Journal: Birds & Quilts & Surprise Birthday Parties

Tuesday, I received a notice from SewThankful.com:  Sure enough, my thread is backordered.  Sew Thankful must not keep much thread on hand.  It’s a small, family-owned company.  Sometimes, when I really must have thread quickly, I order from Red Rock Threads of Pahrump, Nevada; but I prefer giving my business to Sew Thankful, because it’s owned by a Christian family.  The backordered thread is usually only delayed a couple of days.  That’ll be all right.

That afternoon, I ordered a heap o’ stuff from Wal-Mart.com.  I clicked on a package of safety pins and got this pop-up box:  “Warning:  You must be at least 5 years old to purchase this product.”  When I click ‘OK’, how do they know someone over the age of 5 did the clicking, I wonder?

You know, one of the drawbacks to shopping online is that you can’t do things like this while you’re at the grocery store:

I made a fresh pot of coffee with the blueberry whole beans that Kurt and Victoria gave me for Mother’s Day and headed upstairs to do some quilting.

That evening, Amy sent beautiful pictures of the sunset.  I hadn’t even noticed it, even though I have two big windows in my quilting studio!  By the time I saw the email, it was dark outside.

When Larry got home that night, he set off Car Bombs where the previous night he’d set off bug bombs, in order to eradicate the bug bomb scent.  (Why does this make me think of ♫ ♪ The Old Woman  ♫ ♪ Who Swallowed a Fly? ♫ ♪)

“I hope nothing blows up,” I said as Larry headed up the stairs.

We ate supper, and I went back to my quilting studio.  The studio itself smelled nice.  There was a pleasant aroma, not too strong, and no undercurrents of Nest Eau d’Sciuridae.

The little office where I have my oak rolltop desk, a tall chest of drawers, the cheval mirror, the ironing board, and a dozen large totes full of photo albums was another matter:  It smelled good, all right!  Overpoweringly good.  That, because the cubbyhole doors behind which Larry set off two odor bombs don’t seal tightly.

That was okay; the aroma would slowly dissipate.  I hoped.

Meanwhile, Larry put up a long board inside the eaves over the back deck, where he discovered the squirrels had gnawed holes to get into the rafters.  They had evidently traveled up over the rooftop, inside the rafters, and down into the dormer area and ceiling above my sewing room, on the opposite side of the house.

I got the first couple of borders on the Americana Eagle quilt that night.  More photos here.

Wednesday, I quilted until time to get ready for our midweek church service.  I went into the little office to iron some clothes – and heard the unmistakable sound of a starling chirping – and it wasn’t far enough away to be outside.

Aaauuuggghhh!!!  The poor thing had evidently gotten blocked in when Larry nailed up that board!  As if it wasn’t enough that her poor babies had perished from Monday night’s bug bombs, now we had imprisoned her.

So early the next morning before Larry went to work, he opened the cubbyhole doors in that room, then opened the door that goes into our unfinished addition, and then opened the patio doors.  He hadn’t wanted to do that the previous night, as we’d have awoken to the house being filled with night bugs gladly invading the place.

By the time I got up later, there was neither sign nor sound of any bird, thankfully.

Thursday morning, I worked on the flower gardens for a while.  I made a big pile with all the weeds I pulled, but the flower gardens still look messy.  Maybe if I spent as much time weeding as I do quilting, they’d look tended and well-kept.  But I don’t have that much time, energy, or want-to.

The Wild Prairie roses are in bloom.  They spread out and look unkempt, but I like them anyway.  And they smell sooo good.

My lilacs are finally blossoming.  They’re always later than everyone else’s, because they’re on the north side of the house.

Indoors, the Phalaenopsis orchid is flowering, as are the African violets, which badly need to be separated and repotted.

After a good scrub and shampoo, I got back to quilting.

Then I happened to look out the back window, and saw that there were birds all over the feeders – including American goldfinches, which are in full summer plumage.

Male American goldfinch

Common grackle

I grabbed my camera, put on the long lens, and shot a bunch of pictures.  See more here:  Grackles & Finches

Friday, a quilting friend wrote, “Ack!  I just sewed a dozen blocks together – without any bobbin thread!”

I consoled her, “If you knew how many times I was sewing happily away at that rag rug, tucking little pieces up under the presser foot, carefully pushing in pretty little pleats – only to belatedly notice that the pieces were falling right off the backing, as soon as that part of the rug got behind my sewing machine!  The bobbin thread had run out.”

I’ve had several requests to do quilting in the last week, but I’m swamped at the moment.  I have three customer quilts waiting, but I have my Americana Eagle quilt on the frame and am doing dense custom work on it, so it’ll take a while.  I have a matching pillow to do, too.

I have 18 tea towels to machine embroider (six were supposed to be a wedding gift – and the wedding has come and gone).  I need to put together a wedding album for Loren and Norma.

There are satin origami pillows on the To-Do list.  I have a Sunbonnet Sue quilt to make, using vintage blocks that were hand-appliquéd by my grandmother, great-grandmothers, aunts, great-aunts, and some of their teachers, neighbors, and best friends. 

There are over 350 large photo albums I’ve been planning to scan for several years now.  I need to put together a book with my patterns for the Buoyant Blossoms quilt, along with a few poems and photos, and try to get it published.  There are quilts to make for children and grandchildren.

Meanwhile, my flower gardens are sprouting weeds with aplomb, flourish, and relish.

I need me a clone!  Or a maid, a butler, a gardener, ----- what in the world?  Outlook’s thesaurus says ‘no similar words’ for maid or butler!  Is the thing trying to be politically correct, thinking those words are too similar to ‘slave’?  ‘I need me some slaves!’ 

Mah woid.  Those two words are not in Thesaurus.com, nor are they in Merriam-Webster’s thesaurus.  Okay, now that’s just plumb ’diculous.

All right, I’ll pluck some words out of my own li’l peabrain:  I need me some flunkeys!  Some minions!  Some toadies!  Some stooges!  Some lackeys!  Hirelings!  Henchmen! 

There.  Let Thesaurus.com go dark on me, heh heh.  ((evil sniggle))

AAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaa......  there’s a tick crawling up my leg!  Thanks a lot, Teensy!  (He just rubbed lovingly around my ankles.)  Time out to go murder it.  (The tick, not the cat.)

...

...

...

Okay, I’m back.  Did you miss me?

Loren and Norma came that afternoon, bringing Norma’s wedding dress for me to hem.  I sent pictures she took on their honeymoon from her phone to my laptop; I’ll use some of them in their wedding album.

That evening we went to Kurt and Victoria’s house for a surprise birthday party for Kurt.  He’s 21.  His family, Jeremy and Lydia and their kiddos, and Caleb and Maria were there, too.  

Full House

Our niece Rachel made a lemon raspberry (I think) (unless it was lemon blueberry) cake, fashioned to look like a tire, with the Dodge Ram emblem painted on top.  It was gluten and dairy-free, and for once I didn’t get a stomachache from eating cake.  Plus, with all that fruit in it, I actually liked it.  I’m not usually too fond of cake.  If I’m going to consume dessert calories, let it be fruit pie!

A big storm was coming, and I kept saying, “We need to go!  We need to go now!”  But Larry was playing with Baby Carolyn, and getting him to ‘go now!’ was nigh to impossible. 

By the time we left, lightning was crackling down nearly straight overhead, with big thundering booms accompanying the streaks almost simultaneously.  The wind was picking up, making us nervous about driving the streets of town where tall, towering trees leaned over the roadways. 

Halfway through town, the rain started falling.  As we hit the western outskirts, it was coming down hard, and before we were halfway home, it was a wild deluge, and hard to see where the road was.  We could hear small pebbles of hail hitting the roof and windshield.

We finally pulled into the drive, the storm nothing abated.  The umbrella was in the house – and wouldn’t have done a bit of good in that wind, in any case.

So... I reached behind the seat, snatched a big bag lying there, put my purse, camera, and tablet into it, and tied the handles tightly.  I grabbed another bag, put it over my head, and pulled the handles together under my chin.  The bags had held our Memorial Day flowers, so my hair would probably be sporting a few plastic leaves and silk petals; but that was preferable to drowning.

Then I opened the car door, leaped out, and ran for the house. 

A river otter ran through the front door behind me.

At least, that’s what I thought it was; but after it dried off a bit, and its hair came unplastered from its head, whataya know, it turned into Larry again.

Baby Keira weighed in at 4 pounds, 10 ounces, that day.  “She’s doing really good,” wrote Hester.  “She’s just working on feedings now.” 

She still gets some of her nourishment through a tube.

Later that night, Hannah sent a screen shot of a machine someone was selling online:  a Brother ‘surgery machine, with 66 spools of surgery thread’.  How ’bout that?  You could save yourself lots of expensive hospital stays and procedures, and just do your own surgeries.

I did a little more quilting, and then hit the hay.

Here’s my feline speed bump, having a bath.

Saturday morning, I cut my hair.  Instead of it taking 15 minutes to put a few curls in, it now only takes five.

That evening, Larry smoked a large Alaska salmon in the Traeger grill.  I cooked green beans to go with it, and we had chunky applesauce, too.  There was fudge brownie frozen yogurt for dessert.  It was a fairly light meal, but yummy and filling.

After seven hours of quilting that day, I’d almost made it to the halfway point on the borders of the Americana Eagle quilt.  I’m ready to start outlining the eagle!  More pictures here.  I’m going to tack those Prairie Points down by putting a small glass bead in each corner.

Can you see a few blue lines on the fabric?  That’s from my water-soluble marking pen.  I used a template (well, actually, a scribble I drew with pencil on paper and then cut out) for the main spines for those feathers, so they’d all start with the same basic shape. Other than that, I just let the plumes be asymmetrical. Asymmetry is my friend! 

A friend was telling me that they are getting a new refrigerator, and asked what kind we have.  It’s a Frigidaire side-by-side, I told her.

Every time I think of when we got our refrigerator, I remember that Jeremy had come to help Larry and Caleb carry it in, and he’d brought Jacob with him.  Jacob was two.  He stood off to the side and quietly watched all the activities and procedures.  They moved the old refrigerator out of the way, put the new one in its place, and then took the old fridge out, leaving Jacob and me in the house. 

Jacob looked around.  They’d left Larry’s tools all over the floor.  

He stared at those tools.  Then he pulled open the freezer door, looked things over, and gazed at the drawer at the bottom.  He looked back at the tools.  He looked at the drawer.  Then he slid open the drawer, picked up all the tools, and put them into the drawer, ker-plunkity-plunkity-plunk.  He pushed the drawer shut, closed the freezer door, dusted his hands off thoroughly, and trotted out the door to watch the menfolk strap the old refrigerator into the back of Larry’s pickup.

I left the tools where the child had put them.  His Grandpa would be well entertained when he found them there.  😁

I cut Norma’s dress, both lining and outer layer, to the right length, and tried hemming the scraps.  I didn’t have the right color of thread, but thought I’d see if I could do a decent job.

Ugh.  That fabric is thin, thin, and stretchy, stretchy.  My stitches didn’t look the best. 

So yesterday after church, after collecting last week’s flowers from the cemetery, we stopped at Wal-Mart and got the right color of thread, and some wash-away stabilizer, too.  That orta do ze trick.  I hope I can mist the stabilizer away when I’m done and not leave a waterline on the fabric.  Sometimes wash-away stabilizer can be torn away.  I do have tear-away stabilizer, but it’s sturdier than the fabric, and might distort the stitches and pull them all whoppy-jaw.

Larry went for a bike ride last night after a supper of salmon (the rest of last night’s fish), clam chowder (which makes good ‘gravy’ for salmon), more of that tasty chunky applesauce, and Cran-Grape juice.  I baked chocolate chunk/peanut butter chip cookies; Larry ate his after he got home an hour and 15 minutes later, having gone about 21 ½ miles, at an average speed of over 16 mph.

It’s laundry day today.  I put the last load into the washer a little before 3:00 p.m.  Then I took three of Larry’s suits to the cleaners.  I discovered when I got there that one of those suits ... doesn’t match.  That is, the pants don’t go with the jacket. 

What this means is that there is an identical mismatched suit in the closet, only with the colors of pants and jacket reversed.  I’d better remember to pick up those things at the cleaners Wednesday afternoon, or Larry is going to feel funny (and look even funnier) when he gets dressed for the Wednesday evening church service.  Remind me, would you, please?

I made a drop-off at the Goodwill and came home.

Baby Keira Brooke is 7 weeks old today, and she weighs 4 pounds, 13 ounces.  Three more ounces, and she will have doubled her birthweight.

A sturdy table that I ordered from Wal-Mart.com was just delivered.  It’s to stand at my left side at my sewing table, and will help support large things (quilts, rugs) as I’m sewing them.  The top surface measures ........ !!  What in the world?  I ordered a 34”-square folding table.  What I got is a bi-fold, height-adjustable table that opens to 24” x 48”, and when it’s folded up, there is a snap lock and a carrying handle.

Oooookay.  Since this table is a more expensive one, I need to let them know.  They usually tell me to just keep it, when such a thing happens; but I always let them know.

Accordingly, I started a chat with a Wal-Mart employee on their forum:

Status: Connected

 Charly M (Listening)

 Charly M: Thanks for chatting with Walmart.com! I’m Charly M and I’ll be assisting you today. 
 Charly M: Hello Sarah Lynn, I hope you are having a great day! I’ve read your concern and I’ll do my best to assist. How may i help you today? 
 Sarah Lynn Jackson: I ordered this table:  34” Square Folding Table  Wound up with this one:  24” x 48” Bi-Fold Table

 Sarah Lynn Jackson: I like the table I wound up with better than the one I ordered and would like to keep it, but it’s more expensive. 
 Charly M: I understand, no problem let me verify the information here Sarah and see what we can do here for you 
 Charly M: Just to verify the information Sarah may I please have the order number? 
 Sarah Lynn Jackson: 4201873-341574 
 Charly M: Thank you 
 Charly M: For security purposes, can you please provide your full billing address?

 Sarah Lynn Jackson: 12345 - 678^th Street 
 Charly M: Thank you for the information, I checked the information here in this case I can start a return process here so you can have a refund and order the other table, would that be okay for you? 
 Sarah Lynn Jackson: No, as I said, I like this table better; I’d like to keep it, but I know it costs a little more. 
 Charly M: I understand just to verify the information you want both tables correct? 
 Sarah Lynn Jackson: No, I only want the table I have received; I don’t need two. I received the wrong one -- but would like to keep it. 
 Charly M: I understand, I’m sorry I was confused, no problem let me see what can be processed here due to this situation 

...

(a long wait)

...
 Charly M: Thank you for your patience Sarah, in this case due that the item is more expensive to the item ordered, no problem I can transfer you to a higher department so they can process the difference for the item received, would that be okay for you? 
 Sarah Lynn Jackson: Yes 
 Charly M: Perfect, please allow me a moment while I transfer this chat to them 

 Charly M has disconnected.
...

(another long wait)

...

 Dynasty C: Thanks for chatting with Walmart.com! I’m Dynasty C and I’ll be assisting you today.
 Sarah Lynn Jackson: Okay
 Dynasty C: Thank you so much for your patience. Do you mind if I take a brief moment to review your previous interactions?
 Sarah Lynn Jackson: Fine 

...

(a long wait)

...
 Dynasty C: Thank you so much for your patience Sarah. I am glad that you like the item that you received. I am checking into our options of billing you for the difference at this time. One moment please.
 Sarah Lynn Jackson: Okay 

...

(the longest ‘moment’ of my life)

...
 Dynasty C: Thank you so much for your patience and honesty Sarah, it is greatly appreciated. I was looking through some information and I understand that you want to keep the item that you received. You are free to do so without the difference being paid. This is an error on our behalf, not yours. You are all set to go and I hope that you enjoy your purchase.
 Sarah Lynn Jackson: Thank you very much; I appreciate it.
 Thank you for your patience as we connect you with a Walmart Team Member. 
 Thank you for your continued patience as we connect you with a Walmart Team Member. 
 Connection resumed. 

(No idea what that was all about.)

 Dynasty C: My pleasure Sarah!

Are there any other questions I can help you with today?

 Sarah Lynn Jackson: One other thing -- I was trying to buy a can of hominy online. But the price of one can was $38.44. I think the decimal got put in the wrong place! :-D Perhaps someone might want to fix that.
 Dynasty C: Thank you for that information Sarah! You are such a valued customer to our business. I will research it now and escalate the site error.
 Sarah Lynn Jackson: Thank you, and thanks for your help.
 Dynasty C: It’s been a pleasure assisting you. I am going to disconnect now. You may receive a brief email survey regarding your experience with me today, and I would appreciate your feedback. If you need any help in the future, please, do not hesitate to contact us again.  Thank you for contacting Walmart.com and have a great day!

+++++++++++++++

She’s going to ‘escalate’ the site error.  Does that mean she’s going to raise the price for that one can of hominy even more?  Or maybe she’s going to put similar prices on a whole lot of other things??  ‘Escalate’.  Maybe she means ‘eradicate’.  ‘Get rid of.’  ‘Fix.’  Or maybe she will escalate the fixing of the error.

Anyway, I now have a $58.99 table for $42.69.  I’ve needed this for a long time. 

Actually, what I really need is a big ol’ honkin’ Horn of America L-shaped sewing cabinet/workstation, but I don’t have several thousand dollars for such a frivolity.  Ah, well.  It would probably be too big for my quilting studio in any case.

Norma, in her wedding dress

(Side note:  Any product from a company that refuses to list their prices anywhere is always a product well out of my price range.  “Call us for prices!  You’ll be pleasantly surprised!”  Yeah, riiiiight.)

I’ve heard no squirrels in the upstairs ceilings for the last week, so I think we got those fluffy-tailed rodents out and successfully blocked their Port of Entry.  Cute little things, and I like them – so long as they stay out of my house.  They can make havoc of a house, fast.

The dryer just buzzed... and that’s the last load of clothes.  Now to put them away, clean the kitchen, and then hem ------------  No, it’s bedtime.  I’ll hem the dress tomorrow.

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