Bags and Cats and Guests and Late-Autumn Flowers

My cyclamen and African violets are blooming, despite the fact that I forgot to water them last week.

Why does my hair always turn out better on Monday than it did on Sunday?  I do nothing different.  I wash it, dry it, curl it.  But without fail, the do is better on Monday.  One of Murphy’s more obscure laws, I guess.

Last Monday was Halloween.  Lydia dressed her little boys as Eeyore (Jonathan), Pooh (Ian), and Christopher Robin (Jacob).

Jonathan was sure Lydia should be piglet, but Jacob assured him that she was way too big to be piglet. 😂

That night, Bobby and Hannah and the children stopped by.  Levi had a big straw hat and overalls on, Nathanael was wearing his ‘traditional Polish outfit’ that Hannah had put together for him last April for a school project, and Joanna, who’d been doling out the candy at their house, had a rubber snake draped around her neck and was carrying a porcelain ‘skull’ of a Jackalope, given to her by the owners of the cabin where they stayed on their vacation in the Black Hills. 

Doesn’t that look like fun? – fixing the meal over a campfire... cabin in the background...

I never understood why anyone would want to eat indoors when one could eat outside.  My father, on the other hand, never understood why anyone would eat outside with the bugs when one could eat in the house or in the camper.  So sometimes when I was little and traveling with my parents, they’d be in the camper eating breakfast/lunch/supper... and I’d be on the far side of the park/rest area/campground at the most remote picnic table I could find, eating my breakfast/lunch/supper.  

Tuesday, I watched the archived wedding service online.  There are things one can see in the online services that one never sees when there in ‘real life’.  I had to laugh at a clip of Kurt and Victoria in the reception line making fish faces at each other and rubbing their cheeks, obviously gone to near paralysis from all that smiling.

Tuesday, I posted the next block for the Buoyant Blossoms BOM, the Gladiolus.  It will be free for one month.

I had the block and all the pictures and pdf files done quite a long while ago; so all I had to do was upload them to Craftsy, Etsy, Google Drive, four or five Facebook groups, Pinterest, Instagram, four Yahoo groups, and two Blogger pages.  Piece of cake.  ;-)

Loren came visiting for a few minutes that afternoon, so we looked at my wedding pictures.  Sometimes he comes here or calls just because he’s a bit lonesome.  So we chat for a while, and then he hurries off to get back to the many things that keep him busy.  He keeps his house clean and well-tended, and the yard is still green and full of flourishing trees and a few autumn flowers.

For supper that evening, we had Brussels sprouts (much to Larry’s chagrin – so I fixed mixed vegetables, too, to cheer him back up), Alaska salmon, Maine blueberries, and small cheese on rye sandwiches left over from the wedding.  We washed it all down with cranberry juice.  Simple and healthy – that’s what we like best.

Except for Brussels sprouts.  ;-)  He doesn’t like sweet potatoes, either, but I do.

A couple of people asked if Kurt and Victoria’s wedding cake had live flowers on it.  Yes, they were live.  Our niece Rachel frequents the flower shops for decorations for her cakes.  She calls her business ‘Wildflower Pastries.’

One friend wrote, “Oh, my!!  I gained 5 pounds just looking at her website.  LOL”

 There is that drawback, heh.  Fortunately, I don’t like cake.  Much.  And it doesn’t like me, much.  However, her cake with a blueberry lemon filling is so much like pie, I think I might happily down an entire cake at one sitting, if there weren’t so many others clamoring for a slice.

So now we are ‘empty-nesters’ (although kids and grandkids were a-comin’ and a-goin’ all week).  Wouldn’t it be lousy to wind up the only two people left in the house – if you didn’t like each other?!  Eeek.

We were once in a store with all our kids, and a little boy pointed at us in amazement and patted his father’s arm: “Look, Dad!  It’s a FAMILY!”  (I wonder how many people he thought it took?)

Thursday was Larry’s 56^th birthday.  He must’ve decided he didn’t have to set the trash can out by the road on his birthday – I discovered it wasn’t out there, long after the garbage truck had come and gone.

Here are Caleb and Maria.  It was three years ago October 13^th that they were married.

It was 67° that day, and pretty as a picture.  The Boston ivy growing up beside the kitchen window is all scarlet and gold.

Since it was National Sandwich Day in addition to Larry’s birthday, Bobby and Hannah offered us Subway sandwiches.  So we met them and the children at the newest Subway in town for supper.  Larry had one of his favorites, a meatball sandwich, and I had a BLT sandwich loaded with everything, including hot peppers.  Hannah made her father a quilled picture of a motorcycle, and framed it.

When we got home, Lydia and the boys came bearing a banana cream pie, vanilla frozen yogurt, several candy bars, and money for Larry to use on bike handlebar rests.  He had tried to get by with some cheapies, but one suddenly cracked and slipped sideways when he was riding one night, making him swerve all over the shoulder of the road before he got things under control again.  He usually pedals about 20 mph.  That’s too fast to go out of control on one’s bicycle!

I worked on the Blossoms bag every chance I got, and finished most of the hand sewing on it.  Friday, I tacked the lining to the outside all along the piping seams.  Believe me when I say that was no easy job.

That afternoon, I pulled out a bag of dried split peas, rummaged up the cheddar-cheese-stuffed wild game wieners that were in the freezer, and chopped and sliced onions, carrots, and celery in anticipation of split pea soup.  I love that stuff – so long as it’s not overcooked to mush.

Once upon a time, my late sister-in-law Janice brought us a big pot of 15-bean soup.  I gave everyone a bowlful and we set about eating supper.

Hester, age 3, peered suspiciously into her bowl.  She sniffed at it.  She picked up her spoon and pawed through it like one of the cats with something disagreeable in its bowl.

Then she said, said she, in a plaintive little voice, “Mine has more than 15!”

I gave Loren a quart jar of the split pea soup that night.  I think he felt quite a lot like Hester had, when he found the cheddar-cheese wieners in it, never mind the fact that he himself had given them to me in the first place. 

The next day, he thanked me again for the soup – then allowed as how, while he liked everything in it, he didn’t like it all together.  He didn’t like the carrots or the celery (he evidently didn’t know there were also onions) mixed in with those split peas.  Sooo... he got a few saucers, and separated them:  carrots on one saucer, wieners on another, celery (and probably those unidentified onions) on another.  Then he happily ate it all.

“You dissected it!” I protested, making him laugh. 

“I always did like biology!” he said.

And then there was Caleb who once upon a time, when I asked him if he liked his split pea soup (since it wasn’t going down the hatch very fast at all), replied, “Yes.”  Then, looking down into his bowl, “But I don’t care much for the soup.”  He considered.  “Or the split peas,” he added.  “But it’s pretty good,” he concluded, in an attempt to be polite, “for split pea soup.”

Andrew and Hester visited that evening, bringing gifts for Larry:  a Bluetooth speaker that he can use when he’s riding his bike (it even has a loud air-horn tone on it, to Larry’s delight) (hope he doesn’t blow any li’l ol’ ladies off the road with that thing), fruit-filled pastries, Fuji apple juice, jerky sticks, and a fruit-and-nut mix.  Also, they gave him more money for those bike handlebar rests.  Too bad Larry wasn’t home; he was still picking up forms at a hog barn near Lindsey. 

He got home late – about 10:30 p.m. – and then he ate, got ready for bed, and slept really fast, because his alarm was set to go off at 2:00 a.m.  He got up and headed out by about 2:30 a.m. to go with Jeremy to Ada, Oklahoma, where they picked up a bucket truck Jeremy had purchased for his woodworking business.  Fairly often, he has the opportunity to collect his own wood, which he then mills.  He’ll increase his profits quite a lot if he can cut the trees himself, rather than buy wood from another mill.

I was still working on the Blossoms bag when Larry got up.  An hour after he left, it was done.  Saturday I took pictures of it out on the sunny, warm deck.  More pictures are here.

That thing is heavy.  It weighs as much as the girl!  Reckon I should mount it on a roller skate?

I watered the poor wilted indoor plants and flowers, put away a load of clothes, hung a second load on the line, and put a third load into the washer.  After cleaning the kitchen, I headed downstairs to start work on a customer’s lace quilt.

First, I ironed the backing... loaded it on the frame... and then I sewed three thick pieces of batting together.  It was thicker than most of the battings I use (though I did use extra loft for the Buoyant Blossoms quilt and the Christmas tree skirt), and each piece is large.  After zigzagging about six inches of the first two pieces together, I changed my mind, draped them over my frame, and did a long whipstitch by hand with a double layer of thread.

I’m ready to iron and then mark the top.  This quilt should be symmetrical, I think, so it will need to be marked carefully.  I plan to use lightweight stabilizer over the lace as I quilt it, to prevent the hopping foot from catching in it.

Kurt and Victoria had beautiful weather on their honeymoon out in Colorado, and enjoyed every day.  They headed back to Nebraska Saturday, and stayed in one of the cabins we like so well in Long Pine.  Remember the cabin wall hanging I made the owners of Pine Valley Retreat last year?

Late that night, Larry wrote to tell me he’d be home by 1:45 a.m. – but 1:45 a.m. came and went ... and then he got home at 1:32 a.m.!

Huh?  You’re wondering, How could that be?

Well, because Daylight Saving Time ended, and we fell back an hour at 2:00 a.m., that’s how. 

I was relieved to hear the Cummins diesel, knowing it was Larry, and knowing that that meant Jeremy, too, was home safe and sound.  They’d had only about an hour of sleep in the last 24 hours.

Sunday, my Uncle Bill and Aunt Helen from O’Fallon, Missouri, visited.  Uncle Bill is my father’s youngest brother, the only surviving sibling.  His birthday is November 14^th – and he will be 93 years old.  He and Aunt Helen still travel around all over the country, ride bikes together, and are in quite good health.  I rummaged up a birthday card for him, and printed a picture to tuck inside.  They are always pleased to get pictures.

After church last night, my brother-in-law John H. told us of a conversation they had with Uncle Bill that afternoon, while they were having dinner at my niece Christine’s house.  Uncle Bill was in the Navy, on a carrier in the Leyte Gulf, and with 14-men crews in planes that were used for search and rescue.  He told of waiting for the USS Indianapolis to come into harbor, and after it was four days late, they learned it had been torpedoed by the Japanese.  Her sinking led to the greatest single loss of life at sea in the history of the U.S. Navy.  On July 30, 1945, after delivering parts for the first atomic bomb to the United States air base at Tinian, the ship was torpedoed by the Imperial Japanese Navy submarine I-58, sinking in 12 minutes.  Of 1,196 crewmen aboard, approximately 300 went down with the ship.

The remaining 900 faced exposure, dehydration, saltwater poisoning, and shark attacks while floating with few lifeboats and almost no food or water.  The Navy learned of the sinking when survivors were spotted four days later by the crew of a PV-1 Ventura on routine patrol.  Only 317 survived.  I don’t know if Uncle Bill was one of the Ventura crew, but possibly.

Uncle Bill went into the Navy a year before Daddy, and got out a year later than he did, on account of Daddy having three young children, and Uncle Bill not having any yet.  Uncle Bill said he was never in any real battle, per se, but he recalls that they were all required to patrol the Philippine shores after the Indianapolis went down, as they were afraid the Japanese would bomb the beach and try to retake the place.

Uncle Bill and Aunt Helen headed back to their daughter’s home in Kansas City later that afternoon.

A little while after we got home from the evening church service, Victoria texted to say that she and Kurt were in Norfolk, 45 miles to our north, heading home.  It seems they’d both gotten homesick and decided to head for home. 

They had a grand time in Colorado, hiking and exploring and getting gorgeous pictures, as they had beautiful weather most days.  It snowed just enough to make for some pretty pictures. 

I reminded Larry of the first day of our honeymoon, as we were heading through Denver on our way up into the mountains.  It was late afternoon, and Larry had gone all quiet, not replying at all satisfactorily to my sparkling chitter-chatter and repartee.  I, having not yet learned that this man was the sort to get sleepy while driving (it took a 20-hour day to get me sleepy, after all – there were things to do and see!), thought he was having buyer’s – er, bridegroom’s – remorse, or was getting homesick before we’d hardly begun, or some such dismaying malady. 

I used to take great umbrage at his penchant for falling asleep smack-dab in the middle of a conversation.  It’s a personal affront, right?  Right??!!!!  Wake up and fight like a man!!! 

That was my general attitude.  heh  But even worse, the guy sometimes fell asleep smack-dab in the middle of his own stories!!!  Aaaaaarrrrrggghhh.  If he falls asleep in the middle of my stories, at least I know the rest of the story.  But... he would fall asleep whilst telling me a story, and then when I’d wake him back up ((poke, poke, jab, “Hey!!!!  Finish the story!!!!”)), he couldn’t remember what he’d been telling me.

Ooooo, my frustration knew no bounds.

Flash forward 37 years.  Here’s Victoria, just a year older than I was when I got married, and a whole lot like her mother in some ways.  And here’s Kurt, surprisingly like Larry in some ways – and still a little the worse for wear from his dire bout with life-threatening pneumonia back in March, and still getting over mononucleosis and coping with a bit of asthma.  For the most part, he seems healthy again.  But he works long hours, and gets tired.

So I told Victoria the above stories about her father and me, and cautioned, “Now, when Kurt falls asleep when you’re still raring to go, don’t act like your mother and take it personal and get all offended!  Be kind and sympathetic and let the poor guy sleep.  And just be glad you have a loving, kindhearted, hardworking husband.”

She assured me that that’s exactly what she’ll be like.

Ha!  She thinks.  The girl is like her mother.  But maybe... hopefully... she’s also like her father, with the praiseworthy ability to get along with people unless they really, really get obnoxious.

I spent a little time looking for some pewter or gray or silver shoes on eBay before I went to bed, because when I decided to wear my ruffly metallic pewter top and gray skirt with the big white flowers to church last night, I discovered that the two pairs of shoes I sometimes wear with it were in even worse shape than I remembered.  I wore black velvet slings instead.  I found three pairs of nice shoes – one new, two slightly used – at very good prices.  $18 for a like-new pair of shoes that cost $120 suits me just fine.  Another was $30 – but they are very nice shoes, and the price on their website is $180.  The brand-new pair, not as high of quality as the other two pairs, was $14.99.  Not bad.

I’m washing sheets today.  It’s a rainy, drizzly day, 57° – and Hannah just sent me a picture of Larry, high on our church’s roof, helping set the new steeple in place, after lifting it up there with the boom truck.  You’ll perhaps recall, the steeple got blown down in those hurricane-force winds we had a few months ago.  The new steeple is steel reinforced, while the old one was wood.  It should stand up to Nebraska winds, barring a strong tornado. 

Hannah entitled the photo “Precarious Positions.”  There was Larry, scrabbling along the ridge, heading toward the steeple, where he would secure it.

“Aaauuuggghhh,” I wrote to Hannah.  “Did you HAVE to show me that?”

“I didn’t send that to you when he was up there,” she responded.  “I thought you might have a heart attack.”

So he was already down.  That was some comfort.  I really hate it, knowing husband/sons/sons-in-law work on high scary ledges and hang from small sprigs that are pulling loose from sides of cliffs!  (Think Sarge, in Beetle Bailey.)  As if the height isn’t bad enough, they do it in the rain!  ♫ ♪ Slip-slidin’ away-ay!  ♪ ♫  (I hate that song, too.)

Later, Larry would tell us how, with each step he took, his boot would slip, which explains why he was practically crawling up there.  Aiiiyiiieee.

There goes the washing machine’s little jingle; time to put the sheets into the dryer.  I’m washing bedding.  I decided to put away the summer bedding and replace it with winter bedding, since I was washing sheets and microfleece blanket anyway.  Now the wool/corduroy/velvet quilt is on the bed, along with the velvet/Sherpa comforter.

Here are photos of the finished quilt from April 2012:  Jewel Box/Log Cabin Quilt

Here’s a bit of drama that happened to it before we ever got to use it, along with photos of the ugly back: 

Quilt Calamity

And here it is, finally on the bed.  More pictures:  Jewel Box/Log Cabin quilt on the bed

We only used it for a month before it got too hot and I swapped it for the summer quilt.  Now that I’ve put it on the bed, the weather will take a turn for the better, and we’ll have summer-like temperatures for a month, whataya bet?? 

Anyway, I’m looking forward to snuggling under it tonight.

That quilt was supposed to be a personal throw for Larry (he actually asked for one), but, as my projects are oft wont to do, it grew.  And grew.  And grew.

I think I must’ve been trying to use up all my wools, velvets, and corduroys in one fell swoop!  It didn’t work.  I could still make him a nice personal throw, with various wools.  It’s fun to sew with good quality wools.  Velvets, velours, and corduroys want to slip and slide, especially if I put opposing naps together; but I’ve made many clothing items from those fabrics, and knew how to pummel them into subjection.

I made it without batting, since it was so thick and heavy.  I won’t do that again; I’ll get a lightweight polyester batting, if I ever make another quilt of similar fabrics.  It was much harder to quilt it nice and flat without distortion, with no batting in it.  Batting takes up excess fullness – and because there was no batting, I wound up with an odd tuck here and there, especially in the log-cabin borders.

Here’s the velvet Sherpa comforter:

And now I’ll make a fresh pot of coffee – Vanilla Macadamia, produced by Hawaiian Isles Kona Coffee Co.  It’s chilly and rainy here.  Victoria is bringing us supper tonight.  Shouldn’t it be the other way around?  :-D

Tabby keeps sneezing!  If he’s not better by tomorrow, I suppose I should take him to the vet, or get him some medicine.

***************

And now supper is over, and Kurt and Victoria have headed home again.  The supper was partly a birthday gift for Larry, since they missed his birthday last week.  It consisted of sirloin tip roast, whole potatoes, and carrots.  Victoria cooked the meal in her new crockpot, purchased with gift money from an elderly preacher friend who lives in Kentucky.  The tip roast was perfectly seasoned, and so tender it melted in our mouths.  That was one of the best meals she’s ever fixed.

They also gave Larry a new pillow.  That, because Larry had texted them a few days ago to tell them that two big, lightweight boxes had arrived for them.  Victoria replied that they were pillows someone had given them. 

Larry, teasing her, responded, “Yes, they’re very nice!  Mine was getting quite flat, so I was glad when these came.” 

We looked at the pictures they’d taken in Colorado, then at the pictures I took at their wedding.  They hauled out a few more things of Victoria’s... and off they went again, sweeter and happier than ever.  I sure like those kids!

Below is one of Victoria’s pictures from somewhere around Georgetown:

Now to go get under the velvet comforter and the wool/velvet/corduroy quilt. 

Oh!  I hear snow geese!  It’s after 1:00 a.m., and there must be a very large flock, because the honking isn’t fading out.

Tomorrow... 

Election Day 2016.

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