Journal: Hops, zzzzSNAPs, KaBlooeyes, Parties, & Ducks

 

Last Tuesday around noon, I saw a delivery truck come driving down the lane and stop out front.  The driver, a skinny kid, exited, extracted a box from the rear of the truck, and headed toward our porch.

He paused to determine the best pathway through the trees, the flowers, and the roofing material —— and then the idget amazed me by climbing right over the top of Larry’s big motorcycle that was sitting on the sidewalk!

I’m talking about the 800-lb. K1200LT BMW motorcycle.  The one Larry can barely manage, if it tilts too far to one side.  He learned from a few instructional videos how to lift it if it tips over, turning the front wheel just so, grasping it at key points, and essentially levering it against itself and using leg muscles, as opposed to back muscles, to raise it back upright.

The bike must be parked with its kickstand on level concrete, which is why it was on the sidewalk.

The aforementioned idget tossed the package onto the porch, turned, and, although he could’ve easily walked right across the lawn between the trees, climbed back over Larry’s motorcycle again!!!  Furthermore, he momentarily lost his balance in midstride and hopped up and down on the following foot a time or two before giving an extra big hop to propel him on over the bike and onto the leading foot.

I fully expected him to take that big bike down, with him underneath it.  Had that happened, well, ... I guess I could’ve carried him a lunch, midafternoon, to sustain him ’til Larry got home. 

At least it wouldn’t have been raining on him, as we finally had a sunny day, after three full days of mist and drizzle.

That day, the Oklahoma City Zoo announced the birth of an endangered okapi calf.  The female calf was born Sunday and is the eighth okapi calf born at the zoo since 1973.  “She is 57 pounds and doing great!” they wrote.

Okapis are native to the Congo.  Only 10,000 remain in the wild.  They are the only living relative to giraffes (though Pronghorns are near cousins), and are very elusive, known as the ‘ghosts of the forests’.  They have a velvet brown coat, striped legs, and big ears.

Okapis are in the Giraffidae family.  Pronghorn antelope are in the Antilocapridae family.  Both are in the Artiodactyla order.

Someone wrote in the comment section, “I have those same pants.”  😆

A few others thought it was an AI-created photo. 

“There is no such animal,” one person, uneducated and seemingly unable to learn (has he never heard of Google?) commented.  Sigghhhh...

It was Carolyn’s eighth birthday, and I took her a gift – a pottery wheel, with a few accessories and supplies.

While I was there, Victoria gave me some sparkling juice to drink, and sent me home with a loaf of her homemade sourdough bread and one of her sourdough dinner rolls.

As I was driving home, something in or under the dash went zzzzSNAP!!!, and then it smelled like firecrackers for a couple of minutes.  It aired out before too long, because the windows were down, as the air conditioner still doesn’t work.  Afraid something was going to catch on fire, I turned up the Detection Mode on my schnozz and watched the gauges carefully.

I made it home without anything more exciting happening, and dutifully sent the report off to Larry, who would later take a cursory look at the jalopy and find nothing wayward.

There’s very definitely an electrical problem in that vehicle, and whatever it is, it’s almost certainly what’s ailing the air conditioner.

Supper that evening was corn on the cob that we’d gotten from Daniel’s Produce Store the previous night on our way home from Grand Island.  We’ve never had any corn better than Daniel’s corn.  We had tomatoes from their farm, too; soooo good.  And fresh peaches and fresh dark sweet cherries.  Oh, and French toast with peanut butter and syrup for dessert.  😋

A quilting friend was asking about the cross-stitched blocks on Emma’s quilt, saying she, too, had some vintage embroidered blocks.  She wondered if I was able to get the blue dots off. 

Nope, the blue dots remain on those old embroidered blocks.  I tried a number of things to remove them – water, water and Dawn dish soap, rubbing alcohol, Tide Stain Remover, hydrogen peroxide...  Nothing even faded them.  Fortunately, whoever did the cross-stitching was precise, and sunk those stitches right smack-dab into the dots.  However, the dots for hand-quilting are still there.  I thought maybe after Christmas I’d ‘borrow back’ the quilt from our granddaughter and sew very small pearls on all those dots, but you know what?  They just don’t show all that much, and the more I look at that quilt, the more I think, “I’m done!”  I will now look at the dots as part of the fabric.  “It came that way.”  heh

You can barely even see them here, can you?

Here are a couple more pretty quilts that were at the Nebraska State Fair.

There were 537 quilts at the Fair this year.

I had an order at Walmart that was supposed to be picked up at 9:00 p.m. Wednesday.  But I got one notification that they were going to be late – and then nary another.  Really late, I guess.  As in, ‘not ready at all, ever.’

A minute after the notification from Walmart, I got a text from a friend:  “Hello, my phone isn’t working, and I can’t text.”

Uh, yeah, that’s too bad, and I’m sorry, but...  ((scratching head))

Hester sent me some pictures of Keira on her first day back at school.  In one picture, she was carrying the pink and lavender backpack we gave her a while back.  That thing looks half as big as the girl!

She even took that bag with her on their recent vacation to San Diego.  Here are Keira and Oliver in the USS Midway Museum.

They toured a few old sailing ships at a ship museum, too. 

“It was funny to see those, versus the giant ships they make now!” said Hester.  “Oliver was very impressed by the pirate ships.”

I’ve always loved the looks of those old sailing ships – but I’m glad I never had to travel on one, particularly across the ocean in a rip-roaring storm!

Thursday morning at 6:44 a.m., I got a notice from Walmart:  “Your pickup order is running late.”

Yeah, I noticed that.  Leave me alone; I’m sleeping.

Later, I made myself a breakfast of tomato and peanut butter on a piece of Victoria’s sourdough bread, toasted.  The tomato was from Daniel’s Produce.

If you have never tried this concoction, don’t turn up your nose!  And if you ever do try it, do not fail to toast the bread.  Crunchy peanut butter and tomato on toast is the only way to go.  If you use bread?  Well then, it’s all your very own fault if you find it disgusting and disagreeable and foul.

A little before noon, I received an alert from Walmart asking me to choose a different pickup time, which I did.

For supper that evening, we had the last of the corn on the cob from Daniel’s, and Dannon pineapple yogurt with little crunchy bits of fiber in it.

The corn was scrumptious.  I wanted to eat Larry’s, too.  😄

But he picked up the groceries, which were finally ready; so I thought it best not to steal his food.

Friday morning felt like autumn, as it was only 58°.

I spent the day working on Ethan’s Ducks Unlimited quilt.

Back when I was in 9^th-grade Home Ec, having been sewing for a couple of years and considering myself ‘advanced’ after all that experience (ahem, cough), I decided (and got permission from the teacher) to make a green plaid wool skirt with box pleats all around.  My mother took me to get the fabric.

The pattern called for about 2 yards.

My mother bought 10.  Ten.  T.E.N.  Ten yards.  And the fabric was 60” wide.

Did she expect me to make some catastrophic error that would entail discarding the attempt and completely starting over?  Five times???

I made my box-pleated skirt and wore it for several years.  I later used the leftover fabric to make jumpers with knife pleats for the girls when they were little.  I made vests for the boys.  I made skirts for the girls when they got older.

Mama got really struck funny every time she saw yet another outfit that included that plaid green wool.

Eventually, I used the rest of it – and there was a bunch of it – in the wool/corduroy/velvet quilt I made several years ago.

Here’s a cute baby goat we saw in the nursery at the Nebraska State Fair.  He hopped and bounced about, and tipped his head and looked at everyone when they laughed, and then did double-time with the bouncing, quite as if he well understood that he was the cause of the laughter.

And there he is peering at a slightly bigger kid curled up in their mothers’ feeding pan.  Kids and lambs alike seemed to be laboring under the impression that those feeding pans were sleeping cribs placed there especially for them.

Can you see the expression on the baby in the pan?  “Hey, le’ me alone, kid, wouldja?!  I’s a-havin’ me beauty nap!”

I went to Eva’s birthday party at 7:00 p.m. Friday evening.  Larry came later, after he got off work.

I followed my friends Sarah and Eugene, Maria’s grandparents, all the way from 48^th Street clear out to Caleb and Maria’s house on East 10^th.  They were in Sarah’s red 1965 or 1966 Mustang convertible.

We gave Eva a purple Thermal mug with all sorts of ‘bling’ to attach to it, and a set of bracelets.

I took a couple of pictures of Eva, then said, “Would you like to back up a few steps, so I can get a better picture of you from the tiptop of your head down to your pretty shoes?  I’m so close, I can’t see your shoes!”

 So she stepped back, and did her best to hoist a shoe (with a foot still in it) into the photo frame.  She looked down at her other one, pondering; but there didn’t seem to be a good way to hoist them both up at the same time, so... she just looked back at me and smiled for the camera.  😅

This is Caleb and Maria’s big dog, Marley, a Great Pyrenees.  He’s looking to see who’s coming through the gate – and then he took off in great happiness and delight to greet Carolyn and Violet as they entered.  They climbed up in the playset Caleb put up a while back – and before long, Marley was up there, too.

Maria had fixed a yummy supper of tortillas with all the fixin’s to go with them, along with fresh watermelon and lemonade.  And, of course, birthday cake with multiple layers.

Little Maisie was watching Eva open her gifts, and then her other grandma handed her an empty, sparkly, pink gift bag, and told her she could fill it up with her own toys.  Maisie promptly hurried off to her room to find some toys, and she played with that bag for a good half an hour after that.

Here’s Eva in the butterfly outfit Caleb and Maria got her, wings, wand, and all.  She saw a picture of it somewhere, and has been wanting one ever since.  An aunt, uncle, and cousins gave her a butterfly net and a little ‘bug house’.  She likes butterflies and bugs!  😃

Saturday morning, Hannah forwarded a note from Levi, who was tuning a piano on the northeast side of town:  “They’re testing the nado sirens and I got disappointed because the highest tone of the sirens doesn’t match a full key.  It’s between F5 and F#5.”

haha  That kid.

Remember my rant about ironing on both sides of an item?  Well, I have to make this disclaimer:  I was only speaking of clothing.

When it comes to quilting, I often press seams one way or another on the back side of a block (and sometimes I press them open, depending on how they will be set in the quilt), then turn the block over and press it on top, just to make sure those seams are perfectly flat.

But I will NOT be putting aluminum foil on my ironing board.  Nope, nada, nyet.

Saturday night, I finished Ethan’s Ducks Unlimited quilt top.  Now to put together the backing and decide if I have big enough scraps of Quilters’ Dream wool batting for it, or if I should just use a piece from the big roll of Quilters’ Dream 80/20 (which I don’t like nearly as well).

My nephew Kelvin told me that Lura Kay fell one day last week.  She didn’t break any bones (she broke a hip last December), but she’s not doing well.  She’s in some pain.  She doesn’t talk much at all now, and she’s quite weak.

Yesterday was a sunshiny day, 78°, but slightly hazy from Canadian wildfires.

A friend of mine is constructing a memory scrapbook, and asked for some pictures of friends of ours who are either elderly or who have passed away.  In gathering up the pictures, once again thankful for all that time I spent scanning my hundreds of albums and thousands of pictures, I came upon this one of a friend, Gaylan, holding his little girl Charlene.  Charlene was born in 1966, and she’s at least 3, maybe 4, here.  This was probably Easter, 1970.  I took the picture with the little red 126mm camera I’d gotten for Christmas 1969.  I thought I had the world by the tail, when I got that camera!  I was 9 years old.

The story behind this picture:  There was Gaylan, smiling nicely at me.  I lifted the camera, and just as I pressed the shutter button, quick as a wink he dived behind Charlene.

Film was precious back then, and besides, one didn’t know until one got the pictures back from the photo lab whether or not one had gotten a good photo.  So... this is the only shot I took of them that day.  Gaylan did not like to have his picture taken.  😅

These days, I’d have ten shots fired off before he even realized I was pointing the camera in his direction.  haha

Charlene passed away at age 19 in 1985 of cancer.

This morning’s breakfast consisted of the last slice of Victoria’s sourdough bread, toasted and buttered, with peanut butter, blackberry jam on one side, and apricot preserves on the other.

Last night I suddenly noticed that my bottle of Thera Tears dry-eye therapy had that smell – sorta rancid-like – that the old Equate eyedrops I used years ago used to get after I’d had them a while.  The Thera Tears aren’t all that old, but they have that smell.  I have another bottle upstairs – they came in a two-pack – and they’re fairly large bottles, 1.5 oz.  That’s bigger than most, and both are still about three-quarters full.  Is this why my eyes keep hurting (especially the left one) and never get better???  I immediately pitched it into the garbage, and have only used GenTeal or Soothe eye gel ever since.

My left eye is better at the moment than it was yesterday.  Time will tell.  I may have to see an eye doctor and get some eyedrops with antibiotic in them.

I’ve just put away the last load of laundry.

Supper is done – London Broil top round roast, and fresh, cooked cauliflower, broccoli, and carrots.  Mmmm, it all smells good.

Larry just got home from work, bringing in the mail – including my winnin’s from the State Fair.  It was enough to pay for our supper last Monday night in Grand Island!

Carolyn had her first violin lesson today.  Her lesson was so much fun, she told me, she hadn’t wanted to quit, but had wanted to continue on to Lesson Two!

“Did Carolyn take note of the verses Robert read about the potter and the potter’s wheel yesterday?” I asked Victoria, “And did she think, ‘Oooo, yes indeedy, I know exactly what that means, “marred in the potter’s hand”!’?”

“Yes!” answered Victoria, “and he read them again in chapel this morning!!  She said she just loves hearing them now since she has the wheel.  😁”

“I hope that potter’s wheel will actually make things,” I said to Victoria, “and isn’t just a toy.  People gave it good reviews, mostly.”

“I think it will,” responded Victoria.  “I got really close to making a normal ish thing.”

Haha – ‘really close to making a normal ish thing’.  hee hee

“It’s hard to know how wet it should be,” explained Victoria.  “I suppose it just takes practice.”

“Daddy liked doing it back in Trinidad in art class,” I told her.  “He says he made a pitcher.  Then, after a moment of reconsideration, he said, ‘Maybe it was a glass.’  And finally, ‘Or a saucer.’”

I made a Leaning Tower of Vääs, in my art class.  Väz, maybe?  Vaaawwwwzz.  The dignified way to say ‘vase’ (vāce).  (Though mine was anything but dignified.)

Back to Eva’s birthday party:  Here at one end of the table, we have this enormous hullaballoo goin’ on.

At the other end of the selfsame table –

Yep, there’s Violet being Violet, absorbed in a book.

Along about midway through the party, Eva came running and KaBlooeyed down beside me on the couch, which worked pretty much like a trampoline with two people on it carrying out constructive interference (aka ‘double bouncing’, which is jumping at opposite times in order to acquire higher trajectories).

Mary, Eva’s other grandma, gasped and said, “Oh, be careful of Grandma!”

Eva looked quickly and apologetically at her Great-Grandma Sarah sitting in a chair in the corner on the other side of her, then got up gingerly, walked carefully past Sarah’s feet, rounded mine, and KaBlooeyed down on the couch on the other side of me, which rattled my teeth and sent me skyward every bit as much as it had on KaBlooey #1.

No harm done, though; and it wasn’t long before she snuggled up beside me for a good five seconds before she dashed off to the next fun and games.

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