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Marblehead Lighthouse, Ohio,
July 2000
Some years ago, we had a well-loved uncle who sometimes sat near us in church. He had a lovely mellow voice with tremolo – but he was only on tune those times the melody passed him as it went either up or down.
Victoria, who was about four or five,
said lovingly, “He has a good heart for singing, just not a good voice box!”
Hannah reminded me of something I had
long forgotten: Dorcas, at about age
seven, almost 33 years ago, asked, “What part (meaning, soprano, tenor, bass) does
Uncle Alfred sing?”
I answered, “Whatever enters his head.” 😅
Tuesday morning,
I got a call from Cruise & Associates: Loren’s tax papers were ready to be signed and
e-filed.
Two or three weeks
ago, Judy, Janice’s sister, said, “... and don’t forget to file for Loren’s
Homestead Exemption after you get his taxes done.”
Huh? I
had never heard of such a thing and didn’t do it last year. So he didn’t get the tax break he had
coming. 😕
A
friend in another state wrote, “You have to file each year, but most counties
automatically refile homestead exemptions as long as the same owner lives in
the house.”
Well, they didn’t refile for Loren, here in Platte County,
Nebraska. I wonder how much compensation he missed out on? I tried looking it up, and found this piece
of useful information:
Gather
What You’ll Need
1.
Homeowner’s name
2.
Property address
3.
Property’s parcel ID
4.
Proof of residency,
such as a copy of valid Alabama driver’s license and a copy of vehicle
registration
5.
Recorded deed for new
owners, if county records have not been updated
6.
Trust document and
affidavit, if the property is in a trust
Huh, how ’bout that. Loren needs a valid Alabama driver’s
license to get his homestead exemption.
(Okay, okay; I do realize I landed on a page from another
state.)
I tried again, and found this:
Maximum Value. ** To
be eligible, the maximum assessed value of the homestead is $95,000, or 200% of
the average assessed value of single family residential property in the county,
whichever is greater. The exempt value
will be reduced by 10% for every $2,500 that the assessed value exceeds
the maximum value.
I lost several brain cells just reading
that, and as I really don’t have any to spare these days, I stopped with that
research in one quick hurry.
Caleb & Lydia, July 2000
In case anyone has been wondering, NFIB
stands for National Federation of Independent Business – the conservative’s version of the Chamber of Commerce, for
which Loren worked in earlier years, until they became too liberal.
It was 71° Tuesday! What a change
from a couple of days previous. I donned
short sleeves and loafers when I went to the CPA’s office, as opposed to the
multiple sweaters, coat, and tall boots I’d worn the week before.
Once the papers
were signed, mailed, and e-filed (why did they have to do both, I wonder?), I
went to the courthouse, as I had not received the bill for Loren’s property
taxes. They said the bill had been sent; but we often have mail go
astray.
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| Victoria |
A lady in the
County Assessor’s office told me there was no sense in filing for the Homestead
Exemption, because Loren would be disqualified right off the bat since his
house is empty and he’s not living there. Too bad the CPA didn’t tell me
about this last year.
Ah, well. At least the taxes are done for one more
year.
I
dropped off a load of stuff at the Goodwill, and put away a bunch of things when
I got home. Soon the third load of
clothes was in the washing machine. After
a cursory cleaning of the kitchen, I spent the rest of the day scanning
photos. If I hadn’t have had quite so
much to do, I’d have been outside working in the yard that day.
When
I was in town, I drove past an older lady outside her beautiful home trimming
her bushes with some sort of power tool, and was envious. Not of the house... not of the power tool...
not of her bushes – just of her time to do that. Wouldn’t she have been surprised if I had’ve
yelled out my car window, “Aw, quitcher showin’ off, wouldja!”
Hannah went to the doctor that day. X-rays of her lungs showed that she had pleurisy. This, in addition to the remaining allergic
reaction (stomach pain and nausea, plus hives) to the amoxicillin. The
doctor prescribed Naproxen, which then triggered a pretty bad
asthma attack. Her oxygen level was
at 84% when she checked it. A nebulizer
treatment brought it back up to 90%, which still isn’t very good. By Wednesday, her oxygen level was around 93% when
she wasn’t doing too much, but she was miserable with the hives and aftereffects
of the medication.
She’s feeling better now, but we worry
about her.
Sarah Lynn, Lake Erie
Once upon a time, many years ago when
my cousin Helen Jean was little, she was often made over for having ‘big, brown
eyes’. Then came the day when she was
with her mother, my Aunt Pauline, in the grocery store. Helen Jean, about three years old, was just
big enough to peer over the edge of the conveyor belt at the checkout stand.
“My, what brown eyes you have!” said
the clerk.
Helen Jean stared at her a moment, then
set her straight: “And dey’s big, too!”
she informed the woman. 😂
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| Joseph & Victoria |
I got 84 pictures scanned Wednesday,
most of which were taken during a trip to Ohio in late July 2000. Here’s an excerpt from my journal:
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.
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| Victoria & Lydia |
“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.
Thursday, Larry and I went to the insurance
agency, where we canceled insurance on all of Loren’s vehicles that have been
sold, and put some on the Mercedes.
Next, we went to the courthouse to get the license and the title for the
Mercedes and for Larry’s BMW motorcycle.
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| Lydia & Hester |
Late that night,
after scanning and editing 112 pictures that day, I finished the last of the photo
albums in the totes upstairs in my office.
Friday, I started on the albums in the hope chest downstairs (on the
main floor, that is). Don’t get all excited just yet, though; there are
45-50 large albums in that hope chest. I
can only get about 100 pictures scanned a day. Still, I’m getting closer!
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| Caleb |
I needed to take
pictures of the hand-embroidered, hand-quilted quilt Norma had made. It was an overcast day, but bright enough I thought
I could get good pictures. Norma told
some of her granddaughters about the quilt shortly before she passed away in
June of 2020. We looked for it then, but
couldn’t find it. Hannah found it when
she was helping me clean Loren’s house a few weeks ago. We’re going to give it to Larry’s sister
Rhonda, who’s the oldest of the living siblings.
I gathered up quilt
and camera, and headed to the back deck.
After sweeping the deck thoroughly, I began spreading the quilt out –
and immediately realized it was the wrong day to take quilt pictures
outside. The wind was blowing right up
under the deck (one story up) and making a balloon out of the quilt. I tried positioning it artistically on the
iron bench, but it blew off. So I took videos instead. 😅 But here are a few not-so-good photos.
I discovered, in
spreading out the quilt and photographing it, that there were stains on it, so I
put it into the washing machine on delicate cycle with Tide and OxiClean, and
Downy in the rinse.
The stains came out almost
entirely, and when I pulled it from the dryer a couple of hours later, it was
all fluffy, no longer crumpled up and wrinkled.
It looked like new. Plus, it
smelled good, into the bargain.
Since a lady on my
quilting group asked about irons, I decided it was probably time to
retell my iron story(ies).
I began with a disclaimer:
(Warning: LSA) (Long Story Ahead) (Do not click Show More,
if Long Stories make you itchy.)
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| Hester |
This is from March of 2011: (Small note: since this time, I have had two
Rowenta Steam Stations, which I love, and a t-FAL iron with a ceramic plate,
which I also like.)
I was nearly done with another apron that night when my iron
went kaput. I can’t sew without an iron!
Sooo... I did what I do best: I gathered
up the iron and dashed up the steps, calling “Larrrrryyy!” as I went.
Larry then did what he does best: he took a nap.
When the nap was over (shortly, thanks to teenagers in the
house), he got out screw drivers, pliers, and monkey wrenches, and pried open
said iron, whether said iron wanted to be pried open or not.
After disconnecting and reconnecting various wires numerous
times, he came to a conclusion: “It’s
the automatic shut-off that’s causing the problem.” He next came to a solution: “I will override the automatic shut-off.”
With that, he reconnected the wires, turned the dial, felt
of the bottom of the iron, quit feeling it really fast, whistled in a ‘letting
out the heat’ sort of way, unplugged it, and proclaimed victory.
He put the iron back together and plugged it in again.
It proceeded to heat up without benefit of the dial being
turned to ‘On’.
And it continued to heat.
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| Victoria & Lydia |
It heated until it snapped and crackled. It heated until it smoked and stank of
electrical malfunction and extremely high temperature. I tell you, that thing got so hot, it would
have smoothed out the fur of a Himalayan yak in two seconds flat.
Larry belatedly unplugged the errant thing while I dashed
around holding my nose, opening windows, turning on fans, and shouting, “Open
the windows! Turn on the fans!”
Since I have no more Appliance Smoke, nor do I have an
Appliance Smoke Applicator, nor do they sell either of the above items in any
known shop uptown, I do believe a new iron is in order. Remember: I cannot sew without an iron!
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| Larry, July 2000 |
I accordingly curled my hair all cute-like, and put on
going-to-town hosiery in anticipation of paying a visit to Wal-Mart’s home
appliance department after taking Victoria to school. I didn’t look like a person who would
murder an iron in cold blood, nor yet one who would bring in a hired killer to
do the job!
{Did I?}
==========================
Fast Forward: The
Rest of the Story
I went to Wal-Mart… stood on my tiptoes to reach (with
difficulty) the irons on the display racks (do they think that people under 5’3”
should not iron?!)… selected my iron… and trotted home again.
Now, I have to have a good iron. I use it nearly every day, and it’s on for
umpteen hours, nearly every one of those days it’s in use. It has to steam well, have lots of holes out
of which to steam, steam well, have a good point on it, steam well, have a
stainless steel plate, steam well, and be heavy enough that I don’t have to
push on it as I use it. And it has to
steam well.
Sooo… I got one that was regularly $49.95 – on sale for
$39.95. The only one on sale – and the
very one I needed. I got a $3 one-year
replacement plan with it. It’s a Shark
Professional Removes the Toughest Wrinkles 2X Steam Power X-Tended Steam Burst
Technology Self-Cleaning Multi-Position Auto Shut-Off Anti-Drip XL Premium
Stainless Steel Soleplate Intelligent Electronic Temperature Control iron.
I. Was. Ready. To. Iron.
I marched off to do battle with scant ¼” seams.
A good friend of mine asked, “Doesn’t everyone have a backup
iron?!”
Oh, you betcha, I have (uh, ‘had’) a backup iron. A cute little travel iron/steamer. I got it
out… plugged it in… turned it on…
The light went on, flickered, went off. I spun the dial one way and then the other. The light flickered on. Off. On. The
thing warmed slightly.
The toe or point of this small iron is so curved as to
resemble a saddle oxford shoe, circa 1960. Makes me irritable when I try to stick it into
a seam that needs to be pressed open, and the clumsy thing cannot blunder its
way in.
Furthermore, it weighs approximately the same as two
juvenile hummingbirds, so I must push down on it in order to accomplish
anything remotely like ‘ironing’. I have
a bum wrist that does not appreciate this pushing.
I took that iron upstairs to see what Larry and his tools
might think about it.
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| Marblehead Lighthouse, Ohio |
“It’s got a bad switch,” he announced, after a cursory
inspection.
“Can’t you fix it?” I asked, making my best Bambi eyes.
“Nope,” he said shortly.
I personally think his ego could not handle two defeats in
one night, so he therefore would not even try. After all! – this is the man about whom his
two-year-old daughter Lydia once said adoringly, “My Daddy can fix ANYTHING.” And, for the most part, she was absolutely
right. He can make a diesel engine out
of a paper clip, a garbage disposal motor, and a bit of hair tonic. He can overhaul a foreign motor with nothing
but his Swiss pocketknife.
That Black and Decker iron, however, got the better of him. (He says it was ‘unfixable’.)
But I have a new iron. A Shark. (I’m feeling all mighty and forceful and
powerful and stuff.)
My sizzling iron didn’t just cause us trouble; it caused
somebody troubles clear across the country, too. A lady to whom I emailed the above story wrote
back, “I was making lunch for Lily and started reading these emails and the
story of the iron and how it heated up and was hurrying to read hoping that
Sarah Lynn’s house hadn’t caught on fire. I smelled smoke. Yes, while I was reading. I forgot about the quesadilla I was making for
Lily and our house smells like burned tortilla.”
Another lady wrote, “Let us know which model comes home to
live with you, and keep it away from Larry. :^D “
I answered, “What, you do not think I should ask him to
bypass the auto shut-off???!” <amazed
face>
The iron is percolating along quite nicely. It hasn’t burnt anything or spewed on
anything. I do wish it didn’t have the
auto shut-off feature, though.
Another lady wrote, “My sewing/quilting iron is a GE Travel
iron, circa 1937! You have to attach a
bottle to steam, and the cord is cloth covered! I found it at a yard sale and paid ONE DOLLAR.”
That was when I realized . . . I did have
another backup iron! – found it in this old farmhouse when we moved it and
started remodeling it: it’s one of those
things that has a detachable handle. Ladies
used to have several of the iron bases, and would leave some heating on the
stove while they ironed with the other, then when the one they were using
cooled, they’d place it on the stove, remove the handle, and fasten it onto a
hot iron.
Problem: I have no
handle for it. Waaaaa! I need a handle for that nifty old iron. (I don’t suppose I could hold it with a log
clamp?)
I finally finished the next apron that evening.
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Magnolia Blossoms, April 2004 |
Larry removed the electrical cord from the little travel
iron/steamer whose switch wouldn’t work right, and now I have a cute little toy
iron to give Emma. I need a cute little
ironing board to go with it!
A friend wrote that she hoped I have better luck with my new
iron than she had with hers, which was just like mine. Hers only lasted 2-3 weeks.
I replied, “Well, if my Shark bites the dust, I’ll just have
Larry fix it.”
She answered, “Nooooooooooo…”
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| Magnolia Blossoms, April 2004 |
When we lived in town, I used distilled water in my iron. But out here in the country, we have the
clearest well water you can imagine, and we have very little mineral buildup on
anything.
But. . . once upon a time. . .
There I was, in a gigantic hurry, getting ready for church,
ironing my dress – when the iron ran out of water.
But I’m such a well-prepared person, I’d left a glass of
water on the dresser for the very purpose of filling the iron.
I snatched it up, poured it in, and went back to ironing.
Only it wasn’t water.
It was grapefruit juice.
It had been in a sepia-colored glass, and I’d thought the
stuff was clear. Water.
So off I went to church, smelling remarkably like ummy-yummy
tutti-fruiti. Burnt ummy-yummy tutti-fruiti.
Annnnd...
Th-th-th-that’s all folks!
We now return you to your regular programming.
Saturday was an overcast, rainy
day. I scanned photos until Larry got home. I have now
scanned 25,975 photos. There are possibly 15,000 to go. I hope not... but there could be.
Larry came home after 4, and we headed off
to see Loren. By 5:30 p.m., an icy mist was falling. On the four-lane, we wound up following
a truck putting de-icing solution on the road – and it was one of those with a
trailer that can be offset so that truck and trailer together can spray two
lanes at once. Trouble is, it was only going 40 mph. Traffic was
jammed up for a loooong ways.
It looked something like this one:
I took
pictures, but I can’t show them to you.
You’ll find out why, later.
I took Loren some
clothes, including the new pair of Dockers pants I got him for Christmas.
Last week, he pointed at the double-knit pants he was wearing and said he’d had
to wear them for three days, because they were all he had. (I doubt any of that was the case.) His door was locked, so we couldn’t go in and
check the clothing situation; no nurse was standing at attention anywhere nearby
to unlock the door; and he was launching into his ‘I can’t go home’ story #2,
and I thought it best to tell him goodbye sooner rather than later.
I also had a couple
of framed photos of him and Janice to put on the drawered end table we took him
a couple of weeks ago. I debated over that, wondering about taking a
picture of him and Norma. I can never
say how something might affect him, particularly since it might not affect him
the same, any two times. So, I just took what I had handy.
He remembers
Janice just fine, and knows that she passed away from cancer in 2014. He does not understand this about
Norma. So perhaps the picture of him and
Janice is best.
I should’ve
called and asked about that locked door last week, but I didn’t muster up the,
ummm... chutzpah, I guess, to call and find out what was up with
that. Maybe ’cuz I didn’t wanna know? Sometimes I have good
understanding of the ostrich who has his head buried in the sand. (They
don’t really do that, you know. They’re just rotating their
eggs.) Instead, I just hoped it was because nurses were helping his
roommate, or something.
*Chutzpah:
Yiddish word meaning bravery that
borders on rudeness. Rhymes with ‘foot spa’. If you have chutzpah,
you say what you think without worrying about hurting someone’s feelings,
looking silly, or getting in trouble.
We arrived at
about 6:30 p.m. There weren’t many people
in the commons area. We headed to Loren’s room – and found the door
locked again.
I hunted for a nurse, and found one down the hallway, right
around the next corner. She greeted us, came
and opened the door, and called softly, “Loren?
You have visitors!”
He answered promptly, “Oh!
Send them on in!”
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Aaron on his 3rd
birthday playing with his new Thomas the Tank train set. 04-24-04
He was already in bed, early as it was. But it was dark outside, and in recent years he
has made tracks for the feathers as soon night falls.
I told the nurse, “The door was locked last week when
we were here, too.”
She explained, “We lock them to prevent wandering at
night. Then people don’t wake each other up so much, or ‘find’ so many things
that aren’t theirs.”
We felt better, upon hearing this. There are at least four rope pulls and
buttons in each room for patients to push to call for a nurse, including
in the bathrooms.
Loren said he had gone to bed 20 minutes earlier, but was
not asleep. However, the wy-ode (as Violet pronounces ‘wild’)
story he told a few minutes later led us to believe that he had indeed fallen
asleep already, and had been dreaming.
He said he was ‘earlier’ walking down the street, and had
asked a man where a certain street was (I forgot what street name he told us,
though I recognized it at the time), and the man got mad and started fighting with
him.
“I hit him right in the mouth,” said Loren, laughing and
shaking his head, “and then the people who were with the other man started
trying to stop the fight, and the people who were with me were pulling me
away.”
He went on laughing while he told this story; he was clearly
not at all distressed by it.
{“Well, of course not,” I said to Larry later. “He
was winning the fight, after all!”}
I put away the clothes we’d brought, after first putting
name stickers on them. I put stickers on three of the four blankets we’d taken
him a couple of weeks ago, too, glad to find those three, at least, still
in his room. The gray stripe fleece, the
one that’s soooo soft, wasn’t there – or at least I didn’t see it.
Maybe the lady who hot-fingered his socks and petted that very blanket has
it.
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Aaron & Lydia. Bobby built the table for the train.
We had gotten Loren some of his favorite grapes at Love’s Truckstop. Since we took them straight to his room and put them on his dresser, maybe nobody else will be helping themselves to those grapes before he can eat them.
He asked us what he owed us; we of course said, “Not a
thing.” (I wonder how he would’ve paid us, had we given him a price?)
I set up the pictures for him, after first showing them to
him. He looked and looked at the big picture of him and Janice, and then
told us who she was. I left him an old album, an annual from Prairie
Bible Institute in Canada, where he went for a couple of years as a young
teenager, some pages from Grace Gems I’d printed when he was at Edgewood, and a
handful of pictures he got for Christmas.
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Larry & Joanna
|
05-02-04 |
He has some small teddy bears in his closet shelves, but I think these were given to him by the nursing home. The skunk, bird, doll, and big teddy bears are gone. Both of his electric razors are gone, as are both pairs of shoes – and now the slippers he thinks he found ‘while outside mowing’ are gone, too.
He likes his ‘new’ chair. We teased him about it making
a good clothes rack, because he had a flannel shirt/jacket lopped over it.
He said he hoped to come home soon, and that he was
lonely. He probably meant that he was
lonely for his friends and family. I’m
sorry about that, but I can’t help it.
So I do my best to comfort him by mentioning various things we can be
thankful for.
“Well, at least there are a lot of nice people to talk to
here,” I said, and he readily agreed with me.
We left after a little visit, with him happy we’d visited,
and ready to go back to sleep.
He was still laughing about the ‘clothes hoss’ chair when we
went out the door.
When I feel badly about him being in the nursing home, being
‘lonely’, and wanting to ‘come home’, I remind myself that he said those same
things when he was at his very own home, too, sometimes right after going to
church and visiting with numerous friends.
I know it helps Loren to
be with other people, and the doctors and nurses there are good with dementia
patients, for which we are thankful. We know that any ‘improvement’ in
dementia will be short term, of course; dementia always continues to
worsen. It’s a sad disease.
We
went to Fazoli’s Italian Food restaurant for supper. I had a spicy
chicken bacon ranch salad, and Larry gave me a couple of his breadsticks to go
with it. He had spaghetti and meatballs. It’s a fastfood chain, but
the food was good – and cheaper than fancier restaurants. Oh, and we had little strawberry cheesecake
slices for dessert.
Hannah
called; she’d made it home safely from Wayne, where she had a two-day Lilla
Rose event (selling hair jewelry). The roads were icy, and she saw a
jackknifed truck, an SUV off the road inches from a deep culvert, and another
vehicle that had slid off, too.
You
know, the trouble with having shoes with Velcro fasteners (as I do on my new
Earth shoes) is that after you take them off and set them beside you in the
car, your socks get stuck to the Velcro, and the shoe then chases after you
everywhere you go. 🤪
We
got home at about 11:30 p.m. The roads were fine. Side roads – and
sometimes the left lanes of the four-lanes – looked icy, but the main lanes on
the main roads were clear. Larry consumed Bai energy tea drink, coffee,
and a Stay-Awake tablet, and only made the steering wheel vibrate once when he
got too close to the white line. 🙄
Speaking of ostriches...
Did you know that, under
natural conditions, a female ostrich lays 12 to 18 eggs per season? Under farm conditions, young females produce
10 to 20 eggs in the first year, and from 40 to 130 eggs annually (most often
40 to 60 eggs) in subsequent years.
How big is an ostrich egg? Well, by comparison, a chicken egg is usually
a little more than 1 ½ inches in diameter, whereas an ostrich egg is a whopping
6 inches in diameter. A chicken egg generally weighs 0.11 pounds; an ostrich egg can weigh over 3 ½ pounds. That’s big!
Here are ostrich, goose, duck, chicken, guinea, and quail
eggs. They forgot to put a hummingbird
egg at the end of the lineup!
Hummingbird eggs are no bigger than jellybeans.
Sunday afternoon, we had a lunch of Larry’s scrumptious
French toast. I had pure maple syrup on mine – accompanied by a big cup
of rich milk from Teddy’s cow. Mmmm, mmmm.
After church
last night, we had a late supper before going to Loren’s house to put the
garbage out by the road. I had a BBQ
pulled pork burrito that Joe, the man for whom Larry does automotive work, had
given Larry. Larry couldn’t eat it,
because he has a sore in his mouth. He
needs to have his dentures fitted better.
They never have been quite right.
Joe also gave him some yummy potato salad, and we had rice pudding and
grape juice, too.
By the time we
headed to Loren’s house, it had snowed a bit and gotten windy and cold.
I collected all
the good towels, which are in the washing machine even as I type. Most of them will be for Teddy. There are a few things I need to take to the
Salvation Army, too.
Snow and ice
started coming down again while we were working in the garages. The Mercedes goes good on slick roads.
We left another
humongous pile of garbage for the trashmen to pick up in the morning.
Robert has a
good deal of the interior of the house painted; it looks nice.
In case you want to laugh at me today...
Late last night when we checked the Mercedes one
more time for my camera, we finally came to the conclusion that I had forgotten
it at the nursing home Saturday evening.
🙄 It’s a Canon EOS Rebel
T5i. Not cheap. It had the 25-75mm zoom lens on it when I set
it down... where? My best guess was that
I had put it on the sideboard/counter where we signed in, and then left it
behind when we put in the code to unlock the door.
How could I do such a thing as that?! My camera is a seldom-removed appendage of me!
I didn’t miss it right away, because I didn’t use it
as intended, as we got there a little later than I’d’ve liked.
I suspected my camera was long gone now.
I called the nursing home, and the man who answered
promised to leave a message for everyone to look for the camera. (Why didn’t he just get himself up right that
minute and go look, huh, huh, huh?!)
Nobody had returned my call by 11:00 a.m. this
morning, so I called again, prepared to be told no one had seen such a thing as
a camera on the premises.
But this time, thankfully, I was told that someone had turned it in at the front desk. “We’ve
just been waiting for someone to claim it!” said the lady I talked to.
I told her I would pick it up soon. And I asked, “You won’t throw me in one of
your rooms when I come to get it, will you?”
She laughed.
Larry said later, “It’s too bad I threw away that
nice little 110 camera I found at Loren’s house!”
At least he didn’t say that until I learned that the
camera had been found. Maybe because he
dropped his phone as we were getting into the Mercedes Sunday morning and
turned the face into spiderwebs. 😵💫
Gotta put the towels in the dryer, start another
load in the washer, and wash some dishes.
And it’s Andrew’s birthday; he’s 33 years old today. I need to get his gift wrapped (or bagged),
and write something in his card.
Aarrgghh, the towels all smell vaguely of oil. Rewash, rewash! Let’s crank the water temperature up to HOT, too.
Wouldn’t you know, I’m all out of colorfast bleach. I hate the smell of that stuff, even when its
scent is ‘Springtime Fresh’; but it does remove the smell of oil. If all else fails, I do have some
vinegar... 😝
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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