New President-Elect, New Baby, and New Shoes

Well, the election has come and gone, with all its accompanying drama and angst.  We don’t discuss politics on any of the online quilt groups to which I belong.  But I don’t mind discussing politics, really, and I have opinions, oh, do I!  Why, I’m so opinionated, I’m downright dogmatic, and of course I’m always right.  There are things about both of our candidates that I don’t approve of.  Nevertheless, I am a whole lot more in alignment with one than the other.  So I did my part in canceling out someone’s vote for the other guy.  Ahem.  Gal. 

Do you ever scratch your head over religious nut cases who think they shouldn’t vote?  How do they think that’s going to work out well for them, anyway?

While I listened to long streams of statistics last Tuesday evening/Wednesday morning, I entertained myself by watching a few youtube videos of (generally) ladies trying to parallel park.  Good grief, they just can’t get the dynamics of ‘turn the wheel this way, reverse, and the car goes that way’.  They go to playing bumper cars (or they totally drive up and over other vehicles, if they are fortunate[?] enough to have a four-wheel-drive) – and some finally leave their car at some odd diagonal and just walk away.  Or they give up and drive off after destroying numerous cars around them.  One video I watched had Yakety Ax playing during the whole fiasco, and I laughed so hard I woke up the cats. 

When I was 15, my father let me practice driving his little four-cylinder, stick-shift Honda car around the big church parking lot.  I could circle around the central sidewalk and make a tipsy figure 8.  I practiced my shifting until I could do it smooth as butter – and that was a quite a feat, in that little car.  Then I tried backing – and discovered I had difficulty putting the vehicle into the exact spot I was aiming for.

Well, that wouldn’t do.  I intended to be a pro at this driving stuff, and that included parallel parking!  We’d seen a woman trying to parallel park along a street uptown, and my mother commented that the woman didn’t belong behind the wheel, if she couldn’t do better than that, and I didn’t want to be anything like her.  Sooo... I set up some markers (big sticks, if I remember right), and got down to business. 

I practiced... and practiced... and practiced... until I could squeeze that little car smack-dab into any spot I wanted it in just one try.

All that practice stood me in good stead when I wound up graduating to a big ol’ Suburban, not so very many years later!

But in all these years of traveling first with my parents, towing campers – and Daddy let me drive, too – I drove an International (like a Suburban) pulling a 31-foot Airstream camper right through Peoria one time when I was 15 (kinda scary – too many big trucks in too many lanes of traffic!) – and many times with Larry towing all manner of trailers, even driving his big 6-door pickup with a 48’ slant trailer hauling three vehicles – in all these years, I have never, ever backed a trailer of any sort.  I think I could; I know the modus operandi and understand the theory... but I’ve never done it in actuality. 

One time I was driving that big pickup and slant trailer, coming home from an auto auction in Casper, Wyoming.  It was nighttime, and we were coming down through the Sandhills and Pine Ridge areas of Nebraska, in the northeast.  The kids and Larry were all sleeping.  Just as I got to the other side of a narrow bridge, deep arroyos on either side and a creek way down at the bottom, a large buck leaped out in front of me and then stood right in my lane, staring in a paralyzed trance as I bore down on him. 

You don’t swerve a long rig like that when you’re going 65 mph.  I hit the brake pedal with both feet and jammed it down with all my might and main, blaring the horn at the same time.  Waiting until the last possible minute, having slowed to about 35 mph or so, I jerked my feet off the brake and steered hard around that big deer.  He leaped back just as I got to him, so that with my steering to the side and his jumping back, I managed to miss him, just barely.

No one was asleep any longer in that pickup, let me tell you! 

Then there was the time in 2004, when we were coming through Yellowstone National Park late at night.  The four younger children were with us.  We’d been traveling north from Old Faithful to Mammoth Hot Springs, then east, then south past Tower Falls, making good time.  We got clear over to Canyon Village, not too far north of Yellowstone Lake, when we discovered road work.  The road was closed.  Both roads were closed – the one to the south, and Norris Canyon Road to the west.  We had to go all the way back the way we’d come to get to our pull-behind camper trailer we’d left at a campground in between the Tetons and Yellowstone.  That made for many extra miles, so it was a lot later than we’d intended.  We were driving a pickup with a fairly big pickup camper on it.  Larry got tired, so I drove.  A couple of the children were sleeping in the top bunk in the camper.  The headlights were not very bright; I hated driving that thing at night.  I came up over a hill just east of Old Faithful, going about 45 mph—and there in the road directly in front of me was one of the biggest buffalo I’d ever seen.

I immediately thought of the children in that upper bunk.  I thought, If I hit that buffalo, those children will fly right through that front window.  My heart was pounding, but everything seemed to be going in slow motion.  I simultaneously hit horn and brakes, but not pressing the brake pedal as hard as I might’ve, thinking of the children, knowing I mustn’t jerk the wheel at that rate of speed with that top-heavy camper on the truck.  I pressed harder… harder… and then, at the last minute, with that beast’s big rump seemingly right in my face, I let my foot off the brake and swerved to the left, still laying on the horn. 

The buffalo lumbered a few steps toward the right side of the road.

We skinned by him with bare millimeters to spare.  Whew, that was quite a fright.

A red-breasted nuthatch is on the feeders!  We have white-breasted nuthatches here, but the only place I’ve ever seen the red-breasted ones is in the mountains, although the bird maps show them wintering in our area.  The white-breasted nuthatches, in addition to being white where the red-breasteds are rusty-red, don’t have the black stripe through the eye like this one does.

So many birds... so unique and colorful... the oodles of drab little birds that sing like Maria Callas (well, sorta)... I think God had a delightful time creating them, don’t you?

And then there are the butterflies... and even the furry little moths.  Can you hardly believe this one is even real? 

I think he just heard about the election:  “Whaaat?!”

When Larry got off work, we went and voted.  They’d run out of “I Voted!” stickers by the time we got there.  We bumped into the Wright grandkids in Wal-Mart shortly thereafter, and they all had stickers, so Larry stole a sticker right off of one of their jackets, saying, “Hey!  You’re too young to vote anyway!”  (He did give it back, though the kiddos were laughing and telling him he could keep it.)

We gathered up the printer ink cartridges we’d gone to get, then went to Menards to look (unsuccessfully) for wide-jawed clamps for my quilting frame.  We did spot some tools on sale, so we bought several for Christmas gifts, and then returned home.

At a quarter ’til ten, I wrote to a friend in Colorado, “Aaarrrggghhh, you didn’t vote enough times!  Colorado went Democratic!”

Ohio went Republican...  and Nebraska...

Then I heard news that the Mexican peso was slumping badly, which was considered a predictor of a Trump win.  The Dow Jones dropped over 700 points – more than it dropped after the 9-11 attacks on the Twin Towers.

By 10:00 p.m., Donald Trump had 168 electoral votes to Hillary’s 131.  But there were several important states to go.

Five minutes later, Clinton was projected to take California.  That put her ahead, 209 to 172.  But it wasn’t long before Trump surged ahead, and there was no catching up for her.

A little after 2:00 a.m., having received a concession call from Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump made his acceptance speech.  I watched it in live streaming video on my computer.

Did you see Donald Trump’s youngest son Barron as he stood beside his father while Trump gave his speech?  I lost track of the speech several times, because ten-year-old Barron kept making me laugh, what with his eyerolls at inappropriate times, and in general looking pretty much like he was asleep on his feet.

I mixed a packet of French Hazelnut Latte (birthday gift from Jeremy and Lydia) into hot water and sipped happily away, watching the spectacle unfold.  Mmmmm.

If people would just drink their lattes, they wouldn’t have to riot in the streets!

Speaking of riots... did you know that some people got paid to create an uproar?  And then there were those reporters(?) who reported disturbances and demonstrations where none were taking place.

Good grief, what a bunch of liars walk the earth.  No wonder David wrote in Psalms 116:11, “I said in my haste, All men are liars.”  Nevertheless, he praised the Lord for His faithfulness and bounty – and he learned that there were indeed others who also loved the Lord.

Wednesday morning, I found notes on Twitter reading, “#somebodyputBarronTrumptobed” and “#orgivehimRedBull” and various other hilarious things.  Poor kid!  He’s going to be in the limelight like never before – right into his early teen years.  He’s quite a nice-looking boy.

That afternoon, I printed a document for Victoria for changing her name on her social security card.  She is now legally ‘Victoria Brinkman’.

I’m glad the election is over.  With a Republican House and Senate, Donald Trump may well be able to put through some of his conservative ideas – and that will be a whole lot better than what we’ve had.  We can’t afford Obamacare; it’s totally outrageous.  Could you afford $1,000 (a few of our friends pay twice that) a month – with a huge deductible – for insurance??

Donald Trump might be a bit obnoxious, but those who know him personally agree that he’s a kind and generous person, which is more than they say about Hillary Clinton.  Many who have worked for her found her to be rude and belittling and even downright nasty to employees, secret service agents, and plenty of others.  I’m always skeptical of, oh, just about everything; but when enough reports come from enough trustworthy individuals, and when some of that nastiness has actually been recorded, then it can generally be believed.

But being obnoxious or not isn’t the defining criteria.  What matters is how closely a person with aspirations to lead our country does what is right.  The right path isn’t as wide as some would have us believe. 

I heard some woman on the radio saying she was going to vote for Hillary Clinton “because we need a woman in the White House.”  Other than that, she had no clear idea at all what Hillary stands for (or doesn’t stand for).  I repeat myself... but... good grief!

Donald Trump believes abortion is wrong; Hillary sanctions it.  He believes in marriage only between husband and wife – and Hillary thinks same-sex marriage is fine and dandy.  Obama, after saying he was against it a few years ago, now goes around promoting it.

Hillary wants more gun control.  Trump believes in our constitutional right to bear arms.  She and the current administration have pulled away from Israel and have done various ‘deals’ that give enemies of all humanity money, arms, and leverage for their vicious, evil deeds. 

They have made our military weaker; Donald Trump wants to strengthen it.  It’s a bad leadership that weakens a nation.

Hillary Clinton would continue her present direction of throwing our country deeper and deeper into debt.  Trump, though he’s never been an elected official before, has proven himself for years to be an astute businessman, and, with help from the House and the Senate, he hopes to apply that knowledge and skill to the United States budget.

There are a whole lot of other reasons why I believe Hillary Clinton would’ve been very bad news for our country.

Well, whatever happens, we can rest assured that the Lord has His hand on all things, and nothing transpires that is not in His great Plan.  He knows from time’s beginning what will take place, right down to the smallest detail, and nothing occurs without it being a part of that great plan.  A better world awaits those of us who believe in Him and have put our trust in His salvation, so we don’t need to fall to pieces over any of the bad things that happen in this old world.

I’m mighty thankful for that.

One more thing:  I have friends who voted for Hillary Clinton.  They will remain my friends.  (Unless they don’t like me anymore, after reading all of this.)

Okay, that’s the end of the political dissertation.

For now.

No, I take that back.  I have something else to say, regarding public assistance, which has always been another dividing point between Democrats and Republicans.

The trouble with public assistance is that so many people take advantage of it who in no way, shape, or form should be accepting handouts.  Some are hale and hearty, but pretend to be infirm.  It’s staggering, the price the federal government spends on all the welfare programs each year:  $152.8 billion.  That’s a terrible price tag, and we simply cannot afford it.  Our national debt is 20 trillion dollars, for crying out loud!

If something doesn’t turn around, and turn around hard and fast, our country is going to collapse.  No government can sustain debt like that and continue.  It was debt that brought down empires before us, from Persia to Britain to Rome. 

And you know what has always gone before a collapse of finances?  It’s people turning away from God and morals totally decaying!  That’s not speculation; that’s history.

Look around the country, and tell honestly the state of the morals.  It’s not good!  And the debt is following, hot on its heels – just as it always has, throughout history.  Single-parent homes are an enormous financial drain on individuals and government alike.

So many leaders from all rungs of the ladder put themselves forward for self-gain, rather than for the good of the people.  The CEO of Goodwill Omaha resigned Friday in the wake of a recent investigation showing that the charity’s top-dollar executive pay has consumed the profits of its stores, leaving scant dollars for programs to help disabled and needy job-seekers.

We can’t say that about Donald Trump, at least.  He had nothing to gain, financially, in running for president.  In fact, he loses money (as does his extended family).  He will have many of his businesses allocated to others while he’s in office.  Trump relied heavily on his own fortune throughout the campaign.  He had many smaller donations from numerous donors, while Hillary had large donations from a lesser number of donors.  Clinton spent $25 million campaigning in one state alone.

Here are the totals:  Donald Trump spent $247,541,449 in candidate committee money and $59,389,531 in outside money.  Hillary Clinton spent $497,808,791 in candidate committee money and $189,453,103 in outside money.  That in itself bolsters the fact that he’s the better businessman, and more likely to tame the budget.

So many people in places of control are corrupt.  Trump intends to have better overseers, in order to cull out waste and overpayment and unconscionable spending, and remove people from the dole who don’t need it and shouldn’t be taking it.  It will be a monumental task.

He knows it, and I imagine he has a very good idea how to cope with it – but he’s going to have opposition.  Witness the protests in several large cities, with people – especially young people – chanting “Not our president!”  Many were paid to protest, as previously noted.

It’s quite horrid, the way our country is going.  A couple more policemen were killed last week.  The week before that, two were killed in Des Moines – ambushed while just sitting in their car.  As of the last week of September, there had been 81 officers killed in the line of duty this year, by some type of assault (gun, knife, vehicle).

The way the police in our country have been treated for the last few years – many being killed by thugs and villains – is unprecedented.  I know there are officers who are not worthy of the badge – but most are honest, hard-working, courageous men and women who deserve our respect.  Nowadays, many of them, along with their families, live in fear, every day of their lives.  It’s awful – and some of it can be blamed on our very own President.  He has given his two-cents’-worth (and it wasn’t worth that much) about incidents he knew little to nothing about, and in doing so, actually encouraged criminals to act out.  He’s caused division and unrest, and he should have known – perhaps did know – full well what he was doing.  I will say that he gave a short, decent speech last Thursday after the meeting with Donald Trump at the White House.

Three days after mocking Trump as ‘unfit to control the codes needed to launch nuclear weapons’, Obama said that he wants his successor to succeed and that he would do everything he could to ensure a smooth transition.  We should be thankful for that, at least.

Trump, who at one time claimed Obama is not a natural-born American and accused him of being the founder of ISIS on the campaign trail, called Obama ‘a very good man’ and said he would seek his counsel in future.

That’s all pretty syrupy, but I guess it’s better than if they had punched each other in the mouths, eh?

Okay, now it’s enough political ranting and raving. 

For now.

I cleaned the kitchen, picked up several grandchildren from school, and then printed my letter to mail to an aunt and uncle.  The yellow cartridge went dry mid-print.  I reached for one of the new cartridges – discovered I’d purchased a black, a cyan, and two magenta cartridges.  No yellow. 

I printed anyway.  The people on the last couple of pages had a smurfy blue tint to them. 

(Sorry, Uncle Earl.)

Getting back to my customer’s quilt, I got the quilting design partially completed before it was time for church.

Larry was late coming home from work, so I went on ahead.  That worked out pretty well, since I needed to stop at my blind friend’s house to see why her email program, Eudora, wasn’t working.  I re-downloaded it from the blind-friendly-program website, reran it, and presto, it was working again.  The files had evidently become corrupted somehow.  That’s not the first time that’s happened.  I wonder what causes it?  Perhaps it’s just some sort of incompatibility glitch between Eudora and Windows 7, as Eudora is no longer under development or supported.  Many sight-impaired rely heavily on it, however, as it works well with their synthesizers (audio readers).

In the meantime, Larry went to Wal-Mart for the yellow ink cartridge, milk, and butter.  On the way home, I stopped at Lydia’s house – she’d made us a coconut cream pie.  Mmmmm, mmm, it was the perfect after-church snack that night.

Thursday, Uncle Clyde was able to come home!  We are so thankful.  One of his granddaughters posted this picture, captioning it, “Still just as ornery as ever!” 

I went on working on my customer’s quilt.  I spread it out on my marble table, the better to put together the quilting design, using online coloring pages, PaintBox, and Corel PaintShop Photo Pro.  I wanted the large quilting design for the plain fabric areas to match the design in the lace.  Here’s the lace, before I began.

I dropped off some things at the Goodwill before picking up the grandchildren from school that afternoon.  We try to donate enough stuff throughout the year that we get a little return from the IRS each spring.

It was 59°, bright and sunny.  But it was -6° in Alert, Nunavut, Canada.  (I knew you wanted to know.)

And then... later that afternoon...

AAAAAaaaaaaaaaaa!!!  A terrible thing happened!  I ran out of coffee, and there was only enough for half a potful.  How did this happen???  Last time I looked, there were three bags of coffee beans in the cupboard!

It surely must be Kurt and Victoria’s fault for getting married and making me forget about important things such as coffee.

But... somehow... I managed to survive on half a potful until Larry brought some home after he got off work.  Otherwise, why, I might’ve had to subsist on tea.  :-O

I got back to work, trying not to hyperventilate on account of the coffee shortage.  Needing to tape some pages of design together, I hunted high and low for my tape dispenser, and then I hunted low and high.  I looked all along the side of the table (on which lay the quilt) where I have marking pens, rulers, and pencils.  I looked on the cutting table.  I looked on the sewing desk.  I looked on the quilting frame.  I looked upstairs in the kitchen, in the bedroom... and then started the entire process over again.

Oh.

Found it, right under my nose.

I’d set it atop the quilt to keep it from sliding off that slippery marble table.

Symmetrical designs, for me, are more difficult than asymmetrical.  Asymmetrical is easier because you don’t have to make one side of any part of the design exactly match the opposing side. 

This seemingly simple design took me a while.  Hopefully, the actual quilting would go quicker.  

I vacuumed the tracks on my frame and the carpet under it, loaded the quilt top, pinned a layer of water-soluble Sulky Solvy clear stabilizer over the lace, and launched in.  By 11:30 p.m., I had the first border of lace finished.

Because the batting is so thick, the quilt is going to be quite puffy.  I like it that way...  but I hope my customer won’t be surprised over its puffiness!  She has never used this kind of batting before.

I used thick batting in my Christmas tree skirt, and then when things weren’t lying exactly smooth, I stuffed even more thick batting into it.  It’s really, really puffy – but my customer’s batting is much denser.

The lady made the quilt with lace and rayon linen that came from France.  She’s going to give the quilt to her sister for Christmas.  It has much sentimental value. 

Someone asked me if I have a glide foot for my HQ16.  It’s a cupped foot with a hole at the bottom of the cupped area for the needle to go through.  It is made to glide easily over thick seams, embroidery, and suchlike.  I don’t have one.  It’s $49.95 for the foot, and I would also have to purchase the foot conversion kit, which is $99.95.  I don’t want to sink that much into a 2005 HQ16.  The Solvy is doing the job – and I got it cheap.

Supper that night was sirloin tip steaks from Omaha Steak Company (purchased with our anniversary gift card from Kurt and Victoria), baked potatoes, carrots, onions, and celery.  Mmmmm... the steak melted in our mouths.

I went back to the quilting machine, after donning furry slippers and fuzzy socks.  It was chilly in the basement.  I had some troubles getting quilt top and back pulled tightly enough, partly because of the density of the batting, and partly because the linen is a little slippery, and doesn’t stay as tight on the take-up bars of my frame as quilting cottons do.  I’m winding up with a pucker or a tuck here and there on the back.  I’ll go back and fix as many as possible when I’m finished.  I’ll pick out the stitches... put it back on the frame... stretch it as tightly as possible... and redo it, trying my best to redistribute the excess fullness.  I’ve had to do this a few times before; thankfully, not very often.  Sometimes it works great.  Sometimes it works... sorta.  Sometimes ... why, sometimes, I create New and Improved tucks! 

The extra-loft batting I used in the Buoyant Blossoms quilt wasn’t as dense as this stuff is, and was more pliable.  The quilt sandwich is thick enough that it creates a bit of drag on the machine.  Sometimes, in order to more evenly spread excess fullness, I press down on the quilt top with one hand while guiding the machine with the other.  This means I can’t be as accurate as I’d like.  It’s pretty, but it’s not perfect!  But I’m trying, with all my might and main. 

By the time I quit for the night, a double-wide row was done.

Saturday afternoon after Larry got off work, we went searching for Larry’s new little Bluetooth speaker that had fallen out of a bracket on his bike the previous night as he was riding north of Monroe.  We parked at the top of the hill where he turned around, then walked down the hill, mostly in the ditch, about a mile, and back up the other side.  We drove down to a lower area and repeated the exercise in reverse.

No luck.  The speaker was a birthday gift from Andrew and Hester, and Larry really liked it.  It broadcast music from his phone so he didn’t have to use earbuds, and it also had a loud horn on it.  It’s a small, dark charcoal, rubber cylinder, heavy enough to sink right into the thick grass at the bottom of the roadside ditches.  We probably walked right over the top of it.

When we got home, there were three packages by the front door.  They should’ve all been the shoes I ordered last Monday; but only two were mine.  The other box was for someone whose name I’d never seen before, and an address some distance away.  We have mail persons who are not only geographically challenged, but have difficulties with reading comprehension, too!

That night, we looked on eBay for a speaker like the one Larry lost.  Most were going for $55 – but then we found one for $40, and there was even a ‘Best Offer’ option.  We offered $35, the man accepted, and we purchased it.  Shipping was free.  This one will be secured into that bracket better!

I sat down to play the piano, and found a song that reminded of a time when I was playing for the congregation.  After the song service and before the sermon, a lady sang Jesus, Lover of My Soul, the more elegant and wide-ranging tune especially for soloists singing special numbers.  [‘Special number’, in church lingo, simply means ‘song sung by special singer(s)’.  There is an entire set of songbooks specifically for this purpose, entitled ‘Special Numbers’.  These songs are sometimes simply called ‘Specials’, or ‘Special music’.]

The sermon ensued.

And then, for the ending song, the song leader chose ---- Jesus, Lover of My Soul, this one, the more simple tune in the hymnbook.

Problem:  the first tune was embedded in me poor leeto peabrain, and though I looked right straight at the hymnbook tune and had known it for eons, I couldn’t for the life of me play it in the proper timing.  I had the tune right, ... but, oh, the timing!  Yikes.  If you know those songs, think about one, then the other – and try putting special number tempo into hymnbook tempo, and just see where that takes you. 

Our song leader, evidently discerning sumpin wuz a-mattuh, halted us after verse 2 and politely asked us to skip to verse 4.

I’m here to tell you that 4 warn’t no bettah than 1 and 2.  So, while my brain screamed in anguish, “That’s wrong!  That’s wrong!  That’s wrong!” my fingers hip-hopped blithely on.

The worthy parishioners gamely struggled along, though casting doubtful looks at me throughout the song.  There was a whole plethora of expressions in those upturned faces:  From “This must be the right way to sing this song, because the pianist would know, right?” to “Heavenly days, what’s this world coming to!  Get the idiot off the bench now.”  And everything in between.

I went home and headed straight for the piano.  I will play this right!  But of course, I played it right.  In fact, I couldn’t for the life of me play it wrong!  Siggghhhh...  Oh, the troubles stage nerves can bring on.

Yeah, I had my share of piano-on-stage calamities and catastrophes.  But here’s a fact:  I always had them with gusto and high spirits!

And by the way, just for the record, it’s really, really awkward (even if one doesn’t slaughter the timing) to sing one song after the other that, while having different tunes, nevertheless have the very same words.

A song leader of days gone by once had us sing Songs of Praises, immediately followed by Guide Me, O, Thou Great Jehovah.  Same words, different tunes.  Who knows?  Maybe he never even noticed they had the same words.  haha  He was a Nervous Nelly, for sure.  Poor guy.

One of our organists once thought she’d help him out when the same thing happened with yet a third song, and announced from her perch over on the organ bench, “We just sang that.”  (She evidently didn’t want to get too longwinded and enlarge upon the statement, as she wasn’t the Speaker of the House [of the Lord], after all.)

Oh boy oh boy oh boy, did that ever cornfuse him to bits and pieces.  It was a different page number, now, wasn’t it?  He was never one to argue, especially in public, but what to do, what to do?  He had no idea what to do next.  In fact, I’m pretty sure he had no idea where he was, what he was doing there, where he should go afterwards, or what his name was.

Moral:  It is not good to have Helpful Hattie and Nervous Nelly both on the stage at once.

You’re welcome.

We were just about to eat supper when someone knocked on the door.  I was surprised to find the mail lady there, with a box.  She said they had a ‘late truck’.  Sure, sure.  Pffft.  She had a late box is all, because she misdelivered it.  (At least this lady is a nice and friendly one, which is more than we could say about the last one.)  I gave her the one she’d left earlier that wasn’t ours.  The box she brought was indeed my 3^rd pair of shoes.  The new pair is a bit too tight.  The slightly used, really expensive pair ($30, but list is $180) is a bit too big.  So I’ll wear one pair to the morning service and the other pair to the evening service, and they’ll average each other out and be just right.  Right?  Or maybe I could a too-big shoe on one foot and a too-small one on the other and trick both feet into feeling comfortable.

Larry got a new gas cap for Victoria’s Touareg since the old one wasn’t sealing properly, thus causing the Check Engine light to come on and the fuel pump to misbehave.  He went to put it on for her – and came home with a pumpkin chiffon pie she’d made.  (Do our kids think we look skinny??)  She made seven of them, and gave away three or four.  It was scrumptious.

By bedtime, I was almost to the middle of my customer’s quilt.  I had to be careful where I stepped, because Tiger had decided his favorite place to sleep was right under the end of my quilting frame.

We once had a beautiful cat – Tad, whose mother was Black Kitty – who could jump with great ease from the floor to the top of our tall refrigerator.  He could jump from the ground below the porch up and over not just the porch, but on over the railing without even touching it, a jump of about eight feet, and land gracefully back down on the porch on the other side of the railing.  Wow, could he ever jump.

He was such a sweet cat.  We were all very, very sad when he got hit by a car.

I cut my hair Saturday morning, so it didn’t take as long to curl it Sunday morning.  I got it all nicely in place... and then decided to wear a turtleneck.  :-O

It was a beautiful day, bright blue skies with nary a cloud to be seen.  The morning was a little chilly, only 43°, but it got up to 64° that afternoon.

Meanwhile, it was -18° in Alert, Nunavut, Canada.  But it was 46° in Ketchikan, Alaska – 3° warmer than it was here.

Larry went for a bike ride after church last night.  He has to dress warmer nowadays, and is glad for the Heat-Holder socks Jeremy and Lydia gave him.  I should get some of those for all the menfolk in the family for Christmas.  Get this:  they’re $30 a pair at Bomgaars here in town!  But I see I can get them from Amazon.com for $14.38 a pair.

Today I’m doing a double backup from computer to two external hard drives while I type.  It will take a majority of the day to transfer all this data. 

One day soon, I have to go to Nebraska Furniture Mart in Omaha for a new laptop; mine is on its last leg – or at least the lid is.  It’s about to come completely off.  And the fan is barely working.  (When you actually dream that your computer has fallen to bits and pieces, it must be getting prrrretty bad.)  It has lived longer than most of my computers, and the main functions still work; so I’m handling it with kid gloves, not closing the lid (just hibernating it from the start menu, instead).  I don’t want it to fail entirely before I’ve gotten all my data transferred to a new laptop – and I have nearly a terabyte of data along with a large number of programs, so it’s no quick job.

Time out to hit the shop, the bank, and the school to pick up grandkids.  If there’s not a lot of traffic, and if the lanes at the bank aren’t full, it takes an extra 14 minutes to pick up the check, take it to the bank, and get back to the school.

++++++++++++++++++++++

Okay, I’m back.  Did you miss me?

Why do so many people refuse to use the outer lanes of any drive-thru?  Do they think the person at the window can only read lips, so they have to be up close?  Do they think money sent through vacuum tubes will have molecules sucked off of it, and thus be worth less?  Do they think their little Fiats and Fiestas can’t round the corners or fit through the lanes?  For pity’s sake, even our Chevrolet Subdivision could make it around the tight corner at the outer drive-thru of Columbus Bank.  You didn’t want to sneeze in the wrong spot, though, or the extra particles inside the vehicle might cause it to expand just enough to make the mirrors brush the pillars.  Sometimes, those people create a looong line behind the window lane, thus blocking the way into the outer lane, where nary a soul is conducting business at all.  This makes me want to put my vehicle in four-wheel-drive and then just push them all through the line, until I get to the break-off point for the outer lane.  I hate wasting time, and I don’t appreciate others wasting it for me!  Grrrrr.

Here’s the moon, closest it’s been to the earth in almost 69 years when it’s also full, just coming up over the ponderosas.

Oh!!!  We just got the news! – we have a new little granddaughter!  Her name is Elsie Martha Jackson, and she weighs 7 pounds 3 ounces, and is 18 inches long.  Emma finally has a sister!  Teddy sent a picture of her diligently, industriously,  and studiously sucking on one little finger.  Precious little baby!

,,,>^..^<,,,       Sarah Lynn       ,,,>^..^<,,,