Monday morning Larry blew out the pipes to the tub, which fixed them. Boy, did it ever fix them. Now the water shoots in so violently, and the tub fills so fast, we all take snorkel and mask with us to the bathroom, just in case we don’t get the water turned off in time.
Keith came that evening to help put studs up in the downstairs bathroom. Lydia’s bed has now been moved to the big part of the room, to the area that may someday be the kitchen.
“I hope nobody trips as they’re coming down the stairs at night,” she remarked, “or they’re going to land right on top of me!”
A little while before sunset, the clouds were traveling overhead at a rapid pace. Thunderclouds loomed on all horizons. There was a lot of lightning and thunder. But it rained and the wind blew hard for only a little bit, and then was all calm again. We could hear several different kinds of frogs, including northern cricket frogs and bullfrogs, from my office window. They are probably in and around all those ‘lakes’ in the fields and ditches.
Did you know that the African giant frog, the largest of all frogs, grows as long as 26 inches and weighs as much as 10 pounds? Ugh! I’m sure glad I don’t live there. But I guess they need that size of frog to eat up all their enormous insects. Yike. Makes Antarctica seem pleasant and agreeable, yes?
Jim C. moved a huge log with his tractor to our front yard next to the ditch, where Larry put dirt around it and is using it as a dike to keep water from flooding the yard. Hopefully, the water will now be directed into the culvert properly. He also brought his lawn mower for Larry to repair and service. I think he speaks the truth when he says, “There ain’t nothin’ Larry can’t fix!”
Tuesday morning after taking Hester, Lydia, and Caleb to school, Victoria and I went to the grocery store. One time when in the bakery department, I bought only frozen bread, reasoning that if I didn’t get regular ready-made bread, then I’d be forced to bake the frozen stuff, which is always so scrumptious. Now, that might make perfect sense in the light of day, but in the middle of the night, when it suddenly occurs to me that we have no bread for lunch the next day, it seems quite berserk. My bread machine is sitting ready and waiting atop my pattern file in the washroom; but I have yet to use it since we’ve moved. Bread machines in washrooms are not extremely handy.
We then went to Wal-Mart for ink, typing paper, and a scrapbook. We came home, put groceries away, ate muffins, and read the newspaper. I came upstairs to my office to print my letter. By then, it was 11:00. I fired up my computer, pulled up my document – and the electricity went off. On. Off.
“Victoria!” I cried, “You’re kicking the cord, you’re making it come unplugged!”
Victoria, who’d been playing with dolls, dishes, stuffed animals, books, colors, and coloring books on my big lighthouse rug, sat up and stared at me. I looked at the cord and realized it was a good two feet from her – and it dawned on me that, not only was my computer off, but so was the light, the furnace, and the tape player.
“Oh!” I said, “Sorry! Guess it wasn’t you, after all.”
I called Cornhusker Public Power.
“We are in the dark here at our office, too,” the receptionist told me. “Linesmen are already out trying to find the problem.”
Perhaps it was lightning, for the sky was covered with dark, ominous clouds most of the morning and afternoon.
I gathered up everything we needed for lunch, took Lydia’s glasses to Wal-Mart to have a new screw put in them, did a couple of other errands, and got to Mama’s house five minutes early. By the time I got home, the electricity was back on, and soon the sun was shining into my office window so brightly that I could hardly see the monitor screen. But the microwave clock gained ten minutes to every hour, until Amy suggested that I unplug it and then plug it back in. Presto, abracadabra, voilá! Fixed.
A week or two ago, Dorcas gave Lydia and Victoria an American Girls' Collection Activity Booklet. They’d finished several of the projects, so I took them to Dee’s Hallmark Card and Gift to get stickers affixed to their books. And – best of all – they were awarded a cute little pin with a picture of an ‘American Girl’ for each completed activity.
After that, we went to the library so Lydia could get some books about pianos for a report she was doing on industries. Hester went with her, and the bookworm came back out with an armload of books so high she could hardly see over the top of them. We went back to Wal-Mart – third time that day – to get Lydia some notebook paper for school. Why don’t they tell me what they need before I go to the store?! Oh, well; I’d forgotten to get Norma and Mama a Mother’s Day present and card anyway.
For Norma I got a set of stone coasters and a hot plate with lighthouse pictures on them, and two envelopes of potpourri. For Mama, I got potpourri envelopes, two big bags of potpourri, and a heart-shaped glass dish and a round glass dish with fluted top in which to put the potpourri.
Dorcas brought us chicken rice casserole for supper that night. We had fruit and S’mores pudding for dessert. Mmmm…
Noble House, a publishing company based in London, with offices in France and New York, has asked me to send one of my poems for publication in their newest poetry edition. It’s just like International House of Poetry: I will be famous, but I will not be rich. In fact, I should send them money! The more the merrier! [If I want a copy of the book, I must pay for it. If I want a short biography in the book, I must pay for it.] I sent them a poem, nothing more.
Keith came and helped Larry Tuesday night. They put the shower walls on the tub and got it all positioned properly, framing it in where there will be built-in knotty pine cabinets and cupboards.
It rained Wednesday, and we felt a bit soggy going to church that evening. As Dorcas once said when she was not quite two, “Zis woo-ins mine hay-ooo!” (This ruins my hair.)
Thursday, it rained most of the day. The lady who stays with Mama in the mornings had made a large pan of chicken enchiladas, enough for all of us at dinnertime. She’d also baked banana cake with poppy seeds and cream cheese frosting, and she gave us some of that, too.
Dorcas had gone with Hannah and the children to see the doctor, but he was running late, and they didn’t get to see him until almost noon. So I stayed with Mama until Dorcas returned, playing her electronic piano.
We have seen a mallard drake and hen swimming in a full ditch of water beside Shady Lake Road each day. That afternoon as I was bringing the children home from school, the drake started flying just as I drove past – and he stayed even with my window for a quarter of a mile or so. The sun was shining on him, and his colors shimmered and shone in the light. “Quack, quack!” he said with some degree of alarm, peering through my window right into my face. He just couldn’t seem to get away from us. And then he got smart and banked sharply to the left and rose higher in the sky.
Victoria brought a bean plant home from school. It was about 10” tall. We planted it on the west side of the porch. She is delighted that it is standing up straight and tall, hale and hearty, and she tends to it faithfully every day.
“Are there any beans on it yet?” she asks anxiously.
Keith came out to help Larry Thursday night. It wasn’t long before they ‘ran themselves out of a job’, as Larry said, because there was no more they could do without purchasing more supplies. Keith was the first to notice: there is grass coming up here and there on our hillside. Would you ever believe it? Of course, not where the real rivers flowed, but on every section of higher ground, there is grass. Real, honest-to-goodness grass. We are glad; every little bit will help.
There is still a small leak in Hester’s new room. The gutters need to be cleaned out; several pieces of siding need to be replaced… Larry says he’ll probably have to build a roof over that porch. We look around at similar houses, and we decide, “Yes, we’ll have a porch;” “No, it’ll look ‘attached’;” “I’m sure we can make it look nice;” “No, it’ll look better without a roof, with only fancy white railing all the way around;” and so forth and so on, back and forth. But we are beginning to think that a porch roof might be a necessity. I am heartily sick to death of washing, rewashing, and then rewashing again, clothes that have gotten drowned.
I’d just finished washing all the clothes…and then I had to wash a box full of skirts that got wet in the storage room. I hung a few things and emptied out more boxes. The hostas were swamped, and I supposed they were ruined.
Larry told me that our neighbor Richard A. remarked, “Your children must be feeding Winston, because he hasn’t been eating as much at home, and he isn’t getting skinny.”
“What would they be feeding him?” I wondered, knowing we’d had no leftovers recently.
“I saw Hester tossing crackers out the door to him earlier,” Larry informed me.
Aaaauuuugggghhhh! Crackers! Those were for humans, to go with our soup, not for neighbor dogs, and I hadn’t even had any yet! Dumb kids.
Jim C. has let his cows into the south pasture; they aren’t in the field beside us anymore. There is tall, green bromegrass there, and they like it. He was riding his big white horse around his property, checking all the fence, when Richard A. came out to confront him – and there was Larry, right betwixt them, in the position we’ve both hoped to avoid.
“What were you doing on my property, digging up my dirt?” demanded Richard.
Jim had indeed done just that with his tractor, using the dirt to fill in a gully that had washed across the lane. A couple of weeks ago he repositioned his cattle guard, and since he only filled in the culvert with dirt, there is no place for the water to go but straight across the road.
“Just leveling out the lane,” Jim told him, looking down at him condescendingly.
“Why don’t you get down from that horse, and I’ll show you I’m younger than you think I am!!” bawled Mr. A.
“Why don’t you come a little closer, and my horse will kick you right in the head!” offered Mr. C.
Larry busied himself with whatever he’d been doing and pretended he was deaf. Good grief! These are men in their 70s, acting like that! And we live smack-dab in between them. The Bible says in Matthew 5:9, “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.” Hmmm. I wonder, how do you bring peace between two old coots who want to strangle each other cold? It’s a good thing it was Larry out there instead of me. I’d have probably ordered them, “Stop talking to each other like that! For shame!” – and that would be the end of any friendship we might have with either of them.
We went to bed at a quarter till midnight, an unheard-of early hour. But we felt like it had been days and days since we last slept. Then at 1:00 a.m., there was such an awful noise from one of the cats just outside our bedroom window – a scream, a snarl, a howl, a growl, and more screams – that I thought a coyote must have nabbed him or her, and we’d never see the puss again so long as we lived.
But Friday morning we found all the cats alive and well; evidently one of our cats had merely been having a conversation with one of the neighbor cats.
That afternoon, Hester, Lydia, and Caleb went on a field trip to the airport to watch a model airplane show. The airport manager later called to tell my sister Lura Kay, our principal, how much he and the ‘pilots’ appreciated the good behavior and attentiveness of our students. Not long ago, an official from Loup Power District came and gave a speech and demonstration on electrical safety. He, too, complimented our students on their well-mannered behavior and quiet listening, and on the intelligent questions several of them posed.
Hannah and the children came visiting. Aaron, who has four grandmas, including his great-grandmas, is going to think that Grandma Jackson is the one with boxes all over her house; he probably can’t well remember either house any other way. Baby Joanna weighs over 17 pounds now.
It was not until after school that Lydia advised me that she’d received an invitation to her friend Dorothy’s birthday party that afternoon. Dorothy is the third child of my friend Malinda, who died in childbirth a year and a half ago. It’s hard to believe it’s been that long.
Anyway, the party started at 4:00; we had no gift; it would take fifteen minutes to get there; and it was 3:45 already.
I turned the Subdivision toward Wal-Mart.
It took us ten minutes to pick out a tall, fat, hand-painted glass vase, along with a large, fancy pink dahlia bulb. I grabbed a box of ‘spiritual’ birthday cards in which was one that spoke of planting seeds of kindness and reaping joy. As we drove, Lydia put the dirt and bulb into the vase and signed the card. One needn’t wrap a plant, so we were all set. We were only ten minutes late.
We’d only just pulled into the drive when Helen, the children’s grandmother who used to be one of our school teachers before Malinda died, rushed out and gave us a tan ruffled skirt for Lydia, jerking off the price tag as she handed it to me. Helen is my brother-in-law John's sister, and they are alike in that they are both extraordinarily generous.
When we got home, we discovered that Jim C. had brought us a big box of fruit, including two cartons of scrumptious strawberries. Mmmm… Now, why doesn’t he try some of his munificence and benevolence on Richard A.? Maybe even a little tolerance. After all, Mr. A.’s ‘collection’ isn’t hurting Jim, except perhaps for wounding his sensibilities. He does keep all that junk in sorted groups, with walkways through it all; and he does diligently dig up all the dandelions throughout his property. In the words of Rodney King, and Booker T. Washington before him, Why can’t we all just get along?!!
But... let me tell you where all this produce is coming from: Jim C. drives around town to each of the grocery stores in turn, collecting all the fresh foodstuffs they're preparing to throw out, tells them it's for his Black Angus cattle (they won't give it to people for human consumption, after it's expired), and soon here he comes home again, van loaded with food. He sorts through it, saves the best for himself, gives us anything else that still looks edible -- and tosses the rest into his pasture for his cows. This is all supposed to be a Big Secret, so you mustn't tell.
By 6:00 p.m., Hester had started the garbage burning, Caleb had swept the steps, Victoria had shaken the rugs, and potatoes were baking in the oven. The kids headed outside to play.
I found a picture of a couple of Dalmatian pups in an old calendar. After cutting it to the right size, I affixed it to a plaque one of the children had received when they were in Jr. Fire Patrol. It has a 3‑D fireman’s hat and, under that, where there used to be a yellow paper with the child’s name typed in, and the words Jr. Fire Marshall, is the cute picture of the Dalmatian pups tussling over a stick. I hung the picture on one side of Caleb’s mirror. On the other side I hung a picture of Dalmatian pups playing with a fireman’s hat; they are both just above the Dalmatian trim that runs all around the room.
Keith came home with Larry, and they unloaded his pickup. It held, among other things, the wood flooring from the other house. There will be enough for Hester’s room, and maybe even for Lydia’s, and most of it still looks like new. Caleb took an old mattress down to Jim C.’s burn pile on the lawn tractor.
I transplanted the drowned hostas to higher ground; they did not enjoy swimming, as water got in their ears.
We were just finishing supper when Lydia found two or three ticks crawling happily about on her arm and neck. When I gave Victoria a bath, I found two crawling in her hair, one attached to her head, and one on the floor. Ugh! Shudder! Shiver! I had ticks, tarantulas, termites, tiger beetles, and tailless whipscorpions that didn’t feel tailless at all racing madly up and down my spine the rest of the evening.
Teddy and Amy came visiting while I was juicing carrots, celery, and apples, using Mama’s big juicer. I like carrot juice. With one or two sticks of celery. Too much celery makes it bitter. And maybe an apple for a little more sweetness. I know somebody who likes cabbage juice. Don’t worry; I’m not that far off the beam.
Teddy and Amy brought me a Mother’s Day card and a rose bush that will sport big, beautiful pink and yellow blooms. So now I feel better about leaving behind that pretty miniature rosebush he gave me several years ago. I tried to dig it up, but couldn’t. It was too big, and the ground too hard.
Larry came home wet and cold at 2:30 p.m. Saturday. Walkers had dug a basement, set up forms, and poured it, too, in the rain. It wasn’t raining hard, but enough to drench a person if he was in it very long. He ate a big bowl of split pea and ham soup, and a grilled cheese sandwich. He brought Keith with him; they’d been to Menards for supplies to work on the bathtub/shower downstairs.
“Whose shoes are on the porch?” asked Larry as he came in.
Aaccchhhh! They were mine. Were they ever a mess. Mud was still caked on the bottom (from digging up the hostas); but they were filled to the brim with water, and the leather – yes, leather – was soaked. Yes, we do need a roof over the porch. (By the way, the hostas are revived, alive, and thriving.)
Hannah and the children came, bringing me a snowmound spirea bush. There were tiny white buds all over it. By the next day, many of them had bloomed into tiny white flowers.
Lydia’s biome was due today. She’d collected everything she needed during the last couple of weeks. Larry had cut a sturdy box down to size for her, and she’d filled it with sand, dirt, and a few rocks – and put it in the basement where she thought it wouldn’t be disturbed. Three guesses what happened to it, and the first two don’t count.
That’s right; cats. One of them, anyway; anybody’s guess which one. I’m sure he/she was greatly appreciative that somebody was so thoughtful as to put a litterbox in the basement for him/her, so he/she wouldn’t have to exert himself/herself to come all the way back upstairs every time he/she needed to go.
Lydia was distressed. “I had it all fixed up so neat!” she wailed. “Those horrible cats!”
I dumped the dirt outside, and Caleb tossed the box out the patio door for later burning when it wasn’t raining. I emptied another box, and we started over. That was about the time Hannah arrived. Keith went out to help carry in kids and paraphernalia. Lydia set about entertaining Aaron. I wrapped the box with Christmas paper that was mostly brown, with pine cones and needles all over it – just the thing for a coniferous forest biome. Lydia’s science teacher had loaned Lydia a bunch of little animals. One cute little figurine of a couple of squirrels had fallen onto the basement floor, and both their tails broke off. So the first thing I had to do was to glue the poor thing back together again. I wonder where she got it; we need to get her a new one. I put dirt, rocks, and plants into the box. By the time Hannah left not long later, the biome was done, and Lydia was consoled. In fact, she was well pleased.
“It looks like we’ve spent a long, long time on it!” she exclaimed happily.
Hester helped Victoria make Mother’s Day cards for Mama and Norma. They then colored pictures and I wrapped the presents. Lacking bows, I taped a handful of silk flowers to the top of each present. While hunting for a box, I came upon my weatherball! I promptly took it to the sink to fill it. Those things are hard to fill, did you ever try it? When it was almost as full as it ought to be {half full}, it occurred to me that I needed to put food coloring into the water. Of course, one is supposed to put food coloring into the water before one fills the ball. The only bottle of food coloring in the spice cupboard was yellow. Thank you; no yellow water. Lydia opened an old egg-dying kit, and, sure enough, it held all sorts of dyes – in powdered form. I mixed up the blue, and then carefully trickled it into the ball. I now have a weatherball on my desk with the brightest blue water you ever did see. I’ve missed that thing! It’s been packed away since before Christmas. After packing it – very carefully, I did – many were the times I’d glance at the top of my desk to see if the water was rising, signaling an approaching storm. Right now, 6:40 p.m., the water has risen almost to the top of the tube, halfway filling the small ball at the top of the tube. My Oregon weather clock shows a picture of clouds and rain. Wonder if we’re in for a storm?
Saturday night, we had baked potatoes for supper, covered with split pea and ham soup; and Lydia made Twice-the-Blueberries muffins. The house smelt scrumptious.
And then – “Don’t anybody flush anything,” Keith called up the steps, “I’m working on the main water conduit!”
Of course, that made everyone need to use the water facilities immediately. Some time later, I thoughtlessly washed my hands.
“HEY!” came a muffled yell of protest from Keith as he scrambled out from under the pipe.
“Oops, sorry,” I called back down to him, “It was nothing but nice clean water!”
The littles snickered and tee-heed.
Larry and Keith were unable to finish everything and make the tub/shower usable, because, once again, they needed more plumbing supplies. And it was getting late. Maybe this week…
Esther came to get Keith, bringing me a gift: a set of pillowcases she had embroidered, and a pretty pad of stationery, three different sizes, with embossed flowers on the edges.
Dorcas arrived with cinnamon rolls from Norma. She gave me three white pillows, small, medium, and large, tied with lavender and white ribbon. She’d done purple crocheting on the tops. Just what I needed to decorate my bed.
Mother’s Day arrived with the wind blowing in 35-40 mph gusts. Imagine what we looked like by the time we got to church! Help. Help and bother. If you see a dark brownish-gray-with-strands-of-white wig sailing by, please return it, won’t you? I was fond of it. I was attached to it.
After church, we all went to Mama’s house to give her a gift. We went home with Keith and Esther’s lasagna, because they’d been invited to her parents’ house for dinner. I stayed with Mama Sunday night, and afterwards we took Norma her gift. Norma was so busy doling out soup and cookies and ice cream bars, it was a good forty-five minutes before she had time to sit down and open her present.
She told us that Lawrence had fallen down their basement steps Saturday night; he was stiff and sore, and stairs were difficult for him to negotiate, but he’s one of those sorts who rarely complains.
As I type, my office window is open, and I am watching the mother blackbird on her nest. Every now and then she exits the nest with a loud, shrill squawk, flying right by the window, which makes the cat nearly jump out of her skin. Somewhere not far away, I hear the tiny, raucous screeching of baby birds. A few minutes ago, another bird of unknown genealogy landed nearby and was immediately bombarded by an extremely irate male blackbird. The intruder departed posthaste.
Baltimore orioles have arrived en masse, and are in the big old oak trees to our east warbling and trilling like anything. I can hear an Eastern phoebe, and a warbler, too, probably a yellow-rumped warbler, although I have not yet spotted it. Cardinals are whistling and chirping, and barn swallows are chattering excitedly.
This morning on our way home from the school jaunt, Victoria and I saw a flock of bobolinks, wings outstretched and all soaring in unison, landing near a small pond. The white patches on their shoulders and rump glistened in the early morning sunlight. The bobolink migrates all the way from southern South America. Few other North American songbirds migrate that far. Bobolinks molt all of their feathers, including those of wing and tail, twice a year. At the end of summer, adult males molt into a plumage much like that worn by females and first-year males: buff on the underparts and heavily streaked with brown above. Starting in January, while still in South America, the males begin molting into their “skunk blackbird” breeding plumage, which includes a buff patch on the nape.
Christine, David’s widow, gave Bobby’s mother, Bethany, our high-school science teacher, three abandoned duck eggs that she’d found in her garden. Bethany put them into her incubator. The eggs hatched last week, and there were the cutest little mallard ducklings one could ever hope to find in one’s incubator.
Today, Hester told me, Bethany’s class took the ducklings out to the Big Garage – or gymnasium, as it is now – where Bethany had filled a child’s ‘turtle’ sandbox with water.
“And then we taught—” Hester paused. “Well, I guess you don’t have to teach a duck to swim. We let the ducklings swim,” she finished.
I’d better get busy! Larry has cleared out a small corner of the living room where, he hopes, I’ll be able to fit all the rest of the boxes and furniture that are still inside the trailer. He plans to sell the trailer; somebody we know has expressed interest in buying it. There are several loads of clothes to wash…a fish tank to clean…supper to fix… I must rush!
