Tuesday,
I opened the box from Joyce, the lady in Phoenix, pulled out her pretty quilt,
and started loading it on my quilting frame.
This
quilt can be made from one ‘layer cake’ – a set of about 42 10” x 10” pieces of
fabric.
I
like the pattern, and it’s given me an idea for the layer cake Kurt and
Victoria gave me a few months ago. The
fabric in my layer cake would certainly make a whole different quilt
than Joyce’s, wouldn’t it? I’m not sure
there’s enough contrast; I might have to add some black-on-black and some
white-on-white.
I
want to put black fleece or minky on the back, and probably give it to
Kurt. But I must, must make a throw for son Teddy first! I’ve
made throws for three of the sons-in-law, and none for Teddy!!! Yikes,
how did that happen.
One
day when Teddy was 2, I told him, “Teddy, did you know that your real name is
Theodore?”
He
giggled. “Noshuh.”
“Yes,
it is,” I said. “It’s Theodore Lyle Jackson. That’s your name.”
Another
giggle, and a shake of the head. “Noshuh!”
“Yes,
Teddy!” I worked harder to convince him. “It says ‘Theodore Lyle Jackson’
on your birth certificate! Teddy is your nickname. Your real name
is Theodore.”
He
became more adamant than ever. “Noshuh!!! I is a Teddy!”
Hee
hee He sure enough is just that – a Teddy. (And he’s still
skeptical about things.)
He got home
before too long, and answered his phone the next time I called.
No, he did not
want me to bring him any food. He
wasn’t hungry, he didn’t feel like eating, he’d already eaten, and he needed to
talk with me about something – but, as he said, “I don’t know how to describe
it.” (He often has trouble putting words
together, and remembering specific words.)
Finally, he said, “Someone is trying to derail me!”
Since I knew
where he’d been, I knew exactly what he was talking about, but I didn’t offer
any clues. If he can’t think what to
say, we don’t have to have the conversation, right?
But eventually
he asked why the State Patrol would’ve told us, rather than him,
that they did not want him driving his – uh... his, ‘equipment’.
Now, I do
answer pointblank questions clearly and honestly. So... I launched into yet another explanation
of what had happened east of North Platte last year.
He immediately
interrupted. “That was over a year
ago!”
(How does he
remember that, I’d like to know??)
“Yes,” I
agreed, and continued with my account of his hunt for ‘Norma’ at the rest area
where he was parked, of helpful people looking for her, too, until they got
worried and called 911. Emergency
vehicles arrived... the State Patrol came – and then, upon looking up
information on both Loren and Norma, they discovered she had passed away
several months earlier, and thus realized Loren was confused.
“And no,
there’s no ‘other Norma’,” I said to his predictable protest.
I didn’t get a
whole lot farther in the dialog before Loren suddenly exclaimed, “I knew it
was you who’s behind all this! You talked
to the State Patrol and got them to stop me, you’re the one who caused them to
say I shouldn’t go anywhere, and it’s your fault there’s a hitch lock on my
camper!!!”
“No,” I told
him, “none of us called the State Patrol; they called first Robert and
then us, and told us what had happened – and then we had to drive to North
Platte so Larry could drive your pickup and camper home again. But we are all in agreement, you mustn’t
drive the pickup and camper anymore. As
they said, you are getting things much too confused, and it would be a serious
mistake to try taking that rig somewhere.”
“That isn’t
true at all!” he blustered, and added, “You are very oppressive!”
I decided at
that point that ‘kind and tactful’ was no longer the proper method.
“Everything
I’ve told you is exactly true,” I said.
“And I am not oppressive; you are, and you have been for
years. But God will no longer let you
get by with that. When I told you we
didn’t want you to take your rig on a vacation, you said you didn’t have to
listen to me, and you didn’t have to do a thing I said. But, as you’ve discovered, you do
have to.”
He forgets
things and gets them mixed up, but he did remember saying that to me a few
weeks ago. He stopped arguing – but then
he decided to say “I don’t know what you’re talking about” to anything else I
said.
“Yes, you do,”
I said; “I said it very clearly, and I know you understand that much. It’s not that you don’t know what I’m talking
about; it’s that you don’t like it.”
Then I added, “And I’m not going to argue about it anymore; it
doesn’t do any good.”
So we said
goodbye – him in a subdued tone – and hung up.
Ugh, ugh.
Dementia isn’t nice. It takes people’s un-nice traits through the years,
reinstates them, and multiplies them by the power of ten.
As I’ve said
before, I cannot let him talk to me like that, or I will no longer be able to
help him with food, laundry, etc. I must stand my ground, or he gets
worse. It’s upsetting, though. I
never, ever want to be unkind.
I went back to loading the quilt backing
on my frame, steaming it as I rolled it onto the bar, so there would no odd wrinkles
or tucks back there where I might not notice.
I then put the batting atop the backing, laid down the quilt top,
stitched it into place, and rolled it onto the top bar. The batting wanted to hang onto it, and I didn’t
want to damage that nice batting (Quilters’ Dream Puff, a high-loft polyester
batting),
so I took it slowly and carefully.
How do people on YouTube load quilts in
15 minutes, I wanna know??!!! And are those quilts square when they’re
done??? It took me a couple of hours to get everything just right and
ready for quilting. Joyce had chosen a
pantograph called ‘Unicorns and Glitter’.
I
sent her a few pictures of the progress, writing, “Annnnnnnd... we begin! I’m putting unicorns in their places.”
“I just love watching it all happen,”
she responded. “I thank you so much for sharing this part of the journey.
I would never see it any other way.”
When I quit for the night at about 11:30 p.m., I had
three rows done. Each row took about 19 ½ minutes. I sent Joyce a few more pictures, entitling
the email, “Quilting unicorns, unicorns, unicorns...” and telling her, “If I take
length of quilt divided by width of pantograph minus rows already completed
times rows yet to be done times minutes spent per row divided by number of
minutes in an hour, I see that I have 3.7778125 hours of quilting to go, plus
time spent winding bobbins, rolling the quilt forward, trimming and releasing
the quilt from the frame, and taking pictures. And let’s not forget about
coffee refills and cat feedings and pettings and discussions.”
I added a postscript: “By the way, I close the door to the upstairs
when I come down for the night, so big ol’ Tiger kitty can’t cuddle up in the
batting when I’m not looking.” (The batting drapes down from the frame
and onto the floor.)
5:30
p.m. Wednesday found me past the halfway point on the Unicorn Ribbons quilt. There were singers from the 30s warbling away
on my laptop. Many of the songs were
patriotic. However, some of the singers
were totally aggravating and annoying.
This is good, because it keeps me quilting ------ ’cuz if the longarm is
percolating along across the quilt top, I can hardly hear the caterwaulers. Ha!
It
was time to get dressed for church. Our
service is at 7:30 p.m. I get ready
early so as to be out of Larry’s way when he comes skinning in from work with
barely enough time to take a bath and get dressed before we go rushing out the
door. I was garbed in glad rags in 15
minutes flat and back at the quilting frame.
The ‘getting out of Larry’s way’ scheme turned out
to be unnecessary, because he didn’t get home from work in time to come to
church.
I had earlier reminded Loren that the service
started at 7:30 p.m. “Are you sure?” he
asked, and then, before I could reply, he answered himself, “Oh, yes – it’s
7:30 on weekdays. 6:30 and 7:30, 6:30
and 7:30; they just keep switching back and forth!”
(Our Sunday evening services are at 6:30 p.m.)
I thought, You shouldn’t be saying that; you’re
confusing the issue.
Sure enough, he went to church at a quarter after
6. Then he went back home... and tried
it again at a quarter after 7, which worked considerably better, as the doors
were unlocked by then.
After church that night, a friend gave
me a quilt to quilt for her. She had two
more for me to do, too, as soon as she could get the backing and batting ready.
Have you noticed how, ever since I said
I need to quit doing customer work and finish my own projects, the quilts have
been raining down? And Jennifer is one more
of those persons I would not say no to. After all, she’s an aunt to
son-in-law Jeremy and daughter-in-law Maria.
The quilts are for some of her little granddaughters, and several of her
grandchildren are my great-great-nieces and great-great-nephews, and a couple
are our cousins, twice removed. I used to give Jennifer piano lessons
when she was a little girl. She’s been the preschool teacher for a number
of our grandchildren. Both sets of her grandparents were best of friends
to my parents, and her parents are Larry’s and my good friends. So you see I can’t tell her ‘no’!
Besides, I do enjoy the
quilting.
Larry got home from work about the same
time I got home from church. After a
late supper, I went back upstairs to my quilting studio. A little before 12:30 a.m., I rolled the
quilt forward, and there was the bottom border peeping out. I guessed that in another hour, I would be
done.
It took three hours. By then, I was too tired to trim the quilt
and remove it from the frame; I would do it the next day, and take pictures,
too.
Thursday morning, I awoke to rain. But WeatherBug was promising a few moments of
sunlight in the early afternoon, so I hurriedly took a bath, washed my hair,
dried and curled it, ate breakfast, and then trotted upstairs to trim the
quilt.
While I was trimming it, the rain
stopped, and the sun shined on the deck long enough that by the time I finished
taking the quilt from the frame, the deck was dry. I swept it, spread out
the quilt, took pictures, and managed to get that quilt and the leftover fabric
back into the box in which Joyce had sent it by using my small Eureka vacuum on
it. Understand, the batting had arrived by separate shipment – so there
was a whole lot more bulk to cram in there.
Larry gave me that little vacuum for my
birthday one year. They (whoever ‘they’
are) say husbands are never supposed to give their wives ‘working’ gifts; but I
am practical and somewhat frugal (depending on how many pennies are in my
pocket at any given moment), and I much prefer a gift I can actually use,
as opposed to doodads and gew-gaws. I like my little yellow Eureka
Maxima. (Especially since recently discovering that it works marvelously
as a quilt compressor. 😉)
When I got home from the post office, I
started working on the baby quilt. It was
in lavender and white, with pretty little girls machine embroidered on the
white squares and cotton eyelet lace around the embroidered squares.
My phone rang. It was Loren, calling to ask if there was a
church service that night.
“No,” I said, “we had church last night.”
He laughed, “I know it!” and then added,
“Yes, okay, I see it’s Thursday, so bye!” and he hung up in a hurry, probably
so I wouldn’t tell him something else he already knew. It’s really
aggravating when people keep telling you stuff you already know. 😏
A couple of hours later, at a quarter
after seven, Loren called again. This
time he was worried because he wasn’t feeling quite right, and didn’t think he
should be alone. I asked a number of
questions. He wasn’t exactly sick, he
didn’t have a headache, and he didn’t have any symptoms of stroke, as near as I
could tell.
“Just a little woozy, maybe,” he
explained. “But people have been telling
me I’m not acting normal,” he said, “and I really don’t feel normal.”
I realized this was probably the result
of the kerfuffle two days earlier combined with his turning down supper earlier
that evening, saying he was clear full and had already had plenty of food to
eat, and yes, it was a ‘balanced diet!’ – or so he said. The ‘woozy’ feeling is typical for someone
with Lewy Body Dementia. He’s actually
kept his balance a lot longer than some with the disease do, no doubt because
he’s healthy and has always been well-coordinated.
“I’ll make some calls and see if I can find
some help for you,” I promised.
I called Robert, our nephew and
pastor. He quickly gathered up some
sliced ham and some homemade pumpkin pie with homemade whipped cream on it and
headed to Loren’s house.
Loren soon felt better after eating
some of the food, and I’m sure just visiting with Robert for half an hour or so
helped, too. Loren decided he would be
okay, and would try to get some rest.
Robert promised to call at 7:30 the next morning and see how he was, and
Loren liked that idea.
It’s often frightening to older folks
to be all by themselves when they know something is wrong, whether it’s
sickness, or mental confusion. Makes me
feel so sorry for him. That is, when
he’s not accusing me of being the Wicked Witch of the West, I feel sorry for
him. 😏
The rest of the night was quiet, except
for the sound of my Avanté whirring along over a quilt.
By 1:30 a.m., the Lavender Embroidery
& Lace quilt was done. I put a little dab of Elmer’s
glue stick under each lace scallop so the hopping foot (yep, that’s what it’s
called) wouldn’t get caught in it. It’ll launder out after a wash or two. The pantograph is called ‘Curly Hearts’. The
quilt measures 42” x 42”.
As
promised, Robert called Loren early the next morning. He emailed me, “He sounds good this morning. He said that he was feeling much better.”
But a couple of hours later, thinking
it was Sunday morning and time for Sunday School, he went to church at 9:30
a.m., only to find school in session. He’d
probably gotten Robert’s phone call mixed up with Larry’s regular Sunday
morning phone calls.
That afternoon,
I took him some food and returned his laundry.
I gave him a picture of himself when he was three months old, and
another at age 14 looking out of a window at Prairie Bible Institute, Three
Hills (northeast of Calgary), Alberta, Canada.
He knew immediately who it was, how old he was in both pictures, and
where he’d been in the PBI photo. Those
photos have been on his table propped up where he can see them, ever since I
gave them to him.
Leaving his house, I went to the bank,
the post office, and then to Jennifer’s house to take her the lavender quilt. She had the other two quilts ready for me.
When I got home, I started on quilt #2, a white one with pink machine embroidery, using a pantograph called ‘Judy’s Roses’. By 11:30 p.m., it was done. The quilt measures 36” x 46”.
Below is a shot of the back of the quilt.
Saturday, I
made meatloaf for Loren using deer burger and our mother’s recipe, adding Ritz crackers
and eggs. Loren really likes it. The rest of the menu consisted of Normandy blend vegetables, tapioca pudding, dark cherry
yogurt, peaches, and fresh-made lemon/limeade, which he almost poured on his
meatloaf for some obscure reason.
I quickly said, “No, that’s your juice, to drink!” and
he stopped abruptly and laughed.
He was finally
back to his usual cheery self. He did
ask me if I’d ever seen those two pictures before (the ones I’d just taken him). When I said, “Yep! I brought them to you yesterday,” he laughed
again, which is his usual reaction.
I stopped at my
blind friend Linda’s house afterwards to look at her recalcitrant computer and
see if I might be able to beat or scare it into subjection.
I could not.
No matter what
I did, it consistently refused to run Windows.
The computer is an old one, running
Windows 7. Or at least it used to run Windows 7.
Not no mo’, no mo’, no mo’. I ran ‘Repair Windows’... went into the BIOS settings
and looked around for anything that might possibly be in my language (as
opposed to Greek), changed a couple of things, restarted the machine several
times... but it refused to run Windows. It wouldn’t even start in Safe
Mode. I saw a list in BIOS that included
“Corrupt File”, but I hadn’t brought my crowbar to pry it out of there.
“I’m sorry,” I told Linda, “but you’ll have to find someone
smarter than me to help you!”
I bid her adieu, went home, and returned to the quilting. At least I know how to do that.
That evening, Nebraska beat Northwestern 56-7. I
listened to three minutes of the game before the half, and then forgot to
listen again and only learned the score hours later when it occurred to me that
the game was long over.
The quilt I was working on, an Anne of Green Gables panel
quilt, was a custom job, and I ran out of steam to finish it that night.
I happened to look out the window a little after 7:00
p.m., and discovered a pretty sunset – a little surprise after a gray, misty
day.
Larry had gone very early Friday morning to New Mexico to
pick up a skid loader. He’d sold one,
and could have sold three more. He drove his ’89 Chevy dually with the
Cummins motor, pulling a flatbed. The loader weighed more than advertised
(they always do), so he stayed off the Interstates and tried not to hit any
holes, for fear of blowing out the new tires on his trailer or bending an
axle. He was glad he’d bought ten-ply tires.
He called from Dodge City, Kansas, at 7:40 p.m. Saturday,
and thought he had 4 or 5 hours of driving before he’d get home; but I looked
it up, and it was more like 6 hours – and that was without any stops.
In southern Nebraska, he ran into fog. Furthermore, something (the air filter?) was
bumping the back of a low-beam light and causing an electrical short, so that
when the dims were on, all the lights, dash lights included, would suddenly
flicker off. That always adds a little too
much spice to a pitch-black night! 😬
He tried driving with the brights on, but not only was it
nearly impossible to see with brights on in the fog, oncoming vehicles were
also extremely unhappy with him. He’d
switch to dims... and just about the time he met those vehicles, all his lights
would go off.
Tired, he stopped at York, 55 miles to our south, to take a short
nap – and slept an hour and a half. He
got home at 5:30 a.m. Sunday morning. Deciding
he’d better not attempt going to church, he slept all morning and part of the
afternoon too.
The lady in Phoenix wrote that
afternoon via our Cyber Quilters group, “Imagine my surprise when I checked to
see where the package (containing the quilt) was, to find it had been delivered
yesterday and was on my porch. It was supposed to arrive tomorrow.
“At first I was horrified that it had
been neglected all night long, but I went out there and sure enough there was the
box sitting on the chair right by my front door. The box had been
scrunched a bit, but still intact.
“Sarah Lynn deserves some kind of kudo medal
for getting all of that in the box. Her vacuum must be a real super-duper,
’cause it was wall-to-wall fabric and no vacant air space at all. In
fact, I had to pry it out of the box. 😊”
I replied, “Oh! Larry told me to tell you to don baseball
catcher face mask, chest, and arm protection before opening the box!”
“Tell Larry that none of that was
necessary,” answered Joyce. “It had
cemented itself within the walls of the box, got comfy, and had to be persuaded
to leave.”
“Joyce,” wrote another lady, “that
sounds more like a cat than a quilt!”
That made me laugh right out loud.
Joyce wasn’t done yet. She wrote, “I can honestly say that I have
never played tug of war with a quilt before. What we all missed is seeing
a video of Sarah Lynn getting it into the box.
Now for someone who takes copious amounts of pictures, why she missed
that event is beyond me. I fear we shall never walk this path again, and
we blew a really good laugh.
“I was sincere when I said I had to
really pull it out of the box.”
I added in another
two-cents-worth: “Dear me, Joyce, how in
the world do you think I could take a picture of such an operation right whilst
I was a-doin’ it?! What, do you think I’m
an octopus?!! 😂🤣🐙”
And then I wondered about the quilt,
and wrote, “Joyce, was your quilt okay, despite being so squished? Should I not do that again?”
She assured me that all was well. “So very sorry I didn’t say that, but the
quilt was just fine. The box was not ripped through anywhere. Just
two corners had been squished. In fact, had the box not been so full, it
might have been damaged more. If you can
do that again, by all means do it. No quilt was harmed in the squishing.”
Then she added, “I think it is now
twice as big as it was when I first got it out of the box.”
It was only a couple of months ago that
it occurred to me that I probably didn’t have to have those expensive vacuum
bags to use the vacuum on a quilt in a bag.
I gave it a try – and sho’ ’nuff, that little vacuum can slup up and
save a whole lotta space. Since I’m not
using ‘real’ vacuum bags, I have to really hurry and get the box taped shut
before everything expands again.
I think it would not be wise to try
this with a substandard box! Imagine the
news:
Quilt Confetti Stumps
Authorities in Conejos County, Colorado
Authorities admit to being totally amazed and puzzled when confetti, purportedly from a once-sewn-together quilt, came whirling out of the sky over Red Mountain, a 12,896-foot peak in the San Juan Range.
“There really isn’t very much of it left,” stated Park Ranger Bill Canaday, “as droves of mountain pikas came scurrying out of the rocks to gather up as many patches as they could carry in their mouths before scampering back to their dens, where their nests are expected to be more colorful and cozy than usual this winter.”
Caleb, Maria, and Eva came visiting after
church last night. We gave them Eva’s belated
birthday gifts – a little doll and a couple of soft knit dresses. We had a snack of crackers and cheese and
tapioca pudding, and I baked some M&M oatmeal cookies. Caleb and Maria had already eaten supper, but
Larry and I were hungry, so we had loaded baked potato soup.
This afternoon I took Loren some food –
Black Angus hamburger, green beans, tapioca pudding,
blueberry streusel muffins (fresh out of the oven), peaches, orange juice, and
yogurt.
He was outside
when I got there, telling the neighbor lady, who was mowing her lawn, that I
would soon be arriving ‘with my little kids’, and he wondered if it would be
okay if they stood near the property line and watched her mow. She, knowing that he has Lewy Body dementia,
assured him that that would be just fine, and she would take care not to run
over any of them.
My ‘littlest
kid’, Victoria, is 24. She has two ‘little
kids’ of her own, with another on the way.
Loren seemed disappointed when I arrived alone. So... since he was obviously thinking of my
children when they were very young, I told him a few stories about them, such
as Lydia, age 3, trying to imitate her elder siblings in skipping rocks across
Flathead Lake in Montana. “I... (drawing
back to throw a chunky, non-skippable rock) skipped it!!” (said with enthusiasm
while the rock was still in the air, soon to land [and sink] with a
sploosh-thud.)
Loren laughed
over that story. “The children made your
traveling fun!” he said, and I agreed, they certainly did.
I’m glad Loren
is okay again, for now, and I’m back to telling him stories of cats and kids
and quilts.
I baked some bread later, and had a big scrumptious slice
(the heel, my favorite part) loaded with butter and honey. Mmmm, mmm. The only
drawback is that when you take a bite, your bottom teeth press against the
crust, your top teeth sink into the soft bread – and the whole piece flips up
and ker-smacks you in the schnoz, liberally coating it with butter.
Now to get back to my friend’s Anne of
Green Gables quilt, which is about halfway done. There are two quilts coming from Glen Allen,
Virginia (northern suburb of Richmond).
Once again, these are quilts I promised to do months ago; therefore I
must do them, despite announcing ‘no more quilts until my own projects are done’. Another lady has 8, and again, I promised to
do them; but I don’t know when she’s sending them.
(Maybe this is why some businesses have
perpetual ‘going-out-of-business’ sales? – the business really perks up once
people think it’s soon going kaput!)
Time to refill my coffee mug! And the coffee? Why, it’s Cinnamon Brownie Pecan. The beans are from Christopher Bean Coffee
Company – and their motto is, “We never roast the beans until you place your
order.” This is one of my favorite
flavors.
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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