Last
week, Levi, age 6, said to Hannah, “Mama, do you know why I like you? George Washington’s birthday is less than one
week before yours!”
Late
last Monday night, I trotted downstairs to get something – and found an uninvited
furred creature flapping about the place, which immediately turned me into The
Hunchback of Notre Dame, or at least his near kin.
Well, I
opened the downstairs patio door, rushed upstairs and shut the door at the top
of the steps, and then turned on the light on the upper deck in the hopes that that
would draw the bat out of the door below, since they generally understand that bugs
are to be found circling lights. As no
bat has been flapping or diving at my head since then, I hopefully assume the flying
critter found his way out.
Larry is
always unhappy when I leave a door open, as he is far more concerned over
mosquitoes than I am over bats. And that’s a great big heaping bunch of
concern.
My
favored assault against the bat is to duck and scuttle lickety-split off
sideways like a lobster, clacking my pincer menacingly as I go. Or at
least yelling, “Larry! Larrrrrrrry!”
Tuesday,
I cleaned the
kitchen, sewed for a couple of hours on the corner blocks for the Buoyant
Blossoms BOM, then made supper for Loren and took it to him. I fixed
chicken breast filets, pierogies with gravy, mixed vegetables with miniature
bow-tie pasta, and cherry jello. We had
the same, as usual, with the addition of Martelli’s apple juice (not from
concentrate!) to wash it all down.
Loren sent me home with a chunk of roast beef and a bag
of oranges, and he washed my windshield before I left, too. It’ll be a
mere matter of days before he starts wondering what he needs to do to ‘make it
up to us’ for one thing or another, though. That’s my brother!
I stopped on the way home for some good bug spray (read, ‘doesn’t
stink’), then worked on the flower gardens, sans spray. I don’t like to
use the stuff unless I absolutely have
to. Bleah. But the sun was shining brightly still, and
that holds the persqueeters (à la my once-little nephew) down somewhat, so the
$3.96 bottle of Cutter Skinsations Insect Repellent Aloe & Vitamin E
Moisturizes Skin Clean Fresh Scent Repels Mosquitoes That May Carry West Nile
Virus remains new and unused.
I weeded three of the five big front-yard flowerbeds, and
then took a bath. Weeds make me itch. Soon I was back downstairs in my sewing room,
sewing blades together. Blades, that is, for the Dresden plates that
will make the quilt corners.
Larry worked late that
evening, as he’s been doing most evenings – whether at Walkers’, or at Teddy’s place,
cutting and baling hay. His supper is always
cold when he gets home. Good thing
someone invented microwave ovens!
A friend sent me a very old video of a man and woman
singing a very old song, as they sat at an elaborate vintage grand piano. Nobody looks that nice – or
sings that well – anymore! But... how do
they expect us to believe the lady is playing the piano, when they first showed
us the roller traveling through the piano?!
Yep, it was a player
piano... and the lady was pretending to play it, even while ivories and black
keys fell and rose on the keyboard where her fingers were not even close to touching them.
I take exception to someone trying to fool me into
thinking they are playing some instrument that I can clearly see they are not playing. For
instance... I like some of the episodes in the early Little House series.
BUT! – it drives me bonkers when Pa, played by Michael Landon, is supposedly
playing away on his fiddle, when, first, he’s not holding a fiddle at all, but
a violin; and, second, sometimes his left fingers aren’t even touching the
strings, or he’s sawing away at the bottom string when the music is way high on
a note far above the top string.
Do the producers not know that there are people in the
world who can actually play the
fiddle or the violin, and can tell
when the ‘playing’ is fake?
I once saw an old video clip of Dale Evans, wherein she
was supposedly playing the piano and singing. But! – the keys her fingers
were pressing did not match the notes
we were hearing. Why did they do that,
when she could play the piano
just fine and dandy? She could! There was no need for them to fudge it.
Dat bugs me.
Wednesday
night after church, Kurt, Victoria, and
Jared were already here when we got home.
Victoria was fixing smoothies. She combined a golden fruit and
strawberry mix, vanilla Greek yogurt, milk, honey, chia seeds, and a handful of
green leafy vegetables, and ran the blender just enough to almost purée everything,
but leaving a bit of a texture to the thick drink. It was pretty good, actually – but was it
ever green.
She doled out large cupsful, sticking spoons into
each cup.
Jared took his gingerly and stared into it. His eyes widened and his eyebrows rose. He leaned down carefully and smelt of the
stuff. He looked back up at Victoria,
and then he remarked, “This looks like something my mom used to feed me that
came out of those little jars with the baby on the side of them.”
After waiting until everyone else had tried several
bites, listening to Kurt and Larry proclaim the stuff pretty tasty, and noting
that no one had suddenly fallen down in the final throes of death, he finally
took a small, tentative taste. And that
was the last taste he took. When his
brother finished his smoothie, Jared politely gave him another.
Meanwhile, I sliced the roast beef Loren had given us,
toasted English muffin bread, and made hot sandwiches.
When our lunch was over, I headed downstairs to my
sewing room, where I finished the Dresden plate blocks, and then
picked the paper off the back of 9 nine-patch pinwheel blocks. There were three more to go when I quit for
the night.
Thursday,
heat advisories were given for the next three days, especially for ranchers
with cattle, horses, goats, sheep, etc.
Even chickens need shade and extra water on extremely hot, dry days. Although it was only going to be in the 90s,
the humidity was high, putting heat indexes into the triple digits. So many of our family and friends work in
construction, we take special note of severe heat (or cold).
Once you’ve suffered anything close to heat
exhaustion, you’re likely to be more sensitive to heat for a good long
while. I worked in my flower gardens all day one hot summer day about twelve
years ago. I should’ve worn a hat; that would’ve helped. I didn’t
realize my temperature was rising, and by evening, I had a headache to top all
headaches and a 103° fever. Cool baths
dropped the temperature, but neither Tylenol nor Aspirin nor Ibuprofen touched
the headache for a couple of days. It took about five years before I
could be out in hot weather or bright sunlight for any time at all without
getting a headache or feeling woozy.
These days, I work on my gardens either in
the morning or the evening, or follow the shade around the place. {It’s
nice and shady in my sewing studio. heh}
I paid a few bills, then headed back to the sewing
room to finish taking the foundation paper off the pinwheel blocks. I
like the process and the results of paper-piecing; I don’t care for the
time-consuming paper-pick-off so well. But it was done soon. Then I
wrote up the instructions; the next two BOMs are ready to post when the time
comes. I have four more flower blocks to
make, a fancy border, sashing and cornerstones – and the quilt top will be
done. While I worked, I listened to an
audiobook about men who explored the Wild West in the 1800s. In spite of danger and hardship, they ran cattle
drives, trapped and hunted, and settled.
While some Indian tribes were, for the most part, friendly, others were
vicious, and often attacked unprovoked.
The explorers and settlers who did the best were brave and vigilant, not
showing fear or allowing the Indians to bully them. They also kept their word with the Indians,
and were honest and fair. Those who didn’t
deal justly caused troubles for everyone, because Indians often took out their
spite on anyone and everyone they could.
And of course, there was safety in numbers, in being well-armed, and in
knowing the territory.
Before this book, I listened to Incidents
in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself (Harriet Jacobs), and
before that, A Biography of Thomas
Jefferson.
A lot of awful things happen in this old
world! The best little corners, though,
are always and invariably occupied by those few who love the Lord and believe
there’s a God in heaven who sees everything they do, and will someday bring every
person who has ever lived to account for his deeds, whether good or evil. Anyone who professes to love God whilst
hating others and committing unspeakable atrocities against them is a liar.
Here, listen to how this book about the West,
written in the late 1800s, ends:
He (Charles A. Siringo) finishes his
narrative shortly after marrying and settling down into the merchant business
from being a cattle driver and a lawman, detective, and agent for the Pinkerton
National Detective Agency.
Here’s the Epilogue:
“Thus, one cowpuncher takes a sensible tumble
and drops out of the ranks.
“Now, dear reader, in bidding you adieu, we’ll
say, should you not be pleased with the substance of this book, I’ve nothing to
say in defense, as I gave you the best I had in my little shop. But
before you criticize it from a literary standpoint, bear in mind that the
writer had fits until he was 10 years of age, and hasn’t fully recovered from
the effects.
“Finis”
He was kidding; he didn’t really have
fits... but he was a bit undisciplined, and sometimes didn’t make it to
school on account of such things as chasing down clams along the seashore, or
hunting for raccoons in empty logs, or, or, or...
What shall I listen to next, hmmmm?
Okay, The Adventures of Kit Carson it
is. Narrated by a literary-challenged British woman with a nugged-up
ploze (as Caleb would say).
We shall see if I can abide this.
I hate it, when people who cannot
read, then take the privilege of doing so, and post it on LibriVox or Audio
Books or some such! Aarrgghh. Somebody hand me the earwash.
For supper that night, we had puhsquetti and
meatballs (à la Teddy, when he was really little), apple pie, and maple nut ice
cream.
By noon
on Friday, it was 90°. I
washed clothes and sheets and hung them on the line. Some items were dry before I got the entire
basketful hung. I started working on the
next flower pattern – pansies, this time.
I drew a pattern, and then began cutting teensy weensy, itty
bitty little pieces of freezer paper, with lots of jigs and jags and nooks and
crannies. It’s a swell occupation!
Or at least it is, if the result is pleasant and pleasing to the eye.
I took Loren some supper that evening. He will be 78 years old in a couple of months. He’d been working outside on his lawn and
flower gardens from 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. that day. He very rarely turns on air conditioner in
his house. I take him supper... visit with him for a few minutes... and
by the time I leave, I’m a hot, dripping mess. Obviously, he copes with
heat a whole lot better than I do!
Saturday, I went on working on the pansy flower block for
the Buoyant Blossoms BOM. All the little templates were ironed onto
fabric; next I needed to trim them, starch and iron the edges, and glue them to
the background.
Later that afternoon, I made some supper for my brother,
and he came and picked it up. It was in
the high 90s that day, with a heat index in the mid 100s. Think how lovely
it would be to be way up high in the San Juan Mountains!
And think how lovely it would be if the FedEx guy would
quit walking through my flowers to get to the porch. There IS a sidewalk, for pity’s sake!
Shall I bean him on the back of the head with a pincushion?
“How about putting a sign out telling him not
to walk through the flowers?” asked one of my more peace-loving friends.
I will soon have signs all around the entire
house! A few months ago, I called FedEx and UPS to ask them to please
stop throwing boxes willy-nilly into the garage, sometimes through the back
garage door, sometimes through the front garage door, once on a tractor seat on
the back drive, where I might not find them for weeks on end. That didn’t do any good, so I put signs on
the garage doors telling them not to put anything in there. No boxes in
the garage since then. So now Mr. FedEx is having a fit of piqué, maybe,
and ♪ ♫ Stomping Through the Tulips? ♫ ♪
I keep telling myself, It’s better than having to drive to a store somewhere to buy all this
stuff, cart it out to the car, drive home, cart it into the house... etc.,
etc.
But I still want to bean the guy on the back
of the head with a pincushion. It would just be so... satisfying.
By 8:00 p.m., my little pile of starched and
ironed pieces was the same size as the unstarched pile. I would be gluing them onto the background
soon.
Question:
I’ve drawn this design from photos of Johnny Jump-Ups. I’ve always thought that was the niftiest
name for these small pansies. But... do
people know what ‘Johnny Jump-Ups’ are??
Maybe I should include the name ‘Pansy’ in the title, or just leave out
‘Johnny Jump-Ups’ entirely. On the other
hand, more people might click on the link, thinking they’re going to get a
pattern for toddler training pants – and then get all intrigued with Johnny
Jump-Ups and buy a pattern for those,
instead. heh
Victoria got home from work, and went to hunting around
for her box of wedding invitations that had been scheduled to arrive via UPS. She saw online that it had been marked ‘Delivered’. After hunting and searching for 45 minutes,
she finally found the box --- sitting
atop the Traeger grill on the back drive!
Why would that man walk all
the way around the house to
put it in some unnoticeable spot in the back yard, instead of simply putting it
on the front porch, which is much closer? Or, if he insists on going to
the back yard, why not put it
on the deck, where someone might possibly find it?!
Now, instead of thumping the FedEx guy with a pincushion,
I want to get both the FedEx ginkhead
and the UPS saphead, and bonk their peabrains together.
How many signs do I have to make, to cover this half acre
of property? They need to read thusly: “NO, THIS IS NOT A PARCEL
REPOSITORY, YOU IDIOT!” I’ll print a variety, some ending with ‘moron’,
others ‘imbecile’, still others ‘dimwit’, and I’ll fasten them to anything and
everything where a person might possibly set a package. That should
make the place look real swell, should it not?
Good thing Victoria found the box, as we are expecting rain.
She set
about writing a note to the UPS, and then realized that the package had come from
USPS, after being transferred from UPS. This
is odd, as our mail lady usually brings packages directly to our door. However, she does misdeliver mail a lot.
So we are wondering if she left it at the neighbors’ house, and the
neighbor lady brought it over and plunked it on the grill.
We have
found packages in odd places a time or two, and wondered if that’s what happened. Once, a package was in the rosebush over by
the driveway, once in a puddle of melting snow, etc. This would be the neighbor lady who has sometimes
screeched at Larry when he’s running some piece of machinery, working on this
or that, or even mowing the lawn or rototilling, yelling for him to “TURN IT
OFF!!! TURN IT OFF NOW!!!” – though her tantrums have become a whole lot less frequent
since I popped around the corner, startling her, and informed her she was really
awful. We suspect she’s on something...
cocaine comes to mind, as I think it affects the hearing, making a person
exceptionally sensitive to noise?
Probably other drugs do the same.
In any case, she often acts quite abnormal.
Yesterday, a friend sent me the following ‘free
advice’: “Should you lock yourself out
of your house, do NOT try all the Windows. Both Vista and 8 were awful.”
I didn’t mind Vista at all. It had a few grand
improvements over XP. Anybody who used gobs of folders, with folders
inside of folders, and anybody who used photo editing extensively, and
especially the Microsoft suite (Publisher, Word, Outlook, OneNote, Excel),
liked those improvements a lot.
Windows 8 wasn’t bad at all, if one was accustomed to
smartphone or iPad technology. If not, it was too big a technological
jump all at once.
Usually what shoots ratings down on any given new
operating system or device is when too many unexplained advances are made too
rapidly. People don’t like change.
Hence the early demise of the Edsel and the Tucker
Torpedo:
People didn’t like the Ford Model T Depot Hack, either –
but just think of the success of its successor, the Suburban.
It was hotter
here yesterday – 96° – than it was in Las Vegas (94°). Furthermore, it was warmer in Alert, Nunavut,
Canada, northernmost settlement in the world, at 46°, than it was in Barrow, Alaska,
where it was only 34°, with a wind chill of 26°. Nunavut’s wind chill was 38°, as the wind was
gusting at 37 mph. ♫ ♪ And the sun, ♪ ♫ it shall ♪ ♫ never go down! ♪ ♫ (‘Land
of the Midnight Sun’, you know.)
The Soothanol pain relieving drops Lura Kay gave
me last week have been a life-saver the last couple of days since I hurt my
ribs somehow. I could hardly even reach my hair to curl or comb it,
without this stuff! Trouble is, I had to quit using it with the best hand
for the job, as my fingers feel like I’ve burned them or cut up too many
habanera peppers barehanded.
But listen to one of the reviews for Soothanol
I found on Amazon:
“If you want your skin to burn like fire,
thus distracting your brain from the fact that you have an injury, this is the
stuff for you.” hee hee
I stayed home from church yesterday, as ‘church
clothes’ didn’t sound like a very nice thing to put on at all, while ‘baggy
blouse’, on the other hand, sounded fine. Besides, since breathing hurt,
I didn’t imagine singing would feel too great.
Time to
pay some bills and get back to the sewing machine. I made an audio clip in my own voice that
says, “Oh, no! What did you buy now?!”, and this plays when I get
a notice from Larry’s Discover card any time he uses it. Aren’t I clever?
* * *
P.S.: Fortunately, the bad-reading Brit retired
after Chapter One and gave the job over to a plump American (judging by the
fact that he gets out of breath after reading of any exertion). Huff and puff he might, but at least he,
doesn’t put. Commas and, periods
where. Commas and, periods are. Not wont to.
Go?
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.