Journal: Q: "Where's Yer Grammer?" A: "She Ain't Here."

 

Last Tuesday dawned foggy and misty. 

Breakfast that morning was bacon, cheesy scrambled eggs, and a piece of the French toast Larry had made for lunch the previous day.  Yummy.

The temperature only made it up to 50° by 11:00 a.m.  The high would be just 57°, with rain expected.  I started a load of laundry, cleaned the kitchen, and headed to the quilting studio to work on the Jardin de Fleurs quilt.

I considered dreaming up somewhere to go in the cute little mini version of our Mercedes that we were borrowing from the dealership in Omaha while they worked on ours; but the quilt was calling, and Christmas is flying at me apace.  I would’ve been more inclined to go for a drive, though, if that little SUV had more get-up-and-go!

An hour and a half later, I started another load of clothes, folded and put away Larry’s work clothes, ordered some anniversary gifts for the kids (six of them have anniversaries in October), made a new jug of Pumpkin Pie cold brew, and went back upstairs to continue working on Joanna’s quilt.

A while later, I went downstairs to make a tall mug of Celsius and to put away more clothes and start another load in the washer.  Noticing that I’d neglected to hang the little ‘chalkboard’ sign on the cold brew jug telling flavor and time and date it was made, I picked it up, wiped off the previous writing, and reached for the white pen.

It wasn’t in the slot in the wooden drawer-and-letter-box where I keep it.

I hunted around, and finally delved about in the next wooden drawer/penholder (I have a pretty little row of these wooden shelves and drawers and cubbies at the back of the table, like those below, only all in natural wood color).  I spotted something white amongst the darker pens and pencils.  Ah-ha!  I pulled it forth------

But it wasn’t the wipe-off pen for which I was looking.

It was, in fact, the SD card reader, complete with the 64 GB card, that I lost in May of 2022. 

Now, I do not of course think I put the reader and card into the pen-and-pencil holder.  That’s not where I ever keep these things, and I do most usually have a specific place for my things, keep them there, and/or put them back after using them.

However.

However.

 However, you’ll recall that my original mission was to find the white wipe-off pen, which had gone AWOL.  Keep that in mind.

Meanwhile, all delighted over finding this wayward bit of electronics, I opened my laptop that was sitting right here on the end of the table, started to plug the reader into it – but this one needs to be inserted into a USB-C port rather than a USB port, and I, unaccustomed to poking such into this particular laptop, couldn’t immediately find the port.  I walked over and flipped on the kitchen light, the better to spot the correct port.

What I spotted, though, was...  Can you guess?

I spotted the white pen.  It was lying inconspicuously right under the edge of the laptop.

There being nobody else in the house on which to blame the waywardness of this inert object, not even a cat, I must thereby admit to having done it myself.

What this means is, I cannot justly blame someone else for the card reader and card cooling their heels in the wooden pencil holder for these last three years and five months.  (I know the exact date of last use, because I plugged the card into my laptop and looked to see if there were any pictures still on the card [there were not; I had not expected there to be], and in so doing, I saw the date in the DCIM folder properties.)

Well, anyway...  I found them, SD reader, SD card, white wipe-off pen, and all; and I’m right happy I did.  I scribbled the cold brew description on the little chalkboard, hung it on the jug in the refrigerator, and went back to the sewing studio, which was right upstairs where I’d left it.  At least I had not lost that.

For supper that evening, I made bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches.  Once you open the package of bacon, you have to use it up, you know.  (And nobody complains, because, ... bacon!)  Also, the tomatoes were quite ripe, and would be better Tuesday than Wednesday.  We like BLTs!  We had rice pudding for dessert.

The fabric I had ordered a few days earlier – including that piece I needed for Aaron’s quilt – arrived that evening after having been ‘Out for Delivery’ for almost eleven hours.  Fortunately, it was wrapped in heavy plastic, as it was still raining out.

I opened it and looked through the fabrics.  Ordered fabric can be a surprise; it often looks different than I expect it to, when looking at the small squares on a webpage.  But the fabric I wanted specifically for Aaron’s quilt will work very nicely.

I hadn’t quite finished the bottom row of the Jardin de Fleurs quilt when I quit for the night.

As I got the last load of clothes out of the dryer, I peered out the patio door onto the back deck – and there was a raccoon cleaning out the bird feeders.  🦝  He had sparkly raindrops all over his fur.  He was the cutest thing, all plump and fat and quizzical.  

“You put these sunflower seeds out for me, right?  Right.  Okay, I’ll just go ahead and keep chowing down.  Nom nom nom...”

Wednesday morning, the temperature was 68° on the way up to 81°, with a possibility of more rain.

I finished quilting the bottom row, and, before turning the quilt, applied some Inktense penciling to the hibisci, leaves, and vines in the top borders, as I had done to the bottom borders earlier.  I have not yet added the water that spreads the ink.

I then took the quilt off the frame, turned it, and reloaded it.  The thing I don’t like about doing this, especially with two very wide borders to complete on both sides, is that it’s practically impossible to get it back onto the frame with no rumples, especially in the backing.  I even stitched in the ditch between the borders.  I pulled it as taut as I could, then liberally sprayed both top and backing with starch.  And then I had to wipe down the table and rails and the mirror that I use for looking at the underside of the quilt, since I’d inadvertently doused those, too.

A few minutes later, I peered at the underneath side of that rumply quilt, and, lo and behold, it was nice and smooth.  Starch to the rescue!  Thank goodness for starch.

However, another aggravation with this method (somewhat small, in the scheme of things; but an aggravation, nonetheless) is that quilting rulers do not slide nicely on quilt tops that are saturated with starch and water.  (No, of course I couldn’t wait ’til it dried.  I pressed on valiantly!)

After church that evening, we had Campbell’s Classic Chicken Noodle soup, along with cheese and crackers, strawberries, and kiwi-strawberry juice.  Larry had brought home some big (really big!) cookies from a bakery somewhere, so those were our dessert.  They were scrumptious cookies; but, as usual, I promptly got a stomachache after eating one.

Larry’s hearing-aid charger got left in our Mercedes when we took it to Omaha last Monday to have them check the AC.  He has another charger (purchased because the first one got lost), but it’s ... you guessed it, lost.  One is almost always lost.

He showed me how he could compensate by using his earbuds in conjunction with his phone, and putting the phone on ‘speaker’.  (However, once he slides his phone into his pants pocket, everything is almost totally muted.)

The technician at the Mercedes dealership called and told Larry that the problem was the compressor – and it would cost $2,400 to fix it!  😯  Larry found the compressor online for $600; he’ll do it himself.

Thursday, I pulled up my MeWe Quilt Talk group and found several of the ladies discussing how they often have several projects all going at once.  The first sorta felt bad that she did that, but multiple others chimed in to say that they, too, have several things going at once, and went on to explain why this is a good method, and how it suits them well.  There were none on the one-project-at-a-time side of the fence.

I promptly joined the discussion:

“Y’all a-talkin’ to me, huh huh huh huh huh??  😄  I’m the one-project-at-a-time-don’t-start-a-new-one-’til-the-first-one-is-done oddity.  There are reasons for this!”

Partly, especially in years gone by when I was making clothes for the family, money was tight, and if I hadn’t’ve finished those shirts/dresses/skirts/suits/pants/pjs, the children wouldn’t have had clothes to wear.  They had new outfits for Easter, our Fourth-of-July church picnics, first day of school, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and often even Valentine’s Day.  I didn’t have a whole lot of fabric, and a lot of what I did have consisted of scraps and hand-me-downs.

I especially enjoyed making the Fourth-of-July clothes, because I could throw together fabrics I might not have otherwise combined – and more often than not, I wound up with concoctions that were the kids’ favorites.  Here are a couple of those favorites.  (I think without knowing it I was practicing for scrappy quilts!  😄)

But probably one of the biggest reasons for my ‘finish-one-project-before-starting-another’ mindset is this:  I grew up in a busy parsonage.  My mother’s time was not her own; she’d barely get started on something when she’d get interrupted by parishioners visiting unexpectedly, or my father deciding to go visiting parishioners or maybe even missionaries we supported in some far-flung spot.

Mama was unfailingly a cheery and gracious hostess, and the people loved her.  But things didn’t get done – sometimes ever.  I was disappointed when a mint-green quilted robe she started for me when I was about 8 didn’t get finished before I grew out of it.  (Mama was really happy when, years later, I found the pieces – all but the facings, which I had to draw and recut – for that robe in her basement and finished it for one of my girls.)

The biggest disappointment, though, was the time my parents gave me a dollhouse for Christmas when I was about 6 years old.  It was constructed of heavy-duty cardboard, and I don’t imagine it was terribly expensive; but the pictures on the box sure looked promising!  It came with a ‘family’ of Barbie-doll knockoffs, but what intrigued me the most was that there was a strip of ‘sod’ that could be laid out in front of the ‘house’, and with a misting of water, it was supposed to sprout grass.

It never got put together.

There were a number of traumatic happenings such as unexpected deaths in the congregation, weddings, births, sicknesses — and the dollhouse was the least important of these things.  I knew this and understood it, and only asked once or twice if someone could put that house together.

Finally I just extracted the doll family from the box and played with them, and never mentioned the dollhouse again.  But I wrote in my journal (yeah, I kept a journal from the time I was in Kindergarten), “I’m going to finish everything I start!”  

I meant what I said, and I tried to keep that resolve, from the moment I wrote it.

And of course partly it’s just a matter of temperament, and what a person likes to do.  My sister was not affected like I was; she often had multiple projects going at once, and regularly discarded of unfinished things (which drove me berserk, haha).

So that’s my story, and I’m a-stickin’ to it!  If possible, that is.  😉

“Meanwhile,” I told the nice ladies on my Quilt Talk group, “you all carry on with those multiple projects, keep posting pictures, and I’ll keep right on admiring them!  I appreciate everyone’s contributions to my future ideas and projects.”

By the way, that fabric for Lydia’s collar, waistband, and band above the lace ruffle was also found in my mother’s basement – cut in pieces that were supposed to have been an A-line or ‘swing’ dress for me when I was probably 6 or 7, since the pattern (still pinned on the fabric) was size 6X.  Now, there was one thing that didn’t get done that I wasn’t sorry about!  I very much disliked those A-line dresses.  I thought they made me look ‘fat’.  😅

That afternoon, I went to Omaha to pick up our Mercedes and return the one we were borrowing.

After leaving the dealership, I drove across the street to the big Goodwill.  I looked at the sweaters and tops in my size... saw a few pretty ones... and left them on the rack.  I looked at men’s shirts, especially looking for the small plaids I plan to use in a quilt one of these days.  I saw a few that I liked, and spotted a really nice one in Larry’s size that looked brand new.  I didn’t get any.  Why didn’t I at least get that one for Larry??

But each clothing item was $5.99... and our closets and drawers are full... and I’m not as gung-ho on cutting shirts apart as I once was.  There’s always Marshall Dry Goods, right??

I wandered over to the kitchen items, and spotted a large, beautiful stoneware bowl in dark mossy green with raised leaves and grapes on it.  It was $7.99.  Maybe not a real good deal, but it was pretty, and brand-spankin’-new.  I picked it up, decided I didn’t want to risk getting anything else and possibly dropping that heavy bowl, as I hadn’t gotten a cart; so I bought it and departed.

One bowl.  That’s all I got.  But I’ll fill it with fruit, or maybe dried soup or muffin mixes, wrap it in iridescent cellophane, tie a big bow on it, and that will be a Christmas present for one of the kids.  It is big.  The size of the largest bowl in a set of mixing bowls.

Okay, now I need a whole bunch more big, nice bowls for all the other kids.  😊

I stopped at Fremont Lakes State Park on the way home. The sun was going down.  It was such a pretty day for a drive!

I thought of all my drives to Omaha to visit my brother Loren in Prairie Meadows, and missed him. Back in Columbus, I drove past Brookestone Acres, and missed my sister.

I baked a frozen Red Baron Supreme pizza for supper, and got an hour and a half of quilting accomplished.

You know, the omission of one little word in a news story can make a big difference.  An announcer on the Rural Radio Friday morning informed John (and Jane) Q. Public that “firearms were found in possession of a person in Columbus.”

((...pause...))

I hope he got away from them safely.

While listening to the news, sipping Pumpkin Pie cold brew, and curling my hair, I also read messages and posts.  On a Facebook page that offers local weather and road conditions, someone inquired, “Why all the patrol cars on Hwy 2 right off of the interstate mile marker 318?”

Someone answered, “Donut truck overturned,” – and got himself in trouble with all the other commentators.  Good thing they didn’t hear me snicker, or I’d have gotten in trouble, too.  (I can snicker and still appreciate our police officers.  Yes, I can.)

On that same page, I learned that there had been a bad pileup of at least five vehicles east of Silver Creek before 7:00 a.m.  One nice person wrote “prayers that everyone will be ok and that their wasn’t no fatalities in that bad accident ”

Do they even teach grammar and spelling in schools these days?  Or do they just hope and expect kids to learn it by the process of osmosis?  It’s not working.

On another page, on another subject:  “Yep him and I were good friends for many years.Me and my wife were in his and Betty’s wedding party.”

Sometimes it takes quite a bit of reading to come upon a post that doesn’t have grammatical mistakes and spelling errors.  (Now I’d better not make any in this letter, eh?)

It was a beautiful day, 70° with a breeze of only 8 mph, and not a cloud in the sky.

The trees are starting to turn colors. We don’t have the brilliant colors that are found in some areas of the country, but it’s still pretty.

We somehow wound up with a walnut tree in the back yard, no doubt planted by the squirrels.  It produced walnuts for the first time this year.

Here’s a barn I drove by near North Bend Thursday. There’s a painting of a fighter jet on the loft door, and at nighttime they have a light shining on it.

I was glad there was a bank of clouds in the west for the sun to sink behind as I drove home.  It’s hard to drive into a bright, setting sun!

Victoria sent pictures of the kids playing in the park.  And here are Carolyn and Violet at Poppy’s Pumpkin Patch.

“What a fun place to go,” I said.  “I like autumn!”

“Me too!” she answered.  “But pictures never do it justice, I suppose because partly what we’re enjoying is the feeling in the air, and you can’t capture that in the picture!”

“Maybe you could print the photo,” I suggested, “and put a scratch-and-sniff sticker on it?  In the scents of campfire, fresh air, and... oh, maybe maple syrup?”

“What do you do about the cool breeze?” she asked.  “You have to look at it in front of a fan?”  hee hee

Fun at Poppy's Pumpkin Patch:

By 11:00 that night, the outer pieced border of the Jardin de Fleurs was quilted, and I’d begun working on the wide area where I will do graffiti quilting around the quilted hibisci and leaves.  Flowers, leaves, and vines had been stitched, and I’d misted it with water to remove the markings.  I would start on the background filler the next day.

In posting a few pictures on my blog, I looked back at a few of my early attempts at feathers, even some that I was quite proud of at the time, and see that, rather than feathers, I made sausages on a string. 🤣

Saturday morning, the sun was shining, but there was a thin haze high in the sky, making it very pale blue.  It was 56°, on the way up to 59°.

I quilted most of the day, stopping momentarily to put some chicken and potatoes into the Instant Pot.  Since Larry was outside trying to make good use of the daylight as long as possible when the food was done, I set the pot on ‘Warm’ so it would still be hot when he came in.  That’s just one of the things I like about the Instant Pot. 

Saturday afternoon, I80 was closed east of York, about 50 miles to our south, because of dense smoke from fire in a cornfield.  Firefighters managed to get it under control in a few hours.

That evening, Keith wrote to thank me for the set of hammered copper mugs I’d sent him and Korrine for their anniversary, which is today.  Copper is the traditional gift for the 7^th wedding anniversary.

“Kenzie (his stepdaughter) claimed one,” he told me.  “She exclaimed over how ‘cute’ they were.  She loves drinking teas and hot chocolate and didn’t realize you can’t put it in the microwave.”

“Did she try it?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” he assured me.  “I shut that idea down immediately!  haha”

“You didn’t want the Fourth of July in your microwave?” I queried, and then reminded him of the time Caleb, at about age 6 or 7, went off to warm up my coffee, which was in a short, fat blue plastic thermal mug with a lid on it.  

“Set the microwave for 70 seconds,” I told him – but he accidentally pressed 0 twice, making the cooking time 7 minutes.

Along about the halfway mark, I heard, “ka-BLOOOEY!!!!”

I went dashing into the kitchen, saying, “What happened?!!”

There was Caleb calmly standing in front of the microwave, which was still going.  Through the glass window I could see that the lid was off the mug, and bubbling coffee had spread all over the glass plate.

“Oh, the coffee just blew up,” said he nonchalantly.

It didn’t seem like he’d even flinched.

I finished the borders on the third side of Joanna’s quilt, rolled it all the way to the other side, and started on the final borders.

I have 73 hours of quilting in this quilt so far. That makes a total of 134. So far.

At least when custom quilting, I don’t do what I do when using a pantograph and doing edge-to-edge quilting (or at least not as much):  I lean over farther... farther... farther...  

About the time I bump my nose on the quilt itself, I abruptly straighten up.  Oh!  Yes!  Quite so!  (in a Winnie-the-Pooh tone)

I posted some pictures on some quilting pages online – and spotted this remark (by an administrator, mind you) in answer to a member:  “Yes it does goes both ways.  If you see a post hat dont make since report it.”

Suppose I should report the administrator?

A member then consoled him:  “I enjoy your keeping us what will happen”

Siggghhhhhh...

It was only 34° at 7:30 a.m. Sunday morning.  Nevertheless, I had the window open a couple of inches and was sipping Pumpkin Pie cold brew while I blow-dried and curled my hair, which makes me piping hot (the blow-drying and curling, that is, not the cold-brew sipping).  

Why do I get so much hotter whilst getting ready for church Sunday mornings than any other morning??  My eyes were hurting dreadfully that morning; that didn’t help.  They were better by the evening service, thankfully.

Last night after church we picked up an order at Walmart, including this little Sweet Potato pie, which was not nearly as good as it should’ve been.  But you gotta admit, it’s cute!  (It’s on my keyboard for perspective, mind you.  I don’t eat food over the keyboard!)

Larry and I shared half of the little pie last night, and we shared the rest today.  That’s only a couple of bites each; but it’s rich enough that that’s enough.

Today the temperature got up to 64°, and the wind was gusting at 35 mph.  We were issued a High Fire Danger Warning.

As I type, I have my TENS unit going, with the pads on the backs of my shoulders near my neck.  Earlier, I put on Old Goat oil spray, then Absorbine Plus.  That didn’t help much, so I went and got the TENS unit.  On the shoulder that hurts the worst, I feel it the least.  I wonder why that’s generally the case? 

I cranked the strength up high enough that it’s making my shoulders and arms jerk at the end of each short cycle.  I just threw my entire letter clean off my laptop screen when my hand gave a good jerk while I was trying to use the mouse.  I think the letter landed out on the back deck somewhere.

Just a minute, let me go retrieve it...

Okay, I’m back!  Did you miss me?

And now it’s almost bedtime.  I’d better reread this letter carefully before sending, so as not to make a laughingstock of myself by making a worse blunder than any of those poor souls I mocked to scorn!

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