Journal: Runzas and Meatloaf and Old Pictures

After last week’s letter, one of my cousins asked me what runzas are.  Since I can’t remember not knowing what runzas are, it often doesn’t occur to me that a majority of people have never heard of them.

The Runza® Sandwich features fresh-baked bread stuffed with ground beef, onions, a secret blend of spices, and cabbage.  The restaurant started in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1949:

https://www.runza.com/about

Pictured is the original, which is my favorite.  You can also get Cheese, Swiss Mushroom, Vegetarian, Southwest Black Bean Vegetarian, Southwest, Spicy Jack, Cheeseburger, BBQ Bacon, BLT, and minis.  They also sell burgers, fries, onion rings, chicken strips, chicken wraps, BLT Jr. wraps, mini corndogs, salads, grilled chicken sandwiches, Sundaes, shakes, and chocolate chip cookies.

We sometimes make them from scratch.  Yummy!  Here’s a good recipe:

https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/nebraska-s-stuffed-beef-sandwiches/

I like them best without cheese, and I love to put a little dab of butter on them just before each bite.  😋

No, I lied.  I like a big dab of butter on them just before each bite.

Tuesday evening, after taking Loren his food, I took Joanna’s necklace with the missing garnet to UPS.  Amazon had sent me a barcode they can scan at the UPS Store, and then the package can be sent back at no charge to me.  UPS provides the packaging, too.  Handy.

I then went to Hobby Lobby and got two vinyl spiral notebooks with vinyl covers for Joanna’s and Emma’s birthdays.  Joanna’s birthday was January 13; she turned 18.  Emma’s birthday will be February 8; she will be 15.

Joanna’s journal is aqua with gold print; Emma’s is navy with navy print.  

Bible verses are on the cover and at the bottom of each page.  Too bad most are not King James Version.  These will go with gel pens for Joanna, and mechanical pencils for Emma. 

Larry stopped at one of the auto parts stores and got Joanna a reversible windshield cover.  One side has a black background under pretty flowers; the other side has a white background.

For her graduation gift, we gave her three pieces of my mother’s pink Depression Glass dishes and told her she can have the whole set anytime she wants it.

There are at least two different patterns of glass in this set.  Most – maybe all – of it was given to my mother as a wedding gift in 1936.  I wish I knew the story behind it!

Wednesday, Larry decided all of his church shirts needed to be washed.  All of them, including a few he had hanging in the closet.  I walked into the washroom and found a gigantic pile of dress shirts in a heap atop the dryer.

They made two full loads; plus, there were two or three loads of work clothes, and I had a smallish load of everyday clothes.  The washer churned away all day long.

After taking Loren his supper that afternoon, I stopped by my friend Ann’s house to pick up a purple, teal, and green quilt top her daughter Johanna, who’s 11 ½, had made for her grandmother.  The backing was purple.

Home again, I hunted through my thread... and discovered I had no purple or lavender.  However, I had a dark silver that I decided would look pretty on the back; it would make the pantograph show up a little better than if it perfectly matched, and most people like that.

For the top, I found a pretty teal blue that exactly matched many of the fabrics. 

I emailed my friend to ask if that sounded all right; and when she said it did, I got on with loading the quilt on my frame.

A friend sent me a picture of a cedar waxwing and asked if these birds ever come through our part of the country. 

They do, though I haven’t seen one around our house the entire time we’ve lived out here in the country. 

A bunch of migrating cedar waxwings landed in a little town in Iowa a few years back, and went to feasting on the cherries in the trees that lined Main Street. 

Problem:  weather conditions had caused the cherries to ferment right on the trees.

The next morning, the town’s populace found hordes of waxwings staggering crookedly down the sidewalks, unable to fly.  People were quite disconcerted until a local ornithologist realized the trouble:  those fowl were drunk. Drunker’n skunks, they were.

  

Eventually, they recovered... ate more cherries... got drunk again... recovered...  When the cherries were gone, the birds moved on, probably alcoholics for the rest of their little birdy lives.

That night, I quilted a row and a half of Johanna’s strip quilt, using a pantograph by Anne Bright called ‘Aves’.

After shutting down the Avanté, I went through the box of fabric and quilting books my friend had given me last Monday.  There are quite a number of charm packs (stacks of 5” squares, usually cut with pinking shears), several pieces of yardage, a bag of 1.5” strips, and two appliqué patterns. 

I really like this little book called ‘Inspiring Thoughts for Quilters’, but the person who wrote the blurb about Dorcas should’ve continued reading, and then she wouldn’t have had to guess.  It says, “It is likely she (Dorcas) used her sewing skills to make garments that she could donate to the poor.”  But only three verses later, in Acts 9:39, it says, “All the widows stood by him (Peter) weeping, and shewing the coats and garments which Dorcas made, while she was with them.”

It was this Dorcas that we named our daughter Dorcas after. When she was about three years old (she’s 38 now), she would find the picture of Dorcas in our big blue Bible Story Book and say, “This is me!”

I’d tell her, “That’s Dorcas in the Bible!” and she would smile, look at the picture again, and say, “This is me in the Bible!”

That night, the wind started gathering steam, until it was blowing steadily at about 40 mph, with gusts up to 50 mph.  This would continue through the next two days, with winds clocked at over 60 mph.  The same storm produced winds of 125 mph in Montana.

The pantograph I was using on Johanna’s quilt was a somewhat small scale.  As a good part of it consisted of outlines of birds, it required some precision and accuracy, so I couldn’t go quite as fast as usual.  The first row always takes the longest, while I get accustomed to the pantograph and stop a couple of times to make sure the tension is good on the back.

Thursday afternoon when I was halfway through, I timed a row:  it took exactly eight minutes. That’s slower than you’d think, since the quilt was only 43” wide.  But if I went too fast, the pretty little birds turned into platypuses.  😂

I timed it several rows later, and it took 6 minutes and 44 seconds.  

Pantographs get easier with each row.  About the time one is an expert at that particular design, the quilt is done. 😅

While I quilted that day, I ran back-up on my laptop, saving all documents and pictures to two external hard drives.  Since I selected ‘Overwrite’, as I had edited a few journals and photos from years gone by, the task took somewhere in the vicinity of 8 hours to complete.

Late that night, I finished quilting the strip quilt.  I trimmed it, took pictures, and retired to my recliner.

It was 30°, with a wind chill of 15° on account of the steady 40 mph winds, with gusts up to 55 mph.  Brrrrr...

Why was I drinking iced tea?!

Friday, Loren came by at about 1:30 p.m. looking for Larry.  It was snowing, and the wind was blowing at about 45 mph, and he had some troubles hanging onto the door as he came in.  He was once again surprised to learn that Larry was working.  Loren does sometimes remember that Larry works – and then goes looking for him at Walker’s shop.  Thankfully, the men who work there are friends and/or family, and always kind and helpful.

I had one last piece of apple pie left, so I gave it to Loren, and told him I’d bring him some food later. 

When I took him supper at 4:00, as usual, he was surprised to see me.  “I thought you already gave me food!” he exclaimed.

“I did!” I told him, “Apple pie, when you stopped by my house earlier!”

“Oh, yes, now I remember,” he said, and rubbed his stomach in a ‘yum!’ motion.

“So you got to do what you like to do best:  eat dessert first!” said I, which made him laugh. 

He’s almost always in good spirits. 

As I’m working my way through this big project of scanning all my before-digital printed pictures, I’m finding quilts... blankets... dresses... skirts... blouses... boys’ suits... shirts... pants... curtains... tablecloths... that I made and had forgotten all about.  When I’m done with the scanning, I’ll post pictures of the clothes on my Clothes Rack blog.

Teddy and Amy and the children went to the Black Hills last week.  Teddy sent me a picture of the kids in front of Mt. Rushmore.

Larry’s been caring for their animals, and tells funny stories of the sheep behaving more like pigs than sheep, as they run madly between his legs, nearly upending him, to get to the buckets of food he’s carrying.

Saturday I finished scanning Volume 84A, the 35^th photo album I’ve scanned (they’re not in order).  I’ve now scanned 9,084 photos.  It’s fun, this trip down Memory Lane. 

We were the last ones out of the church after the morning service, because we were having such a fun time with Carolyn and Violet.

Then we hurried home to make dinner for Loren:  deer meatloaf, corn, a baked potato, V8 cocktail juice, applesauce, and strawberry jello with peaches.  After leaving his house, we drove to Schuyler for E-85 gas, and on our way home we took the Jeep through a car wash.  Two of the newer car washes had mile-long lines of cars waiting, because it was the first time in a long time that the temperature was above freezing.  We managed to get in quickly at an older car wash.  It’s still a nice one, and has a good brand of wax in its sprayers.

Here is Victoria looking leerily at Keith’s puppy, Duke.  He’d tried chewing on her dolly!  Just look at the grip she has on that doll.

Last night as I walked toward the door of the church, Andrew, Hester, and Keira were coming down the sidewalk.  Keira spotted me, cried, “Grandma!” and immediately, “Where’s Grandpa?!” as she began skipping happily toward me.

“He’s parking the Jeep,” I told her – and just then the church bells started chiming.

“There’s the bells!” she exclaimed, and stood very still and silent, the better to hear them.

We walked to the coatroom together.  After hanging up coats, I leaned down to give Keira a hug – and inadvertently touched my cold, cold nose to her forehead.  She made a small exclamation and clapped both small hands over her forehead.  😆

Larry came in then, and gave her a small strawberry mint.  She popped it into her mouth, tipped her head away from him, grinned, wrinkled her nose, and peeped at him out of the corners of her eyes.

She’s the funniest little thing.

I held Baby Eva for a while after church; the sweet baby was all full of smiles, and she cooed when Larry talked to her. 

I had to play with Malinda before we left.  She’s getting less and less timid, and more and more liable to tell me all about whatever she’s been doing.

We had a late lunch of Larry’s yummy pancakes when we got home, and used the good maple syrup Caleb and Maria gave us for Christmas.  Mmmmm...

Finished eating, we went and sat down in our recliners.

We’d just gotten ourselves comfortable when there was a fracas nearby.  I didn’t see everything that happened, but obviously Tiger had bugged Teensy as he was sleeping in his Thermabed, probably poking his nose into Teensy’s fur and snuffling loudly, whereupon Teensy sprang up and dashed away. 

Tiger was close enough that I could just reach him, so I ka-thumped him (gently! – he’s old, and I don’t want to hurt him) on the rump.  He jumped, looked back at me with a guilty expression (oh, yes, cats can too look guilty), and waddled quickly to his own bed. 

Teensy regrouped and went and jumped on Larry, who was covered up with the wool/ velvet/corduroy Log Cabin quilt.  He positioned himself smack-dab in front of Larry’s tablet.  Larry lifted it higher, the better to see it.  Teensy stretched his head up high to keep it between Larry and the tablet.  Larry raised the tablet higher.  Teensy stretched up higher, ears askew.

By this time Larry and I were both laughing.  The look on Teensy’s face – ‘You will pay attention to me!’ – was hilarious.

Late this morning, I looked out the window and discovered snowflakes falling gently and prettily from a bright, winter-white sky.  Not a sentence often used to describe weather in Nebraska, with the words ‘snowflakes’ and ‘falling gently’ all in a row.

I got the kitchen all cleaned up (how do a mere two people use so many dishes?!), then made food for Loren:  chicken breast filet, fire-roasted vegetables and potatoes, rice pudding, peaches, a cranberry-orange muffin, and white cranberry-peach juice.  After dropping off his food, I swung by the post office, as I finally found someone – a lady on my Quilt Talk group – who can use the ink cartridge I purchased for the old printer just before it went kaput.

Home again, I accidentally ate a muffin (they were still warm! – I couldn’t help it!), then petted Teensy kitty and gave him a treat.

Here’s one of the pictures I scanned Saturday:  Caleb, age 5, is baiting his hook.  We were at Calamus Reservoir, 115 miles to our west, in the middle-Nebraska Sandhills, on Memorial Day 1999.

The favorite old songbook, Vict’ry Road, that I ordered from eBay arrived Saturday, and I’ve been happily playing through those old songs.  I’ve missed them!

And now I shall pour myself another piping hot cup of coffee – Bavarian Chocolate mixed with Peruvian, this time – and get back to scanning photos.

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