Journal: Off with a Bang

 

Last Monday, Hannah not only took supper to Loren, but to us, too.  It was roast beef and gravy, green beans, cornbread made with broccoli and cottage cheese, and cottage cheese.  A yummy supper.

I saw a little chipmunk the other day when I was outside.  I caught a glimpse of movement under the big hosta leaves and thought it was a bird, because they like to hide there, and when the hosta leaves are all wet, they stand under them and flutter their wings and squirt on shower gel and sing in the bathtub.  ♫ ♪ 

I turned slowly, so as not to scare it – and saw fur and paws, rather than feathers and talons.  Wee little tiny paws.  And a wee little fluffy brown tail.  I leaned down slowly – and got a quick glance of a little striped back before he scampered farther into the hostas.  Aren’t they cute?  Trouble is, they like to eat hostas.  (What they don’t know is that the cats might eat them before they ever get a hosta devoured.)

I managed to refresh the birdbaths and fill the feeders that day.  I called Loren at 3:00 p.m., and then took him some food for the first time in a little over a week.  It was something of a job lifting my legs into the BMW, but ah done it!  I hadn’t driven since the BBBB (Big, Bad Boo-Boo).  So I was either a) getting better, or b) getting more determined. 

Wednesday afternoon, Maria texted me, asking how my back was, and sending a picture of Baby Eva, sound asleep.

Sweet little baby.  Makes you want to give that soft little cheek a kiss, doesn’t it?

“They look so angelic when sleeping,” said Maria.

“Sometimes they even look angelic when they’re awake!” I replied.

She sent a couple more pictures of Eva and Caleb – and see, I was right!  Angelic even when awake.  😊

“She had her first tooth pop through yesterday,” Maria told me.

“Oh!” I exclaimed, “Now she can eat beefsteaks!”

Maria laughed, “She does love to eat!”

A friend and fellow quilter recently told of stopping at the renowned Hancock’s of Paducah quilting store on their way back from a vacation to the southeastern United States.  I hope to go there some day, too. 

I once thought we had the perfect opportunity to stop there for a few minutes when we were on our way to Florida back in February 2016 (Victoria’s last vacation with us); but my navigator (who happens to be related to me by marriage) kept right on a-goin’ south on I55 out of Cape Girardeau, blowing straight past the exit where I had earlier told him to turn east toward Paducah.

Furthermore, when I came out of the depths of whatever it was I was doing (editing pictures?  making sandwiches?) and discovered the routing error, we were too far south to turn back, as we were on a tight schedule to get to Daytona Beach and the AQS Quilting Show.  I accused said navigator of doing that on purpose, and methinks he didn’t protest nearly enough to convince me otherwise. 

Perhaps you’ll recall that a month and a half ago Country Traditions, the large quilt shop in Fremont, sent out a notice that they were downsizing and their business was for sale.  Well, last week I got a note saying that they aren’t closing after all.  I dutifully passed the word on to several quilting groups.

One lady queried, “Did someone buy it?  I hate to see another store go out of business.”

“No, it’s just ‘not for sale anymore’”, I replied.  “No explanation.  Maybe everyone in the states of Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, and South Dakota panicked upon hearing the news of an imminent sale/possible closing/downsizing, rushed to the store, and bought myriad bolts and spools and patterns and machines, and the owners were able to pay off all their debts, buy new inventory, and move to a mansion; and thus there was no longer a need to sell?”

After going 19 days without scanning any photos on account of all the quilting, I’m back at it.  I got 169 photos scanned Tuesday and Wednesday.  That’s certainly not breaking any records; but my back hurts, and I can’t work at it as long as I usually do.

Here’s what Larry looked like when I first met him, when we were both 13 years old.  I decided within three months that he was the one I intended to marry. 😁  It was 1974.

This is me at age 12; the picture was taken in 1973.

Thursday at noon, I got another quilt in the mail from a customer in Washington State.  My back was still quite painful, but at least I could quilt, if I was careful not to twist or bend.

That day, a friend got a shipment of ‘baby butterflies’, i.e., a cup of five Painted Lady caterpillars, from Clearwater Butterfly farm in Florida.

Two or three years ago, there was a huge influx of Painted Ladies all over the country, and especially right here in Nebraska.  We couldn’t walk down the front sidewalk without thick swarms of them rising off the hostas and circling our heads.  I envisioned sitting down in church and having vast quantities of butterflies escaping my hairdo and fluttering upward in spirals from my head.

Speaking of hairdos, here’s how I fix mine these DSB (Days of the Sore Back):  I strap a cold gel pack on my back, then perch on a pillow on the hamper in front of the mirror as I blow-dry and curl it.  Oh, for the days of yore, when my hair had enough of a wave to it that all I had to do was wash and dry it, and it looked all cute and fetching!  Now I spend about 10-15 minutes giving it a bit of a curl.  I might have a sore back, but I don’t want to look like a mud mushroom!  Here’s me, without putting those few curls in my hair:  

Annnnd... heeeere’s me, curled locks, cute little elastic band for the cold gel pack, and all.  (Yeah, I look like a mattress tied in the middle, but oh well.)  Maybe... possibly... perhaps... my back was feeling a little better that day.

One thing for sure, I haven’t been in danger of overheating during these hot summer days whilst a-wearing icepacks!  There it is 95° outside, and here I am with a sweater on.  People would think I was utterly nuts, if they didn’t know there was ice under thet thar sweater.

I have a sweater with embroidered flowers on it, and little embroidered ‘dots’ here and there between the flowers.  One time while wearing that sweater, I had Caleb, age 3, sitting on the counter beside the bathroom sink and was combing his hair before church.  He touched a few of those little embroidered dots, and then he said in his sweet way, “I really like your sweater, Mama.”  ((...pause...))  “I like all these little potato bugs.”  😆

I spent the afternoon quilting, quilting, quilting.  By 6:15 p.m., I was to the halfway point.

At 8:00, I took a little time-out for supper:  chicken egg rolls, green beans, potato salad, applesauce, and tapioca pudding. 

By midnight, my customer’s quilt was done.  She made it for her grandson, and he’s going to be visiting her next week, so I needed to hurry and ship it back the next day.

It measures 61” x 61”.  I used light charcoal 40-weight Gütermann thread on top, and cobalt blue 40-weight Signature thread in the bobbin.  I don’t usually use that heavy of thread in the bobbin, but it happened to match perfectly, and looks quite pretty on that backing fabric.  But I sure had to fill the bobbin a lot more often than when I use 60-weight thread in it.  The light charcoal on top blended pretty well with all the colors, and showed up nicely on the black sashing and borders.  The pantograph is ‘Evening Primrose’.

A friend asked about the tiny wildflower called Mouse Ears that I recently mentioned in my journal.  She has something similar in her garden, but thought her flower might be part of the viola or hosta family.  I looked it up. 

You know, a good deal of the time I look things up not because I think I don’t know, but to prove things to others.  And then I discover I don’t know as much as I thought I did.  😶

I was surprised to learn that there is a large variety of flowers, both cultivated and wild, that are named ‘Mouse Ears’.

The particular wildflower that grows here, with its two delicate periwinkle petals, are in the spiderwort family.  Its scientific name is Commelina communis, and it’s also called Asiatic Dayflower or Dew Herb.  Here it is at U.S. Wildflowers website:  Commelina communis 

Friday morning, Keira had outpatient surgery in Omaha for an inguinal hernia, which is a little hole that never closed, due to her being a preemie.  

Hester told us, “They say it’s not too painful and she should be feeling pretty normal in about two or three days.”

Larry texted Hester, “Well, give her a big hug for Grandpa and Grandma and tell her we love her this much 👉------------------------------------------👈 😊”

“I’ll show her that and read it to her,” Hester answered.  “She’ll love it.  💗😄”

A little after noon, Hester sent a picture of Keira in her hospital bed eating a push pop.  She wrote, “Push pops make everything better 😊.  Everything went well.  They only had to fix one side.  I’m not sure when we’ll be going home.”

I printed an invoice and a label, and packed my customer’s quilt into a box.  For her last few quilts, we have been exchanging a box on which someone wrote “BEANS” in big letters with a wide-tipped black permanent marker.  😆  I wonder how many times one can use a box before it loses its integrity?  Larry says my boxes get stronger with each use, because of the amount of packaging tape I plaster on them.

I took Loren some food that afternoon:  Black Angus burger, green beans, tapioca pudding, mango juice, peaches in strawberry jello, and red grapes.  Every day when I call him lately, he tells me, “Don’t bring much!  Small amounts of everything, and not very many things.”

I kinda sorta ignore him a little bit.  😉  I never take a whole lot of food, as he’s not a very big eater; but I do take what I consider a healthy meal, and admonish him to eat his vegetables, which makes him laugh.

After leaving Loren’s house, I took the quilt to the post office, then stopped at Pet Care to pick up Teensy kitty’s thyroid medicine, all whilst trying to march along like I was fine and dandy, nothing the matter with me, huh-uh, nosiree.  My route took me past Andrew and Hester’s house.  Both of their cars were there, so I knew they were home from the hospital with Keira.

The rest of the day, I scanned pictures, a large economy-sized ice pack back on my back, which was complaining about all the excess activity and the hypocritical good posture.  This bin full of Norma’s old photos has no bottom!  As I worked, my back was hurting little enough that I noticed that my thumb was hurting.  Ever notice, when something hurts badly enough, you can’t tell anything else hurts?  Therefore, if you get, oh, say, a papercut or something on a finger, you should just stub your toe really quick-like, and you’ll quit paying attention to your finger.  😆  

My thumb hurts because of all the quilting I’ve been doing lately, and I have a bad habit of holding the handles on my longarm with a death grip.  Thursday, I very purposefully tried not to do that; but the damage had already been done.  

Amongst Norma’s pictures, I found this old news article.   😄

That evening, Larry brought home some expanding foam to spray into the lathing above my office door, the better to seal it off from the bats.  Whooooeee, the stink alone should drive off the bats.  I moved across the landing to my quilting studio while Larry worked in my office.

Loren arrived at 20 ’til 9 – unusual, as he’s generally in bed sleeping by then.  He came upstairs looking for me, and told me that Norma had been home, they’d gone to bed, and then she up and left without telling him where she was going.  ‘Those girls’ had left, too.  He’d gone around and checked all the beds in his house, and not a single person was there.  So now he didn’t know if he was safe in his own home. 

Once again, he’d probably gone to bed, dreamed, and awoken thinking it had all happened and was real.

This being one of those instances where we can’t ‘just be agreeable’, since a) he wants us to find Norma and talk to her about how she’s behaving, and b) he feels unsafe, I went through the whole story, telling him that Norma has passed away, he’s a widower, there is no other woman calling herself by this name, no one else is staying at his house.  ‘The girls’ – and this time, I specifically said ‘Kenny’s daughters’ – who came to help Norma when she had cancer, are not there, and have not been there, not once, since Norma passed away.

He resorted to his old favorite when he’s getting bent out of shape and/or doesn’t know how to answer me:  “Do you think I’m insane?!”

Hmmph.  Thought we settled that once.

I won’t let that go by; I will win this argument.  In fact, I must win this argument.  Things will only get worse if I don’t.  “No,” I told him, “but you have a disease called Lewy Body dementia that makes you think you see people when they’re really not there at all.  The chief symptom of this disease is hallucinations.”

This stops him, somewhat.  He decided it was a funny-sounding diagnosis.  “Looooo-ey?”  I only looked at him, so he said it again:  “Looooo-ey?!”  Since that didn’t get any answer from me either, he added, “Body?!” and laughed.

I said (very seriously, without a smile), “Yes, it’s called Lewy Body dementia.  It’s when plaque forms on the brain cells, distorts thought processes, and causes various types of hallucinations, including thinking you see people when there’s no one there.”

Since my remarks were all viewed with suspicion, I turned to my computer sitting right there in front of me, looked up the disease at Mayo Clinic’s website, and printed a page describing the symptoms and listing the causes.  I highlighted the visual hallucinations paragraph.

Understand, I don’t do this to be unkind, but to convince him that what we say is true:  there is no one at his house, and he has nothing to be afraid of.  He does not take it as an insult, and sometimes the ploy works, for a little while.

About this time, Larry emerged from my little office; he’d been keeping the door shut because of the smell of the foam he was spraying.  Loren tried explaining to him about the ‘Norma’ that had been there (until she wasn’t). 

He told Larry, “It’s the woman who calls herself your mother.”

Larry, as he is oft wont to do, went on shaking his head with a slight smile.  So Loren, as he is oft wont to do under such circumstances, changed his story.  Or, more likely, it changed without his notice.  “You know who I’m talking about; she’s your little sister!”

Larry shook his head again, smiling.  “I don’t have a little sister; only an older one – Rhonda.”

After a few more minutes of traveling around the mulberry bush, or maybe it was the pawpaw bush, Loren took his leave, telling me, “I can see I’ll have to find someone else to talk to about this,” and he apologized for ‘telling us things that put heavy burdens on us’. 

Siggghhhhh...

I got 120 pictures scanned that day, which is a decent amount. 

I came upon a couple of pictures taken in the mid-1960s of Larry’s older brothers Lyle, Jr., and Roy riding Prince, Aunt Lynn’s beloved Palomino.  Roy died of a brain tumor not long after, at age 7.  Junior died only 2 ½ years later at age 11 in a car accident.

The dark horse is Sandy, who came with the farm and was also a good horse.

Next picture is Larry, age 9, on Prince, June 13, 1970.  

Fourth shot is Larry, 16, with Prince at Christmastime 1976.  By this time, Larry and his family had moved to Columbus, Nebraska, where we live now.

The remaining pictures are of our oldest four children, Keith, 4, Hannah, 3, Dorcas, 2, and Teddy, 9 months, riding Prince in May of 1984.  Aunt Lynn, who by then owned what would become Jackson Stables, can be seen in some of the pictures.  

In the photo where I am putting Teddy on the horse, he’s laughing because the horse hair tickled his legs.  

In the shot where Aunt Lynn is holding him, Callie the cat went strolling right under the horse, calmly certain of her Right of Passage, and Teddy, spotting her, is announcing, “MEOW!!!”

Prince lived to be 34.

Saturday, having learned that our Platte County Fair would be accepting entries for competition from the general public on Monday (today), I texted Victoria, asking if she would mind if I entered the table topper I gave her for her birthday in February.  Maria had already told me it was fine with her and Caleb if I entered the Atlantic Beach Path One-Block Wonder quilt I gave them for Christmas, along with a table runner I’d given her for her birthday.

I wrote to her again to be sure, and to repeat that they needn’t do that, if for any reason at all they didn’t want to.  After all, things have been stolen from County and State Fairs!  “Remember,” I said, “you still have two days to decide you don’t want to ‘borry it back to me’ (as an old German friend of ours used to say).”

“No, it’s fine,” replied Maria, and I thanked her again.

“If I get any ribbons,” I told her, “I’ll investigate to see how much it increases the value of the quilt.  The bigger and more important the quilt show, the more the value increases with any ribbons won.  😊”

Along about 6:30 p.m., there was a big, rattling bang, and I informed Larry, who was working on vehicles in Genoa, that a bald eagle had crash-landed on the roof before it occurred to me that it was, after all, the third of July.  The neighbors were shooting off fireworks.  😄

Teensy and Tiger came into my quilting studio where I was scanning photos and retired to shag rug and cat bed, respectively, obviously expecting me to keep them safe from imminent missile attacks (or bald eagle crashes, for that matter).

As we were eating supper, Kenny wrote and asked Larry if he knew the name of the ship their father Lyle had sailed on when he was in the Navy.

It so happened that I had found a picture of that very ship, along with a couple of newspaper articles, in Norma’s box of old pictures, and had scanned them the previous day; so we sent them to him.  

I was surprised when Dorcas wrote to thank us for the five hanks of soft Merino wool fingering yarn I’d sent her for her birthday, which is on the Fourth of July.  I figured I hadn’t ordered it in time.

“You’re welcome!” I answered.  “I tried to choose the softest wool yarn they had at Yarn.com.  Reviews say it’s not scratchy; I hope they’re right!  You know I don’t crochet; I only made one Granny Square when I was about nine years old, and Aunt Janice showed me how because it was raining outside, and I needed something to do.  And then the sun came out, and it’s been shining ever since.”

Dorcas laughed and told me that Janice had taught her the Granny Square, too.

A little after 9:20 p.m., I got a notice from SpotTrace:  Loren was going somewhere.

Once again, I knew Loren had gone to bed earlier, and then awoken disoriented – and this time I figured he had confused p.m. with a.m., and thought it was time for Sunday School, for the Vyncs tracer showed that he went to the church.  A minute after arriving in the parking lot, and apparently finding the church dark and the doors locked, he headed north.  After almost getting to the bypass, from whence he would’ve had a clear shot to his house, he made an about-face and went back to the church.  Maybe he thought he’d arrived too early, and surely by now people would be there, and he could get in?

Since that didn’t pan out, he again headed north, turning east before getting to the bypass.  Perhaps he does not realize construction is complete, and the avenue he normally takes is again open.  In any case, his track took him straight toward the new high school where Columbus’ fireworks display was going on.  The Grand Finale probably took place right about the time he headed that way.

This resulted in him getting caught in traffic as the citizens all headed for home, en masse.  I imagine the fireworks and the traffic jams totally boggled him.

Watching the Vyncs and SpotTrace websites to determine where he was, we hurried off to intercept him – but couldn’t, because of the traffic.

We finally went to the little park by the powerhouse a block from his house to wait for the cars to thin out – and about that time Loren arrived home.  He pulled into the garage, went inside, turned lights on just long enough to find his way through, and then turned them all off again.  He was probably exhausted.

I didn’t mention it to him the next day, and he didn’t say anything about it, either.  Maybe he has no idea it even happened, or thinks it was a dream.  Had I asked, I most likely would’ve gotten a garbled tale, complete with ghosts and goblins.

Maybe I contributed to the a.m. versus p.m. confusion by earlier telling him I would be fixing his lunch for the ‘Brown Bag Luncheon’ we would have at church Sunday afternoon.  Who knows.

Anyway, that ended my photo-scanning for the night.  I now have 19,929 photos scanned, 978 of which are Norma’s photos.  I’m about three-quarters done with hers – at least, those loose ones of hers in this big plastic bin.  I’ll go quickly through her albums and scan any old family photos that need to be in this group, then get back to my own albums.  I’m about half done with mine.

Look what else I found in that bin:  a silhouette of Larry at age 6.  When I first pulled it out, not seeing his name written along the edge, I thought it was our own Teddy’s silhouette, possibly, though it wasn’t quite right...  😊

Sunday morning I got up a little earlier than usual, planning to go to church if I could manage to wash my hair, curl it, and get dressed in my Sunday-go-to-meetin’ glad rags. 

I hadn’t gotten very far in my ablutions before my back decided it wanted to stay home, and I decided to stay home with it to keep it company.

At 20 ’til 8, Loren called.  He thought he’d broken his little toe after kicking something, and could hardly walk on that foot.  He wondered if I knew anyone from whom he could borrow a cane.

I told him that the four-footed cane that used to be our mother’s was in his basement; I’d put it where I hoped it would be easy to find, just in case.  It took a while before he found it, while I kept giving directions.  It must’ve blended in with the background, and he was having a hard time getting around, too.  Thank goodness I had that room clean!  I promised we would bring him some food a little later.

After packing Larry’s new insulated lunch bag from one of the kids with a meat-and-cheese sandwich, cup of fruit, tapioca, yogurt, and raspberry tea, I also gave him bags with dishes to return to Hannah and Victoria, and a quilt I once made Norma to give to Lydia.

Sometimes when Larry heads off somewhere without me, I say, “Bring me a monkey!”

That was one of Caleb’s favorite things to say when he was a young teenager, when I’d tell him I was going somewhere.  Finally one day I hit the motherlode of stuffed monkeys at the Goodwill in Fremont:  big monkey, little monkeys.  Apes, chimpanzees, spider monkeys, howler monkeys, gorillas.  I bought every last one, snuck them into the house, and arranged them all on his bed.  🤣  That was fun.

The ‘Brown Bag Luncheon’ was in our Fellowship Hall after the morning service, with the evening service then moved up to early afternoon.  That was what the great majority of the congregation chose instead of a picnic at Pawnee Park on Monday, when we voted on it.  I voted for the Pawnee Park picnic.  boo hoo 

Maybe I was voting for ten-year-old me, woebegone on the Fourth of July because we were in Butte, Montana, instead of at home having a picnic with our friends.

Daddy, Mama, and I were parked with our camper way up on top of the butte that gives the city its name.  There were no guardrails at the edge of that rocky cliff that overhung the town, and I was scared of heights – but I wanted to look down at the little city.  It was like being in an airplane!  Sooo... I found a nice spot, laid down a big towel (Mama always said I was her cleanest kid – I couldn’t stand to get dirty, and besides, red ants were a distinct possibility), stretched out on my stomach, and peered over the overhang.

People were lighting off fireworks down there, but most of the time I could only hear the bangs, not see them, as it was a bright day.  If I did see them, the ‘BANG!’ arrived several seconds after the flash.  Then, after a particularly loud explosion and some distant screams and yells, I saw some black smoke curing up from a garage way down there.

In a couple of minutes, I heard a loud horn and whistle blare.  I looked at the fire department building – and saw that the horn atop the garages was rotating.  I watched one of the big doors rise and a firetruck roll out, lights flashing.  They turned on the siren and headed off.  From my vantage point high above, I could watch that truck wending its way through the avenues and streets toward the garage fire.  Soon they were spraying water, the smoke turned white, and then died down.

The people scurrying around looked like little ants.  It was kind of nifty to watch all that activity from up on the butte.  But... my friends were at the July-Fourth picnic at Pawnee Park!

A little after noon, Dorcas sent a picture of Trevor, age 5, riding in their van.  They’d been to church and were now on their way to visit Todd’s uncle. 

She also sent a picture of herself – it was her 39^th birthday.

“Todd got me this maternity dress and a new water bottle for my birthday,” she wrote. 

Dorcas and Todd are expecting their second child.  They lost a baby a couple of years ago.  Thankfully, everything is going well this time.

Below is Dorcas at age 1.

I sent a text to Larry:  “Don’t forget to get the quilt and table runner from Caleb and Maria and the table topper from Victoria, give Linda her birthday present, the dishes to Hannah and Victoria, and the quilt to Lydia!”

He forgot to check his phone when he got back in the BMW after the final church service.  And he forgot every last thing on the list.

It was a pretty day here, though a hot 88°.

I got an email from AQS saying that, as a consolation for all the shows canceled in 2020 and 2021, we can enter quilts in their shows for only $25 (member price) instead of the usual $35.  I had become a member a year and a half ago to get the cheaper price for each entry, but my membership is soon expiring. 

Now I need to ask if I can ‘borry back’ Jeremy and Lydia’s New York Beauty quilt!  I had entered it in every 2020 AQS show, and it had already been accepted at each one, when all the shows were canceled.

I can’t enter the Atlantic Beach Path quilt in an AQS show; it’s too big.  Quilts are to be no wider than 112”, and the Atlantic Beach Path quilt is 123” wide.

We took Loren some food at about 3:00 p.m., and were surprised when he walked over and met us at the top of his stairs (the half-stairs to the upper level) as we came in the door.  His toe was much better; it’s not broken.  It was red and sensitive, but it’ll be all right.  We are relieved.

I printed a couple of pictures for him which the Moultrie cam had taken as he crossed his driveway on his riding mower.  He was pleased with those photos, though he did ask, laughing, “Who’s that little old man?!”

It goes against my grain, putting the camera on his house... trackers in his Jeep... We tell him they’re anti-theft devices, which they are, of course, in addition to helping us keep track of him.  He thinks it’s really neat when we tell him we’ve seen him mowing (or clearing his drive, last winter).  That made me feel a little better, knowing the camera taking shots of him now and then doesn’t bother him.  We were so very much raised to respect others’ privacy!

Not only did he not mention his excursion of the previous night, he also doesn’t act like he remembers Friday evening, either.  We will not remind him.

Leaving Loren’s house, we drove out to Caleb and Maria’s on the east side of town to pick up the quilt and table runner.  Caleb made us some yummy coffee with his pour-over coffee brewer.  Maria gave us Rice Krispy bars, and we played ball with Eva.  😊

“I promise,” I said, as Larry picked up the quilt and we started out the door, “if someone steals your quilt, I’ll make you another one!”

We delivered a birthday gift to one of my best friends whose birthday is July 4^th, and then went to Victoria’s house to get the table topper.

Home again by a quarter after 5, Larry took a nap in his recliner – and went right on sleeping ’til almost midnight.  He was awake for a couple of hours, and then slept until I woke him up this morning a little after 6.  In one fell swoop (one fell snooze?), he made up for all the nights throughout the week when he hadn’t gotten enough sleep.

A friend asked me last night if I knew anyone with an inversion table – one of those upside-down hangy-thingies.  There’s one at Walkers’ shop, Larry told me.  It’s probably one of the newer, better ones, and they can be quite helpful.  But I’ve known people who were using one (probably one of the older styles) while alone, and wound up in a real predicament when they couldn’t turn right-side-up again!

If that ever happened to me... just stick a fork in me; I’d be done.

“I’m a-doin’ fine, just fine (in a Mrs. Satterfield tone, of Rascal, the Little Raccoon fame),” I told my friend, “a-sittin’ in my recliner leaning against a large icepack, with a heating pad tucked behind my neck, and piping hot Chocolate Raspberry Tiramisu coffee at my elbow.”

Larry offered to take me to Walkers’ shop at night one of these days if I’d like to use the inversion table.  I politely (well, not too politely) turned him down, informing him that I don’t like the blood running to me punkinhead, thankee kindly.

Everything I read about a herniated disc tells me that if I am careful, it will heal on its own in 4-6 weeks.  I take calcium with Vitamin D, magnesium, and... ? and also some Gummy Joint Something-Or-Others (the medicine cupboard is way over there and I’m way over here).  (If they don’t help, at least they taste good.)  One or two articles also stated that I would be less likely to have this happen again if I would lose 50-100 pounds.  !!!

If I lost 50-100 pounds, I’d be like the man King David wrote about in the Psalms:  “And, lo, he was not: yea, I sought him, but he could not be found.”  😅

Here are Rhonda, Larry, Kenny, and their little cousin Sherry.  Norma made the western shirts.

Peering into the cupboard... looks like it’s time to order some groceries.  I hate running out of essentials.  Larry, on the other hand, sees absolutely no need to worry about such things until he’s been plumb out of whatever necessity it might happen to be – toothpaste, deodorant, peanut butter, gas (ha! – lots of stories about that) – for a good while.

Amy texted me last night to ask if I needed help getting my things to the fair this morning.  I thanked her for asking, and told her Larry was going to help me. 

“I have that big, heavy quilt I made for Caleb and Maria... a small table runner... and a table topper,” I told her.  “That’s it, because I’ve been scanning old photos for a year.  If Larry couldn’t have helped me, I had thought of begging to borrow a kid or two.  😁”

“Okay,” replied Amy, “I didn’t want you to miss out!”

It sure is nice to have helpful people around who care about you, isn’t it?

This morning, off we went to Ag Park a little after 7.  The woman who was checking in my items was reading the categories... and as soon as she read ‘wall quilt’, I thought, Oh!!! Wall quilt!  Wall quilt!  I have a wall quilt! – and it’s still home, hanging on the wall. 

That’s the Vintage Sewing Machine wall quilt.  I was mighty proud of my 3D Flying Geese and my quilting on that thing!  So... home we went again, jiggety-jig, where Larry collected the quilt off the wall for me, and then back we went to the Park. 🙄

 Larry, talking to Teddy on the phone later, told him, “I heard the bell ‘dong’ in Mama’s head as soon as the lady read ‘Wall Quilt’.”  😂

Hester reports that Keira is feeling pretty good today.  “The pain is getting much better,” she said, “and she’s been busy.  I just have to keep stopping her from jumping on the beds.  And couches.  lolol”

“That sounds like the ‘Ten Little Monkeys’ story!” said I.

Hester answered, “She tried to jump on the hospital bed when we were getting ready to leave, lolololol.  😲  The pain meds they gave her during surgery must’ve been working great right then!”

Funny little girl.  It must’ve felt springy.  “Gotta jump, gotta jump!”

“Never a dull moment,” a friend commented recently after reading one of my letters.

Now exactly what, I ask you, would I ever do with a ‘dull moment’?!

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