Here’s
what my little office looked like before I started cleaning it, which is an
aggravation, since I left it spic and span when I moved my sewing things
downstairs and stopped using the little room about six years ago. I discovered that the rest of the family had
been using the room as a catchall for all manner of paraphernalia. Ugh.
I just
started on this room Saturday, and already it is a good deal cleaned out, with
numerous things going to Caleb and to the Goodwill. I’ll be happy to be using this rolltop desk
again soon.
The children
all loved that rolltop desk, because as I’d sit there typing (first, on a word
processor; eventually on a computer), they’d ‘mail’ me things through those
slots on the sides. I’d exclaim, snatch it up, read it, sign stuff with a
flourish, draw a picture or two, ‘stamp’ it (with stickers), and ‘mail’ it back
to them.
That rolltop
desk was neat as a pin, and shut when I left it and moved most of my
things downstairs to my new sewing room. Then one day when I went up
there for something, there it was wide open, with things in a jumbled heap, and
lots of items on the desk and in the room that don’t belong to me – painting
supplies, parts for remote-controlled, gasoline-powered vehicles, a grand
variety of tools... you name it. And of course everything is covered with
dust. Living on a gravel road with
cornfields all around assures that.
At least the quilt display rack that I found at a secondhand
store for only about $5 is still in one piece.
See it there, in the middle of the mess?
A quilting friend recently told a story about how she and
another quilter were discussing quilts they needed to finish. Her husband joined the conversation: “Well, you only have to get those three
quilts hanging on your longarm done, and then you’ll be all done!” (meaning, ‘all
done making quilts forever and ever, amen’.)
He looked quite bamboozled, bewildered, and mystified when
his wife and her friend went into great ringing peals of laughter.
That’s something
on the order of Larry thinking I don’t need to go see the Sandhill cranes
again, because I already saw them, took pictures of them, and they still look
the same as they did last time. I told him indignantly, “I’ve been
through three cameras since then! It’s been eight years, at least!”
(Besides, they’re only 70 miles away, all 600,000 of them.)
“It’s only
been two or three years, at the most!” he protested.
I pulled up
my last photos of the cranes. Ha! It’s been nine years!
Quilting
and photography: there’s always another
one to make and take! Here’s a
fact: Nothing ever looks the same way twice. Things change! – landscape, clouds,
lighting. And animals and birds are not static.
They move, for crying out
loud!
So now we are
planning to go see the Sandhill cranes this coming Saturday.
Since I’ve gotten the majority of my contacts and accounts
notified and changed from lajack@megavision.com to sarahlynn.jackson2@gmail.com, I’m also resetting my notification sounds
in Outlook. I don’t (usually) match up
audio clips with what I think people are like; I just choose something that I
will hear and take note of, and know who is writing. Plus, it’s fun to
have my computer chirping, growling, meowing, barking, warbling, and now and
then bursting into song.
But I did have a friend get all bent out of shape because her
audio clip, when she wrote to me, was Singing in the Bathtub, Happy Once
Again! – and she thought that meant I thought she needed a bath.
Haha!
When Teddy was still at home, he used to say, “Mama, your
computer drives me nuts!” So I’ve
entitled the sound theme on each of my computers ‘Drive You Nuts’ ever
since.
Last week at this time, I’d forwarded gmail to Outlook and applied
some rules. Most of them didn’t
take. By Tuesday, they were working – randomly. Perhaps the laptop
needed a nap? If particular errors
refuse to happen twice in a row, then I certainly have a hard time figuring out
a fix for whatever needs to be fixed! I decided to let well enough alone
for a while, and hoped some of the issues would resolve themselves. Could
happen. Maybe. Possibly. 😉
In fact, many did just that.
No, don’t ask me why. Don’t ask, I said!
That evening, feeling quite a lot like I needed dessert, and quite a lot
like I didn’t want to make it myself, I wrote a note to Larry: “I’d be sorta pleased if you’d bring us home a big ol’ gooey
doughnut or two for dessert.”
He wrote back in quite an agreeable tone, “I will see what I can find. 😋”
He brought home
turnovers – apple and cherry – as the big gooey doughnuts were all gone, except
for some in dozen-count boxes, and he didn’t like the variety, nor did he want
that many. Just as well; the doughnuts
give me a stomachache. The turnovers
never do.
Some friends have been discussing troubles they are having
in the dividing of a late parent’s belongings, and the executing of the will. Some tell of becoming estranged with their
siblings over the matter – and never speaking to them again. Sad, when that happens.
My mother passed away just before Christmas of 2003. As we sorted through Mama’s things, my sister
Lura Kay and I decided to give Mama’s pink depression-glass dishes – a sizeable
collection that she’d received as a wedding gift in 1936, and added to as she
could – to our late sister-in-law, Janice, because we knew how much she liked
those dishes, and we also knew she had two or three china hutches, and would
find a lovely place for them.
I wasn’t at my mother’s house when Lura Kay gave them to
Janice.
Dawned the next day... and I got a phone call. It was
Janice – and she was crying. What in the world?! I thought,
concerned.
Turns out, she’d fretted and stewed all through the night, because
she’d taken those dishes when I wasn’t around, and had not made absolute certain
that I really, truly wanted her to have them! I set about assuring her
that she was absolutely the one who should have them.
Flash forward to a year or more ago, when I was at my
brother’s house one day. We walked past the china hutch where Mama’s
dishes are displayed – and he came to a sudden stop, peered in, and then,
turning to me, asked, “Do you want these dishes? Shouldn’t I give them to
you or Lura Kay now?”
“No, no!” I
protested. “Just look how pretty they are in there! I don’t have
nearly as nice a place to put them, and Lura Kay’s china hutches are full,
too! Besides, you like them, don’t you?”
He did. So there the dishes stay.
That was just one item.
One night as my sister and I were working away in our mother’s
house, clearing it out, I took yet another box out to my crammed-full vehicle,
walked back in, and said, “You know, I’ve just realized that you’re not really
being generous; you’re just getting rid of junk that you don’t know what to do
with!”
It was late, and we both have a tendency to get silly when
we’re tired.
She turned and gave me a long look without cracking a
smile. Then she looked at her husband John, who was trying not to
smirk. “She’s onto us,” she told him. “We might as well take
this---” and she picked up a box of pretty bird figurines that I’d packed up,
and handed them to him.
These were figurines packed in a box with my name on it, as
they were gifts I’d given my mother in the first place. And of course
everybody knows I love birds, just like she did.
John said in a resigned tone, “I guess so,” and headed for
the door.
“HEY!!!!” I protested ------ and then we all proceeded to
laugh like idiots.
One more little note: we came upon a very old pair of
Mama’s wire-rimmed glasses. She wore
them long before I was born. But I have a couple of favorite pictures of
her wearing those glasses, including this one with my father in his sailor
uniform. It was July, 1944.
Well, I’d been going along just fine, enjoying working with
my sister, sister-in-law, and various friends who popped in now and then to
give us a hand. But, quite unexpectedly, I cried over those
glasses. I put them back in the case and set them down.
My sister picked them up and handed them to me with a
smile. “Here, you put these in your box.”
So I did, without another word.
Gmail forwarding seems to be
working okay now with my Outlook program. I tweaked it just slightly, actually
doing something that I thought might make matters worse – but instead I think
it fixed the problem.
Wednesday morning, we heard
some bad news. Loren called to tell me that our nephew Kelvin, Lura Kay’s
oldest son, had been transported to an Omaha hospital via helicopter – and he
has colon cancer. Kelvin is just 50
years old.
His wife Rachel has not been well for months.
Doctors aren’t exactly sure what’s wrong, though they gave a diagnosis
of ‘acute exhaustion’. She hasn’t been able to teach her class at
school or come to church for quite a while.
Kelvin and Rachel have five children. Their youngest is 9 ½. They have seven grandchildren,
with one more on the way. They just moved into a beautiful new home about
a year ago.
When we lived in town, we were a block away from them. They lived in a house we used to live in, and
had renovated it very nicely. Our youngest four were almost the same ages
as their oldest four. They had Jodie, we had Hester. They had
Sharon, we had Lydia. They had Jason, we had Caleb. They had Jamie,
we had Victoria. They played together often, and still get together.
One morning, I opened my door to get the newspaper – and
there sat Sharon, age 3, right in the middle of my front lawn. She’d had
to cross the street to get there, and wasn’t supposed to do that. “Hi!”
she greeted me happily.
“Hi,” I returned, setting the paper down and heading out to
collect the child.
“I know what your name is,” she informed me, “And I can say
it, too!” She nodded once or twice for emphasis. “It’s Shar Win!”
Hee hee
“We’d better take you back home!” I told her, taking her
hand. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be here by yourself.”
“Oh, it’s okay,” she said airily, “’Cuz Mom doesn’t know!”
Her mother had gone to the grocery store, and Kelvin was
working in the yard. He’d gone inside to answer the phone – and Sharon
had made her getaway. Jodie, age 5, had dashed in and told her Daddy.
He was just trotting down the sidewalk, looking worried,
when I rounded the corner toward his house.
“Found your wayward puppy,” I said.
“Sharon!” he exclaimed, “You know better than to run off
like that!”
“Yes,” she agreed, “But Mom doesn’t know!”
Haha
Jodie and Sharon both have two girls and a boy. Sharon
named her little boy after my father, her great-grandpa – George. He
would be tickled over that. Sharon is expecting their fourth. Our
Lydia, same age as Sharon, has three little boys and is expecting their fourth,
also. Jamie and her husband just had their first baby... and Kurt
and Victoria are expecting their first. I imagine this next generation of
cousins will be good friends, just as their parents are.
That day, I paid a few bills, picked up the grandchildren
after school, did a bit of altering on a fleece robe I’d given Hannah for her
birthday, and kept cleaning and organizing the upstairs.
I had a hard time concentrating. Hearing that news about Kelvin had been like
a hard, nasty punch. I was 5 ½ years old when he was born, and I just
loved him to pieces. He once said to me, when he was really little, “Sarah
Lynn, I like playing with you better than with anybody else in the whole world!”
I was probably 10 or 11, and that thrilled me to pieces. Best compliment
anyone had ever paid me. Ever.
I still think of him as having curly blond hair, even though
it turned dark when he was still young.
Soon it was time for church.
On Wednesday nights, we have our midweek Bible study, and sometimes
prayer service. We start off with several songs, and end with one more.
It’s refreshing and helpful to the spirit, especially when we’re feeling sad.
After church that night, we had a light meal of Alaskan
salmon, broccoli, apple juice, and applesauce.
I always think I’ll get back home with the same energy with which I left
the house, and plan to return to whatever it was I was doing when I departed. Rarely happens.
But I was back in business Thursday, cleaning and sorting away. I finished the main part of Caleb’s old room, closet and
all, and was ready to start on the large cubbyhole. Up on a top shelf in
the closet (there are 9-foot ceilings, and two shelves above the closet rod), I
found a violin. The bridge was off, but it’s a beautiful instrument, with
shiny bright woodgrain with a touch of red to it. I decided to take a picture, send it to Hannah, and see if
she knew whose it was.
My camera was downstairs – but my new tablet was right there handy, and
it takes quite good photos.
I snatched it up, took a photo, touched the ‘Share’ icon, and looked
somewhat blankly at the options. Since I
was a-wantin’ to send a message, the ‘Message’ button seemed like the logical
thing to press. I pressed it, typed in
Hannah’s address... and tapped ‘Send’. A
few minutes later, I thought I’d also send the picture to my laptop. Maybe I’d forward the entire message I’d
sent, just to keep things straight.
There was the picture, all right... but where was the message? It
wasn’t in my gmail ‘Sent’ file; nor was it in Larry’s.
Hannah had received it, so where was it? She told me it had been sent from Larry’s
Google+ account. Ah. I not only don’t know much about my tablet, I
also don’t know much about Google+. Didn’t even know I could send from there. But ah’m a-larnin’.
One thing I need to do is take my tablet to Verizon and have them take
out Larry’s 187 contacts and put my
much smaller number of contacts in. His
contacts got put into it because Larry and Caleb were the ones who purchased
the tablet, and I was not along. I don’t
imagine I’ll be needing to contact construction companies in Omaha anytime
soon, hmmm?
I could do it myself, if I had something a little more intelligent than
a dumbphone. :-\
Hannah told
me that the violin had belonged to Dorcas, so I wrote and asked Dorcas about
it. She does indeed want it, and is
happy and excited I found it. Last year
when she needed maternity clothes, she had a garage sale to get a little extra
money. Someone asked if she had any musical
instruments. “I said yes,” Dorcas told
me, “and was stupid and sold my violin, and have regretted it ever since.”
“This one might
not be as nice as the one you had,” I told her, “but it’s sure pretty. I’ll
have it fixed by the
technician at The Music Store uptown, and send it to you.”
Since Teddy was having new tires put on his van, and having
it aligned, Amy had no wheels that day.
So I made four runs to town ferrying the grandchildren to and fro.
Josiah tried to teach me arithmetic: “Grandma, do you know what 3+5 is?”
“Albuquerque!” I exclaimed triumphantly.
He gave me a long look.
Is Grandma really that dumb? He tried another equation: “What’s 8+2?”
“Nebuchadnezzar!” I said, quick as a wink.
At that, several of the other kids couldn’t keep from laughing,
and Josiah began to understand that Grandma was ... being Grandma.
He pulled out his spelling paper. “Do you know how to spell ‘elephant’?”
“Yep!” said I.
“Q-r-p-8-7-b-b!”
He gave up and laughed with his siblings.
Lura Kay
called late that afternoon to tell me that there is a spot of cancer on Kelvin’s
liver and in his lung. The cancer is
therefore considered Stage
4. The doctors plan to shrink the colon tumor with chemo, then remove it.
This is pretty heartbreaking for all of us. Lura Kay
and John H. have already lost one son – their second son David, when that drunk
driver rammed into his house in the middle of the night.
Kelvin is an upbeat person, and quite optimistic, although it
was sobering that morning when the new test results came back. It’s hard
for his wife Rachel, and she wasn’t well in the first place. Everyone sort of thought maybe Kelvin had
whatever Rachel has, when he felt unwell lately. He had tests, but nothing showed up. So the cancer has progressed for a time.
That evening, Larry sent me a text: “I’m on my way to Omaha with Teddy to get a
bedroom set for Emma.” Jeremy’s father Tim has been putting in the electricity for the basement
bedrooms at Teddy’s house.
When Larry is going to be late, I eat when I’m hungry, rather than
waiting ’til he gets home. I was just
chowing down on brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes, and a bowlful of frozen
berries (blackberries, blueberries, and raspberries), with M&M oatmeal
cookies baking in the oven, when Loren came to visit for a little while. He was feeling pretty bad about Kelvin.
I shared my cookies with him, and when he left, he was
laughing, because I told him the story of Sharon on the front lawn: “It’s okay, ’cuz Mom doesn’t know!”
I showed him a picture our great-niece Jodie had posted on
Instagram of their little boy Mitchell dressed for church Wednesday night – and
wearing a helicopter tie tac pin that his Grandpa Kelvin had given him when
they’d visited him, a helicopter just like the one Kelvin had ridden in. That picture got to me. The little guy looks a lot like his grandpa
did, when he was that age.
I had a lengthier suppertime break than I’d intended... but
my brother felt better, and so did my back.
A little after 10:00 p.m., I suddenly thought, Aaaccckkk, laundry! I’d forgotten about
the laundry. Only two loads had been folded and put away. Another was in the dryer, another in the
washing machine, and one more waiting to be washed. I rectified that situation and headed back
upstairs to start dragging things out of Caleb’s cubbyhole. I was younger
and tougher when I put things in there. It wasn’t going to be easy.
After quitting with the cleaning for the night, I
worked on changing my email address here and there. I’m planning to eventually shut the
Megavision address down entirely, but I have several accounts scattered around
the Internet that refuse to let me change the address for one reason or
another. For instance, Craftsy. When I tried changing from lajack to sarahlynn.jackson2@gmail.com, I was informed that the gmail address was
already in use. This conflict must be
caused by something I ordered years ago before I set up my pattern store with
them.
I wrote for help. The
cute little office girl (well, that’s what she sounds like) gleefully wrote back the following day that they had
merged my emails together ‘into one happy account under your preferred
email!’ Yes, that’s the exact wording.
I checked it out – and found I no longer had access to my pattern
store.
I wrote again: “Thank
you kindly, but now I can’t sign into my store!”
“Oops!” wrote the jolly, perky office help. “I’ll fix that!”
Directly I got a notice that I was to sign in under lajack,
as I had been doing, and then I was to go ahead and change to the new addy in
my ‘preferences’.
I did so – and was informed, “Sorry; that address is already
in use.”
Uh, I think I already went through this once?
And Craftsy isn’t the only
place that’s happening. Fabric.com is
another. I could just make a new account there altogether, but that’s not a
good solution, as I want to maintain access to my previous orders. All they
need to do is delete the old, unused account, and all would be well. They have to change do it from their
end; I can’t do it. But will they?? No, of course not!
I decided to quit giving myself a headache over the matter,
pull up youtube, and watch truck accidents on icy/snowy roads, instead. Much more
relaxing.
You can still write to my lajack address, and I’ll still get
it. But I have to switch accounts before
I reply, or my email gets stuck in Outbox, and then I have to disconnect from
the Internet, close out of Outlook, pull Outlook back up, delete the email from
Outbox, turn the Internet back on, open the email I threw into the deleted
file, and resend it, hopefully remembering to change accounts before clicking ‘Send’
(or I’ll have to repeat the entire process all over again).
Somebody wanted to know what I was doing all this
housecleaning for. Well, to get the
house clean, of course! Duh. I like things clean and organized. Just because you can’t tell it is no sign I don’t. I’m going to move my sewing room (not the
quilting machine) upstairs to Victoria’s old room. I’m holding that out
as a carrot in front of my nose, to keep myself plugging away at it.
Friday, I delved deeper into the cubbyhole in Caleb’s old
room. By early afternoon, the Jeep had a bunch of stuff in it, the living
room had a heap of things to give the kids – and that cubbyhole was still a
whole lot more full than empty.
After
going to town once that afternoon to deliver several large boxes and bags to
the Goodwill and to take some suits and dresses to the cleaners, I returned
home and got every last box, bin, and bag out of Caleb’s old cubbyhole. I
sorted... and then I laid the two rear seats down in the Jeep, making the
entire back from driver’s seat to hatch a cargo area. Then, box after
box, I hauled things out. Nice sweaters, shirts, jeans, Carhartt
overalls, and a variety of games were for Hannah and family. I think
Aaron is almost as big as Caleb, imagine that. Caleb is 6’ tall.
I found a lot fewer jeans in Caleb’s cubbyhole than I
expected to find – and more shirts than I remembered putting there. I
have no idea what became of the size 14 jeans I thought were in there.
Possibly Jeremy Duncan of the renowned comic strip Zits sold them on
eBay.
I also discovered a beautiful-but-forgotten shimmery, plum-colored
sweater with a soft black fur peter pan collar in the top drawer of a dresser
in my old office. I knew when I opened the drawer and saw plum-colored
confetti all over that the news would not be good.
Sure enough, mice had chewed multiple holes in the
sweater.
How did they get into the top drawer, and why did they leave
the other four drawers alone?? I hate mice.
At least they couldn’t chew up
this pretty stoneware duck feeder! Loren
and Janice gave it to me, some years ago.
I wondered what had become of it.
I found it amongst some things of Victoria’s and thought it was hers...
but she said it’s mine, and Loren had a vague recollection of them giving it to
me. Okay, yesirree, it’s mine! I know right where to hang it, too.
A huge box of cassettes was for Teddy and family.
Loren gave them an old but very nice cassette player for Christmas. It works perfectly and has excellent sound
quality, even though it’s probably 25 years old. I found a little Walkman
cassette player in the cubbyhole, stuck a new battery in it, rummaged up a nice
set of earbuds – and it works! I gave that to Emma last week, and Teddy later
told me that it had been his when he was not much older than
Ethan. He wondered how he’d managed to leave it behind when he got
married and moved out. And I wonder how I managed to give it to a
child of the person to whom it belonged, and who was particularly fond of it.
Those cassettes are probably approaching the ends of their lifetimes; but the
children will enjoy them while they last.
When Larry got home after work that night, he came with me
to take things to Hannah’s and Teddy’s houses.
Teddy and Amy were just arriving home from Lincoln, where they’d gotten
the kids a big playset. We unloaded a
lot of stuff, but the Jeep was still half full, because the Goodwill closed
earlier than we’d expected that evening.
Our living room looked like a calamity, because there was a
heap of things belonging to Caleb stacked in it. I found a box of things
he’d gotten for Christmas the year before he got married – still full of
brand-new things. He must’ve stuck it in his cubbyhole and forgotten all
about it. There were nice socks, a silky-soft Under Armour shirt, and a
beautiful little leather-bound devotional by Charles Spurgeon (he was called ‘The
Prince of Preachers’, preaching back in the late 1800s, and he’s one of our
favorites) – and the plastic wrap is still on the book. Caleb was happy
to have that; he likes reading Spurgeon’s writings. There was a wooden
football made up of wooden puzzle pieces, too.
I found brand-new Wrangler jeans (that will no longer fit him)... and
half a dozen big and little remote-controlled vehicles.
Whew,
this spring cleaning I’m doing is... hmmm...
I looked for a better description than ‘hard work’ and discovered ‘tough grind’
and ‘donkeywork’. So ‘donkeywork’ it is. ;-)
Did you ever look at things like those cars... books...
toys... and think, I miss my little boy! ? Yeah, I miss my
little Caleb the boy – but I sure do love my grown-up Caleb!
One day when Teddy was just two years old, I told him, “Teddy,
did you know that your real name is Theodore?”
He giggled. “Noshuh.”
“Yes, it is,” I said. “It’s Theodore Lyle
Jackson. That’s your name.”
Another giggle, and a shake of the head. “Noshuh!”
“Yes, Teddy!” I worked harder to convince him. “It
says ‘Theodore Lyle Jackson’ on your birth certificate! Teddy is your
nickname. Your real name is Theodore.”
He became more adamant than ever. “Noshuh!!! I
is a Teddy!”
Hee hee He sure enough is just that – a Teddy. (And
he’s still skeptical about things.)
So now I was done with Caleb’s old room and the cubbyhole. I quit stirring the house for the night, headed
for the recliner, and put the heating pad behind my back. Each box or bag
that I take out to the Jeep requires me to carry it down one flight of stairs
to the main floor, then down another three-quarter flight of stairs from back
deck to driveway. I’m pretty sure I used
up the calories I consumed at suppertime, eating a little more than my usual
portion of chicken pot pie. 😉
All three cats were worn out and soon sound asleep in their
beds, too – they worked hard, keeping me company all day, often trotting up and
down the stairs and all the way out to the Jeep and back with me. Silly
little animals. They like me! (Or
maybe they were just worried I’d forget to feed them, what with all the
goings’-on.)
Some friends were discussing their menus, and someone
mentioned ‘flower salad’. One of the
ladies was surprised that there are edible flowers. There is actually quite a list of flowers one
can safely consume: Edible Flowers
Lura
Kay called that evening to tell me that there had been some encouraging news
concerning Kelvin: the tumor in the colon was smaller than originally
thought. He had hemorrhaged again the night before, but at least that
time they were able to control it before it got so bad that they had to give
him blood again. He will have several chemo treatments, and they will
watch the tumor to see if it’s shrinking. They don’t want to try to remove
it until it has shrunk. They’ll give him
a shot after each chemo treatment to control the nausea. One shot alone
is $500. Good grief.
Saturday, I started on the little room that used to be my
office. There’s a big cubbyhole under the eaves in there, too, and
it’s chock full, crammed to the gills. I
have hundreds and hundreds of books that I want to get into our bookcases, and
I’ll make the little office and Caleb’s old room into libraries for the
grandchildren. They all love to read.
I’ll get all the bookcases positioned just so... put in the three
rocking chairs... the child-sized wooden table, chairs, and bench... maybe even
clean out my own closet... and then the sewing room!
I always save the best until last, in order to keep myself in High Gear.
After working several hours Saturday morning, Larry went with
a friend to get a pickup he’d purchased in Iowa. The man had been told
the truck was drivable, but they took Larry’s trailer anyway, and it was a good
thing they did. Some people must think ‘drivable’
is defined thusly: ‘When you crank the
starter, it makes a noise.’ Or maybe,
‘It has at least three wheels, which may or may not have actual tires on them.’
Meanwhile, it was a beautiful day, and he would have
been working on his big garage, had he been home. I’d remarked a couple
of days earlier that what this family needs is four or five Larrys. Well,
that wouldn’t be enough, because it’s not just family who needs
him!
That afternoon, I took Dorcas’ violin to The Music Store to
have it repaired, and then I took half a Jeep-load of things to Caleb and
Maria. Among other items, I’d found Caleb’s Craftsman toolbox that Loren
and Janice had given him a few years ago. It still looks new.
Caleb and Maria helped me carry things into their house. I looked around and said, “Well, here’s all
this dusty stuff (I did try to wipe everything off) to put in your
spotless house! I hope my kids still love me, after I get done cleaning.”
They were laughing and making assuring noises, while their
adorable boxer, Sadie, was wagging her stubby tail for dear life and checking
out all the boxes.
“Sadie will still like me!” I decided.
Maria keeps their home looking so pretty. She’s a dear.
One time she said to Victoria as they were going for a walk,
“Something must be wrong with us (meaning Caleb and herself) – we never have
fights!”
Victoria couldn’t quit laughing, over that.
On the way home from Caleb’s house, I dropped off the rest
of the stuff at the Goodwill.
Home again, I put a third load of clothes into the dryer,
and then started reloading the Jeep with more things for the children: several bags of freshly-washed jeans for
Hannah’s boys... a bag of stuff and a
game call Apples to Apples for
Victoria.
On with the office cleaning! I need to be a bit more
ruthless about getting rid of things. I keep telling myself, once I get
furniture (especially bookcases and my sewing tables and cabinets) where they
belong, and then start putting stuff into place, it’ll all come together
fine.
AND! – I found a quilt! I am not completely sure, but
I believe it was made by my late sister-in-law Janice for Caleb some years
ago. It’s made with lots of little colorful squares, tied with yarn at
the corners, and still like new. I washed it and gave it to Lydia for
Jacob’s new room, which she is decorating with a nautical theme.
I reported on
my progress to my quilting friends, and a friend wrote, “You know, I think I know why I’m
so tired: it’s all that cleaning that Sarah
Lynn is doing! Sarah Lynn, you need to take
a break and relax a bit. It will still
be there to work on later. Get a cup of
tea and put your feet up and take it all in.”
Have you ever noticed that when you start cleaning and
sorting, everything expands exponentially?
I got hung up momentarily on a large three-ring binder full
of my old journals... but they are all on my computer and backed up on
external hard drives, after all... Sooo, I stamped my foot, closed my
eyes, and deposited the whole works into the garbage and got meseff back with
it. A three-ring binder might be sort of
fun to look through, but it sure is easier to find things when they are kept
digitally. If I can remember a few words of a particular sentence, I can
find it in nothing flat. Not so easy, practically impossible, in
extremely fat three-ring binders – and I had a lot of them.
A friend wrote in some alarm, “Sarah Lynn, a journal is one
of the things I think I wouldn’t be able to make myself toss in the trash.
Even if it were backed up on an external drive (is that what you’re
calling a jump drive/USB drive?). I don’t totally trust a computer or any
kind of drive not to lose it.”
I wrote to
reassure her: I’ve had journals on my
main computer (whether desktop or laptop) and also on three back-up hard drives
for many years – nearly 18, in fact. Jump drives or thumb drives aren’t
stable enough for all the data I need to save. I’ve never lost a single
document, photo, video, or song that I’ve had backed up on my hard
drives. I use WD (Western Digital). My latest is a little Elements
box with a 2 TB capacity: WD Elements
All data
(journals, photos, music, videos, patterns, financial documents, emails) is
backed up at least thrice, and some is backed up in quadruplicate.
I have a
couple of WD My Books, too. One is 12 years old and full, but still
working dandy. I had another kind – Seagate, maybe – that I got in 1999;
gave it to one of the kids. It’s still going,
too, and hasn’t lost any data. But I keep updating... and never leave
data behind on old technology.
I never leave
important data on thumb drives, SD cards, or pencil drives; too unstable,
especially over long stretches of time. I use SD cards almost exclusively
for photos. I transfer card from camera to computer, and once the photos
are on the computer, I clear the card.
I have
everything on my laptop and on all my hard drives catalogued both
chronologically and categorically, with labels that make searches a snap.
When I launch into the photo-scanning project of my 250+ large albums, I’ll buy a new hard drive (8 Terabyte would be good) especially for all those pictures, as
I want to scan them in high quality: WD 8TB
(One terabyte
is 1,000 gigabytes. One gigabyte is 1,000 megabytes. Most of the photos
from my newest camera are 10-12 megabytes and are still clear when printed at
16” x 20”.)
I keep enough
digital backups of everything – including all those yearly DVDs I give my
friends, my blog where I post my journals, etc. – they can’t possibly all
go bad at once. I don’t print anything if I can help it. Those
journals were given back to me some years back by a friend who wanted my weekly
journal but had no internet access, so I printed them for her each week. She thought she was doing me a favor,
returning them to me. I must’ve saved them out of politeness. But I’m
sooo tired of stuff! Too much stuff. Out it goes.
My digital journals date back into the mid 80s – saved on
floppy disks from electronic Word Processors. When I got a computer, I
transferred them to the computer. Lots of hieroglyphics came along, but I
used the Search and Replace function in Word to fix them.
Okay, just for the fun of it, let’s see if I can resurrect a
snippet from an old journal when we went fishing at Muscatine Lake up by
Stanton, Nebraska, back in... 1999, maybe? Caleb was a little guy... we
were heading out on the pier... a fisherman scowled at us, with all our
ducklings – he thought they’d raise the roof, and shoot all his chances of ever
catching a fish.
I recall part of Caleb’s remark, “He liked us because -----”
Well, I’m not going to tell you the rest just yet, or I’ll spoil the punchline.
Now, I give you my word, I haven’t looked for the letter yet.
I’ll look just as soon as I finish this sentence, and we’ll see how long it
takes me to find it. It’s 11:58 p.m.
5... 4... 3... 2... 1... GO!
12:04 a.m., and I have found it!
Labor Day, 1999:
On Labor Day, Larry thought he needed to work at least part
of the day, because of missing a couple days of work the previous week.
At 3:00 p.m. he came home, and we left for Muskatine Lake, north of
Stanton. I have no idea how to spell the name of that lake: Muskatine? Muscatine?
Muscathine? Maskathine? Meskathine? In the little town of Stanton stands a sign
directing us to “Muskatine”. A mile north of town, alongside the road, is
a Department-of-Roads sign which reads, “Meskathine”. But the carved
wooden arch beside one of the entrances to the lake spells it, “Maskathine”.
[Note: I just looked
it up online, and it seems that the correct – or at least most common –
spelling is ‘Maskenthine’. All of the
above are evidently wrong.]
It was a beautiful
day. Unfortunately, there were a number of undisciplined and unsupervised
brats at the playground, cursing and swearing – in English, of all
things. They looked quite capable of swearing in another language, which
would have suited us better. I don’t want my children to hear such
language – but they did, before I could do anything about it. We went
away from the playground and didn’t come back, instead going out onto the
fishing pier to be with Larry and some of the other children, who were already
fishing. Another man was there, too, and I knew he wouldn’t appreciate it
if we scared all the fish straight down the stream into the Missouri
River. So, before walking down the
wooden walkway over the water and out onto the pier, I told the littles, “We
must be very quiet, because if we make a lot of noise, all the fish will run
away.”
Victoria, age 2, nodded her head in solemn agreement. “Swim,
Mama,” she said.
I stood corrected: the fish would swim away.
The man on the jetty looked around apprehensively as we
came. We quietly seated ourselves, and Victoria pulled little cups,
saucers, bowls, and silverware out of the bag Dorcas, 17, had brought for
her. She arranged them all neatly, then began feeding her dolly.
Caleb and Lydia each picked up a fishing pole, cast a line out into the lake,
and stood calmly.
The man looked at Caleb’s line, which was too slack. “Do you
want me to help you?” he asked.
Caleb, age 6, always a friendly sort, smiled. “Okay,”
he responded.
The man showed him how to reel it in just a little bit
more. “There you go,” he said.
Caleb grinned.
A few minutes later, the man turned to me. “You
homeschool, don’t you?” he inquired.
“No,” I responded, a little surprised, “but our children
attend a church school.”
“I thought so,” he said. He smiled. “Most kids
would be tearing around this deck, frightening all the fish to the other end of
the lake!”
He turned to Lydia. “How would you like a minnow on
that line?”
Larry and the children were using worms that another man had
given them when he left, and they weren’t having any better success than the
previous fisherman.
Lydia, age 8, tipped her head consideringly. She
looked at me and raised an eyebrow. I smiled at her.
“Okay,” she told the man.
She reeled her line in, and he showed her how to hook the
minnow on. She tossed the line back out, and before she knew it, she was
pulling in a bluegill. It wasn’t big enough to keep, but it was a fish,
just the same. Within the next half an hour, she’d pulled in three
more. The man put minnows on all our
lines. Teddy, 16, caught a little
catfish. Then, saying it was time for him to go, the man gave us his
entire bucket of minnows, wished us a good time fishing, and departed.
“He liked us because I didn’t stomp,” Caleb informed us with
much sincerity.
++++++++++++
Here’s a photo of Caleb and Victoria fishing on that same
fishing dock in May of 2008.
* * *
Here’s one more story I found during my search, just for
good measure, this one from December,
1999:
Since there was nobody to babysit the littles, I had to take
them to band and orchestra practice with me. Would you like to know what
the highlight of the evening was, for those same littles?
Well, there they sat, Hester, Lydia, Caleb, and Victoria, in
a pew side by side, for two whole hours, playing with books and dolls and
matchbox cars while I played the piano, being quiet and orderly the entire
time.... and Victoria had to go to the rest room approximately 32 gazillion
times, give or take a few.... with Hester and Lydia taking turns taking her
there…. and the highlight was....
…the Highlight was…
…it was…
…just this:
Victoria dropped her doll in the commode.
Luckily, as Victoria assured me, “It was okay, though,
because it (meaning, the commode) was already really cleaned, because Lydia had
already really kaflushed it.”
Even after Lydia came back into the sanctuary with Victoria,
she kept getting all tickled over the sequence of events, and winding up all
hunched over in the pew, one hand clamped over her mouth, shoulders shaking.
Otherwise, things went swimmingly.
After we got home, Dorcas ran that doll under the hot water
faucet for a while, just in case. And Victoria, looking on in a bit of dismay,
commented in her low-pitched voice, “Oh, mercy. Now she’s REALLY
drownded.”
* * *
Last night
after church, we took Hannah the last of the jeans, and then stopped at
Walkers’ shop to pick up Larry’s road bike so he could go riding.
He donned
riding garb, headed off, and I put a tray of jumbo shrimp into the oven. Larry
was pleased to find fresh-baked shrimp waiting for him when he returned. We dipped them in some scrumptious, homemade,
sweet ’n’ sour salsa the friend he took to Iowa gave us. Mmmm, mmm.
But wheweeeEEEEEE, is it hot stuff!!! I consoled my mouth with cold
applesauce.
Today I’ve made serious inroads on whittling down the places where lajack
is on file, and editing my profiles to have only the gmail address, with a
yahoo address as a backup.
Once we get these issues resolved, the lajack addy will go bye-bye.
I’ve paid the bills, and changed the email address in those
profiles. I do all our finances online, so there are a lot of accounts to
change.
But right now... it’s bedtime!
Tomorrow, it’s back to the little office.
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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