Journal: Trip to Harlan, Iowa, & New Spectacles

Last week, I sent a note to our children, asking for their family members’ sizes.  Soon Hester sent Keira’s, Andrew’s, her own – plus these last two entries on her list:

Spooky is sz small but ornery cat.

Wolfie is sz tall but skinny cat.   

 

I replied, “LOL  Do the cats prefer polyester, or faux fur?”

“Usually feathers,” answered Hester.  “Anything with feathers.”

Hee hee

“Our cats are thrifty and economical,” I informed her.  “They gather their own feathers.  (Toenails included.)”  (In fact, Teensy did that just this afternoon.  But we won’t talk about that now.)

She responded, “😂😖  Mostly ours just collect little pom poms and nerf darts.”

’Course, her cats are indoor cats.  Outdoor cats, by comparison, are sorta cannibalistic.  Socks was even cannonball-istic, if a hapless dog happened to set foot in his territory.  He’d utter a wild, guttural screech, spring, fly through the air, land on the dog’s back, and then ride it home, with the dog ki-yi-yi-ing all the way.  If the dog tried rolling to disengage the cat, Socks nonchalantly made like a logroller, sidestepping neatly as the dog rolled, keeping his perch topside, no matter which side of the dog that happened to be.  Pretty wild and wooly, it was.  And the bigger the dog, the wilder and the woolier was Socks.

Late Tuesday morning, Hannah called me from the hospital where she was with Levi, 10, who had had a Grand Mal seizure.  He’d been home from school because he didn’t feel well, and was taking a nap when it happened.  Fortunately, Aaron, 19, their oldest, was home.  He carried Levi to their van, and then into the hospital when they got there.  Levi weighs 80 pounds, and Hannah couldn’t lift him while the seizure was going on.  It lasted a couple of minutes, and afterwards Levi was somewhat out of it for an hour or more.

So scary, to have such a thing happen.  Levi is doing all right since then, though he’s still feeling under the weather.  The doctor doesn’t know what brought it on, other than possibly a stomach bug.  He did not have a fever.  They’ll have to keep a close watch on him.  No baths... no riding his bike... etc.  Poor little guy.  Poor Hannah!

They’ll have some tests run as soon as they can.  One doctor Hannah called couldn’t give them an appointment until May!  Good grief, that’s over six months.

Wednesday when I took Loren some food at about 4:00 p.m., I reminded him what time our church service was that evening, as I usually do.  He has trouble keeping times and dates straight.  Sunday evening services are at 6:30 p.m.; Wednesday evening services are at 7:30 p.m.

A week ago Sunday night, he was an hour late.  We weren’t worried, because he’d told us that afternoon that he might not come, as he had a cough that sometimes worsened at church, possibly on account of airflow, or maybe perfume combinations, or maybe even because of the large bouquet on the communion table.

The next day when I called him at about 3:00 p.m., as I do each day, he said, “Sarah Lynn told me the service last night was at 7:30!” 

Quick as a wink, I said, “No, she said 6:30!” which made him pause... and then he started laughing, having figured out it was me. 

He writes those church service times on his big calendar, but then he turns the page to the next month – and it’s not written there anymore! 

Each day last week, I scanned photos in old albums, and managed to finish three more large picture books.  Here’s Victoria, age 2, in 1999.  Hester, who was in 5^th grade that year, had received a page of stickers from Jr. Fire Patrol, and she generously gave them to her little sister.  Victoria proceeded to plaster them all over her dress.

Mind you, this wasn’t as temporary of an enterprise as you might think.  Just look how long the picture has lasted!  And now it’s digital; it’ll last forever.  😉

Wednesday, Larry put a big bag of ice into a very large cooler and went to pick up his deer meat at a local processor’s shop.  For $125, the man had skinned the deer and cut it into all types of steaks, roasts, and hamburger.  It was a large deer, and there was a lot of meat on it.

Problem:  no way under the sun would all that meat fit into the freezer in our kitchen, though it was only about half full.  Larry put as much as he could into it, then put the cooler, with the bag of ice still frozen solid, out on the front porch.  It was cold enough that it would be fine out there for another day.

Thursday, he went to Menards and got a nice 7.0 cubic foot Criterion chest freezer.  We’ve been needing one ever since the big old thing we used to have went kaput.

Levi still had a headache and felt a bit sick the next few days, but he was finally able to eat some chicken noodle soup and keep it down.  The doctors think it was most likely a one-time thing, which happens now and then with some viruses – and he did have what’s considered a ‘mild’ case of Covid-19 a month or more ago. 

That morning, I called LensCrafters in Omaha, hoping for a couple of Saturday morning appointments, as we would be traveling through on our way to Harlan, Iowa, to have the Atlantic Beach Path quilt appraised.  Both LensCrafters offices in Omaha were booked.  I tried the office in Lincoln where we got our last glasses, a couple of years ago.  They had no openings, either.  There was only one more LensCrafters in Lincoln – and they had an 11:00 opening.  I took it.  Larry could take the appointment; I would wait for another time.  He needed glasses worse than I did.

When I took Loren some food that afternoon, he showed me a schedule he’d drawn up for the days he wanted me to skip bringing food to him, because, so he said, I’m going to wear myself out, and he doesn’t need that much food anyway.  He wanted me to skip Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.

“I don’t like that plan!” I protested.  “You’ll dry up and blow away!”  (Plus, it’s probably better for him to see me each day, rather than every other day.)

He informed me that he’s been gaining weight, and doesn’t want to do that.  I let it rest; I’ll argue each separate day as it comes.

In reading the news that day, I came upon this obituary:

“She enjoyed watching Wheel of Fortune, doing puzzles, and playing games on her tablet.”

How would you like to have those things listed in your encomium as your sole achievements and entertainments?

I hope when somebody composes my eulogy, they write, “She liked cats and birds, though this combination did create occasional grisly conflicts.”

{Not...  really.}

Here’s Hester, 10, at the Jr. Fire Patrol parade in 1999.

Friday, LensCrafters called Larry to say they’d had a 10:00 a.m. Saturday cancelation, and they thought they could squeeze both of us in, if we’d like. 

We’d like.

I do need new glasses, and LensCrafters is so much cheaper than the Optometric Center here in town, where I planned to go if I could not get into LensCrafters.

That afternoon, I cooked hamburger-vegetable stew – one pot of sedate stew for Loren, and a bigger pot of hot stew for Larry and me.  I attempted to make the stew like my mother used to do.

When I got to Loren’s house and put the food on his table, he took the lid off, sniffed at it, and said, “This smells just like Mama’s hamburger stew!”  

So I guess I was successful.  😊

He also asked if I knew where Norma was, so I again explained... and we went round the merry-go-round for a while.

He shows me Norma’s pictures on a table in the living room... tells me she just put them there yesterday... I tell him she put them there in late March or early April, after her surgery, he’s amazed – but he does indeed remember what she said:  “This will help you remember what I looked like” (only he says, ‘what I look like’ – present tense).  I tell him yes, that’s Norma – Larry’s mother, my mother-in-law, his wife, who passed away in June.

And, not for the first time, he asks, “Why didn’t we have a funeral?”  I reminded him that he rode with us to the cemetery... and that the reception included only our families and Robert’s family, on account of Covid-19.  “Yes, I do remember that,” he said then, nodding.

Just before I left, he said, “I’m not trying to fool anybody; I just want to do the right thing.  But I get confused.” 

I assured him we all know that, and he mustn’t worry about it, because ‘God looketh on the heart’, and He knows when we intend to do right, and doesn’t at all hold it against us if we can’t remember everything.  God’s Word always comforts and calms him, without fail.  He might get things confused, but he still understands and believes the Bible!

So, when I knew he was feeling all right about things, I took my leave.

Makes me feel bad.  I try to respond in the way that seems best at the moment, depending on how well he seems to be understanding things right then.  I have only love and sympathy for him, but I know I can be blunt.  My prayer is that I say the right things, and always say them with kindness and love.

Home again, I went back to the scanner.  Here I am holding Baby Caleb in late 1993.

And this is Victoria, 2 ½, ‘doing homework’ – an obviously hazardous occupation requiring protective headgear.  Her ‘tweazshoos’ (treasures – a favorite word of hers for a little while) are all around her. 

She had learned to write her first two initials. If you can zoom in, you might be able to see a few ‘VM’s (for ‘Victoria Maurine’) here and there on the page.

We left for Lincoln shortly after 8:00 a.m. Saturday morning.

Around 9:30 a.m., I called the police to report a straight truck that passed us with not enough time to spare, as there was an oncoming car.  He started pulling in before he was all the way around us.  We were braking, and the other car was heading for the shoulder, before he managed to get back in his lane.

Shortly thereafter, he swerved madly around what was merely a smear of mud on the pavement, rocking the truck and winding up in the left lane.

He brought it back and continued down the highway.  A couple of miles farther on, the road widened to three lanes, with two of the three allocated to oncoming traffic.  The truck driver swerved into the middle lane, heading for the far left lane—and a semi was coming!  The semi quickly took to the shoulder, putting on the brakes; but finally the straight truck moved back into the right lane.  That was when I decided he was doing more than, oh, say, eating a breakfast muffin/dropping it/picking it up off the floor, and grabbed my phone.

We then had to turn south on 79, heading for Valparaiso, while the truck continued east on 92.  The dispatcher assured me a patrolman would soon be there; we hoped it would be soon enough.

LensCrafters was having a 40%-off sale on all frames.  Plus, if you ordered a second pair of glasses, both frames and lenses were 40% off.  We tallied it up, and decided it was well worth it for me to add not only my crafting glasses to the order, but also sunglasses.  I use them almost every day, and they are at least six years old.  My prescription has changed enough since then that they give me a headache if I wear them much longer than 20 or 30 minutes.

Larry, looking at the total for all those pairs of spectacles, said, “You sure are expensive, for how little you are.”

The lady who was helping me choose and adjust the glasses thought that was just about the funniest thing she’d heard all day.

By the time we left LensCrafters, we were half starved half to death (à la Bill Collins of The Sugar Creek Gang fame), so we grabbed a couple of breakfast rolls (they looked remarkably like doughnuts), aloe vera juice, and chocolate milk.  Larry had some crispy chicken tenders, too; but I wouldn’t touch those things with a ten-foot pole.  They smell suspiciously like they were fried, and I further suspect they were breaded without benefit of having the skin removed first.  Bleah.

We pulled into a rest area 15 miles east of Council Bluffs, Iowa, both of us needing to stretch our legs a little bit after too much sitting.  It was 39°.  I don’t mind, really; I just put on warm clothes and trot around taking photos.

We got to quilt appraiser Jennifer Perkins’s house at about a quarter after three.

As we walked up onto her porch and knocked on the door, a woodpecker swooped through the yard and landed on the side of a big tree nearby.  So there we were, necks cranked back, gawking skywards when Jennifer opened the door.  She looked upwards, too, and exclaimed over the bird, having never seen one like it before.  I guessed at its make and model, but later after a bit of research learned that I was wrong. 

It was a red-bellied woodpecker.  This photo is from AllAboutBirds.org.

It would’ve only been 135 miles from our house to Harlan, Iowa, had we been able to go to LensCrafters in Omaha.  But because we had to dropped south to the LensCrafters in Lincoln, the trip to Harlan was 167.  From Harlan straight back home would’ve been 125 miles – but we first took a 45-mile drive east to Prairie Rose and Lake Anita State Parks, and when we headed west toward home, we turned a bit south to Council Bluffs in order to eat supper at Cracker Barrel.  That gave us a return trip of 211 miles.  So our total mileage was 378, plus a few extra miles in driving through the State Parks.  Oh, and we added a few more miles to go to stations that sell E-85, as the Jeep runs much better on that fuel.

We saw quite a few deer at the State Parks, including a couple of big bucks, some smaller bucks, and two does with sets of twin fawns.

It wasn’t even 6:30 p.m. when the sun went down over Lake Anita.  We headed west toward Council Bluffs.  I put my SD card into my laptop and started editing photos.

Larry, who was evidently hungry, read off names of all the restaurants we passed.

“Buck Snort Restaurant,” he intoned.

 I laughed, thinking he was kidding.  

“Really!” he insisted.

I looked it up – and discovered, to my amazement, that it’s a chain!  How on earth could we never have heard of the Buck Snort Restaurants, for pity’s sake?!  There’s even one in Nebraska!

We arrived at the Cracker Barrel in Council Bluffs about an hour later, and made use of a gift card from one of our children.

I had haddock – here’s the description from Cracker Barrel’s menu:  North Atlantic boneless whitefish fillet dusted in traditional cornmeal and flour mix and grilled until fork tender beneath a light, crispy crust.  The fish – and Larry’s steak, too – came with biscuits and cornbread.  For the three side dishes, I chose a salad with honey mustard dressing (because it’s good on fish, too, and they always give you plenty), fried apples, and fresh strawberries and pineapple.  Larry had green beans, mashed potatoes, and fried apples.  He had peach tea to drink, and I had coffee.  It was a scrumptious meal. 

I managed to get around the outside of everything but the cornbread muffin; I took it home and had it Sunday, warmed in the microwave and liberally doused with butter and syrup.  Mmmmm.

This morning the cats’ water dish and food dispenser – mat, dishes and all – were scooted over by the hallway door near the pet door.  The cats don’t do that.  Did an opossum get into the house?  We keep hearing... something out there in the garage, and once while we were eating supper tonight, we heard a noise at the pet door.  I rushed over there and jerked the door open, but whatever it was had already decided against coming in.  I couldn’t see it, but it was stumbling and sliding its way through the garage, somewhere.  Its toenails were clickety-clacking on the cement floor as it headed into the far reaches.  Yep, pretty sure that means ’possum.

I washed clothes and bedding today; it’s always a treat to climb into bed on clean sheets, with a clean fleece blanket.

And it is time to hit the hay.  I like to stay busy until I hear the snoring quiet down (speaking of Larry, not the opossum, nor yet either of the cats), then scurry to bed and try to fall asleep before it launches in again with vigor.

Sometimes I alllllllmost fall asleep – and away he goes, snoring again.

“Turn over!” I say (in my politest tones, of course).

The snoring pauses... sometimes starts up again – I grab my little battery-operated lantern, flick it on low, take a look --- and there he is, flat on his back, arms stretched luxuriously over his head, just working up a good rumble.  Shades of Andy Griffith and Barney Fife trying to sleep in the Darlings’ house the night before Charlene’s wedding, when her brothers and father kept flipping back onto their backs and snoring, no matter how many times Andy and Barney turned them over. 🤣

I tell him (Larry, that is, not Mr. Darlin’), “Turn over!!!” a little less politely than the first time.

“I already did!” he informs me, without bothering to wake up.

You may finish the story as you like.

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