Here’s
Tabby, looking a lot like he fell asleep in mid-stretch. Excusable,
when you’re 19 ½ years old, which is equivalent to over 92 human years. Hannah once said his fur looks like unraveled yarn. hee hee
His fur is soft and silky. He never used to get mats, but as he’s
gotten older, he does get a few now and then. I wait until they’re not
too close to his skin, and then clip them off.
Last
week, a friend was out of electricity for several hours. She pulled out her treadle and sewed
away.
My treadle sewing machines would work – the lady who gave me one of
them showed me it worked. The other one would work if it had a
belt. But I’ve never tried to use either of them.
On those rare
occasions when our electricity goes off, I sometimes grab my camera and hunt
down something to take pictures of. I can charge batteries in the Jeep. If it’s bright enough, I cut fabric. The battery on my laptop is usually at full
charge, so I could write in my journal, edit photos, design a quilt in EQ7...
and if Verizon is up, I can still be online, too.
I should
learn to use the treadle. I’m looking forward to having those treadles in
my new sewing room on display. If they’re
right there in my sewing room, I’ll be more likely to give them a try. On the other hand... Larry has a generator...
😉
By
last Monday night, Tabby was getting a little better. He smelled our clam chowder, and came to
stand up against Larry’s leg and pat his kneecap. Larry, of course, gave him tidbits and then
let him lick out the bowl when he was done.
On
one of the online quilting groups, we were discussing our ancestry. I send a post each Monday night called ‘The Winding
Thread’, and anyone can join in the discussion.
Last Monday I asked, “Where are your ancestors from, where did they originally settle if they
came to the States, and how long ago? Did any of your family travel west
via covered wagons? How many of our members live across the Pond (whether
East Pond or West Pond), I wonder?”
I’ve been fascinated with History and Social Studies
since I was in early Elementary School. I used to wish I had lived in the
middle 1800s, when life was fun and exciting. I eventually got a little
wiser and realized I should be thankful I hadn’t lived then, but live in
much safer times, with many conveniences the pioneers would never have dreamed
of.
My ancestors are
Scotch, Irish, English, and German – and when one of my uncles did a thorough
genealogy, he discovered that his 12th-great-grandmother (making her
my 13th-great-grandmother) was Pocahontas. She married John
Rolfe, my 13th-great-grandfather, April 5, 1614. Their only
child, Thomas Rolfe, my 12th-great-grandfather, was a plantation
owner with his wife Jane Poythress in Virginia in the mid-1600s. (There
is another Thomas Rolfe who married an Elizabeth Washington and lived in London
during that same time frame – some mistakenly claim descent from Pocahontas
through him.)
My uncle carefully
listed all the family names, places where they lived and died, all the way to
the present generation. We have numerous copies of handwritten censuses –
though some data from the very late 1800s is missing because of a fire in the basement of the Commerce Building
in Washington, D.C. in 1921. I said all that to say that I guess we
really are descendants of Pocahontas; it’s not a mistaken claim, heh.
The (dominating)
nationality that my father’s family has always been the proudest of is
Irish.
Larry’s
great-great-grandmother on his father’s side was a Sioux who married a French
Canadian. There’s English on that side of the family, too... don’t
remember what else. His mother’s
ancestors came from Sweden, England, Germany...
A group of my
ancestors came west from Virginia, Indiana, and Illinois in the early 1800s,
traveling in wagon trains. Some of them tried to winter east of Omaha,
but they were unaccustomed to and unprepared for the severe blizzards and cold
of the Plains. Many died. There is a very old cemetery near the
Missouri River, Winter Quarters Pioneer Cemetery, where some are buried. The
survivors continued on west in the spring, on their way to Utah.
It snowed Tuesday morning; but
it didn’t stick. By noon it was 59°,
bright and pretty. The birds were singing like anything. It’s so
funny to listen to a close combination of a robin warbling, with an oriole
throwing in a few melodious phrases now and then, whilst a grackle grackles his
head off in inharmonious exuberance, and a turtledove coos away. Above
all that, the finches twitter and twee. So we’ve got a couple of
sopranos, a nice soft alto, several high tenors, and J. D. Sumner at his best,
a-shoutin’ out the bass.
A quilting friend wrote that afternoon, “My grandmother
used to tell a story of a relative who was an outlaw and went down with guns
a-blazing!”
Funny. Well, funny about the grandmother telling
the story... I suppose the incident itself wasn’t too so very awfully
funny!
We’ve been told (though nobody is positive it’s true)
that my father’s ancestors changed the spelling of their name back in the late
1700s because someone had a Big Bad Fight over a Cajun queen in New Orleans
----- oops, sorry, that was Jimmy Dean’s Big, Bad John. Well,
there was a fight, anyway, and our great-great-great-somebody-or-other won
(which means the other guy lost, permanently) .......... and
great-great-great-whozit fled from Kokomo, Indiana, to southern Illinois, and
changed the spelling of his name – though not the pronunciation. Those
Irish Swineys/Sweenys/Sweeneys/ McSweenys/etc. were proud of the name, tempers
and fights included!
Many years ago, an ex-wife of one of my uncles announced
that she was dusting herself off from those “Cussin’, fightin’ Swineys!” ---
and my brother, always (and still) quick of wit, remarked, “Well, that’s
rude! We don’t cuss!”
(Think about it.)
Another lady wrote to say, “My mum’s family was from
Yorkshire and there is a castle there that is connected to her ancestors.
She and my dad finally had an opportunity to go and visit it once and she
took numerous photos. This was back before the time of digital cameras
and phones and such. When she got back to Canada, she discovered that the
camera had malfunctioned and she had no pictures at all. Fortunately, they were able to get in touch
with someone over in Yorkshire who volunteered to get some more shots for her
and send them to her.”
That can happen with digital cameras, too, if you’re so
wrapped up in the moment that you don’t bother to take a peek at your screen (I
like to use the viewfinder when shooting pictures, rather than the screen).
We were in Yellowstone National Park in 2012, and we went
to see Old Faithful Geyser. It wasn’t expected to erupt for an hour or
more, so we went into the beautiful old Inn and wandered around all over the
place. I, wanting natural lighting in that huge and rather dark log
building, adjusted my shutter slower and opened up the aperture in order to
draw in more light. I checked the screen, got everything set just right,
and took many good shots.
Then we went outside to watch Old Faithful.
You know exactly what happened, don’t you?
Yep, I forgot to reset my camera. And it was a very
bright day. I took shot after shot of the geyser blowing high... people
all around on the boardwalks... rainbows in the mist... ravens circling on the
thermal spirals -------------- and every last shot was a total whiteout.
Aaarrrrggggghhhhh!
Fortunately, we had more days at the Park, and a day or
two later we stopped again at about the same time of day. I did my best
to re-create all the original shots, plus a whole lot more besides, to make
myself feel better. This time, they all turned out fine.
Done larnt me a thang or two, that day! I haven’t
been so feebleminded about camera settings since. (It’ll probably happen
again tomorrow, since I said that.)
We took the older children there in 1993, a couple of
months before Caleb was born.
Hester was four years old. We were sitting on a bench waiting for Old
Faithful to erupt, hundreds of people all around. Everyone was chattering away—and then, with a
rumble, a tall, thin stream of water shot out.
Silence, while everyone stared expectantly at the geyser.
And then, into this quietness, came Hester’s high, piping
voice: “It’s about to sprout!!!”
It seemed like the entire crowd burst out laughing.
By midafternoon Tuesday, one load of
clothes was put away... another was hanging on the line... and a third was in
the washing machine. There were two more loads to go. The
houseplants were watered... Tabby had been coaxed (and re-coaxed) into
eating... the bathroom was scrubbed... bills paid... groceries and necessities
ordered online...
I called my brother
for our usual afternoon chat. He’s been
busy. He finally gave up trying to save
the cherry tree that the wind blew down last year. He’d pulled it up and
staked it, and it seemed to recover. It flowered this spring... put out
leaves – and then a windstorm blew it partway down again. He restaked
it. It seemed all right. But yet another bad windstorm blew it down
the opposite direction. When he tried pulling it back up, he could
tell the roots had been snapped off, so he gave up the effort and sawed it into
logs. They’ll be dry enough to burn by wintertime, and cherrywood burns
long and hot.
It’s no fun living
by troublesome neighbors. I’ve probably said this before... but I’m happy
to repeat it, and I’m happy to say that the neighbors who threw such fits every
time Larry tried to work on lawn, house, garage, or car have moved, and been
replaced by friendly, normal souls. Normal is nice!
We live out in the
country... our houses are some distance apart... and even in town, ‘quiet
time’ doesn’t start until 10:00 p.m. Larry works 65+ hours a week. When he comes home, he tries to get a little
done around the place while the sun is still shining. It’s disconcerting
to suddenly find the neighbor lady(?) directly in your line of travel (whether
via lawn tractor, four-wheeler with snowplow, or scissor lift), shrieking like
a banshee to “TURN THAT THING OFF!!!! TURN THAT THING OFF!!!!”
We didn’t complain
about their various noise and racket – including heavy metal in their
open garage, loud enough to vibrate the pictures on our walls.
Sometimes they acted
fine – other times, ... whew. The woman would scream at Larry when I wasn’t
around, but finally one day I was hanging clothes on the line and heard
her. It was early evening, and he was rototilling the front yard in
anticipation of planting new grass after we’d removed all the Austrian pines
that the pine sawyer beetles had destroyed.
I rushed around the
corner of the fence and there she was, about 10 feet away, mouth open wide,
screaming ’til the veins showed on her temples and the tendons stood out on her
neck. I said (loudly, so she might stand a chance of hearing me over her
own cacophony), “AW, CUT IT OUT!”
She nearly jumped
out of her hide.
I added, “You’re
really awful.”
She pointed at
Larry, who was on the far side of the lawn by now, said something jumbled and
incomprehensible, so I repeated myself: “You are awful.”
She took a
menacingly step toward me. So I grinned and took a step toward her,
and put one hand on my hip. (I’m Irish, remember?)
She was bigger than
me by, oh, maybe 25%. But for some
reason, this seemed to frighten her. She turned and headed somewhat
rapidly back toward her open garage, listing slightly to the left – and nearly
ran into the back of her own SUV.
“You’re filthy,
filthy people!” she screeched back over her shoulder as she went.
I considered
retorting, “Oh, no, ma’am; we take baths every day!” but she was going, so I let her go.
Now, I’m pretty
naïve about some things, and specific possibilities don’t occur to me until the
evidence nearly smacks me in the face. I went in the house and looked up ‘recreational
drugs’ (hope nobody finds that laptop search and uses it for evidence against
me) (yes, I know how to delete search histories; y’all don’t need to write and
explain it to me) – and I discovered that some drugs do indeed make the sense
of hearing ultra-sensitive. I looked at all the symptoms and thought, Well,
that fits.
Whatever the case,
I’m certainly glad we don’t have to contend with it anymore. Larry talked
with the new neighbor man, told him what he still needs to do on garage and
house, and the man was friendly and encouraging. This gives Larry
incentive – and he’s been getting some long overdue work done on our
property. Now, if he’d just finish my sewing room, and quit
starting other things before he finishes the previous
project! 😏 Sewing rooms are important!
Here’s
another photo from last week’s wedding reception. I told Josiah that the canopy over the gift
table was going to do double duty as a tent, and the bride and groom were going
to stay in it on their honeymoon.
He always starts grinning when I tell him a bit of
nonsense... but looks at me long and hard... then finally says, “Really,
Grandma?”
I laugh and tell him I’m teasing, and he says with a nod,
“That’s what I thought.”
Wednesday, I finished some housework, put
away a load of clothes, and then headed to my sewing room to work on the
coffeepot cozy. A little after noon, I
was reading the news.
Here,
look at these two paragraphs from a story about a plane crash in Washington
state:
“On its way down, the two-passenger plane clipped
powerlines and hit a street light, which raptured a fuel cell. Despite the ensuring fire, no one was
seriously injured and the pilot and his passenger walked away from the crash,
investigators said.”
And here’s a comment from a reader: “Perhaps the fuel cell was very evangelical,
and it ensured that this would indeed instigate a fire?”
Do news agencies even hire
editors anymore??
A friend’s husband had to make a trip to Australia last
week. He got to the airport... handed
over ticket and passport... and the agent at the desk informed him that there
was no record of him ever coming back from his last trip to Australia
in 2003.
So then... the
person standing there in front of the airport personnel was a figment of their
imaginations, right? (Or, as one of our boys said when he was little, a ‘fig
Newton’ of his imagination.) (They
eventually got the passport record resolved.)
Wow, that flight
from Los Angeles to Melbourne is almost 16 hours nonstop. That made me curious... so I looked up some
information on travel to Australia:
It takes 29-34 days
to go by ship ------- oh, here we go, Crystal Cruises will get you there in 19
days.
Or you can take the
Grand Voyage by Seabourn: 76 days. That’ll take you from Los
Angeles to Australia and all the way back to Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Here’s what it says on www.traveltips.usatoday.com:
This
epic, 76-day voyage presented by Seabourn takes you from Los Angeles, across the Pacific to
French Polynesia and the Cook Islands, around New Zealand and Australia, then
back to California via New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Fiji, American Samoa, Kiribati
and the Hawaiian Islands. From Los
Angeles, the ship continues southward to Mexico, Costa Rica and Panama. It traverses the Panama Canal, visits Colombia
and crosses the Caribbean to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where the long journey
ends. Four Australian cities – Burnie on
the coast of Tasmania, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane – are featured on the
itinerary among more than 30 ports of call. Some notable destinations include the lush,
volcanic island of Nuku Hiva, one of the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia;
Rarotonga in the Cook Islands with its pristine lagoons and picture-perfect
beaches; remote and tiny Fanning Island, part of the island nation of Kiribati;
and Puerto Caldera, a port surrounded by dense rain forest in Costa Rica.
Ooookay. I won’t be doing that any time soon.
This crazy-quilting
was taking quite a lot of time – in part, because I didn’t sew pieces onto the
shaped foundation sections before
sewing the sort-of hourglass-shaped sections together. It would’ve been
easier, had I done that – but I wanted a Grandmother’s Fan and half a Lemoyne
Star to cover more than one section.
((...pondering...)) Guess I could’ve just put them on top of everything, after sewing
already-crazy-quilted sections together.
The thickness wouldn’t have mattered – other than the fact that it
would’ve been harder to pull ribbon embroidery through all those layers.
I seem to have a
penchant for painting myself into corners, with my Big Ideas! Some of the
pieces are going to be origami forms by necessity, because of the shape of the
coffeepot.
It looked a little
sloppy to me. So, once it was all together, I started applying embroidery
floss, silk ribbon embroidery, and beading.
I’ll keep at it until anything sloppy is all covered up. (If the
embroidery and beads look sloppy, I’m sunk.)
I found a pretty stitch
on my machine:
One of these days,
I’ll use that stitch with a variegated pastel embroidery thread. Wouldn’t that be pretty? More photos here.
Larry came rushing
in from work that evening, having barely enough time to take a bath and get
ready for church. But we skinned in with
just a couple of minutes to spare.
Thursday, I filled
the bird feeders... discovered I was out of suet for the suet feeder... and hunted
down Tabby to feed him his soft food.
Last Sunday, I was afraid he wouldn’t live much longer; but he’s rallied,
despite being so little and frail. Many
times a day, I coax him to eat a few more bites of food. He purrs, and
tries to oblige me.
Compare him to
Tiger – I think Tabby probably weighs only about 5-6 pounds, while Tiger is
close to 20 pounds.
Teensy is about
13-14 pounds – a good weight for his length and height. We thought he was big, until Tiger came along! Tiger is obese. I’d try
to limit his food... but I feel I need to leave dry food out for Teensy and
Tabby. I buy Iams for older cats, a special blend that is supposed to
give them all their nutrients while not contributing to weight gain. It
consists of small pieces, so that Tabby at least gets some benefit from
it, even though, because he’s lacking a number of teeth, he swallows it
whole. I give him soft food often, so it’s okay that the Iams is for
weight control. And Teensy doesn’t get fat on it.
But Tiger was too
fat when someone dumped him over a year ago, and he has stayed too
fat. I thought at first that he was eating somewhere else, in addition to
here at our house; but if he was, he isn’t anymore. Since I’m not willing
to be even more of a slave to the cats than I already am, measuring out and
keeping track of each cat’s intake, I guess he’ll stay too fat, unless
the other cats die before him!
Why would people
overfeed a cat... and then dump him? They’d obviously been mean to him,
too. He was limping at first, and was scared to death we were going to
kick him. Poor old thing. He’s slightly gray around the muzzle; I’d
guess him to be about 10 years old, perhaps. He’s a gentle kitty, big as he is. But
when he decides to get all lovey-dovey around our ankles (usually when we’re
trying to get ready for church and don’t want orange-furred ankles), he
sure can slow us down and trip us up!
Tabby was dumped,
too, back when we lived in town. He came to us when he was just a year
old or so, according to the vet. Maybe they
say that about all cats of unknown age, so people will keep them? He was
very small, and his little ribs were squared off instead of curved nicely,
because of malnutrition and malnourishment. His front teeth had been
kicked out – at least they were gone, and he was frightened out of his
wits of men’s boots, never mind whether there were feet in them or
not. Larry was so kind to him, so careful with him, as were our boys,
that he soon got over that, and took to running figure eights around our
ankles and between our feet in his quest for love and attention, cutting us off
at the pass, and in general endangering both himself and us – and the habit
persists to this day. We yelp and holler and try not to murder him (or
kill ourselves), and he goes on purring and trotting (and stopping) directly in
front of us.
I fed him kitten
chow for a good 6-8 months so as to give him more nutrients, and when we had
him back at the veterinarian’s office in, oh, maybe a year or so, the doctor
was quite surprised to find that his little ribs had come out of their
malformation, and were curved as they should be. He had expected the
damage to be permanent.
Yes, he’s tiny, and
now rather frail; but when we pick him up, we can tell he’s been eating, because
his little tummy is plump.
Uh, did someone ask
about my cats? You ought to see me go on
and on (and on) when people ask about my kids and grandkids! 😲
I continued work on
the coffeepot cozy Thursday. This will probably be another of those gifts that
makes the groom stare and frown at it and wonder, What on earth is this?!
When I was young, I loved perching in trees, reading
books, writing letters, and spying on unsuspecting passersby. There was a
big tree that grew a little distance from the walk-out door on my father’s big
garage where he parked his camper and several cars. That tree was supple
and flexible, and it was glorious fun to get way up high in it and set the
branches to swaying. (I never gave a solitary thought to the possibility
of a branch snapping and depositing me unceremoniously back down onto terra
firma.)
I found a low-middle branch that, when put to rocking,
would bend right down almost to the ground outside that door.
So one day, upon hearing my father shutting things down
inside the garage, I got the branch to swaying hard ----- and just at that
precise moment when he opened the walk-out door, I brought that branch down low,
plopped out of the tree, and landed smack-dab in front of him.
Made my brave, fearless Daddy jump out of his hide, I did.
And he said just what he always said, in such circumstances:
“Why, ... Sarah Lynn!”
By bedtime, I had some beading and
ruching done, and was adding more fabric, more lace... more this, more that... until all the rest of the foundation area of the coffeepot cozy
was covered with various bits of fabric, and some of the seams covered with
fancy stitches. That took long enough. It’s tricky, as the
cozy is oddly shaped in order to fit the pot.
Friday morning, as usual, I got up, made the bed, took a
bath, washed my hair, made some coffee, headed back to the bathroom to blow-dry
and curl my hair, and then ----------
Aarrgghh, there was a wasp in the bathroom!
I hate wasps worse than I hate snakes. Snakes don’t fly and divebomb my head!
“Bring flyswatters! Bring bazookas! Bring
grenades! Bring surface-to-air missiles!” I wrote Larry.
He laughed. He laughed!
I turned off the bathroom lights and opened the window, then
swung madly at the wasp with a flyswatter (he was too high above my head for me
to make contact). He decided it was
safer outside and made his exit, looking back at me over his shoulder with a
threatening look. I’ll get you later, little girl.
I took a final swing at him, snarling. He kicked in the afterburner, and away he
went.
I curled my hair, ate breakfast, and got back to work on
the coffeepot cozy. I added more fancy
stitches, more beads, and did some ribbon embroidery. I cut the slit for the spout, sewed
the last curved seam together, and then cut the cozy right in half where the
handle will be. There will be loops and buttons to hold it together.
That last cut was scary, as there would be no easy recovering if I got it
wrong. And there were already a lot of hours in that thing.
Tape measure... check.
Pins... check... Scissors... check. Hair up on end...
check. Reactors Online. Sensors
Online. Weapons Online. All Systems Nominal.
And... here...
we... goooooooooooooooooo...
Did I get it in the
right place? I measured. I wrapped it around the coffeepot.
Yes!!! It was in
the right place! It was perfect. Now for the
ribbon embroidery. First, though, I
cleared off my worktable and put away all the fabric and laces I’d finished
using.
I took a little break to order some things from Wal-Mart, including a
couple of cans of Raid, in case the wasp’s brothers, cousins, and friends come
visiting.
I’d been getting shipments from Wal-Mart for the past three days. That morning, FedEx delivered a tall double
shepherd’s hook, and now the beautiful wind chimes that Lura Kay gave me are hanging
on one hook. I have a wind spinner that she gave me to hang on the other
side, but I need a chain or wire for it. Larry will doubtless come up
with something.
Scroll down to the
bottom of this post and you’ll see the chimes, with a description of their
design and designer, and a little video clip of them playing: Wind Chimes
I had to get a new
shepherd’s hook, because the one that used to be out there belonged to Victoria. She has it in her yard now, with baskets of
flowers hanging from it.
That afternoon the
UPS man brought four big boxes down the drive and then along the walk to the
porch on a hand trolley. He began setting them on the porch. I
pulled a couple into the house... then, seeing that the bottom box was heavy
enough that even he, a strong young man, struggled with it, I asked if he would
please set it inside for me.
He hesitated.
I tried to look as charming and helpless as possible.
“We aren’t supposed
to go into people’s houses,” he told me.
I held the door
open and grinned at him. “How about if you just sliiiiide it right in
there, without setting foot inside, and I’ll never tell?”
He smiled.
(Did you ever notice it’s really hard to keep from smiling at people when they’re
beaming at you?)
“I’d really
appreciate it!” I added, for good measure.
And so he did it.
I thanked him, he wished me a good day, and I happily went to opening boxes and
putting things away.
I once went
shopping in Omaha with a friend when we were teenagers. Everywhere we
went, people were friendly to me, and ignored her. Finally she was all
put out, miffed, and in a snit over it.
“You just wait!”
she told me peevishly. “Someday you’ll be old and not so cute, and
everyone will ignore you, too!”
I laughed at
her. She was tall and slim, nicely dressed, and had long, wavy blond hair
and blue eyes.
“That’s not it at
all!” I said. “You just don’t get it, that it makes all the difference in
the world how you treat people! If you are friendly and nice to others,
they will be friendly and nice to you.”
She was not friendly
to people she didn’t know – and sometimes not even to those she did
know.
Well, now I’m old
and not so cute, and have Blepharospasm troubling my eyes. But I still
try to be friendly and nice --- and guess what? People are even nicer to
me now than they were when I was a teenager. Even teenagers are
polite, and often hold doors for me. How ’bout that. (They do call me ‘ma’am’ now,
though.) 😉
Speaking of
shopping in Omaha... I’ve loved Orange
Juliuses ever since my friends and I used to get them at West Roads Mall back
in the late 70s, when we were in our teens. Well, now you can make them
yourselves: How to Make an Orange Julius
I went back to the
coffeepot cozy. You’ll recall I was making
it for my great-nephew and his bride-to-be, who are getting married June 11th?
But... May 17th is my sister Lura Kay’s
76th birthday. She is 20 years older than me.
Facts:
1.
I don’t have anything for her birthday yet.
2.
I like to give her things I’ve made.
3.
The more I get done on this coffeepot cozy, the better I like it.
4.
My great-nephew’s wedding (he’s my sister’s grandson) is not for another
month.
5.
My sister likes coffeepots and teapots.
6.
My sister likes handmade pretties.
7.
I have the pattern templates I made for this coffeepot; I can reuse them.
8.
I know where to buy another coffeepot just like this one.
I asked all the
ladies on my favorite quilting groups who they
would give the cozy to. It was
unanimous: they would give it to their
sister.
Sooo... the sister
it is!
I should mention
that the mother of the bride-to-be is the one who made that adorable Noah’s Ark
quilt that I did the quilting on just before Christmas. So Josie would appreciate
the coffeepot cozy. So I’ll make
another, less elaborate, one for Josie and Matthew, my great-nephew.
Here’s a
funny: One evening when Matthew and Josie were first dating, and everyone
knew an engagement was in the not-too-distant future, the family was in Josie’s
living room visiting and having a good time. Matthew’s sister Danica, who’s a little
younger than Victoria, found Josie’s little sister Julianna in the kitchen all
by herself, looking like the world had ended.
“Oh, what’s the
matter??” asked Danica, all concerned.
Julianna, who was
about 7 or 8, shook her head, scowled, and said in quite a disapproving tone, “Josie
is waaay too young for all this.” 😆
After working on
the cozy until evening, I took a break to drink some V8 cocktail juice and play
the piano. Larry was finally off work, AND! – he was bringing home
Mexican food from Amigos! 😋
It was a beautiful evening, so we ate our supper on the
back deck. No wind, no mosquitoes... how often does that ever
happen, both at the same time, in Nebraska?!
It got a little chilly after the sun went down, so I made a big pot of Folgers
Hazelnut coffee.
I think what Larry got us were Southwest
Chicken Salad Wraps. Whatever they were,
they were scrumptious. It was more than
enough ------ but Larry must’ve been starved, because he also got each of us a large carton of The Works Nachos.
Now, The Works
Nachos have always been one of my favorite things to get from Amigos. Imagine my disappointment (discounting the
problem of already being full) when I took a bite and discovered --- they’d changed the corn chips! The kind they used to have were crunchy and
yummy, a lot like the Tostitos brand.
These were soggy and bitter, like the cheap store brand we once got by
accident, giving the whole meal a bad flavor.
Bleah!
I didn’t want them
anyway; I was already full. I saved them
for the next day.
Is there anybody
out there who thinks yucky nachos improve on Day Two? No?
Didn’t think so. And you’d be
right. So the next day I ate a few bites
and gave the rest to Larry.
I’m generous like that.
Larry went for a
22-mile bike ride Friday night... came home... stood his road bike up next to
his motorcycle, and backed up to take a picture of them together. Wanting
an artistic shot, he backed up a little more to get into the exact right
position. A little more... a little
more...
---- and then he
tripped over some of his own Important Stuff and Things in those riding shoes
with the odd, uh, ... things underneath that clip onto his pedals, and
down he went onto his karumpasetter (as Hester called it, when she was about
three years old).
He recovered
without harm, fortunately. He uses Map My Ride on his smartphone to
record his bike rides. He averaged 16.8 mph – but coming down a couple of
hills, he got up to 32 mph, and maintained that speed for several
minutes. He’s doing good!
Saturday morning, I
heard a baby bird twittering at the bird feeder, and rushed for my camera and
big lens. It was a baby house finch,
looking bedraggled and working hard to pry open a sunflower seed. The Papa finch is on the other side of the
feeder.
There were various
other birds flitting about, including the English sparrow in the first part of
this letter.
After shooting some
pictures, I returned to the sewing room and began adding silk ribbon flowers to
the cozy.
And then the ladies
on the quilting group began sharing stories of their kids and all their various
calamities. I offered a few of my own tales
to the mix:
When Victoria was
not quite one year old, I thought as I tucked her into bed one night, We
need to lower the mattress in her crib.
We should’ve done
it right then.
The next morning
when I opened her door, she was standing at the crib rail. She grinned when she saw me, held out her
arms --- and tumbled right out of the crib onto the floor, head first.
Her head bent back so far, it scared me half to death, thinking she’d doubtless
broken her neck. But she popped up, looking dazed, and said cheerily, “Oops!”
It took my heart some
time to get back in rhythm.
And then there was
Hester, who at age three learned to do a somersault while her little sister
Lydia, age one, was taking a nap. Then
Lydia awoke, and Hester, all excited to show off her new skill, exclaimed, “Watch,
Liddle-luh (we called Lydia “Little Liddle-luh for a while, just because that’s
how Hester said it), I can do a thunder-salt!”
And with that, she
pitched herself headfirst at the floor, without bothering to put her hands down
onto the floor first. It was a thundersalt, just like she’d said!
Once again, my
heart stopped, and I feared for her neck. I sat Lydia down as fast as I
could and rushed toward Hester.
But she sat up,
looking stunned, and then informed her little sister, “That wasn’t quite right.”
“One more story,
and I’ll quit,” I told the quilting ladies.
“Maybe.”
One time the older
six children were outside making snow angels. Lydia, age 2, was peering
out the window. She turned and looked at me, eyebrows up, a quizzical
expression on her face.
“What they doin’?”
she asked.
“They’re making
snow angels,” I told her. “Look at the snow after they get up… doesn’t it
look like an angel?”
She stared
doubtfully. They sometimes floundered so as they were getting up, one
couldn’t really tell much of anything about the print left behind; it looked
sort of like a small buffalo had wallowed there.
After a few minutes
of watching, Lydia giggled and went dashing off down the hallway. Then, suddenly and entirely without warning,
she threw herself over backwards with a loud ka-THUMP, flapped
and kicked vigorously, and got back up again, staggering a bit from her
exertions.
“Now I’m an angel!”
she proclaimed.
“Remind me to tell
you about Lydia and the dump truck and the road grader one of these days,” I
ended my email.
A few hours later, one lady wrote, “Oh, do tell us right
now!”
So I ran a search and found
the story in an old journal:
Once upon a
time when Lydia was three years old, she was playing with the boys’ big Tonka
trucks and equipment. Here she came, pell-mell down the hall, pushing the
dump truck, hands clasping both sides of the front of the box, running
lickety-split. Her head was down, and she wasn’t looking where she was
going—and the huge Tonka road grader was dead ahead.
I yelled, “LYDIA!!!
STOP!!!” — but the clackety-clacking of the dump truck tires on
the floor were making way too much noise for her to ever hear me.
CRRRRRRRRASSSSSHHHH!!!!!
She smashed
into the road grader, which held its ground. The dump truck tipped
forward, and Lydia flew head over heels over both truck and grader and landed
flat on her back on the other side.
Before I
could get to her and discover whether or not she was mortally wounded, she
scrambled rapidly to her feet, leaned down, and peered into the cab of the
truck.
“Just what I
thought,” she muttered in disgust, shaking her head, “It was a lady driver.”
I returned to the
ribbon embroidery. And then several
people, having seen pictures I’d posted, asked me, “Where do I get beads?”
Amazon has beads by the gazillions. But late one night I was in a pinch, and the
only place open in this burg was Wal-Mart. I called customer service, inquired
into whether they had beads for beadwork, and was told they did.
So off I went to Wal-Mart, snap-sizzle. I rushed in, trotted back to where I thought
the beads might be located, and glanced around fruitlessly. I found a man working in housewares and asked
him where the beads were, describing them, even showing him with thumb and
index finger how tiny the things are.
The man smiled politely (women are dumb, when it comes to
estimating sizes, don’t you know), pointed, gave me precise directions. I
followed them – and wound up in the toy department, looking at fat Fisher Price
snap-together plastic beads for babies.
I looked for myself. Uh, that is, I looked on my
own. (I already knew where I was.)
English, tsk.
Lo and behold, in the crafting/sewing department, squarely
between wedding supplies and scrapbooking and directly across from baby yarn,
were ----------- high-quality glass beads! Furthermore, they had all sizes of metallic
beads, including tube beads, which were exactly what I needed.
I’d have never guessed I could’ve gotten those things at
Wal-Mart. The price was comparable to pricing of beads at Hobby Lobby or
the stores on Amazon.
That afternoon, Victoria
came. You will recall she didn’t want anything else that she’d left behind,
won’t you? Won’t you??
Well, guess what.
You guessed, didn’t
you? Didn’t
you?!
Yep, she came to
get her pink exercise mat.
I gave that thing
to the Goodwill looong ago, when she said she had everything out of the
downstairs bathroom that she wanted. She was sad; she’d paid over $30 for
it. Aarrgghh. I really, really don’t want to give away things the
kids want! The kids are careful with their money ... they don’t just run
out and replace things, if they lose them. At least I’d found a little
battery-run dermabrasion thingamajig that she was glad to have back.
After she petted
all three cats and departed, I found a purple mat for her on eBay. It was
only $7.58, and shipping was free. It comes from Malaysia, so it’ll take
a couple of weeks to get here. But at least it wasn’t $30.
Victoria took her
nifty little blender, too, that she used to make smoothies. She likes
vegetable smoothies, in particular. Thankfully, I knew better than to
give that away.
I set to work trying to make a fold-and-twist ribbon
rose, watching a tutorial on youtube. The
lady doing it has skilled fingers, and her little rose center is beautiful.
In my clumsy fingers, the narrow, slippery, fine silk ribbon
slips and slides as I wad, tangle, wad, tangle, and wad some more. Before
long, I couldn’t even tell which side was supposed to be the top of my
little wadded mess.
Here’s the tutorial
on youtube, in case anyone is interested:
These are the roses I wound up with:
Sunday afternoon when we got home from church, Larry made
his scrumptious pancakes, and we had eggs, sunny-side-up, with them. I put blueberry syrup on my pancake.
It was 86°, and we had the air conditioner and the
ceiling fan on.
Late last night, we heard a strange noise – sort of like a turkey getting stepped on at the same time one of those
vintage child’s soft plastic tooting trains is getting the daylights squeezed
out of it, while in the background an aardvark is getting strangled. Not that I’ve ever heard an aardvark getting
strangled. But I have a good imagination. The first time I heard that noise, not long
after we moved out here, I hadn’t the foggiest notion what it could ever
be. I thought possibly it was a woman
screaming, but when I scurried outside and listened, I could tell it was not a
human. But what? A bird?
A pterodactyl? A four-footed
furry thing? Baby Sasquatch?
I typed a
description of the noise into Google – and almost every single entry suggested
‘fox’. I clicked on an audio clip of a
fox calling – and was immediately listening to the identical sound we were
hearing in the nearby wooded area.
Last night’s fox was
calling/screaming/barking in the woods northeast of our house, across the
lane. What a noise it was! It made Teensy growl. Listen to it
here: Fox Call
My nephew Kelvin,
who has colon cancer, was able to make it to both church services yesterday.
But tomorrow he will get his 4th chemo treatment, and it always
makes him sick and exhausted for several days thereafter. He barely
starts feeling better before it’s time for the next treatment. He gets them every two weeks. After the 6th treatment, they will
run tests to determine if the cancer has shrunk so that they can do surgery.
Time to get back to
the coffeepot cozy! A little more beading to do... maybe some silk ribbon bluebells and
a small daisy... and then I’ll draw a pattern for a partial spout cover, cut
it, sew it together, and attach it to the rest of the cozy. Once that’s
done, I’ll be ready to line it. I’ll put thermal Insul-Bright in it,
along with a layer of cotton batting, to keep the coffee or tea hot.
Now I’m really, really looking forward to giving it to my
sister.
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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