Just last week, at least three of my online quilting
friends told about close family members who are suffering from cancer, and one
lady just lost her husband to a heart attack.
Life down here on earth isn’t really very
long at all, before eternity begins for each of us. I think it isn’t very
real, for many people! Did you ever just stop what you’re doing, and
think really, really hard about heaven? I remember doing that, ever since
I was a little girl.
But it’s truly beyond our imagination.
As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor
ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God
hath prepared for them that love him.” (I Corinthians 2:9)
The troubles we have in this old world make
us look forward to heaven, don’t they?
Tuesday, I went on quilting the Atlantic
Beach Path quilt. Same song, 70th verse. 😂
At least it’s my own quilt (until I give it
away, anyway)! Quilting for others is
more stressful than quilting for one’s self. I once quilted a pretty
quilt for a lady that had a backing of some mighty stiff batik. That is, the quilt had the stiff
backing; the lady may have also had a stiff back, but I cannot be sure, since I
never met her personally.
Anyway, the stuff was expensive, and it had
been washed, but it was some of that multi-layer-dye stuff, and felt like it
had a fine layer of shellac over it.
I used the finest needle and thread I could
get by with (too small, and it skipped stitches), but it still punched
holes in that fabric. It was horrible.
I wrote to several forums about the problem,
but no one knew how to help, really. A year later, I found an entire
thread on a forum somewhere, where people had been using that very same fabric,
and were having the very same problem I had had!
One lady who chimed in said she had solved
the problem by quilting the entire thing wet, soaking each row down with
water laced with fabric softener before quilting.
A little late to learn the remedy; but if I
ever get fabric like that again, at least I’ll know what to do! Quilt
it wet. I’d never heard of such a thing before.
That day, I quilted weeds and wood. That is, I did thread-painting on the
grasses, weeds, wooden railings, and steps of the Atlantic Beach Path
quilt. A few more hexagons were done, too. More photos here.
Wednesday, we were issued an advisory: the wind chill that night was expected to
drop to 30 below! It wasn’t too bad when
we went to church, but by the time we came out after the service, it was cold.
A
friend, looking at some of the pictures I had taken near Schuyler, remarked,
“It’s so flat there!”
The
area between Columbus and Fremont is indeed one of the flattest parts of the
state.
“This is what I don’t like
about the Midwest!!” she exclaimed. “I
love my mountains!!”
I agree, I love the
mountains, too. But the Sandhills
immediately to our west are nice, and the Pine Ridge area a little farther
northwest is really pretty, and the bluffs along the Missouri are high and
rugged, and all these areas are full of wild animals and birds. I’ve lived here all my life, and I’ll keep
right on doing just that, even though I’ve often wished we all (all my family,
all my friends) lived in the mountains. But
three seasons out of the year, even that flat stretch of road between Columbus
and Fremont has a great variety of flowers blooming in those ditches. (Plus, flat roads are safer than mountain
passes for new teen drivers, especially in the wintertime. And we had nine of them. Teen drivers, that is. And now several of our grandchildren are
driving.)
A cousin of mine from Illinois joined the
conversation, saying that the area around where she lives is quite flat, too.
I remember my parents laughing at me when I
was about 6, and we were driving the country roads around Shelbyville,
Illinois, where my grandmother lived, and I exclaimed, “Nobody can have any
wrecks here, because there are no ditches!” 😄
Somewhere around the same time, I
tried to convince my father, who was a minister for nearly 50 years before he
passed away in 1992, that we all – ‘all’ meaning the entire congregation –
needed to move to the mountains.
He didn’t seem taken
with the idea, and I, with my 5-year-old logic, thought it was because of the
church... that is, the building.
“The army has really
big helicopters,” I assured him, “and if there were two, they could put straps
all the way around the church and take it out to the mountains for us without
any problem at all!”
So many times in my
childhood, I pondered deeply over why my parents often looked like they were
trying hard not to laugh.
Several people have asked if I am keeping track of the
hours spent on the Atlantic Beach Path quilt.
“I hope so,” wrote one lady, “Because
this is like a black hole of time!”
Yes,
a ‘black hole of time’! haha It would help if I could quilt for 10-12 hours
like I used to. But many days, I only
do about 6 ½ hours of quilting. Right
now, I have 359.5 total hours in the quilt, with 157.5 in the quilting alone.
“Do you enjoy thread painting?” a friend asked.
Yes, I like thread painting; it’s just
scribbling atop a design that’s already there, trying to follow that same
design. And if it doesn’t look good after a little bit of stitching, a
bunch more stitching is sure to solve the issue. 😄”
This quilt is not like other quilts, wherein
after I figure out the quilting design on the first row, everything speeds up
exponentially, since I only need to repeat the design over and over. Because I’m trying to do each hexagon
differently, it’s like doing that same sloooow first row, over and over again. It
has now become a quest! A mission!! A crusade!!!
I’m telling myself today, I’m past the
halfway mark. I’m past the halfway mark. Just keep going... just
keep going.
Fortunately, I’m enjoying the process.
Every part of a job is made easier, if one decides to enjoy each task in the
procedure.
Wednesday
afternoon a little after 3:00 p.m., all the weather apps were saying that we were
having ‘light snow’ – but outside my window, it looked like a blizzard.
Snow was coming down fast, hard, and sideways. The weather apps said the
wind was blowing at 24 mph, but judging by the way it looked and sounded, it just
had to be more than that. I checked Weather.com – and they said
4 mph! They must’ve been measuring it at
their desk, inside their building. 🤣
I
closed out of WeatherBug and pulled it back up, and it then informed me that
the winds were 37 mph. That, I could believe. It was
28°, with a wind chill of 13°. The temperature had dropped 10° in the
last hour. I was glad I had refilled the bird feeders before the snow
began!
Teensy
came in, cold and damp, hoping to warm his feet on my lap. And of course
I had on a light beige skirt. 🙄
A friend sent this link to the Westminster Dog Show. I grinned at those dogs that look more like
sheep than anything else... and I laughed aloud at an itty-bitty white poodle,
feet a-flying like mad just to stay up with the gait of his handler.
Reminded me of a little Joseph on his tiny tricycle, trying for all his worth
to stay up with Keith and Hannah on their little bicycles and Teddy and Dorcas
on their Big Wheels.
By 4:00 p.m., the snow had slowed... the wind
had increased. Teensy went back out... came back in... and this time,
he smelled like oil. 😝
Why does he like to go clambering around on
and under Larry’s equipment, anyway?
That cat.
That night after
church, children (and their mothers) were passing out Valentines. Hester, Lydia, and Victoria gave us pictures
of the children for Valentine’s Day.
Victoria had taken the photos; they’re all sooo cute.
At 2:30 a.m., it was -2°, but with a north wind
blowing at 30 mph, the wind chill was -24°.
By 4:00 p.m. Thursday
afternoon, the temperature had made it all the way up to 13°. Windchill was 3°. I filled the bird
feeders, and then I had a window open for a while, taking pictures of all the birds
at the feeders.
When my fingers were finally frozen into
icicles, I shut the window, cleaned the kitchen, and got back to the quilting
machine.
Not long later, I got an email from my
quilting friend, Sue H., who lives in Belton, Texas: “Just got a call that the machine has had its
spa day and has some new parts. I knew
it needed a new bobbin door, but it needed a new bobbin sensor too. I’ll pick it up tomorrow. May the trip planning begin!!!”
Did I tell you what this is about? Some months back, Sue offered me her Bernina
Artista 730, which is essentially a newer, better version of my Artista
180E. I hoped to get it, if we had a big
enough tax refund. We did, and I am!
Sue, as promised, had taken her machine to a
Bernina tech to have it thoroughly checked over and serviced before we came to
get it. And now it was ready.
I fired off an email to Larry: “The 730 is done!!!”
Larry,
feigning ignorance: “What is that? A
jumbo jet, or BMW?”
“Something like that,” I agreed.
So then I thought I forwarded this conversation
of ours to Sue, for the fun of it – but my autofill took over, and I didn’t
notice, and I instead forwarded it to one Sue C. Frank, whoever she is,
adding, “Hee hee! Larry is the same
Larry he was at age 13, when I first met him.”
I did not discover until Sunday that the
above email had gone astray.
Somewhere in this ol’ world, there’s a Sue C.
Frank scratching her head and pondering things.
A quilting friend, remarking on my Atlantic
Beach Path quilt, said, “We just know you’ll add some twist we weren’t
expecting.”
That’s when I remembered: I need to order hexagon-shaped Swarovski
crystals and flat, square, earth-toned glass beads for this quilt! I pulled up several websites, compared
prices, and purchased what I needed from a jewelry and bead seller on
eBay. The beads and crystals are on
their way.
Thursday, my mother-in-law Norma got back the
results of tests she had done on a sore in her mouth, and learned it’s cancer –
squamous cell carcinoma. She will see a
specialist in Omaha Wednesday to determine further action. Norma will be 81 in March.
Squamous cell carcinoma can usually be dealt
with successfully, if it’s caught soon enough.
We are praying that such is the case.
I rolled the quilt forward that evening—and
there was the bottom of the center panel, and the row of hexagons under it. More photos here.
I’m making progress!
Friday, I opened an email from AQS, and... Ooooo, lookie what I got:
“CONGRATULATIONS! The jury has accepted your quilt, attached
above, for further consideration in the 2020 AQS QuiltWeek® Contest in Paducah,
Kentucky April 22 – 25, 2020.”
This quilt, the New York Beauty quilt, is at Daytona Beach
AQS right now, and will next go to Lancaster. And then Paducah! I plan to submit it to a few other shows, too.
That afternoon, Victoria
sent videos of Carolyn and Violet bobbing their heads and waving their arms, pretending to play the piano, in time to Victoria
playing Chopsticks on the piano. It’s so
hilarious, I couldn’t quit laughing.
I wrote to Victoria,
“You’re
either going to give them permanent brain damage or turn them into punk rockers,
one or the other!”
🤣😂😂😃😄😅😆
I looked at the videos a couple more times,
then added, “Do you think they need to see the chiropractor now?” 😆
Late that night, I finished the center panel of
the quilt, and the hexagons on either side.
More photos here.
Saturday, I began
packing for our trip to Texas, as we planned to leave in the afternoon,
depending on what all Larry needed to do to get his pickup ready. We’re driving his 1996 GMC truck and pulling
a flatbed trailer, because – would you ever believe – he has purchased a
wrecked 2017 Dodge Ram pickup in Odessa.
((...pause...)) You would
believe that, wouldn’t you?
That
afternoon, Victoria sent an audio clip of herself singing and playing When I
Kneel Down to Pray – and an old recording of me singing and playing
the same song, in the same key, years ago.
That was the song Linda Wright and I sang
together the very first night I started playing the piano for church, when I
was 15 years old. We’d sung it at our
house, my father had heard it, loved it, and asked us to sing it, my first time
of ever playing for church.
But I’d lived with Daddy for 15 years, you
know. I knew how to roll with the
punches! Besides, I could hardly
complain about his spontaneity when I was the same way, could I?
Victoria’s clip had a cuter ending on it than
mine did. It was Carolyn, saying to Violet,
“Good job walking, Vi! Vi walking!” And she is.
I sent a
note to Lydia, thanking her for the photos for Valentine’s Day.
“You’re
welcome!” she replied. “Victoria took
the pictures 😊”
“I knew
that before I opened the envelope,” I told her, “because she was hanging over
my shoulder waiting to see what I had to say about them. 😂”
Lydia: “😂 I was trying to pass out 40 little valentines
😬🧐😳 and trying to remember which kids go with
which parents.”
Me: hee hee
Remember Mrs. Armstrong (a dear elderly friend who passed away several
years ago) saying, hand to mouth, as if she was telling you a secret, “I wouldn’t
know who these kids are, if they weren’t with their parents!”
Teddy, upon hearing where we were going and
why, immediately sent animated gifs of men, babies, and Donald Duck either
throwing or counting heaps and stacks of money.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Well... as my friend Jeanne once told me
when I tried refusing $20 she gave me for my birthday, ‘If I keep it, it just
sits around and accumulates!’” Then, “Can’t
you find a picture of Spanky (of Little Rascals fame) pitching his father’s
dollars out the window?”
He immediately sent that one, too.
I told him I still needed to pack his
father’s clothes, whereupon he helpfully sent this:
Packing list:
#1
socks
#2
underwear
“No, only one sock,” I disagreed. “He says he doesn’t need two, ’cuz if he
happens to step in a deep mud puddle, he has the sense to stop. Thus, only one sock gets wet.”
About this time, Caleb, having also learned
what we were planning and where we were going, responded, “Okay. Sounds fun and ‘adventurous’. 😋”
“Always ‘adventurous’,” I
answered. “Sometimes it’s so adventurous,
I yell and throw things! (Just for the
fun of it, you know.)”
Caleb:
“😂 those are the most memorable adventures.”
Me: “We
do all right, though! We only caught
fire twice on Wolf Creek Pass, after all.
And Daddy had enough sense to only use half our gallon jug of
drinking water on the first fire, so he still had the other half to use on the second
fire.”
Caleb:
“Always good to prepare for the future.”
We have funny kids.
I went on getting our things ready. I emptied the last of the dry cat food into
the feeder. It’s full, and the bowl is
full... and should last until the new bag of cat food arrives Wednesday.
There are 54 cans of Fancy Feast; that
should last. 😺
It kept getting later... and later... and
later... and Larry still wasn’t home.
He finally came, long after we had thought to
leave, and still needing to put a new fuel filter in his pickup, as it was
leaking. (He should pay attention to his
wife’s schnoz! – I told him last time we drove it to Omaha that it reeked
of the odor of fuel).
He might’ve had it done by then, but he
needed to take a skid loader off of his flatbed trailer – and he decided to go
ahead and put the motor back into it first.
This is similar to how Larry’s day went:
Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder
This is how it manifests:
I decide to wash my car. As I start toward
the garage, I notice that there is mail on the hall table. I decide to go
through the mail before I wash the car. I lay my car keys down on the table,
put the junk mail in the trashcan under the table, and notice that the trashcan
is full.
So, I decide to put the bills back on the
table and take out the trash first. But then I think, since I’m going to be
near the mailbox when I take out the trash anyway, I may as well pay the bills
first.
I take my checkbook off the table, and see
that there is only one check left. My extra checks are in my desk in the study,
so I go to my desk where I find the bottle of coke that I had been drinking.
I’m going to look for my checks, but first I
need to push the coke aside so that I don’t accidentally knock it over. I see
that the coke is getting warm, and I decide I should put it in the refrigerator
to keep it cold.
As I head toward the kitchen with the coke, a
vase of flowers on the counter catches my eye -- they need to be watered. I set
the coke down on the counter, and I discover my reading glasses that I’ve been
searching for all morning.
I decide I better put them back on my desk,
but first I’m going to water the flowers. I set the glasses back down on the
counter, fill a container with water and suddenly I spot the TV remote. Someone
left it on the kitchen table. I realize that tonight when we go to watch TV, we
will be looking for the remote, but nobody will remember that it’s on the
kitchen table, so I decide to put it back in the den where it belongs, but
first I’ll water the flowers.
I splash some water on the flowers, but most
of it spills on the floor.
So, I set the remote back down on the table,
get some towels and wipe up the spill.
Then I head down the hall trying to remember
what I was planning to do.
At the end of the day: the car isn’t washed,
the bills aren’t paid, there is a warm bottle of coke sitting on the counter,
the flowers aren’t watered, there is still only one check in my checkbook, I
can’t find the remote, I can’t find my glasses, and I don’t remember what I did
with the car keys.
Then when I try to figure out why nothing got
done today, I’m really baffled because I know I was busy all day long, and I’m
really tired. I realize this is a serious problem, and I’ll try to get some
help for it, but first I’ll check my e-mail.
Anyway, just like the person in the above
saga, we were tired, and needed to sleep before starting this journey.
Gone are the days when we could work all day and then drive all night!
I would have to unpack curling iron, blow
dryer, shampoo, mirror, comb, pillow, etc. – and run the risk of leaving them
behind, since they were all checked off my list. Bah, humbug.
Ah, well. If I forget something, we can
buy it along the way. Better a forgotten item than a ditched truck after
the driver falls asleep.
We left early the next morning, heading first
to Odessa, Texas, to get the pickup Larry bought, because if we didn’t get it
by Monday, they would start charging $35/day. It’s 14 hours from our
house to Odessa. Larry thinks he told me this... but he probably told
several of the kids, my brother, his mother, my brother-in-law, his brother, a
grandkid or two, his boss, and several coworkers – and forgot to tell me.
😏
I wrote and gave this news to Sue, hoping she and
her husband weren’t rearranging their lives in anticipation of us, whose
schedules are often orchestrated by vehicular reparations, restorations, and renovations.
“I’m sorry our arrival time is so
unsure! I do hope you’re going about
things just as if we weren’t coming, and not stopping all normal activity.”
She assured me that they were going along as
normal.
At 1:00 p.m., I sent
her an email:
We’ve made it to Odessa!
Well...
...
...
...
That is...
Odessa, Nebraska.
“Hey!” protested Sue, “That’s mean! I was all ready to see you tomorrow! Haha!”
We drove I80 out to Lexington, then turned.
While we drove, I
downloaded six large text volumes for my blind friend, Penny. Each file was nearly 2,000 pages, and
together made up the entirety of Matthew Henry’s Commentary Exposition of the
Old and New Testaments (the entire Bible).
Matthew Henry, who lived from 1662 to 1714, is one of our favorite Bible
commentators. Penny once had all these
volumes, but as technology improved and updated, her old files became
incompatible and eventually refused to open.
You’d think plain
text files would save quickly, but I downloaded them first as .pdf files, then
copied and pasted to Word document, from whence I converted them to plain text
and saved them into our shared DropBox folder.
Three and a half hours later, I was finally done. At least my computer (and camera) could do other
things while those downloads, copies, and pastes labored away!
By 2:30 p.m., we were south of Arapahoe,
Nebraska, almost to the Kansas State Line, and by 3:00, we were in Norton, Kansas. Ten minutes
before 5, we were driving south out of Oakley, Kansas. The sun had
come out, and the sky was covered with interesting clouds. It’s good
lighting and interesting clouds that always has me reaching for my camera.
We’d just shared a chicken salad croissant
sandwich and had some yogurt; we’d been half starved half to death (à la Bill
Collins of The Sugar Creek Gang), but we’d probably done spoilt our supper.
That evening, a lady
wrote asking for my border to the Amazing Grace quilt I
made for Caleb and Maria in 2015. I sent
her my EQ7 design. She, not being very accustomed
to Electric Quilt, couldn’t get it to open properly. She sent me a screen shot of a square with a
whole lot of dots lined up in a grid, asking what the problem might be.
She wrote back,
thanking me and apologizing for bothering me:
Hi
Again,
I am sorry! I
FINALLY Figured it out! I Have had EQ for YEARS and only PLAYED with it --
never really trying to USE it! I think I May need to FINALLY Break down and
attempt to use it! This is so pretty and you did a great job!
Did you do
this on your own? I am amazed at the TINY INCREMENTS that you did the paper
piecing! :)
I would have
this so messed up if I had to design it.... HAHA!!
Thank you
again.
“No apologies necessary!” I assured her.
“I guessed what the trouble was before actually looking – because I’ve done the
very same thing. 😂 ”
“Yes, I did it on my own – and those ‘tiny
increments’ prove it! I forget all about making sure things come out to
fourths of inches – or at least nothing smaller than eighths of
inches. I just design away, trying to make it pleasing to the eye... and
then when it’s time to cut fabric, I look at the measurements... Oh.
Yes. Quite so. (In an Eeyore tone) Then if I don’t want
to make paper foundations or templates, I start enlarging or smallering
(daughter Victoria’s word, when she was 3 or 4) until I think maybe I’ll be
able to cut it the right size. heh
“A couple of times, my patches didn’t fit
together quite right – because I had the thing set to round to nearest ⅛” or ¼”
---- and that doesn’t always pan out, if there are multitudes of odd-shaped
patches in one block.
“So, having learnt the hard way, I now give a
little more effort to keeping those measurements normal, especially
since people often want to use my patterns, and I don’t want all those nice
ladies mad at me! 🤣”
She
assured me, “No way anyone could be mad or upset with you!!!”
Now,
if we could just get everyone on the same page with that sentiment...
8:00 p.m. found us at
the
Wal-Mart in Liberal, Kansas, getting some blickdorts for the boffwingle. At least I think that’s what Larry
said he was getting. The store was
crowded and busy – and it was the dirtiest Wal-Mart I’ve ever been in. Bleah.
Finally hungry again after
that late snack, we looked for a place to eat supper, and decided to use the iHop gift
card our neighbors gave us for caring for their animals. I had a chicken
fajita omelet and they brought me a stack of three big fluffy pancakes, which
quite surprised me. There were four kinds of syrup at the table:
strawberry, blueberry, butter pecan (my favorite), and old-fashioned. I
had half of the fajita, one pancake, a glass of cranberry juice, and two cups
of coffee; and I brought the rest away with me in cartons; why, I cannot tell,
since I would never need to eat again in this lifetime.
Oh!
Just discovered it’s actually IHOP, all in caps, no plural. I hop,
you hop, we all hop to IHOP. I first wrote
iHop –I musta thunk ’twas an Internet device. hee hee
Last night, Hannah
sent a video of Joanna and Victoria singing together the same song Victoria had
sent the day before, When I Kneel Down to Pray. They harmonize so well, and were so perfectly
together, Larry and I were not totally sure who was singing what part, and had
to ask. Turns out, Victoria was singing
soprano and Joanna the alto.
Shortly thereafter,
Victoria sent an audio clip of herself, Hannah, and Joanna singing Looking
in the Face of Jesus. It’s so
beautiful. You’d think they were
identical triplets, the way they harmonize.
We stayed in the
Super 8 motel in Liberal, Kansas. I was
looking forward to taking a shower, but couldn’t figure out how to switch from
faucet to showerhead. I tried pulling on
the knob – and knob, faucet, and all slid right out of the wall a good six inches. I turned a ring at the faucet opening one way
and then the other, but it neither tightened nor loosened. When I washed my hair under the faucet, I
kept getting my hair caught on the lever that opens the tub drain, and it, too,
would slide out of the tub a few inches.
I wonder if the
people in the room below us inadvertently had a shower, whether they wanted one
or not?
Larry figured it out,
when it was his turn: he pulled
downwards on that ring under the faucet opening, and Voilá! – water from the
showerhead.
People who can
invariably figure out everything I cannot should periodically have a bucket of
icewater dumped over them, just to keep their pride in check.
Super 8s are usually
pretty nice, and have lovely breakfasts; but we just might start avoiding them,
because I dislike their shiny polyester comforters so much, never mind the
shower-that-wouldn’t. Ugh, touching them
– or having them touch my face – makes me feel like some people do when they
hear fingernails dragging down a chalkboard.
Furthermore, the slippery things won’t stay put, particularly when the
person sharing the dumb thing with you refuses to lie still, insisting on
racketing about, kicking, jerking, and otherwise raising a ruckus even whilst
he is sound asleep.
Maybe I should do the
same as my friend Sue – the very lady from whom we are going to purchase the
Bernina: she made ‘traveling quilts’ for
herself and her husband. A few experiences
with Super 8’s aggravating comforters-that-aren’t make that seem like a
crackerjack idea.
And then it was a
quarter after six in the morning and time to rise and shine! Or not.
I didn’t sleep. Somebody among
us, and it wasn’t me, kept having tantrums or seizures or fits or something all
night long, yanking and tugging on the blankets. Maybe his subconscious mind is rebelling
against those nasty comforters?
For breakfast, I had
apple spice oatmeal, scrambled eggs, sausage, a little round waffle, milk, and
orange juice, never mind the fact that last night I knew I would never again
need to eat. And I collected three jelly
packets to go with the pancakes I saved from last night’s supper.
While this Super 8
seemed like a fairly decent motel, there were oddities: the smoke detector was missing from its spot
in our ceiling – and from its spot in the breakfast room.
They served communal
margarine from a plastic tub, instead of offering those little packets. That’s probably a no-no by National Institute
of Health guidelines.
Wouldn’t either of
those infractions get them closed down, should they be reported?
At 8:40 a.m., we crossed
into Oklahoma. It was really, really
foggy – pea soup, in the valleys. The
fog was so misty, it required windshield wipers. We stopped to fill with fuel at Balko,
Oklahoma. By 9:20 a.m., we were in western
Texas, after being in the Oklahoma Panhandle for only 40 minutes – and that
included stopping for fuel. It’s a
skinny little Panhandle! 😃
An hour later, we
drove by an airport way out in the middle of nowhere. The Texas boonies are a whole lot boonier
than the Nebraska boonies, and the Nebraska boonies are nothing to sneer at! The road was dreadful, with jarring, crashing
holes and bumps.
After a particularly
bad one that nearly jarred our eyeteeth loose, Larry exclaimed, “I think they’ve
been nosediving those little planes right into this road!”
I took a few pictures
despite the weather. Fact: it does not matter what lens I have on; it
will soon be the wrong one. Too bad we
couldn’t see this canyon very well; we could see just enough to know it was
quite dramatic.
At a quarter ’til
noon, we arrived in Amarillo, population about 200,000. For the size of the city, it has surprisingly
few skyscrapers. And then the sun came
out! Ahead of us, there was not a cloud
in the sky. ♫ ♪ Nothing but
blooooooue-oooo skies ♪ ♫ do I see! ♫ ♪
We passed through
Plainview, Texas, hometown of Jimmy Dean.
It was 182 miles to Odessa. By
the time we got to Lubbock, it was 75°, and I was rummaging up my sandals.
At 4:30 p.m., we got to the place in
Odessa where we would get the pickup Larry had bought. What
do you think of it?
We drove to a Pilot
station, and Larry fixed some trailer wiring.
Wouldn’t you know, the coveralls he brought are insulated! (There was a wind chill of -30° just a few
days ago, after all... with real temps a few degrees below zero.) Furthermore, the shirt he has on is flannel. When we left Liberal, Kansas, this morning,
it was about 30°. (I did pack
some summer clothes for us.)
The wiring took a little longer than
expected, and Larry also put a new valve stem in one of the airbags. By this time, we were starved, having not
eaten since that early breakfast at the motel; so we went to Cracker Barrel to
use a gift card from one of the children.
Shortly after we arrived and got in line, the
seating host got kidnapped (I guess that’s what happened, as he vanished
quite abruptly); but finally someone paid the ransom and he returned to seat
another guest. Then the very nice boy who was serving our table was a
rank newcomer, and had no idea if blackberries had seeds, or that ice tea
refills should have ice in them, same as the first glass, and we
realized after we waddled out to our pickup, stuffed to the gills, that he had
neglected to bring us our biscuits or cornbread, whichever we preferred with
our meals.
We decided he’d done us a favor, on that
score.
Anyway, it was well after 9 when we finished
our meal, and we didn’t really want to drive this rig in the dark for the first
time (Larry has not used this truck before to pull heavy loads), so we got a room
at the Woodspring Suites in Midland, Texas.
Tomorrow we shall head toward Belton!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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