Journal: New Baby Granddaughter!

Last Tuesday after paying some bills online, finishing the laundry, and filling the bird feeders, I worked on my customer’s quilt.  I’ve been working on it every day since, except for Sunday.

Storms went through our area that night.  Some friends had a shed blown down on their farm, and lost a chicken.  All the others survived, somehow. 

Loren gave us a rain gauge, and he even installed it for us on a post on our deck.  Wednesday morning I checked it, and found that we’d received a little over an inch of rain.  We had high winds, but it was worse in town and to the south and east.

Two blocks from Bobby and Hannah’s house, a big tree was uprooted and landed on a house.  I found pictures and the story online:  Columbus Storm.  Wow, the winds in town were 75 mph! 

On the way home from church that night, Larry showed me a truck trailer belonging to one of our friends that had tipped over.  (The trailer tipped over; not the friend.)  (Or if he did, we didn’t know about it.)  The trailer was loaded with things, so it will be a bit of a job to right it.  Hopefully, not too many things were damaged. 

We stopped at that same friend’s camper dealership, and went exploring through some of his campers.  It reminded me of when I was a little girl traveling with my parents, stopping at camper sales places.  While Daddy looked at products and/or new campers, sometimes the manager or owner would give me his entire large ring of camper keys, show me how to match tag to camper, and tell me to explore to my heart’s content.  I was always so pleased to be entrusted with all those keys, and always so careful to leave things exactly as I’d found them, or better.

Have you ever watched some of those crazy youtube dashcam videos from Russia?  Sometimes there are long lines of cars stopped on the highway... and some guy on a motorcycle goes whizzing lickety-split down the center line between all those cars.  What could possibly go wrong?

Several nights after getting off work, Larry has gone to Teddy’s place to cut hay.  When he’s not doing that, he’s been working on a flatbed trailer he got, laying a new wood floor on it, painting the wheels, and putting new tires on it.  After the trailer is done, he needs to finish overhauling his Dodge dually crewcab with which he’ll tow the trailer to pick up some piece of machinery he purchased in southern Missouri. 

So... I’m refraining from griping about the upstairs room I want to move my sewing things into, because a) my sewing room in the basement is nice and cool on these hot days, and b) I’m quilting at the moment, and the quilting machine is going to stay downstairs anyway.  I’d like my quilting studio finished one of these days.  Only one wall has knotty pine on it, and the ceiling is nothing but rafters and heat ducts.  But the quilting frame rests on cement, which keeps it level and steady, and there is soft carpet for me to stand on.

So I won’t gripe, if Larry doesn’t get projects done quickly.  Even if he didn’t work such long hours, he’d still not get projects done quickly, because he perpetually has irons in too many fires, and he starts new projects before he finishes the old. 

I will only gripe about the leaking ceiling... the squirrels in the eaves... and the downstairs bathroom sink that has never had a water line hooked up to it, though we’ve lived here for 14 years.  (Larry always looks shocked when I tell him how long we’ve lived here – he thinks we just moved in last week, I think.)

Otherwise, I will not gripe!  I will not gripe... I will not gripe... I will not gripe... I will not gripe... I will not gripe... I will not gripe... I will not gripe... I will not gripe... I will not gripe... I will not gripe... I will not gripe... I will not gripe... I will not gripe...

I’ll count my blessings... set a pan under the leak in the ceiling... and shoo the squirrels out of the eaves.   Or feed them and take cute pictures of them.  One or the other.  Maybe both. 

Here’s Teensy at the front door one hot afternoon when I went outside to take pictures of the flowers.  And no, he wasn’t wanting out, he wanted me to come back in.

By Thursday night, I was past the middle of my customer’s batik quilt – meaning, I would’ve been more than half done, if I hadn’t’ve skipped some of the background, since neither the new thread nor any thread in my stash matched it.  I ordered more; it would arrive Saturday.

An online quilting friend had to have a colonoscopy.  Her nurse was surprised she’d never taken laxatives before; the lady was surprised the nurse seemed to think everyone has taken laxatives.

I’ve never taken laxatives before, either.  But... once upon a time... when Larry and I were on our honeymoon...

We stopped at a little old-fashioned country store in the Tetons, and went in for some food.  We were in a hurry, because we’d stayed too long in Yellowstone, and I had to be back to play the piano at church on Sunday.  So Larry dashed to the left side of the store while I dashed to the right, and we planned to meet up in the middle.

I like prunes.  And...  to put it as delicately as possible, I needed prunes, though I hadn’t mentioned the matter to my new husband.  I was brought up by a lady, after all.  And she tried to make a lady out of me, with dubious success. 

I grabbed a large bag of prunes and rushed on.

Larry and I met at the checkout stand.  I put an armload of stuff on the counter... including the large bag of prunes.

Larry put an armload of stuff on the counter... including a tall bottle of prune juice.  (And he didn’t even like prune juice.)

hahaha

Friday afternoon, I got a tornado warning from AccuWeather.  A trained spotter had seen one on the ground in Newman Grove, 34 miles to our northwest.  So I trotted up to the addition, camera in hand, to look out the windows.

It was very dark off to the northwest.  Overhead, there were several layers of clouds under a thick bank, and fragments kept breaking loose from the bank of clouds and drifting down below the others, all confused and not knowing which way to go.  Sometimes they got themselves in order and swirled in a circle, then got sucked into an overhead cloud, only to repeat the process.

I saw the neighbor man across the lane cutting grass on his riding mower.  He’s careful and precise, and sometimes spends a good two hours mowing his large lawn.

And then a wide bolt of lightning hit the ground off to the north, with a loud crack of thunder following shortly.

The neighbor man forgot all about being careful and precise, put that lawn tractor in high gear, and came down the hill at Mach IV. 

He always blows the grass from his mower when he’s through.  This, too, usually takes him a while.  But this time, he got it done in record speed – and he’d have been even faster, had he not stopped every couple of minutes to run behind the house and peer up at the sky.

Believe me, I’m not judging him for being careful and neat – would that we all were a little more that way.  But... I did have to laugh at the way he picked up the pace to unparalleled (for him) velocity.

Meanwhile, I’d discovered that an animal – I figured it was a raccoon, since we’d caught one climbing the log-siding wall a few weeks ago – had been in the addition, and had left several messes behind to prove it.  Ugh, yuck.  As I stood there in the addition looking out of the big half-circle window, I heard an odd noise.  I looked around – and glimpsed movement in the southwest cubbyhole.  It was too dark to see clearly, so I waited until Larry got home, and then we went up there with his bright flashlight.

Sure enough, there was a mother raccoon and at least one baby in that cubbyhole.

After the storm had passed, we opened the patio door in the addition, left things alone for a while, and then checked the room.  All signs of wildlife were gone, so Larry sealed the place up, nailing boards in any area near the eaves where the animals could have gotten in.

I returned to the quilting machine, and quilted late into the night.

Saturday morning, I was suddenly awoken by loud chirring and crying.  I didn’t have to look to know what it was:  a baby raccoon had come in the pet door – and he didn’t know how to get back out! 

I grabbed a towel, fondly supposing that young raccoons, like young bunnies and birds, can be covered and removed from the premises without great ado.

Wrong.

These kits are big enough that when you get too close, they quit their cute chirring, stand on their tippytoes whilst humping their backs as high as possible, come right at you, and say, “FzssssssssssszzzzzzTTTTTGggrrrrrrrrRRRRRRoooarrrfzzssst!”  (Spelling my own.)

(A ‘kit’ is a baby raccoon, not a set of paraphernalia with which to make a raccoon.)

So I opened the door to the garage, propped it, and gently herded him with a towel (imagine a bullfighter with a big red cape) toward the opening.  Poor little panic-struck guy; he can climb fairly well, but he sure wasn’t very good at navigating steps going down!  He slipped and ploppity-plopped down a couple, then tumbled the last two until he got to the garage floor.  Then, instead of going out the open walkout garage door into the Big World, he tried climbing up the inside of the door and wall to get to the top of the door.  I could hear other babies chirring and crying, and found them in the outside eaves. 

I worried about the mother.  Where was she?  She didn’t get left behind in the addition, did she?  We’d looked carefully, but it was dark in all the cubbyholes, after all, and that room is quite large.  Oh, me, oh, my.  But why would the babies be out, without their mother?

By now, all the baby raccoons were squalling at the top of their lungs.

I was texting Dorcas while all this was transpiring, and she wrote back, “At least it’s not skunks!”

“Haha!” I replied.  “Remember when Daddy shooed Kitty out of a garbage bag in the garage – only it wasn’t Kitty?  It had a stripe!  He came in the house really, really fast.”

“Yes, I remember that,” responded Dorcas.  “I was doing dishes, and his yell scared me.  LOL”

Caleb, on the other hand, who from his stance in the back hallway had seen the whole incident as it evolved (and deteriorated), laughed so hard he was nearly bent double.

I headed up to the addition to see if Mama Raccoon was trapped in there somewhere. 

Sure enough, I found her in the closet cubbyhole.  She dashed out and made a beeline to one of the other cubbyholes.  I opened the patio door so she would be able to hear her babies crying, and hopefully would get herself out and go take care of those kits.  Or maybe so the babies could get in.  😕

I didn’t stay up there to direct traffic; I just opened the door and got me out of the way.  Poor Mama Raccoon was scared half to death.  It’s hard to explain to a raccoon that we don’t want to hurt them; we just want them to find a better place of abode!

After a while, Larry got home from work.  He’d gotten his tall ladder from his mother’s house where he’d left it one day, and he grabbed the pet carrier, positioned the ladder, and shinnied up it to rescue the baby raccoon that was inside the garage above the walkout door.

Baby Raccoon said, and I quote, “GRRRRRFFZZZZHISSSSSSSSGRRROWWL!!!”

It put up quite a fight, but eventually Larry got it into the carrier.  He released it in the little white garage south of the driveway, thinking that was a logical place for the family to reconnect and reunite.

Raccoon logic is not the same as Homo sapiens logic. 

Hannah and the boys arrived with a gift for Larry for Father's Day:  steaks, and a box of some of the fancy cookies our niece Abbi had made and sold at the Farmer’s Market that morning.  There was also a fancy card with quilling that Joanna had made, which matched that cookie with the tie.

Larry promptly fired up the Traeger grill.  He put the steaks on it to cook while he cleaned up the addition.  Then we shared a cookie as a starting appetizer, had steak and seasoned baby bakers for the main meal, and baby carrots for dessert. (The carrots refused to finish baking at the same time as everything else.)

Teddy arrived as we were finishing our supper, Baby Elsie in one arm, a gift for Larry in the other:  steaks, sausage, cookies, and a couple of strawberry-something-or-other muffins, made by Amy.  Mmmm, those yummy muffins topped our meal off right.

We went outside to see where the raccoon kits were, and found them still in the eaves, chirring away.  Then one slipped and came tumbling down, landing rather hard on the driveway.  It didn’t seem to harm him, but he growled and snarled and marched toward us, all in a panic.  His brother, still up in the eaves, joined in the ruckus, all upset over the episode.

Teddy decided to get him out of the eaves before he fell, too.  He put Elsie into her car seat, donned a thick pair of leather gloves, climbed up a stepladder, and, with some difficulty, extracted kit from eave.  It screeched and snarled.

He carried it down from the deck by the nap of the neck and put it down near its brother (or sister), who had been snarling and growling in fright and sympathy for its sibling.  The little critter came rushing out from under the mulberry bush to pat and sniff his brother (or sister) all over before they both scurried back under cover.

Teddy put in the dialogue for the exchange:  “You okay, Buddy?!  I’m here for you!”

We hoped that the commotion would somehow bring the raccoon family back together again, since they could be heard for a country mile, I do believe.  We went away to give them some peace so that they might better accomplish a reunion.

Larry then went for a bike ride, and when he came home, he called me to come see something cute just outside the basement patio doors:  three little raccoon kits huddled together on the retaining wall under the mulberry bush.  The mama raccoon evidently hadn’t come back to them yet, though she surely must’ve been nearby; but at least the babies were together again.  I hoped the mother would show up and care for them soon.  The babies were almost as big as our little Tabby.  I seriously doubted if they could make it on their own.

Larry took a good look around the addition.  The mother raccoon had gotten back in after Larry sealed it up Friday night by tearing the corner right out of a piece of plywood.  So this time, after ascertaining that there was no wildlife in residence, he used 2” x 8” and heavy-duty screws to close everything up. 

Then, just in case, he checked several times yesterday to make sure no creatures were hiding somewhere.  There have been no signs of them.

Some ladies on a quilting group have been discussing recipes for fig jelly.  I was reminded of the time one of our boys came home from school – he was in the fourth grade, I think – and announced, “I have to write a report on Fig Newton!”  (He meant Isaac, of course.)  After that, we called Fig Newtons ‘Isaac Newtons’, and poor Isaac became ‘Fig’.

The cone of longarm thread had come that day, and I had fond hopes of finishing my customer’s quilt.  But I’d forgotten about Father’s Day, and I’d neglected to add ‘raccoons’ to the agenda.  The quilt did not get done that day.

Amy sent me a picture of little Warren.  Little purple Warren.  He’d been having mulberries. 

He’s almost as cute with purple cheeks as he is otherwise.  😆

After church yesterday morning, we stopped by Bomgaars and got an indoor/outdoor electronic weather station and a rain gauge for Nathanael, whose eleventh birthday is today.  I put it in a red gift bag, and we took it with us to church last night to give to him after the service.

That afternoon, Keith sent an Amazon gift card to Larry... and Dorcas called to talk to him.  Todd has given her an early birthday gift:  a cute little dog from the Humane Society.  He’s five years old, and his name is Hillbilly.  Larry told her she should crochet him some little bib overalls and put a little straw hat on him, to go with his name.

A little while before leaving for church, Jeremy texted Larry, asking if we could pick up Jacob, and sit with him, too.  Jeremy was staying home with Lydia, just in case... 

Jacob, who will be 8 on the 24^th, sits and listens well, and hasn’t the slightest finding the Bible references.

After church, with Jacob listening, I told Norma (Jacob’s great-grandma), “Sitting beside him (pointing) through church is like sitting beside a Jack-in-the-Box!”

Jacob started laughing before I even finished the sentence.

I asked him, “Are you hoping for a little brother or a little sister?  Or will you just be happy with whatever God decides to give you?”

Smiling, he thought about that for a couple of seconds, then, with a couple of bounces on his tiptoes, he grinned and said, “I’m just happy I get to go to Carsen’s house tomorrow!”  😆

Carsen is his cousin.

I got Nathanael’s birthday present out of the Jeep and gave it to him.  When he started pulling boxes of ammo out of the bag, we knew... something was wrong. 

Turns out, Caleb and Maria had put a bag in the Jeep for Larry – a red bag exactly like the one I’d put Nathanael’s gift in.

We soon had things straightened back around right, and Nathanael was pulling out the weather station.  “Just because we gave you a weather station,” I informed him, “It does not follow that we are giving you permission to become a storm chaser!”  He laughed.

When we took Jacob home, I told Jeremy how nice it was to sit beside a child who sat nicely through the service, and listened so well.  Jeremy ruffled Jacob’s hair, smiled, and said, “Yes, he does real well,” which made Jacob grin from ear to ear.

Jeremy is a good father, and loves his little boys so much.  And they show the effects of that.

They gave Larry a Father's Day gift – a large piece of double-tiered chocolate cake made by our niece Rachel, some packets of snacks, and a gift card to Bass Pro Shop.

Today when Larry came home for lunch, he told me, “I’m sad... because three baby raccoons have been run over, down on Rte. 22.”  (That’s about a quarter of a mile south of us.) 

They’re probably the same ones that were here, though there isn’t a shortage of them around these parts.  Two were way over on the shoulder, as if whoever hit them did it on purpose.  Farmers don’t particularly like them.

I realize they can be troublesome... but they are God’s creation, after all!  Those babies were so cute... I felt so sorry for them, when they were all scared, chirring and crying for their mother... and we were happy yesterday when they seemed to have all gotten back together.  😟

This afternoon, Amy sent some adorable photos of Elsie, who’s seven months old now.  That baby tickles my funnybone, the way she gives us long, deep stares, eyebrows pulled down a bit, while she’s obviously thinking, I wonder what in the world makes them tick.  The gears are certainly turning, in that little head! 

My expectant daughters and daughters-in-law have sometimes told stories demonstrating just how rude people can be.  I ran into a few of them when I was expecting, and I imagine there are more now than there were then.  I generally told them they were, when they were. 

One time in the grocery store, an unknown and over-friendly man thought he could reach right out and touch me!  I was pushing the cart, a child was in the cart’s seat, a child was sitting in the basket of the cart, and others were walking beside or behind me.  And along came that man.

I backed away from the cart and doubled up my fist (I never did hit like a girl).  

The man saw it coming, retreated quickly, lifted both hands, palms up, and went to apologizing really, really fast. 

I glared, didn’t say a word, and stalked – er, waddled – off.

Grrrrrrr.

I wonder if the bozo done larnt hizself anythang that day?

A friend just posted a pretty picture of a windmill at her mother-in-law’s farm, a flowering vine growing up it.  We were there one time when Caleb was about two, maybe three, and he got all excited, pointed at it, and said, “Oh, look! A pinwheel!” Then when his irreverent sisters laughed, he grinned, shook his head, and said, “I mean, a merry-go-round.” – which of course made them yelp with laughter.  Victoria later called that same windmill a ‘Wind-whew’.

Aaron called them ‘windblows’, and Bobby tried to confuse his children by informing them that windmills make the wind blow.  hee hee

We had supper at Kurt and Victoria’s tonight – Larry’s Father’s Day gift.  Victoria fixed sliced ham with a scrumptious glaze, mixed vegetables, cheesy potatoes, and bananas.  She served water in a pitcher with sliced lemons, limes, and cucumbers.  Mmmm, we like it that way. 

On the way home, we got a notice from Jeremy:  New baby girl!  Malinda Grace (named after his mother, who died in childbirth when Jeremy was 14), 7 pounds, 10 ounces, 22” long, born at 9:54 p.m.

We are so happy and relieved mother and baby are safe and sound, and all is well.  

And I love the baby’s name.

Jeremy later sent a picture of her, fresh-hatched, obviously wondering, Who turned on all the lights?!  Her little face reminds me a lot of Jonathan’s (he’s 3). 

I certainly can’t top that kind of news, so here I shall close.

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