Journal: Raccoons, Squirrels, Birds, & Phishers, Oh, My!

 

Funny things happen online.  Particularly, on Facebook.

Last week, I posted pictures of the vintage cars I saw on my drive to Fremont to pick up my laptop that the tech was unable to fix.  I mentioned this in the caption, saying that I had to send it to Stillwater, Oklahoma, where the Square Trade warranty will take care of either fixing or replacing it.

A woman who follows my Facebook page and enjoys offering opinions, dogma, and diatribe suggested, “Why not try Amazon...they usually everything [sic].”

Joker that I am (and a wee bit irked, since, after all, I had explained what our warranty required – and warranties like that will certainly be voided if I should try to fix my laptop myself [not that I can]), I queried, “For what, exactly?  A vintage car?”

Her answer:  “parts”

So I, willing to see where the farce might take us, inquired further, “Vintage car parts?”

She didn’t respond until the next day.  By then, having evidently lost track of the original conversation, and mistaking my smart-aleck answers for sobriety, she wrote, “I have no idea but there might be a vintage parts dealer somewhere.  I hope you find what you need...ask your dealer in your area if they know of such a dealer or market.  Sometimes you can find such a marketplace online.  It can’t be any harder than finding an antique sewing machine.”

I repented and answered, “I have no need for vintage auto parts.  I have no idea what I said that might’ve made you think so!  LOL”  (Well, I did have an idea, of course; but I mistakenly assumed she would recognize kidding when she saw it.)

In spite of my disclaimer, she proceeded to send me more than half a dozen tags from Facebook pages that sell either vintage auto parts, or luxury vehicle parts, and one tag is on a professional fishermen’s guide’s Facebook page, just because he had his pickup fixed somewhere.  On his page I discovered that the woman had gone through his posts that very day and made even ruder and more abrasive remarks than she does on mine.  Under a funny post he made about bacon she wrote, “If I ate bacon, …” —— well, I can’t tell you what she wrote, or my Mama would roll over in her grave.  Suffice it to say, she described in excruciating detail the various digestive malfunctions she would contract, should she eat bacon.

Somebody promptly told her, “TMI.”  Then, evidently fearing the woman wouldn’t know what that meant, the person wrote again, “That’s Too Much Info.”

Rather than backing off, the woman  described her projected ailments in more explicit detail than ever.  :-{

On a site called ‘Jackson Auto Parts for Mercedes-Benz’, she tagged me and asked:  “did you try this place?”

Again I answered, “I have no idea what I said that made you think I would need any of this.  LOL”  (Writing ‘LOL’ at the end of your sentence is almost as good as saying ‘Bless your heart’, right?)

She informed me with some degree of pique, “you were looking for a car part...a pump if I recalled for a Jackson.”

Then, a few minutes later, “maybe I misunderstood”

Ya think?

And by the way, what’s a ‘Jackson’?  Is it something on the order of an Edsel?

After half a dozen attempts to set the record straight, I gave up.  It was like trying to carry on a conversation with Loren.  No, worse.  At least he still has a sense of humor!  Furthermore, he doesn’t subscribe to outrageous ideas about seeing demons skulking down the street, or about dying and being dead for three days, rigor mortis setting in – and then God “flowing her spirit back into her body”, and on and on.  Aiiiyiiieee. 

Loren himself would say she was plumb nuts.  And he’d be right.

Maybe she has Lewy Body dementia, too!  But that doesn’t explain her creepy voodoo beliefs. 

No, no, I can’t remove her from my friends list!  Where would I find this kind of entertainment so cheap?!  (But I will, if those demons go on the prowl again.)

Right in the midst of this vaudeville fragment, another friend wrote, “The Facebook pickup lines are becoming very creative.”

Ah.  I knew what that was about.

I took a look at my page, and sure enough, there was the familiar line from some unknown man, placed as a comment under one of my innocent flower posts.  This time, however, it was in German.  Here’s the translation:  “Please and I’m so sorry to have intrude your privacy herein, but I was impressed always with your content and think you are a beautiful, intelligent women (how many of me are there?!).  I tried to sent you a Friend request, but it failed to go through.  Would you please sent me a Friend request, and add me to your List?”

And yet another fantastic, wonderful, amazing, lonely soul is now blocked.  Here, look at his list of accomplishments on his page (which sports exactly two photos, no posts, no Friends):

Works at Citigroup

Works at CNN

Works at NBC News

Works at NBCUniversal

Studied at City College of San Francisco

Went to University of California Berkeley

Lives in Los Angeles, California

From New City, New York  (yes, that’s an actual place – I looked it up)

(and he speaks German! )

 

Most of these duffers and potential data and finance thieves are dressed in high-caliber suits with decorations and bars on the shoulders, standing in front of the United States flag.  This one wasn’t nearly so important.  He looked more like he was dressed for Waikiki Beach.  Oh, and those decorated members of the military?  Sometimes if you zoom in on their military decorations, you will discover that the various bars don’t match their listed achievements!  Furthermore, there are sometimes gold name tags on their suits, and those don’t match the names on their Facebook pages – though every once in a while they put the name on the tag in parenthesis under their Facebook profile name.  Phishers, they are.  Intellectuals, they are not.

One wrote, “I admire your beautiful smile!” under a shot I’d taken of one of our neighbors’ funny little goats, lips pulled back, showing its teeth as it begged for treats.

That evening, Larry brought home tacos, chalupas, and Cinnabon Delights from Taco Bell for our supper.  Yummy, I’d never had a Cinnabon Delight before.  I didn’t know they were warm glazed doughnut holes filled with soft cream cheese! – I thought they were more on the order of hard little dried-out miniature cinnamon rolls.  Where do I get these ideas, anyway?!

I worked on my customer’s Wildflower Way quilt most of the day Tuesday.  By midnight, the central section was nearly done and I was almost ready to start on the lower borders.

Wednesday, a friend posted a pretty painting of a farmhouse with a yard full of flowers, a big dog snoozing on the porch – and a bunny family in the yard under the clothesline, on which hung a quilt.

All those flowers... That’s how I envision my yard looking.  (Of course, they don’t bloom all at once like that, but in stages throughout the season.)

Either the dog on the porch has no idea all the bunnies have come out to play right around the corner, or he’s a big ol’ softy like my Sparkle, the big collie/shepherd I had when I was a young teenager.  Neighborhood bunnies would escape from free-roaming dogs and cats by fleeing into our fenced yard. They’d sit and watch while Sparkle ran at the fence barking, scaring off those alien canines and felines.  She’d then stroll importantly back to her perch on the back porch, big bushy tail flagging gently, ears at her ‘unthreatening’ incline.  The bunnies would happily nibble the grass, knowing they were safe.  Mama used to say, “You’d think she could at least keep them from eating my flowers!”

Larry has been struggling to get all of his tools and equipment out of the garage in Genoa where he sometimes works on the owner’s vehicles, and sometimes on his own things, as the owner of the building is planning to rent it out.  Every day after working at Walkers’, he spends several hours gathering up things in Genoa – some of them, big things, such as engine hoists, a non-running pickup, motors, and the like – and hauling them home.

That day the man told Larry he has a few more days to get his stuff out, since the person who was going to start renting the place June 1^st will not do so until July 1^st.  (I wonder if there really is someone planning to rent the place, or if this was his way of getting Larry and all his stuff out of there?)

After coming home from church and eating a late supper, I returned to my quilting studio and worked on the quilt until I finished the crosshatching.  There were two borders to go.

Thursday, we had a gentle rain (astonishing – a gentle rain in Nebraska!) all morning, and a couple of mornings earlier this week, too.  The weeds are growing faster than the flowers, and you’d never know that I had most of the flowerbeds looking neat as pins just a few days earlier.  See, this is why I like quilting much better than gardening!  Imagine if every time you went back to your sewing room, everything you did the previous day was coming all unraveled.

Ah, well.  I do love the flowers.  At least I can take pictures, and those are somewhat permanent.

I did a bit of cleaning in the kitchen, and then headed upstairs to quilt.  By a quarter ’til 7, I was done with the quilting.  But before removing the quilt from the frame, I rolled it back to the top and put a few more stitching lines in the outer border.  About halfway through the quilt, I had decided it needed more quilting, and had been putting it in; so I needed to add it to the upper part, too.  It’s the outer two lines of the arc that I added.  I’m much happier with how it looks now.

I trimmed it and took it off the frame, and then began putting on the binding.  My customer asked me to do it, as she recently broke her foot, and even ironing this big quilt in preparation for sending it to me was difficult for her.  She sent a roll of binding, cut and ready to attach. 

Soon I had the binding sewn to the quilt front, and was stitching it to the back.  A little before midnight, I quit for the day.  One side was done.

Friday morning, I put the bird feeders out.  I’ve been bringing them in at night, since the raccoons think I’m offering them a smorgasbord.  One night I went out at 9:30 p.m. to retrieve the feeders, and the raccoons were already there!  Our game cam showed that when I leave the feeders out, those cute little ’coons are at them almost the entire night, right up until the sky is beginning to lighten.

Late that morning, I received the following email from one of the managers at the Prairie Meadows memory care unit:

Subject: Building Evacuated & Fire Dept has Cleared

Message: Sarah Lynn, Please be advised that all residents were evacuated this morning from the facility as a precaution. The Fire Department has cleared the building, all residents have been returned inside and are accounted for. Activities have resumed as normal.

*******

And that was it.  I’d like more information with that notice, pour fa vour!  Since everything was evidently all right, I would ask someone when I visited Loren the next day, and try to pick one of the more chatty members of the staff with whom to lodge my inquiry.

I finished the quilt that day and took pictures of it on the deck in the nick of time.  I was just filling in the invoice and making the shipping label when it was suddenly pouring rain outside!

I packed the quilt into a box and taped it shut.  It was ready to be shipped.

The quilt measures 91 ½” x 98”.  The embroidery was done by machine using a CD from ABC Embroidery Designs called ‘Calla Lilies’.  The batting is Quilters’ Dream wool.

I used eight different colors of 40-wt. thread on top – Mettler, Omni, and Signature.  There’s 60-wt. Bottom Line in the bobbin.

I sew binding on entirely by machine.  First I sew it onto the quilt front as usual (or on the back, if I plan to pull it around to the front and use a fancy topstitch of some sort on it – but usually, front first).  Then I fold it to the back, and pin, pin, pin – verrrrry carefully, so that the binding fold overlaps the stitching line by about 1/16”, no more.  I use 1 ¼” steel-shank glass-headed pins, very fine.  (Those fat, dull-tipped pins belong in the trash.)  I like to do one side of a quilt at a time.  It’s a lot like trying to hold a porcupine, with all those pins in it!  One side at a time makes it easier.  I wear quilting gloves and sometimes toss on a long-sleeved sweater just to keep from getting poked.  Next, using an open-toe presser foot so I can see exactly where that needle is, I stitch in the ditch, taking care to stay right there in the ditch.  When I remove the pins, I make sure the stitching caught the edge of the binding.  If there are any spots where it didn’t, I carefully pull it a little farther over the stitching (not too far, or it’ll make a tuck), repin, and restitch that little spot.  You get better at it, the more you do it, and your fingers will tell you when you have that binding fold in the perfect spot to pin it down.  

This might sound time-consuming, and indeed I don’t hurry, because I want it perfectly neat, front and back; but it’s a whole lot faster than doing it by hand.  Plus, I like how it looks better than when it’s done by hand (so long as it’s done neatly).

Noting that my laptop had been delivered to its destination, The Repair Depot in Stillwater, Oklahoma, I called to specifically request that the hard drive not be reformatted.  The problem is the charging jack – a hardware issue, not a software issue.  And I had not backed up my data for a good three months.  I hardly ever neglect to do that – but I did that.  

The person I talked to refused to give me any assurances, and almost acted like they routinely reformat each and every computer they get for repairs!  (That can’t be.  Can it?!)  I wanted to box his ears.  I tried hard to be nice, though I did tell him I was not at all happy with that response.  And no, I could not speak to any of the techs.

If worse comes to worst, I can retrieve journals and photos from my blog, but the photos will be compressed, and I don’t put pictures of the grandchildren online, so I won’t have those.  I’ve sent some of my favorite photos of the grandchildren to the kids; they could send them back, if I asked.  Some would be lost forever, though.

Peony

It would be a pain to have to reload all my programs on a reformatted machine.  Let’s hope some repairman has enough sense to simply repair the jack and leave the rest alone.  Siggghhhh...  At least the last 24 years’ worth of data, minus the last three or four months, is all safe and sound on multiple external hard drives.  I’ll keep reminding myself of that.  (See, I warned you a few days ago that I would continue to natter on about this!  Just keeping my word, just keeping my word.)

I finished the last load of laundry, and was ready to go see Loren.  And then it occurred to me:  one tire was low on the Mercedes, and Larry hadn’t had a chance to see if there was a leak.  Since he was still working, I begged help from Teddy.  He met me at the shop, filled the low tire, and adjusted the others, all of which had different amounts in them.

I decided that if there was a leak, it was a slow one, since it hadn’t changed in a week.

So, after thanking Teddy for his help, off I went to Omaha, dropping off something at the Goodwill and shipping my customer’s quilt via UPS before leaving town.

When I post pictures like this one, taken somewhere near the little town of Rogers, people invariably comment on the flatness of the area.  I think the flattest part of Nebraska is doubtless right between Columbus and Fremont.

There’s a lot of pretty country in Nebraska.  But people drive I80 from east to west, and think it’s long and boring (455 miles, following the Interstate – and that’s not even the widest distance across the state).  Nebraska encompasses 76,824 square miles, and there’s a great diversity in its scenery.  I love the tall, tall mountains best; but Nebraska has many areas of beauty.

I gave Loren a Messenger newspaper (he assured me that he always reads those from cover to cover), a Nebraska magazine, and a Car and Driver magazine from Randy and Judy (Loren’s sister-in-law).  Judy ordered it for Loren in February, and it finally came yesterday.  She’d tried ordering the Reminisce and then the Country magazines, intending it for a Christmas gift; but Reiman was shutting down publication of most, if not all, their magazines, including Taste of Home, Birds and Blooms, and the Extra magazines that were for the off-months (since the magazines came every other month).

Loren was pleased to get Car and Driver, and thanked me for bringing it.  He said, smiling, “I had no idea you could do that!”  

I wanted to ask, “Huh?  Do what?  Drive a car?  Carry a magazine?” but I hushed up my smart-aleck self and instead just smiled back and said, “Yep!”  ’Cuz whatever it was, I musta done did it.

I wrote his name at the top of the magazine, and added ‘From Randy and Judy’.  He wouldn’t remember otherwise; but he can still read.

I showed him pictures on Instagram; he enjoyed seeing little Eva and several of our great-great nieces and nephews. 

I left a little sooner than I might’ve, because a lady in a wheelchair next to the couch where Loren and I were sitting in one of the lounges kept struggling to lean far enough forward to tap me gently on the shoulder, saying “Excuse me,” and then talking about – what, I don’t know.  I couldn’t make heads or tails out of what she was saying, and couldn’t even recognize very many of her words.  She’d point at the TV, then at me, jabber a few things, and seem a little bit agitated that she couldn’t express herself clearly.  I finally decided I should go, since my presence seemed to be causing some of the trouble, and I was getting a crick in my neck from turning around to look at her.  It was a long enough visit anyway; I never stay too awfully long, as it wears Loren out.

I got up, took the lady’s hand (she’s a pretty lady, though I’d guess her to be in her mid-80s; I’ll bet she was beautiful when she was young), and told her my name.  She tried to say it, but she couldn’t pronounce it.  Then she gestured at Loren and said, “Husband.”  

I smiled and said, “He’s my brother!”

She raised her eyebrows, gave me an embarrassed smile, then ducked her head a bit and put her hand up to her mouth in an ‘oops!’ gesture. 

I patted her hand (carefully! Her hands are slim, and feel quite fragile) and said, “That’s all right.  Now I have to go home.  I’ll see you later!”

She said, “Ohhh, ohhh, ohhh…” in such a disappointed voice.  Poor lady.

I’m glad Loren doesn’t react like that when I go; that would be hard.  Instead, he cheerfully thanks me for coming, and tells me, “Drop by anytime!” and sometimes (though not recently), “Come back when you can’t stay so long!” haha  He’s said that for years.

Before leaving Prairie Meadows, I asked one of the nurses what had happened Friday morning.  She looked at me blankly; she’d heard nothing about an ‘evacuation’.

I asked a nice-looking young male nurse with tight black curlicues of hair sticking out all over his head if he knew what had happened.  He gave me a friendly smile and said he hadn’t heard a thing.  “I don’t work in the mornings,” he explained.

And nobody communicates?  K

I went out the door into the front lobby, a pretty sitting room with lovely furniture, planning to ask Yvette, the lady at the front desk.  She was on the phone.  I wandered over to the far side of the room and got myself a little drink of cold water from their new Culligan water dispenser.  They no longer have the big fruit-infusion dispenser!  waa waa waa

Clematis starting to open

Yvette went on talking.

I put a little more water in my glass and looked at the pretty things in the lighted hutch.  There are pictures, jars of layered cookie mix that the residents helped make, helpful books about dementia, albums with pictures of past and present residents, and ceramic and resin figurines and décor.

Yvette went on talking (and listening; it wasn’t entirely her fault that the conversation was so long).  I pretended diligently that I wasn’t eavesdropping, but I could tell she was talking to a family member of one of the residents.

I put more water in my little cup.

Yvette went on talking.

And then she started telling the person on the phone what had happened Friday morning, so I listened with all my might and main.

It seemed they’d gotten the residents into the dining room, probably for breakfast (maybe breakfast was nearly over; I’m not sure), when someone smelled hot plastic or wires.  They got all the residents out on the patio while somebody called the fire department.  There was no smoke, no fire; but the firemen said that one of the air conditioning units was terribly hot.  They shut it down.

The unit was fixed Saturday, and everything was back to ‘normal’, whatever that is.

It was hot that day – over 90° – and it’s always a little too warm in the nursing home, and by the time I leave, I’m thirsty.  So I filled my glass one last time with cold water, gave Yvette a cheery wave, and went out the door.  If she wondered what I was doing, loitering like that and then departing without so much as a by-your-leave, she didn’t let on.

I got home at ten after six.  For supper, we had ground venison meatloaf and white and yellow steamed corn (Bird’s Eye is not nearly as good as Schwan’s), and for dessert I made smoothies with Kemps extra-creamy vanilla ice cream and frozen blackberries, raspberries, and blueberries, along with some milk and honey.

Above is one of the raccoons chowing down on the nut-and-berry suet, and here I am belatedly taking down the feeders.  When I went out the patio door, the startled critter squished himself through the railing and scuttled down the deck post to the ground, one story below.

It wasn’t long before he was back, obviously wondering, Hey!  Who took my serving dishes and platters away?!

Sunday after the morning church service, we drove out to the cemetery to get our flowers.  Here are more pictures of headstones for family and friends:  Roselawn Cemetery

Last night after church, we went to Super Saver and got a few groceries, including baked chicken, still hot in their warmer.  We bought potato salad and coleslaw to go with it, and for dessert, orange-cranberry scones, fresh strawberries, and ice cream.  Mmmm… that made a quick and good supper.

Earlier today, I refilled and rehung the bird feeders.  I could hear the house finches and goldfinches in the trees nearby, making their little upswinging chirps, urging me to hurry.  All the little birds came thronging to the feeders moments after I stepped back inside. 

I found a tick crawling on my arm the other day when I was working outside.  Mostly, we have the American dog tick here; but there are a few of the blacklegged ticks that carry Lyme disease.  My late mother-in-law and a couple of my daughters have contracted Lyme disease.  It has long-lasting effects.  Our cats brought the dog ticks into the house regularly. 

They’re dog ticks.  Don’t cats and ticks read their manuals???

I picked up a large grocery order at Wal-Mart late this afternoon.

For supper tonight, we had the rest of last night’s chicken, putting it on butter croissants with lettuce, garden-vine tomato slices, and pepper jack cheese.

One after another, Walkers’ boom trucks have been going down for the count.  Last week, the hydraulics on the outriggers weren’t working right on the truck Larry was driving.  A coworker helped him push them in.  A little later, Larry pushed the button to bring them out again – and the thing, having built up a whole lot of compression, shot out and upward and smacked him hard on the upper arm, shoulder, and chest.  He now sports several large, colorful, bruises.  It’s a wonder he didn’t wind up with a broken arm or broken ribs – or worse. 

He took the truck to the place that works on them in Omaha, but they won’t have it done for weeks.  Those repair places do not allow their workers to get more than 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, in order to avoid paying them overtime, thus keeping their costs down.

The other truck has a big split somewhere on the boom.  Only a little bit of the housing is keeping everything in place.  It could have been disastrous, had Larry not noticed that split, and had the boom been in use when it broke the rest of the way.  So this truck is at the truck repair place, too – and Larry learned today that the parts must (again!) come from Australia.  If by ship, it will be a couple of months.  If by air, 4-5 weeks.  (That’s a mighty slow plane, if you ask me.)

Anyway, the one truck that’s left is the oldest of the fleet, and the radio that controls the boom constantly loses connection with the boom and must be rebooted.  Sometimes it then makes connection, and sometimes it does not.  Larry ran it manually today.

Larry has decided to go to Omaha tomorrow morning, pick up the truck with the faulty hydraulics, bring it home, and take it apart himself.  He will then take the hydraulics to the business in a small town to our northeast that repairs them.

Meanwhile, the brand-new truck, which took a year to arrive after they ordered it back in 2021, and which needed a bed put on it – that’s the one for which Larry made the bed himself, with Caleb’s help, after deciding the place that usually does it was not staffed with enough good workers to get the job done properly – has also needed the Palfinger crane attached to it.  It has taken many months for the crane to come from Australia by ship.  It then sat in Niagara Falls, Ontario, for a coon’s age, and finally got shipped by truck to Nebraska.  And now it’s taking another good deal of time for them to install it on the new truck.

As you can see, raccoons aren’t the only varmints that pilfer and poach from the bird feeders!  Here’s a little squirrel that was perched on the rebar early one morning, wondering where his breakfast was.

I am not going to accept any more customer quilts for a while, because I want to work on quilts for the grandchildren.  Plus, I need to work in the flower gardens, too.  There aren’t enough hours in the day!

Tomorrow, I plan to cut and then sew borders on the turquoise, black, and white Split-Blade Pinwheel quilt.  Since my laptop with the EQ8 design is in Timbuktu getting repaired (and hopefully, some idget won’t reformat the hapless thing), I have to ((...gasp...)) actually measure the quilt and cut the borders, rather than simply go by the measurements in EQ8.

Bedtime!  From now on, if I hope to work outside, I’d better hit the hay early and tumble back out early, in order to be outside when it’s pleasant, rather than stiflingly hot.

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