Last Monday evening, I was searching
around in cupboard, freezer, and refrigerator to see what there was for
supper. I took out a can of mustard
greens Loren had given me some time back.
He pulled it out of his cupboard, handed it to me, and said, “I don’t
know what to do with something like this.”
I looked at it, then informed him, “Neither
do I.”
He laughed.
I sent a text to Larry: “If you bring home crackers and eggs, I could
make meatloaf.”
He brought them. Unfortunately, he bought the store brand of
Saltines, rather than Nabisco or Keebler.
Saltines are not a good item on which to try to save a few cents. Bleah.
They even made the meatloaf slightly bland, never mind trying to eat the
things with butter or peanut butter. I
added a little more sea salt to counteract the blandness.
Into a pound of hamburger, I added several
handfuls of crumbled Saltines, a large chopped onion, the can of mustard greens
(drained), five eggs, sweet basil, sage, lemon pepper, salt, black pepper,
Spanish paprika, Italian seasoning, thyme... and ten minutes before the meatloaf
was done, I drizzled Sweet Baby Ray’s Sweet ’n Spicy Barbecue Sauce on top.
Canned mustard greens taste similar to canned
spinach. I don’t like it. But it certainly tasted good in the
meatloaf.
Do you get emails now and then from
some unknown entity with subject lines saying ‘Please Respond Urgently!’
Makes me want to write back all in caps, ‘URGENTLY!’
Loren stopping by Jeremy and Lydia’s
house that evening to see the progress being made on the new house. Jeremy laid all the blocks for the basement walls.
He’s fast and precise in his work. He
put rebar down through the blocks and filled them with cement, so they will be
as strong as poured walls.
Earlier, someone had hit their mailbox –
one that Jeremy had made of brick to match his house, with a covered arch...
really pretty. Whoever did it doesn’t have a mirror anymore; Jeremy and
Lydia have it. Jeremy was trying to put the bricks back together, but the
metal box was pretty well ruined – and it had been nearly new. Loren went home, got a pretty blue mailbox
with a windmill, barn, and cow hand-painted on it, and took it back to Jeremy
and Lydia. The box was given to him by one
of his NFIB customers (the man gave him two, actually – Loren and Janice gave us
the other one a few years ago).
Loren was delighted over how much little Jacob
and Jonathan love him and were so glad to see him. Jonathan, who’s 1 ½, took hold of a couple of
his Great Uncle Loren’s fingers with both little hands, and trotted him around hither
and yon, chattering and grinning up at him happily. When Loren was ready
to go, Lydia said, “Tell Uncle Loren goodbye!” and Jonathan’s little face went
all crestfallen. “He’ll be back soon,” Lydia assured him, so he cheered back
up.
Tuesday, Lawrence and Norma bought me a
new dryer – for my birthday, they said. They
sure are good to us! Norma called a
little after noon to ask if Ray’s Appliance could deliver a new dryer that afternoon
(and cart away the old one, if we desired).
Ack, no, no, they couldn’t! I had to clean the laundry room! It was a calamity. Some people mistakenly believe it to be a ‘storage
room’, you see. :-P
It’s one of those areas where,
immediately after I clean it, everyone runs at it full cobs (Middle Cornland
terminology) with everything they can carry in their two hands, and gives it all
a fling into the general vicinity of the room. Aarrgghh! I like
things clean and orderly! But you wouldn’t know it, to look at my laundry
room. So I had to clean. There was a whole lot of work to do.
While talking to Norma, Amy arrived, eight
little kiddos in tow, to give me a package of Apple Pie English muffins (they
know I love English muffins), Brown Sugar and Cinnamon Philadelphia Cream
Cheese Spread, and a still-warm loaf of homemade bread made by Jeffrey, who’s 7
years old. Little Grant, age 2, came in giggling and saying in his funny
high-pitched voice, “I got me all wet! I got me all wet!” – he’d
accidentally walked through a sprinkler.
I had nothing to give them in return
except the Skittles Victoria had left on the table – and only two Skittles per
kid, since they were those dreadfully sour things and, after all, Victoria’s.
And they love me just the same. I guess they know Grandma’s heart is in
the right place, even if she only doles out two Skittles apiece!
Amy said Jeffrey has been making a
couple of loaves of bread in the bread machine every morning without her even
asking him to.
I started the water on the lawn and
little trees. I thought that after we took down all those dead-and-dying
trees, we wouldn’t be so likely to run into giant spider webs and their
gigantic creators, who liked to string their silks from branch to branch and
from branch to house. Well, now they just merrily string them around in
midair like weightless confetti! And I, of course, walk through
them. I immediately had several dozen large tarantulas running gleefully
up and down my back and over the top of my head.
Or at least that’s what my imagination thought
was happening.
I spent the rest of the day Tuesday
cleaning the laundry room, which entailed carrying a whole lot of things both
small and large downstairs. I finished
the last counter (why do I need all these knickknacks?!) (’cuz they’re pretty,
that’s why), and Larry even scrubbed the sink (it was his mess, after all) –
and then it was midnight. The room was
neat as a pin. I would sweep and mop the
hallway the next day.
Wednesday found me still scurrying
around like a chicken with my head cut off, trying to get everything nice and
clean – just in case the dryer-installation man came to the front door... or
walked into the kitchen... or the bathroom...
Yeah, I got the whole main floor
whistling clean, just because a man was bringing a dryer into the laundry
room. I had barely finished winding the
cord back up onto the vacuum (after conducting a bit of maintenance on it,
removing enough string and hair from the rollers to make someone a Phyllis
Diller wig) when I saw the truck pulling into the drive.
When the man tried unplugging the old
dryer, he couldn’t get the cord loose.
He thought it was welded to the outlet, the plug was bad, the cord was
bad, the pigtail was bad, the wiring for the entire house was bad... He asked where the breaker box was, so I led
him downstairs and pointed it out. Not
knowing which switch to pull, he flipped the top four, surmising (correctly) one
would be the right switch.
He doesn’t do electrical work, he told
me. (I was beginning to see that.) So I suggested he take the old dryer out,
bring the new in, and we would take care of the wiring ourselves. Larry
knows how to do electrical work.
Next thing I knew, he was going
downstairs to turn the breakers back on – in order to try the dryer! Huh? I
thought he couldn’t plug it in? Turns
out, he’d removed the pigtails from the dryers, then hooked the old cord to the
new dryer. The new dryer worked, regardless
of the ‘welded plug’.
“Just hurry and flip those top four
breaker switches if you smell anything hot,” the man told me (he had not learnt
which was the right switch), and away he went, old dryer in tow.
Uh-huh.
That sounded encouraging, eh? I
would leave the matter to Larry. I’d
been drying clothes on the line for several months; another day or two wouldn’t
hurt. I prefer not to burn the house
down, given the option.
Aarrgghh, my head hurt. In fact,
I hurt from head to toe, from cleaning for a day and a half and carrying heavy
things up and down the stairs. I’ve
become a wimp! But it is nice to have
everything sparkling clean. And I do need to clean once every ten years
or so, whether it needs it or not.
Actually, the room isn’t totally clean,
as I couldn’t reach the gewgaws on top of the cupboards, even with a chair (and
someone has absconded with my stepstool).
Ah, the drawbacks (or advantages, since it saves one from certain jobs)
of being short.
My father was only 5’ 6”. He
always said he was perfectly happy at the height the Lord had made him, and he
knew it was exactly the right height, too, since he was plenty tall enough that
his feet reached the floor.
I remember protesting when I was wee
little, just 3 or 4, “Daddy!!! That doesn’t make any sense!” – and
wondering why everyone laughed.
I’m 5’ 2 ½” – and I must be tall
enough, because my feet reach the floor, too!
I went back to embroidering on the
lighthouse quilt.
That night after church, I uploaded the
pictures I took last Thursday:
Somebody asked, “How did you choose
what to photograph?”
Well, ummm, I didn’t ‘choose’. I
just photographed everything! ha!
When the light is good, especially
around sunrise or sunset, everything photographs beautifully, and I can’t stop
pressing the shutter button. Hills and
old structures add texture... and I always enjoy getting shots of animals,
birds, and insects.
As for all the trucks... I often
capture shots as we are driving, and a red truck in the scene adds a bit of
punch. Once a friend teased me about ‘loving
red trucks’ — and ever since, I’ve snapped off a shot of just about every red
truck we pass, just for the fun of it. I call them ORTs – Obligatory Red
Trucks. Now and then I gather up all the Red Truck shots I’ve garnered
for a trip, and send every last one to my friend, just because.
One time I managed to get a series of
shots of my brother-in-law in his truck as he was approaching us on a pretty
stretch of road. He hadn’t even noticed us as we passed, as we were not
in our usual vehicle. He was pleased
when I sent him all those pictures.
Every now and then, I upload photos to
Google Earth. You can look on Google
Maps... or Google Earth... or just type into Google: United Methodist Church, 505 Prairie St., Axtell,
KS—and there are my photos: United
Methodist, Google Earth, United
Methodist, Google Maps, and United
Methodist, Google Search.
Ever since we came upon that wind farm
in southeast Nebraska, I’ve been wondering about it. We hadn’t even know it was there. I looked
it up:
The 44–turbine Steele
Flats Wind Farm between Steele City and Odell began commercial operation
on November 1, 2013. Each turbine has a maximum capacity of
1.7 megawatts for a total of 74,800 kilowatts (or 74.8 megawatts). The farm could produce an amount of energy
equivalent to the amount of electricity used by approximately 19,000 Nebraska
residences in a year (average annual output). Nebraska Public Power District has committed
to buy the total output but will sell 30 megawatts of renewable energy credits
from the farm to BD (Becton, Dickinson Company, located right here in Columbus).
See, I would’ve known all that, if I
had’ve continued my career at Nebraska Public Power District! :-D We
have more turbine farms in Nebraska than I knew: Wind Energy in Nebraska
The things photography causes me to
learn!
Speaking of turbines, look what this
drone videoed, high atop one of those things:
Thursday evening, I took Loren some
supper: Alaskan cod (baked in a little butter, with salt, pepper, sweet
basil, and Spanish paprika – gotta remember that combination of spices; it was scrumptious),
sweet potatoes, mixed vegetables, cherry jello, tomatoes from Victoria’s garden,
and a couple of slices of the homemade bread from Jeffrey. Mmmm, mmm.
It started sprinkling – and I had clothes
on the line. I reckoned they wouldn’t melt. The water was running
on the lawn, too... but the rain might
stop shortly, and then the little trees wouldn’t have enough water. I was
downstairs embroidering, and there I was a-gonna stay!
A quilting friend from Iowa wrote to
tell me that a quilt had been stolen at the Iowa State Fair. I looked it up and found the story and
pictures of it from the Des Moines Register:
Stolen Quilt, Iowa State Fair. Isn’t that terrible, that someone would do
that? After returning for my quilt at our county fair and seeing that there
was absolutely no security of any sort, I wrote an email voicing my concerns,
and a lady called to apologize and promise that security would be better next
year.
I was amazed when I saw that everything
in the entire exhibit hall was totally free for the taking that morning.
There were only two other ladies there, and they were retrieving their own
things. Anyone could’ve walked out with anything; there was no one watching,
keeping track, or keeping thieves at bay. I don’t want that to ever
happen again, not with anybody’s things.
I sure don’t want to enter anything
that I’ve already given to someone, and would have a hard time replacing, if it
winds up free for the taking! The lady at the Nebraska State Fair has
assured me that the quilts are very secure in their exhibit hall. But...
one sneaky, determined person could foil their system, I imagine.
I hope the person who lost the quilt in
Iowa has many pictures of it, and has posted it on all the lost quilt
websites. Sad thing is, most times once something is gone, it’s
gone.
(I would say Hilary did it, but I don’t
usually discuss politics on public forums. But she was there, after all.)
Even worse, someone stole a baby goat
at that fair. It was one of triplets, only three days old.
Fortunately, they found it, or it would’ve died. That’s a whole lot worse
than stealing a quilt – because it’s a living, breathing, little animal,
totally dependent on its mother or humans to keep it alive! Ugh, people
are so awful.
By 10:00 p.m., the sprinkles had turned
into a full-fledged rainstorm; WeatherCat (aka Tabby) came in and let me
know. Had I not gone to all the trouble of watering the lawn, we wouldn’t
have gotten a drop. Murphy is alive and
well, here in Middle Cornland!
Ladies on an online quilting group were
discussing UFOs (Unfinished Fabric Objects) Friday morning. Most ladies who quilt have multiple UFOs – in
fact, some consider it a badge of honor to have dozens, even hundreds of
them. It almost makes a person intimidated
to admit she has nothing unfinished, except what she’s working on at the moment
– those are known as ‘WIPs’ (Works In Progress).
The only UFOs I have were bequeathed to
me by other people. Right now, I have a tumbling block quilt that
Victoria started for Lydia’s baby a couple of years ago. It’s in colors
of green and pink – and Lydia had the audacity to have a boy. So Victoria
abandoned the quilt. I will finish the
quilt, just in case...
I also have some very old Sunbonnet Sue
blocks made by a great-grandmother, grandmother, great aunts, their cousins,
and a couple of favorite teachers and neighbors. I hope to put those
together soon. And I have a flannel baby
quilt kit that my sister-in-law gave me.
I suppose you could call the Mosaic
Lighthouse quilt a UFO – it’s taken long enough that it might fit that category.
Do you actually have to fold something
up and put it away and let it age before it is in the UFO classification?
I usually doggedly plow through to the finish with things I start, even if they
don’t seem to be turning out so swell.
This is probably a by-product of seeing
my mother start things – and then, to my disappointment, they never got
done. She was a pastor’s wife, and her time was not her own. People
came and went at our house from early morning until late night, and she was a
gracious hostess, always.
After my father passed away and my
mother was not so well, my sister and I cleaned her basement. I found
some of those partly-done items, took them home, and finished every last
one. The one in particular that I was sorry never got done, when I was
very young, was a beautiful mint-green quilted bathrobe Mama was making for
me. I was soooo looking forward to it... but she got interrupted time and
again, and finally put it away for good. I finished it for one of my
little girls; all it needed was facings, buttonholes, and buttons. Mama
was so happy about that. (She had gotten me a store-bought robe to take
its place, but I had really, really wanted the one my Mama was sewing!)
When quilting/crafting friends ask
about UFOs, I usually keep still. People might not speak to me again for months,
after all, if I gleefully and smugly announce, “I don’t have any UFOs!”
But I thought maybe if I gave the above LH (Life History), I would be forgiven.
I no sooner wrote that, than a friend
responded, “I read your letter about how you feel when people ask you about UFOs.
I have hardly ever had two projects on the go at once so I too keep quiet when
people start talking about them and how many they have.”
Ah, a sister in crime! Maybe
there are more of us than we think. We’re so funny... we’re embarrassed
to say we have no UFOs!
I do have UGCs, however.
...
...
...
(Unfinished Gardening Conglomerations.)
All that being said, I should add that
I have discovered that it is sometimes helpful to let a dilemma ‘percolate.’ Ever notice how sometimes, with just a little
pause in the work, the perfect solution will suddenly come to you? Often I find just the right answer somewhere
online while reading something else entirely. Other times, my brain,
which was evidently hibernating, wakes up, churns and stirs around a bit, and
clickety-clacks out the resolution, just like an old Burroughs Accounting
Machine.
I put in about five hours of
embroidery, then fixed some supper. While
I ate, I uploaded some photos of a Black Swallowtail, Bumblebees, and a Snowy
Urola to my website:
Then back to the embroidery. The
lighthouse was done, the entire fence was almost done, and all that was left was
a bit of cobblestone on the pathway and the keeper’s house (which entails lots
of detail). But I was more than half done.
Victoria played baseball with some
friends that night. A number of them
like to get together on Friday evenings to play tennis... basketball...
volleyball... baseball... whatever strikes their fancies.
Later, I was sitting in my recliner,
minding my own business and paying my taxes (famous line from an elderly
neighbor lady – the first part of which was absolutely untrue, and the second
part of which was debatable), when a bat came flapping through.
So I did what any reasonable person
would do: I leaped to my feet and ran like a chicken – a humpbacked chicken,
mind you, the better to keep my head out of undulating air flight pathways.
I carried my laptop with me, so as not to be totally isolated in whatever
hidey-hole or cubbyhole I found to hole up in. As I dashed past the
bathroom door, I pounded on it vigorously and then, receiving no answer, I
flung it partially open and screeched in a melodious tone, “Bat in the
house! Bat in the house!!!” The
snoring person in the bathtub stopped snoring, batted his eyes (appropriately),
and said, “Ummphph, mmmm-hmmm.”
That didn’t seem promising. And
when the snoring resumed, I knew better than to expect help from that
quarter. I put my computer in my bedroom (just in case – one can survive
in isolation fairly well, if one has a laptop), put a sweater over my head (to
save it from the aforementioned oscillating and fluctuating flight path),
stooped over, and came back out into the hallway.
The bat, who was exploring the living
room air at a speed of Mach 5 or thereabouts, turned his head, looked
piercingly at me, and immediately altered his flight and headed straight at my
head. (What is there about my head???!!!!!)
I ducked and skedaddled into the living
room, turning off lights as I went. Next, I did what Larry hates for me
to do: I flung the front door open wide and turned on the porch
light. Then, making like the Hunchback
of Notre Dame, I beat it back to the bedroom, dodged in, slammed the door, and
ensconced myself in bed with the laptop on my lap.
By the time Larry finished his
before-bedtime tub nap, the bat had vanished, and has not been seen since.
My friend Rita’s mother passed away a
few days ago, and my friend Linda offered to put cards and notes into Braille
for Rita. So I sent her this poem that I
wrote a few years ago:
Far over the earth, the heaven is high;
Yet the Lord hears me when to Him I cry.
He is
my strength, He is my light;
His song shall be with me in the night.
’Though
poor and needy, He thinketh of me;
I will rejoice when His mercy I see!
When
my heart is troubled, He pleadeth my cause,
For I love His precepts, I delight in His laws!
’Though
sometimes my weeping lasts all the night through,
Joy in the morning He giveth anew.
In the
secret of His presence I have been hidden;
The device of the wicked my Lord hath forbidden.
I have
found in the Lord the fountain of life,
And under His wings am I sheltered from
strife;
I’ll
be of good courage--He’ll forsake me never:
With all my heart will I love Him forever!
Taken from Psalms 30 and 31
Do you ever have trouble recognizing
someone, when they aren’t where they are supposed to be? I have walked right past next-door neighbors
when I met them at the grocery store, and never realized who they were.
Halfway down the next aisle, vaguely wondering, Why were those people staring
at me? and even more, Where on earth are the tapioca pearls?? it occurs to me, Oh!!!
Those are the Joneses! and, in the interest of neighborly love, I whirl around
and dash back to apologize and say ‘hi’ and make lame excuses.
They just look different, buying
groceries, than they do, mowing the lawn. (And I rarely see them up
close, either.)
Lura Kay called Saturday night to tell
me the moon was supposed to be something spectacular that night, so I took some
pictures from our back deck. It’s called
the ‘Sturgeon Moon’ (sometimes ‘Supermoon’). The photos weren’t very
good... a little blurry. I should’ve set the camera on ‘Timer’, so that
my finger didn’t cause vibration when I pressed the shutter button. By
the time I downloaded my pictures to my computer, the moon was quite a bit
higher in the sky, so I didn’t bother trying again. But the moon will be
extra close to the earth a couple more times this fall, so maybe I’ll get
another chance.
That night, I finished embroidering the
fence and started on the lightkeeper’s house.
The door is done now, and part of a window.
I’m keeping careful watch of the
calendar. I only have until October 16
to submit my application for my quilt to be entered in the AQS quilting show in
Daytona Beach, Florida. The quilt doesn’t have to be complete at the time
of application, but I want to send a picture with it as done as possible – hopefully,
totally complete.
I showed Teddy the quilt, with Larry
helping me hold it up so he could see it.
It’s so big, it’s best viewed from a distance, so one can tell what the
picture is. It’s a case of “I can’t see
the picture for the pixels!” heh
Teddy, upon hearing about the quilt
stolen from the Iowa State Fair, suggested looking into those little GPS
tracking discs that could be tucked into the binding of a quilt. It’s a good
idea; I need to learn more about it: https://www.thetrackr.com/. I would like to think I could track down a
quilt if it was stolen or lost. But... I wonder how wide a range these
devices have? It seems someone with the
TrackR app has to be within 100 feet of the device for it to send its signal to
me?
After Larry cut Teddy’s hair, he headed
to the laundry room to do some electrical work.
He discovered that the plug wasn’t welded to the outlet at all, and
nothing was melted or even looked like it had gotten hot. The trouble was, you see, that the dryer plug
had an L-shaped prong (like the one on the left), while the outlet had a
straight receiving hole (for a plug like the one on the right). So Larry had used his handy-dandy pliers to
straighten out the L until it would go into the outlet. Thus, the connection was very tight. He unplugged it without too much trouble...
sized everything up... plugged it back in... and the dryer is now in business.
There’s a little squirrel out front
running to and fro, busily carrying food from its ‘grocery store’ to a stashing
cache. He just scampered past with an
item in his mouth that’s bigger than his head.
He’s a bit too far away for me to tell what it is.
Last week, I sent notes to Hannah,
Hester, and Lydia:
Subject: Christmas Indian
I just
got one of your Christmas presents. I like it. Can I borrow it?
Love,
,,,>^..^<,,, Mama ,,,>^..^<,,,
Hannah’s answer: Hmmmm. Well, I’m not sure. ;-)
Hester’s answer: Lololol!!!!!
Sure!!!
Lydia’s answer: No I need it ;-|
And there’s a perfect glimpse of their
varied and various personalities. :-D
Victoria is caring for her friends’ dog
and two cats while they are on vacation. She absolutely cannot associate
with any dog anywhere without setting out to train or teach it a new
trick. She’s been caring for the little
dog, who is about a year old, for two days, and already it knows how to heel
along nicely beside her when she’s taking it for a walk. And it obeys ‘stay’.
When she was littler, we had to get
packages of milk bones at the grocery store, and she’d go around with several
in her pocket when she played outside, in case any neighbor dogs came
around. She taught several of them to shake han—uh, paws, sit, beg,
speak, ... etc. Silly girl.
Larry met our new neighbor man last
week when he saw him in the wooded pasture to our east, taking down dead Scotch
pines and underbrush. Larry offered him
the use of an excavator in exchange for allowing Larry to drag the leftovers
from our own dead trees into the man’s burn pile. He agreed, saying, “Sounds like a good
deal!” He was a friendly and nice young
man. Larry told him a bit about the
troubles with new garage, how the old neighbors threw fits and tantrums,
wanting the pitch of the roof changed (after it was already up!), only one door
on one end (the most inaccessible end, of course) instead of a door on either
end (it’s quite a large building).
The man shook his head, and said,
“Well, I like your garage! I think it will
look very nice when it is done.”
So Larry is encouraged over this, and
will finally be able to get back to work on it, as soon as he’s not putting in so
many summer hours (70-75 hours, most weeks). That garage was delayed over
a year because of those fussy neighbors. They finally petered out,
because they are tightwads, and they got tired of paying their lawyer to write
us letters (which went nowhere, because they hadn’t a leg to stand on).
They should have been clearing up the acres of fire hazards – dead trees, old
farm jetsam and flotsam, etc. – on their own property instead of having conniptions
about ours.
We live out in the country, for pity’s
sake, and we aren’t doing anything different on our property than others are
doing on many of the nearby farm places. A garage roof is pitched too
steeply to suit them?? It’s at the same pitch as the house roof, and sits
at a lower elevation on the hill, too, for crying out loud. Some people
just can’t be satisfied unless they are causing an upheaval for someone else, I
think!
A lady just wrote to tell me that she
has sent me four quilt tops to be quilted.
Gotta hurry, hurry, with this embroidery!
But... right at the moment... I am
coping with a migraine headache. Tylenol
hasn’t touched it, and it’s steadily getting worse. My head needs a pillow! This letter will be late.
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
