Have you ever awoken
suddenly from a vivid dream and thought you were still in Madagascar, or
wherever the wild and zany dream had taken you?
The ceiling and walls look totally unfamiliar – especially if it’s still
dark out.
It’s
always a plus, to know where you are when you wake up. Otherwise, you
might wind up like my father did after my mother repositioned the furniture,
and then, after they went to bed and were sound asleep, the phone rang in the
middle of the night.
Daddy leaped out of bed and
dashed for the door – only he wound up in the closet, and, in his own words, “fighting
my way through shirts and suits, with pants legs wrapped around my head.”
The other day, somebody asked me what the
Bible says about exercise and/or running.
I looked up the
verse that Paul wrote to Timothy: “For
bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto all
things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.” –
and discovered that the NEW King James Version added just one itty-bitty,
one-letter word to that first phrase, and totally changed the meaning: “For
bodily exercise profiteth a little.” Some translator apparently
worked out, and did not like his endeavors disparaged.
Paul also wrote, “But
I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection...” (meaning, he kept his body under
control)... Some translations say, “I buffet my body –”
but that obviously is not a wise choice of words, because the population at
large (pun alert! I made a pun!) (as
usual, by accident) – anyway, the population at large ((snerk)) apparently
read it as, “I buffét (buh-FAY) my body.”
And there are all
those verses about running a race:
Psalms 19:5:
The sun is ... as a bridegroom coming out
of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race.
1 Corinthians 9:24:
Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but
one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye
may obtain.
Hebrews 12:1:
Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a
cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so
easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set
before us.
Ecclesiastes 9:11:
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the
swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet
riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and
chance happeneth to them all.
Those verses use the terms ‘run’ and
‘running’ to refer to perseverance in our Christian life. We can deduce that while it’s not at all wrong
to do what we can to keep our bodies healthy, and in fact we should, it
certainly isn’t anywhere near the most important part of our lives. Living a godly life is what matters the most.
Time out – the dryer is playing its little
tune. Gotta get the clothes out before
they wrinkle, and transfer clothes from washer to dryer.
Okay, I’m back. Did you miss me? That washer is so deep, someday Larry is
going to come home and find me stuck headfirst in there, with just my feet
sticking out, kicking away.
Another time out... gotta butter my toast
while it’s hot! Nothing worse than
butter on cold toast. 😝
I like this
agitatorless washer more and more – if not because it gets the clothes any
cleaner, then just because it’s so easy to load and unload things.
Nothing gets snagged on the agitator. I
washed a twin-sized quilt in it, and it’s much less likely to get off-kilter in
the spinning cycle, without that agitator. Also, it’s easier on delicate
things, and not as hard on things like that quilt, which is made of wool and
corduroy and velour.
I’ve always
gotten heavy-duty washers and dryers, out of necessity. There have been
plenty of times when it was fortunate that we had a warranty. Dryers, for
example, do not appreciate having half a pound of cement dust work its way out
of the drum and get all over the motor, the blower, the idler pulley, the drum
belt, and the rollers.
Tuesday,
I did a bit of housecleaning, paid a few bills, and then worked a little more
on my new laptop. I looked online for
possible reasons that there was no sound on the big screen, and found all sorts
of explanations regarding wiring and suchlike.
I thought, That’s not the problem, and pulled up some settings on
my computer. Two or three clicks later,
presto, there was sound. It was a
software setting, not a hardware problem.
That afternoon, Victoria sent a bunch
of pictures of baby Arnold.
He's such a pretty baby. In some of his pictures, you can see the
start of a tentative little smile, about to work itself into a bigger one.
Victoria said, “He smiles and
smiles... BIG smiles. But it’s very hard
to get them on camera!”
“Yes, smiles are pretty fleeting, at
that age!” I agreed. “Besides, it makes
question marks on babies’ faces when you lift up cameras or phones the instant
they start to smile.”
“He smiles so big and fast that his
tongue clicks as it releases suction from the roof of his mouth,” she
said. “He’s the happiest smiley baby we’ve
ever had!”
I well remember that ‘click’, when my
tiny babies were first smiling. Sometimes
they’d ‘click’ just before they really started smiling, and I knew that if I
just worked at it a little longer, we’d soon have a brand-new-baby smile.
Victoria sent several more photos,
asking, “Why do babies make so many cute faces that you can’t just send one
picture?”
“Because Grandmas need lots of
pictures!” I responded.
In one picture, he is lying on the
Winnie-the-Pooh quilt I made him.
Hannah printed
and framed this verse from Isaiah 26:6, and did the quilling of roses and
flowers under the verse. Her niece then
incorporated it into a beautiful bouquet.
I’m so
very sorry for Susan’s husband Charles, her four children, and my sister, too.
We saw Caleb,
Maria, and Eva there, and Maria told me that their new baby would arrive
Friday. That was three weeks early, but her doctors were being careful
because of Maria’s tendency for high blood pressure. They’ve kept it
down well through the last several months.
After leaving
the church, we washed our vehicle and then ordered loaded nachos at the new
Pepper Jax restaurant. I got steak
nachos; Larry got chicken. Steak,
ha. They should call them gristle
nachos. And the food is way overpriced.
A quilting
friend has recently found some vintage Necchi sewing machines in very good
shape. One was in a nice sewing desk.
My mother
had a nice Necchi in a large cabinet. When
she bought it in the 60s, it was advertised as “Powerful enough to sew yardsticks
together!”
Mama,
always a lady but with an irrepressible wit, said dryly, “That’s nice; but I
have never looked good in yardsticks.”
Double
knits were coming into vogue, back then. While the Necchi may have done a bang-up job
on yardsticks, it fell down on the job when sewing double knits. Either no one knew about ballpoint needles, or
the salesman had ka-bashed it out of time, sewing yardsticks.
After my
mother passed away, I sold the machine for $60 on eBay, and Larry made a cutout
for the cabinet to fit the Bernina we’d gotten Victoria on eBay for $100.
Wednesday
morning, I was listening to the grain report on KTIC, the rural radio
station. The announcer chattered his way
through soybean statistics, and then said, “Meanwhile, the corn report is lurching in
the background.”
Lurching?!
Lurching! 🤣😂
Susan’s funeral was
that afternoon at 2:00 p.m. Pastor Robert Walker (Susan’s brother, my
nephew) gave a sermon from Psalm 17:15, where David wrote, “As for me, I will
behold thy face in righteousness: I
shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness.”
After the
service, we went to the cemetery for a short graveside reading and prayer, and
then we returned to the church for a luncheon in the Fellowship Hall.
Jacob, Jeremy and Lydia’s oldest boy, rode
with us to the cemetery. The younger three, Jonathan, Ian, and Malinda, feeling
left out, then traded with Jacob and rode back to the church with us.
There must’ve been 200 cars strong that went
to the cemetery; probably more like 250, even though we all try to carpool as
much as possible. People who had to stop
and wait for the procession were most likely late to wherever they’d been
going.
After leaving the church, we picked up an order from Wal-Mart, and then went home.
Later, I was having a text
chat with Hannah, who mentioned possible plans for this summer’s
vacation.
“Tell Bobby and each of the kids to
wear pillows and parachutes while working, until you go,” I recommended
(because last year, Bobby and Aaron both broke legs/ankles/tore ligaments,
etc.).
She wrote something (correctly) – and
autocorrect ‘fixed’ it just as she clicked ‘Send’.
“Why does autocorrect think it knows
more about grammer than I?” queried Hannah (and yes, she misspelt that word on
purpose).
“De grammer, she is in de kitchen,” I
responded. Because I was. (In the kitchen, that is.)
We discussed drives through the
mountains on perilous roads, and how some people’s shrieking about same keeps
everyone in the vehicle safe.
“I yelled once because we were about
to plow into a fire truck that was traveling along ahead of us,” I reminisced, “somewhere
in New Mexico. And then I realized
everything was fine; it just looked that way because I was peering
through the binoculars. Disrespectful
kids laughed at me.”
Hannah then talked about her funny
little Australian shepherd: “Willow
doesn’t appreciate when I grin at her with an excessively large smile. She just came in here and stood there looking
at me with a giant smile on her face. I
grinned back, but she thinks I’m fickle, I think.”
“Sparkle would say, ‘WOOF!
aaa-WOOOOF!!!’ when I’d do that,” I told her.
I’d been getting
quilts, taxes, housework, and birthday parties done, and those things plus the
funeral seemed to have drained the sap out of me; so earlier than usual that night
I retired to my recliner and played with EQ8.
Ian’s quilt was next. His birthday would be in five days, and there
was no way under the sun I’d be able to get his quilt done by then. I have twelve cross-stitched blocks of little
fishermen in the form of Overall Sam (Sunbonnet Sue’s counterpart), minus the
overalls; and I planned to put connecting blocks of some sort between the Sams.
I told the following to Hannah:
One of these days, when the other
grandchildren’s quilts are done, I want to make a better one for Willie. You’ll recall, perhaps, that his and his
sisters’ quilts were made with Split-Blade Pinwheel blocks? Willie was sick and could not attend our
family Christmas get-together; but Victoria sent me a video of Willie opening
the box with his quilt and pillow.
Carolyn and Violet had been all
pleased over the large black cats appliquéd on their quilts, and when Willie
got his present opened and they saw it was a quilt similar to theirs, they
immediately started looking for a kitty on the quilt. They were quite disappointed when there wasn’t
one, I think.
Willie watched them looking, then
peered into the box. Cat? Where’s a cat??
Willie reached into the box just as
Victoria said, “Oh, look, Willie, there’s a little pillow!”
Willie: FLING
(pillow sails)
(girls giggle)
At their house a week and a half ago,
we took him a birthday present, and it had a card in an envelope on the front. Willie plucked it off, looked the box over. How does a body open this thing??
Victoria said, “Willie, do you need
help getting the paper off of that?”
Willie sighed, nodded, and sent the
card off like a Frisbee. 😂
I then told Hannah about the nifty
tool, like an extremely fine-toothed brass comb, that I got recently for
removing dog or cat hair from upholstery.
“It worked!” I said. “I used it on the loveseat that was embedded
with Tiger’s fur on the front flaps at the floor level, and now I don’t feel
the urgency to pitch it out with the trash each Thursday! We can actually offer the piece of furniture
to visitors as a decent place to sit.”
“What’s it look like?” asked Hannah.
Now, I knew full well that she was
referring to the pet-hair remover. I
chose to answer otherwise:
“Oh, it’s equivalent to the width of
two chairs, with plump pillow-like things on the back, and cushions for seats,
and padded armrests. Like that.”
Then, after a pause, “Oh, you meant
the fur-plucker.” 😄
“I need to paint the stairwell,” I
told her. “And I will, too! – one of
these days. If I wait until I’m too
decrepit to do it, I’ll just stand at the top with an open bucket of paint, and
slosh it at the walls. (I’ll probably
wind up like Spanky of Little Rascals fame, when he was up on the counter and
tried to clock the ‘burglar’ with his mother’s iron, but the iron was heavier
than he was, and he wound up tumbling off and landing ker-WHUMP right at the
burglar’s feet.)”
Hannah suggested using a paint gun.
“Daddy has a paint gun,” I told her. “Somewhere. Probably more than one. All I’d have to do would be bring it in the
house, get started – late, so Daddy would be coming home about the time I got
started – and he would promptly take over the job and usher me straight out of
the way. Ah hain’t lived this long without
a-larnin’ how to work the system!”
She sent a couple of pictures of her
male Australian shepherd, Chimera.
“I’m heading upstairs,” she said, “and
the dogs went up first, as usual. Chimera
is parked at the top squinting his eyes at me, begging me to pet him.”
Chimera has one blue eye and one brown
eye.
Thursday, some White Chocolate Raspberry
Truffle coffee by Christopher Bean arrived.
I put it on the table with a note to Larry, wishing him a Happy Valentine’s
Day. (It was a day late – but it hadn’t
seemed very Valentinish the day before in any case.) The coffee is delicious. ((...slurrrrp...))
Hester, Keira, and Oliver came to visit that
afternoon after Keira got out of school, bringing a Valentine card Keira had
made and a box of chocolate chip cookies Hester had made, and a couple of thin
caramel-filled chocolate hearts.
Hester told me that while Keira was carefully
printing in the card and gluing some little teddy bears into it, Oliver found
the little plastic scissors Keira had been using, and carefully made several
slits along the top of the envelope.
Keira was dismayed. She’d just spent ever so long printing out
carefully, ever so carefully, “Grandpa and Grandma” on the front of the
envelope.
Hester assured her it was fine; the envelope
could still be used; not to worry.
I opened it, took out the card and admired
it, thanked Keira, and told her how nice her writing is.
Meanwhile, Oliver had been standing at the
door pointing at Larry’s scissor lift and basket lift on the long hydraulic
arm.
“Combines!” he said excitedly, pointing.
“Those are Grandpa’s lifts!” I told
him. I pointed at one. “That’s a scissor lift.” I pointed at the other one. “And that’s a basket lift. See the cage-like thing? With the fencing stuff around it? Grandpa stands in there, and it goes way up
high, and then he can work on our roof and things like that.”
Oliver listened silently. Then, “Lifts,” he said carefully, trying it
out on his tongue. He looked at those
big pieces of equipment. “Combines!”
he exclaimed.
Hester laughed, “He’s never seen combines up
close, but he’s very intrigued with them, and he probably thinks that the hydraulic
arm is the conveyor.”
But when he knew I was opening the Valentine
card, and heard Hester telling me about the scissor episode, he grew very still
and silent. He peeked over his shoulder
at me.
I help up the envelope. “Did you do this?” I asked, smiling at him.
He gave a little nod, eyes wide.
“You did a good job!” I said, and his eyes
got even wider. He glanced at his
Mama. “See,” I said, opening the flap so
the cuts could be seen, “You almost made a snowflake!”
He grinned, and looked at his sister.
I looked at her too, smiled, and said, “It’s
okay. It didn’t hurt anything you had
done; he just added his own special touch to it!” So she grinned, too, giving her
characteristic quick little nod of agreement.
Here’s a poem I wrote in Hester’s
autograph album when she was 8:
Dear Little Hester
A dear little
baby to us was born –
Oh, happy day;
oh, wonderful morn!
Only five pounds
and two, this baby of ours;
But sweeter than
honey, and fairer than flowers!
She was full of
spirit, and life, and pep;
She soon learned
to crawl, and then take a step;
Before we knew
it, she skipped off to school –
Where she does
just fine, as a general rule –
And now she’s
grown up to the age of eight,
Learning to cook,
and liking to skate.
And as we watch
our little girl grow,
There’s one
thing, dear Hester, we want you to know:
Always love Jesus
with all of your heart,
And He’ll be your
Redeemer, and never depart!
Written in Hester’s
autograph album, 9-24-97, when she was 8
Here are
some of the 12 cross-stitched blocks that will be part of Ian’s quilt. After drawing up several designs in EQ8, I settled
on one and named the quilt “Cross-Stitchin’ Gone Fishin’”. I needed some white background fabric. Astonishingly, I have actually used up the
majority of that heap of white-on-white fabrics I bought from Marshall Dry
Goods back when I was making the cream and white New York Beauty quilt for
Jeremy and Lydia.
Friday morning, I waded out in the fresh snow
– well, there wasn’t enough snow to say ‘wade’ and be accurate – so, I scuffled
through the snow to the bird feeders and filled them all up. Why on earth do I have so many bird
feeders???
It was fun to look out the windows
periodically throughout the day, and see the variety of birds at the feeders,
filling their little birdie tummies. Or
gullets, as it were. Gizzards. Maws.
Crops. Craws.
I paid a
few bills, folded a load of clothes – and waited... waited... waited...
for news from Caleb and Maria, who were in Norfolk preparing to welcome their
new baby. I waited and waited... and
then I waited with all my might and main.
For the
last year and a half, Larry has been trying to get a Kubota lawn tractor into
good running order, so we could give it to my nephew Kelvin. We got it in place of a flatbed trailer Loren
had, and we knew Kelvin had been looking for a similar tractor.
Kelvin
has always been one of Loren’s favorite nephews, very special to him. Loren would be so glad for Kelvin to have
this tractor, if he understood these things.
When we cleaned out Loren’s house and garages, we sold what we could,
and put the money in his bank account for his continued care. As for the ‘stuff and things’, we tried to
give family members things that might be special to them, or things they might
need and use; but a lot of it was things nobody wanted or had room for. Neither my children nor my sister’s children
want heaps of knickknacks and collectibles strewn about their houses.
So... I
saved a few like-new things that would make nice gifts for the grandchildren,
let Janice’s sister Judy take any of Janice’s things she wanted – and took
carload after carload of things to the Goodwill and Salvation Army.
Then
Larry found this tractor that he knew Kelvin would like. It had a few things that needed to be fixed,
and Larry had a hard time getting it done, on account of all the hours he spent
working on the trucks at Walkers last year.
But finally it was done enough to give him, and Kelvin assured us that
he can finish whatever else needs to be done, as he enjoys tinkering with such
things. Sometimes he feels well enough
to do that, and sometimes he doesn’t.
We
believe it truly is of God’s grace that he’s still here, after such a lengthy
battle with colon cancer.
It
wasn’t long before Kelvin sent me a picture of the tractor in his garage, with
his little grandson Greyson perched on it.
Kelvin and Rachel have 13 grandchildren, and one more on the way.
“I’m so glad you finally have it!” I
responded. “I hope it works well for
you.”
“I’m sure it will,” answered Kelvin. “It is so neat – a diesel motor, too!”
It has a snowblade, in addition to the
mowing deck, and a cherry picker, too.
Teddy has a rototiller that will fit it; Kelvin can use it for his
garden, come spring.
When Kelvin was a wee little boy,
about 3, I suppose (he’s 6 years younger than me), we attended a funeral.
A day or so later, I was taking him for a ride on my Stingray bicycle with the
banana seat, and he said to me, “Sarah Lynn, I like froonels!”
I said, “Do
you? Why?”
And he said, said
he, “Because we have nice lunches!”
“But what about
the person who died?” I asked.
He debated for a
moment or two, as we flew down the street. (He knew he needed to hang on
tight.) Then he responded quite earnestly, “Well, but he’s in heaven, so
he didn’t need a lunch!”
hee hee I
was really glad I was in front, and Kelvin was behind me, so he couldn’t see
the big grin on my face. I tried to never laugh at that little boy.
(But he was most funny.) I loved him dearly. Still
do.
By a quarter
after 7 that day, I was hungry, and I could smell the aroma of the chicken and
potatoes baking in the oven. ((drool)) ((stomach growling)) I popped some broccoli into the microwave,
and while it was cooking, I pulled the roaster from the oven. It was done!
By 10:00 p.m., I
was a wee bit worried, having not heard from Caleb and Maria.
It’s good to
worry. I’ve kept lots of bad things from happening, just by worrying.
(Actually, I’m not one
to worry, much. All is in God’s hands, and I am thankful for that.)
A friend who is a
little older than me had a birthday that day, and announced that she had looked
in the mirror, and didn’t at all look a year older.
That reminded me
of the day Joseph turned 4 on April 24, 1989.
He told me, “Mama,
I just looked in the mirror, and I still look 3!!!”
This was his
reason for thinking thusly:
For a few months,
he’d been practicing dressing himself when he woke up from his nap. Of course, he had to undress himself
before he could then dress himself... and in so doing, he wound up with
pants, shirt, socks and all, wrong side out. Not knowing how to turn them
right side out (or perhaps not realizing they were inside out),
he put them back on – seam side out.
The first time I
went to get him from his nap and finding his clothes all wrong side out, I
really was quite perplexed. Had I done that, in the morning when I
dressed him??
After it happened
the second time, I decided to peek in on him when he was waking from his next
nap.
Accordingly, the
third day, I listened for the slightest sound coming from his room, stealthily
opened the door a crack, and peeked in.
There he was,
laboriously pulling his little shirt off over his head, then removing his
pants, turning them inside out in the process. Then, with much care and a
whole lot of work, he put them back on – and of course they wound up seam side
out.
“There!” he
breathed quietly, smiling a little at his success.
Then he stopped
smiling and frowned, looking down at his pants, where the insides of the
pockets were flapping on the outsides of the pants, and there was no way to get
a hand into them.
And so it went,
almost every day. I turned his clothes right side out after his naps, and
didn’t make inquiry, first because if I had’ve, I might have laughed, and he
was clearly a bit embarrassed over the matter.
Never make fun of
a child when he’s trying hard to learn!
Flash forward a
couple of months to the day of his 4th birthday:
He got up from
his nap – by this time, he was coming out of his room on his own, rather than
waiting for me to come and get him – and that’s when he said in a sad little
voice, “Mama, I just looked in the mirror, and I still look 3!!!”
Poor little guy;
he’d thought that when he turned 4, he would finally, finally, be able to get
those clothes on right side out!
So... we sat down
with a pair of pants, a shirt, and a pair of socks, and I showed him how to
first turn them wrong side out... and then turn them back right
side out.
And that was the
last time Joseph came from his nap with his clothes all inside out.
That evening, I cut apart the cross-stitched
blocks and took pictures of each one, so that I could insert them into my EQ8
design. There were two ‘sheets’ of fabric with six of these fishing boys
on each ‘sheet’. That done, I began cutting the fabric for the
alternative blocks. The alternative
blocks will be the ‘Crossed Canoes’ quilt block pattern.
The fabrics were in a
layer cake (a stack of 42 ten-inch squares) given to me by Kurt and Victoria
several years ago. I had actually been
saving it to make Kurt a personal-throw-sized quilt; but Ian came first, and
after searching through my bins and finding not much that was suitable, I
pulled out this selection of fabrics and thought, This is just right!
By 12:30
a.m., I had cut 148 ‘canoe halves’ for the Crossed Canoes blocks. These
are 25° triangles. There are 37 Crossed Canoe blocks, plus the 12
cross-stitched blocks.
“If the angle is
increased to 30°,” asked an irreverent non-quilting friend, “does it become a
paddle boat section?”
“Yes, or a dinghy!” I retorted.
I headed off to bed,
wondering if I would remember where I was in the fabric cutting, what pieces
needed to be cut next and the quantity of those pieces, and thinking I should
write myself a note to take a cross-stitched block with me to the fabric store
the next day in order to properly match the background fabric. I carry so much information around in my head
that at night it spills out of whichever ear is angled downward into the
pillow. I once told Jacob when he was younger that I am not forgetful, really;
you see, I just have so many ideas and schemes in my head that it can’t all
settle into locking compartments; and when I lie down, some of that loose data
spills out the ear on the downhill side. My pillow is all full of
statistics and logistics and stuff! Jacob, being young and
impressionable, was quite impressed with his Grandma’s erklärungen (that’s ‘explanations’, in
German).
I sleepily watched the eagles on their nest
in Big Bear Valley, California, until a few minutes after three o’clock, hoping
for news from Caleb and Maria. Then I
turned the volume up on my phone, set it on my nightstand, and went to bed.
As it turned out, the baby was already 50
minutes old, right that very minute!
At 7:00 in the morning, Saturday, February 17th,
Larry awoke me, holding out his phone to show me a picture of a brand new baby!
– Maisie Noelle Jackson.
I was awake instantly, and yelping, “Glasses! I need my glasses!”
I checked my own phone then, and saw that
Maria had sent me a picture of Caleb holding Baby Maisie, along with vital
statistics at 6:11 a.m. – and I hadn’t heard the notification. Had I walked into the kitchen for a drink right
then, maybe? But then why wouldn’t I
have heard my tablet signaling a message?
Maybe because sometimes messages on that poor ol’ decrepit thing come in
hours later?
Anyway, Baby Maisie Noelle was here, safe
and sound. She was born at 2:14
a.m., weighing 6 pounds, 14 ounces, and measuring 20 ½ inches.
I wrote back to Maria, “She’s beautiful! We’ve been waiting with all our might and
main! 💖”
Caleb sent more pictures that
afternoon, including a couple of Eva holding her baby sister Maisie.
I looked up the name Maisie, and
learned that it’s a Scottish name that means ‘pearl’.
The Swineys – my father’s side of the
family – were equally Scottish and Irish, though they were way prouder
of their Irish side, heh heh.
With the
birth of little Maisie, we now have 10 granddaughters and 19 grandsons.
I got a call from one of the staff at Prairie
Meadows that morning, telling me that a water pipe had broken (again!) in the
hallway just outside Loren’s door, and they were going to relocate him to
another room temporarily.
Meanwhile,
Larry had earlier taken the Mercedes to the Toyota dealership and asked one of
the men to drive it and give him his opinion on why it was not driving very
well. When it hit bumps, it would wobble
from side to side, and it seemed to be getting worse.
The man
was pretty sure it was the tires, probably the rear ones, maybe all four.
Larry
then took it to the tire shop – and when his friend there took off a wheel,
they started to realize exactly what the trouble was.
A
previous owner had taken off the wheels and tires that came on this vehicle and
replaced them with low-profile tires and wheels. This required an adapter kit to be used – and
the connecting bolts were small and tapered, and there were not a whole lot of
threads for the nuts to hold onto. If I
would’ve hit one of those big, nasty potholes in Omaha, a wheel might’ve popped
right off.
I don’t
understand why anyone would take a high-dollar, really nice vehicle, and add
stuff to it and change things, just to make it look ‘better’ (in their
opinion), while messing with its fine precision tuning.
Larry also found
out from the man at Toyota that our vehicle, which was sold to us as ‘in
like-new condition’, had actually been wrecked, and had suffered ‘moderate to
heavy damage’ in the rear. Ugh, that will lessen its trade-in
value. I dislike dishonest salesmen.
Larry
found the right size of wheels at Kosiski Auto Parts/Salvage Yard in Omaha, and
planned to pick them up on Monday. We
could visit Loren then.
I
would’ve liked to have visited Caleb and Maria and the new baby, but they were
at the hospital in Norfolk, almost 45 miles to the north. Larry needed to go to Genoa and work on a
vehicle, and I did not want to go visit our new grandbaby without him; that
didn’t seem right. 😐
Also, I
did not know if Maria was up to visitors just yet, and I never intrude on
mothers with new babies, especially daughters-in-law. My lovely, sweet mother-in-law did that to me
before our oldest was born, waltzing right into the labor room!
Yes, I
understand people do that all the time. I
am not ‘those people’, however; I am an extremely private person (as are my
daughters and daughters-in-law).
I
politely asked her to go back out, go on home, and wait until we called them.
She went
out and came back in.
I asked
her (a little less politely) to go out.
She went
out – and immediately came back in.
I said,
and I quote, “GET OUT!!!!!!!!” (If I made the
font a size 350, it would be more accurate.)
Visitors
in rooms all over the hospital got OUT of those rooms. People in cars out in the parking lot hastily
got out of their cars, wondering what just happened. Townsfolk ran out of their houses and looked
wonderingly at the sky.
(I
inherited my father’s preaching voice, and every now and then, I USED it.)
(My own
mother wasn’t barging in like that; why did my mother-in-law think SHE
should?!)
She got
out. Fast. In fact, she went all the way home, and she
did not come back until we called to tell her the baby had arrived, and we
would welcome her visit, along with Larry’s father.
See, the
advantage to letting my stance be known is that I never again had to cope with
that behavior, throughout the next eight births of our children. 😄 And yet,
wonder of wonders, my mother-in-law and I were always very good friends. I loved her, and she loved me.
Above is
a picture of Norma holding Keith, and below is my mother holding Keith;
both were taken when he was just a few days old.
A
quilting friend told about her mother-in-law, who would come visiting –
and then proceed to go into the bedrooms and look under the beds to see if it
had been dusted under there! Good grief.
I said,
“If only you could’ve had some kind of sensor-activated monster under the bed
to roar and lunge forward, if anyone peered under there!” 😂
Right
after we got married, Norma would call up... I’d answer... “Hello?” and Norma
would say without preamble, “What are you fixing Larry for supper?”
Well, ah
ain’t Irish fer nuttin’, huh-uh, nosirreee. Me bright, shiny Irish temper got fired up
right quick-like, and I said without pause, “Green worms.” (It was the first thing that came to mind. I was only 18, after all. 😄)
Having
said it once, I stuck with it. Every
time she called and asked that same question in that same tone, the answer was “Green
worms,” and nothing could pry any other answer from me.
She quit
asking. Or at least she quit asking in that
tone.
And,
like I said, we really did become good friends before too long at all. I’m thankful for that.
But to
this day, if Larry walks in and asks, before greeting me, “What’s for supper?”
(or, in order to be funny, “What’s cookin’?”) I retort as expected: “Green
worms.” 😂
Sometime that afternoon, Teddy stopped by to
get some of his pork from the freezer. I
saw him coming, hopped up, and held the door shut on him. He turned the knob... pushed... encountered
resistance... looked up – and saw me through the glass. 😄
I went to our
local quilt shop, Sew What, to get white fabric for the background for
Ian’s quilt, came home and cut 374 HSTs for the alternate blocks, with an
interruption to go pick up a grocery order at Wal-Mart, and another
interruption to fix supper.
I cut just enough
white pieces to sew together one block in order to see if it went together properly, and then I quit
for the night. 36 blocks to go! I have learned that the white fabric I bought
puckers during both sewing and ironing. I’ll
do custom quilting on this quilt, and ka-smoosh it into subjection.
Here’s the block,
copied from my EQ8 program (not the real, honest-to-goodness block I sewed):
Sunday morning, I
met Kurt and Victoria in the hallway as we walked back to the sanctuary from
the Fellowship Hall after coffee break between Sunday School and the main
service. Only Carolyn, Violet, and Baby
Arnold were with them. No Willie.
“You’re missing
one kid!” I informed them. “Did you throw him out with the bathwater?”
They laughed and
told me he would soon be coming with his other grandmother. Victoria
allowed as how it was a wee bit harder to keep track of four kids
than it had been with one or two, and easier to mix up their names.
I asked Violet,
who was walking beside me, “Do you have to look in the mirror very often to see
who you are?”
She looked up at
me seriously with those big hazel eyes of hers and said in her low-pitched
voice, “Well, ... but... Grandma, I don’t really need to do that.” hee
hee
After the morning
service, I gave Eva, who was with her other grandparents, a small folder chock
full of all colors of narrow stick-it papers. She who is usually quick to
take her little treasures and go rushing off, tossing back an over-the-shoulder
thank-you, stood there and looked at it, then looked up at me with a big smile
and said very sincerely, “Thank you!” She must’ve thought that little
folder was prrrretty nifty.
By 2:00 in the
afternoon, it was 47°, but there was still snow on the ground.
Larry made his
scrumptious French toast for our lunch.
That evening, we
got ready for our evening service, and headed out the door at 6:15 p.m.
My skirt was too
big. If I spun around too fast, the skirt stayed put, and I wound up
sideways inside it. 😅 My sweater was too big, too; but at least it
had sleeves, so it sorta had to come along when I moved.
When
Larry’s hearing aids are in, he talks vewy, vewwwwy quietly. When they are out, he’s loud. He had them in when we walked in and seated
ourselves in our pew, but they were turned down in anticipation of the music that
would soon be starting up. I barely sat
down before he leaned over and whispered LOUDLY, “YOUR COLLAR IS ALL
MESSED UP.”
I’m
telling you, the entire church knew my collar was messed up.
After that,
what would it hurt if I reached up and fixed it, right there in public?
After the
service, we were walking out of the sanctuary, when suddenly I spotted Maria
and new baby Maisie in the front vestibule! I ran over half a dozen
children, knocked down three li’l ol’ ladies, and left two strappin’ young men spinning
in my vortex in order to get to them.
Soon we were gazing
at the baby and chatting with Caleb and Maria.
“You played hooky
this morning!” I said accusingly to Caleb. Then, “In fact, three-fourths
of your family played hooky!”
He laughed and
told me that he, Maria, and the baby were just driving into town about the time
the morning service was over, around noon.
He said that Eva
said baby Maisie is “byoootiful.”
Along came Teddy,
walking up beside me to see the baby. I
stuck my elbow out quick as a wink and said, “Don’t you go butting in!!!”
Grinning, he informed
me, “I’m taller than you!”
After leaving the
church, we went to Wal-Mart for presents for Baby Maisie and for Ian, Jeremy
and Lydia’s third child, who turned 8 yesterday.
We stopped by
Wendy’s on the way home, and got salad, chili, and frosties (thick milk shakes).
By noon yesterday, it was
45°, with a projected high of 47°. The high in Omaha was expected to be
57°.
We headed for Omaha to get the
wheels for the Benz and to visit Loren a little before 2:00 p.m.
A couple of hours later, we
were parked at Kosiski’s. Larry was in
the office, and I was sitting in the car, laptop on lap. I watched a passerby for a couple of minutes
– and my screensaver came on. And whataya know, there
was Hannah as a teenager in the 1990s – wearing the same sweater I had on that very
day.
I took a screen shot and sent it to Hannah,
telling her that since I ‘inherited’ the sweater, I’ve cut off several inches
from the bottom, then used my serger to put the bottom trim back on.
“That would’ve been nice to have it
shorter!” she replied. “I believe those
sweaters were from Uncle Loren and Aunt Janice.
Am I remembering correctly?”
“Yep,” said I. “I would’ve done things like that – if I had’ve
had a serger. I could overlock edges
with my Bernina 830 Record, but it was only 6mm wide.”
Hannah told me, “I took my car to
check out the front passenger tire that had begun leaking on Saturday. Turns out, the rim is cracked! They’re going to weld it and I can get it
tomorrow. I’m using the spare now.” She then replied to my comment about the
serger: “I could’ve done it, if I knew
how to knit.”
Things like that are straight lines I
cannot resist.
“I don’t think knitting a rim would
work, really I don’t,” I told her. Then,
“(Sorry; I just can’t help myself.)”
Hannah was already telling me, “I
suppose the gigantic pothole we hit last month when we were in Omaha caused
that.” Then she answered my malarkey, “(I
thought briefly of putting it in context, but decided to keep running with our
dual stories going on here. 😅)”
Loren was just
finishing his supper when we arrived. We sat down at his table with
him and one other man (who seemed oblivious to most everything), and two ladies
who are generally friendly and nice. Loren seemed more confused than
usual – perhaps because of the water pipe breaking and causing him to be moved
to another room.
However, he did
pick up one stray green bean on his plate and offer it to Larry, asking, “Have
you ever had one of these?” and when Larry said he had, “Did you like it?” and “Do
you want it?” which is typical ‘Loren’ sense of humor.
We sat with him
until he finished eating, and then I said we would walk with him to his room in
order to put some nametags on his new clothes (I’d run out of nametags last
week).
I asked, “Are you
still in another room, or are you back in your own room?”
He looked at me
like I’d taken leave of my senses (he’s more likely to do that when Larry is
along, because he assumes Larry will be on his side, heh) and said, “I’m always in
my own room!!!”
Haha, I just
can’t get it through my thick head that I cannot ask him a ‘normal’ question
and expect a ‘normal’ answer in return, can I?
I asked a nurse,
instead. “He’s staying in another room,”
she told me, “but you can go to his room if you like.”
The main doors to
that hall were closed and locked, but she gave us the code so we could get
through. Resident doors all down the
hallway were open, and a dozen commercial-type fans were positioned
strategically along the hall, blowing at full force (LOUDLY!!!).
I discovered that
the only new clothes Loren had worn were a couple of the shirts I’d hung in the
closet. One of the nurses told me, “We
always hang pants in the closet. Do you want me to bring hangers?”
I said yes,
please, that would be helpful... and she soon returned with a stack of them.
So I got all the
pants out of the drawers, made sure all the tags were off of them, and hung
them. I took all his new socks and underwear from the drawer where I’d
put them, and put them into a drawer where there were a few (a very few)
bedraggled socks and one pair of underwear.
I removed the bedraggled things, and put the usable but worn things in a
more obscure drawer.
As I took all the
wrapping or tags from the new clothes, I pointed out to Larry the scotch tape
holding the underwear in a small roll, and told him, “These are unwearable and
useless. They have scotch tape on them.”
Really, Loren had
not worn any of those things! I had suspected that might
happen. At least now the daily nurses know he has new
clothes, rather than just the Saturday nurses.
We hauled off the
old pants that were too small, and the frayed-out flannel shirt that he liked
to wear as a jacket. Now he’ll have to wear those new
things!
I
did not tell him about Susan. He has not
remembered to ask about her for several months.
Nowadays when he asks, “How’s Mama?” I just smile and say, “She’s fine.”
Because, after all, she is.
Hard
to imagine, isn’t it, having the last 20-30 years of one’s life, just wiped
cleanly out of one’s head? Dementia is
not a nice disease.
Loren
regularly introduces me to other residents at Prairie Meadows: “This is
my sister, Sarah Lynn!”
And
they, picking up on Loren’s general happiness and cheer, smile and say, “I’m so
glad to meet you!” even though we’ve met dozens of times before, hee hee.
Once we got the clothes all organized,
we walked with Loren to his temporary room, giving him the National Geographic
magazines, Messenger newspapers, and Nebraska magazine I’d brought.
There was another
bed in the room with a lot of personal effects; so someone else is in there
with him. He seemed... not quite as happy as usual, while in that
room. He’s better off in a room by himself. But he’s less cantankerous than he was when
he first went to the home, so hopefully he won’t be locking the
other occupant out, like he did when he first arrived and was sharing a
room. They moved him (with my consent) to a private room as soon as one
was available.
When we left, he
didn’t stay there; he walked down the hall behind us. We waved a cheery
goodbye, and he soon got interested in something outside one of the windows.
We next went to Harbor
Freight Tools, where Larry got some things for his boom truck.
One of the
children had given us a gift card for Panera Bread, and it wasn’t far away, so
that’s where we ate supper. I had a half sandwich of
bacon/avocado/something-or-other, a cup of turkey chili, a caramel latte, and a
blood orange-charged splash that I wound up sharing with Larry, because he
couldn’t get his blueberry slushie to come up the straw until it melted a bit.
We bought a cherry/cream cheese Danish ring to bring home with us.
As we drove home, Keith and I were texting
when there was a beeping noise, and the dash readout ordered Larry to stop and take
a coffee break. At least this time it
wasn’t because he was falling asleep while driving; he’d merely been
repositioning himself.
Here’s a fact: The disadvantage to seatbelts that are
attached to the walls of the vehicle (as opposed to the seats) is that when you
change positions, you get throttled!
Larry promptly argued with the dash,
just like he does with me if I tell him he’s obviously getting sleepy. The Mercedes notices swerving, and
fluctuations on the gas pedal.
I reported on all this to Keith.
“Maybe y’all should trade the Mercedes
in on a self-driving Tesla! 😬😬😬” he suggested. “First time I saw a guy riding along eating
his Chinese food with both hands holding his tray of food and not hanging onto
the steering wheel, I almost had a stroke.
I had no clue that car existed.”
Then he told about when he was hauling
vehicles, and was taking a Tesla Model X to Denver. This is the autopilot SUV-style with the
falcon-wing doors.
Keith didn’t realize the key fob got
bumped in the container he kept all the keys in, and while going down the road,
it opened a wing door! Luckily, they
have sensors that keep them from hitting anything beside the car, or it would
have crunched the door against the side rails of his trailer.
I saw a video where someone let a
passenger out of their Ferrari on a London street, took off without closing the
wing door – and the door smacked into the upper story of one of those red double-decker
buses. It tore the door off, and scared
several bus passengers out of their ninth lives.
We got home a little after 10:30
p.m. As we came up Old
Highway 81, Larry stopped at the mailbox (we forgot it was President’s Day, and
no mail would be delivered), and he said, “Could you get out and get the mail?” (He was kidding; he always does it.)
I said, “No, I have COL.” (That used to mean ‘Cat on Lap’.)
He laughed. “Computer on Lap.”
Yep.
When he got back in the car,
I asked, “Did the presidents leave you any mail?”
Here’s a poem I tucked into
sympathy cards for all of Susan’s family:
And now it is bedtime.
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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