Journal: Visiting with Family Hither and Yon

 

A while back, Hester gave me a quilting book called The Farmer’s Wife, 1930s Sampler Quilt.  On each double-page spread is a quilt block and a letter written from a farm woman to the magazine The Farmer’s Wife, and published from 1930-1939. 

Every now and then I pick up the book and read several pages.  Now that the photo-scanning is done, as soon as I give this house a good cleaning, I’m going to quilt again!  And as soon as I finish Kurt and Victoria’s quilt (which probably no longer matches their bedroom), I’ll start making quilts for the grandchildren, and I plan to use some of the patterns in this book.

 A few days ago, I read what is my favorite Letter to the Editor so far.  It’s from a lady whose signature is simply A Blind Flyer from Oklahoma, and was written in December of 1931 – yet it could just as well have been written today, some 91 years later.  It’s so true, and so much needed today.  Here it is:

 

How much like an aviator’s “blind flying” our lives are.  In this time of great confusion, we are in need of a set of instruments that will enable us to “fly by faith”.

An aviator depends on a Sperry horizon that tells whether the ship is pointed up or down, or flying on a level course, a Sperry directional gyro, by which the course is kept, and a radio to get assistance from distant stations.  In fog, darkness and rain the ship can, with these instruments, keep its course.

God has provided a set of instruments for “blind flying” in life.  Instruments that will enable the soul, with confidence and assurance, to meet and negotiate every storm, fog bank, or night in life.

The first is “a God-centered philosophy”, the fundamental principle of which is that God is sovereign and sufficient for any event of our lives.  This is our “Sperry horizon”. 

The Holy Bible is the directional gyro.  “A lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my pathway.”  The rule and guide of faith and practice.

The third instrument is prayer.  In the hour of one’s deepest and darkest problems, there is nothing so assuring and comforting as to talk to our Father in heaven.  This is the radio of the soul.

These three are God’s instrument boards for living by faith and not by sight.  “And this is the victory that overcometh the world.”  The soul that places the same confidence in these instruments, that an aviator places in his, will be able to fly safely through the darkest gloom to the journey’s end.

 

~ A Blind Flyer, Oklahoma, December 1931

Last week, upon learning about the fiasco with the fraudulent thumb drives (said to hold 2TB of data, but in reality only holding about 42MB), Penny, one of my blind friends, offered me some of her thumb drives, because she has drawerfuls of them.

“What size of drives do you have?” I asked.  “I need drives that will hold well over a terabyte.  I reckon I could divide them, if I had to.”

She responded, “16s up to 64s.  Come and see, and what you need I’ll gladly give you.  I’m glad if I can help you out.”  (Of course she can’t tell by looking at the drives how big they are; she must plug them into her computer, and then the computer will tell her.)

I, always willing to tease Penny, inquired, “What does ‘s’ stand for?  S'moresbytes?”  Then, “You know, I would need about 80 sixteen-gigabyte thumb drives for each of the kids!  In a minute or two, I shall start calling around to see where I can get 1 or 2TB thumb drives.  If they don’t have them here in town, I’ll call Nebraska Furniture Mart.”

She didn’t have any 2TB thumb drives.  “Sorry,” she wrote back, “I did not realize you needed so much space.  You dear photogenic folk take up a lot of terabytes.”  hee hee

I called Wal-Mart, and was told that they had 2TB external hard drives.  Nine of them, the man said, though not all the same brands.  I accordingly headed to Wal-Mart.

The lights on the dash in the Mercedes came on as usual when I opened the door and got in – but this time there was also a warning:  the battery in the key fob was low.  I could get stranded somewhere, just because the key fob battery was flat!

I had known that was about to happen, since twice the vehicle had not recognized the fact that the key was indeed inside said vehicle.  We had held the key closer to the dash, and the Merc started. 

I debated.  Could I drive ten miles to the store, turn the vehicle off, go into the store, come back out, start the vehicle, and drive ten miles back home without that battery going totally flat, and the engine turning off?

I was still debating when I got to Wal-Mart.

They had seven hard drives.  Not nine, seven.  Two (Seagate) cost $58, two (Western Digital) cost $59, and three (Toshiba) were $119.  I debated (it was a day for debating) on the Toshiba, then decided (and for deciding) to get them.  The Toshibas had two cords – one with a USB plug, and the other with a USB-C plug.   Cringing at the price, I gathered them up – and was surprised and glad when the young man rang them up, and it turned out the Toshibas were on sale for $57 each. 

Another place in town, Connecting Point, had a couple of drives, but they were $128 each.  I decided to either wait ’til Wal-Mart restocked, or get a couple more at a Wal-Mart in Omaha or Fremont next time I visited Loren.

Upon returning home, I connected my 4TB drive with all the pictures to my computer, then connected three of the new external hard drives, plugging two into the USB ports and one into the USB-C port.  I renamed the master photo folder, “All My Photos, with love from your mother,” and drug it, thrice, onto the new hard drives’ windows.

So now I have a small bagful of cute little silver thumb drives that have ‘2TB’ engraved on them, but hold only 42 gigs, and these external hard drives, small though they are, will not fit in the cute little miniature trunks I got from Hobby Lobby for the purpose of holding the thumb drives.

Ah, well.  42GB is something; I’ll find a use for them.  And, most importantly, no photos were harmed in this cinematograph.  So there’s that.  

As for those nine cute miniature trunks...  well, it seems I have nine granddaughters.  I think those trunks can be pressed into service as receptacles for a pretty piece of jewelry for upcoming birthdays, what do you think?

For supper that evening, we had pineapple and Canadian bacon pizza.  I’m not particularly fond of that kind of pizza, but someone gave it away at Walkers’ shop, and Larry brought it home.  We also had cottage cheese, apple crumb pie, and ice cream with caramel ribbons and chocolate chunks. 

That ice cream – even though I only have one small scoop – gives me a stomachache.  

I eat it anyway.

I’m valiant that way.

While the loading of hard drives continued, I cut little photos from the backs of old calendars to give little grandchildren.  My mother used to do that for our kids, and they were delighted.  I finally thought to do it for our grandchildren – and whataya know, they were delighted, too.

Little Eva, who’s 2, smiles when she sees me, then looks straight at my purse to see if any “Leeto pictoos” are forthcoming.  When I told her last week that I hadn’t had a chance to cut any new ones, she shrugged up one shoulder just like her Daddy Caleb does and said, “Tokay, tokay.”  (‘It’s okay.’)

Larry went hunting that afternoon, and got a deer.  He had someone in a nearby town cut it up and package it for us; it’s done now, and he’ll pick it up tomorrow.

A friend who knows I have some problem with my eyes, but doesn’t quite understand exactly what the problem is, offered me some tips for low vision troubles.  I appreciate my friend’s concern and helpfulness; but my vision is just fine – so long as my eyes stay open!  😲 

“I know, I know!” I exclaimed to another friend, “I just thought of a solution.  I could ask a plastic surgeon to install transparent eyelids on me face!  Then I could see, whether the eyelids go shut or not.  When I want to sleep, I could just tie on a set of blinders.  I’m so clever, I’m so clever.”

Wednesday morning, Keith sent pictures of snow around his house.  “I don’t think it’s ever going to stop snowing,” he wrote.  “I cleaned the snow off three times already in the last two days.  I think we’ve had over 12” of snow now since Sunday evening.”

I retorted, somewhat unsympathetically, “That’s pretty, and I’m jealous!”

Trouble is, it sometimes keeps him from working.  He drives a cement truck – and he was working that day. 

“Crazy people pouring concrete in this weather!!!” he said.  “But I haven’t worked yet this week, so I will take it.”

By the next day, they would have another 4.5” of snow.

That morning, my nephew Kelvin, who has been fighting colon cancer for about seven years now, I think, had a heart attack.  He was at work when the pain in his shoulder and chest got a lot worse, so he drove himself to the hospital, where they quickly discerned he was having a heart attack. 

It so happened that a heart doctor with the military and usually based at Walter Reed was there, and he’s the one who inserted a stent or balloon in the heart, where the left artery was completely blocked.  Kelvin was awake during the procedure.  Morphine had not helped the pain much at all, but as soon as the balloon opened up that artery, the pain eased almost completely.

The artery on the right side was completely blocked also, but the doctor said it looked ‘chronic’, like it had happened years back, and the body had ‘fixed’ itself by using the other side of the heart.  Kelvin was to stay in the hospital for a few days so they could watch him and get him adjusted to new meds.  He will be on aspirin every day for the rest of his life as well as another blood thinner.  Since they fixed the heart as soon as they did, the doctor didn’t expect much heart damage from which he would not recover.

That evening, Kelvin was in pain again, but they thought it was most likely because the heart muscle was not accustomed to working as it is now doing, just like any unused muscle might be very painful if suddenly put to use.  Kelvin is 55.

We are so thankful that excellent doctor ‘just happened’ to be there.

Here’s Kelvin with his family from a few years back.  They had one more boy after this picture was taken; he’s 14 or 15 now.  All four of these children are now married, and the girls all have children of their own; Kelvin and Rachel have 13 grandchildren.

Back when we lived in town, our houses were just a block and a half apart.  Our four littles were about the same age as these children:  our Hester/their Jodie; our Lydia/their Sharon (who called me ‘Shar Wynn’ when she was little); our Caleb/their Jason; our Victoria/their Jamie.  They are all still the best of friends, and their children are good friends with our grandchildren.

Kelvin is six years younger than me.  I used to take him for rides on my Stingray bicycle with the banana seat.  When he was about four, he gave me one of the best compliments I ever got in my life, before or since:  “Sarah Lynn, I like to play with you better than anyone!”

Since Larry had not gotten a new battery for the key fob the day before, what with his hunting exploits, and since our church service was that evening and I did not care to get stranded halfway there or halfway home, I thought I could at least take apart the key fob, find out what size of battery it needed, and then ask Larry to get one when he got off work.

Somebody bring me a sledge hammer, a crow bar, and a monkey wrench.

Not seeing any way to get the silly thing open, I finally found a YouTube video that showed how – though I must say, the guy who made the video had an easier time of it than I did.

I eventually got the fob open, and then texted this information to Larry in a nonchalant manner:  “The battery we need for the key fob is a Panasonic CR2025.”

He then had the gall to act all astonished that I was capable of prying the fob open.  “How do you know? 🤔”

“I opened the key fob,” I responded.  (Should’ve said I used my X-ray vision on it.)

He texted back an amazed face: 😮  Then, “That is my job!  🤨”

(Whataya bet he had already tried it himself, to no avail?  He won’t admit it now, though, will he?!  Ha!)

What a world we live in, when a perfectly hale and hearty vehicle might not start just because a wee battery in a key fob is going flat!  😄

Meanwhile, those more-than-a-quarter-million photos were loading onto the external hard drives, one after another, without a hitch.  The total number of photos is 229,186, and they are divided into 4,361 folders.  That’s 1.07 terabytes, or 1,179,222,314,275 bytes.

I put two finished drives, along with extra adapters for iPhones, in gift bags, and the gift bags (along with other things for other members of the family) into boxes ready to be shipped to Keith and family in Salt Lake City and to Dorcas and family north of Knoxville, Tennessee.

Thursday morning, I cut my hair, then filled the bird feeders.  Brrrrrr... it was 25°, with a wind chill of 9°.  The wind was blowing from the northwest at 25 mph, with gusts of 33 mph.

I did the laundry.  Why were there five loads of clothes, for just two people??  Do people live here that I don’t know about??

Larry took the boxes of gifts to the UPS Store for me.

I called Wal-Mart to ask if they’d gotten in any more 2TB external hard drives.  They had not, and would not be getting more until December 28^th.  So I would indeed need to get the last two drives in Fremont or Omaha.

We got a bit of snow that day, but the wind was blowing so hard from the northwest, I think all the snow probably wound up in the Florida Panhandle.  Western Nebraska got a couple of feet or so earlier in the week.  Hard to be accurate, with such winds as they had – 60 mph and higher.  Many roads – I80 and a whole lot of county roads – have been closed for several days.  Eastbound I80 finally opened Thursday – and shut back down a few hours later because of an accident.

Larry’s elderly friend in Genoa, for whom he sometimes works on vehicles, gave us a big spiral ham.  So for supper that evening, I fixed broccoli, mashed potatoes, and gravy to go with it.

Late that night, with the photo transfer complete, my laptop was finally untethered from all the external hard drives, and I was able to retire to my recliner, laptop on lap, for the first time in about a week.  I only had 7,070 steps on my VeryFitPro watch, as opposed to the recommended 10,000; but that was enough for me that day.

Clothes washed, dried, folded, and put away, check.

Fleece pajamas, check.

Soft heating-pad roll behind neck, check.

Large, soft heating pad draped over the top of me, check.

Big, soft ottoman underfoot, check.  (This is better than the footrest on the recliner, since it’s the perfect height, and I can get in and out of the chair much easier than when the footrest is up.)

Coffee near at hand, check.  The coffee is called Winter Wonderland, whole beans from Christopher Bean, and it’s really good.  Here’s the description:

“Sleigh bells ring, are you listening?  This is the perfect coffee for a cold blustery day or a long winter’s night.  Flavored with perfectly roasted hazelnuts, caramel, vanilla, a hint of coconut, and a dusting of snowy white chocolate, this comforting blend will make you face all those holiday plans you’ve made unafraid.”  Quite the powerful coffee, huh?

Christopher Bean does not roast the beans until right before shipping, in order to ensure the freshest possible coffee, and I only grind enough for two pots of coffee at a time.  Yeah, I’m hoity-toity about coffee.

Thus ensconced, I proceeded to watch a video of Wyoming’s large animals – mountain lions, moose, elk, deer, antelope, wolves, foxes, etc.

I watched a mountain lion carefully covering up his kill, looking exactly like our kitty Socks used to look out in the yard covering up some small rodent (or, horrors, a bunny) he’d caught, if it happened that he wasn’t hungry enough to eat it.  Tabby, the moocher, would sit calmly on the porch watching the show, and then, as soon as Socks exited stage left, Tabby would wait a beat or two until he was sure the coast was clear, then go dig up the meal and chow down.

And that’s exactly what happened with the mountain lion’s kill:  a little red fox who’d been hiding silently nearby waited until the mountain lion was gone, and then scurried forth to have himself a feast.

Financial advisors are brilliant.  Everything they say inspires confidence.  Right? 

I heard this on the rural radio Friday morning:  “There is only one expense farmers have control over, and that’s the financial expenses that they have control over.”

That afternoon, Hester sent a picture of birds on her feeder, writing, “Flickers are so pretty!!  And fluffy this time of year, lol.”

There were downy woodpeckers, nuthatches (both the white-breasted and the tiny red-breasted), and red-bellied woodpeckers on my own suet feeder.

Hester then sent this picture of their calico kitty Spooky and Keira standing side by side peering out the window at the birds in the tree just outside.  That kitty has been standing at doors and windows with Keira ever since Keira learned to stand up.  

See picture below from August of 2019.

“Spooky is such a sweet and feisty little cat,” wrote Hester.  “She loves the kids, if they’re crying she always shows up to help out and check on them.  🥰  Funny thing is, she usually distracts them and they cheer up, lol.”

“Our calico kitty did that when the babies cried, too,” I remembered.  “In the night or early morning, if I was sleeping and a baby woke up, Calico Kitty would come to my door and squall loudly.”

Hester said she had peanut butter suet in one of her feeders, and the squirrels were enjoying it right along with the birds.  “I have apple suet too,” she added, “but that’s not really getting eaten very well, surprisingly!  I wonder if it freezes a bit?”

“Yes, our suet sometimes freezes,” I agreed, “and then only the hairy woodpeckers and the blue jays can get any pieces off of it, with their hard pounding.  I’ll bet the orioles would like apple suet; but of course they’re in Guatemala on their little colorful hammocks next to the beach, sipping sweet apple cider.”

Then I asked her, “Did you know that woodpeckers’ tongues are thick (in comparison to some birds) and wrap around the backs of the insides of their skulls, to protect their little birdbrains from all that rattatat-tatting they do?  John James Audubon found that out with his shoot’m and dissect’m method of studying birds.  He was quite a crack shot (not to be confused with a crackpot).”

“That’s how he studied birds?!” exclaimed Hester in horror.  “Yikes.”

“Yeah, well... he lived from 1785-1851, and he didn’t have a portable MRI unit to haul around with him in all his exploratory travels.  Here he is with his gun.”

“I guess I’ve just never been that curious about anything,” said Hester.

Hee hee – no, you couldn’t pay Hester enough to shoot a bird.

Audubon didn’t only shoot and examine birds; he studied (using the same method) most of the quadrupeds of North America, from squirrels to alligators to moose.  In addition to being a deadeye with a gun, he drew and painted.  His paintings weren’t what we might call totally ‘lifelike’, because he worked hard to show all the birds’ details accurately – and he painted them ‘to scale’, too.

That afternoon, I cut the spiral ham from Larry’s friend Joe into sections, put it into Ziploc bags, and froze it.  I did not want that big, scrumptious ham to go bad before we could finish eating it!

I spent several hours putting a bunch of family pictures on one of those not-at-all-2TB thumb drives for Larry’s sister Rhonda, as we were going to meet her at a coffee shop in Omaha the next day.  I put 1,818 pictures on the drive – that’s 7.18 GB.  The thumb drive, if it’s like the others, holds 42 GB.  So it’s only 1/6 full.

At least I can use these thumb drives, even if they aren’t what they’re supposed to be.

Saturday morning by 10:30 a.m., it had ‘warmed up’ to 18°.  The wind chill was at 0°.

In order to get to Omaha and keep all of our planned engagements, I wanted to leave at 1:00 p.m.

We left at 1:40 p.m., then stopped at the shop in town to clean the windshield.  Larry decided he needed to do a really, really good job – and he cleaned all the rest of the windows, too – right when he needed to give it a lick and a promise.  Twenty minutes later, we were finally on our way again.

It takes over an hour and 30 minutes to get to the nursing home. 

We had told Rhonda we would meet her at 4:00 p.m. at a Starbucks coffeeshop on the west side of Omaha, a 15-minute drive from the nursing home.

Figure that out.  How long of a visit would we be able to have with Loren?

As we drove, I got a note from Keith, and a picture of the box we had sent him.

“We just got the box,” he wrote, “but I can’t get into it with all the tape, and I bet the knife I need to open this is inside?”

Haha!  Yeah, Larry’s not the only one who teases me about the way I tape boxes.  I’ll have you know, I’ll have you know, no box I have ever mailed has ever come apart, mid voyage!

“That’s how you know it came from ME instead of from Amazon,” I informed him.

But the funny thing is, there is a fancy-schmancy knife in thet thar package.  It’s a collector’s pocketknife from Bradford Exchange.  It still has the name tag in the zippered, padded bag – and I left it there, with a note to Keith from me, telling him his Grandma Swiney had given it to his Uncle Loren many years ago.

We sent popsockets to Korrine’s three children – grippers for the backs of their phones or tablets.  The girls’ popsockets have pictures of flowers on them, while Kaiden’s looks like granite or marble.

“Korrine just took the bags of our gifts from me to put under the tree,” wrote Keith.  “Guess I can’t peek ’til Christmas!  I wailed and said, ‘I can’t open it!!???’  Then she handed me the card and said I could open that.”

“Well, you know what one thing is,” I told him (referring to the hard drive full of pictures).  “So if you both want to look at it, I don’t care.”

“We will wait,” answered Keith, “or I will end up seeing what else is in there.”  Then, “Knife,” he added.  “Haha”

“You don’t know that,” I retorted.  “Could be a sewing kit.”

We then spent a few minutes accusing each other of trying to be sleuths.

“Sherlock Holmes was in my ancestry,” I informed Keith.  “Didn’t you know?”

“Or maybe it was Chief Thayendanegea,” I reconsidered.

“Did you just type a bunch of letters to make that name or is it a real name?” asked Keith suspiciously.

“Hahaha,” said I, “It’s a real, honest-to-goodness name!  Of a chief!  No less!”

“I always wonder how they decide those are the right letters to create a name, and when they decide to stop at that many letters,” he remarked.

“They called him Joseph Brant,” I continued.  “Probably because nobody could say his name,” I added.  “He was the leader of many Mohawks who sided with the British Crown during the American Revolutionary War.”

About that time, we met a dark orange (almost rust) VW Beetle – with neon-orange wheels.  Wow, that thing clashed.  And I had my fingers on my keyboard instead of my camera shutter.  And there are absolutely none to be found like that online.  There are rust-colored Beetles... and there are black Beetles with neon-orange wheels; but no rust-colored Beetles with neon-orange wheels.  Rats.

A few minutes later, we met a bright red Bug.  Again, my fingers were on my keyboard, and the camera was beside me; but at least this one can be found online.  Here’s one just like it:

Do you know, I spelt the company name ‘Volkswagon’ – until I got a computer, and it put a wavy red line under the word.

I grumped, “Why doesn’t it know that word?!” – and allllmost added it to the computer’s dictionary before I remembered an embarrassing moment in first grade when I thought I knew how to spell sumpthin’.

I looked it up.

To my great amazement it was ‘VolkswagEn’, with an ‘e’.

It was a bright, sunny day, but only 21°, with a wind chill of 5°.  By the time we got to the nursing home, we had used up the majority of the day’s sunlight.

There was no snow in Omaha.  But it’s still drifted high in the Panhandle, and roads are still closed.  School was closed for four days in many towns.  I don’t remember school being closed that many days in a row, here in Nebraska; most places are equipped to deal with it.  But there’s no ‘dealing with it’ when all that snow just keeps blowing right back where it has been cleared.

People were stranded at motels – and sometimes in the little towns there were no restaurants open, so the locals were bringing food to the stranded travelers, and motels were cooking not only breakfast, but also dinner and supper.

Several years ago, maybe in 2010, we got so much snow the night before Christmas, we were totally snowed in, and couldn’t go to the Christmas dinner at our church.

I donned parka and galoshes and camera and headed out.  I rounded the corner of the house just in time to see Caleb at the top of a snowdrift that almost went to the second-story window – and then he jumped!

I cannot lift my camera to my face when my heart has stopped, now, can I?  😯

Larry and Caleb scooped and scooped and snowblowed and snowblew (one of those should be a word)... and finally got the driveway and lane cleared out by about 5:30 p.m.

Meanwhile, I was making the best (giant!) pot of chili I ever made in my life.

Remember that.

They went to town, and stopped at Bobby and Hannah’s house – and they had saved us all nice big meals from the church.  A lot of people had been unable to get there; the Fellowship Hall was sparse.

Anyway, Larry and Caleb sat themselves right down at Hannah’s table and had supper!

Upon learning that, I threatened to put cloves in the chili.  

Remember that story?  I may have told it recently...  Hannah, age 19, had that giant pot of ours full of soup, and was putting in the spices, trying to do it just like I always did.  Victoria, who was about 3, was standing on a chair with a long wooden spoon, stirring each time more spices went in.

Hannah put in the garlic chips... Victoria stirred.

Hannah put in cumin... Victoria stirred.

Hannah put in celery salt... Victoria stirred.

Hannah put in oregano... Victoria stirred.

Hannah put in ground cloves... Victoria stirred.

Then Victoria said, said she, “Hannah!  This used to smell good.”  😂

We got to the nursing home at about 3:35 p.m.  Here's the front lobby:

Loren and a woman (I don’t know her name, but I’ve seen her fairly often) were just coming out of his room.  I wonder how they got the door open?  Did a nurse do it for them?

The woman is very unsteady on her feet; it worries me to see her walk.  As we went into Loren’s room, she followed us back in, and gave effort at welcoming us in her cheery way (she’s one of the more cheery persons there) and wishing us God’s blessing several times.  I wished her the same, which made her happy.

She pointed at Loren, who was by then conversing with Larry, and not paying me or the lady any attention, and said, “We call him Frank.”  She gave me a piercing look.  “Did you know we call him Frank?” she asked.

“No, I didn’t,” I said truthfully.

“He’s ‘Frank’,” she nodded, then frowned, giving the matter some thought.  “We call him Frank, because before my first husband, there was...”  She paused, losing her line of thought.  “And my last husband,” ...  She shrugged and raised a hand, palm up.  “Well, I can’t remember all those details.”  She smiled at me.  “My first husband was Don.”

I smiled and nodded.

She looked back at Loren.  “And he’s ‘Frank’.”

After a short conversation wherein she inquired how far and from whence we had driven, and was astonished that Columbus was 90 miles away, and that we had just driven all that enormous distance, she said, “God bless you for coming to visit us!” and “Drive safely!” several times.  She then turned and headed slowly for the open door, hand on the wall to steady herself.

At the doorway, she lifted one foot high – and then when the foot came all the way back down to floor level, she looked down, surprised.  “There were steps here, before!”  She shook her head in a bit of longsuffering resignation.  “You just never can tell.”

The previous week when I was leaving, Loren walked with me to the front desk, looking all around for a nurse.  Spotting one, he gestured at me and told her with friendly urgency, “She’s needing to go out!”

He gave me a wave as I went toward the door, then headed quickly down one of the hallways, calling back, “I’ve got to get downstairs now!” 

I very badly wanted to call after him, “Good luck with that!!!”  😂

I didn’t.  But I wanted to. 

It had been nearly dinnertime, and I had told him minutes earlier, “They’ll soon be serving your dinner!”, pointing toward the dining room.  That remark probably transitioned itself somehow into his need to get himself ‘downstairs’.

Back to this last Saturday.  We visited with Loren for about 15 minutes, and then I practically had to pull Larry out by the arm to get him to go, as he was busy showing Loren pictures on his phone from our trip to Wyoming, telling stories about it, and Loren was enjoying it a lot.  He hadn’t seen Larry for several weeks, and I know he had missed him.

After leaving, I told Larry that he’d been talking to ‘Frank’, whether he knew it or not.  He laughed and said, “Talking to the people in that home is like talking to a bunch of toddlers!”

“NOOOOOOO!!!” I disagreed.  “Toddlers make sense!”

Before leaving the parking lot, I plugged the address for Starbucks into my GPS, and then we texted Rhonda to say we were going to be 15 minutes late.  Off we went then, with Larry arguing with the GPS at most every turn.

Nevertheless, we got there 15 minutes later, beating Rhonda by a minute or two.

We gave her a Lilla Rose hair clip (the hair jewelry that Hannah sells) for her birthday, and the thumb drive of pictures for Christmas.

Since neither Larry nor I are fond of Starbucks coffee, I ordered their ‘original’ hot chocolate (with a pile of whipped cream on top), and Larry ordered white hot chocolate.

We talked about all sorts of old memories – and suddenly we realized we were going to be late meeting Joseph and his family at Panera Bread in Bellevue, a suburb almost 30 minutes away on the far southeast side of Omaha.  We had promised to buy their supper for their eleventh anniversary, which was October 17^th.  I had a birthday gift for Jocelyn, too; her birthday was November 10^th, same as Rhonda’s.

Since they will be gone over Christmas visiting Jocelyn’s sister, we gave them their Christmas presents, too.  We don’t live all that far apart; but we have a hard time getting our schedules to work together nicely for get-togethers. 

Larry called Joseph to tell him where we were, and how far away we were.  Once again, we were 15 minutes later than planned; but at least no one needed to be anywhere afterwards.

I like Panera Bread.  We were with Joseph and the children the first time we went to one.  I didn’t realize what size of portions they served, and being totally starved, I ordered salad, a bowl of soup, a sandwich, a French twist for dessert, and a large glass of juice.

I took home enough food to feed me for the next week.

Joseph, who had been there and knew, didn’t bother to mention portion size when he saw what I was ordering, and was laughing when they set these giant platters and huge bowls in front of me, and I looked across the table at him in amazement.  I had twice – no, three times – as much food as everyone else.

That bowl of soup and dish of salad had looked small in the picture! 

I was discussing with an online quilting friend one of the few treatments for blepharospasm, which is injections of Botox around the eyes.  Yikes, that makes me shiver.

She found a couple of videos about it that were quite helpful.  She told me about one doctor telling a woman before giving an injection, “This will be a little pinch,” – and I immediately remembered the time our little Joseph, at age three, had to have a filling in a tooth. 

The nurse, prior to giving him a shot to deaden the tooth, said, “This will only be a little pinch.” 

She gave him the shot.

He didn’t move, but the color drained out of his face, and his small knuckles went white as he grasped the armrests of the dental chair.

The nurse went away.

As soon as her footsteps faded down the hallway, Joseph sat up and stared at me, big-eyed.  Then, “Why did she pinch me?!” he asked.

I patted his arm and said, “She didn’t pinch you; she gave you a shot to deaden the tooth so it won’t hurt when the dentist removes the cavity and puts in the filling.”

“Oh,” he said, satisfied, and lay back in the reclining chair again.

Doctors and nurses ought to just tell it the way it is.  😏

It must’ve been longer ago than I thought, when I looked for videos about Benign Essential Blepharospasm.  I didn’t find much.  There’s little information on the condition.  However, since the last time I looked for anything on YouTube, quite a few videos have been posted.  Here’s one I just looked at:  Blepharospasm

Justin and Juliana seem to be great friends.  Juliana’s schoolteacher told Joseph she wished she could clone Juliana 18 times and just have 18 of her in her classroom. 😊

This is Joseph and Jocelyn.  

Joseph had brought along a new tablet he’d just gotten, and upon finding the hard drive full of photos in his bag, he promptly plugged it in and started looking at pictures.  One of the first folders he opened was labeled ‘Joseph’s Photos’, and contained pictures he took with a little 110 camera.

Here’s a shot he took of Lydia when she was about two years old; we were at Mt. Rushmore in the Black Hills.  I think she was being silly in every last picture he took of her.

After a yummy meal and a nice visit, we bid them adieu and headed for a Wal-Mart that was only a few blocks away to get a couple more 2TB external hard drives. 

It was Jonathan’s (Jeremy and Lydia’s 2^nd child) 9^th birthday yesterday.  We gave him a dark blue long-fleeced zippered vest and a RZR.

Today I started loading the last two hard drives with pictures.  When these are done, I need to pull the four hard drives out of their gift bags over there on the end of the table and add Saturday’s pictures to them.

Also, somewhere in the middle of those quarter-million-plus photos, there are two folders that have duplicates, because I backed up photos before labeling and editing, and then again afterwards – and of course relabeled photos get added to the folder, instead of overwriting the old photos.  One folder was 05-28-16.  What was the other folder, and why in the world didn’t I write it down??

The three hard drives that have already been given to three of the kids will just have to have the duplicates and the missing 12-17-22 photos.  Well, I can send them some of those recent photos, of course.

Is this a never-ending project, or what?!

It’s 1° with a wind chill of -13° tonight as I write, and it’s going to be cold, cold, cold, the rest of the week, with the high on some days being well below zero, and wind chills possibly reaching 50 below.  Brrrrrrr.  That’s cold!

When the Christmas preparations and get-togethers are over, I plan to clean the house thoroughly and then get to work on Kurt and Victoria’s quilt.  The top is done, but it’s not... special.  Gotta make it special. 

Earlier today, I told Dorcas that the box we had sent them was supposed to be arriving today.  (But the presents I sent on December 2^nd for Brooklyn’s birthday still have not arrived, and one hasn’t even left the point of origin!  One alllllmost got there, having arrived in Knoxville, just 20 miles from Dorcas’ house; and then it went all the way back to Chicago.  Did they not teach the kindergartners in the warehouse the difference between ‘to’ and ‘from’?)

“I’ll keep an eye out on the porch,” replied Dorcas.

“Won’t that make you feel lopsided,” I asked, “and liable to run into things on the side missing the eye?”  Then, “(Sorry; can’t help myself sometimes.) 😂”

Five minutes later, she wrote, “This package just got here! 😊  Excited kiddos, lol.”

Trevor loves getting packages in the mail.

I remember getting a book called Cat in the Box from my Grandma Swiney when I was 6.  I loved getting the gift in the mail, and I loved the book itself.

The cat is “in a box, under the bed, in the bedroom, upstairs, in my house, in my town, in the country, in the world” – and then it would spiral back down to country, town, house, room, box, and so on.

Brooklyn loved the little John Deere tractor we had given Trevor, so Dorcas got a different one from Trevor’s room to keep her happy.  “She drives cars all the time, and makes a car noise,” laughed Dorcas.

Once upon a time when I was three years old, I was watching my sister Lura Kay wrap gifts for her little Sunday School class.  As she wrapped a car for a little boy, I said in a mournful tone, very quietly over at the other end of the table, “Nobody ever gets me any little boy toys.”

So she returned to the store for one more little car, which she wrapped, put my name on, and stuck under the tree. 😂

When Brooklyn saw her little fleece jumper dress with the bunny on the front, she hugged it and said “eyes”, pointing to the bunny’s eyes.

Dorcas plugged the hard drive full of photos into her computer, then wrote to me, “Where to start first? 🤔😂”

She then sent me this picture of herself that she had found.  “Trevor said this was me as a teacher,” she told me.  “He said, ‘I wish you still had that sweater, because it looks nice!’”

“Would you believe,” I wrote back to her, “that sweater is hanging in my closet right this minute, and I wear it now and then?”

“Oh my!” exclaimed Dorcas, “We should get you some new clothes! 😂😂”

“Haha,” I laughed, “It still looks like new!  Maybe I should save it for Brooklyn. 😄”

And with that, I trotted off, pulled the sweater from the hanger, put it on, and took a picture.

“See, here’s the sweater,” I wrote, attaching the photo.  “This is one of the advantages of having all of my girls outgrow me:  I cabbaged onto their clothes when they were done with them!”

“She looks a little younger than you,” said Larry, pointing at Dorcas’ picture.

Hmmmph.

Well, at least he didn’t say I looked older.

Dorcas got the sweater from Loren and Janice for Christmas of 1993 when she was 11 years old.  That means this sweater is 29 years old.  How ’bout that.

And with that, I return you to your regular programming.

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