disfigured.  There was no time to bake another cake.
This cake was important to Alice because she did so want to fit in at her new church, and in her new community of friends.  So, being inventive, she looked around the house for something to build up the center of the cake.
Alice found it in the bathroom-- a roll of toilet paper.  She plunked it into the middle and then covered it with icing.  Not only did the finished product look nice, it looked perfect.
Before she left the house to drop the cake by the church and head for work, Alice woke her daughter and gave her some money and specific instructions to be at the bake sale the moment it opened at 9.30 a.m., and to buy the cake and bring it home.
When the daughter arrived at the sale, she found the attractive, perfect cake had already been sold.  Amanda grabbed her cell phone and called her mom.  Alice was horrified.  She was beside herself.  Everyone would know.  What would they think?  She would be ostracized, talked about, ridiculed.  That night Alice lay awake in bed thinking about people pointing their fingers at her and talking about her behind her back.  A roll of toilet paper in the middle of an angel food cake.
The next day, Alice promised herself that she would try not to think about the cake and she would attend the fancy luncheon/bridal shower to which she’d been invited, and try to have a good time.  Alice did not really want to attend because the hostess was a snob who more than once had looked down her nose at Alice because of her status as a single parent who was not from the founding families of Tuscaloosa; but having already said she’d come, she could not think of a believable excuse to stay home.
The meal was elegant, the company was definitely upper crust Old South.  And then, to Alice’s horror, The Cake was presented for dessert.  Alice’s cake.  The Toilet Paper Roll Cake.  Alice felt the blood drain from her face when she saw that cake.  She started out of her chair to tell the hostess all about it, but before she could get to her feet, the Mayor’s wife said, “What a beautiful cake!”  
Alice, still stunned, sat back in her chair when she heard the hostess, a prominent church member, say, “Thank you; I baked it myself.”
Alice sat very still while that registered.  And then she smiled and whispered very quietly, “Thank you, Lord.”​

Remember our discussion a while back about funny typos?  Well, here’s one to add to the list:  A friend wrote, “I’m up and trying to get a gripe on the morning...”  hee hee
She’s a dear, and I would never make fun of her... but that is funny.
(And go ahead and make fun of my typos now.  I’m sure to make several, having laughed about that one.)
Look what Hannah crocheted for Emma’s doll:
That makes me want to learn to crochet!
Tuesday evening, I did some quilting for a customer on a piece of flag-print fabric, using a pantograph called ‘Twinkling Star’.
Wednesday, I washed the laundry and the dishes, then packaged up a small bear of Dorcas’ that she’d like to have now.  It’s an adorable little stuffed thing with raggedy fur, and he’s holding a wooden honey pot, and there’s honey spilling all over his paws and even on his head.  The honey is rubbery, made from hot glue, I think.  There’s a fuzzy little honey bee on his head and another on the edge of the pot, both sporting teeny tiny wiggle eyes.
Then, after a couple of minutes to watch a cute bunny out in the front yard giving himself a bath, scrubbing at his face and long ears with his little paws, I got back to work on the Christmas tree skirt, starting a Lone Star for the center.  I enjoy choosing fabrics for the next phase of a project.  I don’t think I’ve ever made a Lone Star of satins and taffetas before.  I wonder how I’m ever going to quilt this thing?  Perhaps I’ll have to do it on my DSM, on account of the ‘doo-dads’ all over it.
There are always things that get in the way of progress on certain projects – such as wedding gifts (people are forever insisting on getting married, tsk), clothes washing (people are forever insisting on wearing clean clothes, tsk), supper fixing (people are forever insisting on eating, tsk), and dolly clothes (now, those were a necessity). 
An online quilting friend wrote to tell me about all the birds she’d seen in her yard that morning – birds that included ibis, painted bunting, parrots, myna, and, she said, small ones she calls ‘tweet tweets’.  hee hee
That reminds me of a story in a birding magazine about a couple who went on a birding tour in Africa.  The guide pointed out one exotic bird after another.  One that showed up fairly often was an ‘elbebee’, though no one in the group ever got a good look at it.
When they got back to their lodge, they were all comparing notes, and looking in their bird books for details on the birds they’d seen.  Unable to find the elusive elbebee in any of their books, one in the group inquired of a manager at the hotel, “What is this ‘elbebee’, and can you tell me what section of my bird book I might find it in?”
The manager laughed.  “Oh, that’s the LBB!  That’s what the tour guides call any of the Little Brown Birds they are unable to identify, since there are so many of them, so similar, and so hard to tell apart.” 
Friday I went on putting together the large Lone Star.  Each elongated diamond of the star is comprised of 45 small diamonds (cut at 2 ½” x 1 ½”), so there will be 360 diamonds in all.
Did you know that satins, taffetas, and brocades are slippery??  Furthermore, some fabrics are stretchy; some are not.  I was on diamond #3, and getting better at it as I went along.  I think.
Upstairs, Victoria was scrubbing the house till it sparkled.  She had part of a fancy meal already fixed – she was making an early Valentine’s Day supper for Kurt, with enough food for all of us.  She even bought candles for the table.
I took a break to pay bills and make a fresh pot of Cameron’s French vanilla crème coffee, then returned to the sewing machine.  I wrote to a friend, “Help yourself, the coffeemaker’s right over there on the counter.  You might wanna take your shoes off before you walk on Victoria’s shining floor, though; you wouldn’t want her to take after you with the mop!”
If I ever happen to be filling up coffee cups and ask Larry, “Where’s your mug?” he makes the goofiest face he can muster, turns it toward me, and says, “Right here.”
By 6:00 p.m., the rows for diamond #3 were done and looking good.  Next, I joined them, trying to match up points.  Matching points on satin diagonals isn’t exactly a walk in the park.  Some points match... and some points, ----- well, ah’m gonna be a-lookin’ ze othah way, ah am, ah am!
Victoria brought me a plate of her delicious supper – smoked salmon on a bed of rice on baby spinach leaves with a side of asparagus broiled in butter and almonds.  She made a fruit dish of cream cheese, graham cracker crust crumbles, and frozen berries.  They must’ve gotten full, because the cherry cheese cake – in a heart-shaped pan – was still in the refrigerator when they went off to Wal-Mart.
By 9:30 p.m., I was pinning together the rows for diamond #4. 
When the kids came back to have their dessert, Victoria had something else with which to decorate the table:  a bouquet of big, beautiful red roses from Kurt.  He also gave her a soft, dark mauve hoodie.
Saturday, Dorcas sent me photos of some framed artwork she’s hung in their nursery – three of Winnie-the-Pooh, and one of Piglet, Winnie-the-Pooh, Tigger, and Eeyore.  Todd’s old art teacher made them for Todd and Dorcas’s nursery, giving them the choice of having him paint it right on the wall, or put it into frames.  They chose frames so they could always keep them. 
Late that night, I got the large diamonds for the Lone Star center of the Christmas tree skirt finished and ready to be sewn together.
Our artificial tree has a slender trunk, so the hole in the middle of the skirt will only take out some of the blue fabric.  The plus side of this is that nobody will ever know if the middle points mismatched, or what a bad hump there might’ve been in the middle of the star!  It would’ve probably wound up like this:
Sunday, February 14, Valentine's Day, was Lawrence and Norma’s 25th wedding anniversary.  We gave them a book called Apples of Gold, a book of poems and proverbs and short stories by Jo Petty.
Excuse me a moment... Tabby wants out.  He tells me this by batting at a cord that hangs against the wall near the door.
Sometimes on cold, cold days, the cats meow at the front door... I open it, an Arctic gale whistles in, the cats leap backwards in alarm and amazement, and then sit down and look at me reproachfully.  I shut the door... the cats trot to the back door. 
“Meowwrrr, we want out back here; it’s summer back here!  Right?  Mrrrrowww!”
At Jeremy and Lydia’s house, everyone has bad colds.  The boys had conjunctivitis last week.  The new baby will be arriving any day, and Lydia feels like she’s getting pneumonia.
What do you call this insect?  When I was little, people around here called the Armadillidiida (aka roly poly, aka pill bug, aka doodle bug) ‘potato bug’.  I see from Google images that we were not the only ones who called them that; but the ‘real’ potato bug is a member of the ant family, and looks considerably different than the roly poly.  This odd little insect will roll quickly into a small ball if frightened.  
(Did you know ‘roly-poly’ – with a hyphen – is a steamed pudding made from suet pastry containing jam or fruit?) 
Well, before I learned what the correct names for this little insect were, I taught the wrong name to all my kids. 
One day when Caleb was about 3 years old, we were getting ready for church.  I scooped him up, plunked him onto the bathroom counter, and set about combing his hair.  I had on a favorite sweater that had hand-embroidered pastel flowers all over the bottom front, and little satin-stitched lumps (technical term meaning ‘small mound of embroidery thread’) here and there over the rest of it. 
As I combed his hair, Caleb traced flowers with a finger.  “I really like your sweater, Mama,” he told me.  He touched one of the aforementioned ‘lumps’.  “Especially these little potato bugs.” 
His sisters screeched with laughter – and they’ve called that sweater ‘Mama’s potato-bug sweater’ ever after.  Yeah, I still have it... and they still remember.
Lydia is making a quilt for the new baby.  It has appliquéd rocking horses on some of the blocks, black on white, with touches of aqua.  Some of the black is in a small chevron print.  The rest of the blocks are pieced. 
I told her, “If it’s a girl, you’ll have to tie pink bows around the necks of all those horsies.”
She laughed and said, “Or give it to Jonathan.  He said, ‘Oh!  Horsies!  They’re mine!’  (nod nod)  ‘They’re mine!’”
Her little boys are sentimental about things anyone makes for them.  That’s probably a direct result of their Mama being just the same.  Always has been. 
One time I was hard at work on Easter dresses when along came Lydia, age 5, carrying her favorite little stuffed Sharpei puppy.  She said in her serious, big-blue/gray-eyed way, “Rumply Bob-Bobby needs a toy!  Could you make him one, please?”
Well, I seldom turned down my children when they asked for something so sincerely.  I decided that a toy for Rumply Bob-Bobby was more important than Easter dresses that afternoon.  So while Lydia was at Kindergarten, I rummaged through my fabric, and came up with brown burlap and some soft red fuzzy stuff.  With the burlap, I made a bone.  I put a small lid in each end with a pebble in the lid, so it rattled.  With the red fuzzy stuff, I made a ball, and put a couple of jingle bells inside it.  There was just enough red fabric left to make Lydia a circle skirt.  I was putting in the last of the hem stitches when the children got home from school.
If you could’ve seen the look on that little girl’s face when I gave her those things, you’d have known I was right:  a ball and a bone for Rumply-Bob-Bobby and a circle skirt for Rumply’s mistress was of infinite more value than any ol’ Easter dress.
“Is that baby going make his Grand Entry when we are in Daytona Beach?????!!!” I asked Lydia.
“Hopefully before then,” she answered.
As usual, people are telling her they hope she has a girl, since she has ‘only boys’.  This, she finds offensive, and I don’t blame her.  First, she doesn’t want her little boys to hear such talk.  But even more importantly, she believes God gave her those sweet little boys.  “God made them and graciously granted me the responsibility of raising them, and for that I am most humbled.  It’s not up to me to decide what I want the next one to be.  You know, they don’t grow on trees!”  Then she added, “So there.  Now I will go have a t-shirt made with that written on it.” 
Teensy is sick.  He has a bad cold – feline upper respiratory infection, actually, which is a lot like human influenza.  He keeps sneezing, breathing with mouth, and his eyes are watering.  Every one of our cats – except our first calico kitty that never went outside – have had it, several more than once.  It’s always a worry, since it can be fatal.  Cats aren’t quite as important as people, I know; but we like him!  Larry picked up some medicine for him today at the veterinary’s office.  I’ve given him three doses so far he’s already better, thankfully.  Makes me feel so bad when one of our pets is sick, obviously feeling unwell.  He’s such a sweet-tempered cat.
It’s the same medicine – Clindacure – that they gave him two weeks ago for the bad bite he got (an infected bite, by the way, can bring on this respiratory illness).  I had half a bottle left; I could have been giving it to him!  But I looked it up online, and never saw a single suggestion for using that stuff for respiratory distress; it was only listed as a medicine for infection in cuts, scrapes, bites, punctures.  Bother!  Had I known, I could have been dosing him for two days!  Poor kitty.  Why do they insist on getting sick or hurt when the vet’s office is closed??
This afternoon, progress on this, that, and the other thing was stymied for a little while, because I kept staring out the window, wondering why the neighbor man was snow-blowing a tall drift --- in his ditch, beside the lane.  ??  He wasn’t one bit happy about it, either. 
Oops, he readjusted the snorkel thingy that the snow shoots out of – oh! – it’s a chute deflector, heh.  Anyway, he readjusted it.  Wrongly.  Then he hit a huge drift hard, several cubic yards of snow shot straight up in the air – and showered right down over the top of said unhappy neighbor man’s furrowed pate.
Well, that should’ve cooled him off a bit.
Here’s Larry with his ‘new’ Suzuki, the trade-in he took on his six-wheeler, heading back to work after lunch.
I called Loren this afternoon, as usual, partly to see if he needs any supper, and partly to make sure all is well.  He doesn’t need any supper tonight, because John H. and Lura Kay gave him more than enough yesterday for tonight’s supper, too.
His fireplace hasn’t been drawing properly, and he hasn’t been able to get a fire started for over a week, so he bought all the stuff he needs to clean the creosote out of the chimney.  It’s supposed to be warm and sunny later this week, and he plans to clean it then.  We obviously don’t remind him often enough that he’s 77 ½ years old!
At the moment, I’m having a difficult time typing, because Teensy is sprawled on my lap – and across both arms and part of my laptop keyboard. 
Bedtime!  I have a customer quilt to load on the frame tomorrow, and another block to design for the Buoyant Blossoms BOM before we leave for Florida.


P.S.:
Question:  Do you know how to get parts for an old Vega?
Answer:     Duh.  You just follow one until the desired parts fall off.


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





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