If It Isn't Kids, It's Pigs!

Have you ever known anyone who ‘tooted his or her own horn’, so to speak?  I imagine we all know people like that.  Do you know where that term came from?

Here it is:  Matthew 6:1:  “Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men.  Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.”

And that reward is... ‘glory of men’, which is fleeting, at best.  They will certainly have no reward from the Lord.

We think that sounds pretty odd... just imagine an important Pharisee parading down the street in his worthy attire, coming upon a poor man begging – and before depositing a two-pence in the man’s cup, the Pharisee would pull out his little horn and blow it, “Toot-ta-TOOT, ta TOOOT!!!” – and then, as soon as he was sure everyone in the vicinity was looking, ‘clinkety-plink’, in would go his coin.

But what’s so different about that from people who perpetually brag and blow until you’d like to throttle them?  Pride and dishonesty sure make disgusting characters out of people, don’t they?

Yeah, I was recently subjected to one of those sorts of persons; that’s what brought on my little tirade. 

Last Monday night, Loren brought us some scrumptious smoked Alaskan sockeye salmon.  One of our nieces had given it to him for Christmas.  Once he opened it, he feared he wouldn’t be able to eat it quickly enough, as it was quite large; so he shared it with us.  We had it on toasted rye bread, and it was delicious.

Do you recall the final sentence of last week’s journal?  Teensy was recovering from a fight, and I declared:  “Teensy be all right... if he’ll just stay out of trouble!”

Well, he didn’t stay out of trouble.  I had probably just signed off from that journal last Monday evening when he got into a Big Bad Fight with an unknown animal, the second in as many nights.  I heard the fight taking place in the garage, dashed out there to chase off the intruder and bring in my own cat, but never caught sight of the whatever-it-was.  I’m guessing it was a stray tomcat.  I knew Teensy had been bitten, as a foot was bleeding, but he didn’t seem to be in any distress.

But... this all led to an eventful morning Tuesday. 

Victoria discovered her favorite kitty crying in pain, a bad bite having rendered him unable to walk on his right rear leg.  He had a deep puncture wound, and his whole foot and leg were quite swollen.  Poor kitty... makes us feel so bad when he’s hurt.  He’s such a nice cat.

She took the cat to the vet before she went to work, and had to leave him, as all the doctors were busy with other animals.  The vet drained the sore and gave him an antibiotic shot, and now I’m giving him antibiotics twice a day.  That was a $94 fight.

Meanwhile, Larry had gone to David City for the physical required to qualify for his CDL.  He didn’t take his hearing aids – and he discovered he needed them.

Fortunately, they passed him when he told them he does have hearing aids; he doesn’t have to go back.  He’d driven the Jeep, but got back before the vet called to say I could come pick up Teensy.  He went off to work, and I trotted off to get ready to go to town.

My phone rang.

It was Larry – he’d run out of gas halfway between here and town.

So I went and retrieved him, brought him home for a gas can, took him back to his stranded Suburban, waited while he poured in the gas and got it running again, came back home, finished curling my hair (didn’t want to frighten the good townsfolk), and then went back to town to get Teensy, who was caterwauling mournfully in his carrier, as all good and respectable cats should do in their carriers.

Teensy goes on howling in a car – unless I sing, haha.  So I sang lustily all the way home, with a few fingers stuck into the carrier so the kitty could rub on them.  He headed directly to his food the moment we got in the house – food has always been his comfort in traumatic events – and then went for a nap on my bed.  He limped badly for another day, but at least he wasn’t in as much pain.  Soon the antibiotics were doing their job, though, and he limped less and less.  He’s almost as good as new now – except he now sports a nice little set of claw marks on his nose and who knows where else.  Siggggggggghhhhhhh...

A friend wanted to know why I hadn’t taken the gas can to Larry instead of bringing him home to get it, then going back to the stranded vehicle, and finally returning home again.

Two reasons:  a) I wouldn’t have known where the gas can was, as he wasn’t even sure where he’d left it (and his garage is a labyrinth), and, the biggest reason, b) he had to fill the smaller can from a larger one that I wouldn’t have been able to budge.  Fortunately, he wasn’t too awfully far down the road; it didn’t take all that long. 

He ran out of gas again, just as he went around the corner toward the shop, but managed to coast to a place to park.  And they have their own pumps at the shop, fortunately.

The white-crowned sparrows are coming through!  Pretty little things; we rarely see them. 

I worked on Emma’s doll dress Tuesday evening, getting the bodice mostly done, and then hunted online for matching shoes.  I found some glittery silver ballet flats on eBay.  They were a bit pricey, but there was an option to make an offer.  I did... and the lady accepted.  Instead of $8.99, I got them for $6.25.  Plus $4.96 shipping.  Still kinda pricey, but they’re lots cuter than I could’ve ever made them.

Wednesday night after church, we had a late snack of the rest of the smoked Alaskan sockeye salmon on buttered rye toast, cottage cheese, and grape juice.  It was good – and I promptly acquired a stomachache. 

I drank a piping hot coffee to calm it down.  :-O

Kurt and Victoria were in the living room, looking at funny animal videos on Kurt’s smartphone, and laughing uproariously.  Robin was here, too, looking at pretty outfits on Pinterest, using Victoria’s iPad.  Larry was ordering himself a new smartphone.  His has had a cracked-up screen for I don’t know how long, and he’s been using it anyway, hoping it would keep working until the contract was due for renewal.  Well, it gave up the ghost entirely that day.  So he was looking for a new one, using his Samsung tablet. 

I wonder how much bandwidth we were going through in this house?  If I had’ve looked, I’ll betcha I would’ve found the cats using the old laptops, whataya bet?

Thursday, I worked on Emma’s doll dress, with a little time out to pick up kiddos at school.  There were only two to pick up, as the others have had bad colds.  Josiah had a temperature of 104.5° one morning, and Amy took him to the doctor.  Scary, when a child has such a high fever.

Hannah’s children, too, have been sick with various things, including some odd type of rash that puzzled the doctors.

When the doll dress was done, I made a cancan underskirt of netting, a pair of bloomers, a little drawstring purse, and, for one last touch, a bow for the doll’s hair.  I used my Bernina 1300DC serger for most of these things.  It is with doll clothes, more than anything else, that I use more of the variety of stitches my serger offers.  I can choose a ¼” seam allowance, and shorten the stitch length enough that it makes a lovely seam for tiny clothes.  More photos are here:  Emma’s doll dress.

And guess what??  The new doll I’d ordered, the ‘My Life As a Schoolgirl’ doll, had suddenly grown wings and flown to Columbus, and was on a truck right then, scheduled to be delivered Friday.

I got some mending done, washed sheets and remade the bed, edited a few photos, and then looked at doll shoes and socks on eBay before heading to bed.

*Light bulb moment*   You know, if I’d quit snapping the shutter button on my camera so often, I wouldn’t have so many photos to go through.

  Naaa... I like pictures.

I shouldn’t look at eBay when I am sleepy.  The Chinese are selling adorable doll shoes (well, they’re selling ugly ones, too; but we won’t talk about those) for anywhere from $.01 to $3.99 (I ignored the higher-priced ones – gotta draw a line somewhere)...  and I wound up ordering a cute pair of black ‘patent leather’ dress shoes with bows on the toes and mesh sides, black and white saddle oxfords (which will look much better with the doll’s school clothes than those tall black boots she comes with), and some fuzzy bunny slippers, because I want to make dolly a nightgown. 

I’ll put the oxfords on the doll and keep the original black boots, the black ‘patent leathers’, and maybe the bunny slippers, too, and make several things to go with them for Christmas – a coat or cloak to go with the black boots, a nightgown to go with the bunny slippers (if I don’t get it done this week), and another dress to go with the black shoes.

The new doll arrived Friday, as promised.  It’s cute as all get-out, though one eye is slightly stickier than the other. 

Remember how tracking showed it taking a year and a day between Mira Loma, California, and Bloomington, California?  Well, here’s something to make a person scratch her puzzled noggin:  The label on the box shows it as coming from Bentonville, Arkansas.  Huh?

Once again, a lady is asking (on an online quilting group) whether or not it is advisable to always wash fabric before cutting and sewing it.  I decided to answer the question, for once.

I almost always make quilts without washing the fabric first.  I rarely mention it, since some people think you are practically a Barbarian if you don’t wash first, wash first, wash first!!!  

I’ve had no bad experiences, really, other than a slight run of bright red one time that was solved with Shout Color Catchers in the second wash.  The pink hue came out entirely.  I also use a cloth, Carbona Color & Dirt Grabber, that works well and can be used many times.

I have many reasons for not washing fabric first:

1. I like the crisp and new feeling
2. Saves on detergent
3. Saves time
4. No ironing, or at least not much
5. No starching, as there is sizing in the fabric
6. No rewashing to get the starch out

Some people wash fabric before using it because they are allergic or sensitive to the chemicals in the fabric.  I’m not... and neither is anyone to whom I give quilts.  If I learn someone is, I will wash the quilt before I give it to them.

I like quilts that look crisp and new... and I like quilts after the first washing, when they acquire that slightly-crinkly, heirloom look. 

I did thoroughly wash all the corduroys and wools and velvets before I made that Jewel Box/Log Cabin quilt, because I knew the ‘Dry Clean Only’ pieces would shrink, and the red corduroy, in particular, would run.  Everything came out nicely – and then when it was all done, all done, lopped over my quilt frame downstairs, an overhead pipe broke and rained water down on the quilt – and the reds ran.  They ran a whole lot worse than they did when I washed them in hot water with detergent!  Aaarrrggghhh.  Shout Color Catchers to the rescue. 

There you are, that’s my opinion.  Like I said, I rarely mention it, since people can get into such a huff about it.  I recommend doing whatever works best for you and for those to whom you give the quilt.  And let me be an unwashed heathen if I jolly well wish to be!

That day, I drew the next pattern for my Buoyant Blossoms BOM, lily-of-the-valley.  I used light pink fabric for the blossoms, representing the Convallaria Rosea variety.  I got the little appliqué pieces all starched, edges folded under and ironed, and then glued them down on the background.  I thought I’d quit, as it was getting late, and finish it the next day – and then Larry remembered that he’d gotten his W2 form that day.  Aaaaaarrrrgggghhh... 

That meant I needed to do the taxes the Saturday.

So I headed back downstairs to appliqué all the pieces down.  It took a while, as there are 37 pieces in the block.  I would do the embroidering of the stems the next day.

Since my sewing chair has been missing a bolt or two and getting decidedly gimpy, threatening to pitch me out on my nose (or over on my back, as the case may be), I ordered a new one.  Larry put it together Friday night.  It’s hydraulically adjustable.  It raises and stays raised, like I needed it to do and like the old one didn’t do.  However, the back is stationary – stationary in the most miserably uncomfortable position, for me, at least.  The back on the old chair tilted as I leaned forward or back, thus staying comfortable in any position. 

So Larry put the old back rest on the new chair, and there I was then, with the perfect chair.

Well, that is, other than the fact that the old back is covered with fuzz and threads and cat hair, it’s the perfect chair.  Nothing a lint roller couldn’t fix.

Saturday, I headed to my sewing room to embroider the block.  Somewhere out back, I could hear chain saws – Loren and Larry were cutting some wood. 

I finished the stems, sewed on a few beads, decided I didn’t like them, removed them, and called it done.  Here is the pattern; it will be free for a month:  Lily-of-the-Valley

I wish I’d have gone for different greens in the leaves... I’m not fond of that small plaid stuff, and the large leaf on the left looks slightly teal, though it looked like forest green under the light near my fabric closet.  I’d like to do it over again in darker green batiks.

I love pink lily-of-the-valley (Convallaria Rosea).  Bobby and Hannah gave me one for Mother’s Day several years ago.  The plant has gotten large enough now that it sends up several sprays of the little pink bells each spring.  And its fragrance is the same as the white lily-of-the-valley, so sweet and delicate. 

I uploaded the pattern to my blog, Scribd, Etsy, and Craftsy, then fixed some supper for Loren.  Scribd is supposedly ‘the world’s premier book membership service’, and ‘the world’s largest digital library and e-book service’.  But I’d never even heard of it until I used their services to embed my pdf files into my blog.  It was being troublesome Saturday afternoon, possibly because more people upload on Saturday nights.

See the snowflake on this little squirrel’s forehead?

Larry got a good part of the back drive cleaned, putting most of his motorized things into the half-done garage.

Then we drove to town and washed my poor ol’ muddy Jeep – which didn’t even stay clean through the drive back home again, though we tried our best to avoid puddles and mud lollies.

As if we all weren’t having enough twubbles and twials, one of Hannah’s little guinea pigs caught some strain of influenza.  The poor little thing would try to ‘purr’ as they do, but kept coughing instead.  It peered up sadly into Hannah’s face – if you have pets that love and trust you, then you know that expression; it’s as if they are begging for help.  Hannah took it to the vet, and he gave it a shot.  The little thing was soon getting better.

I started working on the taxes, but discovered I didn’t have several vital documents.  One came today; I’ll worry about the other one tomorrow.

By midafternoon, we were under an overcast sky – but I could see where the edge of the storm was, off to our north; and under it, there was a ribbon of pale blue sky.  The gray line of clouds just above it, where the storm front began, had a bit of pink mixed in.  Pretty – and almost always a sign of a strong winter storm.

We’ve been getting blizzard warnings for a good 24 hours now, and the snow began around 9:30 tonight.  9-14” of snow is predicted, along with high winds.

A friend wrote, “I must remember to put coffee grounds in the coffee maker when I put everything together the night before.  We had a nice pot of hot water this morning.  Oops!”

That’s not quite as bad as what I did once.  I remembered the coffee grounds – but forgot the pot.  That, because the phone rang just as I poured water into the coffeemaker.  Halfway through the conversation, as I paced the floor (I do that, when I’m talking on the phone), I walked back into the kitchen... and my feet went SPLAP, SPLAP, SPLAP through a large puddle.  Huh? 

AAAAaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuugggggggghhhhhhh...  It was coffee.  It had gone all over the counter, and then, once the counter got full, poured out onto the floor. 

The floor and counter got mopped that day, whether they needed it or not.

Several times, some helpful soul has unplugged the coffeemaker in order to plug something else in (what on earth could be more important to have plugged in than a coffeemaker?!), and then they forgot to plug the coffeemaker back in, so that when I made coffee (the machine is a Bunn, with a lower and upper tank, the lower of which is kept at a constant brewing temperature – if the thing is plugged in), I wound up with a pot of cool, watery stuff guaranteed to make you gag at the first startling sip.

Well, the laundry is folded and put away.  Bird feeders are filled.  The cats have been fed, watered, and admonished (they are not proponents of brotherly love).  Pictures have been edited and uploaded:

Blue Jays, Juncos, House Finches

Woodpeckers, Finches, Juncos, and Cardinals

Funny Little Squirrel – he gave serious thought to jumping right up to the open window where I stood taking pictures.

Snowflake Squirrel – more shots of the one pictured above.

School has now been canceled in many towns around us, all the way to Omaha.  A lot of times when other schools in town cancel classes, ours continues business as usual – because our friends who own construction and excavating companies arrive with large equipment, and away goes the snow and ice from all the areas around the church and school. 

The kids moan and groan.  “Can’t they just stay in bed, and let us have a snow day?!!!”  hee hee 

I used to remind the children that too many days lost to snow meant days would get tacked onto the schoolyear in the springtime, thus delaying start of summer vacation.  So they’d quit moaning and groaning and get on with school preparation.  There were a couple of times, though, when the children in town made it to school and we didn’t, because I won’t drive on a highway where I absolutely cannot see a thing.  Snow and ice, I can cope with; I’ve always had good vehicles, good tires, and I’m a good driver.  But not if I can’t see.

Bedtime!  Taxes tomorrow... and maybe a nightgown for Emma’s doll.

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