My sister Lura Kay and, so far as I know, all our other friends and relatives who had Covid-19 have recovered or are recovering, thankfully, though I’m sure some will be feeling its effects for some time. A few were quite sick, but most had ‘mild’ cases, though what’s considered ‘mild’ isn’t much fun. We speak from experience! 😉
We were particularly relieved when my sister, who at
age 80 is more than 20 years older than me, was finally feeling better again. She has had heart trouble for many years, so
was in the high-risk category for sure. I was so
worried about her, and about Hannah, too.
Hannah is also in the high-risk classification. The virus struck Levi, 10, quite hard, too,
as he has a serious case of asthma. Nathanael
also had a few rough days. One of their
symptoms was nausea. Hannah and the
younger boys still feel queasy now and again when they eat.
But we are thankful they are all pretty
much on the uphill swing now.
The whole time we were outside, we were fighting
those horrid little minute pirate bugs. They
are indeed minute, but their bite is something fierce! And it’s not even really a bite; they’re just
sticking their probe into a person, hunting around for something to eat. They don’t exactly want to chew on
people; we just get in their way whilst they’re hunting for aphids and other
bad little bugs.
At least, that’s what bug scientists –
wonder what those people are called?
Oh! Yes! Entomologists! – anyway, that’s what
entomologists would have us believe:
minute pirate bugs don’t mean to hurt us; they’re just looking
for aphids or pollen.
Hmmph.
I don’t believe it. That last
pirate bug that inserted his nasty little proboscis into me did it on poipose.
Why, I distinctly heard him call out a
chanty to all the other pirate bugs in the vicinity just before he stuck that
blunt little beak right down to my cherished dermis: “Ahoy, me hearties! Got us a live one here! ARRRRrrrrr!
Come one, come all, poke yer chase guns inta this’n! Remember, Old Salts, no prey, no pay! ARRRRrrrrr!!
Pillage and plunder, ye Sea Dogs!
This’n is shark bait! Yo-ho-ho,
we’ll be Grog Blossoms by the noontide!
ARRrrrrRrrrrRRrr!!”
Because minute pirate bugs prey on
troublesome aphids and are pollinators, they’re consider ‘good’ bugs, and you
can actually purchase them in nurseries and garden centers to release into your
garden. Why anyone would want to propagate a species that raids ships and
coastal villages, or inflicts pain on humans every time we step outdoors on
lovely fall days, I cannot imagine. I’d rather just let aphids eat my
roses, and bees do the pollination. At
least the bees, and even the wasps, don’t bother me if I don’t bother them. Why, they even pose for pictures, if I ask
nicely!
That afternoon, I took Loren beef
vegetable soup, beets, tomatoes from our neighbors’ garden, V8 cocktail juice,
crackers, Colby jack cheese, and applesauce.
I hunted in his cupboards for any of my
dishes that might be there, found the divided plate with roast beef, potatoes,
carrots, and onions in his refrigerator, and asked if he wanted me to take it home
again --- and then he decided to eat that, instead of the soup.
Home again, I headed back to my
quilting studio to work on my customer’s Botanica Park quilt. I planned to keep going until it was done.
A friend and I were discussing our
various ailments.
“I like to have important,
high-kaflutin’ stuff, if I’m a-gonna have anything,” I said. “After
all, I’ve had De Quervain’s tenosynovitis... I have Benign Essential
Blepharospasm... Immmmpressive. Now, you see, when anyone talks about
Covid-19, I can give a careless shrug and say, ‘Oh, yeah, I had that,’ with
a rumple of the nose to indicate it’s no big deal.”
(Only it was miserable; that’s the
truth of it.)
Someone else asked me the other day,
“When did you first start to feel ‘old’ and/or ‘tired’?”
(What, do I look old and tired, or
something?!)
Hmmm... Difficult
question. I’ve known I had rheumatoid arthritis since I was 12, and
doubtless had it for years before that. I remember trying to practice my
piano lesson at age 6, and my neck hurt so bad it felt like it was on
fire. I didn’t complain; I just figured everybody had that happen
when they were practicing the piano.
Doubtless the fault of the lesson book, perched up too high on the song
rack. Right? Creating one’s own songs is infinitely more
fun, and easier on the neck besides!
Then, when the children were little, and
I was sewing all our clothes, maybe doing a few little jobs on the side to make
some grocery money, doing the bookwork, and all the other things one must do to
keep house, I indeed got tired.
I get tired now, and my back, neck,
shoulders, feet, etc., hurt when I quilt too long (with the quilting machine,
that is). Determination and topical analgesics keep me going. 😏
Lura Kay gave me a bottle of Soothanol;
it helps more than anything else I’ve found. I’m running low, decided I’d
better get more --- and then I discovered that the stuff costs $45-50 for that
small bottle!
Oh, my word. I just found that it’s gone up to $68
at Wal-Mart, and it’s $90 on Amazon.
That’s for 1 oz. One
ounce. Why didn’t I get some when it
was a mere $45?!
Once upon a time, we got Norma her
first computer. We were setting it up for her, showing her a few basics
on how to use it... showed her how she could look up stories about hymns at http://www.hymntime.com/tch/, listen to the
songs, read about the authors... She liked that.
And then, turning and giving us one of
those piercing looks of hers, she said, said she, “But I’m not going to use the
Internet at all!!!” (Because
she’d heard about its evils, you know.)
I grinned at her and said, “But you’re
on the Internet right now, in order to look at Cyber Hymnal!”
The expression on her face was so
funny, and Lawrence couldn’t quit laughing.
A
little after midnight, I finished my customer’s quilt. I trimmed it, removed it from my frame, and
took a few pictures.
An hour or so later, I suddenly
remembered to look to the north and see if there was any sign of the aurora
borealis, as AccuWeather had said there might be.
Yes indeedy, there was
a vague greenish/pinkish/ bluish glow on the northern horizon. It ebbed and flowed, but was nearly
imperceptible. I would’ve never noticed it, had I not known to look.
Back in the early 70s,
my parents and I were traveling somewhere north of Jasper, Alberta, Canada. It was about 11:00 p.m., and we were seemingly
alone in the world. We hadn’t seen
another car for hours. It had just gotten dark, with the sun finally
falling behind the mountain peaks to the west.
And then, like a huge, majestic curtain unfolding, the aurora borealis
lit up the northern skies. Oh, the
colors that shone and glistened and undulated through the indigo sky!
Crimsons and jades and brilliant blues, shot through with streaks of fiery
orange and royal purple. The colors rippled and rolled from the northern
horizon straight up until they arched over us and curled to the south. Daddy parked beside the road and we got out
and stood there in silent awe, just watching without a single word for a good
half an hour. What an amazing,
astounding display that was.
Wednesday, I headed outside to take
pictures of my customer’s quilt in natural lighting. It was windy out there. I hoped the
quilt didn’t start heading home, sans box and sans USPS.
Fortunately, the breeze calmed considerably
as I swept the deck, and I was able to get some good shots. Too bad there’s a shadow on it; it’s from our
deck umbrella. I couldn’t wait for the sun to get a little lower, because
I had to get the quilt to the post office. Ergo, shadow.
This was one of those quilts that made
me want to pull out EQ8 and try to create something similar. 😊
I printed an invoice, boxed everything,
and took it to the post office. “We will now be simultaneously chewing
our fingernails until it arrives!” I wrote to my customer, sending her the
tracking number.
I happily went back to scanning old
photos. I
really want to get these done. Here are Caleb and Victoria at
Chadron State Park, August 3, 2001. We
had stayed overnight in our tent.
Soon it was time for our midweek church
service. Hmmmm... what should I
wear? It was 68°, bright and sunny. But by the time we got out of
the service, it would be about 56°. Early
Friday morning, we would very likely get our first frost.
I
decided on a pale mint green sweater with embroidered trim and pearls, and a
lightweight, very pale yellow cotton skirt.
There. I was sorta summery and
sorta autumnish.
Thursday, I tried calling Loren at
3:00 p.m., as I usually do. No answer, landline or cell. I went
ahead and started making him some food, thinking he might be outside without
his cell phone, as he sometimes is.
At ten ’til four, I took his food to
him. He wasn’t home – and his camper was gone. He’d been talking about taking a little
vacation for over a month, but he hadn’t said anything about it for a week and
a half or so. He had probably forgotten his cell phone, since he didn’t
answer it. I knew it wasn’t turned off, because
it went on ringing. And it hadn’t occurred to him to tell us he was going
that day, as he always did in years gone by.
He still knows where he’s going, and
how to get there, and he still drives well, and he’s been really happy at how
much better he can see since he had the cataracts removed.
Siggghhhhh... I would not worry... yet.
And anyway; I now had our supper
already done. 😏
I redoubled my efforts to get another
album finished before the next quilt arrived.
Here are Susan and Robert Walker, my niece and nephew,
as our flowergirl and ringbearer on our wedding day, July 15, 1979. Robert Walker is now our pastor. My sister Lura Kay made Susan’s dress and
Robert’s suit.
And here are Larry and I standing in front of my little red Le
Car. I loved that car. I was horribly insulted one day years later
when I found a picture of it in a big hardcover book I’d gotten for Larry,
called “Worst Cars in the World”.
A friend was working
on an embroidery design that afternoon, using a software program on her
computer. The design was done, and she
was just tweaking it a bit here and there, when the program crashed and lost
all of her tweaks.
I commiserated with
her, for I know what it feels like when the software misbehaves and loses your
work. Many years ago, I had an unstable
Word program that often neglected to automatically save my work every minute
like I had it set to do, so when it would shut down, I’d lose pages of typing. One can type quite a few pages in just a few
minutes, when one is really going at it tooth and nail.
My family would
console me, “Oh, well; it’ll be better the second time.”
I’d cry, “No, no, it won’t
be! – because I’ll wind up condensing it, thinking I already said something,
when actually it’s gone now, and I won’t remember that clever turn of phrase I
came up with the first time!” (And now
probably all those who have plowed their way through wordy tomes of mine are
thinking, Actually, condensed would be better.)
Larry picked up my
grocery order at Hy-Vee that evening, and they forgot to give him two boxes of
frozen yogurt and two frozen pies. Bah,
humbug. I had my chops all polished up
for Marie Callender’s deep-dish cherry crumb pie. He would get it the next day.
Friday, I continued scanning,
scanning, scanning old photos. I was working on the 18th album,
which happened to be Volume #105 (the albums aren’t in order in the bins, so
I’m just taking them as they come). A mere 330 (or more) albums to
go. 🥴
I sent Caleb some of the pictures I’d taken of him at
Chadron State Park. He was almost 8, and
he well remembers the hat he was wearing (two pages back).
I finished that album and started on #41 – and there
were the new-baby pictures of Caleb that he asked for last month, doubtless to
see just how much Baby Eva looks like him.
Here he is in the
hospital right after he’d had his first bath, October 13, 1993.
This is one of the
first pictures I got of him with a little tail end of a smile. It’s November 11, 1993; Caleb is one month
old.
For weeks, it seemed, he’d
give a great big smile, I’d jerk the camera up – and that smile would
immediately vanish, to be replaced with big eyes staring: Why are you aiming that bazooka at me?!!
I sent several more pictures
to Caleb. With the above photo, I wrote,
“Here you are at one month, already plump, and getting cuter and more
expressive every day.”
Then I added, “I
didn't fix your hair like that; it fixed itself.”
“It’s pretty
expressive alright!” he responded. 😄
It wasn’t long before
he decided, after looking at his baby pictures, “These look a lot like Eva.”
He sent me a couple of
photos of her, including one where she is smiling in her sleep. Isn’t it amazing how a
tiny face knows how to smile like that, even in sleep? Sweet baby.
Who could’ve guessed when I took pictures of these cute
little guys – cousins – on Thanksgiving Day 1993 that they would wind up as our
sons-in-law 15 years later?
Andrew (top) married Hester on August 10, 2008, and Jeremy
(bottom) married Lydia on August 18, 2008.
When I sent Andrew’s picture to Hester,
she wrote back, “So cute! His family has always been so photogenic... it’s
not fair.”
“Yeah, well...” I replied, “we’ll
forgive him, I guess, since he seems to have passed the gene on to Keira.”
Loren was still not answering his phones. His ‘vacations’ usually last no longer than two days, three at the most. So I wouldn’t worry just yet, though I told Larry, “If he isn’t home by tomorrow (Saturday), we’d better call the police for help in locating him.”
Instead, they called Larry a
little before 7:00 p.m., shortly after I said that.
It was the State
Patrol from North Platte; Loren had been at a rest area near Brady (28 miles
east of North Platte) looking for his wife; he thought she must’ve passed out in
the rest room. People tried to help him
find her... someone called 911; they sent an ambulance...
The State Patrol arrived,
ran his name, then Norma’s name, and soon realized she had died in June, and
that Loren was confused.
Larry was heading home
from a job and would be back in town in about half an hour, whereupon we would go
retrieve Loren, along with his camper and pickup.
North Platte is 212 miles to
the west. It usually takes over 3 ½ hours to get there. It was
going to be a long night.
A female state trooper called from the
North Platte office about a quarter after ten to find out where we were. We were still a couple of hours away.
She told me that the officers had realized
that Loren hadn’t had much to eat (which of course makes his confusion worse),
so they fed him a roast beef sandwich. They brought in a pastor ‘in case
he got distraught’. He was doing all right, but was getting tired.
It was 20 minutes after midnight when
we got there, and Loren was very glad to see us.
We drove back to the rest area where
his pickup and camper were parked, and then Larry drove it home, with Loren in
the passenger seat, glad to have Larry taking the reins. I followed in the Jeep. Halfway home, a deer ran across the road
right in front of Larry. Fortunately, he
saw it in time and slowed down.
We wonder about the right steps to take
with Loren, and the right time to take them... but, as the officers said to us,
“His driving is not the issue.” During all those hours until we got there
a little after midnight, they talked with him about a wide variety of topics,
and the lady officer said to us, “He seems to understand most everything, except
this one thing: his wife has passed away.”
For the most part, that’s exactly the
way it is. By the Alzheimer’s scale, in most areas, he’s in the very
early stages. But in this ‘hallucination’ problem, he registers late
stages. Quite strange, really.
So... we’ll tell him we don’t want him to take his pickup and
camper anywhere again... and get the tracer we bought put on his Jeep. He
still drives well; he’s a careful driver (and not too slow, as some elderly
drivers are), and since he had his cataracts removed, he can see clearly. If he could not drive to the nearby grocery
store, his quality of life would sink, a lot. So...
not yet, not yet. Maybe soon, but not yet.
Loren was doing okay Saturday
afternoon when I took him some food and collected his laundry.
Violet turned two years old Sunday. Every time someone asked her how old she was,
she smiled and said, “Two!” And then,
pointing at Carolyn, “And she’s three!”
Kurt and Victoria invited us over after
church last night. They’d had carrot cake earlier in the day with Kurt’s
family, and Victoria saved some for us. She saved the candles, too.
Violet, watching Victoria put the
candles back on the remnant of cake, asked, “Loight cändles ’gain? Happy
boithday moi ’gain?!” (The girls are
Australian, no doubt about it.)
“Yes, we’ll sing Happy Birthday to you
again,” answered Victoria, getting out the matches.
It was all taking much too long, so
Violet proceeded to start singing ‘Happy Birthday’ herself. Right
on tune. ♫ ♪ “Happy Birthday...” ♪ ♫ She petered out when we all
burst out laughing.
We sang the song... she blew out the
candles... and Carolyn requested, “Loight thèm ’gain fo’ moi? Moi toin?”
“Yes, now it’s your turn,” Kurt told
her, and Victoria relit the candles for Carolyn to blow out.
We took them several bottles of Aloe
Vera juice. It has pear and citric
juices in it, too. We’d never tried it
before. We hadn’t noticed there was aloe vera pulp in it – until we
swallowed down pulp and wondered, What on earth?!
While Larry peered into his bottle, I
peered at the label.
Oh.
Pulp.
After the initial shudder, we
decided... We like it! It’s good!
We took a couple of little squirt
bottles of Juicy Juice for the little girls, which delighted them. For
Violet, we had a large baby doll, dressed in – what else – a purple sleeper and
hat.
The blue jays were screeching their
heads off this afternoon, which reminded me that all the feeders at the feeding
station needed to be refilled. It wasn’t
long before birds were swarming the feeders again.
At 4:00, I took Loren some supper,
returned his laundry, and gave him three more gallons of water. His supper consisted of a Black Angus burger with
spinach and herb seasoning, on which I put a piece of American cheese as soon
as it was out of the oven. Then I
bedecked it with a slice of vine-ripe tomato and some lettuce, and put it all
between a halved piece of buttered 12-grain toast with a bit of Miracle Whip on
it. There were also sweet potatoes,
pineapple slices, a banana, a cinnamon roll fresh out of the oven, and a bottle
of raspberry tea.
He laughed when he saw the sandwich, saying
he didn’t know if he could get that thick of a sandwich in his mouth.
“It’s a ‘Dagwood Burger’!” I told him,
“too tall to fit in your mouth.”
I handed him a knife and fork, and suggested
he eat it with the utensils, as Larry does on account of his dentures.
As I type, I’m sipping Cranberry Orange
herbal tea by The Tao of Tea. Mmmm, it’s
good stuff. Random tidbit: I only drink tea after the coffeepot is
empty. (No, I don’t usually drink the
whole works all by myself.)
Another customer quilt has arrived.
I haven’t even opened the box yet. I’ll start on it tomorrow.
Bedtime!
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