One day last week, when Larry was home for lunch, he was busily mixing up a concoction: tuna, ranch dressing, miracle whip, celery seed. . .
Teddy, his face a picture of concern, asked me, “Should we take that (pointing at Larry’s dish) to a lab somewhere and have them test it before he eats it?”
Monday evening, Esther, Eugene and Sarah (Esther’s mother and step-father) came over for frozen yogurt and sugarless ice cream (Eugene has diabetes) (and we are used to foods with little or no sugar, anyway). Keith gave Esther an oak vanity, complete with oval mirror and an upholstered bench.
She gave Keith—a Fourth-of-July present?—a thank-you present?—a teddy bear dressed in fisherman’s attire. Also, she made him a western shirt to match her dress; so Keith didn’t have to wear that rather wild shirt I’d made him. He wore it on one of his dates, however, and it did look pretty sharp, if I do say so myself. (The shirt Esther made was more Fourth-of-Julyish, though, I must admit.)
Tuesday morning about 8:00 we went to Omaha to take Hannah to the eye doctor for a checkup. We ordered a new pair of soft contacts for her. The place we go, Lens Crafters, usually has glasses and contacts ready in an hour; but they don’t stock contacts in Hannah’s prescription (she’s extremely far-sighted), so they had to order them. They’ll be here in about a week.
We’d driven the six-door crewcab, and were pulling the white flatbed trailer with several large vehicle parts which had been on burned vehicles. These we were taking to a place where they do ‘blasting’ with tiny plastic beads--as opposed to the usual sand--to clean off all the burned paint, take off rust, and so forth. For this job, we will pay approximately $350; whereas, if we bought new parts, it would cost around $1600.
After dropping off the parts, we went to the Lee Simmons Wildlife Safari Park. This park opened June 1, and for the entire month of June they were charging only $1 per vehicle. Starting July 1, the price would rise to $7 per adult, $4 for children ages 4 to 12. The animals have not really gotten used to their new surroundings yet, and, what with all the traffic these last four weeks, they haven’t been eating well. They were rather thin to begin with, having been kept for a time in holding pens in anticipation of their trek to the park. But if I know anything about Lee Simmons, the director of Henry Doorly Zoo, we can be pretty sure that these animals will look sleek and healthy soon.
Lee Simmons himself once removed a youngster from a rare animal exhibit because the child was throwing rocks and dirt clods at the poor thing. He’d asked the child politely to refrain from doing that, and also asked the child’s grandmother to keep the boy from throwing things. They hadn’t complied.
Guess what. The boy’s mother and grandmother sued the zoo, and Lee Simmons, too. The Jackson siblings decided that Lee Simmons would’ve been infinitely wiser to keep himself hidden behind a large tree and let fly with a few well-aimed rocks straight at that brat’s head. After all!—horrid little boys can’t do much harm when they’re out colder’n a mackerel, can they?
We had to go back to the plastic blasting place to retrieve our trailer which we’d left behind, and we also took my old word processor to the Better Business Equipment to have them remove the letter ‘t’. Well, that is, to remove the ‘t’ the dumb thing had such a penchant of typing after every ‘e’, whether I wanted it there or not. It also put a ‘g’ after every other ‘ch’. The next morning they called to tell me it was fixed; the charge was $70. I suppose we’ll pick it up when we return to Omaha to get Larry’s parts. (I mean, Larry’s vehicle parts.)
Still in high gear after returning home about suppertime, I sewed Hester a skirt and Dorcas a blouse. The next day, I made another skirt and blouse for Hester, this one to match the dark mauve ruffled collar Dorcas crocheted for her. Lydia’s outfit is cut out, ready to sew.
Tonight the Jr. Choir sang Into a Tent, which is a story a missionary’s wife, Mrs. M. B. C. Slade, wrote about a gypsy boy who was dying. On his deathbed, he learned from these missionaries about the love of Jesus, and how Christ died for our sins, that we who believe might receive eternal life.
“Tell it again!” begged the little boy, and, just as the sun was setting, he asked them to “Tell it to the rest!” And then he died.
This little boy was the first one of that band of gypsies to turn to the Lord. After his death, several more came to believe in Jesus, too.
Two boys, Seth and Andrew, ages 10 and 9, sang two of the verses, while the rest of the choir hummed.
Thursday afternoon I took Lydia to David City to see Dr. Luckey. Her throat was red and swollen, her glands were swollen (even one on the back of her neck, which has done that ever since she had a tick bite her on top of the head), she had a fever of 101°, and her ears hurt. She hadn’t complained of feeling ill, but for the last several days I’d thought she didn’t look quite right, especially around the eyes. Her eyelids even looked swollen. To make matters worse, she lost her top two front teeth. The second tooth to come out was stubbornly hanging on, and Lydia didn’t want anybody to touch it, and I don’t like to pull a tooth unless the child wants me to; but I probably should’ve, because her gums got all swollen, and even her lip was puffy. Thursday morning the tooth finally fell out; and, just like the other one, it disappeared off the face of the earth. Is it in the bed? On the floor? In Lydia’s stomach? Nobody knows.
The tests showed Lydia didn’t have strep throat or tonsillitis, but some type of bacterial infection. So she is now on antibiotics, and already feeling much better.
While Lydia and I were in the doctor’s office, Dorcas went with Hester and Caleb to the park. She was sitting at a picnic table, crocheting away, while Hester and Caleb entertained themselves and each other.....by rolling down the long, steep hill. After several spins down, both laughing merrily the whole way, Dorcas suddenly noticed that they were covered from head to toe—faces, arms, legs—with tiny red scratches. They’d been rolling through crab grass, and, not only are the blades sharp, but Hester and Caleb are both allergic to some types of grasses or weeds. And this must’ve been one of them.
By the time I came out, they looked absolutely awful. We doused napkins in our water jug, and swiped it all over them, but they didn’t improve much. Home we went, with Caleb and Hester getting itchier by the second. After they each took a bath, scrubbing with Ivory soap, they were nearly back to normal. Such troubles!
Friday, the day of our church picnic, dawned hot and humid. We all dressed in our hot, new, Fourth-of-July clothes and headed for Pawnee Park, cornmeal cookies and lemonade in hand. Norma had made enough lasagna and jello/cheesecake/graham cracker crumb dessert for both them and us, so the cookies and drink were all I had to bring. Once there, Larry had to go all the way back home again for our plastic plates and silverware.
I make it a rule to never fill my plate very full, because I always wind up eating some of the kids’ leftovers. Hester left a yummy-looking piece of casserole on her plate. There was melted Monterey Jack and Colby Longhorn on top, and my mouth began watering. I stuck my spoon into it and took a big bite.
But it wasn’t yummy.
It was sauerkraut casserole.
Oh, shiver me timbers, it was awful. It was terrible. It was bloody monstrous of somebody, ’twas, to bring a nasty booby trap like that to a patriotic picnic in this U.S. of A.! Take the ghastly gerp back to Germany! Gaaaaaacccccccckkkkkkkk. Bleeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaahh.
Hester, in her cute teal and white sailor dress, which I discovered late Thursday night was much too big, and which I then had to alter considerably, promptly headed for a giant dirt pile with a small troop of young boys. Lydia, in her ruffly white and red sailor dress, found one of her best friends and tripped off, looking every inch the little Victorian lady.
She soon shattered the illusion, however, by climbing onto a springy toy riding horse and attempting (or so it appeared) to ride him straight into the nearby Loup River.
Victoria pointed at the baby swings. “Wing?” she asked. “Wing wing wing?” And she waved her hand gleefully back and forth, looking at me hopefully. So Dorcas took her off to the swings.
Hannah and Dorcas both finished their crocheting projects for Linda, whose birthday is the Fourth, same as Dorcas’. Hannah made her a bright red double-thickness apple potholder, complete with dark green leaves and a light green worm; Dorcas made a soft, light blue, ruffled decorator throw.
After the picnic, we came home so Caleb and Victoria could have a nap (and their father did, too, accidentally, while trying to read the newspaper), while I finished the bookwork. Bobby and Hannah and Joseph came home in time to go with us to Lincoln that evening, where fireworks were going off all over the skyline. We drove by the capital building, where I set my camera up on my tripod and took pictures of it. In the meantime, Keith and Esther and Dorcas went to David and Christine’s house (my nephew and Esther’s sister), where they and several friends and cousins, brothers and sisters, shot off fireworks.
Keith didn’t have to work Saturday, so he spent a good deal of the day working on the collector’s spoon display rack for Dorcas. It needs only to be varnished before it is ready to be put together.
That afternoon, we went to my mother’s house, where we gave Dorcas her presents: a full-sized violin, and a resin teddy bear dressed in a sailor outfit. Mama gave her a very old book with stories about hymn writers, and $$$. Lawrence and Norma gave her a beautiful gold bracelet with her name engraved on a little oval plate, and the band is made of narrow Marquee-cut rose quartz. Also, they gave her a size ‘Q’ crochet hook, which is the biggest hook you can get, and four skeins of dark variegated yarn. When using the ‘Q’ hook, you are supposed to work four strands at a time. Dorcas has started an afghan; it is already a foot and a half square. Esther gave Dorcas a pretty mint-green-patterned dress.
We started packing for a trip we are planning to make to Minnesota; but, finding no such thing as a put-together pair of men’s socks in the entire house, I took time out to gather together every known lonesome sock of the male gender and attempt to find it a friendly mate. This is not easy.
Nor was it particularly successful. There are, I have no doubt, multitudes of unmatched socks flying in frazzled formation about the Bermuda triangle, where they will live forever in some kind of bizarre scientific vacuum, a black hole, of sorts, that relentlessly sucks in only one of every third pair of anything everywhere.
Saturday night we went to Fremont to watch fireworks. We found ourselves a convenient parking place in a lot midway between Christensen Field, where the biggest and best were to be blown, and the Country Club, where they were running the city a close competition. And, in the very parking lot we’d parked, people were lighting their own fireworks. So we were well entertained. Somewhere nearby, a child screamed vigorously at every single bang and flash.
Hannah asked Victoria, “Do you want to scream too?”
So Victoria said in a very small voice, “Eeep!”
When the show was over, we went to a ball park in North Bend to light off the box of fireworks Dorcas received from Bobby and Hannah for her birthday. The lady fingers had such a short fuse on them, the boys and Larry had barely enough time to turn their backs before the firecrackers exploded. Joseph, who already can’t hear just the best, a result of ear infections and a ruptured eardrum when he was three, said his ears are still ringing today. Finally Larry built a bonfire with the box the poppers came in, and threw them all in at once. So, with a WHAM! and a BANG!, July Fourth ended.
Since we got home late, it was a mighty good thing everybody had showered and curled their hair before we left. (That is, the girls curled their hair; the boys didn’t.) (Keith and Teddy’s hair is curly on its own; the girls think that is highly unfair.) Everybody jumped quickly into bed, hoping they could sleep fast enough that they wouldn’t be trying to finish their rest during church the next morning.
Everybody but me, at least. I still had to make a pumpkin pie for Sunday dinner. A quadruple recipe, too. And there were dirty dishes all over the table and counters and in the sink. The floor was in bad need of a sweeping, and the canisters and knickknacks had a heavy coat of dust.
But I got it done. We had beef potato stew for dinner, along with apple sauce and lettuce salad. And the pie. Then one of Larry’s cousins brought a scrumptious jello (supposedly for Dorcas’ birthday, but we all helped her eat it). There were three layers: the top was strawberry, with fresh strawberries in it; the middle was a thick cream cheese something-or-other; and the bottom was blueberry, with fresh blueberries in it. Mmmm!
And now I’d better hit the hay; I still have lots of packing to do tomorrow morning!
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