Are you finding that deliveries – whether USPS, UPS, FedEx, or otherwise, are more erratic than usual these days? If it’s not moldy birdseed, it’s the wrong item entirely. Sometimes, after an item is on backorder for two... three... four... or more months, I am finally apprised of the fact that the business has gone kaput, and is no more. At least they were kind enough to not actually charge me for the item.
Last week, I
ordered
some talc from Wal-Mart. A few days
later, I received a box that supposedly had the stuff in it, according to my
email delivery notification. Instead, I
had eyeliner that should have gone to a lady named Mary who lives in New York
State, according to the receipt in the box.
I informed Wal-Mart; they issued a
refund and told me I could keep the eyeliner. I reordered the talc. Why don’t they make a mistake and send me
something I actually use?!
The next day, I received an email
(through Wal-Mart) from a man in Texas who had received my talc, though his
notification had informed him that he had correctly received the scouring pads
he had ordered. I don’t imagine he will
use the talc any sooner than I will use the eyeliner.
Maybe they are playing Musical Chairs
in their warehouses? Or perhaps Round
Robin?
When I took Loren some food last Monday,
he informed me that Norma hadn’t been around for five or six days, and wondered
if I’d seen her. I, as usual, told him
she has passed away – but lately this explanation upsets him. So I switched to, “I don’t know this person
you’re talking about.” That suits him
better.
He still thinks she comes now and then
and does the dishes and cleans house.
But then she just leaves, never saying why or where she’s going.
So I said, “The only Norma I know was
my mother-in-law. And she was honest and
faithful and trustworthy all the years I knew her.”
This calms him down – momentarily, at
least.
Last Monday evening, I loaded a customer’s
quilt on my frame, and started quilting. This one was a mystery quilt for
which a quilting friend will be issuing instructions on New Year’s Eve, so I
can’t show any pictures of it yet. My
customer was one of the testers for the pattern.
I had thought to use a charcoal-colored
thread top and bottom, but it didn’t match at all. Instead, I used dark pink on top and dark
brown in the bobbin. It’s always a little trickier to get the tension
right, when the colors are different, top and bottom... but so often worth it.
I got three rows done before quitting
for the night.
Tuesday afternoon I met my quilting friend
Carol at one of the local quilt shops here in Columbus, Sew What; she had
a Christmas wall-hanging she wanted me to quilt.
While I was there, I intended to hunt
for some medium-hued plum-colored fabric to go with the fabrics I purchased at
Country Traditions in Fremont for the Blooming Nine-Patch quilt I plan to make
someday. I walked in, zeroed right in on
the purple, plum, lavender, and lilac batiks, and soon found four bolts that
matched the other fabrics quite nicely.
I added one floral... and ordered 1 ½ yards of each of those five
fabrics. And that’s how I used some
money a friend gave me for my birthday, with instructions to spend it at Sew
What.
Home again, I finished quilting my
customer’s mystery quilt.
The
quilt was designed by Susie Rose. If
you’d like to make this quilt on New Year's Eve, her YouTube video is here: https://youtu.be/U3FisxOWg6I Or you can go to her website: https://susierosedesigns.com
I can tell you that it’s a beautifully
designed quilt, and I believe that you would be delighted to join those who
will be following all the clues and putting this quilt together on New Year’s
Eve.
Here’s a picture of the quilting on the
back.
The pantograph is called ‘Pink
Paisley’. My customer chose it to
coordinate with her fabric; it has nothing to do with the quilt pattern itself.
Wednesday I started quilting my
friend’s Christmas wall hanging, and managed to finish it that night, doing a
light custom job on it.
Just before I arrived at Loren’s house
with his supper that day, he went and picked up his new glasses – because Eye
Physicians called him instead of me, again. If you knew how
many times I’ve asked them to call me, not him... related all the
confusion that has occurred because they do that... they assure me it’s all
written on the files, and of course they’ll call me – and then the glasses
arrive, and they call him. Sigghhhh...
But he managed to go there without
incident (or at least no known incidents) and get them adjusted, and he was
totally delighted with how well he can see now, whether at a distance, or while
reading.
Thursday, I worked on my Christmas letter... took Loren some food a little before 4:00 p.m.... worked on my letter again... and then drove to Schuyler to return the wall hanging to my friend.
Schuyler is the approximate halfway point
between my house and hers. We met at the
Co-Op, and I took the opportunity to put E-85 gas in the Jeep.
That evening, I received a notice that
the new and hopefully unmoldy (should be a word) bags of sunflower seeds had
been delivered ‘at my front door’. I
trotted downstairs to bring them in and fill the bird feeders. The little birds had been sitting forlornly
on the empty feeders all day, tipping their heads to look at windows and patio
doors, cheep-cheeping their request.
There were no bags at the front door.
I turned on the light and took a better
look.
Still no bags.
Ugh, what wrong address had they been
delivered to now, I wondered? We do
have a lot of mis-delivered mail and packages out here.
Early Friday afternoon, I suddenly
spotted the lost 25-pound bags of black-oil sunflower seeds. They were by a front door, yes, but not the
front door to the house. Rather,
they were tucked into the garage’s walk-in door, which admittedly is at
the front of the house; but by no means can it be mistaken for the actual front
door. Delivery people can be sooo
aggravating. Whoever did that was just
saving himself 25 feet or so of walking, as the garage door is closer to the
driveway. It’s obviously not the right
place to leave packages.
Once in a while, they have opened that
garage door and actually tossed a box inside the garage. I didn’t find it for weeks – long after a
replacement had been sent for the ‘lost’ item.
I then called the delivery company and
told them what had happened, requesting that drivers not throw things into the
garage (and we tried to keep the door locked during delivery hours, too). But it’s never long before they’re back at it
again.
I hauled the bags in, filled the bird
feeders, and soon the feeding station was covered with little birds.
That day, it was clear that Tiger had a
cold. I called the vet, described Tiger’s
symptoms – sneezing, runny nose, mattering eyes – and said he’s too big for me
to carry, and won’t fit in our cat carrier.
So, thankfully, the doctor prescribed medicine for him without insisting
that I bring the cat to the office, and I went and picked it up.
Problem: Tiger doesn’t like the taste of his medicine,
even when I mix it with his food. So I
corralled him, pried his mouth open, and squirted it in. Poor kitty.
But I talked nice to him, petted him,
consoled him, and gave him some treats, and he was soon purring around my
ankles again. Purring as best he could,
that is, between sneezes.
I finished my Christmas letter, put new
ink cartridges in my new printer/scanner, made sure all the settings were right,
and began printing. And OoooooOOOoooo, I
discovered that the printer, when told to print two-sided, does one side,
pauses momentarily while the ink dries, then drags the page back in and prints
the other side. Nifty, really nifty!
It didn’t make a single mistake, all
the way through 204 pages. My old
printer had a penchant for dragging in two pages instead of one, fouling up the
numbering and making a mess of things.
Sometimes one of the two pages was only halfway into the printer before
it began printing. Ugh.
Loren came here
some time after 6:00 p.m., upset because ‘Norma wouldn’t talk to him.’ So he’d brought his clothes and wondered if
he could sleep here. 😲 I said I had no place for him to sleep (and I don’t,
really), but I would follow him back to his house.
“She’s not
there now,” I told him. “You can go
home; she’s not there.”
He wondered how
I could know such a thing, but I just scurried off for shoes and jacket.
Larry got home
from work about then, so he came along, and we followed Loren to his house
(discovering that he does in fact drive very well), and conducted a search for
a ghost.
Finally, after
a whole lot of nonsense, including wandering through the house three or four
times and assuring him no one else was there (and that noise was just me bumping
a closet door, not someone hiding in it), we departed, telling him to lock his
doors and go to sleep.
He pretended to
pout. “What if I don’t want to?”
“Well, then,
just read a book!” I laughed, and then asked how he likes his new glasses.
He really likes
the new glasses, and can see so much better.
He’s quite happy about that, and he’s been reading a lot lately.
So we said
goodbye and headed for home, since he seemed fine again.
Very strange,
what short-circuits the poor old human brain can take.
You know, I knew that people with
Alzheimer’s forgot things and people, often failed to recall that loved ones
had passed away, and grieved all over again upon relearning those facts. I knew that they might get mixed up over
things they are seeing, hearing, smelling, etc.
But I didn’t think they dreamed up people who aren’t there until the
very latter stages of the disease!
The Alzheimer’s organization says
this: “Delusions (firmly held beliefs in
things that are not real) may occur in middle- to late-stage Alzheimer’s.”
But he doesn’t match most of the other ‘late-stage
Alzheimer’s’ symptoms.
So we here at Ghostbusters, Inc., muddle
on...
When we got back home, we found a box on
the porch – pillow shams had arrived from a customer in North Carolina. That renewed my resolve to finish the
Christmas cards that night.
I ran both the cards and the envelopes
through my printer, and it did a very nice job with them – all 120 of them.
The printing was finished just before
2:00 a.m. I stuffed cards into envelopes
while the printer was doing its thing – and wound up with one set left over. Only one.
Wow, how on earth did that happen?
I haven’t bought any cards for three
years, as I purchased a large quantity at 50% off (or was it 75%?) from Current
Catalog right after Christmas of 2017. I had no idea how many cards I had
when I started printing them, and was amazed to have exactly the right amount –
plus one.
I still have some pretty bookmarks to
put into the cards, but that has to wait for another day.
Saturday, I quilted the pillow shams
for my customer. These match her Botanica
Park quilt, which I quilted in late September.
Sunday morning we discovered, when they
delivered a big box to us, that the United States Postal Service is working on
Sundays. It was from my customer in
Washington State, and has three quilts in it.
I will start quilting the first one tomorrow.
After church, Hester asked us what we
thought of renting a place where we could all get together for Christmas. We discussed a building in the old part of
the downtown that has been all fixed up for get-togethers, and Hester was going
to look into it today, but... {to be
continued...}
Before heading home, we took Loren a
steak and cheese sandwich, loaded potato soup, and mixed berry juice, all from
Subway, of which he is quite fond.
After
our evening service last night, Lydia gave Larry the set of rings she’d ordered
for him. She got some for Jeremy, and he
liked them so well, she thought her father might, too. They are made to look like wedding rings, but
are actually silicone; so they are safe for men to wear who work in jobs such
as his. If the ring gets caught on
something, it will tear, saving the finger from injury.
{...continuing...} Jeremy told us about a large ‘cabin’ near the
river that belongs to a friend of his.
We can use it rent-free, because he and the friend exchange work and
various favors, and the friend owes Jeremy, and has offered the use of his
cabin. Does this look like a ‘cabin’ to
you?!
Since we hadn’t had supper yet, Larry
and I decided to try out the new fastfood joint in town, Freddy's Frozen
Custard & Steakburgers.
I got a Chicago dog (it has whole,
long, skinny jalapeños in it! – and tomatoes, onions, pickles, ... the bun is
toasted) and ice tea; Larry got a steak patty melt (which was too greasy), a
concrete (thick frozen custard blended at high speeds and mixed with fruits,
candy, cookies, and/or nuts). He asked
for strawberries, bananas, and Reece’s peanut butter cups to be mixed in, and
he was nice enough to share it with me.
Hmmm... I just found this description
of my Chicago dog online: “All-beef hot
dog with mustard, relish, onion, sport peppers, celery salt, tomato, and
pickle.”
‘Sport peppers.’ Sport peppers?! So, they think it’s sportin’ to blow people’s
heads off and give them permanently runny noses??!
Now, I’m not saying I didn’t like
them thar skinny green peppers. I’m just
sayin’... they were HOT!!!
This morning Lydia launched a group
text with her in-town siblings, Larry, and me, telling about the cabin we can
use for our Christmas gathering. This,
as always, spawned the usual hilarity:
Lydia: We can get the cabin for our gathering. We
need to let the man know what day. Would the 28th or 29th
work? And what time is best?
Hannah: I’m out of the loop....what cabin? I suppose I’d opt for the 28th.
Levi and Aaron have tonsillectomies scheduled for the 30th.
Hester: The 28th works for us!
Lydia: Bob is letting us use a cabin in exchange for what he owes for wood chips. 😄
Hannah: Oh.
🙂 Where is it? (I like the idea!)
Lydia sends pictures
Victoria: That is so pretty!
Lydia: It really is pretty!
Hannah: It’s beautiful!
Lydia: The 28th works for Bob if it works
for everyone else.
Teddy: Wow... are kids allowed?
Lydia: 😆
Me: The 28th is fine. What a name for such a place – ‘cabin’. When I think of a ‘cabin’, I think of
this:
Larry: Only grandparents are allowed.
Lydia: Well enjoy 😂
Larry: But that wouldn’t be any fun
Me: Can y’all keep your kids from falling in the
river?
Lydia: That would be quite a trek (to the river)
Me: What time will we meet?
Lydia: Whenever people are off work I suppose?
Me: I can bring trays of vegetables and fruit. Or
whatever else might be needed.
Victoria: I’ll make gluten and dairy and sugar free
food 🤣 (scrambled eggs... just
kidding)
Larry: 😛😜🤪😝🤗
Lydia: I can make sweet potato casserole and bring
some drinks and cups
Me: We don’t mind gluten-/dairy-/sugar-free stuff
-- so long as it tastes good! 😁
Teddy: I’m allergic
Victoria: Daddy, if I got a whole turkey could you
smoke it?
Caleb: Wow I’m a little late to the conversation.
Couple days reading to catch up. 😟
Lydia: Sorry
Basically, wanna come to Christmas on
the 28th?
Victoria: ☕ 📖 ⏰
Me (to Caleb): Yeah, yeah.
You were just trying to get out of bringing any goulash.
Lydia (to Teddy): I’ll bring you some water
Hester: I can bring cookies and desserts.
Me: To people?
(@Teddy)
Victoria: You cause allergies?
Lydia: I can bring some chips and crackers too
Me: We’ll bring our coffee maker.
And 5 gallons of water.
Teddy: Allergies matter
Me: Do we need to bring plates and silverware and
suchlike?
Caleb: 28th of when?
Me: July
Lydia: We can bring paper plates and spoons and
forks 🍴
I accidentally wrote 38th at
first 🤓
Me: We’ll bring paper towels.
Victoria: 2020 probably comes with a 38th
Me: (I suppose I should say ‘December’ in case
somebody really thinks I mean ‘July’.
People can be so unhumorous. And
unhumored.)
Cats matter, too. Shall we all bring our cats?
Lydia: And dogs
Victoria: No; mine destroys everything
Me: Piglets and lambs!
Larry: The pigs and lambs can have the stuff from
the slop bucket
Lydia: Our dogs are very well house trained. They
even know how to sit on couches. (posts pic of Monty the young Saint Bernard on the couch beside Ian, totally dwarfing the child)
Victoria: Your dog tripled in size since I saw him last
😱
Me: Good heavens, who IS that woolly mammoth, and
what have you done with Baby Monty?????!!!!!!!
Lydia: Picnic benches are super comfy too
(pic of Bella on table)
Larry: How would you like that turkey smoked, with
my crossbow, rifle or pistolla?
Hannah: We can smoke it, if necessary.
Lydia: Monty is working on learning how to drive now
Victoria: Traeger?
Victoria: 😆
Me: 😂 🤣 😆
Hannah: Yes
Hannah: Haha
Lydia posts a gif:
Larry: 🦃🎯
I
wanna smoke the turkey first or maybe a Christmas goose
Hannah: I don’t remember ever having goose. Did we
ever while I was home?
Me: There’s a nice big goose alongside Rte. 81
about halfway between our house and town.
Teddy: Ok I’ll get it
Victoria: Yuck
I can bring some chips and crackers too
Me: I *think* -- not sure, but I *think* -- I once
bought a goose from a farm place out near Lake Babcock on Lakeview Road.
Lydia: Maybe Daddy wants to take some
of us hunting!!
Me (to Teddy): You’ll have to trim off the road rash.
Teddy: Perfect Christmas dinner
Me: 😛😜😝
Teddy: Well I could cook it
Me: I’ll make gopher grits and possum gravy to go
with it.
Lydia posts pic of herself with Monty
as a new puppy
Teddy: Oh yeah, I have a possum too
Me: You both have the identical expressions. 😆
Me:
(the
identical-expression comment was for Lydia and the pup, not Teddy and the
possum.)
Lydia: Probably true either way tho
Teddy: Hey I saw that
Lydia: Monty walks up to me when I’m sitting on the
floor and turns a circle and sits on my lap just like the kids do 🤣
Caleb: That’s a nice picture of Bella and Monty 😌
Lydia: Are you saying I’m Bella or are you being
nice? It’s hard to tell in this group 😜
Me: Haha. I was debating the same.
Caleb: Definitely
Lydia: I meant it’s hard to tell if the comments are
serious or joking btw 🙃 I don’t have text tone yet
Lydia posts a video clip of Monty drooling
Lydia:
Have
to keep a towel handy 🐶
Lydia: We got some really good family pictures with both dogs 😄 That’s an accomplishment
Me: Remember when we used to tie a big bow on
Aleutia for our family pictures? I have
a few shots of her rolling her eyes down at the bow to see, What’s this?!
Lydia: 😆
Lydia posts pic of
dogs. You’ll have to wait to see the
whole picture
Me: 🐶🐕💞
Caleb posts pic of himself holding
Eva, Sadie beside them. Sadie is rolling her eyes in typical Boxer mien.
Victoria: Awwwww
Me: That’s so hilarious. Sadie is obviously wondering, Aren’t they
EVER going to give this kid back???
Lydia: Awww that’s so cute 🥰
Caleb: the dog is very jealous
Victoria: She looks it 😆
Lydia: 😂 “Mom she had
two turns and I only had one!”
Lydia:
Oh
wait that was my kids speaking 🐵🐵
Things then petered out for a
while. I took Loren some food – Alaskan
salmon with red and green peppers and onions sprinkled on top during the last five
minutes of baking, California mix vegetables, a fresh-from-the-oven biscuit,
strawberry and banana slices, and lemonade.
I then went to the post office to ship
off my customer’s pillow shams and my Christmas cards. There was a long line at the post office,
made longer by that social distancing stuff.
Every time I’ve gone there the last three or four times, there have been
people in there holding up the line because they need passports, and are
astonished at the price, and know it shouldn’t be that much, and don’t know
their permanent address, and can’t decide how to pay for it, and have no idea
if they want cash back, ------- and can’t understand English. The postmistress thinks that if she shouts
loudly enough, they will surely understand.
There are three windows at the
counter. One is always taken up with the
Passport People, the other is invariably taken up by persons who need a change
of address – and things are all mixed up because they were living with their
mother, who has a different last name, and therefore the offspring get mail
under that last name even though it isn’t really theirs, and now they’re living
with their father, and he moves around a lot, and the people who live at his
last address were getting his mail, and aren’t giving it to them, and now a
driver’s license is lost, and we need to know if we need to retake the test
or NOT!
Yes, of course I pay attention
to all these stories. How else am
I to entertain myself whilst standing there trying not to cough (face masks
make me need to cough, and now I have a slight cold – I said
SLIGHT!!! There is absolutely no need for all this panic!!!) and trying to
will my nose not to run.
(Well, how do you cope with a
runny nose inside a mask?! NO, DON’T
TELL ME.)
Everything was fine and dandy until I
was just two ticks away from my turn at the one available window. My throat was singingly smooth, and my nose
was clear as the sky over the Mojave.
A slight tickle made a wee disturbance
in my throat.
Since clearing one’s throat these days
is liable to produce glares, glowers, frowns, and scowls, and coughing
generates mass hysteria, I swallowed.
The slight tickle immediately turned
into a claw.
This necessitated a throat-clearing,
whether I wanted to or not.
It did not help. Rather, the scraping, clawing sensation
intensified significantly.
This caused an inadvertent cough, which
I managed to keep almost silent. But in
the way of bunnies, one cough conjured up another... and another... and
another. My heroic attempts to keep them
under wraps caused my nose to run and my eyes to water. And I had not brought any tissues with me. I wiped my eyes with what I hoped was
nonchalance and sniffled as noiselessly as possible.
The non-passport/non-address-change
person at the third window completed his business and exited, and the line
moved forward. There were by now a dozen
people behind me and three in front of me.
Or five, if you counted the two Passport People and the two
Address-Change People. Six, if you
counted the Passport People’s small tot, who needed his nose wiped even worse
than I did. I made a small, unobtrusive
sniff. I would’ve given up my place in
line for a tissue and a private place to cough, but it was only half an hour
before closing time, the line was getting longer with every passing moment, and
I really, really needed to mail that stuff.
And then suddenly the Address-Change People
signed the final page in their Last Will and Testimony (or maybe it was a Term
Life Insurance Policy) and exited, stage left.
I wiped my eyes, scurried forward, put
box and envelopes on the counter, stabbed a finger at an envelope, snuffled
quietly, and croaked, “These might need extra postage.”
I made a swipe at one eye just before a
tear dripped down my cheek.
Maybe everyone would just assume my
dog had died, rather than fearing a tuberculosis outbreak. (Speaking of tuberculosis, did you know that
1.4 million people died of that infectious disease in 2019? What, you don’t remember the world economy
grinding to a halt last year over that??!
Huh. Neither do I.) (Moving along...)
I managed to pay for shipping and
stamps and escape the inner office without anything too awfully mortifying
happening. Rather than pausing at a
table in the outer office to apply stamps to envelopes as I usually do, I hotfooted
it out the door and fled to my Jeep, where I hacked and coughed and blew my
nose and applied stamps to envelopes to my heart’s content.
Then, throat protesting something
fierce, I backed out of my parking spot, went around the block, drove through
the alley where the outside mailboxes are located, deposited those 17 Christmas
letters, and headed to the bank’s drive-thru.
That wasn’t too traumatic, and I relievedly proceeded on home.
Two hours later, I still hadn’t
recovered from that coughing jag. What
makes that happen, right at the most inopportune times, anyway??!
I gulped down some Tylenol cold
medicine, a Zinc Rapid-Melt tab, and sipped soothing, hot Caramel Butter Crunch
coffee. Ahhhh...
The group conversation picked up again,
as our group conversations are oft wont to do:
Hannah: I'll make stuffing, green bean dish, and
creamed potatoes (not mashed).
Me: 😋
Hannah posts a pic of
Chimera
Hannah: Here’s my destructive pooch.
Me: Oh, he's so cute. I like that doggy.
He looks sort of.... sheepish, though.
Hannah posts another
pic: He has a squeaker from his
demolished dog toy that he picked out at the store.
He knows I'll take it away.
Me: 🥴
Teddy then posts a picture of one of
his pigs, and then a sheep, head sticking out of the fence looking for food
Sorry to spoil the serenity
He posts a couple of videos of his piggies
squealing
Hannah: I laid the pieces out in front of him, and
his ears flew up when he looked down at them. 😅
Teddy: That's the same thing that happened with mine (sheep's and pigs' ears flew up when he poured out their feed)
Hannah: Sheep are serene, aren't they?
Victoria: I have nothing and no one to show you (inserts
funny selfie)
Me: 😂
Hannah: 😂
Victoria posts picture
of Yuki sleeping
He was cute earlier though
(Teddy’s videos of the piglets finally
load. They are squealing and shrieking,
all trying to get to the food at once.)
Me: Teensy didn’t like that noise. (Pic of Teensy)
Hannah: hahaha
Victoria: He has eye makeup on
Me (watching video clip): One piglet got totally upended!
Lydia posts a picture of Bella and
Monty in their large indoor nighttime pen, with eggcrate foam, etc., all ripped
up.
Lydia:
It
was a dog bed
Hannah: Whoa... who's the perpetrator?
Me: 🙀🙀 Teensy and Tiger are appalled.
Hannah: Bella looks like she's telling you she was
just a bystander.
Lydia: Monty slept on that bed every night since we
got him. So... I would guess it was the innocent-looking one who did it
Me: Maybe she thought if she got rid of his bed,
you'd give him back?
Victoria: Monty looks depressed
Lydia: He at least had the decency to feel a little
bad about it 😝
Bella's pretty sure she deserves a
medal
Me: 😄
Lydia: That was a month ago. He has grown considerably since!
Me: I wondered if his consternation had shrunk
him.
Lydia: 😆
And now it is a little after 11:00
p.m., and Larry has come home. He’s been
working on vehicles in Genoa since eating supper about four hours ago. He helped me give Tiger his medicine – never
an entirely successful venture, as Tiger somehow manages to patooey a good
portion of it back out again. I’ll try
it with a different syringe next time. The
medicine is helping, though; Tiger is definitely getting better! But he sure doesn’t like taking that
medicine. 😜😝 Nevertheless, he doesn’t hold it against us,
but goes to rubbing around our ankles again as soon as the ordeal is over. I gave him the expected treats afterwards;
that helps.
Bedtime! Tomorrow I shall quilt.
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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