Last Monday when we were in the Naval Aviation
Museum in Pensacola, Florida, we met a Lieutenant General who, after greeting
us and asking where we were from, told us he’d worked in Nebraska as a
teen.
He said to Victoria, “I couldn’t get a date to save
my life! What’s with you Nebraska girls?”
She promptly grinned, shrugged, and held up her left
hand, on which was the pearl ring from Kurt, and replied, “I don’t have a
problem!”
The General tossed his head back and laughed, and
patted her on the shoulder.
I’ve just discovered that this friendly and humble man
who greeted us, chatted with us, and took our picture was quite an honorable
and important man!
This is the General to whom this girl of ours said
that:
Duane D. Thiessen is a retired Lieutenant General in
the United States Marine Corps, and is the past commander of the United States
Marine Corps Forces Pacific, serving from September 2, 2010, until his
retirement on August 7, 2012.
Furthermore, he has a Naval Aviator badge, 8 medals,
3 commendations, 3 merit awards, 2 deployment ribbons, and 8 service award
stars, for pity’s sake!
((shaking head)) Victoria will be Victoria,
friendly to all, prejudiced to none, not intimidated by any. That’s
her. Upon telling her all this, she laughed and remarked, “No wonder he
thought it was funny! – I didn’t act like he was scary.”
I told her, “If we’d have been there much longer, he
probably would’ve asked you to enlist in flight training school!”
This is a good picture of him:
That evening, I got a message from AQS: my quilt was on the way home, set to arrive
Wednesday morning, and requiring a signature.
But we would not be there yet. I
pulled up the UPS website, clicked on a series of links to change the delivery
date – and just about the time I got to the page where I could click on the
date I preferred, the website went down.
And stayed down.
I checked with www.isitup.com – yep, the tracking part of their
website was indeed down. I gave up on the website, fished my cell phone
out of the depths of my purse, and called UPS Headquarters.
I learned it would cost $6 to change the delivery
date, with accompanying rigmarole.
However, “They will attempt delivery three days consecutively,” the lady
told me, “So you don’t need to worry, if you’ll be home on one of those days.”
“Just leave it as it is, then,” I told the lady.
Now, I ask you, is that a wise policy? They will spend a whole lot more than $6
trying to deliver a box requiring a signature to an empty house! They should be glad when someone tries to
save them time and fuel. Siggghhhh...
That night, I uploaded the 6th block, the Columbine
Appliqué, for the Buoyant Blossoms BOM.
I had completed it before we left and had it ready to upload, so it
didn’t take long.
Here’s the Pensacola lighthouse we saw that day:
We took Highway 98 most of the way along the Gulf
Coast, for the scenic view. Many of the
homes we saw were spectacular. Some are
absolutely beautiful, and some are, uh, ... amazing, heh. I would have liked to drive through more of
those ‘fancy’ neighborhoods, but we didn’t have the time (nor did Larry have
the inclination). Here’s a fact: Just because someone has money, it does not
necessarily follow that he has good taste!
Tuesday morning, we drove through New Orleans and
headed toward Baton Rouge. Victoria was feeling better, after a few doses
of over-the-counter medicine.
We saw areas along the Mississippi Coast and also in
New Orleans where the damage from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita has yet to be
repaired or reconstructed.
On the way to Lafayette from Baton Rouge, we
traveled over the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge, which is 18.2 miles long. It’s the third longest bridge in the U.S.,
and crosses the largest existing wetland in the States. The wetland has an area of 1,400,000 acres, including
the surrounding swamps. It was 76°,
warmest it had been on the entire vacation.
It was 26° at home, with a ‘real feel’ of 18°.
In a convenience store, I saw a young black girl who
had long, long, curly hair – in fire-engine red. The underneath layer was still black, so that
when she turned quickly and her hair flared out around her, the black locks showed
through in stripes.
That day, March 1st, was John H. and Lura Kay’s 52nd
wedding anniversary. I wrote to them,
“Happy anniversary! We have a gift for
you, but it’s in the back of the Jeep, and that’s even farther from home than I am.
We’re coming north on I49, heading toward Texarkana.”
Does Louisiana call their counties ‘Parishes’?
We passed a sign announcing ‘Evangeline Parish’. There were fields of ...
?? ... something, all flooded with water, with what looked like buoys sticking
up about 8” in a grid pattern all across the field. ?? Rice
paddies?
I looked it up.
OHH! My goodness, they are rice
paddies, and the ‘buoys’ are crayfish traps! Look:
This world we live in is so very interesting and
intriguing, is it not?
Meanwhile, I was making money as we drove! I sold
five patterns that day. I was just a-transferrin’ money from PayPal to
our bank like an’thang.
Several of my quilting friends asked if we stopped
at any quilt shops along the way. No, the only quilt shops I saw
throughout the entire trip, other than several Hobby Lobbies, were Grandma’s
Quilts in Helen, Georgia, and Sweet Pea’s Quilt Company in Sand Springs, Oklahoma. Grandma’s was closed, and Sweet Pea’s was off
the Interstate and we were on a mission to get home that night. But that’s
okay; I didn’t need anything, and there are plenty of quilt shops where we
live. I’d rather see sights I might never have the opportunity to see
again, while on a trip. I love the outdoors, and I enjoy photography
almost as much as I enjoy quilting. With both occupations, one winds up
with many beautiful results (and a few catastrophes, heh). The acquiring of said results is an enjoyable
pathway, and both quilts and photos last and can be turned into gifts in a
variety of ways. I try to make pretty quilts for friends and
family... and God made beautiful scenery for us!
About 7:00 p.m., we pulled off the Interstate to
have supper in Texarkana. Feeling unanimously
as though we needed good food as opposed to fast food, we looked for a family
restaurant of some sort. We soon spotted
what looked like a nice place – and entered a world unlike any we’d set foot
in before. It looked like a beautiful and elegant home of brick and log
on the outside, while inside there was candlelight... soft, classical music...
lovely furnishings... muted chandeliers... thick carpeting... and a menu
to match all the opulence. :-O
There was no one else in the restaurant when we
arrived, but the large number of servers scurrying silently about setting
tables and arranging napkins just so told us that the dinner crowd would soon
be arriving.
We felt distinctly out of our element, as Joanna
would say – Larry with his jeans and polo shirt, and I with my sailor top and
white tennis shoes. Tennis shoes, of all
things! And they were glow-in-the-dark
white.
The hostess took us to a far corner “to keep anyone
from seeing us,” I told Larry.
It was totally quiet, save for the pretty music. Even the waitres----ahem, servers, spoke sotto
voce.
When people started filling up the dining hall,
however, we saw that our attire was not so incongruous and tasteless as we had
feared – almost all the others were likewise dressed casually. And they were noisy.
We ordered as frugally as possible, and still wound
up with a frightening bill. Yikes. But it was a unique experience,
and the food was excellent, and we brought the leftovers with us – enough for another
meal the next day.
I ordered Shrimp Remoulade – shrimp with a salad
concoction – and was startled when I found my large shrimp cold. Shivered me timbers, it did. I shared.
As many cold shrimps as possible, as many cold shrimps as my fellow
diners would take, I shared.
Larry had Appetizer Kabob – ‘marinated beef tips
skewered and served on a bed of rice pilaf’.
Victoria, along with other entrées, had some crab-stuffed hushpuppies
that made her leap up and flee for the ladies room (more of a parlor,
really). (She’d thought she was well,
until that one ill-advised mouthful.)
I tried a bite.
Ack, gag, bleah!
No wonder she fled. What in the
wide world was in that thing?! Oil of
toad toes, or what?!!
I glugged down iced tea with lemon, hard and
fast. I ate Keebler crackers. I crunched the garlic-flavored dry toast
they’d placed on the table for entertainment purposes while they committed
unspeakable crimes on the hushpuppies, which were mercifully mute.
I don’t know what the flavor was that made us
dislike those things so terribly. Larry had
given me one of his the night before at that little Cornerstone restaurant in
Pascagoula, and it wasn’t half bad – but I don’t think it had seafood in it,
either. Still, I really don’t think it
was the crabmeat itself that made it so objectionable; I usually like crabmeat. Here’s a recipe from Paula Dean that seems
like it would be yummy, judging by the ingredients: Crab
Hushpuppies
Victoria didn’t eat much, when she finally came
back. She gave her plate to me, and I
ate the fried catfish, which was mmmm, good.
The refined and discreet servers doubtless noticed
her absence, and the fact that, when they came to remove dishes and give us
new, and to refill our glasses, I had her plate. Did they think I’d purloined it while she was
gone, and refused to give it back when she returned? After all, I’d ordered only an appetizer, no
main meal. But they kept still, and we
kept still.
Yes, it was a three- (or four-) course restaurant. We have a half-course budget.
So we got up to go, a small flock of Calicacks trying
to look Hoyle, and I discovered only after I exited that I’d buttoned
my sweater (which was missing one button) crooked.
Those friendly looks I was getting as I departed
were probably more on the order of ‘trying-not-to-laugh’ looks.
I told Larry, “That’s the fanciest restaurant you’ve
ever taken me to!”
And it was.
And will probably be the last.
Question: Why
do restaurants serve such enormous portions, for goodness sake??! Haven’t
they noticed that the general population is suffering from an overabundance of
meat on the hoof?!
We stayed at Mena, Arkansas, Tuesday night, in the
same motel where Larry and I stayed when we went to Oklahoma in December.
We had reverse sticker shock – this motel only cost $59, and we’d just come
from the coastal areas where we had to work hard to find motels that weren’t
over $150 per night, aiiiyiiiyiiieee.
11:00 a.m. Wednesday morning found us coming through
Ft. Smith, Arkansas, and turning northwest toward Tulsa, Oklahoma. We had
563 miles to go – meaning, we would most likely make it home that day.
Soon we were heading north on the Muskogee Turnpike
(yeah, that’s another toll road). We stopped
at a station for coffee and something to drink. Larry got diet Mt. Dew with a bit of berry
something-or-other squirted into it.
When he walks up to one of those food islands, he puts on his chef’s
hat, he does. He’s wound up with some of
the oddest concoctions. Most of the
time, they’re quite tasty. But not
always. Nope, not always.
Meanwhile, I was dying for a good orange. Orange juice.
Something citrus!
I’d wanted to stop at a roadside fruit stand in
Florida... Larry said we would... and then proceeded to sail grandly past every
single one we came to, saying blithely, “Oops! Well, we’ll stop at the
next one.”
“Did he do that on purpose?” asked a friend,
laughing.
Oh, not really... he just doesn’t like to stop,
much, once he gets rolling ... and he’s invariably in the wrong
lane. If we need to exit left, he’ll be in the right lane. If we
need to exit right, he’ll be in the left lane. If there are three lanes
per direction, he’ll choose the middle – “The better,” so I tell him, “to miss
every single exit you might need to take, no matter which side it
might happen to be on!”
If someone is behind us, breathing down our
tailpipe, he seems to think he must go faster, faster, faster... and yet there
are times when he moseys along looking for something on a little byway in a
little town, creating a buildup of vehicles behind us with the drivers growing
steadily more aggravated. I say that his willingness to agitate other
drivers is directly related to whether he’s looking for a turn he wants to
make, or whether he’s looking for a turn that I want to make.
This, of course, makes him snort.
I will hasten to say, though, that, for the most
part, he is a very good driver.
Larry is almost always up very early (though I beat
him, a few days) ... but by 11:00 in the morning, he’s yawning. You could
just set your watch by it, as we were traveling: 11:00 a.m. on the dot,
-------- yaaaaaaawwwwwwwWWWWWWWWWWwnnnnnnnn!!!!!!!
I start pouring fresh coffee, pulling out the
sunflower seeds, the apples...
At a quarter after seven that evening, we crossed
the state line into Nebraska, and we arrived home two hours later. By a quarter after eleven, I had everything
but Victoria’s things put away, a load of clothes in the washer, the wilted
plants watered, and the cats petted and cuddled multiple times before, during,
and after each of the aforementioned activities. Let the photo editing
begin!
Kurt, having missed Victoria’s birthday on the 24th,
came to see her for a little while ----- and guess what he gave her?!
He gave her an engagement ring! She’s
delighted and thrilled, and keeps showing it to me. I reckon she’s shown
it to me a good three dozen times, now. (It looks different in different
lighting, you know. ;-) )
We would learn later that Kurt’s grandpa had been teasing
him, and, upon seeing that Kurt was in a giant hurry to go see his girl, he put
Kurt’s pickup keys into his own pocket. Kurt
was looking around all over the house, saying, “Where’d I put my keys?” When he went downstairs to his bedroom to look
for them, Steve put them back on the counter where he’d found them. Kurt came back upstairs, looked again, did a
double take. “I thought I looked there!”
Steve didn’t know this visit was of the Utmost
Importance, as Kurt had a small jeweler’s box in his pocket! (I’m not sure it would have changed his
behavior at all, though.)
Larry knew Kurt had bought a ring for Victoria for
her birthday ... and he never told me! That man. His excuse: “I figured if Kurt wanted
you to know, he’d have said so.”
Hmmph, pshaw, phooey.
Victoria wrote and told her siblings the news.
Caleb replied, “Wow! What’d you ever do to
deserve that?!”
I had ordered a couple of nebulizers, one for Caleb,
one for Teddy, as we were driving through Florida somewhere, and they were here
when we got home. Only Hannah and Lydia
have them, and sometimes several different families need them all at the same
time. The price of the medicine that
goes in the machines has gone down, surprisingly. Asthma is a frightening disease, and way too
many members of our family have it. Kurt
has it, too.
Thursday morning, as promised, the UPS man brought
my quilt home, the nice man. And now I
have a little piece of fabric to attach to the back, telling that the quilt has
been judged, juried, and shown in an AQS quilt show. That makes it worth
a bit more, doesn’t it?
But they didn’t write any comments! Why doesn’t AQS do that?
Shortly thereafter, I spotted that nasty pagan
yellow-orange cat that keeps hurting Teensy, strolling grandly down the front
walk. I rushed out to shoo him away.
He gazed at me, debated, and then shooed, albeit reluctantly.
Trouble is, when I shoo him, he just runs and hides
in the garage. He’s big, and looks quite well-fed. How does a stray
ol’ tomcat get that plump? Maybe he chows down on the neighborhood
chi-hoo-uh-hoo-uhs and Pekingeses?
Victoria is looking at wedding gowns... fabric
swatches for bridesmaids’ fabric... She
found just what she wants for the bridesmaids at fabric.com, and has purchased
the patterns she needs for them. Looks like I have a bit of sewing in my
future. She plans to purchase her dress from a place that makes modest
but beautiful gowns.
No date has been set yet, though they’re tentatively
hoping for fall. They’re looking for a house, and once that detail has
been taken care of, they’ll know better when the date will be.
I refilled the bird feeders and put the last load of
clothes into the washing machine. Victoria,
aka Miss Chatterbox, headed off to town to show as many people as possible her
beautiful new diamond ring. She can’t
quit grinning. And chattering. And texting. She’s placed
pretty little mini jewelry boxes at a couple of locations in the house where
she might wish to remove her ring, since I told her to never, never set it down
loose on counters or sink tops, and to always put it in the same place.
Kurt told her that he was in the jewelry boutique a
couple of weeks ago at the very same time Victoria was at the grocery store
just across the way, and he kept nervously looking out the window, afraid she
was going to come out and spot his pickup parked at the jewelry store. He kept the secret with difficulty, those ten
days we were gone, as he and Victoria kept up a steady stream of texting throughout
the days, and he called her each evening.
That day, I posted pictures of our third day, part
four: Florida,
Day 3, Part 4
The cats got right back into the swing of requiring
me to be their valet. “More food, please.” “Another drink, por
favour.” “Open the door for me, wouldjee, kindly?” and so on. King
Tut and Lord Fauntleroy, that’s what their names should be.
Early Friday, I posted the pictures from the fourth
day of our trip, which included driving through St. Augustine, oldest city in
the United States: Florida,
Day 4
Later, I uploaded pictures of the sunrise in Ormand
Beach, and our drive to the Ocean Center Auditorium, where the quilt show was
held: Florida,
Day 5, Part 1
Saturday, some online quilting friends were
discussing likes and dislikes. One lady
remarked that there must be something wrong with her, as she didn’t like the
dark reproduction prints that many people are using these days, and she’d
missed out on the shopping gene entirely.
I wrote back, “Nothing wrong with you at all!
After all, I don’t like to go shopping either, and I’m not usually terribly
fond of civil war prints, and there’s nothing wrong with me! (Is there?)”
I like heirloom sewing sometimes... and sometimes I
don’t. I like a large variety of sewing, in clothes, in quilting, and in
crafts. I don’t generally like abstract-modern designs in any types of
crafts – but I have seen quilts that would fit that description at the two
large quilt shows I’ve attended, and the workmanship and quilting were
exquisite, and I admired them for that, at least.
That afternoon, I cropped and labeled the pictures
of quilts I took at the AQS show – I have 303 photos: Florida,
Day 5, Part 2.
This quilt got second place in the Large Quilts Home
Machine Quilted category. It’s called ‘Why Not’, by Angela Petrocelli of
Prescott Valley, AZ ------ and she was standing right there by her quilt, and I
met her! Lovely lady, pretty, and gracious besides. The quilt is
paper-pieced, and the logs of the log cabin blocks finish at ¼”. It took her three years to make it.
There were certainly a lot of beautiful quilts! There were so very many that were just
gorgeous, I imagine that the judges must’ve been hard-pressed to choose between
them.
I took a little time out to make Loren some supper –
meatloaf burger, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, apple salad, and
jello. He has been cutting up a huge elm
tree that had been at the end of his road; it died last year. Some of his neighbors, seeing him starting to
work on it, and worrying that it was too big for him to cope with alone,
brought a big forklift, and four of them took it down and helped him pull the
trunk and the biggest of the branches down the road closer to his house, where
he spent six days last week cutting them into logs. Many will have to be split.
We watched long strings of geese flying overhead as
he showed me all the wood he’s been stacking in his back yard. Loren counted 58 large Vs of geese in the sky
all at the same time, one afternoon.
We were invited to Kurt’s house for dinner yesterday.
They always have a scrumptious meal – roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy,
carrots, onion, jello... and, for dessert, chocolate cake or cherry pie.
The last couple of mornings, I used a shampoo and
conditioner on my hair that we got at a Hilton Gardens hotel in Florida. It’s a brand called Tarocco, and the scent is
‘Sicilian blood orange’. Mmmmm, it really smells good.
!!!!
Aiiiyiiiiyiiiieee, I just looked it up.
22.5 oz. of the stuff on Amazon is 40 smackeroos!!!!! 8.6 oz. is $14.95. Hmmm... they have a website: Cali Cosmetics. There’s an interesting story of how their
various products and scents came about.
Okay, that’s over my budget. What this means is, if I want more Tarocco Sicilian
blood orange shampoo and conditioner, why, we’ll just have to go back to
Florida! :-D The motel where I got it was the Candlewood
Suites in Miramar Beach – the one with a dishwasher, as I mentioned in last
week’s journal.
I wished we could’ve stayed longer in some of the
pretty places where we stopped. It’s always nice to stay in a place where
you don’t have to get up and move out before 11:00 a.m. the next morning.
But we didn’t have time to loiter anywhere, too bad, so sad. Ah,
well. We’ll just have to see the
alligators and crocodiles at Henry Doorly Zoo, I guess!
Here’s something else we’d considered doing: riding in a horse-drawn carriage around old
St. Augustine. But, as usual, it was
getting late – and I saw online where some rides cost $80.
When Larry and I traveled to Arkansas and Oklahoma
last December, Victoria didn’t come – and we found a number of nice motel rooms
that only cost us about $50/night. Surprising, how the price jumps when
you need one more bed and have one more person. And of course, when you
are in a prime destination.
We brought Florida’s weather home with us to
Nebraska! Today it got up to 80°. Actually, that’s warmer than it ever
was in Florida when we were there.
Therefore, I am washing the flannel quilt and the
thick microfiber blanket and drying them outside, and replacing them with the
Harvest Star quilt and the thin microfiber blanket, which are also airing out
on the deck.
The dishes are washed, the house is clean (enough),
and soon I’ll get back to editing and labeling vacation photos.
The Sandhill cranes are flocking through central
Nebraska; there are nearly half a million along the Platte River, between Grand
Island and Kearney. I hope to go see them one day this week.
I’m looking at this river cam on the Homosassa River: Live Homosassa Cam. People are putting up the awning over their
pontoon boat, and now they are sailing away down the river. I wish we’d have had a chance to do that.
I wanted to see the Everglades! An alligator! A crocodile!
More lighthouses! More beaches! More birds!
But... here in Nebraska, the honeybees are out! Spring has surely sprung, when the honeybees
come out again. But where will they find
pollen?
Ah-ha! I
looked at the Pollen Alert on weather.com, and I see that tree pollen is high
right now in our area. Bees like
crabapple and locust, which we have in our yard, but they have not yet begun
leafing out. The sugar maple has tiny
red leaves all over it; perhaps they can get some pollen from that?
The squirrels are performing their antics to get to
the sunflower seeds; the finches and sparrows are congregating at the feeders;
and the sheets and other clothes are flapping on the clothesline. I’m hanging things outside for the first time
since last fall. The deck is busy!
I packed up a box with baby gifts for Todd and
Dorcas’ new baby, and headed to the post office. A quick stop at Dollar General and the bank –
and by the time I got home, 45 minutes were gone.
A lot of the family are sick with influenza, strep, stomach
flu (Victoria came home from work early this morning), or other maladies. Hester, too, is home from work (at the bank) today. She’s been to the doctor, and got a prescription
for influenza. “My manager at work told
me just to go home,” she wrote to me, “Which is great, because sleeping is my
favorite thing today.”
I wrote back, “Yes, great – as long as he or she isn’t
mad at you for cleaning out the vault, or something!”
Dorcas sent me pictures of baby Trevor. I said to Dorcas, “He’s changed, in just a
week and couple of days. He resembles
some of his cousins a bit. Have you seen
baby pictures of Todd? Does Trevor look
like him?” and then, “Remember how we teased some of our relatives for dissecting
the babies? – “His left ear looks like Uncle Mort’s, his right nostril looks
like Aunt Hildred’s, his double crown looks like Great Grandpa Schnerd’s” –
etc. I said, ‘Mercy! If we weren’t standing right here looking at
that beautiful baby, we’d think he was some kind of a monstrosity, from that description!’
hahaha”
It’s son-in-law Andrew’s birthday today (Hester’s
husband); he’s 27. We got him a handled, two-section tote and filled it
with all manner of car-cleaning supplies. He has a spiffy, black metallic
Cadillac, and Hester has a bright red baby Hummer. But we’ll wait a couple of days to take it to
him, until Hester feels better.
Oh! – I just
heard the red-winged blackbirds! They’re
back again!
=================
It’s now 9:50 p.m.
The temperature is 64°, but the wind is gusting at 35 mph. The winter bedding is folded and put away,
and the summer bedding is on the bed.
I’m looking forward to climbing into a bed whose bedding has been hanging
outside in the sun. Mmmmmm...
Uh, oh. Now
there’s a black cat out front, and Tabby was screaming bloody murder at
him. He didn’t want to run when I shooed
him, either. I brought Tabby in... and a
minute later, both Teensy and Tabby were standing bolt still in the living
room, staring bug-eyed at the front door, tails getting more bushy by the
second. I walked over there – and found
the black cat standing up and peering in the window with big gold eyes. I chased him away – but shortly, he’s back on
the porch.
Sigggggghhhhhhhhh...
Why do all the stray cats congregate here??
Better yet, why do people dump their cats out here? Now some cat has sprayed somewhere, claiming
his territory, and the evidence is wafting in the windows. Aarrgghh!!
((lighting candles))
It’s picture-editing time!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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