Last week when I was writing to you, I had started printing out the letter when the printer ran out of ink--right on the very first line. So I went to Wal-Mart for a package of cartridges, posterboard for Hester, and Wite-Out for Joseph--one can’t buy Wite-Out around here unless one is eighteen years old. (Teddy gets by with buying the stuff all the time; no questions asked.) Then I came home, started up the printer--and it spit out another blank page.
I had forgotten to put a new cartridge in.
I opened the package; put in a new cartridge; put the second new cartridge in a drawer--and there was another new cartridge. I hadn’t needed to buy more, after all. Isn’t that always just the way?
Hannah said, “Are you dizzy?”
“No,” replied Victoria, “The floor is just going round and round.”
I have finished one of the bridesmaids’ dresses, and a second one is half done. Hannah is making rosettes (out of matching material)--a small one for each sleeve, and three large ones for the back of each of the bridesmaids’ dresses, twenty-one rosettes in all. I spent a good while diligently puckering the re-embroidered, pearled and sequined appliqué onto the top of Esther’s dress. They’re all made slightly whoppyjaw, so it is a bit difficult to sew them on the bodices perfectly symmetrically and smooth. Bother.
One afternoon, the children were all fixing themselves an after-school snack, when Caleb said, “My top teeth don’t work very well anymore.”
Several of his siblings looked at him with concern until he, noticing their stares, explained, “That’s because they’re getting loose.”
Wednesday evening after church, Larry, with Joseph’s help, put together a new distiller my mother gave us. The littles, especially Caleb and Victoria, were absolutely delighted with the empty boxes. For a while those boxes were their houses; then they were school rooms; then jails; and then stalls for horses. When they ended with those enterprises, they had the equivalent of gunny sack races: Big Box Races. Oh, that looked so funny! Hester and Lydia stood in their boxes, holding onto the flaps and jumping. But Caleb!--Caleb sat in his, and then bounced it with all his might and main. And the funny thing was, he could almost keep up with his sisters!--almost. Although perhaps the reason for that might very possibly be because they were laughing too hard to jump effectively.
The Jr. Choir has been practicing a song they will sing for Palm Sunday--Hosanna, Hosanna.
On Thursday, Bobby and Hannah got their end tables, microwave, mattress, dresser, two nightstands, and a mirror. They’ve already got a cadet blue leather couch and chair; did I tell you about that? They got leather, because the less fabric fiber, the better, for Hannah’s asthma. A friend helped Bobby start putting up their new cupboards Friday night.
Hannah had a bad asthma attack Friday evening. I didn’t realize she was having such troubles, until suppertime, when she came walking into the kitchen, and it seemed to me she could hardly get a breath. I snatched the phone and called the hospital in David City. They gave me a Dr. Witter’s number, saying she was on call. I called her to tell her we (meaning, Larry, Hannah, and me) would be coming to the emergency room right away. The entire while we were there, Dr. Witter never once showed up. She left everything to the student doctor--a young woman who went out of her way to help us as quickly as possible. We were pleased that she seemed to have all her wits about her, for sometimes those student doctors appear to be better cut out for working in the coal mines, or collecting trash, than diagnosing someone’s illness. We liked her.
Hannah was promptly given medicated breathing therapy--a mist inhaled through a tube, pumped by a machine. Saline solution is used along with an asthma medication. It opened up her airways so quickly, it made her dizzy, and she had to pause treatment in the middle. Also they gave her a couple of shots--an antibiotic, and another asthma medication.
On our way home, we were behind a car that kept going onto the shoulder, and then it went into the left lane and drove along for a ways--straight into the face of oncoming traffic. We reported him, using our cell phone. The police intercepted him near New World Inn, just south of town; but I don’t think they ever actually stopped him, because by then he was driving like a trooper. Perhaps he had been falling asleep, and driving through town revived him. He didn’t exactly seem like the run-of-the-mill drunk driver. Who knows!
Larry had to go back to the shop after we returned, to put primer on a vehicle. He’d already mixed it when I called to tell him I was taking Hannah to David City, and he barely got back to the shop in time to use it before it had set up.
The kittens are running about (still wobbling and tripping and falling), pouncing on each other, sometimes making their sibling cry loudly, exploring the world at large, and being extraordinarily funny and entertaining whilst they’re at it. Today we fed them kitten chow for the first time. The two striped male kittens came rushing pell-mell to the bowl, climbed right in, standing in the middle of their food, and began eating with vim and vigor. We gave them a little bowl of milk, which they all took turns stepping it, after which, they would violently and distastefully shake their paw with all their might and main, splattering drops of milk hither and yon.
We also made a little litter box for them, out of a shallow box lid. Tad immediately climbed in, scritch-scratched just like cats are supposed to do, and used it. How in the world did he know how to do that??!
Hester has been doing a report on Colorado. This morning I helped her cut out several pictures from old CountRy Magazines, and then she glued them onto her big posterboard. Joseph is doing a report on J. Harold Smith, the preacher from Arkansas who will be 90 years old in June.
Larry got me a metal trellis for my honeysuckle vine. It’s dark teal green to match the trim on the house, arched at the top, and with cutouts of butterflies affixed to it.
Saturday afternoon, I took Victoria for a walk. Meanwhile, Hannah went to her house with Bobby and Lydia, and they were waiting for me to come take pictures of new cabinets. But I didn’t know it, and went for a walk across the Boulevard and further north. When I came back, Lawrence and Norma were just pulling into our driveway, bringing us a big tray of cinnamon rolls. Yummy!
That evening, I was just putting Victoria to bed when I noticed her cheeks were bright red, and she felt awfully hot. I took her temperature--and it was 102°! So I stayed home from church with Victoria the following morning.
Since Keith and Esther, and Bobby, were coming for dinner, I made almond-poppy seed muffins. So the menu was: ham, mashed potatoes (with oodles and gobs of butter, which is the only way to make them), country-style gravy, lettuce salad, almond-poppy seed muffins, peas, and fruit salad with raspberry yogurt.
Now, here is a law of physics I have just learnt: (first, I should say, I usually drink coffee from a lidded mug.) When one jerks one’s mug away from one's face with a tall mug without a lid, whales and pollywogs of coffee globbulars come leaping up out of the mug, liberally splatting themselves on one's erstwhile nose. Therefore, when one is withdrawing one's mug from one's face, one should definitely do it with more decorum when one's mug does not possess a lid.
Sunday morning, Teddy sang with a boys' octet --or, at least it WILL be an octet when one of the boys who was chosen to sing gets well--I Love My Saviour, Too. It's another of my favorite songs. (I have somewhere around a thousand favorite songs, I guess; another couple thousand that I really like; and several thousand that I consider very nice songs. We have learned a lot of songs.) The Wright Quartet used to sing it, when Mr. Wright was still alive…and the octet Larry and I sang in when we were teenagers sang it, too.
What I really like to do is find old hymnbooks--I'm talking about hymnbooks that are 75 years old and older--and just go through them from cover to cover, playing every last song. We have found some of the most beautiful hymns, in those old, old hymnbooks, with pages all yellowed and brittle. We get them at garage sales and auctions, the Salvation Army and the Goodwill, and sometimes at Antique Stores, too.
Sunday night I sang Some Glad Sweet Day.
Last night, as soon as everyone arrived home from church, they set to playing with the kittens and scarfing down the leftovers, in that order, believe it or not.
Soon, I was sending the littles to bed, watching the bigs (or the Big, as the case may be) fall asleep first, and checking Victoria's temperature. It got all the way up to 103.5°, which is getting into the frightening range. So we rushed her into the tub--lukewarm first, then cooler and cooler and cooler, until finally she was shivering. Poor little thing.
In spite of that, she was laughing, because I was making a big plastic glass sail wildly round and round her by swishing the water around in a whirlpool motion, yelping, "She's grounded!" when it hit her foot, and "Iceberg in the traffic lane!" when it ran into her back. Finally, she reached out and shoved it underwater, and I howled, "She SUNK 'er, captain!" and Victoria laughed till there were tears in her eyes. (Reckon all that laughing helped lower her temperature?)
"Okay," I said in a growly voice, "Take that submarine to the battle!" --and I zoomed it around the tub, underwater all the way. So Victoria went on laughing, not noticing that the tub was getting colder--and colder--and colder, from the trickle of cold water I had running into it. But finally, I could stand it no longer--she really was shivering rather badly--and I got her out. Larry dressed her, and we tucked her into bed, with hugs and kisses and dolls and favorite blankies.
Now, as I write this, I have been back from taking Victoria to the doctor for a couple of hours. Her temperature got clear up to 104.3 this afternoon! She has tonsillitis, and is now on antibiotics.
About 1:00 p.m., I noticed she was getting hotter by the minute. I took her temperature; it was 103.8°. After calling Dr. Luckey, and being told he would call me back, I put her into the tub, and cooled it down more and more. But half an hour later, her temperature had gone up to 104.3°! And the doctor had not yet returned my call. I called him again, in the meanwhile continuing to pour cool water over Victoria. By the time he came to the phone, her temperature had gone down to 103.1. We were both in agreement that I should get her to the clinic as quickly as possible. It took half an hour to get there, and then it was another hour before we actually got in to see the doctor.
Victoria keeps saying she's better now--and she was particularly delighted that I got her her very own bottle of strawberry kiwi Gatorade at that little convenience store on the north edge of town. I also got her a chocolate chip cookie
When we got home, Hester, spotting the cookie, asked Victoria, just teasing, "Oh! Can I have some of that?!"
Victoria replied, "Nope! It's for my throat!"
She's still awfully hot. The doctor asked if she was prone for high temperatures when she got sick; I said yes, that was true. He said some children have more of a tendency for that than others. I remembered then that Hannah used to be particularly bad at having sky-high temperatures. Dr. Luckey said that sometimes it is only a sign that their immune system kicks in vigorously. Anyway, Victoria should begin to improve soon. I certainly hope so; this is rather worrisome and distressing!
Time for supper.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.