Journal: Company ... and Lost (but Found) Quilts

Last week, I spent two or three days cleaning the house.  I’d say ‘thoroughly’ cleaning the house, but... neither the laundry room nor our bedroom got much cleaning done in them.  The bedroom needs a good dusting; but, more than that, it needs to be painted.

Tuesday, I worked on the bathroom and the kitchen.  Everything takes longer, with this bum wrist and thumb.

A quilting friend who lives in Tucson, for whom I have previously done quilting, has been making a couple of ‘Memory quilts’ – quilts made with clothing and blankets that belonged to a little girl who drowned at age 3 last year.  She will give the quilts to the family when they are complete.  One quilt will be a wall hanging; the other is for the child’s older sister.  She shipped the box to me last Monday, and we began our USPS Tracking Page vigil.  It was not a pleasant watch – you’ll see why, as the story progresses.

First, USPS was being quite frugal with their details.  Tuesday, we could see that the box was “In transit to the next facility.”   Well, that was nice; but what facility?!  We wanted to know the exact whereabouts of that box!

On the other hand, it’s also irksome to watch (via tracking pages) packages travel right past me from, oh, say, the west, and land far to the east in Des Moines or Kansas City, and then sit there over a weekend or holiday before slowly making their way back to little ol’ Columbus.  I could’ve gone and picked them up in just a few hours’ time! 

Our ‘Winding Thread’ topic on one of the quilting groups that day was, “What’s the most fun sewing project you ever did?”

That’s a hard question for me to answer.   When one really likes to sew and quilt and embroider and, and, and, ... it’s hard to pick a single project that one enjoyed the most.  I really enjoyed making the Buoyant Blossoms quilt... and I particularly enjoyed giving it to my mother-in-law for Christmas.  But I also enjoyed the recent Americana Eagle quilt – and it was lots of fun telling Larry that it was for him.  The best part is in the giving!  

The Lord Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” after all.  As that beautiful old hymn says, ♪ ♫ “I’ve found it true, I’ve found it true!” ♫ ♪

Another possibility for an answer to that question is:  The next one!  I always think the next sewing or quilting project is going to be lots of fun.  Yes, there are those ventures and endeavors with their frustrations; but who says I don’t like to be frustrated?  Ha!

It was a beautiful 81° that day.  I went out and filled the bird feeders, and soon the birds were again clustered around them.

A few minutes later, there was a huge THUMP on the house or... somewhere.  It resounded so, I couldn’t tell exactly where it came from.  Maybe a helicopter landed on the roof?

I went outside and looked around, but didn’t see anything that might’ve caused the noise.  Perhaps a bird hit a window somewhere?  When I walked onto the back deck, the bird feeders were swinging, telling me birds had been there, and then gotten startled and flown away.  A robin was making a worried chirp in one of the trees.  What in the world.

I checked on the peaches while I was out there.  They’re allllmost ripe.  The tree is bending low with them.  There are apples... crabapples... neither are quite ripe yet.  The birds always eat up all the cherries before they’re quite ripe.

In all the years since we planted our cherry tree, I have had one – ONE! – cherry from that thing.  It was a wee bit too green, but it was the only one left.  Birds sometimes eat the cherry – and leave the pit hanging on the branch!  Ever seen that?  Anyway, I picked off that cherry and popped it in my mouth – and overhead, a robin suddenly scolded loudly.  I’m pretty sure she said, “ HEY!!!  THAT WAS MINE!!!”

I saw a hawk flying from the stand of pines to the north, heading over the hill – and two little birds were hot on his tail, dive-bombing and pecking him.  He kept trying to evade them, but their maneuverability far surpassed his.

Have you ever seen a little bird riding on a hawk or eagle?  I have – and the hawk kept tipping this way and that, trying to dislodge the freeloader – but he simply couldn’t shake the smaller bird.  First time I saw such a thing, I was totally amazed.  I didn’t know they did that!

A quilting friend wrote to lament that she’d headed into her sewing room to do some quilting – and then, after looking at the room with its ‘unbelievable mess’, as she put it, decided she should put a few things away.  She wound up putting totes away, tossing out a few things, and stacking other things...  And she didn’t get any quilting done.

“Ah, well,” I responded, “sorting, organizing, cleaning... those are worthwhile things, too!  Sing whilst you’re at it, and you’ll be doing two things at once.” 

Classic Peanuts circa 1950s 

This old comic reminded me of the time I was pushing Keith and Hannah on kiddie swings (those old wooden ones) in the park.  I was pushing from the front, on the seat area – and that, as it turned out, was a mistake.  Just as I pushed on Hannah’s, she leaned forward suddenly.

Over she went, headfirst, swinging away from me at the same time.  It didn’t seem to matter how fast I ran, she was just out of reach.  It was right before Dorcas was born, so my ‘fast’ wasn’t... very.

She made one high-pitched scream, and then went silent – but she flung her arms straight out in panic, rather than hanging on, and I thought sure she’d fly out of that swing at any moment.  Fortunately, her legs went stiff at the same time, and they, being under the slide-bar, held her in.  The swing was high enough off the ground that even upside down, she didn’t bump her head on the ground.

I grabbed her as she started on the back swing and turned her right-side-up again.  

“There you go,”  I said calmly, hoping to avert a Scared-of-Swings-for-the-Rest-of-Her-Life Syndrome.

Keith, meanwhile, went on swinging, head cranked around sideways, staring wide-eyed at his upside-down little sister.

Hannah looked at Keith, even more wide-eyed than he.  Then she said, said she, all smug and superior, “Keith!!!  I went upside down!”

Mmmmmmmm... I just ate a peach from our tree.  They’re smaller than usual.  Maybe they’ll grow in the next few days.  Mmmm!

My wrist and thumb are slowly getting better.  When I really need to use that arm, I tighten up the brace, try to remember not to turn it wrong or extend the thumb to the side, and get on with it.  The brace has heavy-duty Velcro on it – such tight-grabbing stuff, I can hardly get it loose sometimes, and my other wrist is threatening to be troublesome, too, so I’ve been using that hand with care.  Washing dishes is the worst, because then I must remove the brace – and it’s really hard to grasp a dish without moving the thumb too much.

I still can’t play bass very well with that hand, when I’m playing the piano.  Waa waa waa  I love me those big ol’ booming bass runs!  I like lively piano playing. 

Thumbs and wrists are good and helpful commodities!  It’s good not to demolish them.

By evening, the bathroom was so clean, you should’ve been able to see it sparkling from way over there.  😃  The curtains had been washed and were in the dryer, and there was just a little bit left to do in the kitchen.

Soon the washing machine sang its little tune, telling me that the last load of clothes was ready to be put into the dryer.

I put the freshly-washed curtains back up and scrubbed the blinds.  Yeah, yeah; I should’ve done it the other way around; but I didn’t notice the blinds needed to be scrubbed until the curtains were already back up, and I certainly wasn’t going to take them back down again.  It’s not an easy task, since I must stand on the edge of the tub to take them down or put them up, and that’s a little more scary than usual, when one has an injured wing.  One could potentially bend one’s beak, too!

The dryer buzzed; the last load was done.

Oops; it wasn’t the last load after all; I noticed that I needed to wash the blanket Tiger lies on, on the loveseat.  The seat and back of the couch needed to be vacuumed, too.  If anyone sat there, they’d go away looking like they had a kitten stuck to their behinder!

A friend commented on how much I was getting done, and I hastened to assure her that it really wasn’t as much as it seemed like.  “See, the trick is to talk about everything you do,” I explained.  “Talk about every little detail.  Mention the dogs... the cats... the birds... the neighbors... the supper menu... the weather... the houseplants...  And everybody thinks, Wow, she got a lot done!”  ((...snicker...))

When Larry got home from work, he moved a pile of wood out of the basement, putting it in the spot he’d newly cleared for it right outside the patio doors.  

I started dusting, polishing, and shining my treadle sewing machines and their desks.  Larry found me at this task, and helped me finish the job so he could carry them upstairs – but they’re too heavy (and too fragile) for just one person to try carrying up two flights of stairs.  They could wait until he rounded up some help.

He came upstairs, looked at my list (my kids used to call me ‘Mrs. List-It’) and then howled, “Hey!!!  Write down all those things I did, so I can check them off!!!”  😄

I was happy we had leftovers for supper that night.  It was chicken tortilla soup, which is always better on day two.  After another hour or so of cleaning, I wouldn’t have felt much like cooking a big meal.

I gave Larry strict instructions to not sleep in the tub that night, as he is oft wont to do.

“Can I put water in it?” he asked.

Late Wednesday morning, I looked at the USPS Tracking Page: 

The box had arrived at the Omaha Distribution Center at 2:27 a.m.  It left at 4:30 a.m., arrived at the Omaha ‘Unit’ at 5:38 a.m., then finally landed at the Omaha ‘Facility’ at 11:15 a.m..

If they could’ve tossed it out as they went over our house on their way to Omaha, I’d have had it by about 2:00 a.m.!

I swept and mopped the linoleum and wood floors, vacuumed the area rugs, and then the valances at the front windows.  When that was done, I spent a while laboriously vacuuming the cat hair off the loveseat.  Good grief!  It’s a wonder Tiger isn’t bald by now.  I use the lint roller on that sofa often, and the seat and part of the back is almost always covered with a blanket, unless Tiger inadvertently pulls it to the side as he’s scrambling his poor ol’ fat self onto it.

The lady who sent me the quilts wrote, commenting on the box’s whereabouts.  “They could’ve had that package to your door by now, had they wanted to!” she exclaimed.  Then, “Many times I seem to only have the patience of Job when fishing.  😊”

I responded, “!!!  You like to fish?!  Now, that runs me out of patience faster than anything I know of.  I let the rest of my family fish.  And I hike around hither and yon, taking pictures.  It is fun to take pictures of them when they’re reeling in a big one, of course.  😉”

Actually, I have little patience ever.  And a hot temper to go along with it, which I have learned to control a little better than I used to do.  A little better, I said. 

So many people look at something I’ve quilted or embroidered, and say, “Ooooh, you have so much patience!”  

No, that’s not patience.  It doesn’t take any patience at all to do things one enjoys doing.  Patience is to put up with something one doesn’t enjoy so much, and to do it with grace, refinement, and, uh, benevolence.  Me, I’m more likely to yell and throw stuff. 

Ah ain’t Irish fer nuttin’.  Shoulda been born with red hair! 

Some friends of ours went to Alaska this summer.  We’ve always wanted to go to Alaska.  They posted pictures of themselves on a boat with their catch:  huge halibut.  Larry practically drooled all over my computer screen.  Not because of the taste of fish, you understand, but because of the taste of fishing! – and in Alaska. 

Nebraska has free State Park and fishing day each year, and we used to take the kids fishing when that day rolled around.  One year, we went to Fremont Lakes State Park.  The lakes had all been recently stocked with fish.

There were the kiddos, all lined up on the side of the lake... alternately crying, “I caught a fish!”   “I caught a crawdad!”   “I found a turtle!”   “I caught a minnow!”  (laughter) ------ and then Caleb, who was about four years old, reeled... reeled... reeled... and cried, all in a great excitement, “I caught a moss!”  – and indeed he pulled up the longest strand of moss I ever did see in my life.

The others all went into great throes of hilarity, and they haven’t let the poor kid forget that until this day.

Before I knew it, it was time to get ready for our midweek church service.  That’s always a welcome break.  It was grandson Jeffrey’s tenth birthday, so I gathered up the things I’d collected for him, and filled out a birthday card.  We dropped the gift by after church:  a set of nautical magnets, a red pullover with a Nebraska logo, and a 1/43 scale stainless steel antique Hotwheels car.

I don’t believe I’ve mentioned that my nephew Kelvin, who spent most of the last year battling colon cancer, got his old job back!  The company had always told him that they wanted him to return, if and whenever he felt well enough to do so; and they kept their word.  He’s feeling quite good now.  We are all amazed and thankful; we had not thought we’d ever be able to say that.

Thursday morning, I worked for a while in the laundry room, putting away things that collect in there that don’t at all belong in there.  And... while working away... I deliberated on the following Tip O’ Ze Day, which I then sent to my quilting groups in the Spirit of Helpfulness:

When you are vacuuming and you poke a hole in a 40-pound bag of Nyjer seed, it sets back your progress – first, whilst you sit there like the little Dutch boy with his finger in a hole in the dike, calculating how many pounds of seed will spill onto the clean floor while you run for the packaging tape; second, whilst you tape (and retape) the hole shut; third, whilst you sweep up the Nyjer seed and pour it back into the bag; and fourth, whilst you vacuum the stray Nyjer seed that the broom missed (taking care not to repuncture the bag).

Therefore, the tip is this:  Don’t do it.  Don’t poke a hole in the 40-pound bag of Nyjer seed.  Just don’t.

Thank you for listening, and you’re welcome, you’re welcome.  Any time.

Nyjer seed is expensive.  But I found this humongous bag quite a lot cheaper than usual.  (Maybe because the bag cannot withstand a slight poke from a vacuum cleaner nozzle?)  It’s often close to $3.00 a pound.  This was just a little over $1.00 a pound. 

But I didn’t want it strewn all over the floor! – I’d have to open the back patio door and invite the birds to eat indoors!

At 11:35 a.m., Keith wrote to say that he was sitting in the plane in Denver, and they’d just announced a mechanical issue they were troubleshooting, so there would be a bit of a delay.

Ten minutes later everyone was back off the plane, in standby for an hour or more, while mechanics fixed an ‘issue’. 

An hour later, the plane pushed away from terminal, took off, and headed for Omaha.  It landed at about 2:20 p.m.  Keith rented a car and headed our direction; it would take him a couple of hours to get here.

That afternoon, Victoria sent a video of Carolyn, who had just cleared out the cubbyholes in which Victoria keeps the diapers, etc.  She kinda knows... somehow... this isn’t right.  So, upon realizing her mother was not just looking, but also videoing her, she reached over, picked up her doll’s foot, pointed at the shoe, scritch-scratched her fingernail on its sole, glanced up at Victoria, then back down at the shoe, and tried discussing that, in the hopes that the mess around her would go away. 

As that didn’t rectify the problem, she did the only thing left to do:  she grabbed up one of the diapers, showed it to Victoria, then crawled to her and handed it over in a “Here, fix this!” mien.  All the while, she made quiet ‘whisper-talk’ noises, exactly like her little cousin Malinda does.

That was the day my customer’s Memory quilts were supposed to arrive.

They didn’t.

The tracking page had not been updated; the box was supposedly still in Omaha, and the delivery date was still listed as Thursday.  But the mail lady had long ago come and gone, and there had been no box listed in my daily mail notifications (which I like to get, in case something important arrives at the mailbox over on Old Highway 81, in which case I would hotfoot it over there and collect it out of the box).

A quilting friend, upon reading my Tip of the Day, wrote of her experience: 

This reminds me of a similar scene in a Publix supermarket in Florida.  A hurricane was coming, so everyone in town was lined up in the market buying bread and milk (and snacks, of course) to survive through the hurricane.  I had a giant bag of kitty litter on the bottom of my cart.  I was soon to find out just how much litter was inside that bag. 

We stood in lines the entire length of the store for nearly an hour to check out.  Somehow, in the midst of it, someone walked by and their cart snagged in that bag of kitty litter. 

A small trickle of litter began to flow.  As we tried to untangle her cart from mine, that trickle grew and grew.  No matter how hard we tried to stop it, nothing worked...  it seemed like the amount of litter in the bag was endless as it spilled and spilled and spread across the aisle. 

About halfway through this fiasco, one of us started to laugh, and Comedy Hour was “on” – everyone in line started laughing and clapping, and the whole place dissolved in manic laughter...  made only better when a stock boy rounded the corner and saw the entire mess and realized he had to clean it up!!!  You could see instantly that he was completely perplexed as to why we all found it so very funny.

It was a great stress-reliever at a very strange time...... and a memory I keep always.

Yes indeedy, litter can certainly spread hither and yon.  Almost as bad as pabulum, inserted unsuspectingly in baby’s open mouth -------- and then the babe sneezes.

But the worst messes we have ever had, I think, involved honey.

There was the time Dorcas was carrying a bag with a big quart jar of honey inside – but she’d bumped the bag against a concrete step on the porch, and, unbeknownst to her, the jar had broken. 

Plastic bags do not well contain honey, did you know?

Unaware of the problem, the girl left a trail from the front hallway... into the living room... where she did a few figure eights... then she sashayed halfway down the hallway toward the back of the house... turned around and came on out into the kitchen --- and that’s where someone stepped in the stickiness and finally noticed.  There was more than a trail of it by then, since several siblings had walked through the mess and gone to other corners of the house.

But the biggest honey story of all is what we have oft called The Horrible Honey Horror:

Hannah, age three, was attempting to put the lid on a jar of honey as she cradled it in the crook of her arm.  

WHAM!!  The honey jar slipped from her arm and hit the deck.    

“Oh!”  I cried, “Did it spill???”    

“No,” she assured me, picking it up and screwing the lid on, successfully this time.

In retrospect, I think she must have meant, “No, not all of it spilt.”     

Life went on.  Hannah went to play, liberally smearing several dolls with her honeyed hands.  Dorcas, age two, trotted through The Lake and beyond to the far reaches of the house.  Keith, four, walked through it, got the cat food out of the cupboard – bag upside down – and poured some in the cat’s bowl, leaving a trail of Kitty Nibbles.  He went downstairs, layering each carpeted step with honey.  Teddy, eleven months, crawled through the honey, sat in the honey, and commenced to eating Kitty Nibbles coated with honey.

This, just four feet from me, but with the table blocking my view as I sewed long lengths of ruffles for little girls’ skirts. 

I am not usually so oblivious. 

I finally awoke to the mess when Baby announced, “Bleah!”  and began spitting out foreign matter.

I jumped up, ran to see what he’d put into his mouth ---- and found... “Houston, we have a problem.”

One bright spot:  the cat didn’t have one solitary speck of honey on herself.

Now, where would you start?

And then there was the time, some years later, I walked into the kitchen…put my hand on the counter – and jerked it back up again, having encountered much stickiness.

“Yuck!”  I exclaimed – and put my hand into a small puddle of honey on the table.  “Why is there honey spilt all over the place?!”  I demanded – just as I encountered the back of a very sticky kitchen chair.  “Oh, this is terrible,” I said to the children, several of whom were sitting around the table.  “You should clean up the messes you make!”  I reached for the drawer with the dish cloths – and found a handle covered with goo.  I howled, “You all are such sloppy pigs, I shouldn’t be half surprised if there wasn't honey dripping off the chandelier!!!”

With that, all eyes rolled silently (and guiltily) upward.  My eyes involuntarily followed – and, of all things, there was a long drip of honey, slowly dripping from the chandelier.

It seems that Joseph had been trying to open a new plastic honey bottle.  There was a seal on top that he couldn’t peel off, so he got a tight grip on the bottle, and stabbed that top with a knife.  When the knife went through suddenly, honey squirted out with such force that it flew straight up ’til it reached the chandelier.  This had evidently happened mere seconds before I walked in, and the honey had only now found its way back down the gold S-shaped curlicue at the bottom of the fixture and begun dripping off it.

The rest of the honey had gotten spread about when someone over-warmed the nearly empty honey bottle in the microwave, then extracted it, not noticing that a hole had been melted in the bottom of the plastic bottle.  As usual, the child had wandered the entire kitchen, bottle in hand, drizzling honey everywhere as he went.

I should end this little tale by writing, “That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it…”  but…  I won’t.

Keith arrived shortly after 4:30 p.m.  Around 7:00, Larry got off work.  He drove home with the boom truck, so Keith could see it.

That evening, Larry cooked Black Angus burgers on the grill.  I baked ciabatta rolls and fixed green beans and corn on the cob, and we had pears, apple pie, and Maple Nut ice cream.  Everything but the pears were from Schwans.  Keith, who used to drive a truck for Schwans, appreciates the good food they sell.  And he remembered the product numbers of almost everything we ate.  😆

Victoria asked to borrow one of the little wooden chairs in our little library for use in Carrie’s one-year pictures.

“Sure, you can borrow a chair,” I told her, “but they are extremely topsy-turvy!  I couldn’t use them for baby pictures; had to wait until the child could plant feet on the ground and hold himself/herself firm, before I could use them.  I have a better idea.  How about if we give this to Carolyn for her first birthday?”

Victoria loved it, and thought it was perfect for pictures, and would look cute in her room.  So that’ll be her birthday gift from us. 

When I was wee little, someone gave me a dinky little red rocking chair.  I walked into my room... and there it was, over in the corner.  I imagine I lit right up and glowed, I was so delighted.

When I grew out of it, someone got me a rocking chair like this one – but it had a little music box on one rocker.  The faster you rocked, the faster the song played.

Can you guess how the song played?  😅

Keith helped me take the Mosaic Lighthouse and the Americana Eagle quilts off the bed in the upstairs library, fold them, and put them in the closet.  Those aren’t for bed use... yet.  (He oohed and ahhed quite satisfactorily over them.)  That left a cotton and a fleece blanket – and a suede-and-fur one that used to be Caleb’s, in case he gets really cold.

After supper, Larry and Keith carried my treadle sewing machines upstairs.  There was the perfect spot for them on the landing at the top of the stairs, one under the slanted dormer, and one between the bedroom doors at the other end of the landing.  I’m so pleased to finally be able to display these pretty machines.

The Singer (above, with the wooden lid) works perfectly.  The Domestic (below) would work (still turns smooth as silk) if it had a belt.  I have extra bobbins and needles, too.  But... they’re really just for decoration, at my house.

We visited until both Larry and Keith were yawning hugely.  Bedtime!

First thing Friday morning, I checked the USPS Tracking Page. 

There was no change.  No update, and the box was still supposedly at a USPS Facility in Omaha.  And it still said the expected delivery date was Thursday, by 8:00 p.m.

My customer called the post office.  She was finally able to speak to someone, after being on hold for an hour and six minutes.  

“He seems to think it went somewhere else from Omaha and will be rerouted to Columbus and could arrive either today or tomorrow,” Joyce told me.  “In other words, he has no clue where it is, but is hoping that it surfaces soon.  Yeah... me and him both.  So, we wait and keep our fingers crossed...”

“Oh, dear,” I replied.  “Joyce, if anything happens to those quilts, I will help you remake them.  ☹  Things do usually show up again.”

“Thanks,” she wrote back to me, “but I only have the clothing left.  I don’t have any of the blankets.  I put those in the garbage that went out on Wednesday, and I don’t have any of Emo fabric for the backing or that favorite fleece.  I am trying valiantly to keep being optimistic that they just took a detour to your house and will show up.”

For breakfast, I baked French toast sticks – more Schwan’s food.  Keith mentioned that he wanted to be sure to get a runza before leaving Nebraska.  He asked about a recipe, so I wrote and asked Hannah for Janice’s recipe – and she soon called to tell me not to cook anything for supper, as she was going to bring the meal that night, and they would eat with us.

Hannah did send me the recipe:  

Runzas

Makes 24

2 lbs. lean ground beef

1 onion, chopped (optional)

Cabbage, fresh, 3 cups, shredded (or 1 bag shredded cabbage; I use the coleslaw mix)

salt and pepper to taste (I like to add other spices such as garlic powder and seasoned salt)

*Pillsbury Grands Buttermilk Biscuits, refrigerated dough, 3 cans

Brown beef with onion.  Drain.  Add salt and pepper to taste, and then add cabbage and stir.  Cook covered, stirring occasionally about 25 minutes or until cabbage is tender.

Roll out 1 biscuit (uncooked) until about 5-6 inches in diameter.  Put about ¼ cup beef mix into the center of the dough and fold edges in over the mix.  Place seam side down on greased cookie sheet and repeat with remaining mix.  Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.  

Serve hot.

I need to make those one of these days.  I really like them... so long as I have a little dab of butter with each bite.  😋

My mother told me that one time when I was very small, she set me in my red highchair (one without a tray, with swing-down steps), slid me up to the table... and I giggled and said, “You’d better scoot that butter dish away from me, or I’ll get into it!”

Larry came home early that day, in order to spend some time with Keith. 

Hannah’s supper was apple-chicken salad on lettuce and pita pockets, Sun Chips, and pound cake with caramelized fresh pineapple slices on top.  She poured melted butter over them, sprinkled them with brown sugar, and broiled them in the oven for a few minutes.  They were served with ice cream.

“Open and shut oven door repeatedly until done,” she told me, checking on the pineapple for the third or fourth time.  😄 

Now, that was a scrumptious dessert.

At 7:30 p.m., I pulled up the USPS Tracking Page.

AH!  Whew!  Relief!  The box was listed as having ‘Arrived at USPS Regional Destination Facility’ at exactly 7:00 p.m.

That was precisely the spot at which it had arrived, 64 ½ hours earlier, after which it had gone to a ‘Regional Facility’, then a ‘Facility’ — and then it had dropped off the face of the earth.  Let’s hope it’s not in some eternal loop, and keeps doing that same thing, over... and over... and over... and over, I thought.

Two hours and 22 minutes later, at 9:22 p.m., it departed the Regional Destination Facility.

I, always an encouraging soul, said to my customer, “It is probably on its way to Columbus, Ohio, even as we speak.”

(I actually had a VIB [Very Important Box] go from somewhere in California all the way to Columbus, Ohio ---- and then it went to Nashville, Tennessee, before moseying back to me.)

It wasn’t until 6:56 a.m. Saturday that the box was marked as having arrived at the Columbus ‘Unit’.  Over 9 ½ hours to go 80 miles??  At 7:18 a.m., it was listed as ‘Sorting Complete’, and by 7:28 a.m., it was ‘Out for Delivery’.

Joyce wrote to tell me as much.

“Yes!  I just saw that,” I assured her.  “We have the front door open... we’re ready and waiting...”

At 11:00 a.m. sharp, it was marked ‘Delivered, left with individual’.

Yesirree.  That was me; I had to sign for it.

I immediately sent an email flying to Joyce:  “The box is here, it’s here, it’s here!”

“THAT is great news,” she responded.  “SO very happy.”

Poor lady!  What a way to traumatize her, courtesy of the U.S. Postal Service.

Keith had gotten up before I finished drying and curling my hair; so when I pulled a package called ‘Sausage Breakfast Skillet’ from the freezer, he offered to cook it.  He added half a dozen eggs to the mix.  I stuck a couple of mini 12-grain loaves in the oven, and it all got done about the same time.

There was enough left over that Larry and I had some for supper that night, along with green beans.  I put Ranch Dressing on mine, and wondered why I hadn’t thought of it earlier.  Mmmmm, mmm.

Remember the ‘THUMP’ I heard last Tuesday?  Well, Larry got home from work at about 12:30 p.m.  He parked in the back, down at the south end of the property... and when he started walking up the hill toward the house, he noticed that that Jeep Commander (the ‘spare’ he bought for $1,500 for parts that he plans to use on some other vehicle) that is parked in his big building looked all mangled:  one of the front headlights was lying out of its socket on the front bumper, a front fender was half off and crumpled, and the hood was up.  He thought, Was someone trying to steal parts off of it? – and then, on closer look, he realized what had happened:  Last Monday night, he had filled the tires with air so the wheels weren’t down on the ground – and the tire, which wasn’t in very good shape, had held its own for half a day and then blown out, lifting the hood, blowing out the headlight, and taking the fender with it.  Wow.

Keith left in the middle of the afternoon, after a good visit.  Sure wish he didn’t live so far away. 

While we talked and visited those three days, I embroidered on the Bucilla Butterfly quilt, and finished the Monarch butterfly.

This is what I work on when we have company, or the electricity goes out, or we are traveling and I don’t have anything else to do... which explains why it’s taken several years to get one butterfly done:  I always have something else to do.  As soon as I complete a few more quilts and other items on my To-Do List, this cross-stitched quilt will go on the list, and I’ll just work on it, until it’s done.  I’m not very fond of half-done projects sitting around cooling their heels.  😏

I carried the Memory quilts upstairs to my quilting studio, measured, and headed to Hobby Lobby to get the batting.  I almost always take the opportunity to drop off a bag or two at the Goodwill when I go to town.  Soon I was home again, loading the largest of the quilts.

The backing is a piece of fabric that used to be a favorite comforter, and is something like a polyester satin.  I wondered what my machine would think of that, but I needn’t have worried; it’s handling it with aplomb.  I used my mirror and flashlight to peer at the stitching on the back, and it looks very nice indeed.  Tension is good, and the needle isn’t making any big, bad holes in the material.  I was concerned whether or not it might do that, after the fiasco with a previous customer’s backing.  But it looks great.

In the meantime, I washed a couple of loads of clothes and bedding.  When the sheets and pillowcase for the upstairs bedroom/library were dry, I took them back upstairs and made the bed.  Upon inserting the pillow in the case, I discovered... it was a feather pillow!  I’d told Keith it was polyfil, when he’d asked.  But there were feathers poking out of it.  I looked at the tag, and saw.....  yep, sho’ ’nuff, it’s stuffed with feathers. 

I also saw that the tag said ‘Goodwill’, and I thought, HUH?!  I don’t buy pillows to sleep on from the Goodwi------------- oh.  Yes.  Now I remember.  The Goodwill in Fremont got a truckload of brand-spankin’-new overstocked feather pillows from ... ?  Wal-Mart?  Target?  Costco?  One of those places.  And I bought a few. 

They aren’t wonderful; they’re more feather shaft than down.  Next time someone uses that bed, I’ll have a better pillow for them.  Cheap feather pillows feel good when one initially puts one’s head on it; but by the time one has slept on it for a few hours, it’s either squished down flat, or has squirted out from under one’s head, or both.  Ever notice that?

After supper, Larry and I splurged on Dairy Queen Cream Cheese Summer Berry blizzards.  Probably the best blizzards they’ve made yet – and it says on the sign that they are seasonal!  Bah, humbug.

I finished the first row of my customer’s Memory quilt and quit for the night.  The corners, displaying elephants, were cut from a nursing blanket the mother used when the family lived in Kenya and the little girl was a baby.  They are particularly fond of yellow and of daisies.  Thus the Omni thread, by Superior, in a shade of yellow called ‘Butter’, and the pantograph, which is called G’Daisy.  The third photo was taken into my mirror whilst holding it under the frame and shining a flashlight on the backing.

I am always amazed when I post pictures of my quilting, complete with the frame ---- and now and then even with that big ol’ honkin’ machine itself right there in the picture ---- and somebody on a quilting group (Facebook, usually) asks, “ Are you hand-quilting?”

What in the world.

I answer politely, knowing that, after all, I knew nothing about quilting machines, just ten years ago.  But... I like to think I would’ve recognized a machine when I saw one!

Other people chime in to answer the person who asked the question, and sometimes they aren’t a bit nice.  They act like the poor lady is the dumbest thing they’ve ever bumped into on this earth.  If I have the option, I delete those nasty comments.  No sense in being mean, just because someone hasn’t had opportunity to learn what someone else has!  It could be that the unlearned lady lives in some faraway country in great poverty.

Speaking of faraway countries... I always thought it would be delightful to live in one of those little villages in the Italian Alps, where each morning you could trot down the steps from your house all the way down to the levels where the vendors have their bins and shelves all loaded with fresh vegetables and fruit, and maybe even fresh-baked breadstuff.  You can buy just enough for the day, and have fresh-picked stuff every single day of the year.

Actually, we can do that many days of the year, right here in our own town, because a big farming operation called Daniels brings their trucks to town and sets up in parking lots here and there.  But... we live far enough out of town that it would be a trifle unhandy.  (Friends who live in big cities laugh at me when I say that, because they know it takes us only 7 minutes to get to the school and church, 9 minutes to get to the grocery store.  Takes them 30-45 minutes to get a short distance across town.)

Last night I was reading the news online, and learned that one of my Jr. High English teachers was killed in a hot-air balloon crash in Colorado Friday morning.  She was 73.

That makes four of some of our favorite Jr. High teachers who have died in the last three weeks.

It’s thundering... and starting to rain.  I’ve always loved the sound of thunder.  I like it best, waaay up in the mountains, when it booms and crashes and ricochets between the peaks.

Time to get back to my customer’s quilt!  That second one has me a bit worried – it’s fleece and furry stuff and thick terrycloth.  What will my machine think of that, I wonder?

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

P.S.:  It is not wise to try smacking a mosquito between one’s palms when one is >slowly< recovering from De Quervain’s tenosynovitis. 

You’re welcome.  I knew you’d want to know.

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