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Victoria's Rose of Sharon Hibiscus that she planted in our back yard
3 or 4 years ago. It's blooming like anything. |
Last Tuesday, I started
giving Teensy his pill for hyperthyroidism.
Yaaaay... I always love giving cats pills.
Not... ...
... ... really.
What you do is, you
stomp on their tails, and then when they yeOOWWWLLL, you throw the pill down
their throats.
Siggghhhhh... You know I don’t do that. In fact, I ordered a little marble mortar
and pestle, so I can crush the pill and put it into his food. Poor
kitty... he’s one of the nicest cats we’ve ever had.
Then I opened the
pill bottle and discovered... these are
wee teeny little dinky pink pills.
I dropped one into
his soft Fancy Feast food, poked it in and buried it, and put the saucer down
for the cat.
He gobbled it up in
nothing flat, and bawled for more.
Yaaaaaay!!!
And this time, I mean it.
Every evening for over
a week, Larry worked on the camper and the pickup, getting them all ready for
use. We needed to take my quilting and crafting things to the Nebraska
State Fair Thursday morning, and then we planned to go camping somewhere for a
couple of days.
Tuesday afternoon,
after a somewhat sunny morning, it was suddenly pouring rain. Good thing Larry
had come home for lunch and noticed a box sitting half in and half out of the
walk-in garage door. It held the little
rocking chair I ordered for Carolyn, for her birthday and for Victoria to use
as a photo prop.
I guess I need to
put a big sign on the garage door again:
BOXES DO NOT GO HERE!
Amy was telling me some of the funny things her kids
say. One said he was ‘backwardsing’ a
video tape. 😄
That reminded me of
the time I asked Keith, at about age three, to go see if a cassette was going
or if it had paused, and he, after peering in through the clear plastic window,
said, “Yes, Mama; the paws are moving!”
That day, I worked
on the top borders of the Sunbonnet Sue quilt.
I didn’t keep track of my time in the piecing, but I’ll keep track of
the quilting. Getting started always takes me a while, measuring,
deciding, marking, etc. I worked seven hours on that little dab of
quilting. Well, it felt like more than ‘a little dab’.
My machine keeps
track of stitches – total amount, since the machine was new; and for each
separate job. Or at least it would, if I ever remembered to reset
the meter. Not once have I remembered. I’ve wanted to do
that, so I could better correlate cost with time versus stitches. I keep
saying, Next time I’ll remember!
Victoria
called a little after 2:00 p.m. Wednesday afternoon. She was on her way back from her doctor’s
appointment in Norfolk, had Carolyn with her... and she was at my house, in the living room right that moment.
And where
was I? Why, I was in bed! — because,
after getting up, taking a bath, making coffee, and preparing to curl my hair,
I was suddenly very sick.
First, a
bad headache. I downed some Extra-Strength
Tylenol and tried carrying on. Lost my
socks. Gave up. Went to bed.
I stayed
in my room, the better to not pass around the bug. Victoria took the rocking chair for Carolyn (still
in the box, assembly required) and departed.
I always regret lost opportunities to see my offspring!
At a
quarter after five, I got up, thinking I was feeling better. The headache returned, and it was a bad’n. But I needed to be packing clothes and
supplies into the camper, because the next day we were going to Grand Island,
and then we were planning to go on a little camping trip! Bah, humbug.
I curled
my hair despite the headache; but all I really
wanted to do was to go back to bed.
Then I
ensconced myself in the recliner with my laptop, pulled up our Camping Supplies
list, and clicked ‘Print’.
Larry
came home, got ready for church, and went off by himself to hold down our
pew. Loren and Norma weren’t there, as
they’d gone on a little camping trip to the west. So somebody
needed to hold that end of the pew down (they usually sit by us). Meanwhile, I stayed home and held the
recliner down. I did a jolly good job of
it, too, and didn’t get bucked out once.
After
church, Larry was kind enough to fix some Campbell’s Chunky Chicken Noodle soup
and share it with me. It stayed down,
happily. I took another dose of Tylenol
and looked up West Nile Virus, since I’d recently acquired a whole volley of
mosquito bites that itch worse than any mosquito bites I’ve had for a long
while. I had nearly every symptom. ’Course, I have half of those symptoms all
the time anyway, what with the rheumatoid arthritis. Did you know that one of the ways of
diagnosing that disease is with a lumbar puncture, so they can test spinal
fluid? Aiiiyiiiyiii. I prefer just looking at symptoms on the
Internet.
At about
11:30 p.m., I decided I was feeling as good as I was going to, and I needed to throw
our clothes into bags and gather things for the camper, headache or not. If we wouldn’t’ve had to take my stuff to
Grand Island the next day, we could’ve just postponed all this fun!
By 2:00 a.m., I was
done with everything that could be
done until we were finished using various important items in the morning. Later
in the morning, that is. I even washed
the dishes. Funny thing was, I felt a
whole lot better than I’d felt all day. Hopefully,
it was just a 12-hour bug. Maybe it was a 24-hour bug; I hadn’t felt quite right on Tuesday, though I’d done my
best to ignore it.
I had no idea if
there were dishes in the camper. Maybe I was smart enough to leave them
in there, last October? (I was, and
there were.) (Or maybe I just forgot to
bring them in the house.) (No, actually,
they were the dishes and pans and silverware I purchased specifically for a
previous camper. I got all the pots and
pans at a thrift store in Cañon City, Colorado, for only $1.50 - $1.75 each.)
I suppose we should
remember to take the stuff I needed to enter in the State Fair? (I did have it all ready to go – except
there were still a few things in the van.)
A big, rolling clap
of thunder rattled the house. I pulled up AccuWeather. Wow, there was a bad storm just south of
Humphrey, less than ten miles to our north.
We would learn the
next day that a lengthy swath of fields was ruined when they were hit with
baseball-sized hail. But we only got a
little bit of rain.
One of the things
Larry did to the camper was to install a new folding grab handle at the back of
the camper, so I would have an easier time getting in and out. I had no
idea how I would clamber into the upper bunk, though, with this bum
wrist. Maybe Larry could just throw me up there, hmmm?
I got
about two hours of sleep before Larry awoke me with his snoring. I said (very politely, of course), “Can you
roll over?”
He
muttered some sort of agreement and scrabbled a bit... but went on
snoring.
Shortly
it got light enough that I could see – and I discovered his ‘rolling over’ had
merely entailed turning his head slightly to one side and throwing both arms
over his head. That generally helps him
snore BETTER!
Two more hours, and
I gave up and scrambled out of bed. That wasn’t enough sleep. Nevertheless, I was feeling much better that morning.
 |
| 'Mouse Ears' |
I gave Teensy his
food and a pill, so no one would have to do it until the next day. Several of our cats who had to take pills of
one sort or another fairly often knew that the instant they swallowed that
pill, I was going to give them a treat. So they’d gulp, and then trot
straight to the cupboard where I kept the treats, looking back at me with a “Mrrrow?!”
to make sure I was coming.
Larry had a few
more things to do on the camper and pickup. He put a new regulator switch
on the refrigerator... cleaned out the pickup... and then he loaded the Polaris
RZR onto the trailer.
I wrote to
Hannah: “Whom shall I ask to give Teensy
his pill (he gobbles it up when I put it in his soft food, especially if I let
it sit and dissolve a bit for just a minute before I give it to him).
Yesterday I noticed he’d spit it back out, so I quickly grabbed his saucer of
food before he finished it and smushed the pill with the end of a knife handle,
then mixed another little spoonful of food with it. He downed it without
any trouble.
“I gave him his
medicine today already. He only needs it once a day for a couple of weeks,
and after that, twice a day. The vet said this way it wouldn’t be such a
shock to his system.
“We plan to be back
Saturday night or Sunday night.”
Hannah said she
could look after the cats, as usual, despite the fact that she’s somewhat
allergic to them. She has to remember to
wash her hands immediately after petting them (at which point they promptly
demand to be petted again, of course).
If she touches her face before washing her hands, she’s liable to get a
bright red welt.
I looked out the
window, and saw that Larry was putting our bikes on the trailer with the
RZR. As it turned out, Larry’s bicycle came in handy two or three times. But when I tried riding mine, my wrist
protested, and I decided I’d better not.
I looked at the
clock. I sure hoped we didn’t have a
repeat of a couple of years ago, when we got to the building at the State Fair after
they’d already locked the doors at 3:00 p.m. Larry, not realizing (or
maybe not caring) that the dark windows on the doors were one-way mirrors,
jumped up and down and jerked and tugged on the handle, bawling.
A lady opened the
door. She was obviously trying not to laugh. The people in the
background weren’t even trying.
They ushered us in
and let me enter my quilt.
Soon Larry came
dashing in, heading at a trot for the bathtub.
Maybe we would get there in
time.
Or maybe we would have
a flat tire or overheated brakes on the way, and be late after all.
Is a purty blue
ribbon and $1.50 worth all this effort??!
(Actually, the State Fair does give
a little more than the County Fair for their awards.)
Hester sent some
pictures of Baby Keira and a note: “Miss Keira is four months old
today! She’s now 10 lbs., 3 oz. We’ve just started her on some medicine for
reflux so we’re hoping she’ll be feeling a bit better soon.”
Poor little
sweetie! She has such an endearing face. Reflux is so awful for
babies!
Soon we
were heading southwest toward Grand Island.
Amy then sent pictures
of Elsie in a pair of one of her brother’s cowboy boots, looking quite pleased
with herself. Half an hour later, she
sent more pictures of Elsie in yet another pair of boots, playing with (and
tasting) bubbles from the bathroom sink.
This time, the boots were on the wrong feet. Warren, too, was playing with bubbles.
Amy accompanied the
pictures with this note: “I was telling
Warren to do something and called him ‘honey’. He sweetly, but very emphatically said, ‘Say
me Warren, Mama; say me Warren.’” 😄
We got to the
fairgrounds at 2:30, with plenty of time to get everything checked in at the main
Exhibit Hall and the Textile Arts building.
I was glad Larry was there to help me.
I had several bags full of things; and the Americana Eagle quilt, the
Baskets of Lilies quilt, and the rag rug are heavy.
We stopped at Super
Saver to get a snack of cheese and Scoops before heading west.
But we were soon
stalled out by NDOR (Nebraska Department of Roads) doing Armor Coat (gravel on tar)
on the road. Finally, finally, we
were allowed to go. All the vehicles kicked up an oily dust cloud. Yuck.
Before turning
north, we went to a Polaris dealership in Kearney for some gear grease for the
transfer case on the Polaris RZR.
While we drove, Larry told me a scary story:
He is getting more
hard of hearing right along. A couple of
days earlier, he was working, standing beside his running truck at the door. He backed up to shut the door ------ and a
Tahoe went flying past just inches behind him. He hadn’t heard the
vehicle coming, at all.
Problem is, when he
wears his hearing aids, it amplifies loud noises of hammers on metal... truck
engines... Hard to know what to do. Maybe more expensive hearing
aids would be better.
Sometimes when we’re
traveling, it’s a good thing I’m along, because Larry doesn’t hear such things
as bearings going out... motors making odd noises... tires with bad spots
slapping the pavement... etc.
Before
long, we were in the Sandhills. Albion,
37 miles to the northwest of our house, is called ‘The Gateway to the Sandhills’. From there on to the Pineridge area is
Sandhills. 33,333 square miles. Largest sand dune formation in America. Most of the time, the Sandhills are covered
with prairie grasses.
We ate supper at the
Dairy Queen in Broken Bow: grilled
chicken salads and Summer Berry Cheesecake Blizzards. I could only eat half the salad... and got a
small Blizzard.
At 9:30 p.m., we pulled
into Bessey Camp near Halsey. It was getting dark, and we hoped we could
get parked and settled before it was pitch black out (though heaven knows we’ve
had plenty of experience parking in the middle of the night).
This campground has
so many pine trees and hills, it almost feels like we’re in the mountains – except
for the humidity.
We walked over to
take a look at the showers. Larry walked
inside Рand I found a happy little toad making merry with a sm̦rg̴sbord of
bugs under an old-fashioned lamp light by the campground showers.
I was hunkered down
nearly on the ground getting a picture of this wee toad, when along came a
young boy who’d been bouncing a basketball over on the court near the showers. He slowed... walked by very softly... I
looked up and smiled... and he grinned at me as he went.
Either he thought I
was plumb cuckoo, or he was impressed that a li’l ol’ gray-haired granny would
actually be taking a picture of a toad frog, whilst crouched down not more than
half a foot from the warty thing.
We’ll go with the
latter.
By 11:00 p.m., we
were in the camper enjoying the quiet (between coal trains, that is), with all the
windows open. The katydids and crickets were
carrying on a serenade, with tree frogs joining in. Every few minutes, we
heard the quavering notes of a screech owl. When we walked to the showers
earlier, we got closer... closer... closer to the screech owl... and then there
was a little scurrying rustle in the pines, and all of a sudden he was behind
us.
It was very dark
out, and the stars were shining brightly.
It costs $11 to
stay there, and we had electricity at the site. There is water and a
dumping station nearby. We paid an extra $3 to ride the trails the next
day on the Polaris RZR. Larry and everyone else I know calls it ‘the
Razor’, so I was surprised when I looked it up to discover that it’s an
RZR. Now they all look at
me funny when I call it an RZR. hee hee
It was time for
bed... but I wanted to look at the pictures I’d taken. So there I sat at
the table, looking at my laptop and sipping San Marco Apricot Almond
coffee------------ and then, hee hee, Larry was complaining about the pjs
I put in his bag for him.
They’re pale
blue... the top is too tight across the chest, and the pants are too loose. “I look like I belong in a hospital bed!” he
protests.
“No complaining,
when you didn’t pack your own bag,” I told him.
Uh, oh... he then needed to go out and do something with
the camper battery... so he put on his boots.
Boots and hospital jammers don’t go together, you know that? hahaha!
At that precise
moment, I got a notification from Larry’s email that somebody by the name of
Teresa M. was ‘following’ him on Strava (the app he uses for his
bike-riding). I pointed out the notification and informed him, “You’re
going to scare Teresa, going out there like that.”
By then, he was
laughing just as hard as I was.
Do you think our
Apricot Almond coffee made us nutty? Turned us into fruit loops?
I managed to climb
into the bunk all right. Not gracefully, but I got there. And
I got back out. It’s always good, when one can get back out. 😅
We finally went to
sleep. But ‘sleep’ was a relative
term. I’d barely start to drift off, and another train would come roaring
through, shaking the earth and blaring its whistle. I remarked the next
morning that the tracks must be immediately beside the window, on the other
side of a thick stand of trees.
Caleb, when he was
nine months old, learned to say “Tooooot!!!” after we stayed all night at a
motel in a little town in Wyoming with train tracks across the street.
Coal trains went through approximately every ten minutes, all night long.
Larry informed me that
the train tracks were a good quarter of a mile away.
“You’re deaf,
remember?” I retorted.
And then he
had the audacity to tell me I woke him up, snoring!!! Ladies don’t snore. (Do they?)
Plus, he’s deaf. Well, okay, not deaf, but hard of hearing.
Anyway, we were up and
percolating, and I decided not to complain about his snoring, because...
while I curled my hair... he was scrubbing out the refrigerator! We
thought it wasn’t working, but, at least while we were plugged in, it was working. Maybe it’s just when
it’s on propane that it doesn’t work? It worked last year, but overcooled
and frosted now and then. We suspected that the temperature probe got
displaced when the jack gave way as the former owners were trying to lift the
camper, and wound up dropping it onto that corner. (The messed-up corner was part of what Larry
was working on for several nights in a row last week.)
However, the
refrigerator went on working when we unplugged the camper later that day. It switched over to propane just like it’s
supposed to do, and kept everything nice and cold all the way to Merritt
Reservoir, where we plugged into electricity again. The refrigerator automatically switched back
to electricity – and kept right on cooling.
The sun was shining
in the door... I was sitting at the little table curling my hair, sipping
Apricot Almond coffee (I’d filled two large Thermoses before we left home), and
reading the funnies (with time out to answer email).
We ate breakfast...
Larry got the RZR off the trailer... and soon we were ready to go trail riding.
Amy sent a cute
picture of Elsie on their front porch eating a chalupa.
She has on her very
own boots for once, but she got them on the wrong feet. (She has a 50/50 chance of getting it right
[or wrong], you know.) “I think she
likes these things better than shoes!” wrote Amy.
As we were leaving Bessey
Camp on the RZR, heading for the Dismal Trail (named after the nearby river –
and I don’t know what the river is
named after), we saw a parked pickup and flatbed trailer belonging to some of
our friends from home. We thought we
might see them on the trails, but there are 23 miles of trails, and we saw only
half a dozen other riders the whole two hours we were out there.
We drove over hill
and dale, and over dale and hill. We
went all the way to the Dismal River. I
drove for a little ways; but my wrist wasn’t up to the rigors of steering
through those banked and bumpy curves.
Besides, I wanted to take pictures!
When we got back to
Bessey Camp, we saw that our friends’ trailer was still there – but this time,
the pickup was gone. Beside the trailer
were a four-wheeler and a motorcycle, and on the trailer was a motorcycle
without a rear wheel.
“I hope no one got
hurt!” I said, a bit anxious.
Larry wasn’t too
worried, though. After all, he’s had umpteen
tires and wheels, front or rear, go kaput while he was riding, with no serious consequences. He figured they were just off having it
fixed.
We returned to our
campsite, loaded the RZR and our bicycles, and pulled out.
And there were our
friends – a father and his two teenage sons – loading their motorcycles and
four-wheelers back onto their trailer.
Everyone was fine and dandy, with nothing more wrong with them than that
they sported a layer of sand. We chatted
with them for a few minutes, and then departed.
Trail-riding
pictures here.
Victoria sent a
video clip and pictures of Carolyn rocking in the new little chair we’d given her,
and looking at a book. I think the chair was a hit!
We stopped in Thedford,
population 218, and Larry got a few groceries in Ewoldt’s Market while I ‘abode
with the stuff’ (reference to King David’s men who didn’t go with the warriors
to battle). Surprising how much stuff
they can pack into such a little grocery store.
(The Ewoldts, that is, not King David’s warriors.)
We continued west
to Mullen, then turned north toward Merritt Reservoir.
Somewhere on that
route, cellphone service became a thing of the past. This meant that while my tablet for some odd
reason kept the little blue dot showing our location moving right along on the
road we were traveling, I could get no vital information such as, Where is the campground with the showers?!
Yeah, I don’t mind
roughing it, providing I can be nice and
clean whilst I’m a-doin’ it.
We turned onto Merritt
Reservoir Recreation Road 16C and headed toward the Snake River Campground.
Mistake.
First, though the
road was paved and looked quite nice,
it wasn’t. Every few feet, there was a deep cut in the
road. It felt like we were thumping into
a series of gullies, one after another.
We crept along, so as not to jar the poor camper to bits and
pieces.
And then, to add insult to injury, once we
got to the campground, we discovered that it was a primitive site. No hookups,
and no showers.
The road was
probably only five miles each way, but it took us 45 minutes to travel it and get
back to where we’d started. Still, had
we not taken this road, we would not have seen the wild turkeys, nor the doe
with her twin fawns.
We continued north
on the east side of the 2,905-acre reservoir, and this time, we paid attention to the signs for each of the
campgrounds, as roads branched off toward the shore. Nary a one showed showers.
We stopped at the
Merritt Trading Post at the north end of the lake and asked where the nearest
campground with showers was. They
directed us back south to Cedar Bay. As
we drove along, the sun was setting over the water. I wanted to be on the shore, taking pictures! By
the time we stopped in the campground and I could get to the side of the lake,
the sun had already gone down behind the western hills. Bah, humbug.
Cedar Bay campground
is a pretty place. It was nice to have
individual showers behind locked doors – but
you have to pay for them! I plugged
in five quarters, which was supposed to give me seven minutes. Thinking that was barely enough time, I
shampooed in record time, washed my face and breathed water into my nose, and
then had enough time to soap and rinse and stand under the water for what was a
whole lot longer than seven minutes. The
shower nozzle was too high, and angled at the wall. And there was no adjusting the temperature;
some hotblooded person had decided what that
should be. 😬
In this remote part
of Cherry County, there was no Internet, no cellphone service, no airplanes in
the sky, no... milk in the refrigerator.
Larry had been so excited to find Dannon cherry yogurt with chocolate
and nut sprinkles, and homemade potato salad (heavy on the mustard, if you ask
me) at Ewoldt’s Market, he totally forgot about the milk. And the coffee. But he did
remember the powder I’d requested.
He’d gone into the store to get three things, and he’d come out with two
bags full – but only one of the items
we’d actually needed, and that one, the least necessary of the three.
At least, in
addition to the other things lacking, there were also no nearby trains with
their ear-splitting whistles.
Cherry County, the largest
county in Nebraska at 6,009 square miles, has a population of 5,848.
Population density: about 1.03 people per square mile. On the other hand, there are about 166,000
cows in Cherry County alone.
Saturday morning,
Larry rode his bicycle to the Merritt Trading Post ten miles to the north and
got half a gallon of milk for our breakfast.
He forgot about the coffee, but allowed as how he probably couldn’t have
carried it on his bike anyhow. (Of
course, he later carried a long stringer of fish, but... that’s different.)
Fortunately, I’d
brought a package of Senseo French Vanilla coffee pods. Each pod makes about two cups of coffee, and it
is good.
While I stumped
about taking pictures that morning, Larry went fishing. He didn’t expect to land anything, because
there was a big Catfish Tournament going on, and fishermen (and fisherwomen)
were racing madly to and fro on the lake, sending wakes splashing up on the
shores. Boy oh boy, did we ever see the
fancy fishing boats. Some were on
matching fancy trailers. I never saw so
much sparkling metallic paint in my life!
Despite the uproar
on the lake, Larry brought in a big drum (the fishy type, not the bang-bang
type), which he fileted and put in the freezer for our supper that night.
And then he made
pancakes for breakfast. Mmmmm,
yummy. Larry makes the best pancakes ever.
That afternoon, we
headed to Valentine, Nebraska, 26 miles to the east. Did you know that
you can send letters to Valentine, Nebraska (called The City of Love), in
February to have Valentine’s post office stamp them with their special postage
stamp?
People do this from
all over the world even though, if they’re too far afield, there is no
guarantee of the letter arriving on the appropriate date.
The post office
there is called ‘Cupid’s Mailbox’. There are only three clerks (usually
enough, for this town of 2,800), and they get about 50,000 pieces of mail (and
even some packages) every February.
Now, if you don’t
look at any of those other links (or even if you looked at all of them),
don’t miss this one, the best of them all, with pictures of the various stamps,
etc.:
Hannah called to
tell us that an elderly friend had passed away that morning. She was our son-in-law Jeremy’s and
daughter-in-law Maria’s great-grandmother, and also a very good friend of my
mother’s. She was 96.
It was Jeremy and Lydia’s 10th
anniversary that day. Too bad when
someone passes away on someone’s anniversary or birthday – particularly when
they’re related. But she lived a long
and full life, a faithful and lovely lady all those years.
We drove to Keller
Park State Recreation Area that afternoon, and Larry fished for rainbow
trout. He caught half a dozen or so,
plus a small-mouth bass. He also fed a
worm, complete with line and hook, to a turtle. They generally snap off
the line and go away before he can remove the hooks, poor things.
I tromped around
taking pictures, then went back to the camper and edited photos.
Hannah went to take
care of the cats – and sent this message:
“A napping young robin & strewn feathers are on the bathroom floor. 😯”
Aarrgghh. Cats.
She added that she
had removed the bird from the house.
“Okay, thank you,”
I replied. “We’ll conduct a proper
funeral for him as soon as the circuit-riding preacher arrives.”
Amy then sent a
picture of Warren in a cap reading ‘Polaris’ on the front, writing, “I found a
hat for Larry; here is Warren modeling it.”
She sent another picture of Elsie, too – again in her brother’s cowboy
boots, with them again on the wrong feet.
“Are you sure she doesn’t
have the wrong feet on the wrong legs by now?” I asked.
Look at this! – I
found a hillbilly bunny, with the telltale straw stuck between his teeth!
Most of the time we
are at Keller Park State Recreation Area, there is no cellphone service (and
thus no Internet). But every once in a
while, an email or two come trickling in (or one goes trickling out).
Larry cleaned his
fish and put them into the camper’s freezer. We’ll grill them on the
Traeger in a couple of days or so.
Before leaving the
park, we dumped the camper’s holding tanks and filled the water tank with fresh
water. Then off we went to the
southeast. As soon as we had cell
service again, I hunted online for a campground – and found the Oregon Trail RV
Park in Atkinson.
That’s on the eastern
edge of the Sandhills, a little closer to civilization. Cellphone signals are less liable to be
dropped... oncoming drivers are less likely to wave... and many of the roads actually
have shoulders.
We were hungry, and thought to take it
easy by eating at Subway, which was just half a block from the campground – but
they had closed exactly nine minutes before I looked up their hours of
operation on the Internet.
Sooo... Larry
fried the drum he had caught that morning, using leftover pancake batter from breakfast
with the fish. (Not that we had breakfast
with the fish.) Soon it was starting to
smell scrumptious in the camper. And the
aroma was not deceiving; it tasted every bit as good as it smelled.
Sunday morning, we broke
out our new coffeemaker and enjoyed some Cameron’s Vanilla Hazelnut coffee.
Yes, somewhere along the route (maybe
in Valentine?), Larry had remembered to grab a bag of ground coffee. It was a somewhat rainy out... but that was
okay. Easy on the eyes. 😊 The night insects were still chirping... a mourning dove was cooing...
and there wasn’t much activity in the little town. It was 67°, and we had
the windows open. Refreshing and nice.
Atkinson, Nebraska,
has a population of 1,249. It was the second largest town we’d been in
for several days, Valentine being the larger.
We got home that
evening. The cats were soon keeping me busy with their crying for food
and attention. Teensy came inside a
couple of minutes after we got home, hopped up on a chair by the counter, and
squalled and bawled while I got his food, put it on the saucer, and stuck his
pill in it. Tiger stood nearby, now and then rasping, “Mrow.” “Mrow.”
(in agreement with and support of Teensy.)
You’d think I was slower than molasses in January!
Teensy gobbled down
his food... (and pill)... and fifteen minutes later was squalling and bawling
for more food. I made him wait
another hour... then fed him again. I used to give him half a can twice a
day... then I increased it to a can and a half per day... and a couple of
months ago, I started giving him two cans a day. And yet he lost weight
and muscle mass.
I can’t tell a big
difference since we started giving him the thyroid medicine a week ago, but he
does seem more content.
A couple of hours
after the second helping, he was asking for a third. But we let him lick
out our yogurt containers, and he was happy. Partly, he was just letting
us know, You were gone, and that wasn’t nice, and I missed you, did
you miss me, and why did you go away?! Pet me! Let me jump on your lap! Pay attention to me!!!
Then he noticed Larry’s
clothes bag sitting open in the living room, and he leaped right in, made
himself comfortable, and slept for a good 45 minutes. 😄
I edited a few
pictures, and then hit the hay. I
usually try to label most of my photos, but sometimes I run out of steam.
“Who took all these gazillions of pictures, and whyyyyyy???????”
And sometimes I don’t know what the buildings are, or even where they
are. I often go through my pictures with the picture on one side of my
screen, and a Google map on the other, so I can at least put a location on the
shots. If a building is particularly
noteworthy, I do a bit of research on it.
Time-consuming – especially since I enjoy history and research, and am
prone to get lost in reading about how a town was founded, and suchlike.
Speaking of
learning about things, I would be very interested in knowing why there is one
kernel of feed corn on the bathroom floor.
?
Other conundrums of
the day: Larry came home for lunch at
noon, found two boxes from FedEx that had been squished hard between the storm
door and the entry door. One box was
soaked. The other was dry. ?
Guess what was in
the soaked one?
Cornmeal. And hearing aid batteries. Both all wet.
The hearing aid battery card was so wet that the plastic had come loose
from the cardboard, and the batteries had spilled out. And you can guess what a wet bag of
concret------ uh, cornmeal, is like.
And then, just a
few minutes ago, the FedEx arrived again,
with another package – different
driver; he said he’d never been here before.
Did each package have a different driver? Did the wet package get delivered Saturday,
and we didn’t see it, and today’s driver set it inside the house? Larry came in the front door yesterday... but
not until it was dark out. Hmmm... the
box doesn’t say... let’s see if I have
an email notification.
Ah! The
wet box was delivered Friday. That is, it was doubtless delivered dry, and became wet later.
The thing is, I’ve
asked the FedEx people over and over
again to set things inside the house.
Sometimes they do... sometimes they don’t... sometimes they fling it
into the garage, where I’ll never ever
see it... sometimes they set it in the garage door, half in, half out...
sometimes they put it half in and half out of our screen door, which has caused
the screen door to fly back and forth in the wind and ruin the hinges and
hydraulic spring.
I made those signs
I threatened to do last Tuesday. Printed
them... put them in Ziploc baggies... and Larry taped them to the garage
doors. Do you think this sounds (or
looks) like I’m peeved?
DO NOT PUT PACKAGES AT THE GARAGE
DOORS!!!
PUT THEM ON THE FRONT PORCH, OR, IF IT’S
RAINING, PUT THEM IN THE FRONT DOOR.
WE ARE TIRED OF BOXES WE CAN’T FIND,
OR BOXES THAT ARE TOTALLY SOAKED, WITH THE ITEMS INSIDE RUINED!
The batteries I got
for Larry’s hearing aids are the wrong size.
I knew I needed size 13; how
did I end up ordering size 10?
And why did
Wal-Mart ship one packet of batteries with the cat food and Cream of Wheat, and
the other packet in the same size box – all by its lonesome? The box with only the batteries was dry; the
other soaked.
There are three young
cardinals on the feeder. Two are already
starting to turn red; the other is turning buffy tan with tinges of red. Evidently
it’s two males and a female.
Several people have
asked if my problem with my thumb and wrist is Carpal tunnel syndrome. I have had a little trouble with carpal
tunnel syndrome, but nothing very bad. That’s
at the base of my palm, where the wrist starts. Just a tingly feeling...
or if I don’t pay attention and stop doing what I’m doing, it can ache a
little. But it usually gives me ample warning.
This trouble I have
now is called De Quervain’s tenosynovitis. It’s an inflammation of the
tendon from outside of the thumb up toward the elbow – and the tendon isn’t the
only thing that’s inflamed; it’s also the tendon sheath. So
every time the thumb is moved, especially in an extending-outward direction, or
if I try to tilt the wrist to the inside, it’s quite painful.
If I sleep too long
overnight without moving the thumb, then it hurts a lot for a while
after I get up, until it gets to moving a bit. The bone on the outside of
the wrist hurts, too, but I think that’s just from being held in one place too
long. It’s odd what things hurt it and what doesn’t. Flipping a sock cuff inside out over the mate
hurts. Hanging onto a dish whilst washing it hurts. So I shouldn’t
have to do laundry or dishes, right? But the maid, she ain’t a-showin’
up, so... Actually, the hot dishwater feels good on my wrist. So I just
try to be careful.
The doctor said
cortisone shots were an option, but I think the wrist is healing okay. I
won’t resort to shots if I don’t have to, as cortisone can make osteoporosis
worse. “Here, this will cure you, if it doesn’t kill you!” Isn’t that the way some medications and ‘remedies’
are?
Anyway, I now know
better than to crank those quilts onto my frame with wild abandon, like I’d
been doing. Nowadays, I do it gently.
I need to finish
editing Saturday’s and Sunday’s photos from our trip.
We had a nice
time. I’m still not fond of pickup campers, though. Too crowded...
too hard to get into. But... it saved us lots of money. And
everything worked well. It’s a decent camper, with a little restroom, and
the bed has a good mattress – sort of a memory foam top to it. Quite
comfortable. It’s hard for me to get in
and out of the bunk (and the camper itself), though, with this bum wrist. The other wrist hurts, too, though not nearly
as much. I injured them both at the same
time. They’re getting better,
though. Or at least they were, until Saturday when a heavy door started
slamming shut in my face, and I grabbed it with the bad hand. Better that
than a bashed-in face, hmmm? I behaved just like my mother taught me,
though: I peeked back out to make sure nobody saw that. ha
I’d been leaving
off the brace, except for when we went in the RZR. I hoped maybe I was done with it. But I put it back on and wore it off and on
the rest of the day and yesterday, too, after the BBDI (Big Bad Door Incident).
It keeps the thumb from moving too much, or the wrist from tilting, and that
really helps.
Anyway, as I was
saying, the camper has a nice kitchen area, with a fairly large
refrigerator. The seats around the table are comfortable, so long as you
don’t sit there too long. I wish we still had our nice big fifth-wheel
camper! We got it at such a bargain, it was a shame to sell it. We
got a little more for it than we paid for it.
Ah, well. We didn’t have opportunity to use it much
anyway.
When we took our
Holiday Rambler to Canada back in 1994, we also had a pop-up pickup camper on
the pickup. The three older boys slept in the pickup camper with Aleutia,
our Siberian husky. The girls and Caleb, who was 9 months old, slept in
the Holiday Rambler. I think it was ... ? 26 feet long? Maybe
28? Hmmm... here’s a page that shows the 1968 specs, and they don’t show
a 26’ or 28’ – but there is a 27’. That must’ve been what it was.
The table and
benches made into a bed for Hannah (13) and Dorcas (12). There was room
at the foot for a bed of foam and thick sleeping bags for Hester (5) and Lydia
(3). One night, the older girls’ comforter slid off the bed and landed
ker-ploomp right over the top of the little girls. They sure came yelping
out from under that in a hurry!
We fixed up a
little bed for Caleb in the tub, which was almost as big as his crib, each
night. The little girls about died laughing the first time we put him in
there.
“The baby’s in the
bathtub! Hahaha!”
Caleb lay there and
smiled up at all the laughing faces above him. He learned to point at the
tub and say, “Ni-nite!” on that trip.
The pictures from our
vacation to Canada are some of the shots I’m most looking forward to scanning
one of these days.
When I was little,
traveling with my parents, we needed some parts for our Airstream camper when
we were traveling in Ohio, and we wound up at the huge factory where they make
them. (I was thinking it was near Lima, so I looked it up, saw it was in
Jackson Center... checked mileage ----- lo and behold, Jackson Center is just
23.5 miles south of Lima. Now I’m all proud of myself and stuff, ’cuz I
gots sech a good remembery.)
Anyway, they let us
into the inner part of the factory, and we watched in amazement as those
trailers moved slowly by on conveyor belts, with workers scampering all around,
over, and inside them, each doing his part to put the things together.
When we were at the
nearby dealership, the manager gave me a humongous (and heavy!) ring of
keys, showed me how to match key with trailer door, and told me to go have
fun. Ooooo, did I! I trotted from one trailer to another, admiring,
hurrying on to the next --- I didn’t want to leave a single trailer
unexplored. I was so very pleased that the man had counted me trustworthy
enough to give me all those keys. I wouldn’t have messed anything up for
the world.
So while Daddy was
showing the man what he needed, and buying a few gews and gaws for the camper,
I must’ve looked at a couple hundred Airstream trailers. Airstream Factory
Gotta git bizzy!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
And then Victoria
walked into the little library – and there was the purple bear, sitting on the
little bench under the north window, big as you please. Victoria demonstrated, sitting up straight
and tall, with a slight, smug smile on her face, which made Kurt laugh.
Did you
know that old muslin atop new muslin stretches, and if it was that crinkled stuff,
it comes uncrinkled and proceeds to
grow... and grow... and grow? I pulled
out the can of Faultless Magic Sizing, gave the Sue blocks a good spraying, and
then ironed them.
It pretty much put the crinkle back into the muslin, and
I was able to quilt it without too much trouble... but still there are rumples
in the muslin of the old blocks. Just
take a look at what the problem is before I quilt it:
