Sunday, October 23, 1994...Christmas Poetry

I have been working on the Christmas program. It must be done by the day after Thanksgiving, for that is when we have our first practice.

Here is a poem I wrote, most of which was taken from Isaiah 49:

Thou Redeemer of Israel,
So Holy, yet so hated;
A Light to all the Gentiles--
The Light so long awaited.

Before He was born,
He was mentioned by Name;
Formed from the womb
To be Servant, He came.

In His mouth, a sharp sword;
In His hand, a gold rod:
With oil of gladness
Is He anointed by God.

As a Root from dry ground
Before Him He’ll grow;
Sorrow and grief
He often shall know.

Though men so despised Him,
And nations abhorred Him,
Yet kings did arise,
And princes adored Him.

To the prisoner He saith,
Go forth! Thou art free!
And when thou art hungry,
He’ll surely feed thee.

He guides those that thirst
By the cool water springs;
To the afflicted and desolate
Salvation He brings.

Every valley He exalteth;
Through the mountains makes a way;
Behold the glory of God
Revealed as bright as day.

Sing and be joyful,
O heavens and earth;
Break forth into singing
At His miraculous birth!

Though having not seen Him,
We still dearly love
This same lowly Jesus
From heaven above.

With unspeakable joy
And glory untold,
We await His coming,
His dear face to behold!

This is the kind of a poem that takes me a while to write. Now, here is a poem that I can crank out as ‘slick as a tater’, as Larry says (this was for a friend of ours, who was having her 15th birthday):

When driving your car, and you plan to go far,
You really should know (you know it’s so)
Just where the cops are making their stops:
’Cause if you’re not cautious,
(The thought makes me nauseous)
You’ll surely get caught!
(And make your father distraught.)

Then they’ll haul you away to St. Vincent Millay,
Where nobody drives, and the pedestrian thrives,
’Cause kids of fifteen are neither heard nor seen.
They’ll give you a bicycle, (or even a tricycle)
And order you huffily to drive more cuffily!

So heed this warning every fine morning
When you rush out the door to go to the store
(Or even to school to learn many a rule):
Drive careful and prudent, you wild, wooly student!
And you might stay alive ’til age ninety and five!

As you can see, I do better in the ‘Dr. Suess’ mode.

Two weeks ago, on a warm, sunny day, I took the children’s Christmas pictures. We actually got a good one, too, if you discount the fact that the dog looks a bit disgusted with the whole rigmarole. And tomorrow they are having school pictures taken. Hester gets to go in the morning with the big kids (she usually goes in the afternoon), and she is just as excited over that, as she is over the picture-taking, I think.

I am now sewing Lydia’s Christmas dress, which is burgundy crushed velvet on the bodice, and the three-tiered skirt is black velvet with burgundy flowers and forest-green leaves, all outlined in gold sparkly thread. I hope I can sew it well enough to do justice to the beautiful fabric! It cost $18/yd. for the black velvet, and I used one yard. The burgundy velvet was a leftover piece from a jacket and vest I made myself when I was seventeen. So, even though the price of that black velvet was absolutely outrageous, it still turned out being mighty cheap for a velvet dress. I’m copying a dress which I saw in an expensive little catalog for $125. Yipe!

Last week two tornadoes touched down in Nebraska, destroying a barn, downing trees, and knocking out electricity here and there. Mighty strange, for October. Tonight we had a sudden cold, icy rainstorm. Now the temperature is dropping, so I expect the streets and sidewalks will be icy. The neighbors’ red maples are proving to be worthy of their name, and the oaks are all orange and gold. The kids gathered up a bag full, and we glued them on poster board (neon pink, and neon orange), along with several handfuls of small rocks and twigs. We outlined all this with locust shells, and then glued Dorcas’ bugs on strategic points across this whole artistic mess. I for one will be immensely relieved when we get these awful bugs out of our hair. Of course, Teddy will have to collect them next year. Bother.

Tonight we can hear the wild, haunting cry of Canada geese as they fly over, far up in the sky. The stars have come back out now, and everything smells crisp and fresh. Every now and then we catch glimpses of the white undersides of these big birds. Just imagine; they’re flying anywhere from 60 to 85 mph!

I got Keith and Teddy a new navy/multi-colored comforter with shams and decorator pillows to match for Christmas. We hope to get them a drawered pedestal for their waterbed, too. It seems like there are never enough closets, and never enough drawer space in this house. I also got a mauve/dusty rose, blue, and green comforter for Hannah and Dorcas. But the shams that matched it had only flat, mitered edges; and, further-more, they were $25 a piece. So I ordered a matching California-king sheet set, and made ruffled shams, several different decorator pillows, and a round ruffled table scarf out of this sheet set. I’ve been keeping it hidden in my sewing chair, and only sewing it after they go to bed, or when they are in school. One day I was frantically trying to finish a long ruffle, get it folded and hidden away before the girls came in, when in walked Hannah before I knew it!

So I said in alarm, “Oh!! What’s all over the back of your sleeve??!!” and she rushed off to look in the mirror.

By the time she came back, looking puzzled because she hadn’t found a thing on the back of her sleeve, the table scarf was long gone. hee hee

The other day after church, Lydia said to me in quite a horrified tone, “Mama! That little boy picks his nose and eats it!”

“Hmmm,” said I, “he ought to mind his manners.”

A bit later, she was playing with her doll. She made it put its hand up to its nose. Then, “Mind your nose!!” she admonished the hapless thing.

“Mind your manners,” I corrected her.

Said Lydia, “But I can’t say ‘manners’; it’s too hard for me to pronounce that word clearly!”, pronouncing each word distinctly, as clear as a bell.

Hester’s kindergarten teacher, Rebecca, told me that when the children all sit down on the floor to listen to her read a story, or to play with puzzles, or something of that sort, Rebecca suddenly hears Hester’s piping little voice saying, “I’m squished!” and she turns around to see Hester grinning, and all seven little boys trying to sit beside her. (There is only one other little girl in the class, and she is quite timid.)

Hester told me, “There are quite a few boys that I would like to marry; but I think I’ll wait and see how tall they get first.”

The last few Saturdays, Larry has been cutting and splitting wood. I wish it would hurry up and get cold enough that we could light the fire! I really like a fire blazing away on a frosty winter day.

Well, it is about time for me to go to bed, or I will have a terrible collision with myself getting back out of bed to fix breakfast. Wouldn’t that be awful?!

Tuesday, October 4, 1994...Word Processor

I am now the proud owner of a Word Processor! I’ve been having lots of fun playing with it and writing letters to everybody I could think of. It can justify the right margin ... and it even has a disk drive.

Last night Larry went to Denver to get a couple of smashed vehicles: an S-10 Blazer, and a Ford Windstar. He is now almost home, and it is 1:30 a.m. I just talked to him on his new cellular phone. Now, that’s a marvelous invention: when you are worried that your husband is falling asleep after driving too long, you now have options other than lying awake worrying: you can call him on his mobile phone and wake him up when he’s just decided to have a short nap at a roadside rest area. Or you can wake him up when he’s just begun napping at the wheel, making him jump out of his livin’ hide and drive promptly into the ditch. So you can see it is a very handy device.

I just cut out Hester’s Christmas dress. The top is dark blue crushed velvet, and the three-tiered skirt is a lavender/blue/periwinkle floral taffeta. If I’d quit playing with my word processor, I just might get it sewn!

I finally got done with my last roll of film from our vacation and had it developed. I accidentally got double prints. I'm looking at them, remembering some things about that vacation that I'd forgotten.

Here's Bugaboo Point. There is a Blazer up there at the base of the point, and that tiny black dot to the left of the vehicle is a black lab! Aleutia must have telescopic vision, because she suddenly spotted that dog, although it was nothing more than a speck, and she began huffing and snorting, making all the kids laugh.

We drove down into Flaming Gorge. The children all wanted to take the runaway ramp, just for the fun of it, but for once their father was not game. There was a big pasture full of mules next to a lake. Could you guess the name? No? But, of course!--it was Brayer Lake!
Caleb is learning to pull himself to a standing position. He'll be walking soon!

Teddy caught a baby mouse. It toddled from hand to hand, trying to escape, and finally it laid its little ears back, squinted, and tried to sink its baby teeth into Teddy’s finger, which ticked and made him laugh.

Well, everybody’s stomachs are rubbing their backbones, so I’d better go stir up some grub.

There are three reasons why there are no pictures of me from our vacation:

I am as finicky as a cat with an ulcer over this state-of-the-art camera of mine, and I hand it over only to Larry, and that with reluctance, although I know perfectly well he is every bit as careful as I am, and sometimes even more so.

I brought along my tripod, so as to take pictures of all of us together in front of a piece of magnificent scenery; but, the truth of the matter is, . . . I forgot.

And, last, but not least, is the small matter of my nonphotogenicality. (That’s not in Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, but it certainly ought to be, and if he’d have seen my picture, he’d’ve no doubt thought of it.) I don’t mind if I am ugly; I just don’t want to look uglier than I really am!

In my wallet, my driver’s license, with a picture of me that looks as if I’m dying of anorexia, and plenty mad about it, too, is directly across from an adorable picture of all the children. Thus, when I must show my license, as identification, I can see the disconcerted look on the face of the cashier:

“How did that poor woman produce such cute kids!”

And then they get a comprehending expression, and look hopefully behind me to see the husband that surely must be the most handsome devil around, in order to cancel out all those ugly genes which I donated.

Well, as Eeyore said, “We can’t all, and some of us don’t.” Anyway, if anybody ever takes a picture of me that even vaguely resembles me, I’ll be sure to send you a copy. In the meantime, … >>>>>>>>