Sarah Lynn's Nature's Splendor: Journal: Christmas Cards and 'Flying' Squirrels

It snowed here last Tuesday morning, but didn’t leave much more than a skiff on the ground. The bird feeders needed to be filled. It was 28°, with a wind chill of 16°. Maybe I should put on some shoes? 🥶

(That feeding station is what you get when you ask a man who used to own a body shop to make you a bird-feeding station.)

”A few more presents have arrived,” I told a friend, “so I shall get those put into gift bags, and then I will scan photos.” Then, remembering something else I needed to do, “Oh – first I will pay bills. Then I will bag and scan.” Then, looking around the kitchen, “Oh – first I will pay bills, then I will wash dishes, then I will bag and scan.”

And that’s what I did.

That afternoon, there was a female red-bellied woodpecker on a sunflower-seed feeder and a female downy woodpecker on the suet feeder, both at the same time. It was so funny, watching the red-bellied woodpecker warding off the English sparrows, leaning toward them with her beak wide open in a threatening manner, and, at the same time, the little downy was trying to keep the smaller finches and nuthatches from sharing the suet.

The woodpeckers aren’t much afraid of the blue jays, especially the red-bellied woodpecker. But all the other birds flee from the jays.

There’s a little red-breasted nuthatch that’s practically tame. He comes swooping in while I’m filling the feeders, sometimes perching right above my head and watching every move I make, hardly able to wait, and sometimes landing smack-dab in front of me, tilting his head, and staring directly into my face with his bright, dark eyes. It wouldn’t take a whole lot of trouble, I don’t think, to have him eating seeds directly from my hand.

The white-breasted nuthatch, though slightly bigger, is much more timid.

That afternoon, the Executive Director of the nursing home wrote, “Good News! We are lifting the mask mandate as of today. Everyone will still need to do the screening on the tablet daily prior to entering the community. If you have any questions please feel free to call me any time.”

I was glad about that, as I very much dislike those things, although I don’t make any big stinkin’ fuss over it. On the contrary, I just pull it down under my chin when no one is looking.

It’s not the nursing home’s fault, but everything is as ridiculous as always. There’s been a mask mandate (though many times no one followed it) ever since Loren went to Prairie Meadows at the end of January.

However, there was no sign of Covid until the last month and a half, when twice we were not allowed to visit on account of a small handful of residents testing positive for the virus, though none ever showed any symptoms. Now, exactly one week later, the mask mandate is lifted.

There has never been much rhyme nor reason to much of anything during this entire pandemic. One small ‘for instance’: Wal-Mart and Hy-Vee used to be open 24 hours a day. When the pandemic began, hours were severely cut. Last year, hours were expanded, but they still close at 11:00 p.m. and open at 6:00 a.m.

This was moronic, as all it did was cram more supposedly-germ-infested people more tightly together during those shortened hours of business. And it took away people’s jobs when they badly needed them.

Ah, well. As I’ve said, we all, for the most part, continued life the same as usual.

Each morning, I check an email address at Frontier for a blind friend whose device will no longer work with that email platform, which is owned by Yahoo. Most of her email has been changed to gmail now, but periodically something arrives that she might wish to see, or might wish to have transferred to her other address. I also empty the Spam folder. Get a load of this piece of Spam she received the other day:

Dear Valid Users,

We are to inform you regarding the Virus that damages Human so we hereby inform you to please stay safe to be prevented from contracting this covid20 which you are to click on the following upgrade to, be pandemic.

UPGRADE NOW TO STAY SAFER

DO NOT IGNORE !!!

Thanks.

Frontier Communications INC. Stay Safer!

Haha! I wonder if the writer of that bit of brilliance sounds that bright in his mother tongue?

For Eva

A few of our friends and family members have asked if we were going to bring Loren home for Thanksgiving.

No, we will not be doing that.

The father of some friends of ours had Alzheimer’s. After living with his son and the son’s family for a few difficult years, they had him admitted to a nursing home. It was traumatic for all of them.

The man would cry and beg to go home – so they’d take him home with them for a while. He would then insist that they were not home, and demand to go to his ‘own’ home. He wouldn’t be satisfied until they’d take him for a drive, circle the entire town, and not find his ‘own’ house. He ran them ragged – and got himself into a much worse state of mind in the process.

Loren, while he has a different type of dementia (Lewy Body), would’ve done things like that, had I allowed it. This “always agree with everything they say” philosophy some people preach is only right in certain circumstances – and it’s absolutely wrong in others.

First, he has no ‘home’ but the nursing home; his home has been sold. Second, it would be a long drive for him – an hour and 45 minutes each way. Our Thanksgiving dinners are at our church with all our friends and relatives; there will be approximately 450 people there. We have a short service at 11:00 a.m. with music and a few Bible verses read, and often a touching story from one of those very first Thanksgivings. The dinner is at noon, and most everyone stays around and visits until midafternoon.

If we didn’t get Loren from the nursing home the previous day (and where would he sleep? – we have no good place for him), we’d have to get him Thursday morning. So we’d have to leave home at 7:00 a.m. Then we’d have to take him back later that day – and we probably wouldn’t get home until 9:00 p.m. or so.

No! Just ... NO.

Think what troubles this could cause! – what if he decided he wanted to come with us the next time we visited? Worse, what if he got all bent out of shape, like he used to do so often?

He’s happy and content there at the home. Our visits are always pleasant, without fail. We will leave well enough alone.

For Carolyn. I have a little yellow ladybug planter for Violet. I’ll give each little girl a small bag of potting soil, too.

I think doctors did not have nearly as good a handle on how to manage the symptoms of dementia, back when our friends’ father was suffering from it. I know it was more difficult to medicate patients appropriately, with some not getting the right medicine, or the proper dosage. People were overmedicated to the point where they really weren’t functioning much at all. Others were either given the wrong medication entirely, or not enough of the right medicine.

The medicine most often used for Alzheimer’s can cause the symptoms of Lewy Body dementia to escalate and worsen alarmingly. And that’s exactly the medication Loren’s family doctor gave him, when first we were seeing symptoms and thought it was Alzheimer’s.

He promptly got worse. I investigated... researched... read and read... and learned about Lewy Body dementia, which I had never heard of, even though it’s the 2^nd most common type of dementia. We did not refill that prescription.

The meds they give Loren now are doing him a good service. They keep careful tabs on his levels, and I am satisfied that all is well in that regard.

It was Leroy’s 11^th birthday that day, November 16^th. I gathered up a few gifts for him, including this geode with pewter figures on top – an eagle and a pinnated grouse (aka a greater prairie chicken) with two little chicks.

The pajamas I’d ordered for him had not come, so I tucked the ugly orange shirt that came by mistake into his bag. Maybe an 11-year-old boy will think a neon orange shirt with black stripes running down the sleeves and the middle of the back is nifty!

That wasn’t enough. I looked around my gift-wrapping room for something else. Whataya know, in a box over in the corner was the throw-sized schoolhouse quilt I once made for Lawrence Fricke, to whom Norma was married before he passed away in early 2017. It was my very first try at freehand feathering. After reading and watching several books and DVDs on quilting, especially the method of freehand feathering, I gave it try. I could do it, yes, I could! Not perfectly; instead of feathers, I inadvertently made hotdogs now and then; but... I could do it. Lawrence didn’t mind my lack of expertise, and I’m sure Leroy won’t, either.

I tossed it in the dryer on ‘warm steam’, threw in a wet towel for good measure, added two or three good-smelling dryer sheets, and let the dryer do its job.

Twenty minutes later, the quilt was soft and fragrant. I folded it, rolled it, tied it with ribbons, and tucked it into Leroy’s birthday bag.

Here’s a link to my posts about that quilt (keep scrolling down to see it completed – and Teensy enjoying it, heh heh) Schoolhouse Quilt Fortunately, Lawrence wasn’t allergic to cats. I did use the lint-roller on it before I gave it to him.

I’m giving Leroy a smaller geode with a wee pewter miner and mining car inside for Christmas (pictured in last week’s journal), so I had ordered a book on geodes for him. It had not come yet, but I decided to give it to him, along with the pajamas when they came, as a late birthday gift, to go with this first and bigger geode.

Looking back at some old pictures with our kitties in them, I am reminded how they would bring us their ‘gifts’ – mice, gophers, chipmunks, moles, voles, lizards, small snakes, and birds and baby bunnies, arrggghhh, right through the pet door. They’d often bring them in hale and hearty, the better to play with them once they got them indoors. I therefore managed to save quite a number of them. 🥴

Socks once brought in a blue jay early one Saturday morning – and then he let it go, and the chase began. We were all awakened by loud – and not very skillful – piano playing.

What on earth?!

I leaped out of bed and went running to see whose idea of a good joke this was, so early on a Saturday morning.

It was Socks, racing down the keyboard in hot pursuit of the blue jay. Aiiiiyiiiyiiieee.

I opened the front door so the bird would go out. I then went around pulling blinds so he’d quit trying to fly through the windows. But did you know that birds have a difficult time exiting through a door? This is because their instinct when in danger tells them, “Go higher!” – and they will over and over again fly above the open door, instead of through it.

After a multitude of misdirected flights, the bird finally found the way out. Socks, whom I had corralled in my arms, said, “M--mm--mm--ow-ow-ow-owww!!” and made those funny little ‘click’ noises cats often make whilst watching feathered fowl, as the bird escaped.

He narrowed his golden eyes and turned them upon me, nonblinking and reproachful.

“Yeah, Cat. It’s Catch-and-Release-Only Day. Deal with it.”

That day, I began printing our names (via HP printer) on our Christmas cards. I’m not going to do a Christmas letter this year. Instead, I’m putting my blog address, http://natures-splendor.blogspot.com/, into the card, so people can read my journals if they are so inclined. That’ll save me a lot of time, paper, ink, and wear and tear on the printer. I had about 150 cards and envelopes to print, counting those for our church members.

I gave Leroy his gift after church that night. Then I doled out some pictures to Carolyn and Violet and Keira. After Carolyn and Violet departed, I gave Keira a small resin Christmas wreath ornament, about the size of her hand, with tiny teacups on it, and banners (also resin) that say ‘Peace and Love’ and ... ? Should’ve taken a picture of it. I forgot, and I can’t find a photo like it online, as it would no doubt be considered ‘vintage’ by now.

Anyway, it was more of a smash hit than I would’ve ever guessed. I had forgotten that Keira is the one who particularly loves tea. Hester puts a fruit-flavored bag of herbal tea into her cup just long enough to turn the water a soft amber color, and Keira is happy as a lark.

Hester sent a video clip of Keira with the ornament after they got home. “Do you know why she gave it to me? – because she thought I would like it?” asks Keira, and Hester answers, “Yes! Do you think Grandma knows you like tea?” and Keira gives that characteristic quick little nod of hers. She’s such a sweet child.

for Carolyn

We picked up a few more Christmas gifts that I’d ordered from Wal-Mart before heading home. When I placed my order, I’d clicked ‘Ship to My House’ – and was informed, “Some of these items are ‘Pick Up Only’.” So I changed the entire order to ‘Pick Up at Store’. The order went through.

However, shortly after receiving a thank-you notice for the order, I received a notification telling me, “Sorry; some of these items are not available and will have to be shipped to you separately.”

Yeah, thanks, Wal-Mart’s fabulous automated system. So I have to pick up some things... and have others delivered. Many times they come from various warehouses here and there around the country. But the dumbest is when two small items come from the same warehouse on the same day – each packed separately in its own very large box. 🙄 Way to keep your costs down, Wal-Mart.

for Jonathan, to go with the hand-carved rhinoceros

Thursday, I continued working on Christmas cards. I first used up the random Christmas cards I had found in one of Janice’s bins, tucked waaay back under Loren’s staircase. The cards and envelopes are all different sizes, so I couldn’t just run them through my printer pell-mell; I had to stop and measure each one, and then change the page setup accordingly. I tried putting a card through without doing that, when I saw that it was within ⅜” of the previous card.

The printer slurped it in hungrily, and I thought (prematurely), Success!

Without pausing to print, it spewed that card right out the finish slot. With a grating chime, a notice popped up on my computer screen: “You idiot! Don’t you think your printer can tell when you’ve been too lazy to plug in the correct measurements?! Try again, dodo brain!”

Well, it was something like that.

For Ian, to go with the Schleich vinyl polar bear cubs and baby seal we got him.

When the cards changed from portrait to landscape orientation, I had to spin the textboxes I was printing 90° one way or another. Not always, though. Sometimes the very measurements themselves apparently clued in the computer as to which way it should print – vertical or horizontal. When I wasn’t sure, I put a scrap paper through first.

But finally I was done with the different-sized ones, and ready to start on the cards I had left over from last year. After that, things sped up considerably.

By suppertime, I had all the Christmas cards that I had on hand printed. I counted the families who still needed cards, ordered 90 more cards while I ate, and then headed downstairs to wrap a few more things that had arrived.

I sent a picture to the girls: “Which one of you owned this bear?” It’s a little thing, about 5” tall. Its head is of resin, and its body is stuffed with sawdust, so it has some weight to it.

Hester responded within a minute or two: “It may have been mine, or I just really remember seeing it a lot, lol.”

Knowing Hester, I was sure she would not have said that, unless she was fairly certain it was hers. Also knowing Hester, if someone else were to say it was hers, Hester would promptly say, “Yes, it probably is.” Because that’s Hester.

I had already thought it was Hester’s. And no one else claimed it. “Okay,” I wrote back, “that’s what I thought. I was planning to give it to Keira, if that’s okay. I sewed her little hat back together, glued it back on her head, and blew all the dust off. I have a little clothespin chair that Aunt Janice made that it perfectly fits in.”

“I think she’ll love it! 🐻” answered Hester.

So Keira’s it will be. I trotted upstairs to repair the doll. Here are a couple of the types of thimbles I like to use when I am hand-sewing.

By midnight or a little after, the temperature was 13°, with a wind chill of -3°. It was projected to get down to 9° by Friday’s early morning hours.

Before going to bed, I went downstairs to the gift-wrapping room and put the Christmas gifts that had arrived the last couple of days (and that we’d picked up at Wal-Mart) into gift bags.

Friday morning, I walked out on the back deck to fill the bird feeders – and caught a little fox squirrel in the act of stealing black-oil sunflower seeds from the one sunflower seed feeder that wasn’t already empty. The others had probably been emptied by him, too, as they had gotten empty awfully fast.

Here he is, leaping down and taking off on a dead run. I didn’t have time to switch my camera to sports mode, so the only part of him that’s in focus is his tail.

Knowing he’d run along the railing toward me, leap across the opening for the steps, and then dash along the railing toward the house, where he’d shinny right up the quarter-log siding to the eaves, I thought I’d stand there in his way at the top of the steps and thwart his routine.

That silly little squirrel kept right on a-running straight at me, and when he got to the opening, he decided he was a flying squirrel.

He launched himself, even though I was in the way – and by using his tail like a rudder on a tailfin, spiraling it one way and then the other, that agile rodent made a curve right around me, in order to land on the opposite railing! Traveling at Mach IV speed, he raced for the house, scrambled up the side of it, and then scuttled rapidly along the underneath side of the eaves before disappearing. He has probably chewed a hole in the plywood Larry nailed up to cover the previous hole the varmints made, and now has access to the addition again. 🥴 They’re cute, and I like them; but they sure can be destructive little critters.

Having gone as far as I could with the Christmas preparations, I spent the day scanning photos.

Here’s Larry holding Keith when he was just a week old. (Keith; not Larry. Larry was a full 19 years old.)

Supper that evening was chicken thighs baked with baby Dutch Yellow potatoes and a purple onion cut into sections.

I have not bought Schwan’s food for a long time, on account of the price. Also, they no longer do door-to-door delivery out here; they send it via UPS.

I have not found any frozen vegetables that can hold a candle to Schwan’s vegetables. Their meats, too, are superior to grocery-store variety meats. We don’t eat a whole lot of ice cream, but it, too, is much better from Schwan’s. We finally found a few of Kemp’s flavors that are pretty good. I don’t like most brands’ oversweet stuff.

I did five loads of laundry while I scanned photos that day. When I’m upstairs in my studio, I can’t hear the little tunes the washer and dryer play when they finish their cycles, so I set a timer on my computer to let me know when another load of clothes is done.

I kept at the scanning until I finished the album I was working on. I picked up the next one and flipped through the pages – and was delighted when I discovered a whole lot of pictures of Dorcas when she was a baby! I was afraid they were in one of the 13 missing albums.

She will be pleased, too, as she has sometimes asked for pictures of herself as a baby or a toddler, in order to compare them with her own children. Trevor is 6 ½, and little Brooklyn will soon be a year old.

The album I just finished had several of Larry’s senior pictures in them. They are proofs, one of a kind – and the studio stamped ‘PROOF’ on the backs of the pictures, and then stacked them together before the stamp ink was dry. The pictures were nearly ruined. After scanning them, I spent some time editing out a whole lot of that ink, especially in the face area.

This one was a colossal mess, but I worked long and hard on it, and I think you can hardly see the nasty ink that was smeared all over it. I’m so happy I was able to save these photos! I’ve been sad about those senior pictures ever since the day I saw what had happened to them – and by the time I saw them, the studio had burned to the ground, taking all the negatives down with it; so there was no reprinting them.

That picture was one of my favorites – and one of the most badly smeared. Larry is wearing the suit and shirt I had made for him the previous year.

Here's another that was covered with ink:

By 2:30 p.m. Saturday, the temperature had made it up to 29°, but the wind was blowing steadily at 21 mph, with gusts up near 30 mph, so the wind chill was 16°. I was glad I had a reliable vehicle for my trip to Omaha to see Loren that day. Larry did not go, as he needed to put a snowplow on the front of a pickup he recently sold to a coworker.

I got to the nursing home at about 4:30 p.m. Loren was nowhere to be seen, and neither was his friend Roslyn. I have not seen her for about a month and a half. I found Loren in his room, lying in bed – but I don’t think he was asleep. I can’t be sure, because he’s such a light sleeper, he would most likely awaken the moment anyone opened his door.

He had on pajama bottoms and a flannel jacket with quilted lining, as if he’d thought it was time to get ready for bed. His day clothes were lopped over his chair.

We visited for a time, looking at the Messenger paper and the Reminisce magazine I’d brought him.

I had noticed when I opened the plastic that the Reminisce comes in that the magazine was thinner, and the pages felt like they were made of thin newsprint rather than the nice glossy magazine pages it used to be printed on.

Then I found a page telling me that they will no longer be printing Reminisce. The remainder of the subscription will be changed to Birds and Blooms.

Well, that’s too bad... but Birds and Blooms is a nice magazine, too. I like it better, actually, because it doesn’t have pages and pages about obscure movie stars from days gone by. I’d rather look at pictures of birds, thanks. But Loren did enjoy Reminisce.

Later, when I told Loren it was time for him to eat dinner, he was quite surprised. He looked at his watch, agreed that yes, it was indeed dinnertime. He looked down at his pajamas and said, “Oh! I need to change my clothes!”

So I bid him adieu and departed, with him thanking me for coming and telling me how much he appreciates it.

The sun was sinking below the horizon by the time I left Omaha, and the dusky sky was full of ducks and geese coming in low, circling, and landing in harvested cornfields, ponds, and lakes. Can you see their smudgy outlines in the picture below?

A woman (let’s call her Mardilla Sarple) who’s in my ‘friends’ list on Facebook, but whom I don’t know – other than knowing she used to quilt, in days gone by – periodically sends me invites (via Facebook messenger, which I rarely use and generally ignore) to various obscure Facebook groups, usually featuring crafts of some sort, such as crocheting, knitting, or embroidery. There was one group called ‘Stitch Meditation’, whatever that might be. Other times, she has sent invitations to groups that are geared toward those who have suffered strokes or other debilitating illnesses.

Mrs. Sarple is not the only one who does this. If I accepted all the invitations I receive, I would belong to groups such as Tunnel Engineering, Rocketry Science, Animal Husbandry, The Art of Blown Glass, Breeding Sugar Gliders, Sheep Shearing and Woolmongering, Tree Fellers, Steamer Trunk Restoration, Tune Your Bassoon, Organize Your Butterflies, Avoiding Diabetes and Purple People Eaters, How to Love a Llama, and a gazillion others.

So, as I said, I ignore all those invites and most of the messages, too.

Mardilla is unique, however, in that she comes back to her own message days or weeks later, and, apparently thinking I wrote the message, proceeds to answer it.

After sending me several group invitations in the space of 24 hours and noting that I had not accepted any of them, she asked, “You dont [sic] agree? those private groups?”

I ignored that, too. (It didn’t make much sense, anyway.)

A couple of days later, she answered her own question: “Yes and no but they are pretty good usually”

As usual, I ignored that. First, I had no answer in any case. Second, there are nearly 5,000 people in my friends list. I cannot answer all the messages I get.

That was a couple of months ago.

Today the lady found her own message and responded, “yes!”

Yes, what?! I never said anything! 😂 hee hee... If everybody would do that, no one would get bent out of shape when I don’t answer them!

One person once wrote, “Many happy returns of the day!”

When I didn’t respond within 15 minutes, he wrote in a fit of pique, “All right, then, DON’T!” 🤣

Don’t what? Don’t have a return of the day? I think he can’t stop it. The return of the day, that is.

After church last night, Bobby and Hannah gave Larry a plaque that reads, “GRANDKIDS WELCOME” and under that, “parents by appointment”. Levi picked it out.

They also gave him a wood-barreled hand-turned pen that Hannah got from a fellow vendor at one of her events. Larry likes things like that. He hung the sign on the front door.

We headed out to Wal-Mart to pick up an order, stopping at Kurt and Victoria’s on the way, because she had a couple of different kinds of dessert bars for us. One had walnuts and pecans in it; the other had apples, I think. They were yummy. I behaved like a pig and ate them both. I took a couple bites of one, then a couple bites of the other, in order to decide which I liked best and save that one for last; but I couldn’t decide, and before I knew it, they were gone.

Victoria showed me the girls’ room, which she has painted and fixed up quite cute. They each have a twin bed with a soft pink ruffled comforter.

Baby Willie’s room is pretty, too. He likes clocks. Victoria found one for a couple of dollars somewhere, hung it on his wall, and he’s delighted with it. Victoria holds him up so he can see and touch it, and he giggles and laughs, reminding me of how Victoria, when she was a baby, loved my mother’s miniature chimes with the little cardinal on top, and would laugh when I’d hold up so she could juuuussst touch them before I pulled her away quick.

Mama gave her that little set of chimes with the resin bird on top for Christmas when she was 5 years old. She was totally delighted.

It’s back to more ‘normal’ temperatures for this time of year here today – it was 40° by 10:30 a.m., bright and sunny.

Here I am in 1979, age 18, playing Norma’s piano, and below are pictures of Larry. I had these in frames on my dresser before I was married. My father, who never, ever went in my room unless I was there and he tapped on the door first, used to sneak in my room and turn these pictures around backwards or lay them down on their faces. 😂

The first couple of times it happened, I couldn’t understand what in the world was going on. haha

This afternoon, I took Leroy the rest of his birthday present – pajamas and the book on geodes by National Geographic.

I did a couple loads of laundry, including several fleece and flannel throws.

Hundreds of geese are flying over. It’s getting dark out, but I got a couple of shots of them. They’re probably heading down to the Loup River to spend the night, after feasting in the cornfields nearby.