Tuesday afternoon as soon as the bread
finished baking, I planned to go to the Extension Agency at the courthouse to
pick up a folder full of little Jackson kiddos’ ribbons that I had somehow left
at the fair the day before. We got all
the Lego and the wildflower jars and the watercolor painting, and we collected the
money awards – but forgot the folder. We
were all concerned with Lego pieces falling through a crack in the bottom of
one of the boxes – and I evidently laid the folder down on a counter and forgot
it.
I filled
out two entry papers for the Nebraska State Fair to mail to while I was in town,
one for the Chopkey hexagon origami pillow, the other for the Mosaic Lighthouse
quilt. Both made Best of County status,
which puts them into special classes at the State Fair.
Then I pulled the bread out of the oven, cut off a
heel, slathered it with butter, and blissfully ate it. I love
fresh-from-the-oven bread heels with gobs of melting butter on them.
The only drawback is that because the crust of the
heel where one’s bottom teeth hits is hard and the part of the heel that one’s
top teeth sinks into is soft, the heel immediately flips up when one bites into
it, liberally spackling one’s schnozz with melting butter. It’s a small price to pay for ambrosia.
I wiped off my proboscis, swigged milk, and headed
to town.
Guess what I found in the folder with the
grandchildren’s ribbons??
(Did you guess?)
I found my other Grand Champion award rosette!
It wasn’t in the case the day before; I looked for it. I betcha one of
the other winners picked it up with their item by mistake, and then brought it
back when they noticed the error, and the ladies caring for the ribbons and
things put it with the folder.
That’s serendipity, or something on that order, isn’t
it? – I leave a folder behind, so I have to go to the Extension Agency to pick
it up the next day – and find my own lost ribbon in so doing. I would
never have gotten it back, had we not forgotten the folder in the first place.
Home again, I purchased a couple of 10” wooden sewing
machine laser cutouts on eBay. I will
hang them in my sewing or quilting room, string a cord between them, and
display fair ribbons on it.
{Tabby is batting
my knee, begging for his soft food... and now he’s eating it, purring between
swallows. Makes him squeak, purring and
swallowing at the same time.}
Later that afternoon, Loren asked me to take some
pictures of his yard, which sported several tall stacks of wood from all the trees
the windstorm took down a week earlier.
That evening after Larry got off work, he and Loren
went to Fullerton and cut more wood from an area where someone sold a bunch of
trees, including the big walnut trees Jeremy bought. They didn’t get back until well after
midnight.
“Good grief!” I exclaimed to Larry, “Loren was tired
when I took him supper at 5:30 p.m.!”
But Loren assured us that he was fine, not to worry;
he can sleep late if he wants to, or take a nap later. ‘Sleeping late’, to him, is getting up at
8:00 a.m., as opposed to 6:30 a.m.
It’s been humid and buggy (that’s like muggy, but
with more bite) this last week. Time
to head for the high mountains, don’t you think?! I love the tall, tall
mountains. The higher you get, the cooler it is and the less bugs there
are – especially when there’s a stiff breeze. I love the high valleys
with the tall trees and the rushing streams and the waterfalls. I wanna
go there! But I doubt if we’ll go this year. We already went to Florida in February, after
all; and there’s a wedding coming up, too.
I finished
putting the binding on my customer’s quilt Tuesday night, and Wednesday I machine-embroidered the label. That afternoon, I shipped it
back to my customer.
She used the Amazing Grace panel, along with a
border pattern from another quilt kit. It was her first pieced
quilt. Didn’t she do a nice job? It
was an easy quilt to work on, because she pieced and ironed it so neatly. The border pattern that she used was from the
pattern for the Meadow
Path quilt.
Last year I made a similar quilt using
this panel, and gave it to Caleb and Maria for their 2nd anniversary.
After church that night, we took Loren a
couple pairs of pants I fixed for him, then went to Wal-Mart to get a birthday
gift for Bobby: an Aladdin soup thermos
and an all-purpose knife.
When we got to their house, we learned that
his mother Bethany had been taken to the hospital in quite serious condition. She was transferred to an Omaha hospital, and
spent a few days in the ICU. So many
times, she has had life-threatening physical problems, but time and again she
pulls through. She got home yesterday,
and is feeling better, though tired.
The rest
of the week, I worked on nothing but photo/music DVDs. Well, I did fix supper
now and then, took some of it to my brother, and paid some bills. And of
course I kept the livestock fed and watered (three cats).
And of
course I had to take a little time out to get a picture of a cute little baby
English sparrow out there on the deck, flapping his wings and his short little
tail as he begged for food from the papa sparrow.
Friday afternoon at about 3:30 p.m., Larry came home
early from work, asking if I wanted to go to Omaha for our 37th anniversary. He had gift cards from the children for
Cabela’s and Cracker Barrel.
Larry bought a paddle for his kayak at Cabela’s. At Cracker Barrel, we ordered pecan-encrusted
catfish, clam chowder, fresh fruit (blueberries, pineapple, and strawberries),
hot apple cider, iced tea, apple pie à la mode, and mulberry cobbler with fresh
fruit and ice cream. We shared the apple pie and the cobbler.
When we got home, we found a gift bag with candy, dried
fruit, and jello cups in it, and a note reading, “The rest is in the refrigerator
and freezer.” There was frozen yogurt in
the freezer, and a yummy cherry cheesecake in the refrigerator. That was from Jeremy and Lydia.
Saturday, we heard sad news: my nephew John Mark, who was just nine months
younger than me, had passed away the day before, on his 55th birthday.
This is my brother Loren’s 3rd son. John Mark was an alcoholic.
They’re doing an autopsy. But he was an alcoholic,
with various physical problems stemming from that.
He used to be my good little friend when we were children, and again when
he lived here for a few years in his late teens/early 20s. His was a
wasted life. Very sad.
I finished the photo/music movie of our trip to Florida, and started the ‘publishing’
process in preparation to burning it to a DVD. It’s an hour and a half
long, has 4,170 photos in it, and 40 songs or thereabouts; so it takes a few
hours to save and burn.
Meanwhile, I cleaned the kitchen, and then began working on photos for another
DVD – this time, our 2012 trip to Yellowstone National Park, the last trip we
took with Caleb in tow.
Hannah and Joanna arrived with a beautifully quilled
picture Hannah made for us for our anniversary.
We walked down the hill to see Larry, who was moving things around with
the mini excavator. Mosquitoes were
horrible out there.
As we were coming back up the driveway, I spotted a man’s
tie. Kurt’s? Yep.
Kurt’s. It’s not the first time
we’ve found Sunday attire gracing the drive.
Another time, it was Kurt’s brother Jared’s. The tie should be clean; it’s gotten rained
on good and proper at least twice.
The DVD made it all the way to 74% completion Saturday
evening, and then the cord to the external hard drive from which it was drawing
the music got jiggled and disconnected, and that was the end of that. I started it over and let it run all night. By Sunday morning, the movie was finally
‘published’, i.e., saved as a .wmv file.
Before leaving for church, I made a title page, plugged
in a DVD, clicked ‘Burn’, and left it to do its job while we were gone.
“Let’s
hope the cats don’t pull up eBay or Craigslist and buy a Ferrari!” I remarked.
Last
night, we watched the finished DVD on our big screen, making sure it was okay before
I duplicate it. In the meantime, I’d been working on the photos for the next
movie. Some time after midnight, I
clicked ‘Publish’, then turned on a screen saver that read, “No bump! Movie save!”
(Screen saver text is limited.)
By the time I got back to the computer
this morning, the second photo/music ‘movie’ was done. I stuck in a new DVD and clicked ‘Burn’. I’m going such great guns on these movies, I
think I’ll do 2013, too – our trip to Michigan.
Loren enjoys the DVDs... and so do other members of the family. I think.
Maybe. Or perhaps they’re just
being polite. Anyway, I know Loren does, and I’m making them especially
for his birthday.
A little while ago, I let Tiger in for
some food. He either doesn’t understand
about pet doors, or doesn’t like the tight fit.
He’s biiiig. As I was shutting the patio door, I spotted a
cicada on the sunbrella cover. I went
scrambling for my macro lens. Ain’t he a
cutie? Well... maybe not.
Time to
make a new pot of coffee! It’s Josie’s Java today, in Hazelnut Crème flavor.
(Gotta get
some of this ‘Josie’s Java’ one of these days when my great-nephew Matthew
marries his girlfriend Josie. Perfect wedding gift, along with a pretty
coffeepot or suchlike, don’t you think?) (Has to be a coffeepot, as opposed
to a coffeemaker, so’s [Cornland word] I can make a quilted coffeepot
cozy, hmmm?)
Back to
the photos!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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