Journal: Sandhills Trip -- Twice in One Day

Last Tuesday, I thought that if I really tore the bone out that day, I might, maybe, possibly, perhaps, hit the halfway point in quilting the New York Beauty quilt.  Maybe.

It was not to be.  By 5:30 p.m., I was sending Larry a note:  “Remember me telling you my Avanté was making an odd rattly noise, something not quite right? Well, the hopping foot has quit hopping!”

I called the tech in Fremont, and learned that the whole side of the machine would need to be removed, so as to discover what’s binding it up.  Maybe a lever from the needle shaft had slipped off of a wee plastic, uh... platform(?) that’s connected to the hopping foot shaft, which coordinates the hopping foot’s movements to the needle movements?  Or maybe a huge wad of lint and fuzz got in the wrong place? – and if that’s the case, I should never, ever use Signature 100% cotton thread again.  It’s horribly linty.  I’ve been diligently cleaning the bobbin race every time I change the bobbin; but I’ll just betcha lint has gone where I can’t get at it.

Of course, the tech (at Fremont, 50 miles away) tells me blithely, “Just bring it in; it’ll only take an hour to an hour and a half to fix it, and we’ll do it right away!”

Yeah, well, that’s really nice of him, and I appreciate it... but I have a 117” x 117” quilt on the frame, and it’s no easy matter to take a quilting machine from a frame when there’s a large quilt on the frame.  Furthermore, I can’t at all do it by myself, as the Avanté is big and heavy.  The store closes before Larry ever gets home from work.

Waa  I was going great guns, too!

Sooo... I did what I do best.  I called Larry and cried for help.  He said he was coming home shortly, and he had the tools (Allen wrenches) to take the side off the machine.  It wouldn’t be easy, because there is little room at the ends of the frame to work on the machine, with that big quilt on the frame. 

In the meanwhile, I mended a dress for one of my blind friends.  The seams on the pockets were fraying and coming undone, so I restitched and overlocked them the best I could.  Hopefully it will last a while longer now.  I found a button for the cuff and sewed it on.  It’s not exactly the same, but it’s close enough it won’t be noticed.

Next, I edited pictures, posted them on my blog, and then designed a quilt in EQ8.  If all else failed, I could always do a bit of housework.  😲

“Sarah Lynn, don’t you ever just sit and do nothing?” asked a kindly, elderly quilting friend.

“Not if I can help it!  😃” I responded.

More photos from our trip to Lincoln and Omaha, including a trek through Cabela's, are here.

That evening, Larry got the hopping foot moving again, but the entire piece was down too low, pressing on the quilt and ruler base, making the machine hard to push.  I could’ve just raised the hopping foot, but something was obviously not right inside there, and I didn’t want to ruin anything, so I stopped and turned off the machine. 

Larry didn’t want to take the side off the machine without any instructions or diagrams, as there are multiple wires and connections.  By then he was so tired he kept falling asleep while looking for information online, so I shooed him off to bed.  I figured I’d just have to take it to Fremont.  Somehow, I hoped we could get it off the frame without damaging the quilt.  The bars all come off the frame easily – or at least it’s easy when there’s no quilt rolled on them.  😑😣😒😜😕😓😖  (Couldn’t decide which emoji most closely matched my sentiment about the ordeal, so I just put them all in.)

The quilt I designed in EQ8 is a Postage-Stamp Star similar to one that is lurking quietly in one of my quilting books – but do you think I can find it?!  I saw it some years ago in a book my sister gave me (I think), and have wanted to make it – but I’ve thumbed through my books several times, and can’t find that quilt. 

It finally occurred to me that I could design it myself, or at least something like it, because I now have EQ8!

Here’s what I came up with:  à

I posted a picture, and a friend wrote, “I’m guessing that you already have fabric scraps you are wanting to use up in this pretty star quilt.”

“Maybe,” I replied, “if I make it scrappy.  But... I love blue and white or cream quilts, and have been wanting to make one for a long time.  However, I have only two or three pieces of blue fabric, measuring at about 3” square each.”

Wednesday, Hester sent a video of Keira and Spooky both playing with the same toy.  Spooky is reaching through, batting at movable objects... Keira is watching her... then Keira taps a button, and a song plays, and she turns to look at Hester, all sparkly-eyed, obviously asking, “Did you see what I did?!”

I watered the poor bedraggled houseplants.  I alternately put them through drought and flooding.  They badly need to be repotted.  One of these days... Cyclamen are valiant things, though; they revive and bloom again!

I filled bird feeders, including a pretty bright red one that holds more seed and gives the birds more area to perch and eat, which Larry fixed Tuesday night.  He didn’t get the Avanté fixed, but he did get the bird feeder repaired! 

I started a load of clothes, and then pawed through some totes in which I had saved some lace curtains and valances that we had in the house where we used to live in town.  I pulled out the valances I wanted, tossed them into the dryer for a few minutes to freshen them, and then hung them in my quilting studio.  I got one window done before our midweek church service. 

After the service, we gave Andrew his birthday present:  a cup with a moose printed on it, and a camouflage bag with cheeses and sausages.  Both were from Cabela’s, though it says Bass Pro Shop on the mug.

Then we went to Wal-Mart and got another curtain rod so I could put up the second lace valance on the other window.  I had four swags and only two jabots, so... the valances coordinate, instead of match.  Since one window is in a dormer and one is not, it works out fine, I think.  There was a hole in one swag, but I managed to sew it back together, and it doesn't show.

Meanwhile, a helpful friend had sent a link to a video that showed how to take the side off the Avanté longarm.  Larry watched it, then took my machine apart.  He found what was probably causing the problem, and adjusted things; but he thought he needed a new little plastic piece.  He would contact the tech Thursday.

However, we were planning to go out into the Sandhills, as Larry had sold a scissor lift, and we were delivering it.  So I would try to forget I wanted to be quilting, and make like a photographer. 

That night when he walked into the bedroom, Larry found my new book, One-Block Wonder, ENCORE, lying on the bed.  “There’s something on the bed called ‘One Blunder Block’,” he informed me.  😄

I did a bit of tweaking on the Postage-Stamp Star before going to bed.  Which do you like better? 

A friend asked if this was my final version.

Maybe... possibly... perhaps... probably... who knows?  😉  Besides, one can get it all tweaked to perfection ----- and then do it totally different in the sewing of it.  At the moment, I’m satisfied with it.  That’s subject to change.

I haven’t decided yet who it will be for.  Maybe I’ll save it for the first grandchild who gets married and decorates his or her bedroom in blue.  Maybe I’ll save it to use on our bed when the addition is done, and decorate our bedroom in blue.

Thursday afternoon, I dashed around getting everything ready for our excursion out to Ord, Nebraska, where lives the man who bought the scissor lift.  Ord is out in the Sandhills, 90 miles to our west.  We planned to then go on to Burwell, 17 ½ miles northeast of Ord, and eat supper at the Sandstone Grill.  Everything’s homemade, and mmmm, mmm, good.

It’s 102 miles from Burwell back home.

Albion, just 37 miles to our northwest, is called ‘The Eastern Gateway to the Sandhills’.  The Sandhills region is vast:  Nebraska Sandhills

It takes a long, hard drought to make the Sandhills look sandy.  Most of the time, they are covered with prairie grasses – long-grass prairie to the east, short-grass to the west.  And even during a drought, the gentlest rain can cause the hills to spring forth with wildflower blossoms galore.  I really love traveling the Sandhills during a Springtime of plenteous rains.

Even in a drought, there are oases of grasses and flowers and trees around the artesian wells and lakes that dot the hills.  Many creeks run through the area, too.  Some can turn into dangerous rivers after a downpour – and sometimes one may not know about the downpour, if it’s far to the west.  So it’s good to keep track of the weather, both near and far, if one is hiking or camping in valleys or gullies.

Larry said we were going to leave at 3:30 p.m.  Therefore, I was all ready to go at 3:25 p.m.  At 3:31 p.m., he called and told me we wouldn’t be going that day; we’d go Friday.  He’d pushed snow that morning... then he had more work to do at the shop than he’d thought... and the man in Ord had a lot of snow around his place that still needed to be removed.

Have you ever noticed that, once you get all primed up and ready to go somewhere, even if you hadn’t particularly wanted to go in the first place, when you then discover you aren’t going, it’s quite deflating?  Takes the wind right out of one’s sails, it does.

I trotted up to my quilting studio and mended one of my sweaters before starting to cut a table runner that I will eventually give my sister.

Larry learned from the HQ tech at Country Traditions in Fremont that he can’t get the little plastic piece, all by itself, that he thinks is worn out and causing the trouble in my machine; they have to order an entire ‘arm’ with the little plastic piece – and it’s $180, counting the $30(!) shipping.  $30 shipping, for an item smaller than a ballpoint pen!  Plus, it would take at least ten days to get here.  So... Larry decided he would try his hand at fixing it with the tools and supplies he has.  Maybe we’ll eventually have to get the part... but maybe the machine will work just a little longer.

He worked late that evening, and didn’t get started on my machine until after a late supper.  But finally... some time after midnight...  He fixed it, he fixed it!!!  Larry fixed my Avanté.  AND I got a packet of ballpoint Schmetz needles from Kelly Cline.  I’m back in business!

Except... now I’m in the middle of a table runner.  😄  This presents a dilemma:  Do I go on working on the runner, or do I get back to the quilt that I was doing in the first place?  😏

The Avanté sounds smoother and nicer than it has... maybe since I got it.  Plus, these ballpoint needles sliiiiide into the fabric without any resistance at all.  Niiiice.

Larry always asks how I’m going to pay him.  So I look contemplative for a few seconds, and then, with a jubilant, ‘I’ve-Got-It!’ face, “I know!  I’ll fix you supper!”

One of these days he’s going to realize that I do that anyway.

Here’s one of the blocks I started working on for the table runner.  (It’s not yet sewn together.)

I will not be able to quilt the table runner until the New York Beauty quilt is off the frame.  However, I don’t want to leave all the pieces for the Stars table runner on my table; I don’t like stuff strewn about.  So perhaps I’ll finish putting the runner together before I quilt and finish the New York Beauty.

Somebody asked for a more detailed explanation of what the problem was with my quilting machine.  I gave it to her:

The thingamarolphgidget had bent a little, causing the gibblefitcher to slide off of the whangdoozit.  Larry adjusted the bligwogger and oiled all the frippety woblets, and whizbanghooey, it was working again!

As you may have guessed, I actually ... don’t know.  Just that the piece connected to the needle shaft that rests on another piece that’s connected to the hopping foot shaft was slightly warped, and was keeping the hopping foot from working properly.  When it stopped hopping altogether, it had probably slid completely off that piece it’s supposed to rest on.  Our manually moving the hopping foot shaft up and down evidently put it back in place; but the hopping foot was too far down, and way too tight.  Straightening the warped piece, readjusting the hopping foot, and oiling everything that could be oiled has fixed it – but possibly only temporarily.  We’ll see!

We left for Ord Friday afternoon at 2:20 p.m., scissor lift on a trailer behind the pickup.  It was foggy almost the entire day, and drizzling part of the time.  But we got to the man’s house without trouble, unloaded the scissor lift, and then drove on to Burwell. 

We went in the Drycreek Western Wear shop and looked around, but the only things we could afford, we didn’t like; and the only things we liked, we couldn’t afford.  What a dilemma.

We headed over to the nearby Sandstone Grill to console ourselves with supper.  Everything there is homemade, and mmmm, mmm, good.

I ordered a Spaniard bison burger.  I had a choice of sides:  vegetable beef soup with a dinner roll, French fries (yuck), or lettuce salad.  I chose the soup.  In addition to big tender chunks of beef, it had carrots, onions, and a bit of cabbage in it, too, and was altogether scrumptious.

By the time that Spaniard sandwich arrived, I was already full.  It consisted of a grilled bison burger, tomatoes, romaine lettuce, onions, green, yellow, and orange sweet bell peppers, bacon, and Sandstone Grill’s special sauce. 

Full or not, I just had to try a few bites while it was still hot.  I would take the rest home.  But... it was sooo good, once I got started, I couldn’t stop!  So I kept eating... eating... eating... until I couldn’t eat anymore.  I’d made my way through a little more than half of it.  Larry tried a bite, but he was methodically plodding his way through his spaghetti, and having enough trouble with that.  So we asked for a Styrofoam container to take the burger home in.

It took poor Larry long enough to get his spaghetti down that I’d acquired a small (very small) hollow spot somewhere under one rib, into which I decided I could cram a piece of strawberry-rhubarb pie, à la mode.  It arrived hot, with the ice cream melting slowly over it.  ((...swoon...))

Larry got German Chocolate pie, which, he discovered, had coconut and walnuts in it.  Fortunately, they were ground up enough that he didn’t have too much trouble eating it.

Back in the pickup, I tucked the Styrofoam container into the glove compartment. 

Larry protested, “We’ll forget it!”  But I couldn’t see any better place to put it, and besides, even if I forgot it for a day or so, it wouldn’t matter, what with the temperature well below freezing.

By then, it was colder than ever, with a freezing fog covering the roads and countrysides.

We got home at about a quarter after ten, and I had enough steam left that I thought I could do a bit of sewing.  But we’d no sooner chucked off coats, gloves, boots, and scarf, than Larry realized his smartphone was missing.  He looked again in the pickup, but it wasn’t there.  He knew then that it was either in the parking lot of the convenience store in the little town of Ericson, some 78 miles to our northwest, or, less likely, in the parking lot of the convenience store in Albion, 36 ½ miles to the northwest.  

He remembered putting the phone on his seat between his legs as we prepared to drive off in Ericson, and then getting back out for something (namely, to rub my moccasins in the snow after I’d stepped in gas someone had spilt).  We called the convenience store... but there was no answer.  They were already closed.  We called the store in Albion, and the cashier went out and looked in the parking lot, but found nothing.

“Do you want to go get it?” I asked Larry.  “I can drive; you can sleep.”  After all, he’d been up since 6:30 a.m.

He debated.  Probably the phone had already been driven over.  Probably it had gotten all wet and was ruined.  Insurance would cover part of the cost, but he’d have to fork over $150.  It’s an $800 phone.  

He decided to do it.  

So off we went into steadily worsening weather, with the roads getting ever slicker.  We split the driving.  Larry drove first, since he was wide awake.

We looked in Albion, just in case.  Nothing.  Larry was getting tired by this time, so I drove the rest of the way to Ericson.

By now, it was quite foggy, and the wind was really starting to howl.  The road looked slick, but the Jeep felt sure-footed (sure-treaded?).  I checked it out at a stop sign by braking a little harder than usual, and taking off a little faster than normal.  The tires hung onto the road with fortitude and determination.  So I proceeded on down the highway with confidence in my Commander.  Good name for that Jeep!

I switched back and forth from brights to running lights, depending on the thickness of the fog.  At the tops of the hills, it got particularly foggy, and I let the Jeep slow slightly each time we approached the apex.

Once, I topped a hill, the headlights making the road shine with what I suspected was either a thick layer of frost, or black ice – and there in the left lane stood a tall Canada goose!

I was too close to him to do much about it.  I certainly wasn’t going to slam on the brakes or swerve, even though I knew if he waddled on over in front of me, he might very well damage something, big as he was.  And I would surely damage him.

He stepped back and forth uncertainly as I approached, but fortunately he didn’t blunder over in front of me.

Earlier in the day, many of the fields had been full of Canada geese, with some of them settling down for the night.  Larry surmised that a coyote had perhaps stirred them up and chased this one out onto the road, so that he was afraid to head back the way he’d come.

The fog got thicker, and I slowed down 60 mph to 55 mph or so.

“Where are all the deer?” I wondered.  “We usually see a lot of them along this road.  And what if one suddenly jumps out in front of me?!”

“They’re all sheltering among the cedar trees in the valleys and gullies,” Larry assured me.  “They like to stay out of this wind and freezing rain.”

It was only a couple of miles farther when we topped another hill and he cried, “Deer!”

And sure enough, a deer, having just crossed the road, was exiting stage left, rushing through the ditch and trotting up an embankment to a wooded pasture.

Okay, so now I had to keep my eyes peeled for black ice, Canada geese, and deer.  And coyotes.

We got to Ericson at about 12:45 a.m., just 23 miles short of our original destination.  I pulled into the gas station slowly, looking around.

“There are my tracks,” said Larry, sitting forward and pointing.

And then, “There’s something black and rectangular over there on the ground.”

I drove forward, and he climbed out and went to get it.

It was indeed his phone, lying right where we’d parked, in the snow and slush.  Amazingly enough, it hadn’t been driven over.  And wonder of wonders, the screen came to life the moment Larry picked it up.  He dried it off... and it continued to work.

We filled with gas at the automated pumps and headed toward home.  What we wouldn’t have given, years ago, when coming through eastern Wyoming, then the Panhandle of Nebraska, and on through the sparsely populated Sandhills in the middle of the night with a vehicle full of kids, to have found one of those automated pumps!  

One time we were out there where the cattle far outnumber the humans, and we didn’t have enough gas to get the rest of the way home.  We’d been looking for a motel (or a gas station) for a long time, but there’d been no vacancies in those small towns for hundreds of miles, on account of a huge rodeo in Burwell.  It was well past midnight, and all the gas stations were long closed.  A police officer, noticing us circling the block near the little motel in the town, asked if we needed assistance.  We told him our dilemma -- and he called the station owner, who got right out of bed (I don’t think he even combed his hair, heh heh), came to his station, and turned on the pumps.  

We tried to give him a tip, but he peered into the window at the kids, grinned and waved at them, and refused to take the money.  “Just buy the babies some milk!” he told Larry.

We appreciate the automated pumps out there in the boonies, these days.  However, there is still a problem:  there is a serious lack of restrooms, especially in the winter.

We managed to find an unlocked restroom at Pibel State Park.  Next problem:  the snow was over a foot deep all around the restroom, and I had forgotten my boots.  Larry scuffled through it with his boots, making a path for me.  Problem #2:  The women’s restroom door had no handle.  Problem #3:  The men’s door was frozen shut.

Larry pried it open through sheer brute strength and awkwardness.  The cottontail rabbit who was the only other occupant of the park, so far as we could see, didn’t seem to care at all that I went in the wrong side of the restroom.

Larry did his best to straighten the door back up before we left.  By this time, he was wide awake again, so he drove for a while.

The drive home, version 2.0, wasn’t quite as pleasant as version 1.0.  By this time, it was foggier than ever, freezing, drizzling, and the wind had picked up, gusting at about 30 mph.  Larry drove to St. Edward, then pulled off on a residential street to change places with me so I could drive the last 28 miles home, as he was getting sleepy.  The street where he parked was on an incline, and the front end of the Jeep was pointing uphill.

I walked around the front of the Jeep to the driver’s door, treading cautiously on that slippery street.  Larry climbed out, and went around the back of the Jeep. 

Or, that is, he tried.

He no sooner cleared the back bumper than he lost traction and slid several feet down the hill.  With a great deal of effort, and some careful stepping, he worked his way back to the Jeep – and started sliding again.  He grabbed the wheel well and hauled himself forwards.  He made it to the rear door handle, got a grip on it, pulled himself to the front passenger door, opened it, and tumbled in, laughing.  By this time, I was looking in the rear-view mirror, wondering what had become of him.  It was too dark to see anything, though.

We finally got back home at 2:45 a.m.

156 miles, round trip – in bad weather:  freezing fog, freezing drizzle, then freezing rain, and high winds.  We’ve driven in a lot of bad weather... ice, snow, thunderstorms, tornadoes not nearly far enough away, hail, high winds, sandstorms... but ice is one of the worst, in my opinion.  Or maybe it just depends on what one is driving in at the moment, what one considers ‘the worst’.  😏  See more photos here, on my blog.  If you prefer the Facebook layout:  Trip to Ord

It was Norma’s 80^th birthday Saturday.  Now she and Loren are both 80.

The freezing drizzle continued that day.  By evening, it was down to 28°, and a few snowflakes were falling.  The wind was gusting at about 45 mph, and the windchill was 14°.

Larry came home — in a red 1995 GMC manual 5-speed extended-cab pickup.  It has a newly rebuilt transmission and transfer case, good tires, new Bluetooth radio, power seats with adjustable lumbar support, new LED headlights, and the correct hitch set-up for our fifth-wheel camper.  Larry had traded his 2004 silver Dodge dually straight across for it.  It has 150,000 miles on it, as opposed to the Dodge’s 250,000.  It should get 2 ½ times the fuel mileage the Dodge did.

Larry is happy... and the man who got the Dodge is happy.

But...

Do you remember anything about a half-et Spaniard bison burger, and where I put the Styrofoam box?  Do you recall Larry saying that we’d forget it?  Do you remember me saying it wouldn’t matter?

Except it did matter.  It mattered – because the man with whom Larry exchanged pickups cleaned out the Dodge.  And the Spaniard got tossed straight into a very large dumpster. 

Waa waa waa

Now I need to go back to the Sandstone Grill for another bison burger!

After last night’s church service, we chatted with Kurt and Victoria, and played with Carolyn and Violet.

Victoria reads a lot to her little girls.  She told us that, after the reading is done, she lets Carolyn look at the book herself.  When Carolyn wants to get out another book, Victoria has her put the first book away before pulling another from the bookcase.  Well, the other day Kurt was reading to her... Carolyn wanted another book... so Kurt handed her the first one to put away.  She went and carefully put it into the bookcase – then ran into the other room before getting out book #2. 

Where’d she go? wondered Kurt.

Turns out, she’d spotted a book in there, and figured she should put it away, too, before getting out the new book.

Kurt was pretty proud of that little girl of his.  😊

After leaving the church, we went to Loren and Norma’s house to take her a gift.  We gave her a soft purple and cream sweater and a nice pen in a black velvet... uh... case? no... holster? no... envelope? no...  ?  I know! – a pen holder thangamarolphgidget!

Loren made us his specialty:  eggs over-easy on toast.  He’s been making that ever since I was little, so I therefore concluded that he was a crackerjack chef.

I found out just how wrong I was after his late wife Janice passed away, and I discovered he didn’t know how to make anything else.  Eggs and toast, that was the only entrée on his repertoire. 

Look what I found in a couple of old journals:

November 16, 1997 – Victoria is 8 ½ months:

As we were leaving church tonight, I tossed Victoria’s big fleece blanket over her head – it’s only 25° – and headed for the door, with Hannah walking along behind us.

Victoria carefully lifted one corner of the blanket, peeked over my shoulder, and said, “Hi, Hannah,” before ducking back down under the blanket.  Peeping out again, she repeated, “Hi, Hannah!” and down she went again.  Funny baby.

November, 1999 – Victoria is 2 ½

As I write, Victoria is on her way to Wal-Mart (in her imagination) to get some ‘groshies’.  Among the things on her list are bread, blueberry jelly (she loves blueberries), milk, dog food, cat food, ‘cat box’ (she means, ‘cat litter’), and dryer sheets.  Known only to Victoria are the reasons for this motley assortment.

Nowadays, when Victoria wants somebody to get her from her bed after she wakes up, she calls, “Yoohoooo!!!!”, and it gets progressively louder until I open her door.  Then, grinning just a bit sheepishly, she says in her usual low-pitched voice, “Hi.”  And then, after telling her she could get up, she explained, “I needed somebody to get me up really bad.”

Although she has been ‘trained’ for a year now, she still wears diapers to bed.  This is probably necessary because she sleeps about eleven hours each night.  I don’t worry much about such things; what I worry about is whether or not I have a sweet, happy child who knows she is loved dearly.  One night when I was putting a diaper on her, I said, “Goodness.  These things are just about done for… there are huge holes in every single one!”

And she replied, “Oh! Do you have to glue it?”

Yesterday Victoria was looking through my hymnbook, picking out songs and asking Hannah, “What’s this song?”  Hannah would tell her the title, whereupon she would promptly launch into song, using only those words that Hannah had said, and getting higher and higher each time she repeated it in a sing-songy little chant.  As soon as she wound up too high to keep singing, she turned to another page and started over.

Victoria is pleased as punch, because she is able to find Jesus Loves Me in just about any of our hymnbooks.  None of us knows how she does it, for she pays no attention to the page numbers; she only looks at the titles.  Once she came upon the song Victory in Jesus, and she exclaimed in thrilled excitement, “Oh, look! It’s a song just for me!”

“How could you tell what it said?” I asked her.

She gazed up at me for a moment, clearly puzzled as to how to answer such a query. “Because I’m almost three,” she finally replied.

*         *        *

 Jeremy has most of his library put together now.  He got the arches put up back in November, and the stairs some time before that.

Larry took me for a ride in his ‘new’ GMC pickup tonight.  I like it, because the seats are more comfortable, and it has a lot more get-up-and-go than the Dodge.  It’s not as heavy a truck as the Dodge, though.  We’ll soon be finding out how much difference that makes in pulling heavily-laden trailers, because at the end of this week we’re going to Grain Valley, Missouri, to pick up – can you guess? – another scissor lift.  There’s already a possible buyer for it.

Time for bed!

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