Way back on Wednesday, April 16, I placed an order
for several bags of coffee beans with Christopher Bean. They are not as fast at shipping as some
coffee bean companies, but it’s because they don’t roast the beans until they
get your order – and their beans are invariably fresher-tasting than most. So I just try to order soon enough to keep
from running out.
The following Monday, April 21st,
I checked on my order. UPS did not yet have
possession of the package, or so it said on their tracking page. This being somewhat unusual, I sent them a
note: “Is my coffee order lost?”
There was no answer, which is even more unusual. The next day, I wrote again: “Looks like the coffee still has not shipped
today. Perhaps it is lost? Help, help! I only have enough
coffee for one more pot!”
It was not until the next morning, Wednesday,
April 23rd, that I got an answer:
“Good
morning Mrs. Jackson, I apologise [sic] for the delayed response! I was out of the office with a family
emergency! I am happy to check on that
for you! Your order is finishing up and
will be shipping out very soon! We have
recently undergone a big move to our new facility, and the team has been a bit
behind on production! We appreciate your
patience. (By this time, my eyebrows
were worn out from flying up at the exclamation marks at the end of every
sentence, so I appreciated the ‘appreciate-your-patience’ sentence.) I will make sure your order ships out asap!”
“Okay, thank you,” I responded. “I am
making do with Cameron’s. ‘Making do’ only, mind you! 😏”
“I totally understand!” came a quick reply. “I will light a fire under the team and get
them moving!”
If they moved, it was not to send me my
coffee.
Last Tuesday, April 29th, I wrote
again: “What has become of my coffee
order of two weeks ago? It is still not in UPS system, though a label has
been made. Coffee, coffee, I need my
coffee! ☹😢🥹🥲”
I got an answer the following morning: “Good morning Mrs. Jackson, I just went to take a look,
and your order is only awaiting the cold brew! (Wouldn’t you know; I try something New and
Different, and it holds up the whole order, after the whole order had already
been held up.) So it should be
shipping very soon! We appreciate your
continued patience. (Who said I
was patient, huh huh huh huh huh?!!!) The
team is working very hard to get orders roasted and shipped. I will personally get it shipped as soon as it
is ready!”
“Okay, thank you very much,” I wrote
back. “I will continue to cry in my
Cameron’s.”
It was not until Friday, May 2nd,
that I saw
on the UPS tracking page that the Christopher Bean coffee order had been
shipped. The Christopher Bean company is
located in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. The
package had arrived at the UPS facility in Daytona Beach, Florida, at 8:54
p.m., left at 10:43 p.m., and arrived at another facility in Jacksonville two
hours later. It took close to another
ten hours to depart the Jacksonville facility at 10:06 a.m. Saturday morning,
May 3rd.
And just now right this moment (11:29 p.m.) I
see that an estimated delivery time of Thursday, May 8th, by 7:00
p.m., has been added to the page.
Reckon the coffee will be better than ever,
having been roasted in a brand new, big facility??
I spent a while working in the flower gardens
Tuesday morning. Three big gardens have
now been cleared of winter growth. That leaves
only about ten big flower gardens to go. 🥴 I was 42 when I planted many of these gardens,
and divided and transplanted continually for the next ten (+) years. I guess I thought I was going to stay 42-52
the rest of my life? I must admit, the
exercise does make me feel better, so long as I don’t do something
stupid like I did... what was it, four years ago? – when I tried pulling out a,
well, I think it was a sequoia. Or a
redwood. Yeah, I tried pulling it (okay,
okay, it was a small volunteer sapling) straight out of the ground, ’cuz ya
gotta get those roots out, right? And it
was coming! It was absolutely
coming.
And then a disc ruptured in my back, BANG.
😯😲😖 Anyway, so long as I
don’t do that again, gardening is good for me.
That’s what I tell myself, over and over
again, when I don’t wanna. 😏
It was bright
and sunny, not a cloud in the sky; but it wasn’t until 1:00 p.m. that the
temperature made it up to 60°. I wore a
sweater and a headband that morning while working in the flower gardens. I’d rather work out there when it’s cool than
when it’s hot and muggy. If it’s very
windy, I throw in the towel before too long, as the wind hurts my eyes and
ears. A headband helps my ears; maybe
goggles would help my eyes?
If I
have to wear goggles, I want some like this lady has:
After a shower, a blow-dry, a curl, and some
breakfast, I went on a hunt for fabric at Marshall Dry Goods.
I ordered 50 yards of fabric – mostly blues –
at a cost of $297.50. That should
last through several quilts! They don’t have some
of the fabric lines I especially like, but I found a number of very good
substitutes. They don’t carry Northcott’s
Stonehenge line, but they do have seven pages of other Northcott fabrics,
including tonals and marbled prints. I found
a few fabrics that are similar to Stonehenge and other more expensive prints. Some of the collections that I particularly
like are Earth Jewels, Robert Kaufman’s Gem Collection, Palette Patch, and
Fairy Tales. Here are a few of the
fabrics I picked.
That done, I headed upstairs to my quilting
studio to work on the Safari Animals quilt.
There were sunny blue skies that afternoon, nary
a cloud to be seen, winds practically nonexistent – and at 5:40 p.m., the
electricity went off for a few seconds before coming back on. What in the world.
Meanwhile,
a Harris’ sparrow was sitting in the apple tree right outside my east window, singing
away. They are the biggest sparrow in
the States. He’s just migrating through,
though, on his way to northern Canada, where he and his mate will nest
somewhere in those areas where the boreal forest meets the tundra. They build their nests on the ground, often in
a shallow depression under a shrub or small tree, according to BirdWeb. The nests are typically made of twigs, grass,
moss, and lichens, and lined with fine grasses.
Photo by Terry Sohl for South Dakota Birds.
A friend and I were discussing the damage a
lightning strike can cause. We once lost
a microwave and I lost an iron to a lightning strike. And the cats each lost one of their nine lives
when it happened.
Black Kitty was on my lap, right between me
and my laptop, her favorite place to be. Made typing difficult sometimes, but... cuddly Kitty.
Immediately before the lightning bolt, all
three cats, who were sleeping in the living room, jerked awake, one growled,
and their fur stood up. When it
lightninged and crashed at the same instant, Black Kitty simultaneously kicked
my laptop off my lap and sunk her talons into my jugular vein!
Well, at least into my neck. And since she curled her claws as she did so, it
took a concentrated effort to extract those talons from my neck. I looked like a vampire bat had tried to make
lunch of me.
I couldn’t really be mad at her, since she
was so scared. She had no idea she had
clawed me; she would’ve never done that on purpose. I doled out treats all around to calm the
critters down.
I got a wide row and a half of
quilting done that day on the Safari Animals quilt. I was almost ready to start quilting the
animal prints.
Those animal prints are from a line of fabric called ‘Wild Wings’. I really like their prints. I somehow managed to choose backing fabric
from Wild Wings, before even noticing who had made the animal prints! No wonder the backing matches the big animal
blocks so well.
As I was getting ready for church
Wednesday evening, I pulled a collar bar out of my jewelry box and spotted a
little gold heart-shaped pin with the word ‘Mother’ scrolled across it in gold.
It used to be my mother’s.
I thought, I’ll betcha Carolyn,
Violet, Willie, and Arnold would like to give this to their Mama (Victoria) for
Mother’s Day.
So I rummaged up a little box for it, tucked
in some folds of batting, pinned the heart to it, covered it with a layer of
batting, and asked Victoria to tell the girls, who are 6 and 7, to come get
something from me after church.
They were so
pleased when I showed them what I had for them to give their Mama, especially
when I told them that it had belonged to their great-grandma.
I told them, “You
can add your little brothers’ names (Willie and Arnold) to your card, if you’d
like.”
“Yes,” nodded
Violet, “because they can’t write, you know!” 😄😍
I said, “Maybe
your Daddy can help you find a little gift bag for it.”
Carolyn, in her
typical ‘I’ve got this under control’ manner, announced matter-of-factly, “Oh,
we’ll take care of it.” 😅
Before we left the church, a young
friend gave me a quilt she wants me to quilt for her. I need to hurry, hurry, with the Safari
Animals quilt!
After a chilly, wet morning on
Thursday, the sun finally came out at noon, and the temperature rose to 62°. By then I had already done some cleaning,
showered, and was putting a few curls in my hair; so I wouldn’t be doing any
work in the gardens that day. Soon I was
heading upstairs to my quilting studio.
Just look what’s inside the
refrigerator at a ranch home in the Sandhills that got demolished by a large
tornado last Sunday night. The twister
must’ve jerked open the refrigerator door, thrown all that hay in there, and
then slammed the door shut again!
I texted Keith that
afternoon, “Did
you know there was a 3.94 earthquake this morning at 1:11 a.m. this morning
about halfway between Heber City and Strawberry Reservoir?” That’s about 100 miles south of where Keith
and Korrine live in Layton, Utah.
“Yes, I saw the news,” he answered. “Some people reported feeling it fairly close
to us.”
“I feel so slighted,” I informed him. “I have never felt an earthquake!”
“I have, twice,” he told me. “It’s eerie.”
There was a possibility I could have
felt an earthquake once, as the epicenter of a small one was just ten miles
away; but I probably just thought it was Larry unloading a skid
loader/backhoe/scissor lift/other large motorized hunka metal off a trailer.
That
evening, I paused with the quilting to head downstairs and make some
hamburgers. We had those
yummy Pepperidge Farms onion/poppy seed buns, onions, lettuce, Colby jack
cheese, Victoria’s homemade pickles, ketchup, mustard, and seasoned salt and
pepper from Tastefully Simple to put on the hamburgers ---- and no tomatoes. I forgot to order tomatoes in my last grocery
order. Well, the ketchup would have to
do.
Late that night, I reached
the halfway point in the quilting of the Safari Animals quilt. That block
those two green rulers are sitting on (below) is the exact point of
halfway. Well, come to think of it, the middle of that
block is the halfway point, meaning I was half a block past the halfway point,
to be precise. 😄
The thread in that
peach-colored area near the elephant print is Magnifico, a 40-wt. thread with a
whole lot of sheen by Superior Threads. A while back when I tried using
it, it kept breaking. This time, I held my tongue just right, and there
were no breaks at all. (Actually, I used the size 18 needle as
recommended by Superior. Turns out, they
know what they’re talking about.)
I’m not changing thread as much as I had originally
intended. Over there on my sewing table,
I have a dozen cones of thread that I’m not even going to use. I decided I liked medium tan thread on
everything but parts of the animal prints. The tension was good, and the thread was
showing up nicely; so it’s medium tan on blues, reds, golds, creams – and even on
the various dark borders around the animal prints.
Friday, our supper was eye of round
steak and corn on the cob, fixed in the Instant Pot. I wrap the corn on the cob in aluminum foil
and put them into the pot on top of the steak.
Both the steak and the corn were frozen.
Thirty minutes later, it was done, and everything was delicious. The steak was sliced thin, and very tender.
We had watermelon/peach Alō Aloe Vera
juice with the meal. It has pieces of
aloe vera in it, and we really like it. The
first time we got this juice (there are several different flavors), we didn’t
know there were pieces of aloe vera in it. We both got a drink at the same time – and
then Larry was immediately peering into his bottle to see what on earth had
floated into his mouth, and I was just as immediately reading through the list
of ingredients. 😶😛😄
Saturday, my new fabric arrived from Marshall
Dry Goods. All is excellent quality
except for a couple of pieces that were only $4.99/yard, and they aren’t
bad. Most of it was $5.99 to $6.99/yard.
There was one piece from Robert Kaufman’s ‘Gem Collection’ that I just
had to have; it was $7.99/yard. Most pieces are one-yard cuts, three are
two-yard cuts, one is a three-yard cut, and one is a five-yard cut for the
background of grandson Lyle’s ‘Wolves’ Dream Catcher’ quilt. The previous
day, two 10-yard pieces had arrived. One
is for the backing of Lyle’s quilt, and the other is for the backing of his
older sister Emma’s quilt. One piece is 108" wide, and was
$9.99/yard. You just can’t beat Marshall Dry Goods’ prices.
Saturday afternoon after Larry got off work, we went to visit son and
daughter-in-law Joseph and Jocelyn and their children Justin and Juliana. They live in Bellevue, an eastern suburb of
Omaha. Joseph and the children have had
recent birthdays, and we had gifts for them.
On the way, we stopped for gas at Sapp
Bros. in Fremont, right where that baseball-sized hail fell a couple of weeks
ago. Look what it did to the roof of Mel’s
Diner.
It took out all the windows at the
Rodeway Inn, and the glass in the cars that were there. One car that got hit is still there, covered
with a tarp. The windows of the hotel
are all boarded up.
Joseph has set up a gazebo in his yard, one of those with combination canvas and net walls. It was a nice day, so they were tied back. He had tiki torches going. Birds were at the bird feeders, and he’s just planted a bunch of flowers in pots along the walk.
Some of the birds were male and female
English sparrows. A couple of others I
did not recognize, but Joseph told me they were female cowbirds.
I looked it up later, and sho’ ’nuff, he was right. I hadn’t known they looked so different from
the males, though I suppose I should’ve, as that’s common in the blackbird
family. I thought one of the birds he
pointed out was a catbird; but no, it was indeed a cowbird. (It’s easy enough to get cows and cats mixed
up, don’t you think?)
Did you know cowbirds are ‘parasite
brooders or nesters’, meaning the female lays her eggs in another bird’s nest
and then goes away and lets the other bird raise her babies?
Joseph fixed tacos and ‘dirty rice’,
aka Cajun rice, which is white rice cooked with ground meat, onions, celery,
peppers, etc. He had both soft and
crunchy taco shells and refried beans with cheese to hold them together, and
the meat, lettuce, tomato, cheese, and salsa all in separate bowls so we could
make them as we pleased. It was all scrumptious.
We brought some Kozy Shack rice
pudding and Mt. Dew.
Here are their
little Chihuahuas, Puppy (the white one, which they’ve had since the day he was
born) and Lucy (the puppy they gave Juliana for her birthday last year). Larry was feeding them little tidbits of
cheese. They know who the soft touch is!
Larry played ball with Justin and
Juliana for a while after we ate, and then we headed north toward Blaire so
Larry could look at the scissor lift he sold a man a while back, as it has a
leak, and Larry needed to see what parts it might need. While Larry was in the man’s large building
and I was sitting in the Benz, several Great Horned owls flew into the trees
right beside the vehicle, hooting and calling.
The man is a home builder, and has a
YouTube channel called Brad the Builder.
It was after 11:00 p.m. when we again
stopped at Sapp Bros. Truck Stop in Fremont.
By this time I was hungry again, so I got a slice of pizza, a couple of
large, economy-sized tater tots (not sure what their official name is,
but I knew one would have to be for Larry; I can’t eat that much), and a little
apple pie roll.
Every one of these things were in Sapp
Bros.’ hot display case – and every single one of these items was greasier’n
all get-out. But that’s not the half of
it.
I took a bite of the generous slice of
Supreme Pizza —
And came up with a pickle.
A pickle!!!!
???!!
Yep, it shur as shootin’ was a pickle.
I complained, with fervor.
“There’s a pickle in my
pizza!!!!”
Larry, driving, glanced my way and
said nonchalantly, “Oh, yeah, that’s a cheeseburger pizza.”
Cheeseburger?! Pizza?!!
A cheeseburger pizza?!!!!
I tried another bite.
It did in fact taste suspiciously
cheeseburgerish. This is a crime against
humanity!
Three more bites, with melted yellow
cheese getting deeper with every bite, and I gave that to Larry, too. I wanted to return to Joseph’s house and
beg another taco off him!
I opened my chocolate milk and swigged
it. At least that tasted good.
The giant tater tot wasn’t too
bad. Greasy, but not too bad.
I tried the apple pie roll.
Again, greasy, but not bad. I ate it without protest, and swigged more
chocolate milk.
At this point, I felt fine, though
somewhat well-greased.
And then I done spoilt it entirely by
having one of the humongous macadamia nut cookies Larry had gotten. Ugh, I was thereafter well-greased and
well-sugared.
All I had really needed was the
chocolate milk, and I would’ve been perfectly fine. Ugh.
At our evening service last night, Bobby
and Joanna sang a duet, Love So Divine.
We love to hear them sing together.
When I was quite young, a man moved here with
his wife and children and began attending church. He had a very high
opinion of his and his family’s musical abilities. He once had his
teenage son, who sang bass, sing a solo for us.
He did so.
The bass part.
That’s it, just the bass part. As a
solo. All the way through the whole song. Bass. Only the bass
notes. No soprano, no tune. I was about ten years old, and I
cringed so hard, it’s a wonder the pew didn’t wind up bowed right there where I
was sitting.
The father sold insurance. As soon as
he’d sold everyone in the whole church a policy (or as many chumps as would buy
one), he moved to Kansas.
Daddy once sold them a Chevrolet
Impala. The man made a couple of payments, and that was all. Daddy
waited two or three months – and then, figuring the family must be short on
money, drove to their house and signed the title over to him. He gave
them that car. Daddy gave away quite a
number of cars in his lifetime.
The man’s wife played the piano for our
church for a time. She played Thou Thinkest Lord of Me with the
exact right timing – 3/4 rather than 4/4, and she knew, unlike pianists before
her, that an eighth note was an eighth note, whether it was connected to
another eighth note or not.
Yeah, we’d learned it wrong, some years
earlier.
So there we were, trying to sing that song in
4/4 timing, the only way we knew (like Winnie-the-Pooh going down the stairs,
bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head), while she steadfastly and staunchly
played correctly in 3/4 timing, with the aforementioned eighth notes
right where aforementioned eighth notes should be.
She got to the end of the song a good while
before the congregation arrived there at the last note. She had already
dusted off her hands and was back in her pew, Bible in lap, while we were still
straggling to the finish line. (You know I nevah, evah exaggerate,
right?)
Oh, mah woid, mah woid (in a Shirley Temple
tone), I just discovered, in looking at copies of that song online, a possible
reason why some of our former pianists may have been bamboozled, perplexed, and
baffled. A good many copies of that song – probably at least 50% of them
– show 4/4 as the timing signature! Good grief.
Well, if you know what eighth notes are
supposed to do, whether or not they are holding hands with other eighth notes,
you would know that’s wrong. If you can count, that is.
Well, of course, you have to be able to count fractions.
We had a late supper of Campbell’s Chicken
& Dumpling soup with either FlipSides Pretzel crackers (me) or Club
crackers (Larry).
As I was editing pictures last night, wanting to label one correctly, I typed into Google, “What’s this little yellow car with a black top?”
– and got these pictures as answers:
After a bit of research, I determined
that the car of which I had taken a photo was a 2007 Honda S2000 CR.
I should’ve worked outside in the flower
gardens this morning; it’s a lovely day. But I went to bed last night with a headache,
and then couldn’t sleep for hours on account of said headache, leg aches,
shoulder aches, backache, hip aches, head itches, back itches, ankle itches, brain
too busy, blankets all messed up – and somebody snoring (and it wasn’t me). Let’s blame the whole works on the snorer,
okay? 😄
By the time I should’ve gone outside to work
in the gardens, I felt like sleeping. So
sleep I did, until 9:30 a.m. The rest of
the day, I made up for lost time, cleaning the bathroom, filling and rehanging
the bird feeders (I take them down at night so the raccoons don’t clear them
out), washing clothes, cleaning the kitchen, editing pictures, and writing my
journal.
A little while ago, I stepped out on
the back deck to shake out the bathroom rugs before putting them in the washing
machine, but I couldn’t tell which way the wind was blowing. It’s not blowing hard, but no matter which
direction I shook those things, the dust (powder, actually – I like to use a
bit of baby powder after putting on lotion each morning) came billowing right
back over me! I am now well
dusting-powdered. 😅
It takes about five minutes to put
away a large load of clothes. I have the
second-to-largest washer and the largest dryer they sell at Nebraska Furniture
Mart. I’d have gotten the largest
washer, but I couldn’t reach the bottom of the appliance, and I feared Larry
would come home from work and find me head-first in that thing, with only my
feet sticking out, flailing.
We used to know some people who always
had a humongous pile of supposedly-clean laundry on their couch, waiting to be
folded and put away. (I say ‘supposedly’,
because there were always clothes tumbling off the couch and landing on the
floor.)
That pile was a constant through the
years, rain or shine. In fact, it grew. It was apparently the family’s accumulative
shared closet/dresser; so, I want to know, how was it that the pile grew?! Did they wear less and less clothes as the
years progressed? Or maybe, being unable
to find their duds, they purchased more?
I also want to know, were their
closets and dresser drawers totally empty and bereft of any clothing at
all? (I doubt it, as nothing in
their house seemed to be empty or bereft of anything.)
People should really time themselves
doing the tasks they don’t like to do.
Those tasks take less time than they think they do, most every
time. (I should listen to this advice
concerning the dusting, eh?)
The above does not apply to
gardening. It takes longer and longer to
do the gardening, every time I do it, because the weeds grow faster than I can
pull them. As I work my way through a
flower garden, weeds are springing up gleefully behind me, giggling fiendishly
and rubbing their leafy palms together. By
the time I get the gardens clear of winter growth, the weeds will be in full
swing. It’s never-ending!
I tell myself that exercise is good
for me, and the flowers are pretty.
And now I’d better head for the
feathers, or I never will get back to those flower gardens!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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