Journal: Floods & 'Naders, Fabric & Quiltin'

 

This is the Wisconsin River northwest of Boscobel, Wisconsin.  It was running high when we were in the vicinity.  Now, after several days of storms, there’s a flood warning there in Richland County.  Boscobel, population 3,286, is slightly to the east of the red dot designating the warning.

When this picture of Hannah (below) scrolled through on my screensaver, I grabbed a screenshot and sent it to her, writing, “Look at those nifty red shoes!”

“A Goodwill find, right?” she responded.  “I liked that outfit.”

Last Tuesday, there were several tornadoes and severe thunderstorms in Wisconsin, right where we’d been traveling a few days earlier.

One of the reasons I am glad to be home is that I can play the piano whenever I get a mind to.  I’d just worked my way through several pages in the old hymnbook Hester gave me, when a friend who has been learning to play the piano since retiring a couple of years ago wrote, “The more I learn about playing the piano, the more I realize I should probably buy bongo drums.”  😆

In the news that day, there was an article telling about someone driving in Omaha who choked on food, passed out, hit a fence, and then a tree.  Apparently his seatbelt performed a Heimlich Maneuver on him and unstuck the food.  His female passenger could not have done it, as she, not being seat-belted in, acquired an arm deformity after being ejected from the car.

In the comment section:  “McAccident.”

That evening, Victoria sent several pretty sunset pictures with multiple unique rays and sunbeams.

That’s Westside Church in Omaha.

Below is a shot I got last Sunday evening shortly before we got home.  Not nearly as dramatic as Victoria’s picture, but pretty, nonetheless.  See the sunbeams?

Late Wednesday morning, it was sunny and 59° here, but severe thunderstorms were traveling around us, several on all sides.

How much sewing could I get done before time for our evening church service, I wondered?  The first order of business would be to clean off the quilting frame and put away all the fabric I’d been using – but first I would cut the strips for the binding and the correct lengths for piecing together the backing.

In the news, there were numerous pictures of damage from Tuesday’s tornadoes.  This destroyed farm place was just south of a route we traveled in Wisconsin.  The tornado shot below was in Iowa, also right south of the route we were on.

It wasn’t long that afternoon before I discovered that nine yards of 45”-wide fabric was not enough for the backing for this quilt.  I should’ve ordered ten yards.

I checked with three nearby quilt shops; they didn’t have it.  Yes, they carry Hoffman Fabrics; no, they don’t have the piece called ‘Bloom’. 

I ordered more from Marshall Dry Goods, plus enough of another fabric to get free shipping.  The binding was ready and waiting, cut, pieced together, and pressed.  I pulled out my machine embroidery notebooks and chose a motif to add to the quilt label.

The fabric on the right is the backing for the Constellation quilt.  The fabric on the left is for a future quilt.

Our midweek church service is always a welcome break in the week, and it was nice to visit with our children and grandchildren afterwards.

Hester gave me three bags of fabric she had found at the Goodwill.  They didn’t look all that big, but each bag was heavy, and I knew there was more fabric in those bags than one might think.

People who think fancy quilting is what adds weight to a quilt...  Haven’t they ever held a big pile of fabric, enough for a king-sized quilt, in one arm, and a couple of large cones of thread in the other hand, and compared weights, huh huh huh huh huh?!

“I’m impressed with how much was crammed into the bags,” laughed Hester.

“They vacuum-packed them!” I told her.

We picked up a grocery order at Walmart after church.  One quick, efficient, and friendly boy was teaching (or trying to teach) another boy the ropes.  The new boy either doesn’t like the job, or isn’t bright enough to know how to handle groceries.  Do kids these days ever help their mothers carry groceries in from the car and put them away in the kitchen??  That kid was tossing and dropping bags into the back of the Mercedes, ker-THUDDITY-thud-thud. 

Home again, we collected our groceries to bring into the house – and discovered the eggs had been tossed in upside down and heavy stuff put atop them, with the expected results.

I complained (online) and got an immediate refund.  I do hope the first boy doesn’t get the blame for the blunderbuss.

Thursday morning at 10:30 a.m., it was 67° on the way up to 86°, pretty and sunshiny – with a chance of rain and snow Friday night.

I stitched out the quilt label that day, despite the fact that I don’t know the exact date the quilt will be done, and I don’t know the total hours I will spend, and I do like to add that to the label.  But I need to have it ready to attach to the quilt, or I’m not going to get it done in time for Joseph’s birthday on Friday, the 24^th.  I would definitely be using a pantograph rather than custom quilting, and it would certainly be one that isn’t too awfully intense.

Siggghhhh... Marshall Dry Goods ships fairly quickly, but...  I hardly thought this quilt would be done in time.

It’s Larry’s fault, for dragging me off to Wisconsin last week!  (Isn’t it?)  😅

That afternoon, I downloaded the Merlin Bird ID app, created by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, onto my tablet.  This app helps identify birds through sound recordings and photos, or by answering questions about size, color, and behavior.

I paid the bills, then typed up my ‘Birthdays 2026’ list, complete with pictures.  I waited so long to do it, I could hardly remember some of the gifts I’ve given kids and grandkids since January.  I got it done by looking at orders on Walmart and Amazon, my photos, and my journals.

I kept putting it off... putting it off... and finally just thought, Well, I don’t really need to do that, after all – and then it was Keira’s birthday, and I couldn’t for the life of me remember if I’d already given her a cute little cap with attachable ‘bling’ or not.

Yes, I decided, I do need to keep a list.

Catching a glimpse of movement from the kitchen window, I peeked out and spotted a cottontail bunny in one of the flowerbeds nibbling away at the Creeping Jenny groundcover.  I didn’t know they liked that.  I guess they like most anything green, come to think of it.

It ought to be female donkeys – jennies – that like the stuff, don’t you think? 😄 (Maybe they do; how do I know?)

Did you know that when a jenny is bred to a stallion, the offspring is called a ‘hinny’?

Did you know that a female ferret is called a ‘jill’?  The male is a ‘hob’ – and a group of ferrets is a ‘business’.  😅

A male swan is called a cob.  The female is known as a pen.  Their babies are cygnets, and a group of swans is called a bevy or a wedge. 

A female lobster is a hen.  The male is a cock.   Huh.  Now that, I did not know.  And a group of lobsters?  Why, it’s a ‘risk’, of course!

This photo of a swan with cygnets was taken by Robert E. Fuller, the British wildlife artist and filmmaker.  Here’s one of his incredible videos:  Swan Nest  And here is a live camera streaming from the nest:  Live-Streamed Swans

Larry sometimes gets to thinking his $$$$$$ hearing aids don’t make much difference (though he was then tempted to get some $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ hearing aids that someone called and offered him).  He doesn’t wear his hearing aids when he’s busy making lots of racket.  I informed him that those hearing aids do make a big difference.  When we go somewhere and he forgets to put them on, I get hoarse within half an hour or less, trying to talk loudly enough for him to hear me.  Doesn’t matter how many times I’ve told him this, he still thinks that it’s because the hearing aids don’t do much that his wife’s volume seems to be the same whether those hearing aids are in or out of his ears.  Then he sees the ‘look’ I’m giving him, covers the ear closest to me, and says, “Don’t box my ears; I’ll be deafer than I already am!”  😆

I opened the bags of fabric Hester gave me, and was surprised to find seven quilt blocks amongst the fabrics.  They’re very pretty.  Whoever sewed them did a neat and precise job.  The fabrics feel like Moda or Robert Kaufman – high quality.

It was Keira’s birthday that day.  Here she is (far end of table) with her little friends and cousins.  Granddaughter Elsie is at the right end of the table, and other granddaughters and great-great-nieces are there, too.  Since the birthday party went on for a while after school, and everyone was then all worn to a frizzle-frazzle, I promised to take Keira her gift the following day.

I was surprised when I got the ETA for the fabric I’d ordered:  Estimated delivery,  Saturday, April 18 between 2:00 P.M. – 6:00 P.M.  Maybe I could get this quilt done!

By 1:15 a.m., my fabric had made it 95 miles, from Batesville, Arkansas, to Little Rock, Arkansas.  That’s the wrong direction!

By 9:45 a.m. Friday morning, it had gone from Little Rock to Springdale.  See what it says by Springdale?  “Botanical Garden of the Ozarks.” 

 

I think that delivery driver is just enjoying a lovely spring drive through the Ozarks, with a nice stop at the Botanical Garden.

It was chilly that midmorning, 45° and feeling like 33°.  It would only get up to 52°.  There was quite a flock of birds at the feeders.  Several migratory birds are still hanging around. There’s one out in the trees that I can’t see, but it has a song that I’ve not heard before.  Gotta give that Merlin Bird ID app a try!

I decided to work on photo-editing while awaiting the package from Marshall Dry Goods.

As I edited pictures, I listened to (and periodically watched) a live stream of the weather.  At 3:00 p.m., there were 15 tornado warnings out, thankfully not here.  The line of storms stretched from Canada in an eastward curve all the way down to Oklahoma.

When Keira got out of school, I took her a present.  Keira is now 8 years old.  Note her little pink tongue caught between her teeth in concentration as she removes the paper from her gift.  (Yes, the paper is made of calendar pages.)

We gave her a magnet and a postcard that we got in the gift shop at the Sioux City Falls Park, and the aforementioned pink cap with all sorts of ‘bling’ for her to attach to it.  

As I went up the sidewalk at Hester’s house, I lifted my camera to take a picture of her lavender-blossoming tree – and discovered my camera had no SD card in it.  But Hester obligingly took some photos for me.

It was almost worth forgetting the camera card at home to see the expression on Oliver’s face when I told him that when I tried taking a picture, my camera said, “There’s no card in your camera, you dumb-dumb!”  hee hee

Keira liked the birthday card, which was a vintage one that had a list of words to unscramble inside the front cover.  It was in a plastic bin of cards that were my late sister-in-law Janice’s.  I found it waaaay back in a cubbyhole under the front staircase at Loren’s house when I cleaned it out.  From cards that were my mother’s and Janice’s, I’ve wound up with 230,931 (or thereabouts) get-well cards.

If people would be more inclined to tell me when they have hangnails and papercuts and suchlike, I could maybe use up some of those cards!

One has to be careful not to send someone who’s terribly ill and probably won’t get well a card with a kitten hanging by its front paws from a clothesline, with the caption, “Hang in there!  You’ll be purrfectly well again before you know it.  Take some catnip and I’ll talk to you in the morning!”

Also, when you’re hunting for a heartfelt get-well card, you must be cautious not to wind up with a sympathy card by accident.

Amongst the sympathy cards I inherited, some say stuff like this:  “Your loved one never really leaves you!  You’ll think of them every time you see a cardinal.”  No wonder neither Mama nor Janice ever used those.

Ugh.  Let’s leave the superstition out and turn to the Lord, shall we?! 

Give me a blank card with a pretty picture on the front, and I can write verses such as these from Psalm 121 inside it:

¹ I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

² My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.

³ He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber.

⁴ Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.

⁵ The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.

How do you think that compares with, “May you always see butterflies!”  🙄

My fabric arrived at the post office in Lenexa, Kansas, that afternoon, 290 miles to our southeast.  I went on working on photos, and the weather went on deteriorating in Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, and Oklahoma. 

The tornado-warning tally hit 150 just before midnight.  But things were winding down.  It did not equal 2011.  From Wikipedia:

“The 2011 Super Outbreak was the largest tornado outbreak spawned by a single weather system in recorded history; it produced 367 tornadoes from April 25–28, with 223 of those in a single 24-hour period on April 27 from midnight to midnight CDT, fifteen of which were violent EF4–EF5 tornadoes.  348 deaths occurred in that outbreak, of which 324 were positively tornado-related.  The outbreak largely contributed to the record for most tornadoes in April with 780 tornadoes, almost triple the prior record (267 in April 1974).  The overall record for a single month was 542 in May 2003, which was also broken.

“The 1974 Super Outbreak of April 3–4, which spawned 148 confirmed tornadoes across eastern North America, held the record for the most prolific tornado outbreak in terms of overall tornadoes for many years, and as of October 2025, it still holds the record for most violent, long-track tornadoes (7 F5 and 23 F4 tornadoes).  More significant tornadoes occurred within 24 hours than any other day on record.  Due to advancements in technology allowing for more accuracy in tornado reporting, the 2011 and 1974 tornado counts are not directly comparable.”

Last week, I grumbled to Larry, “We should’ve waited a week to go on this Wisconsin trip, and the weather would’ve been a whole lot better.”  Boy oh boy, was I ever wrong!

Instead of feeling grumbly, I should’ve been thankful for that cold front that was warding off the bad weather as we traveled.  And for a Heavenly Father who kept us safe.  (Well, I was thankful for the latter, and told Him so.)

Here’s something else I’ve been watching – a live stream from bald eagles Jackie and Shadow’s nest beside Big Bear Lake in California.  They have two little chicks now.  I happened to be watching when a hawk flew over their nest.  The adult eagles had left the eaglets alone for a few minutes, and I worried that the hawk might take advantage of that; but the adults were probably closer than I knew, and the hawk had more smarts in his birdie brain than to risk such an endeavor as an eaglet kidnapping snack.

I backed the live stream up and grabbed some screenshots.

The chicks are huddled on the right side of the nest bowl, heads in the shade.  They’ve nearly doubled their size in the last week.

Larry was only a few miles from Big Bear Lake when he was in California picking up that container three or four weeks ago.

Saturday morning, it was a breezy 45°, on the way up to 54°.  Shortly after 11:00 a.m., my fabric arrived!  Tracking info had said it wouldn’t be here until 2:00 p.m. at the earliest.

Soon I was measuring, cutting, and adding the newly-arrived fabric to the backing.  And then I was ready to load the Constellation quilt on my frame.

Ooooo, nifty!  Having heard on the radio (on my tablet) that there would be a meteorite show, I wanted the exact dates, so I typed ‘meteorite show’ into Google search ----- and my entire screen then darkened, and several meteorites went flying across it, before it lightened back up with the information I was seeking.  Here’s the info:  “The Lyrid meteor shower is peaking now, with the best viewing on the night of April 21–22, 2026.  Expect around 15–20 meteors per hour in a dark sky.  Viewing is favorable this year due to low moonlight interference.”

OoooooohHH!!!!  I just typed ‘do a barrel roll’ into google search, and my entire screen did a 360° roll!

I thought I needed to hurry and get to quilting??

Oh, look at this!  On elgoog.im, the screen is backwards, mirrored:

And this is backwards Bing, gnib.org: 

Typing ‘askew’ into search tilts the screen slightly.

I thought I needed to git bizzy quilting!

Yes, yes, I do.

And so I did.

That evening, Larry brought home Mexican food from La Mezcal.  Their food is delicious.  And now I need to lose a pound and a half.

What, you think a pound and a half doesn’t matter?!!  Imagine if I gained a pound and a half every day for a year!  I would weigh 654 pounds by April 18, 2027.  😶

Yep, it matters.

Speaking of gaining weight... Precut fabric from Moda comes from a section that they call “The Moda Bakery Shop”.  Those narrow pinked-edge strips in the fabrics from Hester come from a roll that they call ‘Honey Bun’, and a 42-piece stack of 10 ½” squares is called a ‘Layer Cake’.  The half-square triangle sets are ‘Turnovers’, and wider strips in a roll are ‘Jelly Rolls’.  The 5” squares are ‘Charms’, and the 2 ½” squares are ‘Mini Charms’.

A lady on a Facebook quilting group said, “I like these precuts!  They never make me fat!”

“Speak for yourself!” another woman retorted.  “Just the names of them make me hungry, and I wind up going to the bakery!”  😅

Moda calls their patterns ‘cake mixes’, and their designers, ‘Moda chefs’.

These are such pretty fabrics, I believe I’ll hunt for more.  If I can’t find the exact fabrics, I’ll look for some that coordinate.

I got four rows of quilting done that day.  The pantograph is called ‘Monstera’, which is a plant with very large leaves that don’t at all resemble the leaves in this panto.

There were both an opossum and a raccoon on the back deck scarfing down sunflower seeds when Larry went out later that night.  It startled them when he jerked the patio door open suddenly, and they both took off in a hurry – in opposite directions. 

They ran smack into each other.  😅

The raccoon regrouped first, and went down the fire escape, as Larry calls it (the tubular structure that rises from ground level to hold the bird feeders, one story up).  The opossum, after a good deal of consideration, finally deemed it safe to hurriedly waddle his way past us and go on down the steps.

Sunday morning at a quarter ’til eight, it was 36°, feeling like 29°, but the high would be 64°.  It was sunny, not a cloud in the sky.

Wouldn’t you know, the little bird whose song I cannot recognize, and whom I cannot spot amongst the trees, was singing profusely when I went out to hang the bird feeders – and I had no time to pull up my newly-loaded Merlin Bird ID app and find out what kind of bird it is!  

I was getting ready for church, blow-drying and curling my hair, sipping cold-brew coffee (eggnog flavored – out of season, but I always love eggnog flavors [cinnamon, vanilla, nutmeg]), and listening to the news on my tablet.

A piece of that news:  a man is now in custody for buying sets of Lego from stores in multiple states, then returning them for a refund – after having replaced the Lego with sealed bags of pasta in the boxes.  Well, it sounded the same.

After 70 such thefts, he is now residing in the Orange County jail.

We picked up an order for a few groceries and a birthday present last night after church, then headed home for a late supper.  I had more – not all – of the Mexican food Larry brought home Saturday night.  Larry had frozen noodles with chicken and gravy, along with cauliflower and broccoli.  (No, Larry didn’t eat the noodles in a frozen state.  They’re the ones I cooked a couple of weeks ago, then portioned and froze in freezer bags.  How do you describe those yummy noodles that you buy frozen, that taste like homemade noodles?)

I had just enough of what my father used to call ‘spizzerinctum’ to wash the dishes before bedtime.

It was a pretty morning today, 57° at 10:00 a.m., on the way up to... ah!  83°!  I thought it was only going to be in the mid 50s.  Excuse me for a moment while I go exchange this sweater for a short-sleeved top.
...
...

Okay, I’m back!  (Did you miss me?)  Had to change now, before I get my hair all fixed up purty, as dragging a crewneck sweater over it would unpurty it right quicklike. 😆

Larry had the rest of my Mexican food for his lunch today.  It was Lobster and Shrimp Quesadillas.  Have you ever noticed that the more often you warm up fishy things in the microwave, the more fishy they smell?

That was a mighty good quesadilla...  Saturday evening.

That was a pretty good quesadilla...  Sunday evening.

That was quite the fishy quesadilla... today.  😜

I’m fine, though; I had already eaten breakfast:  a piece of the French toast Larry made for yesterday’s lunch.

 Oh!  Lookie, there are butterflies out front!  Cabbage whites.  Not as splashy as some that will show up later, but butterflies, nevertheless!  (And no, they are not angels, nor are they loved ones gone on before.  They are butterflies.)

Mourning doves are building a nest in one of the Blue spruces in the front yard. 

(Photo by Helen Webster Drake)

I’ve made a fresh gallon of cold-brew coffee (right on National Cold Brew Day, at that), this time a combination of Eggnog (vanilla, nutmeg, and cinnamon) and Lazy Bear (honey and blackberries).  I’ll leave it to steep overnight.  It smells scrumptious!

And now I shall get back to the Constellation quilt.

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

Journal: Wisconsin Travels

 

Last Monday morning found me scurrying around getting all the last-minute things ready to go.

Larry had thought to be ready to leave for Wisconsin at 10:00 – 10:30 a.m.  However, 10:00 a.m. found him rotating the tires on his pickup. 

Teddy once asked, bland of face:  “Don’t they just do that on their own, once you start driving?”  😆

It was chilly that morning, 38° on the way up to 44°, and there was a possibility of snow later that night.  West Bend, Wisconsin, would be cold until Wednesday.  There wasn’t any snow in their forecast – yet. 

Parts of northern Wisconsin had at least two days of severe ice storms the previous week, with half an inch of ice from each storm.  Trees and power lines were down all over the place.

At 4:00 p.m., a friend wrote, “Are you still on your trip.”

We hadn’t even left.  And no, she wasn’t kidding.  Maybe she mistakenly thought we were going to North Bend, Nebraska, 38 miles to our east?

Finally, at almost 4:30 p.m., we backed out of the driveway.

Or at least we started to back out.

Then Larry put the pickup in gear, turned it off (because, like so many of his vehicles, it’s a manual-shift and has a nonworking emergency brake), and hurried back into the garage for some forgotten frippery.

Back he came, started the truck, put it in reverse, got all the way out into the lane – and then I noticed that, though he’d hauled out the garbage, he hadn’t rolled the trashcan out to the side of the lane.

I pointed this out.  He put the pickup in gear, turned it off, and went for the trashcan.

Soon it was in place, and we were trundling down the lane, getting on the highway – and then we had to stop at a friend’s place where Larry has been keeping his truck, so that he could collect the, ... um ... , ? wiring? tool of one sort or another? that he thought must be in said truck.  Let’s just say ‘more bits and bobs’ and leave it at that.  Whether he found what he was looking for or not, I cannot say.

We pulled out (again) and headed north at 4:40 p.m.  Forty minutes later, we were getting fuel – both for the pickup and for ourselves – in Norfolk.  Diesel for the pickup, hardboiled eggs and some fruit for ourselves.  We were hungry!

Here’s some northeastern Nebraska scenery.  I saw one little calf in a damp huddle on the ground, his mother licking him thoroughly – and he was only just trying to struggle to his feet.  Fresh-hatched, ’twas!

At Elk Point, South Dakota, 131 miles to our northeast, in the southeast corner of the state, we made our first pick-up of a North Star turf sprayer with a 55-gallon drum.

Across the street was a 1954 Nash Ambassador Hydra-Matic.  At least we didn’t get that.  Look, it’s tri-colored!

We drove to North Sioux City, South Dakota, where we went to Bob & Ellen’s café.  Larry got a chicken bacon ranch sandwich entirely by accident, having intended to get the pizza rather than the sandwich; but neither he nor the young woman behind the counter could hear each other well.  I got a salad, on purpose.  We both got acai bowls, for the first time ever.  Scrumptious, they were.

It was 8:30 p.m. by the time we finished eating, so we got a room at the Days Inn.  My weather app said there was a bit of rain and snow there, but that wasn’t the case when we were carrying our stuff in.  The motel is listed as 2-star, but it’s underrated.  It was quite nice, really.  Roomy and clean, and it smelled good (which is all-important, in my book).  It was almost at No Vacancy; there were a lot of construction workers staying here.  The staff – and the construction workers, too – were friendly and nice.

Tuesday morning at 7:30 a.m., it was 31°, and, once again, several of my weather apps and Larry’s, too, reported snow; but a look out the window did not verify this.  Meanwhile, I had the window open and the air conditioner on full blast.  Showers and blow-dryers heat me up!  I was happy I’d brought along a tall mug of Chocolate Trilogy cold brew.  It had been sitting in the little motel refrigerator all night.

Comb... hairspray ... and I was ready to head to the breakfast nook.

We then drove 260 miles east to Sumner, Iowa, to pick up a gas-powered, walk-behind Tennant sweeper.  The one pictured below is priced at $14,971.42.  Larry paid $129.47 for his.

Before leaving town, we stopped at Norby’s Farm Fleet, where Larry got a 2000w inverter which, hopefully, will run my computer.  He got it all wired in – and the laptop still kept going on, off, on, off.  I did a bit of research to learn why it was doing this, and found some recommendations to turn on Integrated Graphics Mode under the GPU Switch tab in the MSI Center.  This requires a reboot.  I followed the instructions... rebooted... but with the computer going off, on, off, on, I wasn’t completely sure it took – and it apparently didn’t, because the problem continued. 

I unplugged it so that it was running only on battery, and repeated the procedure. 

That didn’t work, because the battery was too flat, and the laptop went off entirely. 

I let it charge while it was off, and it did charge, at least. 

Once it was completely charged, I tried again.

The laptop did not again go off and on.  It’s fixed, it’s fixed!  Maybe... maybe... I could’ve done this while using Larry’s smaller invertor, and we wouldn’t have had to buy a bigger one.  Shhhhh, don’t mention it.

In Norby’s, there were brooder display pens with the cutest baby ducks, guineas, and chicks.  Wow, those tiny guinea chicks were LOUD.

All the little birds were noisy and riled up, because the boy who worked there was pouring food into their dispensers, and they didn’t appear to understand these things called ‘food dispensers’ just yet.

The boy went away, and the chicks and ducklings began settling down.  Some even lay down and went to sleep, but a few  of the more energetic ones continued to run roughshod right over the tops of the sleepers, peeping at the tops of their wee lungs.

We stayed the night at the Prairie Motel in Prairie du Chicken (well, that’s not quite right, but I forgot the odd name of the town) just across the Mississippi River in Wisconsin.  It’s an old-fashioned motel, and we were given a big, nice room.

Ah-ha!  Chien! It’s Prairie du Chien.  See, I was close!

At a quarter ’til ten that night, I was reading some posts on my laptop when I heard a loud back-up beeper going off. 

“Reckon I should move away from the front wall?” I asked a friend with whom I was corresponding.

Then, “Never mind; the beeping was just Larry looking at yet another scissor lift video on his phone.  He didn’t know it was so loud.  All the other guests have now spilled out into the parking lot.” 

Actually, there weren’t many other guests.  They pass this motel up because it looks old.  They don’t know what they’re missing!  Plus, it’s not at all expensive; just $70.

The only drawback:  they don’t serve breakfast.

But! – if the motel had’ve had breakfast, we would not have gone to Huckleberry’s Restaurant a couple of blocks down the street the next morning, and I would’ve missed out on the yummiest cranberry-pecan oatmeal, with a side dish of sliced strawberries, that I’ve ever had.  

Larry would’ve missed out on a scrumptious omelet of some sort and a waffle with strawberries and cream.  He only ate part of the waffle, so we saved it for the next day.

I tried half and half in my tea like my mother used to fix for me, and discovered I don’t like it that way anymore. 

Despite my oatmeal being scrumptious and just right, when I heard a lady behind me somewhere exclaiming over her bread pudding, I was struck with an acute bout of food envy.  I love bread pudding!  I’d read through the menu, but had somehow missed that entrée. 

Ah, well; the oatmeal and strawberries were better for me.  Sigghhhh...

Before leaving the restaurant, we got a loaf of fresh-baked apple bread, then walked through the gift store.  Larry found a 1/36 diecast 1955 Chevy stepside 3100 pickup with a surfboard on top.  The doors open, and it works by friction back-up.

I got a magnetic butterfly pin, which I’ll save for Hester’s birthday.

At 7:00 a.m., it was 42° on the way up to 71° in Prairie du Chien.  I started writing in my journal, “Finally, a nice day!  It was freezing cold and windy the last two days –” and then I saw the weather for West Bend, where we were headed:  “Heavy snow.”  😯

“Well, at least the pickup has good tires,” I added.

West Bend was 179 miles to the east.  While Larry loaded the two small scissor lifts he’d purchased and put more air in the trailer tires, I held a photography session with a pair of unimpressed Canada geese.

We then headed northeast to Sheboygan, Wisconsin.  

“If we hurry, we’ll get to Lake Michigan before sunset!” I informed Larry.

(But we didn’t, so we didn’t.)

We stayed at the Quality Inn for a couple of days so we could do some exploring along Lake Michigan.

After checking into the motel, we went to the Pick & Save grocery store for some meat and cheese to go with the apple bread from Huckleberry’s.  We also got Kefir blueberry yogurt/milk drink.

It started raining before we got back to the motel.  Brrrr, cold.

Thursday morning at 9:00 a.m. it was 45° on the way up to a high of 49°.  The wind was gusting up to 22 mph.  That was 15 mph less than the previous day, but we still needed our coats.  Brrrrrr, cold!

There are big, beautiful farms and barns all over Wisconsin.  Look at the barn quilt on the side of this red barn.

We spent the majority of the day along the lakefront.  It was too cold and windy for comfort, but we explored anyway.  I love to stand on the shoreline and watch and listen to the big breakers rolling in and crashing over the rocks and sand.

After returning to Sheboygan that evening, we ate supper at the Olive Garden just across the street from our motel.

Larry had Chicken Gnocchi soup and I had Zuppa Toscana soup, and it came with steaming hot bread sticks and a big bowl of chef salad for us to share.

Olive Garden serves as many bowls of soup as a person wants at no extra cost. I can barely down one, but Larry had two.

Friday, we started toward home.  It was 40° at 7:00 a.m., and would only get up to 43°.  It seems the weatherman was unduly optimistic, last week at this time, about the entire week there in eastern Wisconsin.  Ah, well. I’ll look at my pictures later, and forget all about how cold and windy it was.  Maybe.

And now, regarding The Science of Curves:

Ever since I was little, traveling with my parents, the things I see make me want to know more.  Back then, I’d write things down that I ‘needed’ to know, and then ask my mother to take me to the library for books on the matter when we got home.

But nowadays, I have the Internet!

So what was one of my questions this time?  Well, of course I wanted to know how high one would need to be in order to see both the east and the west coasts of Lake Michigan, which is anywhere from 62 miles to 118 miles wide.  The variable distance causes a variable answer.

But look at this plumb interestin’ stuff I found:

Here’s the equation:  8*59²/12 = 2320.7 ft or 707.3 m

But!  Math doesn’t always tell you what you think it does.  The following quote is from Geoffrey Widdison on Quora:

“What the math tells you is that, if you’re lying at the edge of the lake, 59 miles away from Chicago, with your eye level with the surface of the water (which would mean that your face would need to literally be half submerged), then the shortest object you can see at the other side of the lake would need to be 2,320 feet above the level of the lake.  That’s entirely true.

“However, because of how geometry works, raising your eye any higher changes the equation.

“If your eye is six feet above the water level (say, if you’re standing with your feet in the water), then you can see an object 2,091 feet above the level of the lake.  If you’re standing 20 feet above the water level, you can see an object 1856 feet above the level of the lake.

“There’s another issue here, though, and that is what is meant by ‘opposite shore’.  There is no single ‘opposite’ for an irregularly shaped object like a lake.  There seems to be no significant point that’s 59 miles away from Chicago.  Gary, Indiana, has a direct distance of about 24 miles; Michigan City is 40 miles away; and St. Joseph, 60 miles.

“What that means is that, from near the water level, you’d expect to see the full skyline from Chicago:

“...have just the trees and the smaller buildings occluded from Gary:

“...and have the shorter buildings mostly or completely blocked from view from Michigan City, with the tallest skyscrapers still visible (only about 850 feet would be blocked, depending on the observer’s height).

“Now, if you could see the entirety of the skyline from the level of the lake, 59 miles away, that would be difficult to explain, in light of the earth’s curvature.  But that’s not the case, and observations actually comport extremely well with exactly what the math would predict.”

End of quote.

I find all that ever so interesting, and I’ve always loved math; but what about my original question that somehow took me to the Chicago skyline?

The answer is...

>> drum roll << ... 

To see both shores of Lake Michigan simultaneously from its average width (roughly 100 miles), you would need to be roughly 1,300 to 1,500 feet above the water level.

There.  If you want more specifics, well, ...  Look it up!  😄

A little after 11:00 a.m., we stopped to look at Lake Winnebago.  Covering 215 square miles, it’s the largest lake entirely in Wisconsin.

We collected our homemade apple bread, some Cutting Board thick-sliced ham, and Wisconsin cheese we’d bought at the grocery store in Sheboygan, along with some Bloom fruit drinks and bananas, and headed for a nearby bench to eat our lunch while looking out on the lake, watching the waterfowl and the boats.  

We sat down.

Then we looked at each other, got back up, and returned to the pickup.  We could eat our lunch and watch the waterfowl and the boats just fine from there, and we didn’t need to freeze to death (or get blown into the drink) while we were at it.

Someday, as I said before, I’ll look at my pictures and think, ‘Oh, isn’t that pretty,’ and forget all about the earaches and the frostbite.  (Well, I don’t suppose one can get frostbite at 40°; but it sure feels like one might.  Hypothermia, yes.  Frostbite, no.)

There were still piles of snow on the ground in some of Wisconsin’s state parks.  We bought a year’s pass, so we really should’ve stopped at every state park in the state of Wisconsin.  But alas, we only had time to stop in three of them.

It’s surprising how just a few degrees of latitude to the south makes a noticeable difference in such things as the leafing-out of trees, this time of year.  Despite the blustery weather, there were signs of spring everywhere.  We drove past numerous farms where new little calves were romping in the pasture.

This pretty waterfall on the Fox River is right in the middle of the town of Montello, Wisconsin.

One evening we decided to eat at Culver’s – or, I should say, Larry decided we should eat at Culver’s, because he saw Northwoods Walleye advertised on their sign, and he likes walleye.

Culver’s walleye, however, is breaded, fried, and slapped into a white bun with a glob of mayonnaise.  Larry didn’t mind it, but I wouldn’t’ve touched it with a ten-foot pole.  Not that I don’t like walleye, mind you.  But, for one thing, I have never understood why people put breaded things into buns.

What did I get, I wonder?  Oh – I remember.  It was a Harvest Veggie burger.

Mine did not look like this picture.  It wasn’t even half as tall as this one.  Listen to the description:  “Fire-roasted chickpeas, peppers, corn, and real Wisconsin cheese come together to create this one-of-a-kind patty.  Grilled and topped with our signature lightly buttered, toasted bun, it’s one hearty burger to say the least.”

That’s mostly baloney.  I mean, the description is mostly baloney, not the sandwich.  The patty itself wasn’t too bad; but it was very thin, there was only one small lettuce leaf, a bit of tasteless tomato, waaaay too much and too strong of an onion, all on a soggy white bun.

I removed half of the bun and most of the onions and ate it.

However, had we not been there, we would’ve missed the following scene:

A mother and a little girl walked in.  They placed their order and came to find a table.  The little girl happily trotted straight toward the big wraparound booth in the corner. 

“Let’s sit here!” she exclaimed.

Her mother said, “No, honey, we don’t need to sit there; we can sit at a smaller table.  That one is for a group.”

In her piping voice, the little girl protested, “I’m a group!”  🤣

I was sympathetic.  I recall the few times my parents and I went to restaurants where there were large corner booths, and I badly wanted to sit there.  They just looked... fun, I guess.  Maybe I wanted to entertain myself by sliding all the way around the circular bench seat.  😄

Larry and I could’ve sat at those big booths when the children were with us; but we just plain didn’t frequent restaurants, because we simply couldn’t afford it.  Instead, we got our food at grocery stores and had picnics.

That afternoon, Hannah wrote to tell me that the Flexi Clip she had created in Los Angeles had won the contest.  This, even though she’d been busy with Easter preparations last weekend and hadn’t realized the contest was on; so she hadn’t given her customers and friends a chance to vote.  And still she won!  Her other clip was also on the top 3.

Isn’t it pretty?  No wonder it won!  😊

At Buckhorn Lake State Park, they were having a prescribed burn, clearing out needles and underbrush amongst the trees.

I don’t mind the smell, but it did get a little thick.

The ground was spongy, it was so damp from all the snow they’d had; so they had no trouble keeping the fire under control.

Arriving back in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, that night, we returned to the Huckleberry Restaurant for supper.  I had grilled salmon, rice, and vegetables – and the bread pudding I’d been drooling for, ever since I heard the lady behind me talking about it on our previous visit to this restaurant.  Mmmmm, it was worth waiting for. 

Problem:  I was full.

The waitress brought me a Styrofoam box to put it in.  I would be happy all over again when I had it to eat the next day.

That night, we stayed at the Windsor Place Inn.  Though we had liked the older Prairie Motel where we’d been before, the showerhead was not only much too high on the wall, it was also in poor shape, with the gasket poking out, and a quite unsatisfactory ‘spray’ coming out of it.  Larry tried to fix it; but although he got the gasket back in place, it still didn’t spray well at all.  Water droplets went all over the place, and it was impossible to find the right spot to stand where one could get the best benefit from the measly ‘spray’.

The Windsor Place Inn was very nice, and the showerhead was fine and dandy.  The room was large – and it was only $65. 

The Quality Inn we had stayed at the previous two nights in Sheboygan had also been nice, with one or two of the usual flaws to be expected in motel rooms.  One small flaw:  the hinges on the plastic cover for the air conditioner/heating controls were broken, so every time we lifted it to adjust the temperature or fan speed, the cover came off in our hands.

Each time this happened, we adjusted the temp or fan speed, then carefully fit the cover back into place, ready to repeat the operation the next time we got hot or cold.

This night at the Windsor Place Inn in Prairie du Chicken... uh, Chien, someone had prewarmed the room for us – and it was still a-warming.  Stifling. 

After helping to bring all our paraphernalia up to the second floor sans elevator, I was piping hot.  I marched over to the heater to turn it off and put the air conditioner on full blast – and discovered that the cover over the controls on this unit was missing entirely.

I commented on it, then thought no more about it —

— until I was searching in the bag in which I’d packed such things as tea, vitamins, ceramic coffee mug and warmer, paper towels, Kleenexes, etc.

I pulled a plastic air conditioner/heating control cover out of the bag.

What in the world.

That thing must have fallen off the unit in Sheboygan, straight into that bag!  I didn’t even recall that the bag had been anywhere near that unit.

It said ‘Amana’ on the control cover.

It said nothing at all on the ac/heating unit in this room.  Furthermore, I could see from across the room that, while the cover for this unit should be almost perfectly square with rounded bottom corners, the cover I had in my hand was wider than it was tall, and was almost a parallelogram.

Nevertheless, I walked over to the air conditioner and tried to insert the cover.

It didn’t fit.

I presented the perplexity to Larry.

He, like me, tried to fit cover to unit, unsuccessfully.

“I could whittle it down with my pocketknife,” he mused, looking at it and rubbing his chin.  😅

“Let’s just leave it here,” I said, “tuck it slightly under the air conditioner/heating unit, and let the maid or maintenance man wonder what the deal is.”

“They’ll really be scratching their heads,” Larry said, grinning.

The more we thought about it, the funnier it got, until we were laughing ’til tears ran down our faces.  We must’ve been sleepy.

“Anyway,” said I when I could talk again, “at least the people who stay in room 211 at the Quality Inn will no longer have to contend with a cover that falls off in their hands.”

I won’t bother sending it back; it’s broken, and there’s no fixing it.

Saturday morning, we prepared to leave Prairie du Chien (I only have to remember ‘Prairie du Chicken’, remove a couple of letters, and I’ve got the proper name of the town) and cross the Mississippi into Iowa.

Okay, let’s find out what this ‘Prairie du Chien’ means.  Hmmmm...  It’s French for ‘Prairie of the Dog’.  Not anything to do with prairie dogs, but, rather, an Indian chief whose name, translated into French, meant ‘dog’.  And it’s pronounced “Prairie doo SHEEN.” 

So now we know.  I was saying ‘Prairie du CHAIN.”  I hope I didn’t say it to anybody who knew better.  😄

Most of Saturday was cold, rainy, and windy.  It was 54.4° in Santa Land, Arctic Circle, Rovaniemi, Finland.  That’s 11° warmer than it was there in Prairie du Chicken!

I checked the radar to see where rain was expected, and if we might be able to avoid it.  

We couldn’t, or just didn’t, though it seemed to nearly stop [the rain, not the wind] each time we made a pitstop.

In Charles City, after I’d already been in the Kwik Star, I saw two people go into the convenience store with bedroom slippers on, and one older lady had thick-soled sandals and fuzzy socks.  Why did I go to all the trouble of removing my suede and Sherpa slippers and putting on my shoes?!

We stopped for the night at the Econolodge North in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  Worst motel room of the trip.  At least it was cheap – just $54.  And the shower got hot (eventually), the beds were sleepable (should be a word), and the ac/heater worked.

After hauling our bags into the room, we drove ten miles to the south to get some supper at Perkins Family Restaurant.  I ordered half a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich and chicken noodle soup. 

That sandwich was quite the slapped-together BLT.  The toast was dry with hardly a smidgeon of mayonnaise.  There was a scant amount of lettuce (are they running short of lettuce in the Midwest?!), and there was just one fat slice of tomato.  At least the bacon was hot and crispy.

The next morning, it was 65° on the way up to 84°.  We planned to go to Falls Park before turning southwest toward home – and neither Larry nor I had any short-sleeved shirts or tops along!

I have been through Sioux Falls many times – always on the way somewhere else.  We never stopped to see The Falls.  I was quite surprised to learn that the population of the city of Sioux Falls is right at about a quarter million.

Our first stop before going to The Falls was at a Goodwill store.  We went to two Goodwills, actually, because the first one was locked, and there was a note on the door saying, “Closed due to no power.”

“Did they forget to pay the bill?” queried Larry. 😄

The next store was open.  We each got two short-sleeved shirts/tops.  The shirt I wore that day was bright blue with big white flowers all over it.  And it’s a good two sizes too big.  

Ah, well... it was comfortable, and I’ll fix it one of these days.  The other is a dark blue, very soft, thin, crew-neck with little gold shiny things in a fancy pattern in the front around the neck area.  It’ll be perfect under some of my suit jackets for church.  The flowered top was $5.99; the crew-neck was $3.99.

I went to see how Larry was doing.  He was stumped.  There were about 328,912,632 shirts, after all!

“Are you having a parking lot moment?” I asked. 

(He has trouble deciding where to park, never mind whether the lot is full or empty.)

He laughed.  I grabbed two shirts for him:  a button-down pale gray knit and a white shirt with wide-set gray-and-charcoal plaid lines.  Either would go with the dark charcoal pants he was wearing.  His knit shirt was $3.99; the dress shirt (he decided to save it to go with one of his dark charcoal suits) was $5.99.

The total for our four items:  $19.96.  

When we got back out to the truck and were removing the tags, I discovered that my dark blue crew-neck was brand-new – the original store tag was still on it:  $30!

We only spent about 20 minutes in the store, though I really would’ve liked to hunt for a few more things.  But The Falls were waiting!

We stopped at the next convenience store, walked in with our new duds folded neatly over one arm, went into the restrooms... and soon exited in new tops, long-sleeved former attire lopped over an arm.  

If I hadn’t wanted anyone to notice me, I shouldn’t have chosen a bright blue shirt with big white Hawaiian flowers all over it!  Wow, that thing is noticeable.

I put my chin up and strode purposefully along, as if I’d just departed my dressing room and was headed for the stage.  It was soooo much more comfortable in short sleeves, that hot day, we quickly got over the embarrassment of doing a quick-change in a convenience-store restroom. 🤣

We went up in the tower at Falls Park – by elevator, not the steps.  There were a lot more hills and steps to explore, and we didn’t want to incapacitate ourselves before we’d hardly begun!

We got home at 7:00 p.m.  It took me an hour and a half to get everything put away and a load of clothes put into the washer. 

This morning, I showered under a showerhead that worked better than any I’d used all week, shined the bathroom back up, played the piano for a while (I sure can tell it, when I haven’t played for almost a week!), and was soon sipping cold-brew coffee, blow-drying and curling my hair, listening to the Rural Radio news, and reading email and posts.

I finished the laundry and ordered groceries.  Flowers are popping up everywhere, shoving and elbowing their way through winter growth to reach for the sun.  Gotta start working in the flowerbeds soon!  I can usually wait until May; but not this year.  But first:  Joseph and Jocelyn’s quilt.  Jocelyn just got her citizenship!

Below is the marina at Lewis and Clark Lake near Yankton.

Amazingly, the half-gallon of milk we left in the refrigerator is still good.  I had raisin/date/walnut oatmeal with half a banana sliced into it for breakfast.

It wasn’t as fancy as some breakfasts I had last week, but it was private.  Privacy is nice.

Still, I’ve heard many interesting conversations in restaurants during this last week.  Sometimes people seem to be getting reacquainted after having lost touch for many years.  Some were old friends or old married couples.  Some were youngsters on a first date.

One woman was telling a man about her two sons, the youngest of whom is 30 and moved out of the house at age 18 – so she and her husband have had the house to themselves for 12 years.

“Is he married?” asked the man.

“No, but he has a girlfriend,” said the lady.  “She lives on a farm and is always willing to dig in and help, not afraid to get dirty.  She’s a sweetheart!”

The man made approving noises and allowed as how “Most mothers-in-law or mothers-in-law-to-be (actually, he said ‘mother-in-laws’, but I can’t bear to write that) (guess I just did, heh) don’t get along with daughters-in-law or future daughters-in-law.”  (He said ‘daughter-in-laws, of course.)

She quickly added, as if just remembering, “Oh, I love Chloe, too!  But she’s a city girl, you know.  Likes fancy teas and coffees.”

“Oh, I know that kind!” the man commiserated.

Hmmmph.  What’s wrong with fancy teas and coffees, I’d like to know, huh huh huh huh huh?!

Here’s a little squirrel I saw by Lake Winnebago.  He’s almost the same as ours... but not quite.  Color is different, tufts on ears are different.

Time to get busy with the Constellation quilt!

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