Journal: A Happy Mother's Day

 

The flowers here at our house sometimes bloom two to three weeks later than like flowers in the county, perhaps because a) many are in the shade a good part of the day, b) a lot of our land has clay in the soil, and clay doesn’t warm up as quickly in the spring as black loam does, and c) we live right over the crest of a hill, and the topography causes the cold north winds to swoop over the hilltop and come blowing through our property like a northerly gale, in the early spring.  At least, that’s my theory.

We’ve had a couple of inches of rain in the last week, and the plants are suddenly growing like gangbusters.   So is the crabgrass.  Tomorrow morning, I must weed!

Late last Monday evening, I heard several voicemails come in on my phone... checked... and found one from the piano tuner, recorded on April 18^th, three weeks earlier!  The next one was an inconsequential one a couple of weeks old, and the third had been sent earlier that morning from the car dealership where we got the Mercedes.  The salesman named George was informing me that he had ‘really good news’ and wanted me to call him. 

If he had a brand-new Lamborghini sitting there waiting for me, he should’ve just said so.  But he didn’t say so, and I didn’t call him back.

The piano tuner told me he would be in town the first week of May, and wondered if he could tune my piano on Wednesday, May 3^rd, at either 1:00 or 3:00.

It must not have ever occurred to him that I had not returned his call and chosen a time.  He was supposed to call me again last week, but did not.

A couple of people have asked about my irises, and where they grow best.  This is from Schreiner’s Iris Gardens:  “Iris will thrive in most well-drained garden soils.  Planting on a slope or in raised beds helps ensure good drainage.  If your soil is heavy, coarse sand or humus may be added to improve drainage.  Gypsum is an excellent soil conditioner that can improve most clay soils.  The ideal pH is 6.8 (slightly acidic), but iris are tolerant in this regard.  To adjust the pH of your soil, lime may be added to acidic soils or sulfur to alkaline soils.  It is always best to have your soil analyzed before taking corrective measures.” 

As I mentioned, some of our soil has a lot of clay in it.  The irises do better in black loamy soil, though they do grow in the partial clay soil.  I have never given my irises any additional nutrients.  The purples bloom first; later there will be other colors and bi- and tri-colored irises.  Most are in partial shade.  Irises are fairly hardy.  These purples are the least ‘fancy’ of my irises, but they always smell the best.

Tuesday afternoon, my nephew Kelvin’s wife Rachel texted me to say that they, along with their youngest son Ryan, were visiting Loren – and one of the nurses had told them that she had found my digital picture frame!

I was downright astonished.  I’d been asking for it for months (they were supposed to put it up, but never did).  I finally gave up and figured one of the employees got themselves a new digital picture frame.  

“Uncle Loren is roaming the halls,” Rachel told me.  “He was trying all the exit doors, setting the alarms off.”

I’ve not seen him do that before.  Here are Loren, Kelvin, and Ryan.  Ryan is 15.

This evening, Kelvin told me a little more about the visit.  Loren said he remembered Ryan, and teased him, saying he was going to wear out the carpet walking back and forth.

He likes it when the young relatives visit him, and kids around with them pretty much like he always has.

He told Kelvin he could only get those doors open about ¼”.  Then he had an idea:  he would send Ryan off to open them! 

When Ryan didn’t seem inclined to do that, Loren had an even better idea:  “Hey, maybe your wife (he couldn’t remember Rachel’s name) could go get someone to come open the doors!”

“What was he planning to do, once he got them open?” I asked Kelvin.

“He needed to go get his car and...  then he kinda faded off,” said Kelvin.

“He often gets lost in the middle of what he’s trying to tell me,” I told him.  “Either he can’t think of a word... or he just loses track of the conversation entirely.”

“Yes,” agreed Kelvin.  “Then he’s off to the next thing.”

“Did he seem upset,” I asked, “that he couldn’t get the doors open?”

“No, not at all,” answered Kelvin.  “He was just trying them.”

I’ve seen a lot of others doing that, and Loren usually says, “They should know better than that.”  It’s different when he’s doing it, evidently. 

There was once a frail little old lady shaking the livin’ daylights out of the French doors into the dining hall.  They were rattling like crazy, but they must have bullet-proof glass, I guess!

Loren told Kelvin that one of the ladies there was working for NFIB (National Federation of Independent Business, for which Loren used to work), but that she was lazy and not working much.

“Yeah, he’s had that problem with a lot of the women in there,” I told Kelvin.  “Plumb lazier’n all get out, the lot of ’em.  Nice, but lazy.  I explained that they were retired.”

“So am I!” he exclaimed, giving me that ‘look’, “but I still work!!”

“Oh,” said I.  (It’s a good answer.)

“He didn’t want to sit,” Kelvin went on, “so we walked around, and then I showed him pictures on my phone.” 

He sent me a few of them, saying, “He liked these.”

This is Laura, one of Kelvin’s granddaughters, with the chickens her mother Jamie recently got.

“He knew his room number and showed me his name plate,” Kelvin told me.  “I was surprised that he was thinking as clearly as he was; but he had short attention for any subject.  When we arrived, he saw me down the hall and called my name.  But he was in a hurry to go get his car, so I walked with him.”

Ah, well; at least he was walking around; that’s better for him, healthwise.

 I’ve worked in my flower gardens four mornings last week.  They’re looking better!  At least the front ones are.  I haven’t even started on the ones in the back yard.  

Tuesday afternoon, since it was a lovely day with temperatures in the high 60s and low 70s and a nice breeze blowing through, I turned the oven on self-clean and opened the windows and the patio doors.  It was a little dicey getting the oven to work, since earlier that day it had been beeping and giving an error code concerning the lock.  Running the self-clean seemed to reset it for some reason.  It has not given the error code since then.

While the oven made the downstairs smell of burnt food, I went upstairs to my quilting room, loaded the pink, black, and white quilt on the quilting frame, and began quilting away.  I used a feathery pantograph called ‘A Little Bit This’ (which doesn’t make any sense, but I didn’t name it; don’t blame me).  

Since the design wouldn’t show much at all on the busily-printed fabric of the top, I decided to make it show on the back.  The backing is a bright fuchsia color – and I put black Bottom Line thread in the bobbin.

Yep, it showed, all right!  But the thread was fine enough, that mainly what one sees when one looks at it is the quilting design, rather than the thread itself.  I was pleased about that.  I tried hard to get all the curves nice and smooth.

With the windows all open, I was enjoying the birdsongs.  I could hear at least a dozen different kinds of birds.

Since the oven wouldn’t be done with its cleaning cycle in time to bake anything for supper, I microwaved Campbell’s chicken and dumpling soup.  We had cottage cheese and fruit with it, with Kemp’s strawberry rhubarb ice cream for dessert.

By 1:00 a.m., the quilt was all quilted. 

I put the binding on Wednesday.  The quilt measures 67” x 78”.  The batting is Quilters’ Dream wool.  There is white 50-wt. So Fine thread on top.

This quilt, which I had not liked so awfully much at first, had been improved enough by the quilting that I liked it quite a lot better now.  I wondered who I would give it to.

I trotted outside with the quilt, planning to take a picture of it lying on the deck – but it refused to lie flat, because the wind was blowing at a steady 20 mph, with gusts past 30.  I put it on the railing, dashed backwards (that’s tricky, heh), snapped a shot, picked it back up, put it on the railing, dashed backwards, snapped a shot... repeat, ad infinitum.

I had just enough time before church to quilt the large block someone had evidently put together for use as a pillow covering, and then it was time to get ready for church.  I smoothed down my windblown hairdo, donned my glad rags, and away I went. 

Larry did not get home from work in time to go with me.  I always feel a bit like a pelican in the wilderness, or an owl in the desert, or a sparrow alone upon a housetop (as David wrote in the Psalms), without Larry.

Afterwards, I picked up a few things I had earlier ordered from Wal-Mart.  When I got home, Larry had baked a Marie Calendar peach pie.  We had chicken noodle soup, and warm pie with a scoop of ice cream on top.  I should quit eating ice cream; even a tiny little bit gives me a stomachache.  (The key word in the above sentence is ‘should’.)

I found a pillow I’d been saving to cover someday that the quilt block almost perfectly fit.  And I found some piping for the edges in a bin of laces and edgings.  I put it all in place to work on the next day, and then uploaded some pictures of clothes I made years ago to my Clothes Rack blog.

Then I played with EQ8 for a little while before I hit the hay.  Early-morning gardening sure does spoil my late-night productivity!  (Well, there was a load of clothes in both the washer and the dryer; but I would probably fizzle before they were done.)

My back and hip awoke me earlier than I had intended Thursday morning.  So I got up and worked in the yard for a little while.  I put out the new birdbath several of the kids gave me for my birthday last October.  The top part is made of pieces of stained glass, and it rests freely on the metal frame – and it’s so lightweight, I can’t imagine how it can last in the Nebraska winds.  I would have to bring it in every time there was a stiff breeze blowing over 20 mph! 

The birds were steering clear of it.  “Big trap! Big trap!” they told each other in alarmed squawks.

One of our bigger cats once tried standing against the side of another birdbath I had, with his paws clutching the rim – but he caused it to tilt enough that he got himself a surprise bath, with the big slosh of water that went over the side.  He sho’ ’nuff didn’t try that again!

After I worked outside for an hour, I came in, showered, and ate breakfast – a piece of toast generously slathered with butter, with wildflower honey on one side and apricot jelly on the other (speaking of ‘left’ and ‘right’ sides, not ‘top’ and ‘bottom’) and a big cup of milk.  I answered online correspondence, read the news and the funnies, and then started another load of laundry.  Next, I vacuumed, swept, and dusted.  I used the dustmop upstairs on the hardwood floor, especially under the treadle sewing machines where I can’t reach with anything else.  I got a bit more dusting spray on the mop than I’d intended, and now the floor up there is downright slippery.  This saves lots of time in going around corners.

Soon two loads of Larry’s work clothes were put away, and throw rugs from both bathrooms were in the washer.  I headed upstairs, skidded gracefully around the corner into my sewing room, and began working on the pink, black, and white pillow.

The pillow was not perfectly square; it was slightly rectangular.  But I couldn’t trim it, as it was already a wee bit too small for the pillow I had.  Sooo… I cut the back a little too big, and put a tuck near each corner, two on each side.  Annnnd...  it fits.  J

The wind howled around the eaves.

My new birdbath! I thought in alarm.  I dashed down the stairs, out the front door, and into the lawn to rescue it.  If it fell over, it would shatter to bits!

I dumped the water (it holds a gallon) and brought the birdbath into the house.  It is now lounging indolently under the living room window.

But I have decided what to do with it, and will do it tomorrow:  the bowl can rest right on the ground. 

Larry says I will be planting bait for the roaming neighborhood cats.   But little birds do take baths in puddles, and escape from cats unscathed; so... that’s what I’m going to do.

The neighbor man had started mowing his lawn that morning while I was outside pulling weeds and clearing out old growth, this time in the garden to the north, next to the big log that’s in place on our side of the ditch next to the lane to keep gully washers from coming down the hill and flooding us out.

Later that afternoon, I paused for a lunch of four or five crackers with some Mozzarella cheese (and peanut butter and honey on the last three crackers in the package, because they looked forlorn in there, all left behind), and a bottle of Bai Nariño Peach Supertea.  

The washing machine played its little song; the rugs were done.  The two oldest ones had gone to wreck and ruin, and I had to vacuum out the washing machine.  I put the others in the dryer for a few minutes, but the rubber backs soon smelled like they were getting too hot, so I got them out and hung them here and there in the house.  It was too windy to try hanging them anywhere outside.

Meanwhile, through all this, the neighbor man had been mowing his lawn.  It is a fairly big yard, but... 6 ½ hours????!!!!!

I finally got concerned about the big oaf and looked out the window.  Maybe the riding lawn tractor was just going around in circles, and Dan the Man had fallen off and was totally incapacitated somewhere!

Nope.  There he was, creeping slowly along through the east yard.  Whyyy???  The grass is barely tall enough to mow! – it isn’t as if he’s trying to take down prairie grasses that have gotten four feet high.  Good grief.  Some people don’t have enough to do.

Or maybe he’s avoiding something his wife wants him to do.  Who knows.  Maybe not even him. 

I should not criticize, as his lawn looks considerably better than ours does. 

In pondering to whom I should give the pink, black, and white quilt, it occurred to me that a few years ago Victoria had made herself an apron with very similar fabrics as was in this quilt.  This tells me that despite liking antiques, the girl likes fabrics with modern prints, too.  Then I remembered that 8 years ago, the year before Victoria was married, I made dresses for her and her friend Robin (who is now her sister-in-law) for our Fourth-of-July picnic – out of a cotton turquoise fabric with a modern print to it.  Furthermore, there were leftovers.  Lots of leftovers.

I could make a turquoise, black, and white quilt similar to the pink, black, and white, and give them to Carolyn and Violet! – but maybe not right away.  I need to give the little girls quilts made from the dolly fabric I have, first. 

I went into my upstairs office, just across the landing from my quilting studio, where I keep the few bins of fabric I have.  (My stash can’t hold a candle to the stashes some of my quilting friends have.)  I pulled out turquoises, blacks, and whites.

Soon it was time for supper.  I fixed venison burgers, broccoli, and mixed fruit.

That evening, Bobby and Hannah brought me a beautiful ‘Fireworks’ Clematis for Mother’s Day.  As they came walking down the front walk, I suddenly saw Bobby out the window, coming along slowly on his crutches with his full leg brace on.  I had on my craft glasses, and the window sashing was partially obscuring his head, and for a heart-stopping moment, I thought it was Larry.  Oh, no! I thought.  Larry, too?!

In addition to the torn ligaments and tendons, his leg is badly bruised, from upper hip to ankle, front, back, and sides.  He says it isn’t too awfully painful, but I can’t imagine how that can be.  He hit a brace with that knee, and hyperextended it something terrible.  Makes me shudder to think of it.  We hope and pray that it will heal all right, and not cause him any permanent trouble.

Hannah, meanwhile, is still using a cane because of the problem with her hip.  Sure makes us feel badly for both of them.

Before going to bed that night, I played with EQ8 again.  Grandson Jacob needs a quilt with Jacob’s Ladder blocks, don’t you think?  I was quite surprised to discover that EQ8 didn’t have a ready-made block or two of Jacob’s Ladder.  I had to draw it in EasyDraw, which is part of EQ8.  Of course, once I get started drawing, I can’t get stopped, and I add in ‘just a few more’ lines... until... I wind up with this kind of a Jacob’s Ladder variation:

The next day, wouldn’t you know, my friend Sue, the lady from whom we bought the Bernina 730, and who knows EQ8 better than I do, searched around in the program and discovered that there is a Jacob’s Ladder block!

“Sarah Lynn,” she wrote to me, “I also have Blockbase (the original one) attached to EQ8, so when I searched for Jacob’s Ladder, it came right up.  Then I got curious about EQ8 not having one... so I began looking.  ‘Road to California’ is what they are calling ‘Jacob’s Ladder’.  And there are several versions of this.  It is under 9-patch blocks.  For future reference for both of us!  LOL”

“Well, bother,” I responded.  “Look at all that work I did for nothin’!”  Then, “Ah, well.  I wound up with that block with the diagonal stripes, and a secondary pattern that I kinda like.  Road to California... Road to California... Road to California...  (Will I remember this?  I thought ‘Road to California’ was a quilt show in said state!)”

Here’s the ‘Road to California’ (or ‘Jacob’s Ladder’) block.  See?  My blocks are lots fancier!  (And of course will take hours and hours longer to put together.  But we won’t discuss that now.)

 

There’s a possibility I might put only a few of the blocks around an off-centered scenic panel.  I just know if I give some of Jacob’s cousins or brothers quilts with a scenic panel in them, he’ll feel like his isn’t quite as pretty!  Jacob will be 14 next month, and he’s crafty and artistic just like his parents, Jeremy and Lydia.

Friday, the bad weather we had repeatedly been warned about earlier in the week began rolling in, all across Nebraska.  Weather radar showed a partial circle of severe weather curled across the entire state, turning in a counterclockwise direction and moving the opposite way most weather moves across the state.  I turned on the weather radio and watched for alerts on the weather apps on my computer, while I worked on the design in EQ8 for the turquoise, black, and white quilt.  I decided to make the pattern identical to the pink quilt.  Wouldn’t you know, there were no pinwheel patterns with a split blade to be found in the program, and certainly none with sashing on only two sides of the block.

So, once again, I drew it in EasyDraw, while the weather worsened.

First there were severe thunderstorm warnings and high wind warnings; but by midafternoon, they started issuing the tornado warnings.  Before the day was over, Nebraska’s record for the most tornado warnings issued in one day would be broken:  50 warnings were issued.

It got windier and windier, and there were reported tornadoes on all sides; but they were heading away.  I kept listening… peering out the windows…  It got very still, and then suddenly the wind blew at what I estimated to be about 60 mph, making the cedar tree out front look like it was going to take flight.  Irregularly-shaped hail nearly the size of pingpong balls pelted the back deck for a few minutes, while none landed on the front porch at all.  I decided it would be prudent to head downstairs, regardless of what the weathermen were saying.

By the time I got all my paraphernalia down there and got it all situated (not long; I wasn’t moving slowly), everything had calmed down, and the storm was definitely going to miss us.  So I came back upstairs.

Meanwhile, something waaay worse than hail and wind was happening:  the jack on my laptop wouldn’t make connection with the cord!

That jack has been troublesome since soon after I got the computer.  I’d been afraid this would eventually happen.  I fiddled with it, to no avail.  The battery wouldn’t last long, and the quilt I’d intended to cut was on the computer.

I gathered up computer, coffee, and phone and headed upstairs to my quilting studio, planning to print the cutting measurements and a picture of the quilt.

I no sooner got situated up there than I began hearing new tornado warnings:  a funnel cloud had dropped down, and the tail was on the ground immediately to our north, by Lakeview High School and the college.  It was moving northwest, though, not coming this direction.

I looked out the front door, then grabbed my camera and got this picture.  You can’t tell it, really, but this was an active tornado with a small tail on the ground.  From my porch, I could see the somewhat loose upper rotation, but the tail was over the hill and not visible.

I hurried back to my computer with its steadily dwindling battery, took a few minutes to answer a couple of the girls’ inquiries into my safety, and then tried to print the EQ8 cutting instructions.

The printer and the laptop refused to connect.

This, too, has been an ongoing problem, happening now and then when I was scanning photos.  It is usually resolved with a bit of fussing and finagling.  However, now that the need was dire, the two recalcitrant electronic boat anchors would not speak to each other, not through Bluetooth, not through Wi-Fi, and not through the usual cellphone hotspot.  I have no cord.

I ran the laptop battery down to 38%, trying to make it work.  I finally pasted screenshots of the EQ8 measurements and quilt diagram into Word documents, then emailed them to my own address so I could collect it on my tablet (which is older than the hills and won’t stay on if it’s not plugged in).  Neither would the tablet connect to the printer, so I pulled up HP’s address for sending things straight to the printer via email, typed it into the tablet, clicked Send, and waited a while, wondering if the printer would be able to print attached Word documents.  

It could, and it did.  So at least I could work on a quilt.  I closed the laptop and picked up the rotary cutter.

The bad weather continued throughout the state for a while.  Multiple smallish tornadoes touched down nearby, and some places got softball-sized hail.  Larger wedge tornadoes tore up farmland, barns, and silos farther west.

Photo by Justin Mensik

Around 8:00 p.m., Kurt and Victoria and the children arrived, bringing me supper (chicken, broccoli, baked potato, and homemade bread) and a rhubarb crisp for dessert, especially for Mother’s Day. 

Violet doesn’t much like chicken.  Victoria told her after a while, “Just eat four more bites of chicken, and then you can have your dessert.”

Violet obediently took a few more bites, then announced with some relief, “There!  I ate four chickens!”

Kurt gave a burst of laughter, tried to contain himself, and laughed some more.

Violet calmly turned her head toward her Daddy and looked at him with big eyes, wondering what was so funny.

I gave everyone some Strawberry Watermelon juice, pouring Willie’s into his sippy cup.  He picked it up fast, took a big drink – and then put it down slowly, turned to look at me, and gave me a big, delighted smile.  He liked that stuff!  Mmmmmm.

After they went home, I went back to my quilting room and got all the white fabric cut.

I hunted around for Norma’s laptop, the one I reformatted last year when I brought it home, returning it to ‘factory’ condition.  I needed it in order to write the Saturday Skim for the Quilt Talk group.  I sure didn’t want to try doing it on the old tablet.

I couldn’t find it.  Larry told me where he had put it in our bedroom. 

It wasn’t there.  But then, suddenly, I saw it on the opposite side of the room, stacked with my old laptop that I’ve intended to take to Chopper’s Computer Repair uptown.  I wondered where that thing went.

I pulled it out.

There was no cord.  Not one for the old laptop, either.  

And then I realized:  those cords I found up in my sewing room over a month ago were not for the really old laptops before that last HP of mine, nor were they for Janice’s old laptop.  They were for my HP with the bad fan, and for Norma’s laptop, which is nearly like new, even if it is Windows 7.  

And guess what I did with them?  

I donated them to the Goodwill, that’s what.

Ugh, ugh, ugh.  Why were they in my sewing room?!!  Nobody will ever know (or admit it, if they do know).

I was about to give up in despair when I spotted an odd green box, wondered what it was, picked it up – and lo and behold, it was an old cord with the wires showing at one end of the charger.  Larry had tried wrapping them with electrical tape, but the tape is coming loose.

I gingerly got it out of the box, carried the laptop (Norma’s; my old one is useless) and cord into the kitchen, plugged it in – and it works.  Whew.

I sat down at the kitchen table and started to write the Saturday Skim. 

Levi texted me.  I stop what I am doing in order to answer the grandchildren.  J

But! – answering him on my phone, and not having a keyboard, drives me berserk, so I downloaded Google Messages on this laptop, synced it with my phone, and then chatted with him for a few more minutes before telling him good night.

I used Google Docs in lieu of Word, which was giving me a pain on account of this laptop being so slow.  I finally searched through the programs and was glad to find a version of Microsoft Word called 'Starter'.  It’s not nearly as good as the new one on my Acer; but it’s a whole lot better than Google Docs.  I opened the Acer long enough to emailed my Journal and the Outlook Address Book to myself, then shut it back down so as not to run the battery all the way flat.  I don’t have Microsoft Outlook, but most everything in Outlook other than the Address Book is there in gmail online.

Saturday morning, I found a computer tech place in Fremont that would be open until 2:00 p.m.  And, the man answers his own phone!  Nary a one here in Columbus did that; they all have some sort of weird computerized voicemail thing, even those that are supposedly open on Saturdays.  So off I went to Fremont, laptop in tow.

The skies looked stormy and dramatic, but only a few raindrops fell on the windshield.  In spite of the appearance of the sky, it was calm, weatherwise, at least where I was driving.

The computer repair man in Fremont was about 35-40, I’d guess, and seemed quick and efficient.  His office was in good order, which is sometimes a rarity for computer techs.  I was pretty sure nothing terrible would happen if I left my laptop there.  

Once upon a time, back in late 1999 or early 2000, a teenaged ‘tech’ with an orange and lime green Mohawk reformatted my computer after I had specifically asked for him not to do that, because there were things I had been unable to save, since my only method for saving things on that computer was with those dumb little floppy discs that only hold about half a kilobyte of data.  Aarrgghh, I lost several video clips of the children that I dearly loved – the only video clips I’d ever taken of the children, because I had a nifty little camera that plugged into the computer.  I’ve had a bad attitude toward orange and lime green Mohawks ever since.  (Not that I thought them particularly becoming before that misadventure.)

Leaving Fremont, I continued on to Omaha to visit Loren.

When I got there, he was in the lounge with the TV, with a couple of other men nearby.  When he tried getting up, he had a very hard time.  We walked into the hallway where it was quieter, and sat in a couple of big leather slide chairs, as he didn’t want to walk all the way to his room.

He said his hips were hurting him worse than ever before in his life ‘yesterday’ (Friday), but then ‘yesterday’ (Friday), they were a lot better.  I don’t know if he’s talking about that pressure wound, or the hip joints.  Even though he had difficulty getting up and sitting back down, he assured me that he was not in pain that day, and that he was feeling fine.

I showed him some pictures on my phone, but a lady kept interrupting us, giving his head a hug and suchlike.  She’d stowed her walker in the lounge, and seeing the trouble she had walking without it was making my hair stand up on end. 

I went and got it for her, saying, “I sure don’t want you to fall!”  (Besides, with her hands on the walker handles, maybe she’d quit hugging Loren’s head!)

She thanked me profusely, and wished me a wonderful day time and again after that, along with many “God bless you”s.

It was a good thing I made the trip earlier than usual, because Andrew, Hester, Keira, and Oliver came visiting shortly after I got home at 4:30 p.m.  They gave me a bar of Ghirardelli Intense Dark Chocolate Sea Salt Almond and a sun catcher. 

Keira bounced excitedly on her toes, hardly able to wait for me to unwrap the box before telling me happily, “It’s a quilt!” 

And indeed, it’s in the shape of an Ohio Star with a Square in a Square in the middle.

Oliver is walking!  And he’s downright pleased with himself about it, too.

I gave them all some of the same juice I had given Victoria’s family the previous evening.

Oliver took a drink. 

Then, exactly like his little cousin the night before, he turned his head, looked at me, and offered me a big, sweet smile.  Yummy, he liked that juice!

I sent Hester home with three houseplants that are a little the worse for wear because of my neglect.  She’ll probably have them nursed back to health in no time.

Later, I was feeling sort of all-done-wrong-by, since I had pictures to edit and no photo editor, when I suddenly remembered – this laptop would surely have Windows Live Photo Gallery, which is a simple but perfectly decent photo editor!  In fact, I like its Shadow and Highlights corrections so much better than I like PaintShop’s, I tried downloading Photo Gallery onto my new computer, but it wasn’t compatible.  Bah, humbug.  Gallery is quick, too.  Or, that is, it would be, if this computer wasn’t so unbearably slow.  Good grief, it’s a time-waster.  Just switching from one tab to another in Chrome takes a government grant.

You stand and wait and wait (and wait) for a page to load – because if you go to a different tab while one loads, then when you return to the first tab, it’s ‘unloaded’ again!  Pages that have loaded already are blank again when you return to them, even after a few seconds on another page.  This makes me feel like throwing things, kicking a cat, and shooting a songbird.

(No, I don’t kick cats or shoot songbirds.)  (And I reckon I’ll survive.)

Saturday evening, I finished cutting the turquoise, black, and white quilt.  I may need a bit more black fabric for the border; but the rest is ready for me to begin piecing.

Sunday, one child after another wished me a Happy Mother’s Day. 

Keith texted, “Happy Mother’s Day!  Thanks for being the best mother in the whole world!  I love you!”

“Thank you!” I replied.  “I could’ve been a more patient mother; but I did love my children with all my heart.  And still do!”

“We all know that!” he answered.  “You did just fine!”

Now, that was as good as any ol’ bouquet.  J

That afternoon, I spotted the starling that built a nest in the eaves just over the kitchen window carrying worms to her nest.  That means…  babies have hatched!

It rained this morning, and I was glad, because I didn’t really feel like working in the flower gardens.  It’s always more fun to say with a regretful air, “I couldn’t work outside this morning, because it was raining,” than “I didn’t work outside this morning, because I was too lazy.”

Maria and Eva came visiting, bringing me a large basket of beautiful geraniums with trailing something-or-others.

I gave Eva some black cherry Oui yogurt and cherry juice.  Learning that Maria had found some pretty cotton squares at a secondhand store a while back, and that she has a rotary cutter but no mat, I trotted upstairs and collected Norma’s pink cutting mat and a June Tailor slotted ruler, 12” x 12”, to give her.  I’m always pleased to help someone start quilting!

Eva particularly loved a big Winnie-the-Pooh book, so when they were ready to go, I gave it to her (after checking to see that it didn’t have one of the kids’ names in the front).

So now I have endeared myself to several offspring’ns and grand-offspring’ns alike.  It’s a good way to start the week.  J

Victoria sent a picture of a new-to-them Chrysler Pacifica van they got today, trading in their red car.  This will be nice for their family, and get better gas mileage than their older Yukon.

And now it is long past bedtime, and I’ll have to hope it rains again in the morning, so I’ll have a good excuse for not working in the flower gardens.

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