By last Tuesday, I had (or thought I had) 24 albums scanned (there were actually more; I neglected to count a couple), and was several pages into the next one. The tip of the iceberg, really; but I’m enjoying this trip down memory lane.
That afternoon, it occurred to me to
wonder if my brother remembered that I had mailed his ballot in for him, along
with Larry’s and mine, and he didn’t have to go vote. “Hopefully,” I
remarked to Larry, “if he thinks he needs to vote, he won’t remember where to
go.” 😏
Sometimes he arrives at the office of
our friends’ Ready-Mix business, thinking whatever appointment he thought he
had to go to was being held there. When I was sick a couple of months ago,
he needed to go to the eye doctor’s office for a last checkup on the second eye
that had a cataract removed.
The night before the appointment, I called
and told him I wouldn’t be able to take him, and asked if he could go there
himself. He said he could... he knew the time... and he knew where the
office was.
But by the next morning, things got
muddled. He went to Gehring Ready-Mix, walked into the office, and asked
our friend Stephen if Dr. Diedrichsen had arrived yet. (Oddly, he
remembered the doctor’s name; he never could, in the previous couple of weeks.)
Fortunately, Stephen is compassionate and helpful, and always does what
he can to assist. He called Eye Physicians, and after a few moments of
them saying they couldn’t tell him anything, and him saying Loren was with him,
and his phone was on speakerphone, he got the correct time, reminded Loren of
the correct place, and made sure he felt capable of getting there (it was only
a few blocks away).
When I took Loren some food that
afternoon, I reminded him that I had already mailed his ballot, and told him
not to try voting again, or he’d get thrown in the hoosegow.
He laughed, assured me he remembered, and
asked, “Would I really?”
“Nah,” I said, “They’d just tell you
you’d already voted, since your ballot was no longer in their files.”
Home again, I got back to the
photo-scanning. Here’s Victoria, 4 ½, in
November of 2001.
I
heard the little notification chime, telling me someone was applying for
membership in my MeWe Quilt Talk group. It was a man.
We have several men in our group.
But... how do you like his name? Lurx
Maglurx. haha
I
clicked ‘Decline’. Try for a little more
subtlety next time, Bub.
Hannah and the children came visiting that
night, bringing Larry a fancy pen, the midpart of which is made of antler. The tip is brushed copper.
Wednesday, I went on scanning pictures,
and came to this one of Hannah, Aaron, and me, taken in January of 2002. Aaron, our first grandchild, was ten months
old.
Late that afternoon, Caleb sent a couple of adorable pictures of Baby Eva. She’s almost two months old now. Isn’t it fun when a baby is all twinkly and bright-eyed, and you can tell without a doubt that the gears are turning quite properly in that little head?
I checked to see how many albums I had
done, and discovered it was more than I’d thought: there were almost 29 albums done (counting
the folder full of loose pictures and the folder full of framed photos [which I
took from the frames before scanning] each as an album). I had 7,110 photos scanned.
I sure am glad that once this project
is done, it will be done, since I’m not taking film photos anymore! ((... considering ...)) Well, I might want to scan the photos we get
in our Christmas cards each year. If I
do it right after we get them, it won’t seem like much trouble at all.
Thursday and Friday were beautiful
autumn days, in the low 80s, with sunny blue skies. The cats sprawled happily on front porch and
back deck, all afternoon.
Here’s Larry in our Suburban; we were exploring remote country roads, November of 2001. You can’t tell it through those tinted windows, but the vehicle is full of kids.
Friday afternoon, friends on my
quilting group were discussing their varied and various priorities in their
daily routines, after one lady wrote and asked how other quilters managed to
get so much quilting done, when she barely had time to do the housecleaning, yardwork,
and fix meals.
“What is this ‘housecleaning’ you speak
of?” responded one lady. 😂
Hee
hee We all usually wind up doing what we
consider most important. I most enjoy
doing what will matter most in the scheme of things......... which is why I’m
taking time off from quilting to scan all my old photos. Digital photos will last forever! – well, almost
forever. I’ll get back to quilting
when this project is through. (And of
course I’ll stop with the photo-scanning to do customer quilts, if
necessary.) I have quilts to make for
children and grandchildren! I do try to
at least keep the house clean enough that if someone says they’re coming to
visit, by the time they get here (it’s a ten-minute drive from town), I’ll have
everything looking nice.
One
lady advised the others to trade off with a variety of activities, so as not to
‘end up with burn-out’.
Ah,
if you knew how many times through the years people have told me I would ‘end
up with burn-out’! That, because when I
start some monumental project, I refuse to let go until it’s done. My brother once, years ago, called me a
bulldog, “because you won’t let go of the bone!” 🤣 No burn-out yet. I guess I’m an oddity (especially among
quilters); I prefer doing one project at a time, if possible.
An
elderly missionary’s widow whom our church supported once remarked that she was
very afraid I would ‘burn out’, taking care of ‘all those children’ day after
day, cooking and sewing and cleaning.
Now,
I really liked that lady; I just didn’t like that remark. So I asked, “Which ones shall I adopt out, do
you think?” and then, when she stared, I added, “Oh, and I’ll start feeding
them their food raw; that’ll eliminate the cooking.”
By
then she realized I was kidding.
I
think.
Friday’s meal for Loren was meatloaf (made with deer burger,
crackers, eggs, salt and pepper... and a glaze of ketchup mixed with brown
sugar put on during the last ten minutes of baking time), carrots in a butter sauce,
cranberry-orange muffins, rice pudding, lemon-limeade, and peaches.
On the way to Loren’s house that day, a
semi turned right square in front of me.
Fortunately, I’d noticed him whip into the oncoming turning lane, and
thought, He is not slowing down enough.
I hit the brakes before he ever started turning, and managed to get
totally stopped (the cruise had been set at 53 mph) in the middle of the
intersection, with the truck across all lanes of traffic.
By late afternoon, I had over 29 albums scanned – almost 7,500 pictures. Here is Victoria, 5, May 19, 2002:
This is Lydia, 8, in
August of 1999. We were at
Chief Hosa Campground in Colorado.
Friday,
a strange thing started happening on my online Quilt Talk group on MeWe. Every time my friend and helper, Lana, and I
looked, there were more people requesting membership in our group. The numbers have picked up every day, until we
now have nearly 2,400 members. We’ve
added almost 800 members in only 3 or 4 days..
I also deleted a post by one member wherein
she, wanting to be helpful, warned everybody about some man (and she included pictures
of him) who had ‘friended her’ on MeWe... and after a while tried to get her to
send him money. Or at least I think that’s what it was; why didn’t
I copy it and save it before I deleted it?! Sometimes I would do myself a
service by not being so impulsive.
Anyway, I deleted it because I thought,
You know, if every one of us warned everyone else every last time somebody ‘friended’,
messaged, or emailed us for fraudulent purposes, we wouldn’t have room for any
quilting messages!
I get friend requests from men on MeWe
fairly often, and on Facebook multiple times a day. The Facebook variety are almost invariably
pictured in full Navy or Airforce attire, positioned proudly in front of the
United States flag. The thing is, though,
they are generally from far-away countries, don’t know English – and haven’t
much of a clue which English names are male, and which are female. Today an Army major by the [supposed] name of
Myrtle Leonora Matson requested friendship.
He looked more like a Murtadaa Labeeb Majeed, to me.
The Internet, complete with bad guys,
has been around for over 30 years. If we haven’t learned by now that we
should avoid ax murderers, organ harvesters, gossipers, and shoe-untiers, we
shouldn’t be on said Internet.
Now, if someone who seems to be a nice
person who does nothing but quilt and pet her cats starts sneakily requesting
pins and needles from members on my very own group, well, then, I can warn
everyone and give the villain the boot.
I finished washing clothes, cleaned a
couple of rooms, played the piano, and went on scanning photos. Here are Hester, 10, and Caleb, almost 6, at Chief Hosa Campground in August
of 1999.
I just learned a Charles Gabriel number
from an old book of mine. It’s called ‘Reapers
Are Needed’, and was written in 1902. It’s
a little tricky here and there, but I’ve got it now, and really like it. It’s all lively and marchy – right down my
alley. Or ‘up my street’, as they say in
Ireland. Just see what good Thanksgiving
words this song has:
Idly saying, Lord, is there no work that I can do?
O how many loiter, while the Master calls anew—
Reapers! reapers! Who will work today?
Refrain:
Lift thine eyes and look upon the fields that stand
Ripe and ready for the willing gleaner’s hand,
Rouse ye, O sleepers! Ye are needed as reapers!
Who will be the first to answer, Master, here am I.
Far and wide the ripened grain is bending low,
In the breezes gently waving to and fro,
Rouse ye, O sleepers! Ye are needed as reapers!
And the golden harvest days are swiftly passing by.
2. Ev’ry sheaf you gather will become a jewel bright
In the crown you hope to wear in yonder world of light.
Seek the gems immortal that are precious in His sight!
Reapers! reapers! Who will work today?
3. Morning hours are passing, and the evening follows fast;
Soon the time of reaping will forevermore be past.
Empty handed to the Master will you go at last?
Reapers! reapers! Who will work today?
These are the kind of photos that keep me going on this gargantuan scanning project – Nathanael, playing peek-a-boo.
Hannah took these pictures. Upon seeing them again, she said, “Nathanael was so funny at this age. He loved peeking around the corners in the house, hiding under the Lego bucket, and playing peek-a-boo with his hands.”
When I quit scanning pictures Saturday night,
I had 7,670 photos scanned, and was halfway through the 32nd album.
There are thousands more to do.
Now, these photos brought back
some memories! Hannah made this ‘birthday
car’ for Bobby’s 19th birthday, July 13, 1999, the year before they
were married.
The ‘seat’ of this car consisted of a
Hershey’s candy bar. As you can see,
most of the rest of it was made up of vegetables, with a few pieces of fruit
here and there, a bottle of sauce for the ‘windshield’, and a small block of
cheese for... uh, I don’t know what the cheese was for. To eat, I guess.
So... what would you think a
19-year-old boy would eat first?
Whatever you thought, I’ll bet you
didn’t guess what Bobby ate first.
OHHH!
Look, I found the story, as I wrote it on July 19, 1999:
Monday night, Larry helped Hannah make Bobby a
strange, funny car out of all sorts of food.
She enlisted her father’s aid because, she told him, he was quite experienced
at building cars, already. There was a
cantaloupe for the front part of the body, and an eggplant for the back part of
the body. The tires were coconut and
grapefruit halves, and the headlights were mushrooms. Green beans were fastened onto the front for
front bumpers, canned sardines represented the gas tank, and the tab was bent
backwards to resemble a hitch. A little
bottle of ‘Gravy Master’ was stuck into the cantaloupe for the windshield, a
dozen leeks or baby onions were the side chrome and tail fins, there were
cherries for tail lights, a Hershey bar for the seat, and Mozzarella cheese for
the back rest. The front fenders were
sausages, while the back fenders were bananas and yellow and red peppers.
Earlier in the afternoon, the littles had gone
with Hannah to the grocery store for all those ingredients. In the fresh produce aisle, they were
laughing over all the funny shapes of the yams.
Victoria, not quite 2 ½, picked up long, crooked, knobby one.
“Oh!”
she exclaimed in her piping voice, “Just look at this really funny one! hee hee hee”
A man behind them began laughing, which totally
mortified her. She hadn’t noticed him
there, and if she had’ve, she
probably wouldn’t have made a peep, since she’s a bit timid.
“It’s time to go home,” she whispered urgently to Hannah.
Tuesday evening, on Bobby’s birthday, Hannah
took The Car to Bobby, along with a new pair of binoculars and tapes of my
father preaching. We gave him a new
lunch box, since the lid on his old one wouldn’t stay shut any more, and
lunches aren’t too so very good with dust infiltrating every bite.
Wednesday evening, we had our midweek church
service. Bobby arrived as usual at our
front door to walk Hannah to church. They
would sit together during the service, and go for a ride and probably visit
family or friends afterwards.
Off to church they went. They seated themselves. The music began. Soon the congregation stood to sing the first
song.
That’s when Hannah learned what part of his car
Bobby had consumed not long before church.
😲😜🤪😆
Being a polite young lady, she waited until
shortly before he left our house later that night to ask him, “Er, what did you
have for supper?”
“Uhhh... chef salad!” He cleared his throat. “Why?”
He swiped guiltily at his mouth. “Does
my breath stink?”
Hannah nodded solemnly.
Finally, the truth came out: he'd eaten the leeks. Every single one.
I, not knowing this, asked a little later,
“Have you eaten your car yet?”
“Well, most of it,” replied Bobby.
“I'll bet I can guess one of the things that
are missing!” said I. “The Hershey bar!”
I concluded triumphantly.
Bobby shook his head. “Actually, that's one of the things I still
have left.”
I stared.
“Bobby!” I exclaimed. “I don't
know if you're going to fit into this family, or NOT!”
He laughed.
Later, I allowed as how I could’ve been wrong about that,
since, should he happen to not really want that Hershey bar, I shouldn’t be
half sad to take it off his hands.
This is Hannah at Christmas time, 1999.
Sunday morning I turned on my computer
to read the funnies and the news and some email while I curled my hair – and
found 29 people requesting membership in the MeWe quilting group, of which I am
the owner. Several mentioned that they
had deleted their accounts at Facebook.
Some had deleted Instagram and Twitter accounts, too. Curious
as to what sort of earthquake had happened on Facebook to wash so many up on
our shores, I did a bit of research.
It seems they can no longer tolerate
the policies of these liberal platforms, where personal data is compromised, and
posts that the powers-that-be don’t agree with are censored.
One major quilting group has around a
quarter of a million members. I hope they don’t all decide our
little Quilt Talk group is the place for them! I will have to clone
myself! 😂
Through
the morning, it steadily got windier, until by the time we got out of church
around noon, there were 50-mph gusts whipping through.
We
walked toward our vehicles, chatting with Bobby and Hannah and some of the
grandchildren. Stopping by Jeremy and
Lydia’s Yukon, we were all visiting when the wind blew so hard, it nearly took
me right off my pegs.
Bobby,
who was standing by the window talking with the children, exclaimed, “Did you
see what just happened?! The wind
blew the hair right off my head!”
Malinda, 3, had evidently never before
noticed that her Uncle Bobby is bald.
She looked quickly at his head, and
then her eyes grew wide, and she stared and stared.
Bobby, of course, was laughing as he
and Hannah headed to their own vehicle.
When we got home, I popped some deer ‘butterfly’ steak into
the oven for Loren, marinating it in lemon juice, salt, pepper, and lemon
pepper as it cooked. Larry turned it now
and then while I cooked broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots. We also took him a cranberry-orange muffin,
rice pudding, applesauce, and grape juice.
Here is Emma on Andrew and Hester’s wedding day, August 10,
2008.
Last night after church, we headed to Shelby to fill the
Jeep.
Since it was nearly empty, and we didn’t
want to risk running out on the way there, Larry put five gallons in it at the Phillips
66 in town.
The Schuyler Coop
is closer than Shelby, but the store is closed on Sunday; only the pumps are
on.
We decided to
go to Shelby, so we could get something yummy for a late supper in their deli.
I got a chicken
cordon bleu junction burger; Larry got roast beef and swiss cheese junction
burger (though he was positive all the way through that sandwich that someone
had forgotten to put in the Swiss cheese).
We bought raspberry cream cheese flips for dessert, and ate our food at
the park next to the convenience store.
And that
polished off a day of too, too much from the grains group. Here’s what I ate yesterday: a cranberry orange muffin at 1:00 p.m., a
piece of French toast at 3:30 p.m., (with almond milk to wash it down), the
aforementioned burger (and junction burgers have a lot of dough around them –
too much to suit me), and the flip.
Ugh, this is
not my usual diet. I’m accustomed to a
small serving of grains and dairy for breakfast, and then mostly fruits and
vegetables after that, with maybe a smallish serving of meat for supper. We did have Fuji Apple Ginger Pure Leaf tea
with our burgers; that was good.
We saw flashes of lightning as we drove, and the wind was
still blowing hard.
When we got home, I sat down in the recliner with my laptop,
and soon Teensy cat was on my lap, too, between stomach and laptop. He was all warm and cuddly – but he kept trying
to pull my hands off the keyboard with his soft little paws, in the hopes that
I would pet him.
It took over an hour to finish approving,
declining, approving, approving, declining, approving, and approving people.
Plus, there were a hundred gazillion posts, and it took forever to scroll
through them all. Most days I simply won’t be able to read that many;
that’s the truth of it.
And the world will keep turning, just
see if it won’t.
Here we are at Andrew and Hester’s wedding August 10, 2008.
This was only two months after Andrew was
nearly killed in an accident at work. A
pump truck tipped over, and the heavy hose full of cement landed on him,
pinning him, crushing bones in his face, and badly injuring an arm and a
leg. He has gone through numerous
surgeries on his face since then. We
were so thankful not only that he was alive, but that he didn’t lose an eye.
People
suggested they postpone their wedding, but Andrew was determined to make it –
and he even managed to walk down the aisle without his cane, and with hardly a
limp, too.
Our
grandson Ethan and great-niece Emily were the ring-bearer and flowergirl for the
wedding.
A
lady wrote the following to me last night:
“If you just take a photo with your iPhone it becomes a
digital image which is clearer and sharper. You can use your editing app to colorize,
restore damage, resize, etc. It also
becomes easier to store, share with others, and uses less space on your
computer or a CD. I learned that when I
started adding photos to my Family History.”
! Do any of the above photos look unclear or
unsharp to you?
I’m scanning all these printed photos, from my 350+ albums, with a brand-new, excellent Hewlett Packard photo scanner at 300 to 600 dpi. Using my smartphone to take a picture of a picture would not come close to equaling the quality of this scanner. Photos would be skewed and discolored. The HP scanner copies photos exactly as they are, with no diminishing of quality. I scan multiple photos at once, and edit if necessary with Corel PaintShop Pro X8. I’ll have approximately 100,000 photos scanned when I’m done. They would never fit on my smartphone. My computer has a 1-terabyte hard-drive capacity. I am also backing up all photos onto two separate external hard drives. One is a two-terabyte drive; the other is an 8-terabyte drive. I will not be using CDs; they don’t hold nearly enough, and can be easily scratched and ruined – and the majority of our children, to whom I will give these photos, do not have the equipment to view a photo CD. I will give them their copies on a large-capacity 4 in 1 thumb drive with four connectors, so it will work with any electronic device. They will be similar to this one:
This is Victoria and Michelle, another
great-niece and Emily’s big sister. They
were the candlelighters for Andrew and Hester’s wedding.
I decided to watch a train-crash compilation
video (just to relax, you know), and then head for the feathers.
I think someone strapped cameras on
kangaroos, and then released them in the general vicinity of impending train
wrecks. A susceptible person could
easily become motion sick, watching that video.
This afternoon I went into the garage to
get the Jeep registration from the glove compartment in order to renew online,
and found a fluffy tortoise-gray cat out there.
He scurried toward the outside door, but not too awfully fast, and I
suspect I could have easily coaxed him into letting me pet him. I didn’t, though; I don’t want another cat
(and neither do Tiger and Teensy). This
one looks like a well-fed pet, in any case.
He has a sort of flat face and oddly angled eyes, like those too-closely-related
cats some late neighbors used to have. They
were usually nice cats, but not terribly bright.
Restrictions are increasing again,
since Covid-19 rates are rising.
The following notice went out in Contra
Costa County, which is northeast of San Francisco:
Allowed:
·
Social outdoor gatherings of up to 12 people.
·
Protests of up to 100 people.
Therefore, someone posted on social
media, “I’m having a protest in my back yard.
We will be grilling and arguing and having a good time. Bring your own topic that you’re mad about.”
😄
(Yes, of course I think that’s
funny.)
A quilting friend whose husband is a
pastor wrote the following:
Let me share Mark’s story: he was getting
dressed for church on Sunday, pulled socks out of the drawer, grabbed his suit
coat and put it on, grabbed his shoes, went out to the living room to put on
shoes and socks – and couldn’t find the socks anywhere. He hunted high. He hunted low. He hunted where they should be. He hunted where they couldn’t be.
He
gave up and got another pair of socks and finished dressing and went to church.
At some point in the morning, he pulled
off his suit coat –and there were the socks, draped over his shoulder!
We once upon a time went breezing into
church with our three-and-a-half-dozen children (or is that three and a
half-dozen? Hyphens make a difference!), seated ourselves... and I
spotted a bit of lace peeking out from under Larry’s knee. I got a grip
and pulled. (This could be dangerous.)
It was one of Victoria’s lacy little
anklets. (Better than what it could’ve
been.)
I bought a new box of dryer sheets the
next day to ward off that embarrassin’, humiliatin’, dreaded static cling.
Y’all probably remember the time I lost
part of a Mariner’s Compass block.
When the ‘Compass’ wound up pointed in
the middle, I took these pictures just to entertain the grandchildren:
A bit later, after trotting upstairs to
warm my coffee, and coming back down to finish the stars, one was missing.
I hunted all around and under my sewing table... went back upstairs to
see if I'd left it up there... and then spotted myself in a mirror.
Yeah, it was still on my head. 😂
Here are Joseph and Caleb fishing at
Calamus Reservoir, perhaps in 2000.
It was rainy all day today. I knew when it was the dampest, because
WeatherCat (Tiger, this time) came in all wet, and telling me [loudly!] about
it.
By 8:30 p.m., the rain was
ping-ping-pinging on the windows, as it was 30°, and the raindrops were getting
stiff. There was a wind chill of 19°, with the wind blowing at 37 mph. WeatherBug tells us to expect 4-5” of snow, once
it gets cold enough to switch from this freezing rain and ice. It’ll be slick, slick, slick tomorrow
morning! I don’t have to go anywhere
until afternoon, when I take Loren some food; but all the rest of my family
goes to school and work, unless they cancel one or both.
A little bit ago, I tried opening the
front storm door so I could see out – and found it was frozen shut! I looked out the back patio door – and there’s
ice everywhere, getting thicker by the minute.
Bedtime!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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