February Photos

Monday, January 8, 2018

Journal: Bedbugs and Quilts and Flatbeds

It’s sooo aggravating to come walking out of the bathroom (barefoot) in the morning, all squeaky clean, and step ‘squoosh splurg’ into something the cat upchucked.  😜😝😖  This doesn’t happen as often as it used to when little Tabby was still here.  Teensy is more likely to leave me a heap of feathers to churn into a whirlwind when I unsuspectingly pull open a door somewhere.  Aarrgghh.
Tuesday, I posted the rest of the Colorado pictures:  From La Junta to Home
I got the dog’s picture at a big truck stop in ... Limon, I think it was.  I thought the owner had gone into the station, so I whistled and made a few friendly dog noises... took the shots --- and then realized the owner was sitting behind the wheel, head on backwards, looking at me.  Emmmbarrassin’.
As for all those old houses I take pictures of... I often look at them and think, Just imagine the lives of people who lived there... maybe even generations of families... and I’ll betcha all they went through just eking out a living in some of those barren places would make us look like we were living on Easy Street.
After we went over Imogene Pass back in 2014 (wow, hard to believe it’s been that long), and saw the remains of the town around Tomboy Mine way up over 11,000-foot elevation, I bought a book called Tomboy Bride – written by a young pioneer woman, Harriet Fish Backus, about her life after marrying and moving with her husband to the mining town above Telluride, Colorado.
If you think going over some of those mountain passes in modern vehicles is scary, imagine traversing them in a stagecoach!
While I full well understand (well, theoretically, at least) the hardships and dangers our forefathers went through settling this land, there’s nevertheless always been something in me that wished to experience some of that.  You know what I mean?
Harriet Backus was a pretty young woman.  There’s a Facebook page hosted by her grandson, Rob Walton, dedicated to his grandmother’s story:  https://www.facebook.com/TomboyBrideBook/
Pictures in Harriet’s book show her dressed in clothes very much like clothing my great-grandmothers wore.  One of my great-grandmothers was a seamstress and a tailor.  Her wedding gown has sooooo many tiny pleats in various sections of sleeve and skirt... pin-tucks in the bodice... lace overlay here and there... It was so intricate and perfectly made – and she did it all by hand.  I have no idea if that dress was ever saved.  But at least we have pictures!
I have a couple of tiny gowns someone made for me when I was born.  I should freshen them up and display them in a glassed shadowbox or something similar.
Here’s an interesting website, with old photos:  https://westernmininghistory.com/
I’ve always enjoyed learning about our country’s history.  Earlier history, especially the Dark Ages, not at all, at all.  It was a terrible time in humanity – dark because of the awful things men did to one another, mostly in the name of religion.  Did you know that almost all other religions violently persecuted the Baptists?  The Baptists are not considered ‘Protestant’.  I didn’t used to know that, until we began studying Baptist history.
Even in the early days of North America’s settling, Baptists were persecuted – sometimes to death – before some of the more just and unbiased of our forefathers took pains to make it clear legally what ‘freedom of religion’ should really mean.
One of the points that so riled other religious personages was the fact that Baptists did not practice infant baptism.  In early Europe, the magistrates would take Baptist preachers, strap them to long poles, and dunk them until they were nearly drowned (or truly drowned), trying to get them to recant their beliefs. 
Lookers-on would chant gleefully, “Baptize him again!  Baptize him again!!”
Real Christianly of them, hmmm?
How in the world did I get off on that?  <...scanning back...>  Oh.  History.  Dark Ages.  Yes, well... We might think our country is going downhill, and it is, in many ways — but we can surely be thankful we have it better, freedom-wise, than many have had it since the calendar began!
Tuesday evening, Larry went hunting with Bobby.  But just as the previous day with Kurt, the only deer they saw were over 600 yards away.
Caleb, upon hearing this, scoffed, “I saw a video where a little eight-year-old girl could shoot a jug of milk at 1,000 yards!”
His father retorted, all affronted, “I wasn’t hunting milk jugs.”
Caleb laughed, “’Course, she did have something on her rifle that amplified her aim.”
“A heat-seeking missile?” I speculated, and they were promptly into longwinded discussions about how that would (or wouldn’t) work.
“It might turn around like a boomerang and come after me!” exclaimed Larry.
You all could probably guess that I would not shoot a deer with anything other than my Canon EOS Rebel.  But I’m not averse to cooking the venison, once it’s processed! 
Look what I found on Bobby and Hannah’s family-room wall when we were there for our family get-together a week ago last Thursday:
This quilt was a birthday gift for Bobby a couple of years ago.  I didn’t realize until last summer when I ‘borrowed it back’ to take to the county and state fairs that the rod I’d given them was too short.  So we got a longer one for them.  And there it was, hanging there in all its glory.  There are 8,550 half-inch squares in that quilt.  The quilt measures maybe... ?  56” x 57”, perhaps?  Something like that.  (I already garnered praise for that quilt once... but I was so pleased to see it hanging on their wall, I just had to take pictures of it... brag about it... 😉 )
Wednesday was spent quilting, quilting, quilting, with a pause for our church service that night, after which we had a late supper, and then I quilted some more until time for bed (whatever time that was). 
In chatting with a friend that afternoon, I was reminded of... hmmm... let’s call it The Big Bedbug Bedlam.  It all started when someone on a quilting group asked me where I got all the uniquely shaped pillows I’d covered to coordinate with some of my quilts.  I get them at the Goodwill and the Salvation Army.  My criteria are:  1) it must have a good shape and not be lumpy, and 2) it must smell good and be clean.  I find all sizes and shapes of pillows there, and they only cost 50¢ to $1.50 each.  It’s fun to cover the oddly shaped ones with the leftover partial blocks from the quilt.  I like to have half a dozen or so decorative toss pillows on the bed, depending on size of pillows and size of bed. 
Someone promptly wrote to the group to tell everyone not to get pillows (or clothes, or anything else, for that matter) at the Goodwill or Salvation Army.  “I would strongly advise against it,” she wrote.  She recommended buying such things at a department store.  (Of course, you’re not going to find those unique shapes there – and the ones you do find, if you should happen to be fortunate enough to find them, will cost you a pretty penny.)  “The department store is definitely more sanitary than the stuff at Goodwill.  Bedbugs are still a huge problem in many cities.” 
Rather insulting, to be accused of doling out unsanitary pillows to people, isn’t it? 
But I wrote back, in an attempt to be funny (which never works, when one is insulted), “Oh, don’t worry.  I have a pet baboon especially trained to pick off all the bedbugs I bring home with me. 
“Actually, our Goodwill cleans and sanitizes things very well before putting them out on the floor.  It smells fresh and nice in there, and is bright and well organized.  I inspect things closely before bringing them home, and often find brand-new items with price tags still on them. 
“We live in a smallish town in the middle of the prairies and cornfields, and there’s more likely to be a tumbleweed stuck in the front door of the Goodwill than a bedbug lurking in a decorative pillow.  Besides, we’ve taught our bedbugs to confine themselves solely to low thread-count sheets.
“I couldn’t make all these pillows if I had to buy them new.” 
,,,>^..^<,,,     Sarah Lynn, putting on a flea collar     ,,,>^..^<,,,
The lady didn’t seem to appreciate my sparkling wit.  She wrote, “Apparently you don’t realize what a huge problem bedbugs are.”  Etc., etc., and on and on and so forth. 
I decided I’d better not answer, in the interest of preserving peace in the quilting group.  But…  of course I do too, I do too!!  (Realize there are huge bedbugs, that is.)  I read!  I even read the news, directly after I read the funnies.  I do.
And since I do, that’s precisely why I hired the pet baboon.  If you receive a throw pillow from me, you may be assured it has been picked clean of vermin and parasites.
{Senses of humor seem to be going the way of senses of horse these days.  Grum grum grum grum grum…  I like things clean!!!  Clean.  And I’ll betcha the finicky manager of our nice, clean Goodwill would be highly offended if she knew anything in her store was coming into question for its sanity.  Uh, sanitation.  Sanitization?  Something.}
The following day, I worked on a couple of bedbug-free aprons for a customer. 

*          *          *
Okay, now flash forward to my journal of 01-28-13:
Do you remember the bedbug flap that began when I announced to one of the quilting groups that I got pillows at the Goodwill and covered them to match my quilts, because they’re so much cheaper (and of greater variety in shape and size) than pricey pillow forms from Wal-Mart or anywhere else?  One of the moderators drew back in horror and announced, “Those thangs have bedbugs!” whereupon I reassured her by saying that I had a pet baboon especially trained to pick said bedbugs off said pillows.
“Ve are not amüsed,” quoth Queen Victoria (of the U.K., that is; not of the Jacksons).
Well, the other morning I wrote the following on that same group when one of the ladies asked what everyone was working on that day:
I will be putting together the hang for the foot of the quilt.  (‘Foot of the quilt’?  Sounds funny.)  (Are there other terms for ‘drop’ or ‘hang’ or ‘foot’?)  Then the border strips… and then I can begin loading it on my frame!!!  I have new Red Snappers with which to attach it…  AND I have brand spankin’ new Railz on my frame that should make quilting a breeze!
Soon I need to make a run to Lincoln for batting (need something drapable and lightweight – Dream Poly or Dream Wool, probably), and I will drop off my Bernina 180 at the Bernina Store to have it thoroughly serviced.  Good time to do it, while I will be using the HQ16.  And I do still have the old faithful Bernina 830 Record.
I will also stop at Hobby Lobby for trim for the pillows.  They have a rack with several shelves chock full of all sorts of fancy trims – piping, beading, cording, braid, etc. – in teal blue and brown that perfectly matches my fabrics, and I want every single roll/skein/bolt/spool of it.  If there are a gazillion yards, and it runs an average of, hmmm, let’s say $10 a yard, just to make it easy, then I only need… well, looks like I need to rob the bank before I go, eh?  Oh! – need to make a stop at the local Goodwill, too, for the pillows to cover.  (Yes, I remember the bedbug debate; I promise to feed them well before I cover them, so they won’t need to eat anything for awhile.  Okay?)  :-D
I envy some of you ladies the snow you are getting!

*          *          *
It was not ten minutes before this post – from one of the moderators – came through the list:  “It was absolutely NOT meant as a joke and I’m not appreciating the humor.”
!  Mercy me, I didn’t know she was that bent out of shape about it.  So she doesn’t want me to feed them.  What will PETA think of that?!
I have not bothered to answer her, though I can certainly think of plenty to say.  For instance, shouldn’t she be more concerned about me robbing a bank??  I said I was going to do that, too, you know. 
Actually, I should be all offended at her for acting like I make vermin-infested things, and then dole them out to innocent, unsuspecting loved ones.
Sooo… do you think bedbugs are funny?  So long as they’re on de üddêr guy, of course. 
Siggghhhh…  Some people.  Tsk.  You’d’ve thought I said her müdder whars army boots.
You want a pillow?  Will you be a-wantin’ bedbugs with that?  And would you like them supersized? 
Poor lady probably got all bitten to bits by bedbugs once upon a time, and is still suffering the traumatic aftereffects.  PBBSD (Post BedBug Stress Disorder), as it were.
Still, it wasn’t my fault.  Nor is it my fault that bedbugs are funny.  Why, even websites that have all sorts of remedies and treatments for bedbugs and bedbug bites have jokes about the horrid little pests.
Other ladies then wrote privately to assure me that my remark was quite funny and not at all offensive, and, further, “Some people are just dreadfully stuffy and impossible,” as one put it.
Why can’t people joke about things?!  Or, lacking that, why can’t they just let me joke about those things?  Why must those who suffer from PBBSD get all twisted up into angry, hostile pretzels?!
(An angry, hostile pretzel is something to behold.)  (Closely rivals a hungry bedbug.)

Oh, well.  I value that group for their helpful advice and information and free quilt patterns, and wish to keep peace in it; therefore I will, uh, merely tell everyone else about it, heh heh.  I’ve made friends with numerous ladies, done some quilting for some, and a couple of them are probably all distressed over what they fear will escalate into Rabbit and Skunk and The Big Fight (one of my favorite little Scholastic Books when I was little). 
All right, that’s enough, that’s enough.
For now.
Maybe.
Yeah, I do have a tendency to run things into the ground.

*          *          *
There.  So now you know all about The Big Bedbug Bedlam, if you didn’t before.
Thursday, I sorted out a few emails for my blind friend that had landed in the Spam folder.  Uh, that is, the emails had landed in her spam folder.  Linda herself was seated quite stably in her desk chair.  English, tsk.  It seems no matter how I label or engage filters on some of her mail, it will determinedly find its way into spam.  I pitched out one email that was written in Japanese, with all those artistic little characters that take ten minutes apiece to write.
I later remarked to Linda, “Maybe I should’ve tossed it into Google translate, in case you are the sole heir of a Japanese prince who died in seclusion in Bol’shoy Shantar, remote island in the Sea of Okhotsk.”
Do you ever get those, and wonder if they could possibly be true?  Don’t worry; if you really are an heir to some spectacular fortune, you’ll get something other than an email full of misspelt words and bad grammar to advise you of the fact.
A friend sent me a video clip of a futuristic smart car, of sorts, part computer and part robot, that behaves like a taxi and can pick you up and transport you here and there quickly and safely.  Kind of nifty, but I told her, “I’m a-gonna hold out for the kind that can instantly morph into miniature helicopters and jet planes and speed boats.”
Can you imagine, if all 7.6 billion people in the world had one of those?  We’d be jostling each other in the sky and sea, in addition to on land!
Look what the prophet Nahum wrote, in about 612 BC:  “The chariots shall rage in the streets, they shall justle one against another in the broad ways: they shall seem like torches, they shall run like the lightnings.”
Speaking of jostling one another, did you know that there are twice as many people on earth now as there were in 1970?
Do you like Pumpkin Spice Coffeemate Creamer?  Hannah offered me some, the other day when we were at their house, and the coffee was a wee bit weak.  Now, if I say the coffee is weak, you’d better believe it’s weak, because I don’t like strong coffee.  (Why do I think coffee tastes like paper towels, when it’s too weak?)
I opened the lid, tipped the bottle...
“It comes out fast!” said Hannah, too late.
It came out fast.
I had a paper towel/pumpkin spice milkshake. 
No, actually, it was downright good.  But if everyone had’ve been as big of a pig as me, someone would’ve had to go to the store for more creamer!
This reminded me of another time a few years ago (everything reminds me of another time, ever notice that?) when I trotted into the kitchen to warm up my coffee in the microwave – and forgot that, the day before, Victoria had been ‘making candles’.  She’d poured mulberry-scented wax into a lid, along with a fat string...  then she made ‘designs’ all over the top ... then she decided that that didn’t look nice, so she melted it again – by putting it into the microwave – on high – for three minutes.
It melted, all right.  It boiledIt splattered mulberry wax high and low.  The whole microwave reeked of mulberry.  And so did my coffee.  😜  I set her to cleaning the microwave.  Soon the wax itself was gone, but the microwave smelt mighty good, and everything we warmed up in there came out tasting vaguely perfumed of berry.  There were bright mulberry splotches all over the walls, ceiling, and floor of that microwave ’til the day it died. 
But the day wasn’t over yet.
Later, I made a new pot of coffee.  A few minutes later, tastebuds all polished up, I came to get a nice fresh mug of coffee.
Pulling the pot from the coffeemaker, I poured – not noticing that there on the spout was a heap of pumpkin pie spice.
Eh?  You’ve never had a heap of pumpkin pie spice mysteriously materialize on your coffeepot spout?
Well, then, you’ve evidently never had a spice cupboard directly over your coffeemaker, nor yet a teenage Caleb rummaging through that same cupboard.  He’d knocked out the bottle of pumpkin pie spice.  And the person who had last used said spice had neglected to screw the lid on tight.  The lid popped off… the spice spilt… and, though Caleb cleaned up what landed on the counter, he did not notice the pile of spice on the coffeepot spout.
Now, I like flavored coffee – hazelnut crème, French vanilla, Irish caramel, blueberry cobbler, . . .  but!! --- I do not much care for mulberry-candlewax flavored coffee, nor yet pumpkin-pie-spice flavored coffee --- especially a whole tablespoon in one small mug of coffee.
Two ruint mugs of coffee in one day is almost too much to bear.
And then there was the time when we lived in town, and Caleb was about five years old, and he decided to be Mama’s Little Helper and warm up my coffee for me.  It was in a tall plastic thermal mug with a lid, nearly full, and it was lukewarm.  Almost cold. 
“How much shall I warm it up?” he queried.
“Oh, about 70 seconds,” I told him.
He put it into the microwave and hit the buttons.
He hit the zero one too many times.
At the five-minute mark, the lid blew off.  BANG!!!
“Wow!” said Caleb, who’d been peering patiently in the microwave window.
“What happened?!” I asked, having forgotten by now what he’d been doing.
“Oh, the lid just blew off,” he told me nonchalantly, still watching the now lidless (and nearly coffeeless) mug revolving inside the microwave.
Yeah, we made fresh coffee.  (And cleaned out the microwave.)
A friend wrote to lament that her coffeepot had died.  “No coffee to be had.  The pot just up and died, but it had a good long life,” she wrote.
Oooo, that’s cruel and unusual punishment, for your coffeemaker to croak!  In a pinch, I have put coffee into a filter, tied it shut with a twisty, and put it into a teapot that goes on the stove.  I heat the water (usually boiling it, without meaning to)... let it steep awhile... and tässä!  Ah haff kahvi! 
By suppertime Thursday evening, I was halfway through the second row from the bottom of the quilt – and supper was not started, except for the apple pie in the oven.  I planned to cook chicken breasts and fresh green beans for supper, but Larry wasn’t home yet.  He worked ’til almost 9:00 that night.
The lady for whom I am quilting does editing, working from home.  That day, she was working on a devotional document for a church in New York City.  
“I still remember the first time I edited a 30-page document full of Bible quotes,” she said.  “I kept pinching myself, hardly believing that I was being paid to read the Bible!”
Reminds me of when Caleb, as a young teenager, when he couldn’t actually be hired by Walker Construction, but was allowed to ride along in the boom truck with his father.  When they were at a job, he could trot around picking things up for everyone, or he could help direct Larry as he backed the truck into a tight spot...
The company paid him anytime he did work such as that.  The first time he got a check, he came dashing in the door, waving his check under my nose and crying, “Look at this!!!  They’re paying me to have fun!!!”
Friday, I began working on the final row of my customer’s Christmas quilt.  Too bad I couldn’t have had the new longarm just a month sooner!  I believe I’ll have better stitches and better tension with this machine.  I certainly hope so.  I have a large mirror and a flashlight that I use to look at the underside of quilts on the longarm frame.  But... every now and then... I’ve looked... I think everything is fine... I quilt... and discover belatedly that the tension changed in some certain spot, and has gone all awry.  😕
‘Awry.’  Now I have to tell you about the time we had this particularly aggravating individual trying to fill my father’s shoes in the pulpit for a time, when my father was not well.  He was an obnoxious oaf, and that’s the nicest thing I can say about him.  Anyway, he was ‘preaching’ away one day, trying his bestest to wax eloquent (what aggravated me so badly was that he tried to preach like my father did – but he didn’t really believe what he was saying, and I knew it) – and he said, “...if you wonder why everything goes a-wire, ...” (instead of ‘awry’).
I needed to laugh.  I needed to laugh really, really badly.
So later, there I was talking to a friend of mine about the bumbling bloke, and I said, said I, “His sermons always go a-screw!”  (I meant to say, ‘askew’.)
Penny laughed ’til she cried.  That was 30 years ago, and she hasn’t let me forget it since.
I made soup that day, using up all the leftover vegetables I’d sliced for vegetable trays, and throwing in some frozen baby bakers (little potatoes), too.  Here’s what was in the soup: 
Broccoli
Carrots
Cauliflower
Red sweet peppers
Yellow sweet peppers
Orange sweet peppers
Green bell peppers
Summer squash
Asparagus
Celery
Baby bakers
Then I cooked some hamburger and tossed that in, too... and began adding salt and other spices: 
Hungarian paprika
Sage
Garlic powder
Sweet basil
Italian seasoning
Thyme
Oregano leaves

Once everything was cooked and had simmered together for a while, I added some milk, a slice of American cheese, and several slices of Pepper Jack cheese – the kind with ghost peppers in it.  Then I added just enough potato flakes to thicken it a bit.  And that was really, really scrumptious soup.  There was plenty for supper Saturday night, too.
One thing I learned a long time ago, though:  milk-based soup doesn’t last nearly as long as other soups, and you’d better have it gone before three days pass.  Nothing like warming up your soup, only to discover it’s gone sour!  Ugh.
Mama used to make what she called ‘hamburger soup’, but she certainly never had the strange concoction of vegetables I used in ours.  The vegetables I used would’ve turned Daddy wrong side out.  haha  Mama used corn, green beans, and peas.  I don’t think Daddy thought there was any other kind of vegetables than those.  😅
And she would’ve never ever put hot spicy cheese – or hot spicy anything – into the soup.
That evening we had our get-together with Teddy and Amy’s family; the kiddos were finally well again.  We had supper and exchanged gifts.  Norma came, too.  Here’s Teddy helping his boys put together the Toss Across game we gave them.
Saturday, Larry went to Oklahoma to pick up a flatbed trailer for a neighbor man, who’s paying him mileage.  Larry did the purchasing on the Purple Wave auction; the neighbor gave Larry the money.  Last week, Larry talked on the phone with the person from whom he bought the trailer, telling him when he could pick it up – but Thursday he received notice from Purple Wave that the seller had filed Abandonment charges! 
That’s when a buyer fails to pick up a purchased item.  After a set time, the seller may then relist the item – and keep the purchaser’s money!  The seller did that less than a week after agreeing to the time of pickup.
Dishonest sellers do that in order to resell items that were already sold, thus garnering twice the profits. 
Purple Wave contacted Larry... he told them his side of the story... they assured him that he had another month to collect the item.  I hoped the seller actually had the trailer Larry had already paid for.
He got up at 3:30 in the morning, and was gone by 3:45 a.m.
He didn’t get home until 3:00 a.m. Sunday morning.  Long day.  He drove a little over 1,000 miles.  The seller had taken the trailer to someone else’s house.  He told this to Larry as Larry was en route, and gave Larry a phone number.  Larry couldn’t hear him well, and couldn’t write it down, as he was driving, so he asked the man to text it to him.  No text came.  Larry tried calling him.  The man answered his phone... heard Larry’s voice... and hung up on him.  He would not again answer or respond to texts thereafter.  Purple Wave auction house is closed on Saturday, but fortunately Larry had one of the representatives’ personal number, and this person was able to discover where the trailer was.  So Larry went to get it, after losing half an hour over the ordeal. 
The taillights were smashed.  They were not smashed in the pictures on the auction site.  The man was probably angry because Larry was the only one or maybe only one of two who had bid on the trailer, and thus the price was extremely low... so the guy wanted to relist it, and get paid twice.  It is understood that this can happen, when one puts items on particular auctions.  It’s not the buyer’s fault, for crying out loud.
Then Larry went to pick up the forklift tines he had purchased somewhere ‘nearby’.  Well, it looked nearby on his smartphone screen.  It was actually another 300 miles.
Moral of the story:
Look at maps on big screens!  😏🙃
(Or check the mileage.)
Meanwhile, here at home, I quilted.  By a quarter after one in the morning, I’d finished the last row of Carol’s Christmas quilt.  More pictures here.  I have only the bottom border to go!
I haven’t used my Avanté yet.  First, I’ll complete this quilt, then I’ll finish getting my new quilting studio set up exactly how I want it, including hanging things on the walls.  I’ll appliqué the remaining petals on Todd and Dorcas’ quilt – and then I’ll quilt it. 
Everyone else who’s champing at the bit to send me quilts will have to wait until I’m at least done with that, because I want to ‘practice’ first with my own quilt, not a customer’s quilt.
I really don’t want to be as swamped with customer quilts as I was last year – six months of non-stop customer quilts!  I have many, many things of my own I wish to do.  Plus, it’s sometimes nerve-wracking when I don’t feel like I’m doing a good enough job – and it’s not my quilt!  I’m feeling this way about Carol’s, because the tension is wrong in places.  She’s paying me a lot, and I really, really wanted to do a good job for her! 
It should have been done before Christmas – but she wasn’t able to get it to me at the first of November as I requested, and custom quilting takes a long time.  I had many things I needed to do for Christmas, too.  So it couldn’t be helped.
One good thing:  by timing my custom quilting and keeping track of the minutes, I will get better at guessing how long it will take, and then I’ll know better just how many scribbles to put into each block to make it tally up to what the customer requests.
Oh, well.  Better too much quilting than too little.  (Unless, of course, the customer doesn’t want ‘too much’.)
And at least it’s not like fruitcake, where if you don’t get it to someone soon enough after baking it, petrification (or worse, fermentation) sets in.  heh
8:00 a.m. Sunday morning found me blow-drying my hair, sipping a fresh mug of coffee, and reading email, the news, and the funnies, not necessarily in that order.
At 25 after 8, I reluctantly awoke Larry, wondering what the interval between ‘I woke him up’ and ‘he got up’ would be.  Amazingly enough, it was only five minutes.
He took a long nap later that afternoon, and then last night he headed to bed just a couple of hours after we got home from our evening church service.  He shut the bedroom door.
Then he opened it back up, peered out into the kitchen where I was, and said in a somewhat sheepish, somewhat imperious tone, “I’m going to get in bed!”
That tone just called for... something, so I stared back at him with a blank face and retorted, “How dare you.”
So off he went to bed, laughing.
By this morning, he had pretty well recovered from Saturday’s ordeal.
After a couple of weeks of subarctic temperatures and blowing winds, we’ve finally had a couple of days where the temperature has been over 40°.  Shocking!  It felt like the arrival of summer!  Well, almost.  It’s supposed to be fairly nice until Friday, when the temperature will drop again, and there is a possibility of snow.
I went out to fill one of the bird feeders – barefoot!  (Had to wash my feet thereafter, as the deck was damp from melting icicles, and sunflower seed shells stuck to my feet.  Bleah.)
We got our electric bill yesterday:  over $400 – $100 more than last month.  Next month’s will make this one’s look like chicken feed.
I’m having Legends of China white tea that Loren gave me, with a Clover Honey Spoon from Caleb and Maria, while a Crabtree & Evelyn White Cardemom candle from Andrew and Hester makes the whole room smell good.  The other candles are from other offspring’ns.  I suppose I shouldn’t burn them all at once? 😄 
Now I have a bit of computer work... laundry... housecleaning... and then I’ll get back to Carol’s quilt.  I have only the bottom border to go, only the bottom border to go!
Oh! – I just discovered Larry has washed his work clothes.  There is a load in the dryer... and another in the washing machine.  I need only put one load into the dryer, and then I can start a load of delicates.  I’ll be done sooner than expected!
Some of my friends don’t like their husbands to do the wash, because they wind up with things tinted the wrong color.  But at our house, it isn’t Larry who tints the wash, it’s me.  He didn’t fuss so much about the pink ‘White Things’, but when I accidentally got a burgundy rayon skirt mixed in with his khaki workpants, well, that was another matter.
And no, I don’t know how it happened, and no, I didn’t know a burgundy rayon skirt would run like an Olympic sprinter.

What’s wrong with sick pink khaki workpants anyhow?


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



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