Did you ever walk past a sleeping cat who roused enough to wonder what you were doing... turned his head to follow your progression past him... but was toooo, toooo sleepy to actually open his eyes? Makes ’im look sorta like a mole.
This week I’ve been watching
discussions on a number of quilting forums.
Some people post pictures of partially-done quilts and ask for advice;
others get advice, whether they asked for it or not.
I am fundamentally
opposed to those who are forever screeching, “Less is more! Less is more!!!” That just isn’t good math. Any math teacher worth his or her salt knows more
is more. Less is simply... less.
I wish I could remember
the name of a quilting lady who put together a book on appliqué (it’s in my
bookcase, somewhere – but since I don’t know which book it’s in or what color
the cover is, how would I ever find it?) — anyway, she said, “Before you decide
you don’t like a certain appliqué design on your quilt, add to it! You probably don’t have enough pieces in
the design.”
Appliqué work, especially
when there’s a lot of it to do, always feels like a gigantic task when I first
start. But because it’s so pretty, it
becomes rewarding quite quickly, and it isn’t hard at all to keep going.
A friend was trying
different appliqué mockups on the border of a beautiful quilt she has made. Several fellow quilters offered their advice,
many telling her not to make it ‘too elaborate’, or admonishing her not to ‘go
overboard’ for fear of ‘detracting from the top’. If you knew how many, many times I’ve had
people say that, when I posted pictures of tops before I added the
borders! And I hadn’t even asked for
advice. 😅
One person even advised her to leave off appliqués entirely, and maybe
even leave off the outer border!
When I was making the
Americana Eagle quilt, I posted a picture of it after attaching that first
narrow maroon border around the eagle. There
were eight more to go, including the ones with the pinwheels, the beaded Prairie
Points, and so forth. I had started this
quilt by putting together all those little pinwheels, constructing them from
leftover bits from another quilt. Then I
used EQ8 to design something to showcase them.
Well, yes, the pinwheels wound up showcasing the eagle, rather than the
other way around; but I was quite pleased with it – and Larry liked it so well,
I gave it to him, rather than giving it away.
Immediately after I
posted the picture with that one little border, some woman wrote, “Do NOT, under
any circumstance, add anything else to this quilt!!! You will RUIN it if you do! Anything else will way overbalance it.”
Usually I ignore remarks
like that. This time, I wrote back, “I
shall only ruin it with eight more borders.”
Then when I was making
that twisted-tuck border for the Atlantic Beach Path quilt, someone exclaimed
in horror, “Oh, NO!!! You aren’t going
to add THAT to your quilt, are you?! It
DOESN’T MATCH AT ALL!”
A whole slew of quilting
ladies pummeled THAT one back into the earth on my behalf. I didn’t have to say anything at all.
And there are always,
ALWAYS, those souls who say, upon seeing a finished quilt top (whether mine or
someone else’s), “Whatever you do, do NOT quilt anything fancy on this quilt. Simple and minimal is the way to go, or you
will overpower the beauty of the quilt.”
One poor lady on one of
those big Facebook groups was getting all worried and anxious over statements
like that last one, because she really wanted to quilt something pretty and
fancy on her first big quilt. I decided
to give her another point of view, and wrote, “Or you could add immeasurably to
the beauty of your quilt with the most beautiful quilting you are capable of.”
I was quite surprised
when she wrote back, “Oh, thank you, thank you!
I was beginning to think I was nuts for even liking that kind of
quilting!”
People who are easily
swayed shouldn’t join enormous groups with Bossy Boots Bertha and her cohorts
running rampant through it. 🤪🥴
I was hunting through some of my old journals for a piece of
information, and came on this one from July 31, 2000. Victoria was 3, and
we were getting ready to go to Columbus, Ohio. (Here she is at the 4th of
July picnic that year, and yes, it was hot.)
(“Why Columbus, Ohio?” asked Caleb, who’d never heard
of the place. “Because we’re tired of Columbus, Nebraska,” I told
him.)
I’d doled out lists to the older kids, and was going to help
Victoria after I got all my things and Larry’s things packed.
But Victoria beat me to it:
Victoria came rushing into the living room. She was carrying her
doll basket, and it was full of all manner of things that she thought she
should take with her: her biggest doll, a toy coffee pot, a stuffed
tiger, a stuffed bear in a mint-green crocheted dress, books, Caleb’s corsage
from Bobby and Hannah’s wedding, a tiny metal car, and a plastic bag from the
veterinary clinic with the words Cat Stuff imprinted on both sides above
a cute photo of kittens. Inside the bag were a large car and a
kaleidoscope. But the strangest thing in the doll basket was a long
plastic pipe that was part of a set of pipes that went on a big Tonka truck
that used to be Keith’s many years ago.
Hannah said to Victoria, “Are you all ready to go?”
“Yes!” Victoria affirmed, showing her the basket. “Here’s what I’m
taking!”
Hannah, who’d come visiting from her ‘new’ house about 3 blocks away,
peered into the basket. “Oh!!” she exclaimed, pulling out the pipe, “This
will really come in handy!”
She held it to her lips and spoke loudly into it, in a very good imitation
of Victoria herself: “I need to go to the restroom!” 🤣😆
Victoria looked amazed, then embarrassed, and her shoulders went higher
and higher until they met her earlobes.
I took pity on the child, stopped what I was doing, and packed her
things, so she would no longer fear getting left behind for lack of proper
packing.
Tuesday, Loren’s supper consisted of butterfly deer steaks,
mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet peas, pineapple slices, apple juice, a
cranberry-orange muffin, prunes, and rice pudding. He was so pleased over those
yummy little deer steaks that for once he didn’t start eating dessert first.
Here are Hester, age 11,
Lydia, age 9, and Victoria, age 3, at Bobby and Hannah’s wedding on June 25,
2000. Hester was one of the
candlelighters, Lydia sat at the guestbook desk, and Victoria was the flowergirl.
Loren had what he thought were light switches going bad in
his kitchen. He hit the switches, first one,
then the other, and the lights immediately came on, but were flickering. They are fluorescent lights. It wasn’t the switches, but the bulbs themselves,
behaving exactly like fluorescent lights do when they are about to go kaput.
I relayed the problem to Larry, so the next day he stopped
by Loren’s house, brought a ladder in from his north garage (the ceiling in the
kitchen is vaulted and fairly high), took the cover off, and removed the
bulbs. There are four in the main
fixture; two in the one over the sink.
Half were going bad; the other half were already burned out. He went to Menards and got all new bulbs. The lights are working fine now, and Loren
was quite surprised that it wasn’t the switch after all, though when Larry
arrived, he was surprised Larry thought there was a problem with his lights; he’d
forgotten all about it.
Loren said he doesn’t often use the kitchen lights at night,
“...but Norma might’ve needed them; her schedule is a little different than
mine.”
Sometimes I think of the bright side of this Lewy Body
dementia is that in thinking Norma is there now and then, he isn’t as lonely as
he would otherwise be.
On the other hand, maybe when he’s lonely, he’s more likely
to hallucinate? Hard to say.
One afternoon, he told me about a phone call he’d just
gotten, and says this happens about once a week (though his perception of time
is extremely skewed) – but when he picked up the phone, no one was there.
I said it could’ve just been a robocall; they have a certain
number of phone numbers in queue, and if too many people actually answer, they
have to let a few calls drop.
“On the other hand,” I remarked, “It could be a
robber casing the joint, in which case you should whisper into the phone, ‘There’s
a pot of boiling oil directly over the door,’ and then hang up.”
Loren looked amazed, then started laughing – and laughed all
the more when I reminded him of how Calvin (of Calvin & Hobbes fame) didn’t
like taking messages from colleagues of his fathers; so once when someone
wanted him to take a message, he blew up a balloon, popped it with a pin,
yelled, “AGHH!!! I’ve been shot!” and hung up the phone.
I often have to tell stories like this two or three times,
since Loren can’t quite catch it all the first time around. He told me
with a twinkle in his eye, “The older I get, the faster people talk.”
As I left, he thanked me for the food – and for the
funnies.
Home again, I paid some bills, then got back to the photo scanning.
Going through all the photos from Bobby and
Hannah’s wedding brings
back lots of memories of sewing lots of purple dresses. One bridesmaid’s dress wound up a wee bit too
small; another wound up a wee bit too big.
They traded – and all was well.
Whew.
Hannah’s gown originally had a very long train on it, which
she did not want. I took pictures of her
in the gown with the train still on it – and then I cut it off and used it to
make Victoria’s dress. Hannah put that
exquisite beadwork on Victoria’s dress, matching it to the beading design on
her own. Hannah made Caleb’s ringbearer
pillow. (I think.) She put the beading on it, too.
Sooner or later, I’ll get to that photo of Hannah with the
train still on her gown.
Last Monday, I mailed a package of ink to a lady who has a
printer like my older one. (Why do
printers quit working immediately after one buys new cartridges of ink for
them?) Since it was MLK Day and the post
office was closed, I stuck on what I figured would be enough stamps, and put it
in a mail depository.
Thursday I got it back,
with a sticker on it that says the post office can’t ship packages that large
(it’s quite small, actually) for security reasons. Siggghhhh... At least they didn’t cancel the stamps! I was able to reuse them.
Ah, well; the advantage to taking the package inside the
post office is that we now get a tracking number.
Andrew had some time off to use before the end of the month,
so he, Hester, and Keira took a little vacation in Colorado last week, staying
in a cabin near Longmont. Hester sent
this picture of Keira, writing, “Everywhere we go, we are kept busy with
rock-digging!”
I ordered groceries online Wednesday, and reserved a
time slot for 4:00 – 4:30 p.m. to pick them up Thursday. They’re doing their time slots in half-hour
increments now, rather than one-hour increments.
I arrived at Hy-Vee at 4:25 p.m., though I had not yet
received a text telling me the groceries were ready. They usually text the following shortly
before time to pick them up:
“Hy-Vee Alerts: Your order is expected to be ready at
4:00pm. Reply GO when leaving and we’ll have it ready. Reply HELP for help,
STOP to stop these messages.”
This being unusual, I decided to text “Go”, and see what
would happen next.
I got this message:
“Hy-Vee Alerts: Your
order isn’t quite ready yet. We’ll let you know as soon as it’s ready. Reply
HELP for help, STOP to cancel.”
I waited 20 minutes, then texted “Help”.
I then got this message:
“You signed up to receive Hy-Vee Alerts. Contact
800-772-4098 for further assistance. Message & data rates may apply. Reply
STOP to cancel.”
I waited 10 more minutes, then texted “Here”. It was 4:55 p.m. by then.
I got a repeat of message #1.
I’d seen store boys bringing several cartloads of groceries
to the pick-up trailer, but none were mine.
I called the store and asked if they were running behind. The lady apologized, and said my order should
be ready right then... but she gave me no hints as to what I should do next.
So... I pulled into the pickup lane. A boy soon came out to ask my name, then went
back into the pick-up trailer and promptly returned with my groceries. They’d been there the whole time, cooling
their heels! Or warming their
heels, as the case may have been.
I was home and had long put away the groceries and got on
with the photo-scanning again when I got a text from Hy-Vee:
“Hy-Vee Alerts: Your order is expected to be ready at
4:00pm. Reply GO when leaving and we’ll have it ready. Reply HELP for help,
STOP to stop these messages.”
It was 6:27 p.m. 🙄
I wonder... if I replied ‘Go’, headed to the store, and then texted
‘Here’, would a duplicate of my first order be loaded into my Jeep? (No, I wouldn’t do that.)
Here’s a picture taken on the day of Bobby and Hannah’s
wedding. There was tornadic activity
going on all afternoon. We were glad it
cleared up and the sun came out in time for a few outdoor pictures before the
service.
That Sunday afternoon, the tornado sirens went off several
times. There were tornadoes to the
northeast that caused extensive damage to several farmplaces. This was the view from our house. We couldn’t actually see the tornadoes, but
we could see definite circular movement in those strange clouds.
This is the photographer, Mike Senior, with Hannah and
Bobby.
Each morning while getting myself all cute and presentable,
I listen to the news on a local rural radio station. There’s an ad for tree removal service that
drives me bonkers, and gets stuck in my head for hours: “Don’t put yourSELF in harm’s
way; call Steve!”
You know, put him in harm’s way.
Don’t people who oversee ads – or better yet, those who pay
for the ads – notice when the acCENT is on the wrong syl-AH-ble?
Think how much better it would be if the ad narrator said, “Don’t
put yourself in harm’s way; call Steve!”
With no over-emphasis on any words, it means exactly what the ad writer wanted
it to mean: “Call someone who knows how
to do it safely!” rather than, “Let’s all endanger Steve! He’s a mean one.”
I also heard a discussion on the Covid-19 variant and its
mutations. They’ve gone from saying that,
while it’s more contagious, it’s not more dangerous, and the vaccine would
cover it, to now saying that it’s scary, scary-bad, getting worse, and the
vaccine may not work. The solution? Double-up on masks, of course!
I paused, and listened a bit closer to see if they’d really
said what I thought they’d said.
Yep. Put two
masks on. No, wait, three would
be better! Really. That’s what they said; I’m not kidding.
See, they should’ve listened to me, when not too long
ago I said we should all just wrap our heads in saran wrap! A plastic bag will do, in a pinch; simply
pull it over your head and gorilla-tape it good around the neck.
Here I am while on a
field trip with several classes of schoolchildren visiting some friends’
farmplace in late spring of 2000.
I was chatting with a
friend on Facebook. She asked a question
about the dresses for Hannah’s wedding.
“pfp[ ‘;” I replied
unintentionally.
Now, I could delete that remark
(yes, one can delete and edit one’s comments on Facebook – just click those
three little dots on the right side of the comment), but it was funnier to leave
it there and explain what had happened: Teensy
cat had jumped on the keyboard. He had also
brought up Groove music app and the calculator.
I grabbed him (carefully! – he’s old, and I don’t
want to hurt him) and put him down, exclaiming, “That’s bad! You know better than that.”
(He does.)
He raced off to vent his spleen on throw rugs throughout the
upstairs, dashing headlong at them, grabbing them with his claws, and
rolling. You’d never have known he’s gone
gimpy and practically decrepit at times.
By 5:00 p.m., the mist that
had been falling since early afternoon was starting to freeze, as the
temperature had dropped to 27°. The
freezing mist would continue through midmorning Sunday. And there’s dense fog in Galveston! (I knew you’d want to know.)
Larry had driven some distance to the north that day. The road was very slick all the way
home. There was a bad wreck just north
of Madison; a van had evidently been going too fast to make the curve on a hill,
slid down through the median, overturned in the oncoming lane, and was then hit
by a pickup. Both the driver and the
passenger in the van were killed.
Saturday night, I finished scanning the 37th
photo album – 9,649 photos are now scanned.
Sunday after the morning service, we gave Loren sirloin
steak and vegetable soup, asparagus, strawberry cheesecake yogurt with granola,
a banana, and cranberry juice. Larry
took it to him, and put de-icing salt on his porch and drive while he was
there.
Here’s another excerpt from my journal of 07-31-00:
In Avon, Ohio, we pulled into a vacant
lot across the street from a convenience store for one of our multitudes of pit
stops.
We walked across the street. After filling our hands with a variety of
such things as extremely hot coffee, extremely hot water (to pour into the
extremely thick coffee, unless one didn’t mind using a fork with which to eat
one’s coffee) (just what one needs when the temperature is in the 90s and one
cannot run one’s AC because it causes the truck to overheat), pop, juice, and
granola bars, we headed back across the busy street. Joseph and Hester ran ahead and were already
in the pickup as the rest of us were preparing to cross the road. I was holding the extremely hot coffee in one
hand and the extremely hot water in the other (to pour into the extremely thick
coffee, because I am not Turkish). Larry
was holding a large glass of pop in one hand and Victoria’s hand in the other.
Suddenly, a block to our left, just
beyond a big intersection, there was a blinding flash and a horrific BOOM!!
Flames shot every which way, high
voltage lines sizzled and crackled – and began popping loose and falling, one
loop after another, fast coming our way.
I, not being one to panic, stood and looked at it with interest.
“We’ve got to get back!” Larry said
urgently, stepping back and pulling Victoria with him.
I abruptly came out of my mesmerized
state.
“Get back!” I shouted, and then for
good measure, “GET
BACK!!” — and 7,214 people – the
entire population of Avon – leaped back from whatever they were doing, whether
sitting at a computer terminal, standing at the water cooler, waiting at an elevator
door, washing dishes at their kitchen sink, trimming rose bushes in their yard,
or sitting in an easy chair reading the evening news. I am not a preacher’s
daughter for nothin’.
So far as I know, all those people are
still standing in mute shock, gazing at whatever it was they were near, and
whatever it was they so suddenly ‘got
back’ from, just because of the sonic sound waves their subconscious minds
heard, wondering what in the world happened.
Meanwhile, the
five of us on the near side of the street skedaddled backwards like skeert
chickens, gazing skyward, looking for a place where there were no high voltage
wires overhead. About the time things
settled down and we decided we would attempt to cross the street again, some
trucks passed by the downed lines, sending them swaying and bumping into each
other. Once again, it sounded like the
Fourth of July, snapping and popping and spitting fire. More wires burned and fell, coming
altogetherly too close for comfort, and we hurriedly backed farther away. The box on the side of a metal pole at the
corner burned swiftly, and it looked as if the poles on both corners, including
the one nearest our pickup and trailer, were wiped clean of their creosote
coating with one swipe of a giant eraser.
We were glad that Joseph knew his
safest course of action lay in staying put, and keeping
his sister there with him. Just as
we deemed it safe to go across the road, the police arrived to block off the
route where the wires were down. We
crossed the street, climbed into the pickup, and started to go – a difficult
piece of work, because the stop-and-go lights at the corner were out, and the
traffic was backed up on all four sides of the intersection. We wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible,
because those wires continued on right over the lot where the pickup and
trailer was parked, and we were afraid they would catch another breeze, touch
each other, and start their flaming, crackling descent again.
We cautiously pulled under wires that
were still live – and it was at that moment that a truck with a tall load, the
driver not noticing the downed lines, turned the corner and started under the
low-hanging lines. It looked to us as
though he was heading right into direct contact with those wires.
“His tires are going to blow right out
from underneath him,” said Larry quietly, and we watched in wordless, helpless
dread as that big truck rolled closer to disaster.
And then the driver saw the police cars
and stopped, in the nick of time.
It took a moment or two for our hearts
to start beating again, and another moment or two to catch our breaths. We carefully jockeyed around the rear of the
truck as it sat there in the middle of that junction, and then we were off down
the road and out of danger. Whew! These paid
vacations...
After
crossing over Sandusky Bay on the Bay Bridge, we drove around Marblehead
Peninsula, stopping to see Marblehead Lighthouse. This lighthouse has been in continuous
service longer than any other lighthouse.
Construction was completed in 1822, and it’s been working ever
since. As we walked nearer, we could see
people far above us, walking around the light up at the top, holding the
railing. We happily headed for the door.
It
was a big old wooden door, painted green – and it was stuck. I pushed on it, succeeding in getting it open
a few inches. I braced my feet and
determinedly pushed.
What
I didn’t know was that the lighthouse keeper was trying to shut and lock the
door from the other side. He pulled it
open, looking a bit disgruntled at this persistent tourist who wouldn’t take no
for an answer – and I, still shoving with all my might and main, nearly tumbled
in onto his feet.
I
gathered myself together and grinned at him.
“Oops,”
said I. “Sorry!”
He
quit looking peeved and laughed. “The
last tour went up at 4:30,” he told me.
“I’m just locking the door; you can come back tomorrow at 9:00 a.m.”
Four-thirty. We were fifteen minutes too late, and
‘tomorrow’ would find us 500 miles farther west. But I thanked him, and we trekked off to the
rocky shores of Lake Erie, where we used up handfuls of film and a good deal of
energy clambering about on the boulders.
Whitecaps sparkled snowy white in the sunlight, and breakers crashed
against the rocks at our feet. Boats in
the distance rose and fell on the waves, and sea gulls wheeled overhead, their
cries drifting down like tinkling chimes.
Here are Lydia and Caleb at Marblehead Lighthouse, Ohio, on the shores of Lake Erie:
It started snowing early
this morning. By 2:30 p.m., it was 24°
with a wind chill of 11°. We had 6” of
snow, and it was still coming down hard. It was beautiful. I love snow, and I’ve gotten a lot of pretty
pictures of the birds at my feeding stations. The photos were a bit dark, but I popped them
into my photo editor and brightened and sharpened them up a bit. Here's a female Downy woodpecker:
Larry came home for lunch a
little after noon, so I packed up a box with cold things for Loren –
peach-white cranberry juice, V8 cocktail juice, red grapes, and a banana. Larry got him the red grapes at the little store in Genoa
Saturday evening, knowing Loren really likes them. Larry would get a hot chicken sandwich for
him at Sapp Bros. truck stop and take him the food at about 4:30 p.m. KFC, Subway, and other restaurants were
closed, due to the weather.
When I called Loren to tell him Larry would be bringing him
some food, he thanked me, then said in a bit of a worried tone, “You’ve been
bringing me food for a looong time now.”
So I retorted in an indignant tone, “Well, you just keep
eating!!!”
That made him laugh, of course.
I wonder how many different kinds of birds there are at the
feeding station today? Hmmm...
1.
Eurasian
collared dove
2.
Harris’
sparrow
3.
American
goldfinch
4.
House
finch
5.
Downy
woodpecker
6.
Hairy
woodpecker
7.
Red-bellied
woodpecker
8.
Blue
jay
9.
Northern
cardinal
10.
Dark-eyed
junco
11.
Pink-sided
dark-eyed junco (a Rocky Mountain variant)
12.
English
sparrow
13.
Red-breasted
nuthatch
14.
European
starling
The blue jays are not quite as skilled as the nuthatches,
but their agility is nothing to sneeze at.
Here is a Harris’ sparrow in winter plumage:
I think there are still mourning doves and American robins
about, but I haven’t heard or seen them today. Maybe they skedaddled south
in front of the snowstorm.
I took 82 pictures and 23 videos.
This is a European starling.
Winters have generally been a bit less severe than usual in
the last five years or so, but when the storms come, they have often been more
violent. I
just measured the snow out on our back deck, and it’s 10 ½”. The forecast
says we could get an additional 3” through the night.
Makes things tricky and sometimes downright
dangerous for the menfolk in construction, but the moisture itself is good news, because the entire
state is in severe drought, and has been for several months.
Here’s the pretty red-bellied woodpecker, big ol’
bully that he is.
Bedtime!
Tomorrow I need to take care of some financial matters for Loren at an
office in town (if they’re open), pay bills, extract my 830 Record Bernina from
its cabinet and clean and oil it for Victoria, take Loren some food, ... and
scan pictures.
Goodnight!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
