Journal: Dogs & Hospitals & Storms at Sea

Last Monday evening, Teddy came walking in the front door – with a big ol’ puppy in his arms.  It’s an Anatolian shepherd, eleven weeks old, and already 32 pounds.

Pretty cute!  And pretty...  big.

School was back in session Tuesday, as most of the roads were once again passable, though slippery.  Our driveway was a glaze of shining ice. 

Larry came home for lunch and found me creeping carefully around the sparkling-slick back deck, boots on feet, camera in hand.  There were squirrels and birds and icicles to take pictures of, after all!  He inched his way along the drive, and I suggested he fall down so I’d have something more interesting to take shots of, which made him hoot and get out his phone, in case I fell down. 

Our niece Katie posted a picture of her icy birdbath on Instagram, and wrote, “My favorite thing about winter is ice.  And that feeling of ‘I’m gonna die’, every time your feet slip or your car won’t stop.  Love it.”  heh

Victoria came out to get a few things, and we had a nice visit.  After she left, I went to Hobby Lobby for batting and tea towels.  Wouldn’t you know, I forgot to print the 40%-off coupon.  And neither batting nor tea towels are cheap!

I saw Hannah there, with Nathanael and Levi.  They’d been to the doctor, and he said Levi’s sore throat was merely troubles with asthma and allergies.  Hannah asked him to take a culture swab ----- and finally today, the doctor’s office called to say Levi has strep throat!  So all this time, the poor little guy has been getting sicker and sicker, trying to go to school... and he’s been needing medication, for pity’s sake.  Strep throat is not something to be taken lightly.  Upsetting, when things like that happen.

When I got home, I loaded the Storm at Sea table topper on my quilting frame and got some of it quilted.

By Wednesday afternoon, the temperature had climbed to 43°, so all that ice was melting, and everything was in a fine mess.  A little before I headed off to pick up grandchildren at school, Amy wrote to say that their driveway and front walk were still thick with ice and very slippery, as they are on the north side of the house.  I went to get our bag of de-icing salt to take with me – but there was only about a cupful left in the bag.

Sooo... I went to town, picked up the children, and headed over to Bomgaar’s for de-icing salt, i.e., ice-melt.  No luck; they were plumb out.  We drove on to Hy-Vee gas station, where there had been large piles of the bags Sunday night.  Nary a bag to be had, and the cashier assured us that they were just as unavailable at the store itself.  By now we’d spent an unproductive 15 minutes, and Amy would be wondering where we were, so we headed to their house.  I parked practically on top of the icy, crackling grass, and then, with that cupful of salt, created a little de-iced path across the shiny, slippery sidewalk to the front porch, where the ice was starting to melt.  The children made it into the house safely – and then as Amy stood on the porch talking to me, Josiah escaped and came whizzing back out, giggling and trying (unsuccessfully) to slide. 

“You’re raising suicidal kids!” I informed Amy as she, laughing, captured her small son and herded him back the way he had come.

Larry found de-icer at Ace Hardware the next day, and got some for us and for Teddy, as the ice still on his drive would’ve put the Rideau Canal Skateway to shame.

After our church service that night, we went to visit Lawrence, Larry’s stepfather, who had been taken to the hospital early that morning.  He’s 89, has cancer, and isn’t expected to live much longer.  Several of our children and Larry’s brother’s children showed up, too, along with Lawrence’s daughter, her daughter, and a little great-grandson.  He was very weak, but glad to see us.  He told us that they’d hauled him to the hospital in a cattle truck.  “I don’t think the ambulance had any springs at all on its frame!”

I took his hand and thanked him for being such a good grandpa to our children, and told him how much we loved him.  He smiled and nodded, and squeezed my hand.

Afterwards, we bumped into Larry’s cousin and her husband at the grocery store, and inquired into the health of one of their little grandsons who is in Florida with his family having extensive surgery on his leg.  He’s 12 ½, a twin, and he was born with a short, deformed leg.  The doctors – world-renowned specialists – have amputated part of it, put a plate in his hip, turned the foot around and reattached it as a joint, and when it heels, they’ll fit him for a prosthesis, and hopefully one of these days, he’ll be able to walk quite normally.

Monday was the first surgery – and he had been in a lot of pain since then.  So Wednesday morning, after deciding that the plate must be pressing on the sciatic nerve, they did another surgery, moving the plate up a bit.  Since then, the pain has lessened considerably.  He’s such a sweet boy, and it made us feel so bad to know he was in so much pain.

After leaving the grocery store, we stopped at Sapp Bros. Apple Barrel restaurant for a late supper.  I ordered roast beef and potatoes; Larry got a Denver omelet and pancakes.

Somebody on a quilting group that night asked about a manual for the Electric Quilt program.  I hunted up the manual in pdf form and sent links for both Windows and Mac to the group. 

BUT.  I wrote from Outlook, and I have my computer set to throw in the words ‘macaroni and cheese’ when I type ‘mac’.

So, I informed 3,329 people that they could download EQ7 manuals for Windows and Macaroni and Cheese.  ((snicker giggle snerk))

I enjoy using EQ7, but I’ll bet I haven’t done even half of what it’s capable of doing.  I sort of bumble rapidly along until all of a sudden something pretty materializes, and I think, Oh!!  Save, save!  Print!  Cut!  Sew!  :-D

Sometimes perfectly logical things float just above my head somewhere, and I absolutely can’t see them, probably on account of my nose nearly resting on the presser foot, what with the machine being on my too-high marble table.

I once made an entire quilt with difficult, set-in seams.  The old-fashioned way, with templates an’ ever’thang.

When I finished, and was putting the templates back into the pockets at the back of the book, I spotted ------- instructions.

Oh.  There was a perfectly easy way of making that quilt, with no set-in seams whatsoever.  I just ... hadn’t noticed, hadn’t thought of it, didn’t see the obvious!

I think someone planted a motto in my head when I was born:  If it’s easy, make it hard.  There’s no little jaunt that I can’t turn into a marathon!  (Or an impossibility.)

By late afternoon, I was about two-thirds done quilting the table topper.

Someone wondered how I’d cope with the excess fullness that appeared in the previous day’s photos.  There actually wasn’t as much fullness as it seemed, and the ongoing quilting was going fine, with nary a tuck nor a pucker.  The ‘excess fullness’ was a trick of lighting – or, rather, the lack thereof:  I’d turned off all but a corner light, the better to show the quilting stitches (and ‘excess fullness’, as it turned out.  http://sarahlynnsmiteredcorner.blogspot.com/  (scroll down)

“Very nice, Sarah Lynn,” wrote a quilting friend.  “Is it just a trick of lighting that gives ME all those wrinkles too??? LOL”

That reminded me of an old episode of the Andy Griffiths show, where Andy, Barney, and Gomer went into a ‘haunted house’, searching for possible criminals, delinquents, and villains.  One of the rogues in question had cut holes in the eyes of a picture on the wall, and every time Barney and Gomer looked at it, the guy on the other side of the wall rolled his eyes this way and that – but every time Andy looked at it, the original painted eyes were back in place.  Andy, disgusted with his scaredy-cat companions, and with an eye-roll of his own, told them, “It’s just the lighting.”

He went off to further investigate the place.  Barney and Gomer peered back up at the picture.  Eyeballs rolled from side to side.  ((gulp))  Each time this happened, they hissed to each other, voices a-tremble, “It’s just the lighting, like Andy said!”

We went to see Lawrence again Thursday evening, but didn’t stay long, as Larry had gotten off work late, visiting hours were officially over, and one of the nurses kept making a production of checking unnecessarily on Lawrence and then looking pointedly at her watch before exiting the room.  Made me want to grasp her wrist, peer at the watch myself, and then tell her the exact time, slowly, carefully, and in precise syllables, as one would do a kindergartner who is just learning to tell time. 

Just like us regular folk, some nurses are charming and compassionate; others are aggravating and provoking, irritating and irritable.  Those sorts should’ve gone into the Armed Forces instead of the medical services.  Let them annoy the Russians (or whomever we happen to be scuffling with at the moment)!  Though other doctors and nurses had told us we could come any time, we left soon, as we didn’t want to be the cause of the aggravation.

I finished the Storm at Sea table topper that night.  Mine doesn’t look like the ‘normal’ Storm at Sea pattern, because of the colorways I chose.  But it is indeed that very pattern.

Here are some of the more traditional colorways:

Storm at Sea quilts

And now I’ll tell you a secret that you mustn’t tell any quilting personages.  (All quilting personages, please quit reading at this point.)

I don’t often really like the Storm at Sea pattern; it’s too ‘busy’ to suit me.  BUT! – a) I wanted to join a group of other ladies who were going to be making it; it’s fun to sew the same thing at the same time, and compare notes; b) I wanted to make a wedding gift; c) someone posted a picture of a Storm at Sea quilt on Pinterest that had similar colorways to mine, and I liked it.

Now, having said that, and insulted and offended every quilter who has ever made a Storm at Sea (and who neglected to follow instructions and quit reading as instructed above), I will add this:  I have found quite a number of Storm at Sea quilts that I really liked, and have posted them on my Pinterest board.  Mine is directly after the one I sort of copied, though you can see the pattern is somewhat different.  I learned how to make the ‘right’ border (diamond, square on point, diamond) after my quilt was done.  ((rolling eyes))

And, as usual, my quilt grew.  Why does everything I do always *grow*?!!  Maybe the newlyweds have a pool table to put it on?  ha!  Maybe it’s a couch topper.  Maybe it’s a concert grand piano topper.  Maybe it’s a pup tent!

Friday, I got all prepared to start on the two machine-embroidered tea towels a friend ordered, embroidery module on the machine and ever’thang – and realized I hadn’t washed the towels.  They’re 100% cotton flour sack fabric, very nice quality.  I sure didn’t want to go to all the trouble of embroidering them, only to have them shrink and look terrible, first time through the wash!

So I tossed them into the washing machine, and then used my trusty old Bernina 830 Electronic Record to sew a double-thick fleece blanket for one of the grandsons.  The old 830 needs to be used now and again, in any case.  I kept pressing the bottom edge of the foot pedal with my heel to make the needle lift or lower – but that machine doesn’t have that feature.  Furthermore, it coasts to a stop, and while I was used to that for some 35 years, I sure got used to my newer machine’s immediate stops in a hurry!

One side of the blanket is black fleece with silver-gray volleyballs printed on it; the other side is silver-gray minky.  I had enough fleece to also cover a neckroll pillow.

By the time the towels were out of the dryer, I was nearly done with the blanket.

I ironed the tea towels, started the machine embroidering, and then finished the neckroll pillow.

While my machine worked away, I got a little more than a quarter of a double-thick fleece blanket fringed and knotted.  This one will be for Baby Elsie’s first birthday next fall, maybe.

Lawrence was sent home from the hospital Saturday.  Hospice will help Norma care for him, and his daughter Barbara, along with Larry and his brother Kenny, have been helping, too.  It’s a difficult job, both physically and emotionally.

It was a pretty day Saturday.  Friends were posting pictures of their children playing outside.  One such shot, of a small child dashing around a swingset loaded with swingers, brought to mind a conversation I had earlier in the week with one of my blind friends on this exact matter. 

“I only really feel endangered,” she wrote, “when I’m walking through a bank of swings.”

I replied, “Toddlers are not frightened of such a thing in the slightest.  If the swing is not there right now, it never will be there.  Dash right through! – then look totally amazed – shortly before howling your lungs out – when you get clobbered right properly, clocked smartly upside the head, by a swing on the rebound, while the happy swinger looks around slightly puzzled to see why the little jolt he felt precipitated such an unearthly baying and yowling.”

“The blind have more insight than the sighted,” my friend responded.  “Maybe it was that floor coming up awfully fast when I fell off those wall ladders at the gym, or maybe it was some parental fear ground into the head of their kid before someone’s clodhopper had a chance to do it.  Or maybe it was the screel of the unoiled chains that did it.”

That evening, Larry went to put Loren’s Internet dish back up; it had gotten blown down by the gale that went through the day after Christmas.  He got it up all right, but couldn’t get the computer to connect to the Internet.  He called me, and I offered a few suggestions, but nothing helped.  I’ll go see what I can do about it soon.  I wonder if they forgot to program it for him when he got the new dish at the office?

Meanwhile, I finished my customer’s tea towels and the double-fleece baby blanket.  The towels were supposed to be alike – but you can see they clearly are not; one has brighter leaves than the other.  Fortunately, my customer likes them both, and they are for her two daughters – not both going to the same person.

My next project is to clear out the entire upstairs that our departing offspring left in a bit of a shambles.  That should keep me busy until ... hmmm...  August of 2026 AD.

Victoria and her friend Robin just came and collected some of her things – her money plant (large five-leafed plant), several bags of potting soil, and a few items of clothing.

The big army helicopter is flying over, just to our north, hanging low over Shell Creek, which has a tendency to turn into a raging torrent anytime there’s a snow or ice melt.  They must be checking out the situation.

***

And now the Schwan lady has brought some frozen vegetables, pizzas, and soups.  I guess we’ll have pizza for supper tonight!  Pizza and cottage cheese and Honeycrisp apples and Tropicana orange juice.

In chatting with a friend about some relatives who keep their house quite cold, I was reminded of a time in the middle of the summer, when I was, oh, maybe about 12 or 13.  My father usually ran hot, and he’d been working on a vehicle in the garage, and when he came in, he turned every air conditioner in the house on high.  There were enough air conditioners in that house to freeze the pipes.

We were sitting around the table eating when my brother Loren popped in.  He sat down at the table... conversed with us for a bit... and then he got up, went to the front coat closet, pulled out Daddy’s warmest wool coat, found a thick hat lined with Sherpa, complete with earflaps, and then grabbed some of my big fuzzy sledding mittens and a bright pink flowered scarf.  For the final touch, he pulled out some of Daddy’s big rubber overboots, the kind with the metal snaps down the side.  He had to remove his shoes in order to put those on. 

He donned all this paraphernalia and came clomping back into the kitchen.

Now, I could see him by way of a round wall mirror, and I knew what he was doing.  He put a finger to his lips to shush me – and believe me, I had a hard time shushing, especially when he pulled that thick hat down over his ears and then wrapped that flowery scarf of mine round and round his neck and face.

Daddy’s back was to the living room, and he didn’t know what was going on until Loren rounded the end of the table, resplendent in his winter attire.

Daddy burst out laughing (he had a great big booming voice) and said, “Well, we could just turn off an air conditioner or two!”

“We could?” asked Loren in a surprised (but muffled) tone.  “I didn’t know we could!” 

Time for pizza!  Shall we have Supreme, Mexican, or Canadian Bacon?

And maybe... a berry smoothie for dessert!

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