Friday we received a box from Larry's aunt full of small presents for the children. We’ve had chickens squawking around, laying eggs and getting their tail feathers stepped on (that’s what it sounds like, anyway, what with all the squeak toys), ever since the package arrived. The littles were pleased with their puppets, and Hester was intrigued with the older children’s bookmarks, since a boy in her class had made her the neatest little wooden flower press, and she’d been wondering what in the world ‘squished’ flowers would look like. The bookmarks were promptly put to good use in new books just received for Christmas.
Last Sunday night during church we had a freezing drizzle, which made the sidewalks and streets positively treacherous. Fortunately, all our friends made it home safely. Larry, of course, immediately thought of something he badly needed at the grocery store--ice cream, of all things. So he and Hannah went off to get it. Arriving home a little later, he said he didn’t think he’d ever driven on roads so slick. He’d even bumped the curb once, an unheard-of occurrence, for him. We, of course, will not soon let him forget that.
We heard, via our scanner, of many car wrecks all over town, and there were even reports of people falling and getting hurt.
One evening, Caleb was eating a slice of ham. He pulled off the edge, and ate it.
“I ate the crust right off my ham!” he remarked.
Later, he was dipping a carrot into the vegetable dip. Hannah, evidently feeling mischievous, quickly gave his hand a small push, causing him to get a bit of dip on his thumb. Caleb was amazed. This sister of his is usually so helpful!
“Hannah!”
He licked off his thumb, and sat crunching his carrot, smiling at her, until she, unsuspectingly, dipped her carrot.
Quicker’n a wink, SQUISH! He pushed her hand down suddenly until every single knuckle was covered with dip.
Hannah was amazed. “Caleb!” she gasped.
He giggled.
Joseph came into the room just then.
“Look what Caleb did to me!” exclaimed Hannah, holding out her hand for Joseph to see.
Joseph, surprised, asked Caleb, “Why’d you do that?”
Caleb answered in typical four-year-old non sequitur, “Because she was dipping her carrot.”
Hannah laughed. “Why else?” she asked her little brother.
Caleb, of course, then realized what the correct reply was. In triumphant tone, he replied, “Because she did it to me!!”
Everybody went on munching their carrots.
Then, smiling at his sister, Caleb told her, “I like you, Hannah!--you’re lots of fun!”
The first several days this week were spent in intense cleaning of the house. By the time the Jackson/Jenkinson/Wright/Fricke/Haddock tribe arrived, everything was neatly in place, glistening brightly. But let me tell you this: Scrub-Free ... isn’t.
The house still looks remarkably shiny, but there is quite a clutter of new stuff and things everywhere you look.
Monday night we had our last Christmas practice. Larry intended to return to the shop later to finish painting the red and white crewcab, but he got the flu. So, the next day, when the man who’d bought it was ready to go to Florida, the crewcab wasn’t quite done. The man didn’t mind, since that gave Larry time to do a few more things the man would’ve liked done; but we minded, because the man won’t be back until the end of January, and we won’t get our money until then. Too bad; we certainly could’ve used it.
Tuesday we went to Omaha to get Joseph some new glasses; his old ones were quite worn out. Also, he needed a new prescription. The doctor there at Lens Crafters gave him a checkup, and discovered his old glasses were two points too strong for him, meaning his eyes have improved. Far-sighted children often continue to see an improvement in their eyesight until well into their teens; Hannah’s eyes have improved quite a bit, also.
Later that evening, Joseph had a headache and was dizzy; fortunately, he’d gotten used to the new glasses by the next day.
Lens Crafters makes glasses in an hour; so, while they were being made, we wandered around the enormous mall, rode the elevator up to the atrium, and ordered food from Arby’s in the food court.
Going back downstairs, we met up with my nephew and his little boy. It always makes me feel surprised when we meet friends in those giant labyrinths; but it seems like that happens nearly every time we’re there.
We watched a man air-painting T-shirts, which he did lickety-split and with great skill.
There doesn’t seem to be much in the mall that we can afford to buy. So, after getting the glasses, we departed, having a great deal of trouble just getting out of the parking lot, due to the volume of people and vehicles.
Rounding the end of one aisle, we met up with an old dilapidated jalopy, full of people, trying to back out, and having the devil’s own time doing so. The brakes seemed to be hair-triggered, along with the accelerator, while the steering seemed to be non-existent. Or maybe the driver had never driven before.
They jerked backward in fits and starts, with the driver cranking on the wheel with all his might and main, nearly bashing in the sides of the cars beside them, periodically jamming on the brakes with such force that their old boat rocked violently to and fro. Finally finding himself in the aisle, the driver put the vehicle in drive, whereupon it took a sudden wild leap directly toward us, causing Larry to shift posthaste into reverse.
Larry, meanwhile, was keeping us all entertained with his running commentary.
Zooming backwards, he exclaimed, “Woooo, man! Don’t you worry none, man! We’s a-gettin’ right outa yo’ way, man!”
I tell you, he sounded so utterly hilarious, I laughed till the tears ran down my face.
Leaving Omaha, we traveled to Fremont, where we hunted fruitlessly in Payless and Wal-Mart for new red shoes for Lydia. She wound up wearing some hand-me-downs which had been through five little girls before her. Oh, well; they still looked cute, all shiny red with little bows on the toes.
At Wal-Mart, we got, among other things, two 50-gallon Rubbermaid bins with big lids for some of the children’s too-small clothes which the littler ones haven’t yet grown into. We mustn’t get rid of them, you know, because we’ll need them before we know it. But, mercy!--this house is full! Larry got a couple of racks on wheels on which we are able to hang a lot of clothes, which will help the general state of several of our too-crammed closets. We slide these racks between the permanent long rods Larry put up in the ‘shelf room’ downstairs; then, when we need to walk between the rods full of clothes, we can simply roll the racks out of the way. One way or a-tuther, we’ll fit ourselves (and all our mountains of stuff) into this house!
A friend of ours works at a place where they all wear identical shirts. These shirts are regularly sent off to the cleaners, then returned with new hangers, which the workers are welcome to keep. But most of them toss the hangers into a pile to be discarded of. So, our friend collects sacks full of them for us every now and then. Our hangers do not seem to have the same prowess of Erma Bombeck’s, which multiplied celeritously every time she closed the closet door.
Another thing we got at Wal-Mart was a set of ping-pong paddles and balls. Thursday evening when the Jackson bunch congregated, Larry backed the vehicles out of the garage and set up our ping pong table. Someone else brought their ping pong table, too, so a couple of rip-roaring ping pong games were going on most all evening.
After everybody departed, Larry and I played ping-pong with the children; and after sending them to bed, Larry and I had several fierce duels with each other. I actually beat him!--twice! (I’m not telling how many times he beat me.)
At the Fremont Wal-Mart, I met a woman, with her husband, with whom I’d gone to school, and whom I had not seen for twenty years. We had quite a nice visit.
On the way home, we were admiring Christmas decorations.
Caleb, sitting beside me, abruptly pointed at a brightly-lit house, exclaiming, “Look at that--”
––and right that minute, somebody turned all the lights off.
“Aaaaa!” I cried. “You pointed those lights right off!”
Of course, all the rest of the way home, he pointed vigorously at every lit house we came to, trying to prove he hadn’t caused those lights to go off.
“You missed them,” I explained. “Somewhere, up on that hill behind them, some people are scurrying around their house, trying to figure out why their lights went off!!”
“Hee hee hee,” giggled Caleb.
Tuesday night I made the program copies, about 125 of them. It takes longer than you’d think, trying to fit it all on the page just right. I didn’t get it even, either.
Victoria is crawling like a trooper. She sallied under the piano, turned around to see where everybody was, but didn’t see anyone; so she yelled, “HEY!” She’s a vocal one, all right.
On Christmas eve, it snowed several inches, just right to make everything look Christmasy and pretty. The program was Wednesday night; it lasted an hour and thirty-five minutes. I find it difficult to keep it short enough, there are so many children. It all went well, and the audience seemed to enjoy it. Afterwards, the young people passed out all the presents, which takes an awfully long time, there are so many.
After coming home from the program, Caleb was playing with a new little car. The motor made noise, but the wheels wouldn’t turn.
“That’s because it’s in neutral,” explained Caleb.
We usually have a get-together with my side of the family after the program; but there are five new babies in the family, and my brother is not a late-night person; so we re-scheduled for Friday night. But we let the children (our children, that is) open their presents from us Wednesday night.
Larry gave me my favorite present of all--an electric blanket. It has dual controls, and sensors here and there to detect if your feet, for example, are cold, whereupon it sends more warmth to that area. It’s light blue, and soft as a cloud. Sure and wouldn’t you know it, we got the controls switched around; so the first night when we climbed into bed, Larry’s side was piping hot, which he positively does not need; and my side was still cold.
One of the funniest Christmas presents we have in the house is Joseph’s new watch/virtual pet, which Larry and I gave him. It started out a puppy, and only his face could be seen on the liquid crystal display screen. But after a couple of days, during which Joseph cared for it diligently, the pup turned a year old, gained several pounds, and, much to our surprise, turned from only the head of the pup to the entire dog. He now paces back and forth across the screen, unless he’s sleeping, tail a-wag.
Joseph, after going to bed very late Christmas Eve, was awakened by his pup crying in the middle of the night--it needed to 'go out'. Joseph pushed the proper buttons to let it ‘out’, whereupon it did its duty. A small ‘mess’ appeared in the corner, steam marks and all; and Joseph was required to ‘clean’ it up before the watch would quit beeping and let him go back to sleep.
Saturday night Joseph slept through the puppy’s ‘crying’, and, by Sunday morning, the poor little critter had lost 25 kilograms! The dog must be played with periodically--there are several games which can be played--or the row of hearts on one particular screen start to empty, showing that the poor thing isn’t being properly loved. Also, he must be fed, watered, and given treats occasionally. Today Teddy gave him three milk bones and six pieces of jerky, after which the pitiable thing suddenly made an awful face, opened his mouth wide, and threw up. Joseph not only had to clean that up, but he also had to give it medicine, which is administered with a syringe. Doggy was really sick. (But he did gain three pounds.)
Sometimes Joseph tries to give it dog food when Pooch isn’t hungry; the creature turns his back to the bowl and shakes his head. After staying awake, with a short nap sometimes, for about twelve hours, the virtual canine retires to his dog house, where a ‘Z’ is soon issuing from the peak. He stays there overnight (unless he gets sick or something), for about twelve hours.
Joseph is now trying to teach Puppy Dear to sit. Sometimes he obeys; sometimes he doesn’t. But he’s definitely getting better! We have all found this positively intriguing. I’ve even offered to dogsit for Rover when Joseph returns to school next Monday.
Have I taken leave of my senses??
Christmas day, we had our usual dinner at church. Just as soon as people are done eating, I like to take pictures, which I then give them next Christmas. I took several rolls, mostly of the children, and I got oodles of cute photos.
In spite of giving us that stove, Lawrence and Norma gave me two albums and six rolls of Fuji film; and they gave Larry a 30-piece set of Craftsman screwdrivers. They gave Hester and Lydia beautiful porcelain dolls, and they gave clothes to most of the other children. And to Teddy (!)--they gave a 16-inch scroll saw! He’s tickled pink. He’s already carved Caleb a name plaque, and is working on one for himself.
My sister and her husband gave Hester a tape player, and Lydia a little ornate bench, chair, and table for her dolls. They gave Victoria several dresses, a robe, and a little white hat with marabou around the brim. She looks like a little dolly in it.
When we went to my mother’s house to exchange gifts, Victoria was very sleepy.
I opened up a package with two quilted bibs in it, and she said gladly, “Bankie!” (blanket)
She snatched one, rubbed it on her cheek, and promptly fell sound asleep, sitting bolt upright. She was ten months old on the 24th; isn’t that hard to believe?
Saturday afternoon we went to Wal-Mart looking for after-Christmas bargains, but the shelves were nearly bare. Leaving empty-handed, we headed for Walgreens. I found a shelf full of little Christmas ornaments and key rings, with characters such as Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, etc., for half price. We bought a whole bag full for the children to give their friends next Christmas. We’d just about decided there were no wrapping paper nor Christmas cards, when Dorcas found it, high on a shelf, nearly out of sight. It was all half price. I filled the cart clear full.
Tonight we are going to Grand Island to look at some elaborate Christmas displays before they take them all down. So I’d better get myself in gear! It’s suppertime, and Victoria is probably awake by now.
Monday, December 29, 1997
Sunday, December 21, 1997
Sunday, December 21, 1997...Christmas Time's A-Comin'
Well, in between coping with the December flu and cold bugs, we’ve managed to finish the necessary Christmas sewing, shopping, and wrapping. The house cleaning is progressing somewhat slowly, since several audacious members of this household have the offensive habit of cluttering those areas which have been recently tidied. Also, they refuse to run around in their skin until Christmas, so as to cut down on the laundry. (Well, I thought it sounded like a good idea.)
Furthermore, they expect the same amount of food--if not more--as usual, regardless of whether or not I think I have time to cook it. Why can’t everybody put all their necessities on hold until I get done with all my necessities?!
Oh, I don’t really feel that way. I still like all these people in this house pretty well, even if they do eat bushels of food every day. Even if they do wear heaps of clothes every day. Even if they do need help with their homework every day.
That’s another thing: it seems to me that accumulations in the children’s homework have a direct correlation to increases in my homework--so I wind up helping them, rather than the other way around.
First, Hannah, having missed several days of school, needed help with a composition to be comprised of their recent vocabulary words. The teacher told them they could put it in poetry form if they liked. As they say in Ireland, that’s right up my street; so I stopped with the dusting and got on with the rhyming.
The following day, Keith, having seen Hannah’s poem, pulled out his list of vocabulary words, which was even more difficult than Hannah’s, held it in front of my nose, and made a sad Cocker Spaniel face.
“Oh, all right,” I said, and snatched it out of his hand.
After all, he is rather swamped with his last few Accounting workbooks, which must be done by January 7, when he graduates.
Anyway, I done ’em. And I’m so proud of myself, I’ll print them here for you. Here is Hannah’s:
Marching to School
Marching to school in vivacious manner,
Holding aloft the didactic banner,
I find myself preoccupied
With a dilemma that has me horrified.
Of paramount concern, you see,
Is my impending jeopardy
In the inherently cruel and hard
Exam on Sir Girard.
Though diligently the facts I glean,
Deploring his doleful mien,
I know my teacher accentuates
The details my brain eradicates.
For with an adeptness quite expected
My teacher, so respected,
Appraises my head’s grayish fluff
To be sure the test is hard enough.
With inveterate courage I pick up my pen,
To write about places and races and men;
The exercise I can’t disparage;
It gives me a great advantage!
The implicit function of all this testing,
Although infringing upon my resting,
Is that I might more magnanimous be,
Noble in mind and conscience-free!
Here is Keith’s:
A Collection of Wits
Collecting my wits, I tackle with gravity
A task I must not approach with levity;
For my inestimable teacher did this week assign
A truculent toil (of which I won’t whine).
Although sorely subjugated by this chore,
I refuse to be annihilated in the war;
So, pitching a bivouac and digging in tight,
I attempt to alleviate my bogged-down plight.
With sharpened acumen, and pencil tip, too,
I aggravate friends and make enemies anew;
My neighbors who sit in nearest proximity
Feel the effects of impending antiquity.
My loquacious manner, which vexes my pals,
Makes taciturn mollusks amend their locales;
Fearing reprisal, should my good grades languish,
I assuage the inevitable, which lessens my anguish.
With diurnal diligence and industry unflagging,
I work till my eyelids with fatigue are a-sagging;
The literary atrocities I often make
Will not with impunity produce a mistake.
Becoming nocturnal before this job’s done,
Nevertheless, it’s been lots of fun;
But if this assignment should come through again,
Think it not strange if my brain’s in a spin!
Tuesday evening we were driving along, looking at Christmas decorations. I made a derogatory remark about Santa Claus; Larry then made a disparaging remark about Rudolph. Caleb peered gravely out the window.
“We need to field dress him,” he said seriously.
One of my nephews once informed a kindergarten classmate that Santa Claus was not real--whereupon she promptly slapped him good and proper.
One day I sent Dorcas into my closet for two of Caleb’s toys which needed to be wrapped. She came back out--with two white boxes which contained her own two presents--a porcelain boy and girl in Americana attire, the boy with a baseball cap, leather mitt and ball--which I’d gotten last spring and had long forgotten. Luckily, she didn’t look.
Lawrence and Norma have already given us our Christmas present--and guess what it is? A stove! With a wonderful convection oven in which one can bake six trays of cookies at once! A fan circulates the air to ensure even baking. We baked two giant trays of apple flautas Wednesday, and every last flauta baked golden brown and perfect--an impossible feat in my old oven. Thursday we baked a large frozen ham--a Christmas gift from one of our customers--using the oven’s probe. On the liquid crystal display panel, the meat’s interior temperature is displayed. When it arrives at the desired temperature, which you preset, it beeps and turns off. The range top is flat glass. The large burner can be switched to ‘small’, and between the two burners on the left is a ‘bridge’ burner, which makes our griddle cook perfectly even. When the burner on the right is left on the ‘large’ setting, and the back burner turned on, our other griddle heats evenly, too.
Quite a wonderful Christmas present, don’t you think?
Victoria is crawling more and more. She likes to turn off lights.
We howl, “Hey! Don’t turn off those lights!”
She squeals--and turns them off again.
We cry, “Hey! Did you turn off those lights?!”
We tire of the game long before she does.
One day she flipped the switch down again, looked around smiling--but we were all busy doing something else.
So she yelled, “Hey! Doo toon off ’ights?!”
Friday afternoon I took pictures of some friends' well-loved dog. They didn’t turn out too badly, although the dog was quite timid about having his picture taken. Dogs can tell when a person likes them, however; and that helps immensely. The lady wanted to give her husband an 8x10 portrait of the dog for Christmas.
That night after Christmas practice, and after everybody else went to bed, Hannah and I went shopping at Wal-Mart for the rest of our presents. I got Larry a gold Elgin watch and a chrome Cross pen to replace one he once received from my sister and her husband which got accidentally flushed down the loo, a decidedly disheartening development. I also got him a Parker, teal and silver. He likes nice pens.
You know what? It takes a long time to wrap lots of presents!
I got Joseph an autograph album with a picture of Golden Retriever puppies on the front. Still in good rhyming form, I wrote the following into the album:
Life’s Long Journey
Throughout life’s long journey,
And wherever you go,
May you hold fast to Jesus,
Who loves you so.
May you know you’ve a mother
Who oft breathes a prayer
That you might be kept
In the Lord’s tender care.
Let this mind be in you,
To be loving and kind;
Always caring for others,
That their needs you might find.
May you rejoice in the Lord;
May you shine as a light;
Counting all things but loss
For the excellency of right.
Whatever is pure,
And honest and true,
Think on these things;
And those things, do.
For then you’ll be happy,
And the Lord will be near;
He’ll supply all your need,
And your prayer He will hear!
Last night Larry cut the boys’ hair. Clip clip, buzz buzz ---
“Ooops!” said Larry to Teddy, having cut around his ear, ”I just gave you a ’97 Dodge wheel well!” to which Teddy replied with a resigned shrug, “As long as it’s not an Edsel,” and Caleb asked, “Who’s him?”
“He,” I amended.
Caleb raised his eyebrows. “Teddy’s not a he?”
Confusinger and confusinger.
Later, I took a good look at a small mole under Joseph’s ear.
Joseph asked, “Are all moles bad?”
All eyes rolled expectantly my direction.
So as not to disappoint them, I answered, “It all depends on how much of your lawn they tear up.”
I had some pictures of Victoria printed. When she saw one with her tongue out, she laughed and squealed--and stuck her tongue out.
I hope you have an enjoyable Christmas!
Furthermore, they expect the same amount of food--if not more--as usual, regardless of whether or not I think I have time to cook it. Why can’t everybody put all their necessities on hold until I get done with all my necessities?!
Oh, I don’t really feel that way. I still like all these people in this house pretty well, even if they do eat bushels of food every day. Even if they do wear heaps of clothes every day. Even if they do need help with their homework every day.
That’s another thing: it seems to me that accumulations in the children’s homework have a direct correlation to increases in my homework--so I wind up helping them, rather than the other way around.
First, Hannah, having missed several days of school, needed help with a composition to be comprised of their recent vocabulary words. The teacher told them they could put it in poetry form if they liked. As they say in Ireland, that’s right up my street; so I stopped with the dusting and got on with the rhyming.
The following day, Keith, having seen Hannah’s poem, pulled out his list of vocabulary words, which was even more difficult than Hannah’s, held it in front of my nose, and made a sad Cocker Spaniel face.
“Oh, all right,” I said, and snatched it out of his hand.
After all, he is rather swamped with his last few Accounting workbooks, which must be done by January 7, when he graduates.
Anyway, I done ’em. And I’m so proud of myself, I’ll print them here for you. Here is Hannah’s:
Marching to School
Marching to school in vivacious manner,
Holding aloft the didactic banner,
I find myself preoccupied
With a dilemma that has me horrified.
Of paramount concern, you see,
Is my impending jeopardy
In the inherently cruel and hard
Exam on Sir Girard.
Though diligently the facts I glean,
Deploring his doleful mien,
I know my teacher accentuates
The details my brain eradicates.
For with an adeptness quite expected
My teacher, so respected,
Appraises my head’s grayish fluff
To be sure the test is hard enough.
With inveterate courage I pick up my pen,
To write about places and races and men;
The exercise I can’t disparage;
It gives me a great advantage!
The implicit function of all this testing,
Although infringing upon my resting,
Is that I might more magnanimous be,
Noble in mind and conscience-free!
Here is Keith’s:
A Collection of Wits
Collecting my wits, I tackle with gravity
A task I must not approach with levity;
For my inestimable teacher did this week assign
A truculent toil (of which I won’t whine).
Although sorely subjugated by this chore,
I refuse to be annihilated in the war;
So, pitching a bivouac and digging in tight,
I attempt to alleviate my bogged-down plight.
With sharpened acumen, and pencil tip, too,
I aggravate friends and make enemies anew;
My neighbors who sit in nearest proximity
Feel the effects of impending antiquity.
My loquacious manner, which vexes my pals,
Makes taciturn mollusks amend their locales;
Fearing reprisal, should my good grades languish,
I assuage the inevitable, which lessens my anguish.
With diurnal diligence and industry unflagging,
I work till my eyelids with fatigue are a-sagging;
The literary atrocities I often make
Will not with impunity produce a mistake.
Becoming nocturnal before this job’s done,
Nevertheless, it’s been lots of fun;
But if this assignment should come through again,
Think it not strange if my brain’s in a spin!
Tuesday evening we were driving along, looking at Christmas decorations. I made a derogatory remark about Santa Claus; Larry then made a disparaging remark about Rudolph. Caleb peered gravely out the window.
“We need to field dress him,” he said seriously.
One of my nephews once informed a kindergarten classmate that Santa Claus was not real--whereupon she promptly slapped him good and proper.
One day I sent Dorcas into my closet for two of Caleb’s toys which needed to be wrapped. She came back out--with two white boxes which contained her own two presents--a porcelain boy and girl in Americana attire, the boy with a baseball cap, leather mitt and ball--which I’d gotten last spring and had long forgotten. Luckily, she didn’t look.
Lawrence and Norma have already given us our Christmas present--and guess what it is? A stove! With a wonderful convection oven in which one can bake six trays of cookies at once! A fan circulates the air to ensure even baking. We baked two giant trays of apple flautas Wednesday, and every last flauta baked golden brown and perfect--an impossible feat in my old oven. Thursday we baked a large frozen ham--a Christmas gift from one of our customers--using the oven’s probe. On the liquid crystal display panel, the meat’s interior temperature is displayed. When it arrives at the desired temperature, which you preset, it beeps and turns off. The range top is flat glass. The large burner can be switched to ‘small’, and between the two burners on the left is a ‘bridge’ burner, which makes our griddle cook perfectly even. When the burner on the right is left on the ‘large’ setting, and the back burner turned on, our other griddle heats evenly, too.
Quite a wonderful Christmas present, don’t you think?
Victoria is crawling more and more. She likes to turn off lights.
We howl, “Hey! Don’t turn off those lights!”
She squeals--and turns them off again.
We cry, “Hey! Did you turn off those lights?!”
We tire of the game long before she does.
One day she flipped the switch down again, looked around smiling--but we were all busy doing something else.
So she yelled, “Hey! Doo toon off ’ights?!”
Friday afternoon I took pictures of some friends' well-loved dog. They didn’t turn out too badly, although the dog was quite timid about having his picture taken. Dogs can tell when a person likes them, however; and that helps immensely. The lady wanted to give her husband an 8x10 portrait of the dog for Christmas.
That night after Christmas practice, and after everybody else went to bed, Hannah and I went shopping at Wal-Mart for the rest of our presents. I got Larry a gold Elgin watch and a chrome Cross pen to replace one he once received from my sister and her husband which got accidentally flushed down the loo, a decidedly disheartening development. I also got him a Parker, teal and silver. He likes nice pens.
You know what? It takes a long time to wrap lots of presents!
I got Joseph an autograph album with a picture of Golden Retriever puppies on the front. Still in good rhyming form, I wrote the following into the album:
Life’s Long Journey
Throughout life’s long journey,
And wherever you go,
May you hold fast to Jesus,
Who loves you so.
May you know you’ve a mother
Who oft breathes a prayer
That you might be kept
In the Lord’s tender care.
Let this mind be in you,
To be loving and kind;
Always caring for others,
That their needs you might find.
May you rejoice in the Lord;
May you shine as a light;
Counting all things but loss
For the excellency of right.
Whatever is pure,
And honest and true,
Think on these things;
And those things, do.
For then you’ll be happy,
And the Lord will be near;
He’ll supply all your need,
And your prayer He will hear!
Last night Larry cut the boys’ hair. Clip clip, buzz buzz ---
“Ooops!” said Larry to Teddy, having cut around his ear, ”I just gave you a ’97 Dodge wheel well!” to which Teddy replied with a resigned shrug, “As long as it’s not an Edsel,” and Caleb asked, “Who’s him?”
“He,” I amended.
Caleb raised his eyebrows. “Teddy’s not a he?”
Confusinger and confusinger.
Later, I took a good look at a small mole under Joseph’s ear.
Joseph asked, “Are all moles bad?”
All eyes rolled expectantly my direction.
So as not to disappoint them, I answered, “It all depends on how much of your lawn they tear up.”
I had some pictures of Victoria printed. When she saw one with her tongue out, she laughed and squealed--and stuck her tongue out.
I hope you have an enjoyable Christmas!
Sunday, December 14, 1997
Sunday, December 14, 1997...Shopping & Wrapping
Last week a friend of ours gave the little girls an early Christmas present--a big Christmas activity book. They promptly used one of the book’s recipes to make cookies with some animal cookie cutters of Hannah’s, and iced them with colored, almond-flavored frosting. On the other side of the table sat Caleb, painting with tempera paints. By the time the cookies and the paintings were done, Caleb’s face and shirt looked every bit as fancy as the girls’ cookies.
Next, they followed the directions for making a large card for Lawrence
Joseph won the geography bee at school, receiving a medal and a certificate for his efforts. He has taken a written test to determine if he is eligible for the state contest.
“Staw!” she exclaims.
Wednesday we went to Wal-Mart and got some presents for my mother to give the children. It’s gotten to be a tradition, I think--every year they look forward to new pajamas or nightgowns from Grandma Swiney. I got printed flannel pajamas for Keith and Teddy, knit pajamas with ‘Green Bay Packers’ on the front for Joseph, a sleeper for Caleb with a big Dalmation on the front and separate ‘paw’ footies, soft plaid ruffly nightgowns for Hester and Lydia, Lydia’s with teddy bears printed on it, and sweatshirt-type nightgowns for Hannah and Dorcas. On the front are Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet appliques. Dorcas’ says, ‘You make me feel cuddly.’ Hannah’s says, ‘You’re All Heart.’ For Victoria, who has enough sleepers, I got a pink sweater with an attached vest. There are furry white kittens appliqued on both side fronts of the sweater, and a bigger kitten in the middle front of the vest. It’s so cute.
Mama was pleased with all the purchases.
Shortly after arriving home, we heard on our scanner that somebody had hit a deer, so we decided to try our luck at getting this one. And we got it. It was a very small one, a ‘button’ buck. We wound up with one rump roast. We had it for supper the next night, and it was very good. I, however, had a bad case of Turned Stomach from the knowledge of the circumstances of said roast; so, after a couple of bites, I unobtrusively slid the rest of my piece onto the plates beside me.
After sending the children off to bed Wednesday night, Larry helped me carry the four boxes of Christmas notebooks from the church music room into the school library, where I spread them out all over the tables so I could put the ‘inserts’ in them--the papers telling the children whose poem or verses comes when, and what song goes where. Larry then went off to the shop to paint a vehicle…without telling me he’d locked the school doors from the outside. I started the copier going, then decided I had just enough time to run home and get my industrial-strength three-hole paper punch and some tape.
Leaving the keys on a table, I trotted out the door. It swung shut gently behind me.
And then I heard that ominous ‘click’---as it locked itself.
Now what would I do? I was locked out. It was 1:30 A.M. All the other people who have keys were sound asleep. All the doors have dead bolts. The windows have special tamper-resistant locks. And our other set of keys had been lost for a millennium or more.
I debated creeping into my mother’s house to get her keys, but I was afraid she’d wake up, hear me, and have a heart attack or something. I hunted through all the coat pockets for the second set of keys. Nothing.
I called Larry, who came home from the shop to help me look for them, or hunt for an unlocked window. Finally, some forty minutes later, Larry found them: they were in an old coat of Teddy’s which was hanging on a peg in the garage.
So, after a lengthy delay, I was back in business. Larry finished painting long before I finished with the inserts, so he came to the school, made a pillow of his coat, stretched out on the carpet, and went sound asleep. I got done shortly after 6:00 A.M. We put the notebooks away and rushed home before some early-arriving teacher found us still there.
Whew! I tell you, it takes some mighty fast sleeping to get enough, after using up that much of the night.
Thursday evening Barbara (Lawrence Lawrence Victoria
Hannah is now crocheting a white/pastel vest for Hester for Easter. Dorcas finished the little girls’ collars and started a cadet blue/mauve afghan for her teacher. I finished Lydia
I typed up the program, and it is ready to print onto the pretty program papers we pass out to the audience. Bookwork took up a good part of one day, and it likely will tomorrow, too.
Another dozen presents are wrapped, and I’ve only got about a dozen more to go. When each of nine children give gifts to about a dozen children their age, and Larry and I give gifts to each of our friends, and I give each of the children in Jr. Choir a present, and then we add in all the relatives, that constitutes a lengthy list! But it’s fun.
Many gifts are well under $1, which is how we manage to include so many people. I ordered click-pencils, lead refills, and retractable ‘Uni-Gel’ pens for all the boys in my Jr. Choir. I got them from ‘Reliable Office Source’ magazine, where, because we own a business, we get a substantial discount. And when one orders in quantity, the discount increases. So I paid about $1.50 for each pencil/refill tube/pen gift. And, judging by how well Teddy and Joseph like such things, I think those boys will also like them.
Christmas practice went well Friday night, but I’m a little worried about the length of it; it took over two hours to get through it. Of course, we went over many of the songs more than once, and I had some of the smaller children say their poems twice. One and a half hours, I think, is plenty long for a Christmas program. I hope it’s not much longer than that--everybody will start helping themselves to the sacks of nuts and candy and apples and oranges waiting to be passed out at the back of the church!
Now I’d better finish Hester’s dress. Next, I’d better clean this messy house--we’ve invited the Jackson/Fricke/Jenkinson/Wright/Haddock tribe to come exchange gifts Christmas evening after our church dinner. And it looks like I’m going to need a bulldozer, or, at the very least, a front-end loader, to get this place cleared out.
Monday, December 8, 1997
Monday, December 8, 1997...Christmas Lights
Lydia’s dress is now done; Hannah finished her sparkly crocheted rose and leaf appliques; and I sewed them on. That done, everybody dressed in their best Christmas duds and, yesterday afternoon, I took the Christmas pictures. We rushed them off to the one-hour developing center at Wal-Mart. Now we’ve chosen our favorite and will order the reprints and enlargements tomorrow. That’s one of my favorite Christmas jobs. Trouble is, we need more wall space on which to hang all these 11x14’s!
At the end of the photography session, Teddy, rubbing at his cheeks, queried, “Have we smiled the clouds away yet?” (Those are the words of a dumb song of which I am not particularly fond, which he well knows.)
Saturday I started sewing Hester and Lydia’s Christmas dinner dresses; they are about half done, so I’m hopeful I’ll be able to complete everything, after all. Two days last week were taken up doing bookwork, and one afternoon we took Hannah and Joseph to the doctor. They both had acquired bad colds, and every time Hannah gets a cold, it triggers a bout with asthma. They are still under the weather, and seberal ub da rest ub us are in barious stages ub da same code, I think.
Tuesday morning, Larry left for Guthrie, Oklahoma, where he got a pickup for one of our customers. (Or, as Caleb said, “He picked up a pickup! He’s pickin’ up a pickinup! Pickin’ a pickup up! hahahahahaha”)
At 1:30 A.M. Wednesday morning, I called him on his cellular phone to inform him that I80 and other secondary roads in southeast Nebraska were totally ice-covered, and semis were littering the ditches, and several were tipped over. He was just approaching Concordia, Kansas, and it was sleeting and the roads were getting slick. But the crewcab is sure-footed, especially so because it is a dually, and that big loaded trailer gave it even more traction. When Larry arrived home about 6:00 A.M., he said he had seen many cars and trucks slipping and sliding all over the road; but his rig never skidded once.
Tuesday Keith put our Christmas lights up on the eaves, porch railing, and around the door frame and garage door of our house. He even put lights on our little blue spruce in the front yard. It looks quite cute.
Friday we scooted furniture around, scratched our heads, scooted furniture this way and that, scratched our heads, scooted it back again, (on and on, ad infinitum), until finally we put the big chair in the front hallway, where it fits just fine if you don’t mind barking your shins on it every time you come around the corner and forget it’s there. We put the love seat in the corner beside the hearth, where it works just fine as long as you’re an amputee (or less than four feet tall); and we slid the smaller computer desk farther into the corner, where it functions just fine so long as you didn’t put something you needed into the now-covered-up cubbyhole on the side of it. By the end of this exercise, we had turned up a small gap in furniture right in front of the window.
Deeming this gap wide enough, we snatched up our Christmas tree and ran headlong into the living room, where we set it up as fast as ever we could, before the over-abundance of furniture began encroaching upon our designated tree location. I’m telling you, we have enough stuff in this house to fill up the Chateau d’Wintertuk, we do!
Well, the littles promptly went to hanging decorations, exclaiming delightedly over forgotten treasures and little works of art they and the older children have created throughout the years. Directly I noticed that the preponderance of ornaments were hanging heavily on the bottom half of the tree; so I recruited the older children to hang the remainder up on top, where the littles couldn’t reach. So, once again, our well-liked tree is up and twinkling merrily. There is no rhyme nor reason to the array, no correlating theme throughout, neither elegance nor excellence--and we want it just that way.
A friend of ours gave us a gigantic wreath with ribbons and trim and pine cones and such like. Teddy hung it outside, near our front door. Keith put little lights around it, and it’s really pretty. After that, he trotted next door and helped my brother-in-law put up his lights.
People are already giving us Christmas presents: one family brought us a turkey; Keith’s boss’s wife, one afternoon while Keith was at work, loaded his pickup with many bags of groceries.
Lawrence’s birthday is Friday; we got him a clock. It has a different bird painted on the face for each hour; and, on the hour, it tweets that particular bird call--a genuine recording. A sensor turns it off at night.
Saturday Keith spent the day cleaning up our yard--raking, taking out dried flowers, trimming shrubbery, and pruning the trees near the alley. Reckon our persnickety neighbor will like us better now? (Actually, she’s nice enough; it’s just that people who can’t abide the smallest leaf on their lawn shouldn’t live next to us.) One day this fall I spotted my sister out pulling weeds from her flower bed.
I marched right over there and informed her, “My CountRy magazine says that a good neighbor is one who doesn’t make his yard look better than yours.”
She laughed. And kept right on pulling weeds.
My mother decided Keith needed his Christmas present now; so she gave my brother some money and sent him off to get Keith an insulated pair of Redwing boots, a velour-lined sweat jacket with hood, a Carhart coat, and thick Redwing socks. Even though the temperature Saturday was below 20°, Keith stayed warm all day long.
Dorcas finished the blanket she was crocheting for my nephew’s new baby; enclosed is a picture of it. That blanket represents hours and hours of work. Now she is making ruffled collars for Hester and Lydia for Christmas.
Lawrence and Norma bought our van Friday. Saturday night they came to get it, and to sign some papers, and they brought us a pumpkin pie. MMMmmmm...
Yesterday I stayed home from church with Victoria (and Hannah and Joseph), who has caught that cold we are all getting.
When Caleb came marching in the door after church, he advised me, “We just had Sunday School; we didn’t get to open presents yet.”
When he arrived home from Christmas practice Friday night, he informed Larry, “We just had practice; we didn’t get to open presents yet.”
S’pose I need to lecture the little mercenary on the deeper significance of Christmas?
Our Wal-Mart store is now open for 24 hours a day--until Christmas, that is. This is just dandy--exactly what a late-night oil burner like me needs. Just the other night as I was sewing away, I had the deflating experience of running out of matching thread. And it had to match; the stitching was right on top.
“Aarrgghh!” says me. “Now, why didn’t I get more.....HEY! Wal-Mart’s open!”
So I dashed off and replenished several of my sewing supplies.
Saturday afternoon Nebraska played Texas A&M in the Astrodome at Houston. We won 54-15. Along about halfway through the game, the Nebraska fans started throwing oranges down onto the field every time the Huskers made another touchdown--because they’ll be going to the Orange Bowl, having won every game they played.
And now I’d better get back to my sewing machine.
At the end of the photography session, Teddy, rubbing at his cheeks, queried, “Have we smiled the clouds away yet?” (Those are the words of a dumb song of which I am not particularly fond, which he well knows.)
Saturday I started sewing Hester and Lydia’s Christmas dinner dresses; they are about half done, so I’m hopeful I’ll be able to complete everything, after all. Two days last week were taken up doing bookwork, and one afternoon we took Hannah and Joseph to the doctor. They both had acquired bad colds, and every time Hannah gets a cold, it triggers a bout with asthma. They are still under the weather, and seberal ub da rest ub us are in barious stages ub da same code, I think.
Tuesday morning, Larry left for Guthrie, Oklahoma, where he got a pickup for one of our customers. (Or, as Caleb said, “He picked up a pickup! He’s pickin’ up a pickinup! Pickin’ a pickup up! hahahahahaha”)
At 1:30 A.M. Wednesday morning, I called him on his cellular phone to inform him that I80 and other secondary roads in southeast Nebraska were totally ice-covered, and semis were littering the ditches, and several were tipped over. He was just approaching Concordia, Kansas, and it was sleeting and the roads were getting slick. But the crewcab is sure-footed, especially so because it is a dually, and that big loaded trailer gave it even more traction. When Larry arrived home about 6:00 A.M., he said he had seen many cars and trucks slipping and sliding all over the road; but his rig never skidded once.
Tuesday Keith put our Christmas lights up on the eaves, porch railing, and around the door frame and garage door of our house. He even put lights on our little blue spruce in the front yard. It looks quite cute.
Friday we scooted furniture around, scratched our heads, scooted furniture this way and that, scratched our heads, scooted it back again, (on and on, ad infinitum), until finally we put the big chair in the front hallway, where it fits just fine if you don’t mind barking your shins on it every time you come around the corner and forget it’s there. We put the love seat in the corner beside the hearth, where it works just fine as long as you’re an amputee (or less than four feet tall); and we slid the smaller computer desk farther into the corner, where it functions just fine so long as you didn’t put something you needed into the now-covered-up cubbyhole on the side of it. By the end of this exercise, we had turned up a small gap in furniture right in front of the window.
Deeming this gap wide enough, we snatched up our Christmas tree and ran headlong into the living room, where we set it up as fast as ever we could, before the over-abundance of furniture began encroaching upon our designated tree location. I’m telling you, we have enough stuff in this house to fill up the Chateau d’Wintertuk, we do!
Well, the littles promptly went to hanging decorations, exclaiming delightedly over forgotten treasures and little works of art they and the older children have created throughout the years. Directly I noticed that the preponderance of ornaments were hanging heavily on the bottom half of the tree; so I recruited the older children to hang the remainder up on top, where the littles couldn’t reach. So, once again, our well-liked tree is up and twinkling merrily. There is no rhyme nor reason to the array, no correlating theme throughout, neither elegance nor excellence--and we want it just that way.
A friend of ours gave us a gigantic wreath with ribbons and trim and pine cones and such like. Teddy hung it outside, near our front door. Keith put little lights around it, and it’s really pretty. After that, he trotted next door and helped my brother-in-law put up his lights.
People are already giving us Christmas presents: one family brought us a turkey; Keith’s boss’s wife, one afternoon while Keith was at work, loaded his pickup with many bags of groceries.
Lawrence’s birthday is Friday; we got him a clock. It has a different bird painted on the face for each hour; and, on the hour, it tweets that particular bird call--a genuine recording. A sensor turns it off at night.
Saturday Keith spent the day cleaning up our yard--raking, taking out dried flowers, trimming shrubbery, and pruning the trees near the alley. Reckon our persnickety neighbor will like us better now? (Actually, she’s nice enough; it’s just that people who can’t abide the smallest leaf on their lawn shouldn’t live next to us.) One day this fall I spotted my sister out pulling weeds from her flower bed.
I marched right over there and informed her, “My CountRy magazine says that a good neighbor is one who doesn’t make his yard look better than yours.”
She laughed. And kept right on pulling weeds.
My mother decided Keith needed his Christmas present now; so she gave my brother some money and sent him off to get Keith an insulated pair of Redwing boots, a velour-lined sweat jacket with hood, a Carhart coat, and thick Redwing socks. Even though the temperature Saturday was below 20°, Keith stayed warm all day long.
Dorcas finished the blanket she was crocheting for my nephew’s new baby; enclosed is a picture of it. That blanket represents hours and hours of work. Now she is making ruffled collars for Hester and Lydia for Christmas.
Lawrence and Norma bought our van Friday. Saturday night they came to get it, and to sign some papers, and they brought us a pumpkin pie. MMMmmmm...
Yesterday I stayed home from church with Victoria (and Hannah and Joseph), who has caught that cold we are all getting.
When Caleb came marching in the door after church, he advised me, “We just had Sunday School; we didn’t get to open presents yet.”
When he arrived home from Christmas practice Friday night, he informed Larry, “We just had practice; we didn’t get to open presents yet.”
S’pose I need to lecture the little mercenary on the deeper significance of Christmas?
Our Wal-Mart store is now open for 24 hours a day--until Christmas, that is. This is just dandy--exactly what a late-night oil burner like me needs. Just the other night as I was sewing away, I had the deflating experience of running out of matching thread. And it had to match; the stitching was right on top.
“Aarrgghh!” says me. “Now, why didn’t I get more.....HEY! Wal-Mart’s open!”
So I dashed off and replenished several of my sewing supplies.
Saturday afternoon Nebraska played Texas A&M in the Astrodome at Houston. We won 54-15. Along about halfway through the game, the Nebraska fans started throwing oranges down onto the field every time the Huskers made another touchdown--because they’ll be going to the Orange Bowl, having won every game they played.
And now I’d better get back to my sewing machine.
Monday, December 1, 1997
Monday, December 1, 1997...Turkeys & Deer & Kittens
December already! Imagine that! This year seems to have absolutely flown by.
Lydia’s dress is now completed, and I’ve begun on my white chiffon and satin skirt. Then, a vest for Caleb, and three more dresses for Hester, Lydia, and Victoria, and I’ll be all done. Can I ever accomplish all that? Lydia’s dress has three tiers, sleeves with a very puffy top tapering to tight, V’d wrists, in large black/white/red metallic check taffeta; the piping, sash, and bowed cummerbund are in red metallic; and the bodice is black velvet. Teddy’s britches are all hemmed, and the waists taken up smaller, too.
Tuesday a good customer of ours left a huge turkey in the refrigerator at the shop. The next day my niece and her husband gave us two five-pound roasts. That evening a friend of ours brought us a big Christmas tin full of homemade oatmeal/chocolate chip/raisin cookies. The urchins rushed off to the kitchen with it, and were prying the lid off before our friend ever got back out the door; and, just before the door went shut, the lid hit the floor with a resounding CLLLLLLAAAANNNNNNNNGG!!
Goodness! He’ll think we’ve not taught anybody any manners around here. Or he’ll think we’re starving our children. Or maybe he’ll just tell his wife we are wild about her cookies.
One night we heard on our scanner that somebody had hit a deer out on Deer River Road (where else?), so we called the sheriff to inquire as to whether we could have it. After being told we could, we drove out to retrieve it. We’d been told it was still alive, so Larry took his twenty-two. Finally arriving at the destination, Larry climbed out of the Suburban and walked toward the sheriff and the lady who’d hit the deer. It was a very dark night. Caleb stared out the back window, trying to see what was happening, which was rather difficult, what with the lady’s lights, the sheriff’s red and blue strobes, and his headlights and emergency flashers on, too.
Caleb’s eyes were very large. In a soft, horrified voice, he asked, “Is Daddy going to shoot that lady??”
We hastily apprised him of the circumstances.
Unfortunately, we learned that the deer had gotten to its feet shortly before our arrival and staggered off into the nearby woods, in spite of its broken leg. Larry hunted for it for a little while with his flashlight, but it was nowhere to be seen. The next morning he looked again, but the only thing he found was a considerable passel of wild turkeys, all trying to out-gobble the other. On one side of the hill were dozens of hens; on the other side were quite a number of toms. And were they ever setting up a racket.
Well, so much for deer meat for the freezer. Too bad for the deer; too bad for us.
Victoria now gets up on her hands and knees, lurches forward (or, sometimes, backwards), and collapses.
When I finish feeding her, she clasps her hands together, wrinkles her nose, and loudly announces, “Aw done!”
This week I passed out all the Christmas poems and scriptures to the children who will be reciting them.
Caleb asked, “Will I get to say a poem for Christmas?”
I said, “Sure!” (He won’t, of course.) “It’ll be: ‘Hickory dickory dock! The Christmas mouse ran up the clock! The clock struck one! Opening presents has begun! What fun! What fun!’”
Caleb, eyebrows high, responded, “I can’t say that!”
“Why ever not?” I asked.
And he answered, “Because all the people would come up there and tickle me!”
(I always knew the audience was scary; but I never knew just exactly what they might do to you, should you get your poem wrong.)
Thursday we had our annual Thanksgiving dinner at church, with everybody bringing lots of food, as usual: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, cranberry jello salad, orange fluff salad, rolls with jelly, and our choice of pecan, pumpkin, or apple pie. Our little band and orchestra played a medley of several songs, which is always toe-tappingly inspiring.
That evening we went for a drive north to Tarnov, watching several falling stars along the way.
Sunday afternoon we drove west to Monroe, then north toward Lindsay. They are creating a new wetlands out in the country, and it was already covered with hundreds of mallards. The wildlife people must have good press agents.
We drove to a television tower out in the hills, one of the tallest such towers in the country. The children climbed out of the Suburban, the better to look at it, having to fling their heads right back to see the top; every time Caleb did so, he staggered forward several paces and nearly fell flat.
Our first Christmas practice was Friday evening. I tell you, it sure takes a long while to get everybody situated, not only according to height, but also according to singing parts. Age matters, too, since we don’t want somebody short to wind up in the Jr. Choir when they’re of Sr. Choir age, nor do we want somebody tall to wind up in the Sr. Choir when they’re of Jr. Choir age. So it took at least half an hour to get everybody seated and arranged on our none-too-big platform. Anyway, we got all the songs practiced at least once, and several two or three times. We’ve got a good start!
Now I need to type up the order of the program and make inserts to go between the songs in all the children’s notebooks, so they know the order of events. The notebooks are not all the same, because of different singing groups singing different songs. It always takes me one entire day to get it accomplished. Thank goodness for word processors and copying machines!
Saturday was spent writing music pieces for different instruments. Alto saxophones, tenor saxophones, and trumpets are each in different keys, and they are also different from the piano. So each part must be written separately. Many of our better players will accompany the singers during the program, in addition to a 15-minute instrumental of favorite carols at the beginning of the program.
Somebody dumped a kitten near Larry’s shop, and Teddy has adopted it. (Actually, I think Larry has adopted it, too.) They bought cat food for it, and give it milk periodically. Every day after Larry arrives, the kitten comes rushing, meowing a greeting. Larry thinks it has been sleeping in a wrecked car outside the shop. We daren’t bring it home; Aleutia would have it for breakfast; so the children have been making inquiries at school as to who would like a cat. The poor thing needs a loving home; we don’t want it to get run over or otherwise hurt at Larry’s shop.
And now we are going to visit my brother and his wife, and Victoria needs to be fed. Supper is ready, and my stomach is growling!
Lydia’s dress is now completed, and I’ve begun on my white chiffon and satin skirt. Then, a vest for Caleb, and three more dresses for Hester, Lydia, and Victoria, and I’ll be all done. Can I ever accomplish all that? Lydia’s dress has three tiers, sleeves with a very puffy top tapering to tight, V’d wrists, in large black/white/red metallic check taffeta; the piping, sash, and bowed cummerbund are in red metallic; and the bodice is black velvet. Teddy’s britches are all hemmed, and the waists taken up smaller, too.
Tuesday a good customer of ours left a huge turkey in the refrigerator at the shop. The next day my niece and her husband gave us two five-pound roasts. That evening a friend of ours brought us a big Christmas tin full of homemade oatmeal/chocolate chip/raisin cookies. The urchins rushed off to the kitchen with it, and were prying the lid off before our friend ever got back out the door; and, just before the door went shut, the lid hit the floor with a resounding CLLLLLLAAAANNNNNNNNGG!!
Goodness! He’ll think we’ve not taught anybody any manners around here. Or he’ll think we’re starving our children. Or maybe he’ll just tell his wife we are wild about her cookies.
One night we heard on our scanner that somebody had hit a deer out on Deer River Road (where else?), so we called the sheriff to inquire as to whether we could have it. After being told we could, we drove out to retrieve it. We’d been told it was still alive, so Larry took his twenty-two. Finally arriving at the destination, Larry climbed out of the Suburban and walked toward the sheriff and the lady who’d hit the deer. It was a very dark night. Caleb stared out the back window, trying to see what was happening, which was rather difficult, what with the lady’s lights, the sheriff’s red and blue strobes, and his headlights and emergency flashers on, too.
Caleb’s eyes were very large. In a soft, horrified voice, he asked, “Is Daddy going to shoot that lady??”
We hastily apprised him of the circumstances.
Unfortunately, we learned that the deer had gotten to its feet shortly before our arrival and staggered off into the nearby woods, in spite of its broken leg. Larry hunted for it for a little while with his flashlight, but it was nowhere to be seen. The next morning he looked again, but the only thing he found was a considerable passel of wild turkeys, all trying to out-gobble the other. On one side of the hill were dozens of hens; on the other side were quite a number of toms. And were they ever setting up a racket.
Well, so much for deer meat for the freezer. Too bad for the deer; too bad for us.
Victoria now gets up on her hands and knees, lurches forward (or, sometimes, backwards), and collapses.
When I finish feeding her, she clasps her hands together, wrinkles her nose, and loudly announces, “Aw done!”
This week I passed out all the Christmas poems and scriptures to the children who will be reciting them.
Caleb asked, “Will I get to say a poem for Christmas?”
I said, “Sure!” (He won’t, of course.) “It’ll be: ‘Hickory dickory dock! The Christmas mouse ran up the clock! The clock struck one! Opening presents has begun! What fun! What fun!’”
Caleb, eyebrows high, responded, “I can’t say that!”
“Why ever not?” I asked.
And he answered, “Because all the people would come up there and tickle me!”
(I always knew the audience was scary; but I never knew just exactly what they might do to you, should you get your poem wrong.)
Thursday we had our annual Thanksgiving dinner at church, with everybody bringing lots of food, as usual: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, cranberry jello salad, orange fluff salad, rolls with jelly, and our choice of pecan, pumpkin, or apple pie. Our little band and orchestra played a medley of several songs, which is always toe-tappingly inspiring.
That evening we went for a drive north to Tarnov, watching several falling stars along the way.
Sunday afternoon we drove west to Monroe, then north toward Lindsay. They are creating a new wetlands out in the country, and it was already covered with hundreds of mallards. The wildlife people must have good press agents.
We drove to a television tower out in the hills, one of the tallest such towers in the country. The children climbed out of the Suburban, the better to look at it, having to fling their heads right back to see the top; every time Caleb did so, he staggered forward several paces and nearly fell flat.
Our first Christmas practice was Friday evening. I tell you, it sure takes a long while to get everybody situated, not only according to height, but also according to singing parts. Age matters, too, since we don’t want somebody short to wind up in the Jr. Choir when they’re of Sr. Choir age, nor do we want somebody tall to wind up in the Sr. Choir when they’re of Jr. Choir age. So it took at least half an hour to get everybody seated and arranged on our none-too-big platform. Anyway, we got all the songs practiced at least once, and several two or three times. We’ve got a good start!
Now I need to type up the order of the program and make inserts to go between the songs in all the children’s notebooks, so they know the order of events. The notebooks are not all the same, because of different singing groups singing different songs. It always takes me one entire day to get it accomplished. Thank goodness for word processors and copying machines!
Saturday was spent writing music pieces for different instruments. Alto saxophones, tenor saxophones, and trumpets are each in different keys, and they are also different from the piano. So each part must be written separately. Many of our better players will accompany the singers during the program, in addition to a 15-minute instrumental of favorite carols at the beginning of the program.
Somebody dumped a kitten near Larry’s shop, and Teddy has adopted it. (Actually, I think Larry has adopted it, too.) They bought cat food for it, and give it milk periodically. Every day after Larry arrives, the kitten comes rushing, meowing a greeting. Larry thinks it has been sleeping in a wrecked car outside the shop. We daren’t bring it home; Aleutia would have it for breakfast; so the children have been making inquiries at school as to who would like a cat. The poor thing needs a loving home; we don’t want it to get run over or otherwise hurt at Larry’s shop.
And now we are going to visit my brother and his wife, and Victoria needs to be fed. Supper is ready, and my stomach is growling!
Monday, November 24, 1997
Monday, November 24, 1997...Chipped Lips and Crooked Things
Yesterday for the evening church service I sang a solo, played the song for the communion service, and the ending song, too. The solo comes before the sermon, somewhere near the beginning of the service; the communion is at the end. So there I went, strutting proudly up the aisle to the pulpit; there I came back down off the platform and back to my seat, just as conceited as could be; and again, about 45 minutes later, I swaggered arrogantly up to the piano, played, and then flounced back down, reseated myself,--and that’s when I noticed: my skirt was off-kilter by exactly 90°.
The zipper was on the side, which is a fine and dandy place for zippers to be…except I discovered a slash pocket right smack-dab in the center front! Feeling surreptitiously around behind me, I located the other pocket exactly in the back. I bounced up and down a couple of times on the pew (luckily, we usually sit on the second to the last pew at the back of the church), giving the skirt a good tug each time. That didn’t help much, and I thought half a dozen people behind me were no doubt wondering what in the world was the matter with me, so I waited until my brother began the prayer at the end of the first half of the communion service, when I again commenced to scrambling around vigorously. The recalcitrant skirt hung onto the cushion for dear life, thwarting my energetic efforts to turn it.
When it was time to play the final song, I gave that skirt a good hard yank as I stood, hoping nobody would notice. I then marched up to the piano. Not daring to call attention to my plight, seated as I was on the platform in front of everybody, I left the skirt alone until the closing prayer. The awful thing was still a good 45° whoppyjaw! How incommodious. Luckily, the piano bench doesn’t have a cushion, so I was able to slide that skirt around to where it belonged just before the preacher said “Amen.”
There. I was finally adjusted and squared. I put my nose in the air and strode haughtily back to my family---and that’s when I realized: my sweater had followed my skirt in its counter-clockwise orbit, and the button placket headed off due west in a 30° curve. Good grief.
Larry got the garage and the shed all cleaned this week, and he’s threatening to string anybody up by their toenails if they so much as sneeze on his well-ordered array.
Dorcas is now working on the edging of the blanket she’s been crocheting for my nephew’s new baby. She’s making three-dimensional roses in pastel colors of pink, blue, and yellow, all the way around the blanket. It’s so pretty.
Hannah is just about done with a little cardigan for one of that new baby’s sisters. It is white with pink trim and big puffy sleeves, and it has hearts and flowers embroidered on it, too. She’s also finishing a pink five-piece doll outfit for somebody for Christmas; she’ll be paid about $10. That’s probably not enough for the amount of time she puts into it; but one can hardly charge by the hour for crocheting.
Hannah and Dorcas’ dresses for the Christmas program are all done now, except for the appliques Hannah will put on hers, and Saturday I cut out Lydia’s. It’s a black/red/white check in metallic taffeta, with a three-tiered skirt; the bodice is black velvet; and the cummerbund, sash, and piping are a red metallic ribbed taffeta. Norma gave me the material, which was left over from the dress she’s sewing for Katie. Lydia is all excited about matching Katie.
One afternoon I noticed that Caleb had a sore on his lip.
“What happened?” I asked, tipping his chin up to take a closer look.
He made a woebegone face. “When I was running into Victoria’s room, I fell down and chipped it!” He looked around sadly, making sure everyone was listening to his sad tale. ”And I couldn’t put a Band-Aid there!”
Larry is in pain from a tooth whose roots are disintegrating. He’s taking antibiotics to reduce the infection, which went into his sinuses, and also a strong painkiller, which isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. The dummy won’t go to the dentist until I call and make an appointment for him, and then bossily insist he keep the engagement.
Thursday evening was our last Jr. Choir meeting until after the first of the year--from now on, it will be Christmas program practice, starting Friday. Keith, knowing I would be busy with Jr. Choir, helpfully bought us pizza for supper.
Tuesday we took Victoria to the immunization clinic in David City for the last in her first series of shots. The poor little baby hardly cries. When it’s over, she snuggles up on my shoulder for a few seconds, then enchants the nurses by turning around and smiling sweetly at them.
You should’ve seen the two-year-old we saw there once. He got his shot, three people trying unsuccessfully to hold him down as he bellowed and struggled valiantly. No sooner had his mother picked him back up again and attempted to console the brat, than he hauled off and smacked her full in the face!
Caleb, who was 1 ½ at the time, said what we all were thinking: “Wowwwww.”
Tuesday evening we went for a drive down Shady Lake Road. Rounding a corner, we came upon a big buck right in the middle of the road. A doe had already crossed and was waiting for him in a corn field. He stood and looked at us calmly for a moment or two; then, with two smooth bounds and a leap, he was across the ditch and over the fence. Aren’t whitetails beautiful creatures? Two miles farther on, we saw a bobcat slinking his way stealthily through a harvested field. When we turned and shone our lights on him, he fled, covering ground rapidly in long feline springs and bounces.
The signature stamp which I ordered for my mother for Christmas arrived, and I can hardly wait to give it to her! She sometimes has difficulty even signing her name; her right hand has been troublesome ever since she had a slight stroke a couple of years ago.
I called my brother and sister to tell them what I’d gotten for Mama--just in case they should happen to be as clever as me in dreaming up a good present for her--and Loren said, “Oh! That’s just what we got her!”
“Right,” I responded, “and if you hadn’t have said that, I would’ve been very disappointed; I’d’ve thought you were slipping!”
He laughed. Of course, they hadn’t gotten her anything of the sort.
Thursday night I helped Teddy finish his Industries Report; he did his on aluminum. I find these reports ever so interesting; I learn all sorts of things. A couple of years ago, Hannah did her report on the history of teddy bears. Last year, Dorcas did hers on the postal system. I don’t remember what Keith’s was; diesel engines, probably. Anyway, I cut out the letters ALUMINUM from aluminum foil, along with several stars, and we glued them here and there on Teddy’s posterboard, making it look quite flashy. He typed his report and printed it on a computer at school that has a penchant for putting X’s at the beginning of every line, which makes one’s report look unique, to say the least. Fortunately, the teachers are all aware of this quallyfobble, and politely overlook it.
Larry traded some of our yummy elk meat to a friend of our for some deer sticks (almost like jerky), of all things. (I threatened to trade him in, should he do it again.)
Caleb asked, “Could I have some string meat to go with my string cheese?”
Friday I figured out the perfect thing to do with one whole pound of deer sticks: I put it into potato stew. Mmmmmmmmmmm!!! It was so yummy, I forgave poor Larry for going off with the ground elk meat.
That evening we went to Grand Island. We climbed into the Suburban. Larry handed Victoria across the front seat and over to me--bumping his coffee mug, which was a good third full of cold cappuccino, knocking it over into my lap. But we were already running late, and I didn’t want to take the time to go back into the house and don new attire, so I soaked it up as well as I could with a couple of paper towels. When we got to Grand Island, I decided to change Victoria. This I do on my lap, putting a plastic bag under the baby to, supposedly, save me from a total drenching.
It’s an activity fraught with danger.
You guessed it; I got soaked.
So there I was, traipsing around in a cold, damp gale in a cold, damp skirt. Yuck. (Anyway, at least I didn’t ruin two skirts.)
First, we got a couple of appliques for one of the Christmas dresses--$9 for two ten-inch appliques! Aarrgghh. And then I found a three-inch button with gold scrolls around a mother-of-pearl cameo that I just had to have for my red-sequined top, in spite of the fact it was $4.25. Yi. But I guess that is cheaper than a piece of comparable jewelry.
After that expenditure, I assuaged my conscience by trotting down the sidewalk to the Goodwill, a couple of doors down, where we got a suit--just like new--for Teddy--$6.25, two pairs of pants to go with it--$2.75 each, a pair of pants for Thanksgiving--$2.75, two sweaters and two skirts for the little girls--$1.50 each, two belts--$.75 each, a brand-new dusty pink down-filled coat for Hester for next year--$3.25, and a cookstove--$2.00.
Feeling frugal and quite pleased with ourselves, we headed off to the 24-hour Wal-Mart, where we found some striking navy and white spectator pumps for Hannah, and some wing-tipped, fringed and tasseled dress shoes for Teddy. Those were both on sale for quite a smashing bargain. We’ll soon be all ready for Christmas!
On the way home, we indulged in chocolate/raspberry frozen yogurt and macaroon granola bars.
Meanwhile, Keith, Esther, and Dorcas went to Norfolk, where Keith finished his Christmas shopping and Esther bought herself a skirt and sweater for Thanksgiving.
The children's school pictures arrived. Keith’s is smaller because we got the cheapest set they sell, since I already took his graduation pictures.
Now here is a conversation I overheard as the children were looking at their pictures:
Hannah: “My hair is crooked.”
Dorcas: “My eyes are crooked.”
Teddy: “My grin is crooked.”
Joseph: “My glasses are crooked.”
Hester: “My neck is crooked.”
Lydia: “My dimple is crooked.”
Caleb, who of course had no picture: “My socks are crooked.” (And they were.)
At that point, everybody quit griping and burst into peals of laughter, much to Caleb’s surprise.
The zipper was on the side, which is a fine and dandy place for zippers to be…except I discovered a slash pocket right smack-dab in the center front! Feeling surreptitiously around behind me, I located the other pocket exactly in the back. I bounced up and down a couple of times on the pew (luckily, we usually sit on the second to the last pew at the back of the church), giving the skirt a good tug each time. That didn’t help much, and I thought half a dozen people behind me were no doubt wondering what in the world was the matter with me, so I waited until my brother began the prayer at the end of the first half of the communion service, when I again commenced to scrambling around vigorously. The recalcitrant skirt hung onto the cushion for dear life, thwarting my energetic efforts to turn it.
When it was time to play the final song, I gave that skirt a good hard yank as I stood, hoping nobody would notice. I then marched up to the piano. Not daring to call attention to my plight, seated as I was on the platform in front of everybody, I left the skirt alone until the closing prayer. The awful thing was still a good 45° whoppyjaw! How incommodious. Luckily, the piano bench doesn’t have a cushion, so I was able to slide that skirt around to where it belonged just before the preacher said “Amen.”
There. I was finally adjusted and squared. I put my nose in the air and strode haughtily back to my family---and that’s when I realized: my sweater had followed my skirt in its counter-clockwise orbit, and the button placket headed off due west in a 30° curve. Good grief.
Larry got the garage and the shed all cleaned this week, and he’s threatening to string anybody up by their toenails if they so much as sneeze on his well-ordered array.
Dorcas is now working on the edging of the blanket she’s been crocheting for my nephew’s new baby. She’s making three-dimensional roses in pastel colors of pink, blue, and yellow, all the way around the blanket. It’s so pretty.
Hannah is just about done with a little cardigan for one of that new baby’s sisters. It is white with pink trim and big puffy sleeves, and it has hearts and flowers embroidered on it, too. She’s also finishing a pink five-piece doll outfit for somebody for Christmas; she’ll be paid about $10. That’s probably not enough for the amount of time she puts into it; but one can hardly charge by the hour for crocheting.
Hannah and Dorcas’ dresses for the Christmas program are all done now, except for the appliques Hannah will put on hers, and Saturday I cut out Lydia’s. It’s a black/red/white check in metallic taffeta, with a three-tiered skirt; the bodice is black velvet; and the cummerbund, sash, and piping are a red metallic ribbed taffeta. Norma gave me the material, which was left over from the dress she’s sewing for Katie. Lydia is all excited about matching Katie.
One afternoon I noticed that Caleb had a sore on his lip.
“What happened?” I asked, tipping his chin up to take a closer look.
He made a woebegone face. “When I was running into Victoria’s room, I fell down and chipped it!” He looked around sadly, making sure everyone was listening to his sad tale. ”And I couldn’t put a Band-Aid there!”
Larry is in pain from a tooth whose roots are disintegrating. He’s taking antibiotics to reduce the infection, which went into his sinuses, and also a strong painkiller, which isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. The dummy won’t go to the dentist until I call and make an appointment for him, and then bossily insist he keep the engagement.
Thursday evening was our last Jr. Choir meeting until after the first of the year--from now on, it will be Christmas program practice, starting Friday. Keith, knowing I would be busy with Jr. Choir, helpfully bought us pizza for supper.
Tuesday we took Victoria to the immunization clinic in David City for the last in her first series of shots. The poor little baby hardly cries. When it’s over, she snuggles up on my shoulder for a few seconds, then enchants the nurses by turning around and smiling sweetly at them.
You should’ve seen the two-year-old we saw there once. He got his shot, three people trying unsuccessfully to hold him down as he bellowed and struggled valiantly. No sooner had his mother picked him back up again and attempted to console the brat, than he hauled off and smacked her full in the face!
Caleb, who was 1 ½ at the time, said what we all were thinking: “Wowwwww.”
Tuesday evening we went for a drive down Shady Lake Road. Rounding a corner, we came upon a big buck right in the middle of the road. A doe had already crossed and was waiting for him in a corn field. He stood and looked at us calmly for a moment or two; then, with two smooth bounds and a leap, he was across the ditch and over the fence. Aren’t whitetails beautiful creatures? Two miles farther on, we saw a bobcat slinking his way stealthily through a harvested field. When we turned and shone our lights on him, he fled, covering ground rapidly in long feline springs and bounces.
The signature stamp which I ordered for my mother for Christmas arrived, and I can hardly wait to give it to her! She sometimes has difficulty even signing her name; her right hand has been troublesome ever since she had a slight stroke a couple of years ago.
I called my brother and sister to tell them what I’d gotten for Mama--just in case they should happen to be as clever as me in dreaming up a good present for her--and Loren said, “Oh! That’s just what we got her!”
“Right,” I responded, “and if you hadn’t have said that, I would’ve been very disappointed; I’d’ve thought you were slipping!”
He laughed. Of course, they hadn’t gotten her anything of the sort.
Thursday night I helped Teddy finish his Industries Report; he did his on aluminum. I find these reports ever so interesting; I learn all sorts of things. A couple of years ago, Hannah did her report on the history of teddy bears. Last year, Dorcas did hers on the postal system. I don’t remember what Keith’s was; diesel engines, probably. Anyway, I cut out the letters ALUMINUM from aluminum foil, along with several stars, and we glued them here and there on Teddy’s posterboard, making it look quite flashy. He typed his report and printed it on a computer at school that has a penchant for putting X’s at the beginning of every line, which makes one’s report look unique, to say the least. Fortunately, the teachers are all aware of this quallyfobble, and politely overlook it.
Larry traded some of our yummy elk meat to a friend of our for some deer sticks (almost like jerky), of all things. (I threatened to trade him in, should he do it again.)
Caleb asked, “Could I have some string meat to go with my string cheese?”
Friday I figured out the perfect thing to do with one whole pound of deer sticks: I put it into potato stew. Mmmmmmmmmmm!!! It was so yummy, I forgave poor Larry for going off with the ground elk meat.
That evening we went to Grand Island. We climbed into the Suburban. Larry handed Victoria across the front seat and over to me--bumping his coffee mug, which was a good third full of cold cappuccino, knocking it over into my lap. But we were already running late, and I didn’t want to take the time to go back into the house and don new attire, so I soaked it up as well as I could with a couple of paper towels. When we got to Grand Island, I decided to change Victoria. This I do on my lap, putting a plastic bag under the baby to, supposedly, save me from a total drenching.
It’s an activity fraught with danger.
You guessed it; I got soaked.
So there I was, traipsing around in a cold, damp gale in a cold, damp skirt. Yuck. (Anyway, at least I didn’t ruin two skirts.)
First, we got a couple of appliques for one of the Christmas dresses--$9 for two ten-inch appliques! Aarrgghh. And then I found a three-inch button with gold scrolls around a mother-of-pearl cameo that I just had to have for my red-sequined top, in spite of the fact it was $4.25. Yi. But I guess that is cheaper than a piece of comparable jewelry.
After that expenditure, I assuaged my conscience by trotting down the sidewalk to the Goodwill, a couple of doors down, where we got a suit--just like new--for Teddy--$6.25, two pairs of pants to go with it--$2.75 each, a pair of pants for Thanksgiving--$2.75, two sweaters and two skirts for the little girls--$1.50 each, two belts--$.75 each, a brand-new dusty pink down-filled coat for Hester for next year--$3.25, and a cookstove--$2.00.
Feeling frugal and quite pleased with ourselves, we headed off to the 24-hour Wal-Mart, where we found some striking navy and white spectator pumps for Hannah, and some wing-tipped, fringed and tasseled dress shoes for Teddy. Those were both on sale for quite a smashing bargain. We’ll soon be all ready for Christmas!
On the way home, we indulged in chocolate/raspberry frozen yogurt and macaroon granola bars.
Meanwhile, Keith, Esther, and Dorcas went to Norfolk, where Keith finished his Christmas shopping and Esther bought herself a skirt and sweater for Thanksgiving.
The children's school pictures arrived. Keith’s is smaller because we got the cheapest set they sell, since I already took his graduation pictures.
Now here is a conversation I overheard as the children were looking at their pictures:
Hannah: “My hair is crooked.”
Dorcas: “My eyes are crooked.”
Teddy: “My grin is crooked.”
Joseph: “My glasses are crooked.”
Hester: “My neck is crooked.”
Lydia: “My dimple is crooked.”
Caleb, who of course had no picture: “My socks are crooked.” (And they were.)
At that point, everybody quit griping and burst into peals of laughter, much to Caleb’s surprise.
Monday, November 17, 1997
Monday, November 17, 1997...Girlfriend for Dinner
Today Hester and Lydia got their report cards for the first quarter. Both little girls have grades in the upper 90%s and a couple of 100%s, too. Grades to be proud of.
Yesterday Esther, Keith's girlfriend, came for dinner. We had corn on the cob, steak (cooked on the electric grill with Larry’s special spice mix), fruit/jello salad with crumbled graham cracker crust, whipped cream, cream cheese, sour cream, and powdered sugar mixed in, and my Grandma Swiney’s spaghetti/tomato juice soup. After cooking the spaghetti and draining it, I pour in a big can of tomato juice, heat it up again, add a little bit of baking soda (to keep it from curdling) and salt, and pour in enough milk to turn it pink. That’s it.
The first time I made this concoction after Larry and I were married, he thought I was nuts. Where were the meatballs?!
Well, actually, the first time I made it, it was a disaster. I hadn’t bothered asking my mother for directions, and I was as unlearned about cooking as our friend's wife is about deer. I first boiled the milk, of all things, putting the spaghetti into that. Then, knowing nothing about the consequences of mixing milk with such a substance as tomato juice, I simply poured in the juice.
Wow, I'll betcha that was the lumpiest curds and whey ever created. Inedible pink cottage cheese. Bleah.
But, after I learned to do it right, Larry discovered he actually liked it. Esther had never had such a thing before, and she, being a proper young lady, was having trouble keeping the spaghetti on her fork or spoon.
Joseph helpfully informed her, “There’s nothing to it. We use really long spaghetti, so we only need to cook as many strands as there are people. So, all you need to do is to find the end, get it in your mouth, and slurp it down. Then all that’ll be left in your bowl is the tomato soup, and you can just drink that!”
“’Course,” his brother Teddy added, “you might want to tuck your napkin around your neck before you start, and you might want to borrow one of the girls’ shower caps to protect your hair, ’cuz the end of that spaghetti strand really slaps around.”
Esther made a face. “Oh, you guys,” she retorted.
And now I’d better go feed Victoria and then fix some supper for this hungry tribe.
Oh... Larry just came in and informed me that he put a new radio and cassette player in the Suburban, and we need to go take a ride after supper and try it out. A ride? Sure! I’m always game for ride.....a ride usually means a stop at Cousin’s Corner for a large mug full of steaming hot Amaretto Cappuccino!--just what the doctor ordered.
Yesterday Esther, Keith's girlfriend, came for dinner. We had corn on the cob, steak (cooked on the electric grill with Larry’s special spice mix), fruit/jello salad with crumbled graham cracker crust, whipped cream, cream cheese, sour cream, and powdered sugar mixed in, and my Grandma Swiney’s spaghetti/tomato juice soup. After cooking the spaghetti and draining it, I pour in a big can of tomato juice, heat it up again, add a little bit of baking soda (to keep it from curdling) and salt, and pour in enough milk to turn it pink. That’s it.
The first time I made this concoction after Larry and I were married, he thought I was nuts. Where were the meatballs?!
Well, actually, the first time I made it, it was a disaster. I hadn’t bothered asking my mother for directions, and I was as unlearned about cooking as our friend's wife is about deer. I first boiled the milk, of all things, putting the spaghetti into that. Then, knowing nothing about the consequences of mixing milk with such a substance as tomato juice, I simply poured in the juice.
Wow, I'll betcha that was the lumpiest curds and whey ever created. Inedible pink cottage cheese. Bleah.
But, after I learned to do it right, Larry discovered he actually liked it. Esther had never had such a thing before, and she, being a proper young lady, was having trouble keeping the spaghetti on her fork or spoon.
Joseph helpfully informed her, “There’s nothing to it. We use really long spaghetti, so we only need to cook as many strands as there are people. So, all you need to do is to find the end, get it in your mouth, and slurp it down. Then all that’ll be left in your bowl is the tomato soup, and you can just drink that!”
“’Course,” his brother Teddy added, “you might want to tuck your napkin around your neck before you start, and you might want to borrow one of the girls’ shower caps to protect your hair, ’cuz the end of that spaghetti strand really slaps around.”
Esther made a face. “Oh, you guys,” she retorted.
And now I’d better go feed Victoria and then fix some supper for this hungry tribe.
Oh... Larry just came in and informed me that he put a new radio and cassette player in the Suburban, and we need to go take a ride after supper and try it out. A ride? Sure! I’m always game for ride.....a ride usually means a stop at Cousin’s Corner for a large mug full of steaming hot Amaretto Cappuccino!--just what the doctor ordered.
Sunday, November 16, 1997
Sunday, November 16, 1997...On Sticking to Floors
This has been a busy week, what with the sewing machine clacking along full steam ahead, the crochet hooks moving at the speed of greased lightening, and homework and bookwork vying for attention.
I cut out and sewed Hester’s Christmas dress. The bodice is a black velvet with fuschia and mulberry and plum flowers with raised gold around the edges; the sleeves and very full skirt are iridescent plum silky something-or-other; and the gathered cummerbund, which comes to a V in the front, the sash, the pleated neckline trim, and the piping around the cuffs and hem are metallic gold crepe. Norma gave us the material, and I can hardly wait to show it to her, it turned out so beautifully. That done, I began remodeling Hannah and Dorcas’ dresses. They were both prom dresses, with necklines much too low.
Now that is the kind of thing I do not like to do--to try to add pieces to an already-made dress. It’s difficult to get the piece to fit into the dress just right, with no puckers or strange unwanted lumps, bumps, and odd shapes. Dorcas’ dress is supposed to be an off-the-shoulder number, and the tops of the sleeves are elastic. Now how, I ask you, do you attach anything to that? Oh, help and bother.
Hannah’s dress is almost done. It’s navy, and she is crocheting ruffled roses and three-dimensional leaves in sparkly white thread to applique onto the front of the bodice. Dorcas’ is midnight blue. The top is velvet, and the skirt is taffeta.
The children have been practicing their violins and cello every day now, preparing for Thanksgiving. We usually sing a few songs before heading downstairs to eat dinner. The day after Thanksgiving will be the first Christmas practice.
Teddy had his science test on elements last week; the kids all consider it the hardest test in any grade. He got a 95%! He was quite tickled pink. The test is not only graded on knowing the right element for each symbol, but also on spelling. Can you spell these? And do you know their symbols?
tin
gold
iron
lead
neon
zinc
argon
boron
radon
xenon
barium
carbon
cerium
cesium
cobalt
copper
curium
erbium
helium
indium
iodine
murium
nickel
osmium
oxygen
radium
silver
sodium
sulfur
arsenic
bismuth
bromine
cadmium
calcium
fermium
gallium
hafnium
olmium
iridium
krypton
lithium
mercury
niobium
rhenium
rhodium
silicon
terbium
thorium
thulium
uranium
wolfram
yttrium
antimony
astatine
chlorine
chromium
europium
fluorine
francium
hydrogen
lutetium
masurium
nitrogen
nobelium
platinum
polonium
rubidium
samarium
scandium
selenium
tantalum
thallium
titanium
tungsten
vanadium
There. Now, wouldn’t you agree, 95% is indeed spectacular?! (Hannah beat him when she was in ninth grade, however; she got 100%.)
Keith hurt his wrist some time back, lifting a heavy stack of re-bar. And it can’t get better very well, because he keeps straining it. One day as he was drilling something, the bit caught on some metal and flipped the drill, which hurt his wrist all over again. Keith is the sort who, if he has an owie, he tells you about it. If he thinks perhaps you may have forgotten, he tells you again.
Now, I know his wrist is sore, don’t get me wrong. But here beside him sits his next younger brother, who last week slipped on his bike and bent his thumb backward, causing it to swell to nearly twice its normal size.
(“I’d’ve rather had it happen with a horse,” said Teddy, “because people don’t think you’re quite as stupid as when it happens with your bike!”)
Anyway, Teddy didn’t even tell me about his poor thumb until two or three hours later. Kids are sure different; here we have Teddy, who ought to complain more (such as about tight shoes, and that sort of thing); and then here we have Keith, with whom we could do with a little less grievance reports.
So when Keith launched into the story about the wayward drill, Joseph said in a so-sorry tone, “Awwwww. . .did you pull your pork loin?”
(Ham string, you know.)
Even Keith had to laugh at that.
Saturday Teddy got his thumb nail--on that same old sore thumb--caught on the sander and ripped the top half part of the way off. Later that evening, he was giving Hester and Caleb a piggyback ride on his back and caught the nail on the carpet. So he gritted his teeth and pulled it the rest of the way off, making us all shiver and shudder in unison.
Victoria is quite adept at clicking her tongue. In fact, she’s been doing it for at least a couple of months. Today an elderly lady--one of those sorts who thinks children below the age of ten or so are mere infants, incapable of deep thought processes--patted on Victoria’s arm and click-clicked into the baby’s face--and the baby promptly wrinkled her nose, leaned over into the lady’s face and click-clicked right back at her, much to the lady’s surprise. Everybody around laughed, so Victoria laughed, too. I’m not sure what the lady thought.
As we were leaving church tonight, I tossed Victoria’s big fleece blanket over her head--it’s only 25°--and headed for the door, with Hannah walking along behind us.
Victoria carefully lifted one corner of the blanket, peeked over my shoulder, and said, “Hi, Hannah,” before ducking back down under the blanket. Peeping out again, she repeated, “Hi, Hannah!” and down she went again. Funny baby.
I discovered the following little note in the box of Caleb’s Tonka dump truck: “Dear Caleb Daniel Jackson: I love you very much. You are a very nice little boy. I love you! Love, Hester.”
Isn’t that sweet?
Wednesday a good customer of ours--the one who owns hog confinements all over the Midwest--gave us about fifteen pounds of ground elk meat. That night after church, Larry grilled elk hamburgers, which we ate, with a tomato on top, on toasted sourdough muffins. He put lots of spices on it: lemon pepper, garlic salt, lemon pepper, salt, lemon pepper, onion chips, lemon pepper, chili pepper, lemon pepper, beef bouillon, lemon pepper, ground mustard, lemon pepper. There is very little fat at all in elk meat, and it was exceptionally good. We grilled it on an indoor electric grill/broiler which my mother gave us.
One day last week, a friend gave me a couple of flashy blouses, one of which I think I’ll wear to the Christmas program. It’s bright red silk, with red sequins in swirling patterns all over it. The other is black silk, with black organza sleeves, and with jewel-toned sequins and beads on it. Pretty fancy! I’m a-gonna look like a lit Christmas tree, I’m a-gonna!
Larry got another light-fixture job for Disneyland--sixty more of them. He’s finished painting them, and they will be collected tomorrow morning. One thing about working for Disneyland--we needn’t worry about their checks bouncing!
Yesterday morning, after putting on nice clean socks, I collected my nice clean baby and headed into the kitchen to feed her some breakfast. I immediately stuck to the floor. That is, my nice clean socks did. I nearly left them behind, I did. Aaarrrggh. There was a combination of jelly, honey, and juice, all over the floor.
Jelly: this was from Hester’s peanut butter/apple jelly sandwich, which she was eating as she strolled through the kitchen. Being too liberally spread, the excess deposited itself on the floor.
Honey: this was from Joseph’s muffin, and it was on the floor for precisely the same reason Hester’s apple jelly was down there.
Apple juice: this was because Caleb tipped the pitcher when he removed it from the refrigerator.
Cranberry/raspberry juice: this was because Teddy shook the carton, as instructed on the container itself.....without first ascertaining the lid was screwed on tightly.
Four kids were soon scrubbing the floor.
Thursday and Friday, my mother had a touch of the flu; I think she is feeling better now, although rather weak.
I just got the Battenburg lace parasol I ordered from an old-fashioned catalogue entitled ‘Victorian Papers’. I plan to use it when taking Victoria’s one-year pictures and Hannah’s graduation pictures. I’ve wanted one for a long time, but they’re $40, and I don’t like spending that much money for something that seems to be so totally frivolous. But it sure is pretty!
Friday Keith’s new boots from Mason’s Shoe Company arrived; they were the nicest boots he’s ever had. He rubbed beeswax into them before going off to work, completely pleased over those boots.
Last week Larry cut the boys’ hair. He perched Caleb on the tray of the high chair, the better to reach him.
Realizing the clippers were on the bathroom counter, he asked Hannah to stand beside Caleb so he wouldn’t fall off, telling him, “Don’t move!”
When he returned, Hannah said in a sassy, tell-on-your-brother sort of voice, “Daddy! Caleb was moving--he kept blinking.”
Caleb giggled. Larry made a frowny face at him. “What were you doing that for?!” he asked in a growly voice.
And Caleb answered indignantly, trying not to laugh, “I have to! Otherwise my eyes would get burned out!”
Saturday Nebraska won the football game against the Iowa Cyclones 77-14. Our next game will the day after Thanksgiving.
Larry’s been spending evenings cleaning our extremely cluttered garage. Good grief; we have so much stuff, we could fill all the rooms at Kensington Palace with no trouble in the slightest. This, along with another snow on Friday, must’ve stirred up the resident mice, sending them scampering for cover.....in our house. Unfortunately it isn’t as safe as they hoped: we’ve been catching mice one after t’ other.
One of our customers owns a gas station here in town. The station is a check-in point for hunters. The station owner's wife was manning the station one evening when about four hunters in quick succession brought their deer in. The lady knows little about deer.
(“But I’m learning!” she informed Larry, laughing as her husband told on her.)
“My, what long antenna your deer has!” she remarked to the first hunter. “And they’re so curvy, too!”
To the next, having learned ‘antenna’ wasn’t quite right, and elicited great guffaws from men in general and hunters in particular, she observed, “My! Just look at those fangs!” which brought an even louder response, to her chagrin.
Resolving to keep her comments to herself, the better to mask her ignorance, she asked the following hunter in a business-like tone, “Male or female?” He stared incredulously, looking from her to his enormous ten-point bull.
“Well, at least I know how to make cookies!” she countered, and she proceeded to fill a sack full for us.
I cut out and sewed Hester’s Christmas dress. The bodice is a black velvet with fuschia and mulberry and plum flowers with raised gold around the edges; the sleeves and very full skirt are iridescent plum silky something-or-other; and the gathered cummerbund, which comes to a V in the front, the sash, the pleated neckline trim, and the piping around the cuffs and hem are metallic gold crepe. Norma gave us the material, and I can hardly wait to show it to her, it turned out so beautifully. That done, I began remodeling Hannah and Dorcas’ dresses. They were both prom dresses, with necklines much too low.
Now that is the kind of thing I do not like to do--to try to add pieces to an already-made dress. It’s difficult to get the piece to fit into the dress just right, with no puckers or strange unwanted lumps, bumps, and odd shapes. Dorcas’ dress is supposed to be an off-the-shoulder number, and the tops of the sleeves are elastic. Now how, I ask you, do you attach anything to that? Oh, help and bother.
Hannah’s dress is almost done. It’s navy, and she is crocheting ruffled roses and three-dimensional leaves in sparkly white thread to applique onto the front of the bodice. Dorcas’ is midnight blue. The top is velvet, and the skirt is taffeta.
The children have been practicing their violins and cello every day now, preparing for Thanksgiving. We usually sing a few songs before heading downstairs to eat dinner. The day after Thanksgiving will be the first Christmas practice.
Teddy had his science test on elements last week; the kids all consider it the hardest test in any grade. He got a 95%! He was quite tickled pink. The test is not only graded on knowing the right element for each symbol, but also on spelling. Can you spell these? And do you know their symbols?
tin
gold
iron
lead
neon
zinc
argon
boron
radon
xenon
barium
carbon
cerium
cesium
cobalt
copper
curium
erbium
helium
indium
iodine
murium
nickel
osmium
oxygen
radium
silver
sodium
sulfur
arsenic
bismuth
bromine
cadmium
calcium
fermium
gallium
hafnium
olmium
iridium
krypton
lithium
mercury
niobium
rhenium
rhodium
silicon
terbium
thorium
thulium
uranium
wolfram
yttrium
antimony
astatine
chlorine
chromium
europium
fluorine
francium
hydrogen
lutetium
masurium
nitrogen
nobelium
platinum
polonium
rubidium
samarium
scandium
selenium
tantalum
thallium
titanium
tungsten
vanadium
There. Now, wouldn’t you agree, 95% is indeed spectacular?! (Hannah beat him when she was in ninth grade, however; she got 100%.)
Keith hurt his wrist some time back, lifting a heavy stack of re-bar. And it can’t get better very well, because he keeps straining it. One day as he was drilling something, the bit caught on some metal and flipped the drill, which hurt his wrist all over again. Keith is the sort who, if he has an owie, he tells you about it. If he thinks perhaps you may have forgotten, he tells you again.
Now, I know his wrist is sore, don’t get me wrong. But here beside him sits his next younger brother, who last week slipped on his bike and bent his thumb backward, causing it to swell to nearly twice its normal size.
(“I’d’ve rather had it happen with a horse,” said Teddy, “because people don’t think you’re quite as stupid as when it happens with your bike!”)
Anyway, Teddy didn’t even tell me about his poor thumb until two or three hours later. Kids are sure different; here we have Teddy, who ought to complain more (such as about tight shoes, and that sort of thing); and then here we have Keith, with whom we could do with a little less grievance reports.
So when Keith launched into the story about the wayward drill, Joseph said in a so-sorry tone, “Awwwww. . .did you pull your pork loin?”
(Ham string, you know.)
Even Keith had to laugh at that.
Saturday Teddy got his thumb nail--on that same old sore thumb--caught on the sander and ripped the top half part of the way off. Later that evening, he was giving Hester and Caleb a piggyback ride on his back and caught the nail on the carpet. So he gritted his teeth and pulled it the rest of the way off, making us all shiver and shudder in unison.
Victoria is quite adept at clicking her tongue. In fact, she’s been doing it for at least a couple of months. Today an elderly lady--one of those sorts who thinks children below the age of ten or so are mere infants, incapable of deep thought processes--patted on Victoria’s arm and click-clicked into the baby’s face--and the baby promptly wrinkled her nose, leaned over into the lady’s face and click-clicked right back at her, much to the lady’s surprise. Everybody around laughed, so Victoria laughed, too. I’m not sure what the lady thought.
As we were leaving church tonight, I tossed Victoria’s big fleece blanket over her head--it’s only 25°--and headed for the door, with Hannah walking along behind us.
Victoria carefully lifted one corner of the blanket, peeked over my shoulder, and said, “Hi, Hannah,” before ducking back down under the blanket. Peeping out again, she repeated, “Hi, Hannah!” and down she went again. Funny baby.
I discovered the following little note in the box of Caleb’s Tonka dump truck: “Dear Caleb Daniel Jackson: I love you very much. You are a very nice little boy. I love you! Love, Hester.”
Isn’t that sweet?
Wednesday a good customer of ours--the one who owns hog confinements all over the Midwest--gave us about fifteen pounds of ground elk meat. That night after church, Larry grilled elk hamburgers, which we ate, with a tomato on top, on toasted sourdough muffins. He put lots of spices on it: lemon pepper, garlic salt, lemon pepper, salt, lemon pepper, onion chips, lemon pepper, chili pepper, lemon pepper, beef bouillon, lemon pepper, ground mustard, lemon pepper. There is very little fat at all in elk meat, and it was exceptionally good. We grilled it on an indoor electric grill/broiler which my mother gave us.
One day last week, a friend gave me a couple of flashy blouses, one of which I think I’ll wear to the Christmas program. It’s bright red silk, with red sequins in swirling patterns all over it. The other is black silk, with black organza sleeves, and with jewel-toned sequins and beads on it. Pretty fancy! I’m a-gonna look like a lit Christmas tree, I’m a-gonna!
Larry got another light-fixture job for Disneyland--sixty more of them. He’s finished painting them, and they will be collected tomorrow morning. One thing about working for Disneyland--we needn’t worry about their checks bouncing!
Yesterday morning, after putting on nice clean socks, I collected my nice clean baby and headed into the kitchen to feed her some breakfast. I immediately stuck to the floor. That is, my nice clean socks did. I nearly left them behind, I did. Aaarrrggh. There was a combination of jelly, honey, and juice, all over the floor.
Jelly: this was from Hester’s peanut butter/apple jelly sandwich, which she was eating as she strolled through the kitchen. Being too liberally spread, the excess deposited itself on the floor.
Honey: this was from Joseph’s muffin, and it was on the floor for precisely the same reason Hester’s apple jelly was down there.
Apple juice: this was because Caleb tipped the pitcher when he removed it from the refrigerator.
Cranberry/raspberry juice: this was because Teddy shook the carton, as instructed on the container itself.....without first ascertaining the lid was screwed on tightly.
Four kids were soon scrubbing the floor.
Thursday and Friday, my mother had a touch of the flu; I think she is feeling better now, although rather weak.
I just got the Battenburg lace parasol I ordered from an old-fashioned catalogue entitled ‘Victorian Papers’. I plan to use it when taking Victoria’s one-year pictures and Hannah’s graduation pictures. I’ve wanted one for a long time, but they’re $40, and I don’t like spending that much money for something that seems to be so totally frivolous. But it sure is pretty!
Friday Keith’s new boots from Mason’s Shoe Company arrived; they were the nicest boots he’s ever had. He rubbed beeswax into them before going off to work, completely pleased over those boots.
Last week Larry cut the boys’ hair. He perched Caleb on the tray of the high chair, the better to reach him.
Realizing the clippers were on the bathroom counter, he asked Hannah to stand beside Caleb so he wouldn’t fall off, telling him, “Don’t move!”
When he returned, Hannah said in a sassy, tell-on-your-brother sort of voice, “Daddy! Caleb was moving--he kept blinking.”
Caleb giggled. Larry made a frowny face at him. “What were you doing that for?!” he asked in a growly voice.
And Caleb answered indignantly, trying not to laugh, “I have to! Otherwise my eyes would get burned out!”
Saturday Nebraska won the football game against the Iowa Cyclones 77-14. Our next game will the day after Thanksgiving.
Larry’s been spending evenings cleaning our extremely cluttered garage. Good grief; we have so much stuff, we could fill all the rooms at Kensington Palace with no trouble in the slightest. This, along with another snow on Friday, must’ve stirred up the resident mice, sending them scampering for cover.....in our house. Unfortunately it isn’t as safe as they hoped: we’ve been catching mice one after t’ other.
One of our customers owns a gas station here in town. The station is a check-in point for hunters. The station owner's wife was manning the station one evening when about four hunters in quick succession brought their deer in. The lady knows little about deer.
(“But I’m learning!” she informed Larry, laughing as her husband told on her.)
“My, what long antenna your deer has!” she remarked to the first hunter. “And they’re so curvy, too!”
To the next, having learned ‘antenna’ wasn’t quite right, and elicited great guffaws from men in general and hunters in particular, she observed, “My! Just look at those fangs!” which brought an even louder response, to her chagrin.
Resolving to keep her comments to herself, the better to mask her ignorance, she asked the following hunter in a business-like tone, “Male or female?” He stared incredulously, looking from her to his enormous ten-point bull.
“Well, at least I know how to make cookies!” she countered, and she proceeded to fill a sack full for us.
Sunday, November 9, 1997
Sunday, November 9, 1997...Beamuts & Christmas Rehearsal
There! I’m done! All done. All done putting the Christmas program together, so it’s ready to start practicing. Caleb’s getting more excited as the days go by; this will be his first year to participate. He and Lydia already know the two little songs their classes will sing, and we hear his high, piping voice coming from all corners of the house, at all hours of the day.
Yesterday he was listening to a CD of George Beverly Shea, the gospel singer who often sang during Billy Graham’s crusades.
“I like George Beb— Bebber— Bebberly—” he came to a stop.
Teddy helpfully intoned, “Borge Sheverly Bay,” which of course caused his little brother to dissolve into giggles.
When Hester was little, she thought Aleutia got her puppies out of the bathroom cupboard.
Larry has taken his camera to the shop and is taking pictures of his six-door pickup as its development advances. Too bad we didn’t think to take a picture of it before he started!
Tuesday I did bookwork all day. Guess what I did last month? I forgot to record a $1,065 deposit we’d made. Good thing it was a deposit, rather than a withdrawal I’d omitted, yes? You can be sure, I had my checkbook out paying bills in nothing flat.
Tuesday we got Hannah a Peak Flow Meter at Walgreens. She is to blow into it at least once a day, and record the pounds of air pressure. It should be about 350 pounds, but yesterday it was only 180. She’s got a cold, which always makes the asthma worse. I tried out the meter, and hit 350, right on the dot. (I gave myself a headache in the process, however.)
I spent Thursday afternoon and evening wrapping three more boxes full of presents I’d collected. Now all the ladies are crossed off my list, and only several men and boys remain. I think it’s much harder to buy presents for men than ladies, because, after all! How many ties does a man really want?? But, of course, a lady would appreciate innumerable necklaces and bottles of perfumes and such like. (Well, most ladies, anyway; I’d like innumerable photo albums and film cartridges, don’t you know.) (And Aunt Lynn would probably rather have a new horse or two.)
The other night, Keith and Esther were making lists of what everybody wanted for Christmas.
When they came to me, I announced, “Really, really warm boots, and a twin-sized electric blanket for only my side of the bed, since your father is hot enough already.”
At that, Teddy unobtrusively exited the room, returning posthaste with a large bulky sweater which he proceeded to drape around my shoulders, saying in an overly-sympathetic voice, “Poor Mama must be cold!”
I swatted at him, but he skedaddled backwards, and I missed.
At that point, Caleb trotted in with my thickest mittens. “Here’s some glovies for your hannies!” said he, giggling.
(Now, that kid, I caught.)
We’ve been practicing Christmas songs in Jr. Choir, which gets the children all inspired and looking toward Christmas with much anticipation. I wish I had time enough to work individually with some of them; we have quite a bit of talent here.
In my Avon order this week, I got a song book with electronic Christmas songs that was to be a Christmas present for Caleb. But I bumped a button, and it promptly played ‘Frosty The Snowman’, which brought Caleb running, on the double. So he got it now, rather than on December the 25th.
At the moment, he’s galloping down the hall, singing at top velocity, “Thumpity thump thump, thumpity thump thump!”
(No, Victoria is not sleeping.)
(Not now, anyway.)
You know, it sure is difficult to indulge in a private little snack around here before everybody goes to bed; someone invariably discovers me and wants some, too. And, of course, there isn’t always enough for everyone. This happened with the last handful of honey-roasted peanuts. Not a soul was around, and I was hungry. I knew those nuts were in the cupboard, and the more I tried to forget them, the louder they called. And there was only one handful. I finally sneaked into the kitchen, silently got them out, poured them into my hand----and there was Lydia, smiling at me.
“What are you eating?”
My mouth was full; no use trying to deny that I was eating something.
“Beamuts.”
Following came the inevitable “Could I have some?”
So I did what I always do--I gave them to her.
I poured them into the lid, set them down on the table in front of her, and told her not to tell anybody. She’d barely put one nut into her mouth, when Caleb came along. She calmly covered the lid with both hands. And while he puttered about, talking to us, playing, getting himself a drink, and so on, she surreptitiously smuggled one after another into her mouth. I tried not to laugh.
But it wasn’t long before Caleb smelled peanuts.
“Could I have some?” he asked beseechingly.
So Lydia surrendered her last precious few peanuts to her little brother, and then she could control her giggles no longer. Caleb, carefully chewing his prized peanuts, looked on the merriment with sparkling eyes.
“I know what’s so funny!” he chuckled. “It’s because we’re sneaking these peanuts away from the other kids!”
I finally finished Victoria’s Christmas dress. The ruffled skirt, attached to a sleeveless top, is flowered white satin jacquard. The jacket is forest green taffeta, double-breasted, and sports twelve gold and silver buttons down the front, a big embroidered organza double-pointed collar with Venice lace around it, and bows at the two inverted V’s at the bottom side fronts and at the pleat on the sleeves’ wrists. I copied a dress I saw in the Storybook Heirlooms catalog which sold for $128. I used scraps of leftover material, only buying three cards of buttons for 25¢ each. That’s all. There are over a dozen seams in the skirt’s ruffle--I was nearly out of scraps!
Lawrence and Norma happened to go to the Salvation Army in York the day they were having a sale: every last item in the store, excluding furniture, was $.99 each. They bought several nice suits for Keith and Teddy, brand-new jeans, a bright purple fur double-breasted coat for Dorcas which she dearly loves, and a black tweed coat for Hannah.
I thought, “Splendid! Now she’ll quit hauling off with mine!”
No such luck.
Boy, oh boy, did we ever have a wild and wooly game with Missouri Saturday afternoon. First, Missouri got a touchdown; then we got two touchdowns; they got another; then we did; they did; us; them; us; them; ........ until we went into overtime with the score 38-38. And then, we won!! 45-38. Whew! That’s the sort of thing nitroglycerin companies depend on, to stay in business. Nay, to make a profit! A big profit.
Just before the game began, Teddy and Joseph mowed the yard, filling many bags with leaves. Boy, were they ever moving in high gear!--they didn’t want to miss any of the opening plays!
The game was played in Columbia, Missouri. It didn’t rain like it did the previous week; the sky was blue and sunny. However, the Missouri fans got soaked anyway--something went awry with the sprinkler system on one end of the field. They valiantly sat there anyway. And then, poor things, to add insult to injury, their team lost.
I just found the birthday card Joseph gave Caleb last month: “Dear Caleb: Happy birthday to my favorite little brother. I love you! Love, Joseph.” That one gets saved.
Larry took some pictures with his camera (it’s the one that motley group left behind when they were chased out of Chief Hosa Campground west of Denver last year after they built a ground fire in such dry weather last year, as you may recall). One shows Joseph, Caleb, and Hester by the stream beside which we ate breakfast.
When Caleb first saw this picture, his eyebrows flew right up to the top of his head. “Was that when I was taller than Joseph?!” he inquired in amazement. And then, a bit sheepishly, “Oh! (tee hee) I was standing on a rock.”
And now, if I don’t hurry to bed, I will have a frightful collision with myself getting back up again.
Yesterday he was listening to a CD of George Beverly Shea, the gospel singer who often sang during Billy Graham’s crusades.
“I like George Beb— Bebber— Bebberly—” he came to a stop.
Teddy helpfully intoned, “Borge Sheverly Bay,” which of course caused his little brother to dissolve into giggles.
When Hester was little, she thought Aleutia got her puppies out of the bathroom cupboard.
Larry has taken his camera to the shop and is taking pictures of his six-door pickup as its development advances. Too bad we didn’t think to take a picture of it before he started!
Tuesday I did bookwork all day. Guess what I did last month? I forgot to record a $1,065 deposit we’d made. Good thing it was a deposit, rather than a withdrawal I’d omitted, yes? You can be sure, I had my checkbook out paying bills in nothing flat.
Tuesday we got Hannah a Peak Flow Meter at Walgreens. She is to blow into it at least once a day, and record the pounds of air pressure. It should be about 350 pounds, but yesterday it was only 180. She’s got a cold, which always makes the asthma worse. I tried out the meter, and hit 350, right on the dot. (I gave myself a headache in the process, however.)
I spent Thursday afternoon and evening wrapping three more boxes full of presents I’d collected. Now all the ladies are crossed off my list, and only several men and boys remain. I think it’s much harder to buy presents for men than ladies, because, after all! How many ties does a man really want?? But, of course, a lady would appreciate innumerable necklaces and bottles of perfumes and such like. (Well, most ladies, anyway; I’d like innumerable photo albums and film cartridges, don’t you know.) (And Aunt Lynn would probably rather have a new horse or two.)
The other night, Keith and Esther were making lists of what everybody wanted for Christmas.
When they came to me, I announced, “Really, really warm boots, and a twin-sized electric blanket for only my side of the bed, since your father is hot enough already.”
At that, Teddy unobtrusively exited the room, returning posthaste with a large bulky sweater which he proceeded to drape around my shoulders, saying in an overly-sympathetic voice, “Poor Mama must be cold!”
I swatted at him, but he skedaddled backwards, and I missed.
At that point, Caleb trotted in with my thickest mittens. “Here’s some glovies for your hannies!” said he, giggling.
(Now, that kid, I caught.)
We’ve been practicing Christmas songs in Jr. Choir, which gets the children all inspired and looking toward Christmas with much anticipation. I wish I had time enough to work individually with some of them; we have quite a bit of talent here.
In my Avon order this week, I got a song book with electronic Christmas songs that was to be a Christmas present for Caleb. But I bumped a button, and it promptly played ‘Frosty The Snowman’, which brought Caleb running, on the double. So he got it now, rather than on December the 25th.
At the moment, he’s galloping down the hall, singing at top velocity, “Thumpity thump thump, thumpity thump thump!”
(No, Victoria is not sleeping.)
(Not now, anyway.)
You know, it sure is difficult to indulge in a private little snack around here before everybody goes to bed; someone invariably discovers me and wants some, too. And, of course, there isn’t always enough for everyone. This happened with the last handful of honey-roasted peanuts. Not a soul was around, and I was hungry. I knew those nuts were in the cupboard, and the more I tried to forget them, the louder they called. And there was only one handful. I finally sneaked into the kitchen, silently got them out, poured them into my hand----and there was Lydia, smiling at me.
“What are you eating?”
My mouth was full; no use trying to deny that I was eating something.
“Beamuts.”
Following came the inevitable “Could I have some?”
So I did what I always do--I gave them to her.
I poured them into the lid, set them down on the table in front of her, and told her not to tell anybody. She’d barely put one nut into her mouth, when Caleb came along. She calmly covered the lid with both hands. And while he puttered about, talking to us, playing, getting himself a drink, and so on, she surreptitiously smuggled one after another into her mouth. I tried not to laugh.
But it wasn’t long before Caleb smelled peanuts.
“Could I have some?” he asked beseechingly.
So Lydia surrendered her last precious few peanuts to her little brother, and then she could control her giggles no longer. Caleb, carefully chewing his prized peanuts, looked on the merriment with sparkling eyes.
“I know what’s so funny!” he chuckled. “It’s because we’re sneaking these peanuts away from the other kids!”
I finally finished Victoria’s Christmas dress. The ruffled skirt, attached to a sleeveless top, is flowered white satin jacquard. The jacket is forest green taffeta, double-breasted, and sports twelve gold and silver buttons down the front, a big embroidered organza double-pointed collar with Venice lace around it, and bows at the two inverted V’s at the bottom side fronts and at the pleat on the sleeves’ wrists. I copied a dress I saw in the Storybook Heirlooms catalog which sold for $128. I used scraps of leftover material, only buying three cards of buttons for 25¢ each. That’s all. There are over a dozen seams in the skirt’s ruffle--I was nearly out of scraps!
Lawrence and Norma happened to go to the Salvation Army in York the day they were having a sale: every last item in the store, excluding furniture, was $.99 each. They bought several nice suits for Keith and Teddy, brand-new jeans, a bright purple fur double-breasted coat for Dorcas which she dearly loves, and a black tweed coat for Hannah.
I thought, “Splendid! Now she’ll quit hauling off with mine!”
No such luck.
Boy, oh boy, did we ever have a wild and wooly game with Missouri Saturday afternoon. First, Missouri got a touchdown; then we got two touchdowns; they got another; then we did; they did; us; them; us; them; ........ until we went into overtime with the score 38-38. And then, we won!! 45-38. Whew! That’s the sort of thing nitroglycerin companies depend on, to stay in business. Nay, to make a profit! A big profit.
Just before the game began, Teddy and Joseph mowed the yard, filling many bags with leaves. Boy, were they ever moving in high gear!--they didn’t want to miss any of the opening plays!
The game was played in Columbia, Missouri. It didn’t rain like it did the previous week; the sky was blue and sunny. However, the Missouri fans got soaked anyway--something went awry with the sprinkler system on one end of the field. They valiantly sat there anyway. And then, poor things, to add insult to injury, their team lost.
I just found the birthday card Joseph gave Caleb last month: “Dear Caleb: Happy birthday to my favorite little brother. I love you! Love, Joseph.” That one gets saved.
Larry took some pictures with his camera (it’s the one that motley group left behind when they were chased out of Chief Hosa Campground west of Denver last year after they built a ground fire in such dry weather last year, as you may recall). One shows Joseph, Caleb, and Hester by the stream beside which we ate breakfast.
When Caleb first saw this picture, his eyebrows flew right up to the top of his head. “Was that when I was taller than Joseph?!” he inquired in amazement. And then, a bit sheepishly, “Oh! (tee hee) I was standing on a rock.”
And now, if I don’t hurry to bed, I will have a frightful collision with myself getting back up again.
Sunday, November 2, 1997
Sunday, November 2, 1997...Painting for Disneyland
I’m typing this Sunday night while most of the family is in church. I am home with Lydia and Victoria, who have a bad headache and a cold, respectively. I took Victoria to Sunday School this morning, but brought her home before the church service at 11:00 A.M. because her poor little nose was running constantly, and she didn’t act like she felt well. Tonight I went to church, because I had to sing in the choir [some sing low, ♪ ♫ and some sing higher! ♪ ♫ ♫ ♪ ♪ Some sing out loud on the telephone wire! ♪ ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪ And some just clap their hands, or paws! ♪ ♫ ♪]
Anyway, after finishing with the choir number, I headed for home, and Lydia came, too, since her headache had not improved after taking a Tylenol. Now Victoria is switching back and forth from playing on the floor beside me, well entertained by Lydia and a large box of toys; and sitting on my lap playing with some toys I’ve put on the slide-out section of my desk just under the desktop.
A minute or two ago, she reached for the keyboard, and I said “Hey!--Don’t!” so abruptly that she gasped, jumped out of her hide, and her arm flew straight up in the air. Now she is warily steering clear of that scary keyboard.
She must be getting tired; she just plopped all her toys down, sighed, gathered up a corner of her dress, rubbed it on her cheek, cuddled up against me, and popped her thumb in her mouth.
* * *
Victoria has now been fed and tucked in bed, opening her eyes just enough to give me a sweet little smile when I pulled her fleece blanket up to her chin.
The Super-Duper Crewcab should be done sometime in December, since that’s when the man who bought the old crewcab needs it. He’s already given us his pickup, a ’90 3/4-ton 4x4 pickup, as a down payment. It’s in very good shape; we hope to get about $8,500 for it. If we get that amount, the man will then owe us another $8,500; we sold the crewcab to him for $17,000. Larry will take out all the hail dents, received last summer, into the bargain. That will probably mean a new hood; that poor thing got peppered.
Guess what Larry is painting now? ? ? Oh, you’ll never guess. He’s painting light fixtures......for Disneyland. Boy, we’re really famous now. We’ll require respect!!
You see, a manufacturing company in town made the fixtures and painted them--the wrong color. They painted them gray, using an exceptionally hard paint which is nearly impossible to remove. Then they learned that the fixtures were supposed to be a shiny, metallic silver. (Seems like that should be a given, if it's for Disneyland.) They enlisted the aid of Casey Paint Company of Omaha, which just happens to be our paint supplier, and they recommended Larry do the repainting. He did half of them yesterday, and will do the other half tomorrow. They must be done by Tuesday morning. There are 50 fixtures, with five pieces to each fixture--250 in all. Appleton did all the original paint removal and masking off of the threads where the pieces are screwed together; all Larry has to do is paint them. He’s charging $7.50 per piece --$1,875. Appleton bought the paint: two gallons @ over $300/gal. (!!) We are glad Larry landed this job, because the electric motor on Larry’s big air compressor just went kaput, and he must have a new one immediately. All his paint guns and nearly all his tools run on air, so we might as well close shop if we don’t have an air compressor. And it has to be a big one, too.
Hannah has now finished the third (and last) doll’s dress for our friend’s little girls for Christmas. I think the only things she has left to do are a bonnet and one more little blanket. She made the cutest little Mary Jane slippers for this last doll. They are for Tim and Malinda's little girls, ages 10 and 7. And I think the smallest doll is for the baby, Melody Joy, who was born prematurely. She now weighs nearly nine pounds.
Early last week Larry finished a burgundy Lincoln Town Car for one of our customers, who rewarded us not only by paying the bill, but also by giving us several pork loins and roasts. I like to fix the boneless loin by baking it until it can be sliced, then sprinkling lemon, pepper, garlic salt, onion chips, parsley, and celery seed on top of it and between each slice. Mmmmmmmmm. We baked the roasts in apple juice. (We would’ve done it in pineapple juice, but one of the urchins guzzled down the juice we were saving just for that purpose.) In any case, they turned out more juicy and tender than any roast I’ve roasted yet.
The same man who bought the Lincoln also bought the Suzuki Samurai. Now, isn’t that a curious conjugation.
Wednesday I helped the kids write a couple dozen letters to their penpals. This time, not all of the letters went to the Philippines; one went to Turkey, one to South Wales, two to Trinidad & Tobago, and one to Mauritius. Mauritius is a little island in the middle of the Indian Ocean some ways east of Madagascar. The girl who lives there, Jyotee Khoodeeram, just celebrated her first wedding anniversary last week, and she and her husband are expecting a baby at the end of December. Hannah has already begun crocheting a baby gift for her. Luckily, small crocheted items are lightweight, so it doesn’t cost too awfully much to mail it.
We’ve learned that if we use thin paper, we can type a two-page letter, using front and back, and send three pictures in a small envelope--and still keep it under half an ounce, which costs 60¢. About three weeks from now, we’ll be getting reams of mail from the Philippines, mark my word. Thought we were going to let that connection peter out?
Thursday Hannah made pumpkin cookies for the trick-or-treaters we expected to see Friday night. Word has gotten around that our house doles out homemade cookies, and, each ensuing Halloween, business picks up.
October 31st is my mother’s birthday; she is now 80. About once a day for the last two weeks she’d been informing all the members of her family that she didn’t want any presents, or any party, or any big ‘doin’s’, as she calls it. She called me last Monday. “Friday is my birthday,” she began--and I butted right in and said, “Well, for shame! Calling me up to beg for presents like that!!”
She laughed, of course, knowing I knew good and well exactly what she was going to say.
I told her, “Mama, you are going to have to behave just like you taught your children to behave: when one of your children or grandchildren gives you something, you’ll have to smile nice and say ‘thank you’ politely, whether you need it, want it, like it, or not!”
Friday we trotted several handfuls of presents over to her house. Now, Mama’s kitchen table is quite large, and she always keeps all the extra leaves in it…just in case, you know. Just in case the Jacksons come visiting, as they are periodically wont to do. Or the Walkers. Or the Tuckers. Or the Wrights. Or who knows who. Anyway, there sat Mama at her enormous table, which was absolutely covered with cards, flowers, and presents. Lydia’s class had made cards for her, and those made a sizable stack.
And you know what? My mother, who’d insisted she didn’t want a thing, was just as pleased as punch.
Of course, as soon as we began setting down our numerous packages, she began to say, “Oh, I told you not to!”
I replied, “Well, every time you called and said that, it reminded me that I didn’t have enough presents for you, so I got something else!”
She laughed. “Oh, for pity’s sake.” (That’s one of her pet phrases.)
She had started to feel a little bit better, but somebody gave her a 10-pound bag of bird seed, and she lifted it out of the decorator bag it was in and sprained her shoulder. “Don’t tell them, for goodness’ sake,” she implored me, “They’d feel just awful!”
That afternoon I’d made four pumpkin chiffon pies, reserving enough crust and filling to make Mama a cute little tiny pie in a popover bowl, complete with fluted edges. We also gave her a miniature bell which looks like a birch tree trunk with a rose-crowned finch perched on it; a vanilla candle in a tin imprinted with flowers, butterflies, and birdhouses; a calendar on which I’d written all our friends’ birthdays and anniversaries; a bar of clear blue glycerin soap inside of which is a shiny silver soap shaped like a snowflake; a small wreath pin with dried and silk flowers; a delicate white doily with raised pink petals around the edges (crocheted by Hannah); and a little ceramic magnet shaped like a heart with ‘You’re Special’ printed in the middle. Those last two were in a small bag with pictures of kittens on each side, picked out by Caleb “’specially for Grandma!”
Friday night we went to Lawrence and Norma’s, taking along a pumpkin pie to share with them. (Yes; I have big pie pans.) (Yes; I fill them really full.) Norma had made chocolate chip cookies. Later, Kenny and Annette and their children came. Nathan was dressed like a cowboy, and Annette had made Charlie a cute Robin Hood outfit, hat and all. Rachel was wearing a white leather jacket and skirt with fringes and beads which used to be Annette’s when she was little. In fact, I remembered seeing her wear it! Amanda is such a striking baby with her black hair, eyebrows, and dark brown eyes. She smiled so big at Dorcas, she wiggled all over.
Olivia opened a box of dominoes--upside down. With a loud clatter, they fell out.
“Ze dumb sings,” she remarked, trying to gather them up again.
Along came Caleb.
Olivia looked up at him in relief. “Cawub! You tan hep me!”
She placed the box in his hands, smiled sweetly, and trotted off, dusting her hands vigorously.
A great portion of this week has been taken up in preparing the Christmas Program. I have the songs all picked out and in order (I think), and most of the scriptures chosen, along with several poems. I wrote Christmas words for one of my favorite songs, leaving the fourth verse and final chorus the same; it was written by Fanny Crosby. She was blind and wrote over 8,000 hymns. Ira Sankey was a world-famous gospel singer and writer who traveled with just-as-famous evangelist Dwight L. Moody, who established the great Moody Bible Institute of Chicago and also the Moody Press.
Following is a poem I wrote last night:
Heir Of All Things(Hebrews 1 & 2)
God spake by His prophets
In days long ago
His Word to His people,
That Truth they might know.
But now in these days
He speaks by His Son,
Chosen Heir of all things,
The Most Holy One.
Express Image of God,
He’s the Brightness of glory;
He purged all our sins;
Oh, tell the old story!
Now at the right hand
Of the Majesty above,
Better than angels,
This Jesus I love.
No angel hath
A more excellent Name;
For He is God’s Son--
In perfection He came.
For ever and ever
Shall be His throne;
A sceptre of righteousness
Is His alone.
The oil of gladness
Anointed His head;
The heavens and earth
His mighty hands spread.
Though they shall perish,
He shalt remain;
They shall wax old,
But He is the same.
Made lower than angels,
Suffering death for us all;
Bringing many to glory
Who were ruined by the fall.
He was made like His brethren,
Our comforter to be;
He was tempted and tested,
Like unto thee.
If we hold fast the confidence,
The hope, and the joy,
Then praises of glory
Our tongues will employ!
Perhaps Hannah will say the poem; we’ll see.
Nebraskans are sad. You see, yesterday Nebraska played Oklahoma--and Oklahoma made a touchdown. They even got the extra point.
All right; I know Nebraska got 69 points; but we were hoping for the third shutout in a row.
Greedy, huh? Tom Osborne, our coach and a real prince of a man, won his 250th game yesterday. A big fireworks display was put on after the game, in spite of a torrential downpour earlier during the last quarter. A beautiful rainbow came out and arched over the stadium. They’ve already made a poster of a picture of it!
Tom Osborne is called “The Winningest Coach In History”. He’s the kind of a person who never takes the credit for anything, is always thankful to everyone else, and always talks about the other teams’ good points. The newscasters and reporters never can get him to brag, no matter how hard they try. He calls his players “my boys”, and insists that good morals are part of the agenda.
Today it has been terribly windy (rather detrimental to Sunday hairdos), knocking down several large trees around town. One fell on a major power line, leaving a number of houses without electricity. Power lines keep knocking into one another, making lights flicker continuously all over town. The main computer at the police station has been down so many times I’ve lost count (we hear about it on our scanner). Joseph has broken his own speed record for resetting the time on all our electric digital clocks, having gotten well practiced at it. At the moment, the wind is whistling mournfully down our chimney, rattling the flue, and disturbing last year’s ashes.
As we were eating dinner this afternoon, the back door suddenly blew wide open, while the front door simultaneously flew shut with a jarring crash. Esther, who was eating with us, jumped out of her skin and uttered a small shriek, sending those bratty littles of ours into peals of laughter.
Even Aleutia wagged and looked twinkly-eyed. I really like dogs; they’re my favorite pet, I think, although cats have a splendid habit that dogs never do: they make bread on your lap.
And that’s all, she wrote!
Anyway, after finishing with the choir number, I headed for home, and Lydia came, too, since her headache had not improved after taking a Tylenol. Now Victoria is switching back and forth from playing on the floor beside me, well entertained by Lydia and a large box of toys; and sitting on my lap playing with some toys I’ve put on the slide-out section of my desk just under the desktop.
A minute or two ago, she reached for the keyboard, and I said “Hey!--Don’t!” so abruptly that she gasped, jumped out of her hide, and her arm flew straight up in the air. Now she is warily steering clear of that scary keyboard.
She must be getting tired; she just plopped all her toys down, sighed, gathered up a corner of her dress, rubbed it on her cheek, cuddled up against me, and popped her thumb in her mouth.
* * *
Victoria has now been fed and tucked in bed, opening her eyes just enough to give me a sweet little smile when I pulled her fleece blanket up to her chin.
The Super-Duper Crewcab should be done sometime in December, since that’s when the man who bought the old crewcab needs it. He’s already given us his pickup, a ’90 3/4-ton 4x4 pickup, as a down payment. It’s in very good shape; we hope to get about $8,500 for it. If we get that amount, the man will then owe us another $8,500; we sold the crewcab to him for $17,000. Larry will take out all the hail dents, received last summer, into the bargain. That will probably mean a new hood; that poor thing got peppered.
Guess what Larry is painting now? ? ? Oh, you’ll never guess. He’s painting light fixtures......for Disneyland. Boy, we’re really famous now. We’ll require respect!!
You see, a manufacturing company in town made the fixtures and painted them--the wrong color. They painted them gray, using an exceptionally hard paint which is nearly impossible to remove. Then they learned that the fixtures were supposed to be a shiny, metallic silver. (Seems like that should be a given, if it's for Disneyland.) They enlisted the aid of Casey Paint Company of Omaha, which just happens to be our paint supplier, and they recommended Larry do the repainting. He did half of them yesterday, and will do the other half tomorrow. They must be done by Tuesday morning. There are 50 fixtures, with five pieces to each fixture--250 in all. Appleton did all the original paint removal and masking off of the threads where the pieces are screwed together; all Larry has to do is paint them. He’s charging $7.50 per piece --$1,875. Appleton bought the paint: two gallons @ over $300/gal. (!!) We are glad Larry landed this job, because the electric motor on Larry’s big air compressor just went kaput, and he must have a new one immediately. All his paint guns and nearly all his tools run on air, so we might as well close shop if we don’t have an air compressor. And it has to be a big one, too.
Hannah has now finished the third (and last) doll’s dress for our friend’s little girls for Christmas. I think the only things she has left to do are a bonnet and one more little blanket. She made the cutest little Mary Jane slippers for this last doll. They are for Tim and Malinda's little girls, ages 10 and 7. And I think the smallest doll is for the baby, Melody Joy, who was born prematurely. She now weighs nearly nine pounds.
Early last week Larry finished a burgundy Lincoln Town Car for one of our customers, who rewarded us not only by paying the bill, but also by giving us several pork loins and roasts. I like to fix the boneless loin by baking it until it can be sliced, then sprinkling lemon, pepper, garlic salt, onion chips, parsley, and celery seed on top of it and between each slice. Mmmmmmmmm. We baked the roasts in apple juice. (We would’ve done it in pineapple juice, but one of the urchins guzzled down the juice we were saving just for that purpose.) In any case, they turned out more juicy and tender than any roast I’ve roasted yet.
The same man who bought the Lincoln also bought the Suzuki Samurai. Now, isn’t that a curious conjugation.
Wednesday I helped the kids write a couple dozen letters to their penpals. This time, not all of the letters went to the Philippines; one went to Turkey, one to South Wales, two to Trinidad & Tobago, and one to Mauritius. Mauritius is a little island in the middle of the Indian Ocean some ways east of Madagascar. The girl who lives there, Jyotee Khoodeeram, just celebrated her first wedding anniversary last week, and she and her husband are expecting a baby at the end of December. Hannah has already begun crocheting a baby gift for her. Luckily, small crocheted items are lightweight, so it doesn’t cost too awfully much to mail it.
We’ve learned that if we use thin paper, we can type a two-page letter, using front and back, and send three pictures in a small envelope--and still keep it under half an ounce, which costs 60¢. About three weeks from now, we’ll be getting reams of mail from the Philippines, mark my word. Thought we were going to let that connection peter out?
Thursday Hannah made pumpkin cookies for the trick-or-treaters we expected to see Friday night. Word has gotten around that our house doles out homemade cookies, and, each ensuing Halloween, business picks up.
October 31st is my mother’s birthday; she is now 80. About once a day for the last two weeks she’d been informing all the members of her family that she didn’t want any presents, or any party, or any big ‘doin’s’, as she calls it. She called me last Monday. “Friday is my birthday,” she began--and I butted right in and said, “Well, for shame! Calling me up to beg for presents like that!!”
She laughed, of course, knowing I knew good and well exactly what she was going to say.
I told her, “Mama, you are going to have to behave just like you taught your children to behave: when one of your children or grandchildren gives you something, you’ll have to smile nice and say ‘thank you’ politely, whether you need it, want it, like it, or not!”
Friday we trotted several handfuls of presents over to her house. Now, Mama’s kitchen table is quite large, and she always keeps all the extra leaves in it…just in case, you know. Just in case the Jacksons come visiting, as they are periodically wont to do. Or the Walkers. Or the Tuckers. Or the Wrights. Or who knows who. Anyway, there sat Mama at her enormous table, which was absolutely covered with cards, flowers, and presents. Lydia’s class had made cards for her, and those made a sizable stack.
And you know what? My mother, who’d insisted she didn’t want a thing, was just as pleased as punch.
Of course, as soon as we began setting down our numerous packages, she began to say, “Oh, I told you not to!”
I replied, “Well, every time you called and said that, it reminded me that I didn’t have enough presents for you, so I got something else!”
She laughed. “Oh, for pity’s sake.” (That’s one of her pet phrases.)
She had started to feel a little bit better, but somebody gave her a 10-pound bag of bird seed, and she lifted it out of the decorator bag it was in and sprained her shoulder. “Don’t tell them, for goodness’ sake,” she implored me, “They’d feel just awful!”
That afternoon I’d made four pumpkin chiffon pies, reserving enough crust and filling to make Mama a cute little tiny pie in a popover bowl, complete with fluted edges. We also gave her a miniature bell which looks like a birch tree trunk with a rose-crowned finch perched on it; a vanilla candle in a tin imprinted with flowers, butterflies, and birdhouses; a calendar on which I’d written all our friends’ birthdays and anniversaries; a bar of clear blue glycerin soap inside of which is a shiny silver soap shaped like a snowflake; a small wreath pin with dried and silk flowers; a delicate white doily with raised pink petals around the edges (crocheted by Hannah); and a little ceramic magnet shaped like a heart with ‘You’re Special’ printed in the middle. Those last two were in a small bag with pictures of kittens on each side, picked out by Caleb “’specially for Grandma!”
Friday night we went to Lawrence and Norma’s, taking along a pumpkin pie to share with them. (Yes; I have big pie pans.) (Yes; I fill them really full.) Norma had made chocolate chip cookies. Later, Kenny and Annette and their children came. Nathan was dressed like a cowboy, and Annette had made Charlie a cute Robin Hood outfit, hat and all. Rachel was wearing a white leather jacket and skirt with fringes and beads which used to be Annette’s when she was little. In fact, I remembered seeing her wear it! Amanda is such a striking baby with her black hair, eyebrows, and dark brown eyes. She smiled so big at Dorcas, she wiggled all over.
Olivia opened a box of dominoes--upside down. With a loud clatter, they fell out.
“Ze dumb sings,” she remarked, trying to gather them up again.
Along came Caleb.
Olivia looked up at him in relief. “Cawub! You tan hep me!”
She placed the box in his hands, smiled sweetly, and trotted off, dusting her hands vigorously.
A great portion of this week has been taken up in preparing the Christmas Program. I have the songs all picked out and in order (I think), and most of the scriptures chosen, along with several poems. I wrote Christmas words for one of my favorite songs, leaving the fourth verse and final chorus the same; it was written by Fanny Crosby. She was blind and wrote over 8,000 hymns. Ira Sankey was a world-famous gospel singer and writer who traveled with just-as-famous evangelist Dwight L. Moody, who established the great Moody Bible Institute of Chicago and also the Moody Press.
Following is a poem I wrote last night:
Heir Of All Things(Hebrews 1 & 2)
God spake by His prophets
In days long ago
His Word to His people,
That Truth they might know.
But now in these days
He speaks by His Son,
Chosen Heir of all things,
The Most Holy One.
Express Image of God,
He’s the Brightness of glory;
He purged all our sins;
Oh, tell the old story!
Now at the right hand
Of the Majesty above,
Better than angels,
This Jesus I love.
No angel hath
A more excellent Name;
For He is God’s Son--
In perfection He came.
For ever and ever
Shall be His throne;
A sceptre of righteousness
Is His alone.
The oil of gladness
Anointed His head;
The heavens and earth
His mighty hands spread.
Though they shall perish,
He shalt remain;
They shall wax old,
But He is the same.
Made lower than angels,
Suffering death for us all;
Bringing many to glory
Who were ruined by the fall.
He was made like His brethren,
Our comforter to be;
He was tempted and tested,
Like unto thee.
If we hold fast the confidence,
The hope, and the joy,
Then praises of glory
Our tongues will employ!
Perhaps Hannah will say the poem; we’ll see.
Nebraskans are sad. You see, yesterday Nebraska played Oklahoma--and Oklahoma made a touchdown. They even got the extra point.
All right; I know Nebraska got 69 points; but we were hoping for the third shutout in a row.
Greedy, huh? Tom Osborne, our coach and a real prince of a man, won his 250th game yesterday. A big fireworks display was put on after the game, in spite of a torrential downpour earlier during the last quarter. A beautiful rainbow came out and arched over the stadium. They’ve already made a poster of a picture of it!
Tom Osborne is called “The Winningest Coach In History”. He’s the kind of a person who never takes the credit for anything, is always thankful to everyone else, and always talks about the other teams’ good points. The newscasters and reporters never can get him to brag, no matter how hard they try. He calls his players “my boys”, and insists that good morals are part of the agenda.
Today it has been terribly windy (rather detrimental to Sunday hairdos), knocking down several large trees around town. One fell on a major power line, leaving a number of houses without electricity. Power lines keep knocking into one another, making lights flicker continuously all over town. The main computer at the police station has been down so many times I’ve lost count (we hear about it on our scanner). Joseph has broken his own speed record for resetting the time on all our electric digital clocks, having gotten well practiced at it. At the moment, the wind is whistling mournfully down our chimney, rattling the flue, and disturbing last year’s ashes.
As we were eating dinner this afternoon, the back door suddenly blew wide open, while the front door simultaneously flew shut with a jarring crash. Esther, who was eating with us, jumped out of her skin and uttered a small shriek, sending those bratty littles of ours into peals of laughter.
Even Aleutia wagged and looked twinkly-eyed. I really like dogs; they’re my favorite pet, I think, although cats have a splendid habit that dogs never do: they make bread on your lap.
And that’s all, she wrote!
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