Last Tuesday morning, the snow began coming
down, and it kept it up most of the day.
By the time it quit, we had about 8 inches. The winds were gusting over 50 mph.
Some new missionaries that our church
supports have recently made their move to Thailand. The family has spent many hours learning the
language.
A few days ago, a friend asked me, “Have you ever
considered learning Thai?”
“Who, me?! Learn another language?????!!!!!!!!” I
exclaimed. “ไม่!!!” (pronounced ‘Mị̀’) (That’s ‘no’ in Thai, according to Google
Translate.)
I signed up for German one year in high
school (10th grade), because I needed one more college prep class to
go along with the Business Administrations class I intended to take in grade
12. The only other classes available that period were Automotives III
(and I hadn’t had the prerequisite Automotives I and II) or Child Development.
On the first day, the teacher taught us to
say “Hello, my name is ---- ” in German. We were to stand up, rattle this
off, and then tell the class what we had done during the summer.
They went in alphabetical order. My
name was ‘Swiney’, so they didn’t get to me that period; I was slated to do my
stint the next day.
Now, everyone was telling about going
swimming... or babysitting... or detasseling... or fishing... or riding their
bike (or driving, depending on their various ages) hither and yon around town
-------- but I, as usual, had traveled great distances across the country with
my parents, visiting missionaries we supported, or admiring the Sierra Nevadas,
or driving through the Rockies of British Columbia.
The last thing I wanted to do was to
come off as a braggart! But I couldn’t at all think of something
Small Potatoes that I had done that summer.
And “I don’t remember” probably wouldn’t do.
The bell rang, to my immense relief. I
hotfooted it to the counselor’s office and begged to switch to the Child
Development class, even though I feared it might prove embarrassing, since it
started at gestation.
As it turned out, the class was full of
students who were one or two years older than me and in grades 11 and 12; I was
the youngest and in grade 10. There were two boys in the class. 😲 But they were all extremely
nice, and I wound up working in the Word Processing Center at Nebraska Public
Power District with a couple of them two years later, which was fun.
I know very well this was all in God’s plan
for me, because I learned all sorts of valuable things about babies and
children, especially how to fix healthy food for them. I enjoyed the
class, and later, when our babies came along, I remembered some of that
valuable information about food preparation and put it to good use.
We did see a movie with some scenes I
considered inappropriate; but the teacher, knowing I would probably quietly
vanish out the door in the middle of it, kindly fast-forwarded through certain
parts. I very much appreciated that.
Afterwards, several of my classmates,
including the aforementioned boys, exclaimed, “We’re really glad Sarah Lynn is
in our class! – we don’t have to get so embarrassed!” (And that
embarrassed me, haha.)
I don’t know if they really thought that, or
if they were just being nice to the Preacher’s Kid. 😊
There was another reason I dropped
German: the teacher said there was going to be extensive homework – two
and three hours a night. I couldn’t do that, as I had chosen college prep
English, Accelerated Algebra, Accounting (which stood me in good stead when I later
did Larry’s bookkeeping for his auto rebuilding business), Science, History,
... can’t remember the rest. I had only one study hall, and it was a
short one. In fact, maybe it was part of my lunch hour. I didn’t like
wasting time! 😉
Also, I was the piano player at our church,
and wrote some of the music arrangements, and worked with choirs and a number
of singing groups several times a week.
The Child Development class did everything in
class, so that was a great help.
Funny, what memories various events can
trigger.
Suppertime came and went, with the snow
coming down hard. Larry was still at
work. All day, he’d been driving from
one town to another, trying to get all the forms picked up at various jobs
before they got buried in snow and ice.
Some weeks back, Larry was working on a
vehicle, and somehow managed to put his weight on the pocket in which his
smartphone was innocently residing. The phone
now sports a small dent in the middle of the screen, and has become extraordinarily
temperamental about all sorts of things, including the volume of its
ringtones. Often now when I text or call
Larry, he doesn’t hear his phone.
Worrying about him out driving in that
near-blizzard, and wondering when I should fix supper, I texted him, asking
where he was and when he would be home.
He didn’t answer.
Despite knowing he can’t hear his phone very
well, I cranked up my worrying a notch.
A few minutes after 9:00 p.m., he noticed my
message and wrote to tell me he was at Walkers’ shop working on a coworker’s snowplow
pickup.
Fifteen minutes later, I noticed vehicle
lights out front on our lane. I peered
out the window, but couldn’t make out if it was Larry or someone else, what
with the snow blowing and swirling.
However, I could tell that whoever it was out there was stuck.
It was one of our neighbor men, I learned,
when he came to the door asking if Larry could help them. He’d gotten stuck somewhere in his two-wheel-drive
pickup; then a friend tried to pull him home with his pickup – and now
they were both stuck, having slipped into the ditch, which was full of about
a foot and a half of snow.
The wind was blowing so hard, it took my
breath away, standing there in the door.
I texted and called Larry... then I called
and texted... and after that, I texted and called.
Half an hour later, he wrote to say, “I’ll be
right there.”
Twenty minutes later, he was finally ‘right
here’.
By this time, the men had somehow gotten both
trucks out of the ditch.
Larry plowed the lane and our driveway with
his skid loader Wednesday morning before he went to work, so no one else got
stuck.
I like snow... and I like driving in it (if I
can see where I'm going). The Jeep can
go through deep, heavy snow without straining a muscle. However, I don't like it if large trucks
slide sideways at me across all lanes of traffic. 😵😲😬
On youtube car crash channels when that
happens, someone always honks at the out-of-control driver. Now, I wonder, how does that help??
That night, I finished my Christmas letter. Now I needed ink for my printer.
Thursday, we went to church at 11:00 a.m.,
first for a short Thanksgiving service in the sanctuary, and then a dinner in
the Fellowship Hall. We sang
Thanksgiving hymns and listened to instrumental medleys by the horn and string
groups. Brother Robert, my nephew and
our pastor, read a few verses. Did you know that many times when a word
was translated ‘praise’ in the Old Testament, the original Hebrew word could
have also been translated ‘thanksgiving’?
If you’d like to see our service, it has been
posted here:
After this, we all proceeded over to the
Fellowship Hall for dinner.
The menu:
Turkey, dressing, potatoes and gravy, corn,
sweet potatoes, dinner rolls hot from the oven and jelly, chef salad, pickles
and olives and carrots and cucumbers and sliced sweet peppers, frozen fruit
salad (with blueberries, cranberries, and strawberries), orange fluff, grape or
apple juice, white or chocolate milk, coffee or tea, pecan, apple, or pumpkin
pie (with an option of whipped cream), and ice cream.
Everything was delicious. We have a
whole lot of topnotch chefs!
Thanksgiving is a time we always look forward
to. My father started these church dinners in the mid-50s, before I was
born, because there were people in the church, which was quite small then, who
either had no family, or their families were too far away for them to visit. Things were different then – many people were
poor, and would’ve considered such travel an unnecessary extravagance.
Everyone enjoyed the get-togethers so much,
we have never stopped. We have Christmas dinners, Easter breakfasts and
evening luncheons, and Fourth-of-July picnics together, too. Now, instead of the 26 members my father
started with, we have 422. There have
been a number of new babies lately, including several great-great-nieces, a
great-nephew, and a few second cousins two or three times removed.
After the dinner, we went to Wal-Mart for envelopes
and ink for my printer.
It sleeted and snowed most of the day, but the
majority of roads had been treated, and people weren’t having much trouble driving.
Home again, I installed the ink cartridges in
the printer, and soon page after page were issuing forth. By evening, the Christmas letter and the cards
and envelopes were finished. There were
21 to mail, all but two of which were stuffed with a fat Christmas saga.
‘They’ (whoever ‘they’ are) say a Christmas
letter should only be one page long – and no more than the front of the
page, at that. Therefore, I call my
missive a ‘Christmas saga’. No one ever
thought to start bossing us around in regards to sagas, just yet. 😉
Next I began ‘signing’ (via printer in
Edwardian script) our names inside 120 Christmas cards and printing recipients’
names on corresponding envelopes. These
are for family and friends at church. I
won’t need to mail them; we sort them into large labeled paper bags at church,
and the young people pass out the bags after our Christmas program, which will
be Sunday evening, December 22, this year.
I left these envelopes open, because I’ll be
tucking a photo of Larry and I into each one, along with a couple of scenic
bookmarks with Bible verses printed on them, as soon as they arrive.
I got a variety of bookmarks from Christian Book. I sure wish they would put the old
King James Version on them, instead of the new. The language is not only more elegant and
majestic, it’s also a whole lot more accurate!
It was cooold that night, 30° with a wind
chill of 21°. I refilled the bird feeders; the little birds sure swarm
those things when the weather is bad!
Friday, I finished printing the Christmas
cards and envelopes, then headed downstairs to fix supper. We had Alaska salmon with red and green
peppers and onions, peas, and peach yogurt. There were chocolate chunk/ peanut butter chip
cookies and chocolate fudge brownie frozen yogurt for dessert.
After supper, I headed downstairs to start
wrapping presents. For each of the grandchildren
there is a jacket, sweater, or shirt; and there is also a toy or something
appropriate for an older teenager, such as a watch. I’ll wrap those things separately. Kids like quantity in wrapped gifts, don’t
you know.
Since I’m trying to use up wrapping paper
whose vintage heaven only knows, I won’t be taking the easier route of gift
bags, unless I run out of paper.
Here’s my gift-wrapping room, boxes of gifts
at the ready.
Saturday, the wind kept picking up steam
until it was blowing over 60 mph at midnight.
Things were banging around all over the place outside.
A friend mentioned that she needed to make some
pajamas for her eight-year-old grandson because he had told her, “Grandma, my pajamas
are up my leg.” haha
I encouraged her to write that down
somewhere, so it doesn’t get lost to the mists of time. Funny little boy.
I found my baby book in my mother’s house
when we were cleaning it out. She had written in it something I said when
I was two: “I’m not sick; I just have a tummy ache. Other than
that, it doesn’t hurt.” hee hee
Sunday morning as I got ready for church, I
listened to a Chicago news station.
Announcers were telling of roads solidly packed on the way to the
airport. News reporters interviewed a few
passengers. One woman said, “Well, we
got up really early, so we could get here early, so that... uh... we wouldn’t
get here late.” 😅
The announcer paused momentarily, then remarked,
“That’s really... uh... terrific advice.”
I prefer to listen to wbbmradio.com whilst
washing and curling my hair on Sunday mornings, as opposed to the ‘Christian music’
they play on the local news station I usually listen to in the mornings. It’s ‘contemporary Christian music’, which I
would define as a series of notes plucked out of a hat and thrown randomly at a
music-staff page, and then ‘singers’ (term used loosely) attempt to scream-sing
those same notes. Chords should instead
be called ‘clashes’.
On weekdays, the local station has world and
local news in the mornings. By the time
I’m done curling my hair, I know what’s a-happenin’!
My computer is a sassy-pants. There I stood, trying and trying and trying
to get my hair to stay in the curling iron (I cut it last week)... and the
computer says, “Do you want to borrow my hammer?” 🤣 (It’s announcing the arrival of an email from
This Old House.)
When we headed off for church that morning,
the wind was blowing at almost 50 mph. So
even though it was a balmy 29°, the wind chill was at 15°.
Kurt and Victoria invited us for dinner that
afternoon. Victoria had fixed a
delicious beef and vegetable stew in her Dutch oven.
After church last night, Larry made scrumptious,
yummy French toast.
Finally, finally, the winds started dying
down. Today
is bright and sunny, 36°, and there is a breeze of only 13 mph.
I went to town and mailed
my Christmas cards this afternoon. Home
again, I was looking at a video of one of our church’s song services. I wonder why it is that, when the camera
zooms in on some child or young person, they have such a tremendous tendency to
yawn? 🥱😅
Years ago, friends gave me a couple of
miniature frames. One has a picture of
Hannah in her wedding dress; the other is Victoria at age 2 in her Christmas
dress. They sit on the hope chest in our
living room. I've noticed that some of
our littlest granddaughters (the last five of our 26 grandchildren are girls)
think those little frames are just the niftiest things, so I found some on eBay
and got one for each little girl, and put her own picture in her frame.
And that’s my report for the week, and you
can clearly see why any Christmas letter of mine could safely be called a ‘saga’
without any false advertisement at all. 😂
Gotta wrap presents!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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