February Photos

Monday, March 20, 2017

Journal: Cleaning, Cleaning, Cleaning -- and Some Bad News

Here’s what my little office looked like before I started cleaning it, which is an aggravation, since I left it spic and span when I moved my sewing things downstairs and stopped using the little room about six years ago.  I discovered that the rest of the family had been using the room as a catchall for all manner of paraphernalia.  Ugh.
I just started on this room Saturday, and already it is a good deal cleaned out, with numerous things going to Caleb and to the Goodwill.  I’ll be happy to be using this rolltop desk again soon.
The children all loved that rolltop desk, because as I’d sit there typing (first, on a word processor; eventually on a computer), they’d ‘mail’ me things through those slots on the sides.  I’d exclaim, snatch it up, read it, sign stuff with a flourish, draw a picture or two, ‘stamp’ it (with stickers), and ‘mail’ it back to them. 
That rolltop desk was neat as a pin, and shut when I left it and moved most of my things downstairs to my new sewing room.  Then one day when I went up there for something, there it was wide open, with things in a jumbled heap, and lots of items on the desk and in the room that don’t belong to me – painting supplies, parts for remote-controlled, gasoline-powered vehicles, a grand variety of tools... you name it.  And of course everything is covered with dust.  Living on a gravel road with cornfields all around assures that.
At least the quilt display rack that I found at a secondhand store for only about $5 is still in one piece.  See it there, in the middle of the mess? 
A quilting friend recently told a story about how she and another quilter were discussing quilts they needed to finish.  Her husband joined the conversation:  “Well, you only have to get those three quilts hanging on your longarm done, and then you’ll be all done!” (meaning, ‘all done making quilts forever and ever, amen’.)
He looked quite bamboozled, bewildered, and mystified when his wife and her friend went into great ringing peals of laughter.
That’s something on the order of Larry thinking I don’t need to go see the Sandhill cranes again, because I already saw them, took pictures of them, and they still look the same as they did last time.  I told him indignantly, “I’ve been through three cameras since then!  It’s been eight years, at least!”  (Besides, they’re only 70 miles away, all 600,000 of them.)
“It’s only been two or three years, at the most!” he protested. 
I pulled up my last photos of the cranes.  Ha!  It’s been nine years!
Quilting and photography:  there’s always another one to make and take!  Here’s a fact:  Nothing ever looks the same way twice.  Things change! – landscape, clouds, lighting.  And animals and birds are not static.  They move, for crying out loud!
So now we are planning to go see the Sandhill cranes this coming Saturday.
Since I’ve gotten the majority of my contacts and accounts notified and changed from lajack@megavision.com to sarahlynn.jackson2@gmail.com, I’m also resetting my notification sounds in Outlook.  I don’t (usually) match up audio clips with what I think people are like; I just choose something that I will hear and take note of, and know who is writing.  Plus, it’s fun to have my computer chirping, growling, meowing, barking, warbling, and now and then bursting into song.
But I did have a friend get all bent out of shape because her audio clip, when she wrote to me, was Singing in the Bathtub, Happy Once Again! – and she thought that meant I thought she needed a bath.  Haha!
When Teddy was still at home, he used to say, “Mama, your computer drives me nuts!”  So I’ve entitled the sound theme on each of my computers ‘Drive You Nuts’ ever since. 
Last week at this time, I’d forwarded gmail to Outlook and applied some rules.  Most of them didn’t take.  By Tuesday, they were working – randomly.  Perhaps the laptop needed a nap?  If particular errors refuse to happen twice in a row, then I certainly have a hard time figuring out a fix for whatever needs to be fixed!  I decided to let well enough alone for a while, and hoped some of the issues would resolve themselves.  Could happen.  Maybe.  Possibly.  ๐Ÿ˜‰
In fact, many did just that.  No, don’t ask me why.  Don’t ask, I said!
That evening, feeling quite a lot like I needed dessert, and quite a lot like I didn’t want to make it myself, I wrote a note to Larry:  “I’d be sorta pleased if you’d bring us home a big ol’ gooey doughnut or two for dessert.”
He wrote back in quite an agreeable tone, “I will see what I can find.  ๐Ÿ˜‹
He brought home turnovers – apple and cherry – as the big gooey doughnuts were all gone, except for some in dozen-count boxes, and he didn’t like the variety, nor did he want that many.  Just as well; the doughnuts give me a stomachache.  The turnovers never do.
Some friends have been discussing troubles they are having in the dividing of a late parent’s belongings, and the executing of the will.  Some tell of becoming estranged with their siblings over the matter – and never speaking to them again.  Sad, when that happens.
My mother passed away just before Christmas of 2003.  As we sorted through Mama’s things, my sister Lura Kay and I decided to give Mama’s pink depression-glass dishes – a sizeable collection that she’d received as a wedding gift in 1936, and added to as she could – to our late sister-in-law, Janice, because we knew how much she liked those dishes, and we also knew she had two or three china hutches, and would find a lovely place for them.
I wasn’t at my mother’s house when Lura Kay gave them to Janice.
Dawned the next day... and I got a phone call.  It was Janice – and she was crying.  What in the world?! I thought, concerned. 
Turns out, she’d fretted and stewed all through the night, because she’d taken those dishes when I wasn’t around, and had not made absolute certain that I really, truly wanted her to have them!  I set about assuring her that she was absolutely the one who should have them.
Flash forward to a year or more ago, when I was at my brother’s house one day.  We walked past the china hutch where Mama’s dishes are displayed – and he came to a sudden stop, peered in, and then, turning to me, asked, “Do you want these dishes?  Shouldn’t I give them to you or Lura Kay now?”
 “No, no!” I protested.  “Just look how pretty they are in there!  I don’t have nearly as nice a place to put them, and Lura Kay’s china hutches are full, too!  Besides, you like them, don’t you?” 
He did.  So there the dishes stay. 
That was just one item.
One night as my sister and I were working away in our mother’s house, clearing it out, I took yet another box out to my crammed-full vehicle, walked back in, and said, “You know, I’ve just realized that you’re not really being generous; you’re just getting rid of junk that you don’t know what to do with!” 
It was late, and we both have a tendency to get silly when we’re tired.
She turned and gave me a long look without cracking a smile.  Then she looked at her husband John, who was trying not to smirk.  “She’s onto us,” she told him.  “We might as well take this---” and she picked up a box of pretty bird figurines that I’d packed up, and handed them to him.
These were figurines packed in a box with my name on it, as they were gifts I’d given my mother in the first place.  And of course everybody knows I love birds, just like she did.
John said in a resigned tone, “I guess so,” and headed for the door.
“HEY!!!!” I protested ------ and then we all proceeded to laugh like idiots. 
One more little note:  we came upon a very old pair of Mama’s wire-rimmed glasses.  She wore them long before I was born.  But I have a couple of favorite pictures of her wearing those glasses, including this one with my father in his sailor uniform.  It was July, 1944.
Well, I’d been going along just fine, enjoying working with my sister, sister-in-law, and various friends who popped in now and then to give us a hand.  But, quite unexpectedly, I cried over those glasses.  I put them back in the case and set them down.
My sister picked them up and handed them to me with a smile.  “Here, you put these in your box.”
So I did, without another word.
Gmail forwarding seems to be working okay now with my Outlook program.  I tweaked it just slightly, actually doing something that I thought might make matters worse – but instead I think it fixed the problem.
Wednesday morning, we heard some bad news.  Loren called to tell me that our nephew Kelvin, Lura Kay’s oldest son, had been transported to an Omaha hospital via helicopter – and he has colon cancer.  Kelvin is just 50 years old. 
His wife Rachel has not been well for months.  Doctors aren’t exactly sure what’s wrong, though they gave a diagnosis of ‘acute exhaustion’.  She hasn’t been able to teach her class at school or come to church for quite a while.
Kelvin and Rachel have five children.  Their youngest is 9 ½.  They have seven grandchildren, with one more on the way.  They just moved into a beautiful new home about a year ago.
When we lived in town, we were a block away from them.  They lived in a house we used to live in, and had renovated it very nicely.  Our youngest four were almost the same ages as their oldest four.  They had Jodie, we had Hester.  They had Sharon, we had Lydia.  They had Jason, we had Caleb.  They had Jamie, we had Victoria.  They played together often, and still get together.
One morning, I opened my door to get the newspaper – and there sat Sharon, age 3, right in the middle of my front lawn.  She’d had to cross the street to get there, and wasn’t supposed to do that.  “Hi!” she greeted me happily.
“Hi,” I returned, setting the paper down and heading out to collect the child.
“I know what your name is,” she informed me, “And I can say it, too!”  She nodded once or twice for emphasis.  “It’s Shar Win!”
Hee hee
“We’d better take you back home!” I told her, taking her hand.  “I don’t think you’re supposed to be here by yourself.”
“Oh, it’s okay,” she said airily, “’Cuz Mom doesn’t know!” 
Her mother had gone to the grocery store, and Kelvin was working in the yard.  He’d gone inside to answer the phone – and Sharon had made her getaway.  Jodie, age 5, had dashed in and told her Daddy.
He was just trotting down the sidewalk, looking worried, when I rounded the corner toward his house.
“Found your wayward puppy,” I said.
“Sharon!” he exclaimed, “You know better than to run off like that!”
“Yes,” she agreed, “But Mom doesn’t know!” 
Haha
Jodie and Sharon both have two girls and a boy.  Sharon named her little boy after my father, her great-grandpa – George.  He would be tickled over that.  Sharon is expecting their fourth.  Our Lydia, same age as Sharon, has three little boys and is expecting their fourth, also.  Jamie and her husband just had their first baby...  and Kurt and Victoria are expecting their first.  I imagine this next generation of cousins will be good friends, just as their parents are.
That day, I paid a few bills, picked up the grandchildren after school, did a bit of altering on a fleece robe I’d given Hannah for her birthday, and kept cleaning and organizing the upstairs.
I had a hard time concentrating.  Hearing that news about Kelvin had been like a hard, nasty punch.  I was 5 ½ years old when he was born, and I just loved him to pieces.  He once said to me, when he was really little, “Sarah Lynn, I like playing with you better than with anybody else in the whole world!”  I was probably 10 or 11, and that thrilled me to pieces.  Best compliment anyone had ever paid me.  Ever.
I still think of him as having curly blond hair, even though it turned dark when he was still young. 
Soon it was time for church.  On Wednesday nights, we have our midweek Bible study, and sometimes prayer service.  We start off with several songs, and end with one more.  It’s refreshing and helpful to the spirit, especially when we’re feeling sad.
After church that night, we had a light meal of Alaskan salmon, broccoli, apple juice, and applesauce.  I always think I’ll get back home with the same energy with which I left the house, and plan to return to whatever it was I was doing when I departed.  Rarely happens.
But I was back in business Thursday, cleaning and sorting away.  I finished the main part of Caleb’s old room, closet and all, and was ready to start on the large cubbyhole.  Up on a top shelf in the closet (there are 9-foot ceilings, and two shelves above the closet rod), I found a violin.  The bridge was off, but it’s a beautiful instrument, with shiny bright woodgrain with a touch of red to it.  I decided to take a picture, send it to Hannah, and see if she knew whose it was.
My camera was downstairs – but my new tablet was right there handy, and it takes quite good photos. 
I snatched it up, took a photo, touched the ‘Share’ icon, and looked somewhat blankly at the options.  Since I was a-wantin’ to send a message, the ‘Message’ button seemed like the logical thing to press.  I pressed it, typed in Hannah’s address... and tapped ‘Send’.  A few minutes later, I thought I’d also send the picture to my laptop.  Maybe I’d forward the entire message I’d sent, just to keep things straight.  There was the picture, all right... but where was the message?  It wasn’t in my gmail ‘Sent’ file; nor was it in Larry’s. 
Hannah had received it, so where was it?  She told me it had been sent from Larry’s Google+ account.  Ah.  I not only don’t know much about my tablet, I also don’t know much about Google+.  Didn’t even know I could send from there.  But ah’m a-larnin’.
One thing I need to do is take my tablet to Verizon and have them take out Larry’s 187 contacts and put my much smaller number of contacts in.  His contacts got put into it because Larry and Caleb were the ones who purchased the tablet, and I was not along.  I don’t imagine I’ll be needing to contact construction companies in Omaha anytime soon, hmmm? 
I could do it myself, if I had something a little more intelligent than a dumbphone.  :-\
Hannah told me that the violin had belonged to Dorcas, so I wrote and asked Dorcas about it.  She does indeed want it, and is happy and excited I found it.  Last year when she needed maternity clothes, she had a garage sale to get a little extra money.  Someone asked if she had any musical instruments.  “I said yes,” Dorcas told me, “and was stupid and sold my violin, and have regretted it ever since.”
“This one might not be as nice as the one you had,” I told her, “but it’s sure pretty.  I’ll have it fixed by the technician at The Music Store uptown, and send it to you.”
Since Teddy was having new tires put on his van, and having it aligned, Amy had no wheels that day.  So I made four runs to town ferrying the grandchildren to and fro. 
Josiah tried to teach me arithmetic:  “Grandma, do you know what 3+5 is?”
“Albuquerque!” I exclaimed triumphantly.
He gave me a long look.  Is Grandma really that dumb?  He tried another equation:  “What’s 8+2?”
“Nebuchadnezzar!” I said, quick as a wink.
At that, several of the other kids couldn’t keep from laughing, and Josiah began to understand that Grandma was ... being Grandma.
He pulled out his spelling paper.  “Do you know how to spell ‘elephant’?”
“Yep!” said I.  “Q-r-p-8-7-b-b!”
He gave up and laughed with his siblings.
Lura Kay called late that afternoon to tell me that there is a spot of cancer on Kelvin’s liver and in his lung.  The cancer is therefore considered Stage 4.  The doctors plan to shrink the colon tumor with chemo, then remove it.  
This is pretty heartbreaking for all of us.  Lura Kay and John H. have already lost one son – their second son David, when that drunk driver rammed into his house in the middle of the night. 
Kelvin is an upbeat person, and quite optimistic, although it was sobering that morning when the new test results came back.  It’s hard for his wife Rachel, and she wasn’t well in the first place.  Everyone sort of thought maybe Kelvin had whatever Rachel has, when he felt unwell lately.  He had tests, but nothing showed up.  So the cancer has progressed for a time.
That evening, Larry sent me a text:  “I’m on my way to Omaha with Teddy to get a bedroom set for Emma.”  Jeremy’s father Tim has been putting in the electricity for the basement bedrooms at Teddy’s house.
When Larry is going to be late, I eat when I’m hungry, rather than waiting ’til he gets home.  I was just chowing down on brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes, and a bowlful of frozen berries (blackberries, blueberries, and raspberries), with M&M oatmeal cookies baking in the oven, when Loren came to visit for a little while.  He was feeling pretty bad about Kelvin. 
I shared my cookies with him, and when he left, he was laughing, because I told him the story of Sharon on the front lawn:  “It’s okay, ’cuz Mom doesn’t know!”
I showed him a picture our great-niece Jodie had posted on Instagram of their little boy Mitchell dressed for church Wednesday night – and wearing a helicopter tie tac pin that his Grandpa Kelvin had given him when they’d visited him, a helicopter just like the one Kelvin had ridden in.  That picture got to me.  The little guy looks a lot like his grandpa did, when he was that age.
I had a lengthier suppertime break than I’d intended... but my brother felt better, and so did my back. 
A little after 10:00 p.m., I suddenly thought, Aaaccckkk, laundry!  I’d forgotten about the laundry.  Only two loads had been folded and put away.  Another was in the dryer, another in the washing machine, and one more waiting to be washed.  I rectified that situation and headed back upstairs to start dragging things out of Caleb’s cubbyhole.  I was younger and tougher when I put things in there.  It wasn’t going to be easy.
After quitting with the cleaning for the night, I worked on changing my email address here and there.  I’m planning to eventually shut the Megavision address down entirely, but I have several accounts scattered around the Internet that refuse to let me change the address for one reason or another.  For instance, Craftsy.  When I tried changing from lajack to sarahlynn.jackson2@gmail.com, I was informed that the gmail address was already in use.  This conflict must be caused by something I ordered years ago before I set up my pattern store with them.
I wrote for help.  The cute little office girl (well, that’s what she sounds like) gleefully wrote back the following day that they had merged my emails together ‘into one happy account under your preferred email!’  Yes, that’s the exact wording.
I checked it out – and found I no longer had access to my pattern store. 
I wrote again:  “Thank you kindly, but now I can’t sign into my store!”
“Oops!” wrote the jolly, perky office help.  “I’ll fix that!”
Directly I got a notice that I was to sign in under lajack, as I had been doing, and then I was to go ahead and change to the new addy in my ‘preferences’.
I did so – and was informed, “Sorry; that address is already in use.” 
Uh, I think I already went through this once?
And Craftsy isn’t the only place that’s happening.  Fabric.com is another.  I could just make a new account there altogether, but that’s not a good solution, as I want to maintain access to my previous orders.  All they need to do is delete the old, unused account, and all would be well.  They have to change do it from their end; I can’t do it.  But will they??  No, of course not!
I decided to quit giving myself a headache over the matter, pull up youtube, and watch truck accidents on icy/snowy roads, instead.  Much more relaxing.
You can still write to my lajack address, and I’ll still get it.  But I have to switch accounts before I reply, or my email gets stuck in Outbox, and then I have to disconnect from the Internet, close out of Outlook, pull Outlook back up, delete the email from Outbox, turn the Internet back on, open the email I threw into the deleted file, and resend it, hopefully remembering to change accounts before clicking ‘Send’ (or I’ll have to repeat the entire process all over again).
Somebody wanted to know what I was doing all this housecleaning for.  Well, to get the house clean, of course!  Duh.  I like things clean and organized.  Just because you can’t tell it is no sign I don’t.  I’m going to move my sewing room (not the quilting machine) upstairs to Victoria’s old room.  I’m holding that out as a carrot in front of my nose, to keep myself plugging away at it. 
Friday, I delved deeper into the cubbyhole in Caleb’s old room.  By early afternoon, the Jeep had a bunch of stuff in it, the living room had a heap of things to give the kids – and that cubbyhole was still a whole lot more full than empty.
After going to town once that afternoon to deliver several large boxes and bags to the Goodwill and to take some suits and dresses to the cleaners, I returned home and got every last box, bin, and bag out of Caleb’s old cubbyhole.  I sorted... and then I laid the two rear seats down in the Jeep, making the entire back from driver’s seat to hatch a cargo area.  Then, box after box, I hauled things out.  Nice sweaters, shirts, jeans, Carhartt overalls, and a variety of games were for Hannah and family.  I think Aaron is almost as big as Caleb, imagine that.  Caleb is 6’ tall.
I found a lot fewer jeans in Caleb’s cubbyhole than I expected to find – and more shirts than I remembered putting there.  I have no idea what became of the size 14 jeans I thought were in there.  Possibly Jeremy Duncan of the renowned comic strip Zits sold them on eBay.
I also discovered a beautiful-but-forgotten shimmery, plum-colored sweater with a soft black fur peter pan collar in the top drawer of a dresser in my old office.  I knew when I opened the drawer and saw plum-colored confetti all over that the news would not be good. 
Sure enough, mice had chewed multiple holes in the sweater. 
How did they get into the top drawer, and why did they leave the other four drawers alone??  I hate mice.
At least they couldn’t chew up this pretty stoneware duck feeder!  Loren and Janice gave it to me, some years ago.  I wondered what had become of it.  I found it amongst some things of Victoria’s and thought it was hers... but she said it’s mine, and Loren had a vague recollection of them giving it to me.  Okay, yesirree, it’s mine!  I know right where to hang it, too.
A huge box of cassettes was for Teddy and family.  Loren gave them an old but very nice cassette player for Christmas.  It works perfectly and has excellent sound quality, even though it’s probably 25 years old.  I found a little Walkman cassette player in the cubbyhole, stuck a new battery in it, rummaged up a nice set of earbuds – and it works!  I gave that to Emma last week, and Teddy later told me that it had been his when he was not much older than Ethan.  He wondered how he’d managed to leave it behind when he got married and moved out.  And I wonder how I managed to give it to a child of the person to whom it belonged, and who was particularly fond of it.  Those cassettes are probably approaching the ends of their lifetimes; but the children will enjoy them while they last.
When Larry got home after work that night, he came with me to take things to Hannah’s and Teddy’s houses.  Teddy and Amy were just arriving home from Lincoln, where they’d gotten the kids a big playset.  We unloaded a lot of stuff, but the Jeep was still half full, because the Goodwill closed earlier than we’d expected that evening.
Our living room looked like a calamity, because there was a heap of things belonging to Caleb stacked in it.  I found a box of things he’d gotten for Christmas the year before he got married – still full of brand-new things.  He must’ve stuck it in his cubbyhole and forgotten all about it.  There were nice socks, a silky-soft Under Armour shirt, and a beautiful little leather-bound devotional by Charles Spurgeon (he was called ‘The Prince of Preachers’, preaching back in the late 1800s, and he’s one of our favorites) – and the plastic wrap is still on the book.  Caleb was happy to have that; he likes reading Spurgeon’s writings.  There was a wooden football made up of wooden puzzle pieces, too.  I found brand-new Wrangler jeans (that will no longer fit him)... and half a dozen big and little remote-controlled vehicles. 
Whew, this spring cleaning I’m doing is...  hmmm... I looked for a better description than ‘hard work’ and discovered ‘tough grind’ and ‘donkeywork’.  So ‘donkeywork’ it is.  ;-)
Did you ever look at things like those cars... books... toys... and think, I miss my little boy! ?  Yeah, I miss my little Caleb the boy – but I sure do love my grown-up Caleb! 
One day when Teddy was just two years old, I told him, “Teddy, did you know that your real name is Theodore?” 
He giggled.  “Noshuh.”
“Yes, it is,” I said.  “It’s Theodore Lyle Jackson.  That’s your name.”
Another giggle, and a shake of the head.  “Noshuh!”
“Yes, Teddy!” I worked harder to convince him.  “It says ‘Theodore Lyle Jackson’ on your birth certificate!  Teddy is your nickname.  Your real name is Theodore.”
He became more adamant than ever.  “Noshuh!!!  I is a Teddy!” 
Hee hee  He sure enough is just that – a Teddy.  (And he’s still skeptical about things.)
So now I was done with Caleb’s old room and the cubbyhole.  I quit stirring the house for the night, headed for the recliner, and put the heating pad behind my back.  Each box or bag that I take out to the Jeep requires me to carry it down one flight of stairs to the main floor, then down another three-quarter flight of stairs from back deck to driveway.  I’m pretty sure I used up the calories I consumed at suppertime, eating a little more than my usual portion of chicken pot pie.  ๐Ÿ˜‰
All three cats were worn out and soon sound asleep in their beds, too – they worked hard, keeping me company all day, often trotting up and down the stairs and all the way out to the Jeep and back with me.  Silly little animals.  They like me!  (Or maybe they were just worried I’d forget to feed them, what with all the goings’-on.)
Some friends were discussing their menus, and someone mentioned ‘flower salad’.  One of the ladies was surprised that there are edible flowers.  There is actually quite a list of flowers one can safely consume:  Edible Flowers
When I was little, the neighbor children and I liked to go into an empty lot that had been allowed to be shortgrass prairie.  We had all sorts of marvelous games in that field.  We’d tread down pathways and pretend we were Indians on the move... and we’d hunt for the miniature buttercups that grew wild there, nibbling off the bright yellow sweet-sour petals one by one.  We never imagined that one day eating flowers would become haute cuisine!
Lura Kay called that evening to tell me that there had been some encouraging news concerning Kelvin:  the tumor in the colon was smaller than originally thought.  He had hemorrhaged again the night before, but at least that time they were able to control it before it got so bad that they had to give him blood again.  He will have several chemo treatments, and they will watch the tumor to see if it’s shrinking.  They don’t want to try to remove it until it has shrunk.  They’ll give him a shot after each chemo treatment to control the nausea.  One shot alone is $500.  Good grief.
Saturday, I started on the little room that used to be my office.  There’s a big cubbyhole under the eaves in there, too, and it’s chock full, crammed to the gills.  I have hundreds and hundreds of books that I want to get into our bookcases, and I’ll make the little office and Caleb’s old room into libraries for the grandchildren.  They all love to read.
I’ll get all the bookcases positioned just so... put in the three rocking chairs... the child-sized wooden table, chairs, and bench... maybe even clean out my own closet... and then the sewing room!  I always save the best until last, in order to keep myself in High Gear. 
After working several hours Saturday morning, Larry went with a friend to get a pickup he’d purchased in Iowa.  The man had been told the truck was drivable, but they took Larry’s trailer anyway, and it was a good thing they did.  Some people must think ‘drivable’ is defined thusly:  ‘When you crank the starter, it makes a noise.’  Or maybe, ‘It has at least three wheels, which may or may not have actual tires on them.’
Meanwhile, it was a beautiful day, and he would have been working on his big garage, had he been home.  I’d remarked a couple of days earlier that what this family needs is four or five Larrys.  Well, that wouldn’t be enough, because it’s not just family who needs him! 
That afternoon, I took Dorcas’ violin to The Music Store to have it repaired, and then I took half a Jeep-load of things to Caleb and Maria.  Among other items, I’d found Caleb’s Craftsman toolbox that Loren and Janice had given him a few years ago.  It still looks new.
Caleb and Maria helped me carry things into their house.  I looked around and said, “Well, here’s all this dusty stuff (I did try to wipe everything off) to put in your spotless house!  I hope my kids still love me, after I get done cleaning.” 
They were laughing and making assuring noises, while their adorable boxer, Sadie, was wagging her stubby tail for dear life and checking out all the boxes. 
Sadie will still like me!” I decided.
Maria keeps their home looking so pretty.  She’s a dear.
One time she said to Victoria as they were going for a walk, “Something must be wrong with us (meaning Caleb and herself) – we never have fights!” 
Victoria couldn’t quit laughing, over that.
On the way home from Caleb’s house, I dropped off the rest of the stuff at the Goodwill.
Home again, I put a third load of clothes into the dryer, and then started reloading the Jeep with more things for the children:  several bags of freshly-washed jeans for Hannah’s boys...  a bag of stuff and a game call Apples to Apples for Victoria. 
On with the office cleaning!  I need to be a bit more ruthless about getting rid of things.  I keep telling myself, once I get furniture (especially bookcases and my sewing tables and cabinets) where they belong, and then start putting stuff into place, it’ll all come together fine. 
AND! – I found a quilt!  I am not completely sure, but I believe it was made by my late sister-in-law Janice for Caleb some years ago.  It’s made with lots of little colorful squares, tied with yarn at the corners, and still like new.  I washed it and gave it to Lydia for Jacob’s new room, which she is decorating with a nautical theme.
I reported on my progress to my quilting friends, and a friend wrote, “You know, I think I know why I’m so tired:  it’s all that cleaning that Sarah Lynn is doing!  Sarah Lynn, you need to take a break and relax a bit.  It will still be there to work on later.  Get a cup of tea and put your feet up and take it all in.”
Hee hee  It just so happened that I’d found my ‘Legends of China’ white tea in a hall cupboard, and that sounded like a good idea – but not yet.  It was barely past 6:00 p.m., and I was still going strong.
Have you ever noticed that when you start cleaning and sorting, everything expands exponentially? 
I got hung up momentarily on a large three-ring binder full of my old journals... but they are all on my computer and backed up on external hard drives, after all...  Sooo, I stamped my foot, closed my eyes, and deposited the whole works into the garbage and got meseff back with it.  A three-ring binder might be sort of fun to look through, but it sure is easier to find things when they are kept digitally.  If I can remember a few words of a particular sentence, I can find it in nothing flat.  Not so easy, practically impossible, in extremely fat three-ring binders – and I had a lot of them.
A friend wrote in some alarm, “Sarah Lynn, a journal is one of the things I think I wouldn’t be able to make myself toss in the trash.  Even if it were backed up on an external drive (is that what you’re calling a jump drive/USB drive?).  I don’t totally trust a computer or any kind of drive not to lose it.”
I wrote to reassure her:  I’ve had journals on my main computer (whether desktop or laptop) and also on three back-up hard drives for many years – nearly 18, in fact.  Jump drives or thumb drives aren’t stable enough for all the data I need to save.  I’ve never lost a single document, photo, video, or song that I’ve had backed up on my hard drives.  I use WD (Western Digital).  My latest is a little Elements box with a 2 TB capacity:  WD Elements
All data (journals, photos, music, videos, patterns, financial documents, emails) is backed up at least thrice, and some is backed up in quadruplicate.
I have a couple of WD My Books, too.  One is 12 years old and full, but still working dandy.  I had another kind – Seagate, maybe – that I got in 1999; gave it to one of the kids.  It’s still going, too, and hasn’t lost any data.  But I keep updating... and never leave data behind on old technology.
I never leave important data on thumb drives, SD cards, or pencil drives; too unstable, especially over long stretches of time.  I use SD cards almost exclusively for photos.  I transfer card from camera to computer, and once the photos are on the computer, I clear the card.
I have everything on my laptop and on all my hard drives catalogued both chronologically and categorically, with labels that make searches a snap.  When I launch into the photo-scanning project of my 250+ large albums, I’ll buy a new hard drive (8 Terabyte would be good) especially for all those pictures, as I want to scan them in high quality:  WD 8TB 
(One terabyte is 1,000 gigabytes.  One gigabyte is 1,000 megabytes.  Most of the photos from my newest camera are 10-12 megabytes and are still clear when printed at 16” x 20”.)
I keep enough digital backups of everything – including all those yearly DVDs I give my friends, my blog where I post my journals, etc. – they can’t possibly all go bad at once.  I don’t print anything if I can help it.  Those journals were given back to me some years back by a friend who wanted my weekly journal but had no internet access, so I printed them for her each week.  She thought she was doing me a favor, returning them to me.  I must’ve saved them out of politeness.  But I’m sooo tired of stuff!  Too much stuff.  Out it goes.
My digital journals date back into the mid 80s – saved on floppy disks from electronic Word Processors.  When I got a computer, I transferred them to the computer.  Lots of hieroglyphics came along, but I used the Search and Replace function in Word to fix them.
Okay, just for the fun of it, let’s see if I can resurrect a snippet from an old journal when we went fishing at Muscatine Lake up by Stanton, Nebraska, back in... 1999, maybe?  Caleb was a little guy... we were heading out on the pier... a fisherman scowled at us, with all our ducklings – he thought they’d raise the roof, and shoot all his chances of ever catching a fish. 
I recall part of Caleb’s remark, “He liked us because -----”  Well, I’m not going to tell you the rest just yet, or I’ll spoil the punchline.
Now, I give you my word, I haven’t looked for the letter yet.  I’ll look just as soon as I finish this sentence, and we’ll see how long it takes me to find it.  It’s 11:58 p.m.
5... 4... 3... 2... 1...  GO!
12:04 a.m., and I have found it!

Labor Day, 1999: 
On Labor Day, Larry thought he needed to work at least part of the day, because of missing a couple days of work the previous week.  At 3:00 p.m. he came home, and we left for Muskatine Lake, north of Stanton.  I have no idea how to spell the name of that lake: Muskatine? Muscatine? Muscathine? Maskathine? Meskathine? In the little town of Stanton stands a sign directing us to “Muskatine”.  A mile north of town, alongside the road, is a Department-of-Roads sign which reads, “Meskathine”.  But the carved wooden arch beside one of the entrances to the lake spells it, “Maskathine”.
[Note:  I just looked it up online, and it seems that the correct – or at least most common – spelling is ‘Maskenthine’.  All of the above are evidently wrong.]
It was a beautiful day.  Unfortunately, there were a number of undisciplined and unsupervised brats at the playground, cursing and swearing – in English, of all things.  They looked quite capable of swearing in another language, which would have suited us better.  I don’t want my children to hear such language – but they did, before I could do anything about it.  We went away from the playground and didn’t come back, instead going out onto the fishing pier to be with Larry and some of the other children, who were already fishing.  Another man was there, too, and I knew he wouldn’t appreciate it if we scared all the fish straight down the stream into the Missouri River.  So, before walking down the wooden walkway over the water and out onto the pier, I told the littles, “We must be very quiet, because if we make a lot of noise, all the fish will run away.”
Victoria, age 2, nodded her head in solemn agreement.  “Swim, Mama,” she said.
I stood corrected: the fish would swim away.
The man on the jetty looked around apprehensively as we came.  We quietly seated ourselves, and Victoria pulled little cups, saucers, bowls, and silverware out of the bag Dorcas, 17, had brought for her.  She arranged them all neatly, then began feeding her dolly.  Caleb and Lydia each picked up a fishing pole, cast a line out into the lake, and stood calmly.
The man looked at Caleb’s line, which was too slack. “Do you want me to help you?” he asked.
Caleb, age 6, always a friendly sort, smiled.  “Okay,” he responded.
The man showed him how to reel it in just a little bit more.  “There you go,” he said.
Caleb grinned.
A few minutes later, the man turned to me.  “You homeschool, don’t you?” he inquired.
“No,” I responded, a little surprised, “but our children attend a church school.”
“I thought so,” he said.  He smiled.  “Most kids would be tearing around this deck, frightening all the fish to the other end of the lake!”
He turned to Lydia.  “How would you like a minnow on that line?”
Larry and the children were using worms that another man had given them when he left, and they weren’t having any better success than the previous fisherman.
Lydia, age 8, tipped her head consideringly.  She looked at me and raised an eyebrow.  I smiled at her. 
“Okay,” she told the man.
She reeled her line in, and he showed her how to hook the minnow on.  She tossed the line back out, and before she knew it, she was pulling in a bluegill.  It wasn’t big enough to keep, but it was a fish, just the same.  Within the next half an hour, she’d pulled in three more.  The man put minnows on all our lines.  Teddy, 16, caught a little catfish.  Then, saying it was time for him to go, the man gave us his entire bucket of minnows, wished us a good time fishing, and departed.
“He liked us because I didn’t stomp,” Caleb informed us with much sincerity.
++++++++++++
Here’s a photo of Caleb and Victoria fishing on that same fishing dock in May of 2008.
*         *         *
Here’s one more story I found during my search, just for good measure, this one from December, 1999:
Since there was nobody to babysit the littles, I had to take them to band and orchestra practice with me.  Would you like to know what the highlight of the evening was, for those same littles?
Well, there they sat, Hester, Lydia, Caleb, and Victoria, in a pew side by side, for two whole hours, playing with books and dolls and matchbox cars while I played the piano, being quiet and orderly the entire time.... and Victoria had to go to the rest room approximately 32 gazillion times, give or take a few.... with Hester and Lydia taking turns taking her there…. and the highlight was....
…the Highlight was…
…it was…
…just this:
Victoria dropped her doll in the commode.
Luckily, as Victoria assured me, “It was okay, though, because it (meaning, the commode) was already really cleaned, because Lydia had already really kaflushed it.”
Even after Lydia came back into the sanctuary with Victoria, she kept getting all tickled over the sequence of events, and winding up all hunched over in the pew, one hand clamped over her mouth, shoulders shaking.
Otherwise, things went swimmingly.
After we got home, Dorcas ran that doll under the hot water faucet for a while, just in case. And Victoria, looking on in a bit of dismay, commented in her low-pitched voice, “Oh, mercy.  Now she’s REALLY drownded.”

*         *         *
Last night after church, we took Hannah the last of the jeans, and then stopped at Walkers’ shop to pick up Larry’s road bike so he could go riding. 
He donned riding garb, headed off, and I put a tray of jumbo shrimp into the oven.  Larry was pleased to find fresh-baked shrimp waiting for him when he returned.  We dipped them in some scrumptious, homemade, sweet ’n’ sour salsa the friend he took to Iowa gave us.  Mmmm, mmm.  But wheweeeEEEEEE, is it hot stuff!!!  I consoled my mouth with cold applesauce.
Today I’ve made serious inroads on whittling down the places where lajack is on file, and editing my profiles to have only the gmail address, with a yahoo address as a backup.
Once we get these issues resolved, the lajack addy will go bye-bye. 
I’ve paid the bills, and changed the email address in those profiles.  I do all our finances online, so there are a lot of accounts to change.
But right now... it’s bedtime!  Tomorrow, it’s back to the little office.


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



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