Photos: Trip to Omaha (Again)

I had to go to Omaha today to pick up Hannah's sewing machine and my sewing machine from the Bernina Store; the tech was done servicing them.  Just in time, too; I needed to put some pieces of batting together, and it works much better on the Artista 180 with its 9mm zigzag and adjustable pressure on the presser foot than it does on the 830 Electronic Record with its 6mm zigzag, faithful machine though it is.  Pretty day today.  

First, a trip uptown to the bank...

School bus crossing a bridge over me.  Did anybody other than me ever pretend when you were little that the overhead bridge and the road you were on dissected, and you'd have big, bad, imaginary crashes with the vehicles going over? 

When I got home and took Hannah's machine back to her, Joanna brought a little green praying mantis to show me.  Those things can not only swivel their heads clear around backwards, they can also roll their eyeballs toward the backs of their sockets to get a better look at you!

Journal: Skunks & Opossums & Bats & Mice, Oh My!

I was looking through some big plastic bins a few days ago in search of a ribbon for something or other, and paused to consider the miles and miles of lace I have, left over from the days when I sewed a whole lot of little girls’ dresses.  I have been saving a few pictures of quilts in which lace and ribbon and trims have been incorporated, and one of these days, I’m going to put something like this together.  ß

But... did you ever give old lace the ‘tug test’, and have it turn into confetti right in your hands?  I had a neighbor lady who thought she could pay me to sew her holes together with ancient sewing items from her barn.  Ugh.  The stuff she gave me was either 100 years old, or had been left out in the elements, because the lace I bought in the 80s and 90s is still in perfect condition.  Did I mention, ‘ugh’? 

Here’s Larry, ready to go on a bike ride, shining his light on the neighborhood skunk so I could see it through my viewfinder.  And there’s Tabby, heading over to see what he’s up to.

My father used to sing me a ditty when I was little, to the tune of It Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo’, No Mo’:

Little black and white animal

  Over in the woods;

Oh, me, but that cat’s purty!

Ah stepped right over

  To pick ’er up ----

PEEEEEUUWWW!

  She ain’t mah kind of a kitty!

Our kitties have coexisted all right with skunks, opossums, raccoons...  but they are definitely nervous when they hear foxes, coyotes, bobcats, hawks, eagles, or owls.  Teensy was quite indignant (and embarrassed) one night not too long ago when I laughed at him because he hit the deck while strolling through the living room when he heard an owl hoot outside. 

Recently, a friend told me that the food bank in her town stopped stocking things like dried pinto beans when they caught people tossing them in the dumpster outside the building.  Their excuse?  They don’t know how to cook them.  They only want things in a can, so that all they have to do is heat it up. 

That attitude is what gets a lot of people into their below-par situations in the first place.

I think dried beans in, oh, just any type of food are generally a whole lot better than canned beans.

One time my late sister-in-law brought us a big pot of scrumptious-smelling 15-bean soup.  I positioned it in the center of the table, ladled out dishes for everyone, passed them around.

So there was Hester, age three, pawing through her bowl with her spoon, like the cat with something disagreeable in his dish.

Then, in a plaintive little voice she said, said she, “Mine has more than 15 in it.”

On one of the online quilting groups, we were telling about various calamities, funny or not, that we’d had in sewing or quilting.  This tale is circa 1988 or thereabouts:

My dogs used to camp out at my feet while I sewed.  Ebony, our Black Lab, once chewed through my sewing machine cord.  There I was, sewing a loooong ruffle lickety-split, really going full bore.  It was the middle of the night, and not another creature was stirring, not even a mouse.  Neither, so I thought, was the dog, who, so I thought, was sound asleep under the table.

Wrong.

She was chewing the cord.

And then she chewed through it.

All at once, my sewing machine stopped in mid-seam, the light went off, the dog yelped, sprang straight up, and ka-blanged her head on the underside of the table.

I, who am not jumpy, went directly into the attic without benefit of a ladder.

It was right before Easter, and those little girls had to have their ruffled dresses.  Sooo… I awoke Larry and implored him to come repair my cord.  He clambered groggily out of bed, put on his slippers, went out into the garage to get his electrical box, came back in, and spliced the cord.

I thanked him profusely and went back to sewing. 

He replied, and I quote, “Grum grum grum.”  Yosemite Sam in person.

The dog did not again chew cords.  One of the children’s Bibles, yes.  Cords, no.

Tuesday evening, there was a scurrying, skidding commotion in the music room, and then a lot of high-pitched squeaks.  I went to investigate, and found Teensy playing with a small mouse.  He generally lets them go when I come around, evidently assuming I disapprove of him maiming mice the same way I disapprove of him capturing birds.  I couldn’t get to the rodent before it skedaddled off.  I turned and gave Teensy a reproving stare.  He squinted at me with his best ‘I’m being really good’ expression.

Late that night, I headed downstairs ---- and discovered a bat flip-flapping madly about.  My brain empties of all intelligence when that happens, and I run like a chicken with its head cut off.

After galloping pell-mell back up the stairs, I regathered myself and debated strategies.

Since it wasn’t raining, I decided to head out the back door, turn on the deck light, go down the deck stairs, and open the basement patio door.  Bats, knowing that insects gravitate toward lights, always go right out when I do that.

But!!! – there was not one, but two skunks under the deck, right in front of the patio door, scarfing down sunflower seeds!  The first skunk must’ve had such fun gobbling his way through the dropped seeds, he invited a friend to join him.  One, evidently a scaredy-cat, went scurrying off.  The other obviously thought, Yayy!!!  Now I can have it all!!!! and ate as fast as his little jaws could munch. 

Good thing I’d grabbed the flashlight and peered over the railing before I rushed down the deck stairs, eh?

I advanced to Plan #2:  I awoke Larry.

He groggily headed downstairs, tennis racket in hand, and commenced bat hunting, unsuccessfully.  Perhaps the bat is one we have previously caught and released, and the thing recognized Larry and his racket?  In any case, the furred flyer found himself a nook (or maybe a cranny), hid, and never came back out.

Larry returned to his nap.  I went to my recliner with my laptop.  A little while later, the young mouse Teensy had chased earlier went tearing through the kitchen and hallway.  I leaped up and went tearing after him.  I managed to trap him with the dustpan, but when I tried to scoop him up and hold him down with the whiskbroom, he escaped.  Aarrgghh.

I made sure a trap was set, and went to bed.

The next morning, the mouse was in the trap.  I emptied it outside and reset it.  So far, no other critter has investigated the peanut butter I put on the kablooey.  (The square wire that snaps down when a mouse puts pressure on the kablooey is called the splat.  The wire that holds down the splat is the spadroon, and the tension is effected via a sproing-oing.  The board itself is the suicide deck.)

It was a lovely day here Wednesday – 78°, bright and sunny.  I worked on my customer’s Six Star blue and purple quilt until time for church.  This hummingbird panto is one of the prettiest of all the ones I have. 

Larry didn’t get home from work in time to go to the service that night.  I took Ethan, Lyle, and Jeffrey to church with me, as Teddy was also late, and some of the littler ones had the flu.  On our way home, on the gravel road leading to their house, we saw a little red fox.

After I got back home, I went onto the deck and peered over the railing to see if the skunks were back.

A critter was indeed down there helping himself to the sunflower seeds, but it wasn’t the same one.  This one was a big ol’ ’possum!

Did you know a baby opossum is called a ‘joey’, just like babies of their Australian marsupial cousin, the kangaroo?  A group of opossums is called a ‘passel’.  A passel of possums. 😃  

An opossum can have as many as 20 babies in one litter.  And they each have 50 teeth!  Well, the adults do, anyway.  A male opossum is called a ‘jack’; a female is called a ‘jill’.  That last part, I didn’t know.

An hour later, the opossum had waddled off, and a skunk had ambled back in.  And I had only the basement patio screen door between him at the sunflower seeds, and me at the quilting frame!  Eeek.  Skunks aren’t menacing, so long as nothing startles them.  But who is to say they won’t get startled, at any given moment??!  😲 😜 🤢

I made a few small noises so he would know I was there, but not threatening him, and then slowly pulled the glass door shut.  I left only the big window at the front of the basement open.  A little while later, I heard coyotes howling – first, low-pitched, long howls, then higher-pitched yelps and quavers.  The pups must be old enough that the parents are taking them out and teaching them to hunt (and to yelp and howl and quaver).  I wonder how many pups will learn about skunks the hard way?

Later, an owl was serenading us from a tall maple tree in the front yard.

After stopping with the quilting for the night, I told my quilting group of another sewing catastrophe I had:

Once upon a time, about 31 years ago, I was feverishly sewing Christmas dresses for Hannah and Dorcas, ages 5 and 4, the night before our Christmas program.  The fabric was a red silky stuff with a gold metallic thread running through it.  I sewed black lace on the multitudes of skirt ruffles and over-the-shoulder ruffles, set in a black chiffon yoke on the bodice, attached a black chiffon sash, and put in black chiffon sleeves.  Those dresses were adorable, if I do say so myself.  I took the last stitch, turned off my sewing machine, went to the iron, set the iron down on a sleeve – and the hungry thing ate it.  I mean, it gobbled a large, iron-shaped hole right out of the middle of that sleeve. 

I had neglected to press the Steam button before touching iron to fabric.

Luckily, I had just barely enough chiffon left to cut another sleeve.  I took out the old… put in the new… and finished (again) at 4:00 a.m.  Morning came pretty quickly, that day.

It usually doesn’t take as long to fix a mistake as my imagination tells me it will take.  When we were teenagers, I had a couple of friends who drove me berserk with their penchant for giving up and throwing things in a far, dark corner if the slightest little thing went wrong.  I preferred looking at it like this:  “Now I know how to do it right, and I will do it.”  I have always hated to admit defeat. 

I once sewed a very full, gathered sleeve into a dress, proud of myself because it went in perfectly the first time.

I held it up to admire it.

I had sewn the sleeve into the neckhole.

The child for whom I’d made it had to go to the chiropractor after wearing that dress.

 (That last line was a joke.  You can laugh now.) 

One time Larry’s sister and I were sewing together, making ourselves dresses for school.  We were using the same pattern, one with an inverted V at the high waistline.  Oh!  Here it is – I found it – Vintage Simplicity 5903.

Well, she got the front skirt pieces switched around, and didn’t notice until the thing was all put together and ready to be hemmed.  At that point, she discovered that the hemline went to an upside-down V right in the front, and the side seams did not match up.  Hearing her exclamations of dismay, I stopped what I was doing and went to see what had happened ------ too late.

She’d already grabbed the scissors and hacked off the rest of the skirt to match the shorter area in a none-too-straight line.

Bad solution. 

After that, she couldn’t take the dress apart and redo it, because it would have been much too short.  It was barely long enough as it was.  Plus, it never did hang quite right.

But I had lots of fun over that episode, because from then on, anytime she asked me any sort of sewing question, never mind what it was about, I told her with a careless shrug, “Oh, just hack it off.”  And then we’d both burst out laughing.

When the children were little, sometimes one or another of them would hand me a book and request, “Read it funny, Mama!  Read it funny!”  I would oblige:  I’d switch first letters of words around, and make the entire book a study in spoonerisms.  The faster I read, the harder they’d laugh.  Like this:

One day Licken Chittle was protting along the tath on her may to warket.  An iny taycorn handed on her led.  “Moe high, the fye is skalling!” said Licken Chittle.  “I gust moe and kill the teng.”

By this time, the older children would be yelping with laughter.  When Lydia was a wee thing, 1 ½ or 2, she looked on all this uproar reproachfully. 

“Isn’t it funny?” Hannah once asked her, and she replied in an offended tone, “It used to be a nice story.”

It was always hard enough to keep my composure long enough to plow through a story like that, without looking at Liddo Lydluh’s (as she called herself) funny little face, all fixed in disapproval.  😁

Thursday afternoon, I saw a little ruby-throated hummingbird flitting from hosta blossom to hosta blossom.  That was the very first hummingbird I’ve seen all year.  Maybe if I’d have had the feeder out... but most times, if I don’t see them, and put the feeder out anyway, it just sits there, unused.

I promptly pulled out a pan and the sugar, and whipped up some hummingbird nectar.  After cooling it in the refrigerator, I poured it into the feeder and hung it on the wire on the front porch.

A friend remarked, “You really do have a zoo.  You are very kind to all the critters letting them eat at the buffet like that.”

Well...  I don’t ‘let’ them all, you know.  Some of them just stroll (or fly) right in and do it!  Skunks are not often argued with.  As for the hummingbirds, I wish there were lots more, and I wish they’d stay around all year.

That evening, I finished my customer’s ‘Six Stars’ quilt and loaded the next one, called ‘Making Ends Meet’.  When I’m in my quilting studio (pretty fancy-schmancy terminology for a half-done room, heh), I can hear the washer and dryer directly overhead, know when they are done, and go switch things around or put away a dry load.  When I’m in my sewing room(s), farther back in the basement, I rarely hear them, and regularly forget all about them.

The skunk returned for another late-night snack, and this time I got pictures of him from the patio door, rather than overhead, looking down on him from the deck.  More photos:

Skunk Comes Back

I printed a few more pages of the Lotus pantograph I planned to use, and taped them together.  The last time I used it, it was for a smaller quilt.  When everything was in position and ready to start, I turned off my machine and all the lights, and headed upstairs.

Soon I was sitting in my recliner with the heating pad behind my back and a massaging/ heating collar around my neck (a gift from my brother), doing a bit of computer things (photo editing, emails, etc.).  I could hear thunder rumbling nearby, but AccuWeather didn’t think it would hit us.  AccuWeather is not always AccuRate. 

I sipped a piping hot cup of China Legends white tea, paid a bill or two, and then spent 18:48 minutes watching a youtube video about a TV journalist who quit his job to live on a boat and cruise the canals of the United Kingdom.  Every now and then, it’s fun to see how someone else lives – someone whose lifestyle is far and away different from ours.  I like adventure and traveling... but I don’t get to do it a whole lot.  Youtube to the rescue!  😃

Don’t believe I’ll be heading off to live on a boat anytime soon, though; it seems one must tattoo his or her arms from neck to fingertips and put a bone in his or her nose in order to fit in with the boat livers (snicker).  Ugh.  I think a nice go on the Elkhorn in Larry’s kayak one of these days will suit me just fine.  And it would suit me even finer if we could take it out on that pretty Molas Reservoir in the San Juan mountains south of Silverton again.

Rick Steves’, the well-known American travel writer, author, and host of the PBS travel documentary series, has a number of youtube videos, mostly from Europe, that are informative and interesting, but I always wonder just how inebriated he is at the end of each production.  It seems like he’s having a glass of wine, whiskey, or beer everywhere he goes.  I want him to show us explorations of the European countryside, not the local pubs!

Friday, I worked on my customer’s quilt.  The bat was somewhere back by the under-porch area, squeakity-squeaking away.  I left the patio door wide open most of the day in the hopes that he would notice the fresh air and, later, the evening bugs beginning to chirp and buzz, and head out.

No such luck.  But at least he stayed put most of the day, and didn’t come out to dive at my head. 

Nevertheless, I kept the tennis racket handy – and sure enough, when night fell and the bat doubtless wanted outside to catch insects, he let loose of his moorings and began flying.  Wouldn’t you know it, I’d just closed the patio door.

Aarrgghh.  I feel exactly like the Israelites must’ve felt in Nehemiah’s time, when they were building the wall of Jerusalem while their enemies lurked nearby:  they had tools for building in one hand, and their sword in the other.  

I opened the door so that I could possibly shoo the bat out – and discovered that the skunk was back. 

“What are you doing?” I said in a conversational tone.

It must’ve been the scaredy-cat polecat, because after giving me a doleful stare (“You interrupted my dinner!”), he waddled hurriedly off.

Deciding I’d have enough of all this hullaballoo (my back was protesting, in any case), I turned off my machine and all the lights and came upstairs, making sure to close the door behind me. 

That was the last I saw of (or heard from) the bat.  Either he finally found his way back out again, or he expired for lack of food and water (in which case I’ll soon know it 🤢).

Saturday, I was quilting away, when suddenly a drip landed on my head, splat.  Huh?

An overhead pipe was sweating!  This, because I’d left the tub faucet trickling a little while earlier when Teensy had begged for a drink.  He prefers running water, pôr fąvör.  Well, when I came downstairs, I opened the patio door and the big front window, and it was warm and a bit humid outside – and the pipe was cold.

I dashed upstairs, turned off the faucet, and turned on the air conditioner.  The pipe quit dripping on my head. 

And no, it didn’t drip on the quilt I was quilting.  Some years back, Janice gave me some pieces of foam pipe insulation to put around those pipes directly over my quilting frame.  That has probably saved quilts from getting dripped on more often than I know.  I need to put a piece of that stuff on the small section of bare pipe that is right over my head when I am in one certain spot behind my quilting frame.

I finished quilting the ‘Making Ends Meet’ quilt, trimmed it, and got pictures of it outside just before the sun went down.

Upon seeing my photos, a lady wrote to say that she had never used a panto before, and she worried about staying on the lines. 

“Any tips?” she asked.

It just takes practice.  Work up a good rhythm... and maybe start with a panto that’s somewhat asymmetrical so it won’t be noticed if a loop is more loopy than another.  😉  Diagonal lines are difficult; smaller curves are easier.  Not too small of curves, though.  For my first panto, I simply chose the one I thought was really pretty, and went along with the red, white, and blue fabric I was using.  It had ships wheels with lots of spokes, and detailed anchors.  Aiiiyiiiyiiieee.  My ships wheels looked like they’d been made before anyone invented the wheel.  🙃😬

Sunday morning, Victoria sent a text inviting us for dinner. 

“Okay!” I replied.  “Want me to bring anything?  Frozen yogurt... broccoli...”

“Frozen yogurt!” responded Victoria.

“Any particular flavor?” I wrote back – and then, noticing the time, I thwacked my laptop shut and rushed off to stick feet in shoes and grab Bibles, purses, and Thermos (we like to have hot coffee to drink on the drive home).

Victoria answered, but I didn’t see it:  “Something fruit flavored maybe?”

After church, we stopped at the store for frozen yogurt, then decided to get sherbet instead, since we are spoiled on Schwan’s frozen yogurt, and think anything the store has to offer is bitter or sour, by comparison.  Ice cream gives me a stomachache; frozen yogurt and sherbet rarely does.  Larry chose Wild Strawberry sherbet.

So he guessed right, even though we hadn’t seen Victoria’s text.  😊

She fixed pork roast, potatoes, carrots, and onions for dinner (slow baked together from early morning), and made biscuits like those from KFC. 

A couple of days ago, a lady asked, “Have you finished last year’s crop of juicy peaches that were in such abundance?  Makes my mouth water, just thinking of them.”

Yep, we sure did.  They’re all gone.  And this year’s crop was very meager, as frost did a number on the blossoms.  But there was a small handful that I planned to pick.  I looked at them ... gave them a couple more days to ripen... went out to pick them...

They were gone.  Nary a one was left, not even the ones way up high in the tree.  Almost all the ones that had fallen from the tree were cleaned up slicker’n a whistle, too.  I saw a few bare pits; that was all.

I should’ve picked that small handful, and just let them ripen in the house!  I think I hosted a smörgåsbord for the local raccoons and opossums and skunks, that’s what I think.  Siggghhhh...

Ah, well.  There are Colorado peaches at the store, and they’re really good.  Plus, I don’t have to pick them.  However, they’re not free.  Nevertheless, I shall get some the next time I’m at the store.

Larry got the two Continental Gatorskin tires that he ordered after our nephew Nathan recommended them, upon hearing about Larry’s second flat in as many bike rides.  Sunday night, he put one on the rear of his bike, and headed off on a long bike ride.

Just as I was about to pick up my phone and call him to find out where he was, and if he was okay, he got home.  He’d gone to Genoa and back – 37 miles.  Took him two hours; he averaged 18.5 mph.  He burned up all of the dinner calories in one fell swoop, I do believe.  He saw a couple of deer.

This afternoon, three more quilts arrived from my Washington customer.  I’ll start on them tomorrow.  I went to the post office and mailed the finished three quilts back to her.

This is what I often have to step over, when I’m quilting:

And now Larry is home, and he’s firing up the Traeger grill in order to smoke some chicken.  I’m cooking pierogies, country gravy, and peas.  ((...drooool...))

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

Photos: Teensy at My Feet

Teensy likes to be right at (and under) my feet whilst I'm quilting:

To see the rest of the quilt (and others), go to my quilting blog.  Link in right margin.

Photos: Skunk Comes Back

He's enjoying all the black oil sunflower seed the birds drop.

He's more afraid of me than I am of getting sprayed.  I move slowly... talk softly to let him know I'm there... and he quickly crams his cheeks full of seeds, then waddle-lollops away fast.

Photos: Opossum Gobbling Up Birdseed

Look what's cleaning up spilt birdseed tonight:

Journal: Great American Eclipse!

Last week, a friend sent a link to a ‘new’ article telling the dangers of coffee drinking.  Scariest article yet, telling of insect poison in the stuff, along with the way it does insidious mind-and-mood change... causes heart disease... weight gain...

I decided to do some research on this ... and was surprised to find it at the top of the list on many well-known websites.  BUT! – it’s an article copied word for word from a 1984 ‘health’ story!  Scientists have learned a lot since then, and methods of extracting coffee beans and making coffee have improved, too.

I discovered why this 33-year-old story has been resurrected so successfully:  It was reposted on a popular social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website.  Somebody did this to pump up readership statistics (and possibly to bring down coffee bean stocks, which some people take malicious delight in doing).

A lot of plants with edible parts have natural insecticides and other poisons in them.  A person would have to extract the poison in coffee plants and beans and ingest very large quantities of it before it would harm him.

Somebody commented on one of the websites that has recently posted this article, “How much coffee do I have to drink in order to kill a biting mosquito?”  hee hee

Yes, excess coffee consumption can be bad for a person.  So can excess sugar, excess carbohydrates, excess fats, and a host of other things.  The greatest health problem in the U.S. right now is obesity, which causes all sorts of secondary health issues.  One big factor in weight gain is sugared drinks.  (Therefore I shall refrain from adding sugared additives to my coffee.)

Oh... haha... Teensy just found a humongous grasshopper in the laundry room and is alternately sneaking up on it, batting it, and then diving backwards when the thing takes a giant leap.  hee hee  Looks funny.

Anyway, here’s a paragraph with good information:

Caffeine is classified by the US Food and Drug Administration as “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS).  Toxic doses, over 10 grams per day for an adult, are much higher than typical doses of under 500 milligrams per day.  A cup of coffee contains 80–175 mg of caffeine, depending on what ‘bean’ (seed) is used and how it is prepared (e.g. drip, percolation, or espresso).  Thus, it requires roughly 50–100 ordinary cups of coffee to reach a lethal dose.  However, pure powdered caffeine, which is available as a dietary supplement, can be lethal in tablespoon-sized amounts.

Two or three years ago, a few people – most of them teenagers trying to get high – died after ingesting pure powdered caffeine.  The FDA stepped in and tried to halt distribution of the stuff to the general public, and has been somewhat successful.

I like my coffee weak, with no creamer or sugar.  I can drink a nice cup of steaming coffee and go straight to sleep with no problems whatsoever (so long as Larry is not snoring, heh).  If I have a sore throat and go without coffee for a few days, I feel no side effects. 

I wish people who repost decades-old articles would clearly label them as such.

So I say, enjoy your coffee and be happy, everyone!  And stop after the 49^th cup.

I wonder why people don’t rant and rave and go into hysterics about alcohol?  It’s ruined countless lives – not just of those who overindulge, but also of those who try to live with and get along with the over-indulgers.  I really hate what alcohol does to people, and to their loved ones.

Do you know of any instances where coffee has ruined anyone’s life? 

Tuesday, I looked at the USPS tracking site, and saw that the quilts I had shipped the previous day had arrived in Des Moines at 3:08 a.m.

Des Moines?

Yes, yes, Des Moines, Iowa!  That’s the wrong direction.

Before the time of digital tracking, we didn’t know.  We didn’t know that when we pay less for slower delivery, what actually happens is that the kindly United States Postal Service takes our packages on a tour of the States via Turtleback Express,  They dawdle along happily, occasionally glancing at their calendar watches, and then, suddenly, when it’s that last final day of promised delivery (or maybe a day late, if the packages are really having fun), they scurry pell-mell for the recipients’ mailboxes and heave them in, crash-bang-kablooey.

Sometimes, if a package accidentally gets to the last Distribution Center a couple of days too soon, workers tuck the box into a time-out corner and let it cool its heels, periodically shaking their heads disapprovingly at it as they pass. 

“You are not priority mail!” they hiss scornfully.  “You should not have gotten here so quickly.” 

At the last possible moment, they reluctantly pull it out and load it on the delivery truck.

So now you know.

That morning, I was listing the things I needed to do:  clean the kitchen, repair a couple pairs of pants for my brother, go to Hobby Lobby for batting, and get started on a quilt for my customer.  

Young male English sparrow

BUT!!! – it suddenly occurred to me, Thursday was the day I had to take my stuff to the Nebraska State Fair, and I had never sewn a hanging sleeve on the back of the Buoyant Blossoms quilt.  Aaaaaaa... had to get that done.  I decided to do it immediately after I fixed my brother’s pants. 

If I wait until the last minute to do things, my hands shake so, I can hardly thread a needle, much less sew a decent blind stitch.  That’s what happens if someone needs a button sewn back on about the time we need to head out the door in a hurry:  my hands shake, and I can barely get the needle through the hole in the button.

Larry, who is always calm no matter how late he is, shakes his head.  “If you just weren’t such a nervous wreck!” 

“And if you just weren’t such a debutante,” I retort heatedly, “Always wanting to make a Grand Late Appearance at the Ball, swishing down the wide spiral staircase so everyone can see you!”

And he laughs.  He laughs!

Well, I was working my way through my list, when I noticed it was getting darker outside, and I heard a distant rumble of thunder.  I looked at AccuWeather, and discovered that a thunderstorm was bearing down on us, and it would probably be raining in 30 minutes.  If I headed out the door right that minute, I just might have time to dash in to Hobby Lobby, purchase some batting, and get back home before I had to pop out the umbrella.  Umbrellas aren’t always a great help around these parts, since high winds often arrive with the rain, and them thar cute little ’brellas don’t keep the rain off so well when they’re wrong side out and billowing upwards. 

I grabbed my purse, slid my feet into sandals, and raced out the door.  I leapt into the Jeep, started it – and discovered that the ‘Low Fuel’ light was on.  Aarrgghh.

Sooo... I stopped at Cubby’s when I got to town, despite the lowering clouds, and filled with gas.  It’s always good to get home again before one runs out of gas.  Getting rained on won’t prevent one from getting home.

I was home again in 35 minutes, batting in hand – and it hadn’t started to rain yet.  I looked at AccuWeather:  it said ‘Rain in 30 Minutes’.

Weathermen like to mess with our minds.

Or maybe I just hit A Wrinkle in Time?

It did rain, but not until Larry got home from work.  He parked in the front, rushed in the front door, and scurried on through the house, telling me as he went that he was going to remove the turbo from his pickup before it started raining.  Out the back door he hurried, still talking.

He barely got the door shut behind him when big, fat raindrops came splatting down, and within moments, it was pouring. 

Larry changed his mind and came back inside.

AccuWeather promised ‘large hail’ in 23 minutes.  It never came, though we heard a few small ‘pings’ on the screens.

Anyway, I was happy I had the batting, the Jeep was full of gas, and I hadn’t gotten drenched.

Now, if little old Tabby kitty would ever have enough sense to come in out of the rain, I’d be really happy.  It can’t be good for the poor old guy to get hizself soaked to the skin like that!

Siggghhhhh...  cats.

Last Saturday, Larry pulled our big pop-up camper into the garage, and is cleaning it out and fixing a few things.  Perhaps we’ll use it... perhaps we’ll sell it and get a newer one.  I lean toward the latter, as we don’t need such a big camper anymore, and I don’t like the way it smells.  There’s always something about all those canvas sides...  And it might be mildew, too.

After supper, Larry worked on the camper.  I repaired Loren’s pants, and then put the sleeve on the Buoyant Blossoms quilt.  Deciding to use my faithful old Bernina 830 Electronic Record for these jobs, I began by opening it up, cleaning it, and oiling it.  It worked perfectly, sewing like a, well, like a sewing machine.  😃  I like to use it every now and then, so it doesn’t get gelled up.  It really is a grand little machine, though it doesn’t do all the things I need a machine to do these days.  It’s 39 years old, imagine that.

It rained all night Tuesday night and part of Wednesday morning.  Shortly after noon, I checked the rain gauge:  5 ½” – and that might be low, because it only measures to 5 ¾” before it runs over.  As I was standing on the lower deck landing looking at the gauge, Larry drove in – with the Jeep.  He’d been to Waterloo to take his turbo to someone who was going to rebuild it.  So there went half a tank of the gas I’d just put in the thing.

Ah, well... I guess that’s okay.  After all, it’s his own money that paid for the gas.  😉

AAAaaaaaa!  Teensy just leaped onto my lap and purred and made bread on my leg and created a problem with the keyboard (I think he typed something in Burmese)... then departed, after depositing what looks like a quarter of his coat of hair all over the front of me. 

Finch fledgling

That afternoon, there were two baby cardinals at the feeder with their brilliantly-colored Papa, begging loudly for sunflower seeds.  Last week, I only saw one.  ((...cuteness overload...))  I raised the window...  went out and refilled the bird feeder... put the big lens on my camera... and hoped they would come back.  It was sort of a dull day for pictures, though.

But it did stop raining, at least.  A few roads to our south were closed, as there was water flowing over them.

I tilted up the glass deck table to let the water run off, and nearly drowned poor ol’ Tiger cat, who, unbeknownst to me, was snoozing under one of the chairs.  For such a tubby cat, he sure scampered – er, waddled – out from under there in a big hurry.  He managed to escape with only a couple of splashes hitting him.  He forgave me quickly (even though I laughed), and was soon purring and rubbing around my ankles.  I added insult to injury, though, by putting drops for mites in one of his ears.  He’s had troubles with mites ever since he came to us as a stray, a year and a half ago. 

How does a stray cat get to be obese??  Maybe someone decided they didn’t like him because he was fat and eating them out of house and home, and dumped him.  He hasn’t gotten any thinner, in all this time.  If I didn’t have to worry about the other two cats not getting enough, I could better manage his intake.  Tabby barely eats enough to keep a chickadee alive.

Actually, comparing small appetites to birds’ food consumption isn’t a good way of describing them.  Here’s some data from All About Birds, a reliable source:

As with mammals, the amount of food a bird eats depends on the caloric value of the food, the size of the bird (the smaller the bird, the more it needs relative to its body weight), the bird’s activity levels, and the temperature of its environment.

A chickadee may eat 35 percent of its weight in food each day while a blue jay may eat only 10 percent of its weight and a common raven only 4 percent—but they all need more calories on colder days than warmer ones.  Hummingbirds can consume 100 percent of their body’s weight in sugar water or nectar every day, in addition to as many as 2,000 tiny insects!  Before migration, it’s not unusual for a hummingbird to double its weight, adding a huge amount of fat to power the long journey.

Canada Geese eat a lot of grass each day, partly because grass doesn’t have a lot of usable calories per pound.  A 5-pound Canada Goose eats about a half-pound of grass per day (about 10 percent of its body weight).

I loaded the next customer quilt, Minnesota Chain, onto the frame and got started with the quilting, after oohing and ahhing over it for a while. 

I heard baby birds cheep-cheeping away, crept over to the patio door, peered out...  and saw that there were three cardinal babies out there in the mulberry tree!  You should hear the racket and commotion they make, when they’re all begging at once.

And then it was time for our midweek church service, always a welcome interruption.  I agree with King David when he wrote in Psalms 122:1, “I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord.”

After church, I finished the first row of the quilt – the piano-keys border.

Did you know it’s a whole lot easier to steam-press a giant quilt back as you’re putting it on the quilt frame, than to use a little wobbly ironing board for the job?  I’ve done it twice now.  Why didn’t I think of it before??

I tried to get a shot with the steam showing, but was unsuccessful.  My iron is not as heavy as those that keep water in a reservoir right on the iron.  The reservoir is separate; I keep it on the floor.  It holds a quart of water, which lasts for several hours even when steaming like a Union Pacific Big Boy.  And boy oh boy, can that iron ever steam.

After writing about Larry’s truck and pup getting stuck last Monday, several people wrote and asked me what a ‘pup’ is.

It’s a trailer pulled behind a truck, usually between 26 and 29 feet to comply with the laws, and sometimes called a ‘doubles’ trailer.  It can be used singularly or in combination with another trailer (depending on state laws).

The one Larry uses is a high flatbed especially made for hauling cradles of aluminum forms.  The pup alone weighs 10,000 lbs.  Loaded, it’s 37,000 lbs.  Larry is licensed for 47 tons – the truck and trailer together.  Big load. 

And there’s always some dimwit in a small car who putt-putts directly out in front of him as he’s driving at highway speeds, then lollygags slowly along and decides to put on the brakes and stop in the middle of the road, waiting to turn left.  

If he wasn’t such a good driver, there’d be a few less dimwits in this old world.

Before heading to bed, I gathered up all the things I needed to take to the State Fair in Grand Island Thursday.  After staggering up the stairs with the third or fourth load, I ker-plunked a box down too hard, heard a tinkling noise, and knew... that wasn’t good.  Sure enough, I broke the spout off of the coffeepot I gave my sister with the coffeepot cozy.  Siggghhhhh...

I sat right down and looked for another one on eBay (after gluing the spout back on the best I could) – and soon found the exact coffeepot at a very good price – because the lid is broken.  That’s fine; this lid is still intact.  Now, I’ll be really happy if it turns out that this pot doesn’t have the crazing of the glaze (sounds funny) that the first one had.  It was ‘Buy It Now’, and I bought it so fast I left my keyboard smoking.

It has now been shipped, and should arrive in a day or two.

Thursday morning, I got up early and prepared to head to Grand Island.  I had quite a few things to do before I left, including redressing the poor coffeepot with its cozy and then loading the car with everything, and I felt like I was moving in slow motion.  I’d forgotten to ask Larry to carry my sewing machine upstairs and out to the Jeep, so I had to do it myself.  Aarrgghh, it’s a looong way up those steep steps carrying that heavy Bernina, then down the front porch and across the yard, up a slight incline to where the Jeep was parked.

But eventually I was on the road.  Huffing and puffing and feeling like a wet noodle, I was on the road!

I picked up Hannah’s sewing machine before leaving town; I would take both hers and mine to the Bernina Store in Omaha to have them serviced.  Mine is okay, just showing its age a bit, and in need of a good cleaning and oiling (and that requires a tech, as it’s computerized).  But Hannah’s won’t do anything but a straight stitch, and very likely has a bad circuit board, which could cost more than the machine is worth.  She bought the machine online, and I don’t think the person from whom she got it was honest.  We’ll have it checked, find out what’s wrong with it, and then decide the next step.

At Grand Island’s Fonner Park, where the State Fair is held, I had to take the quilts into the Expo building, and everything else into the Textile Arts building.  The first wasn’t so bad.  I parked right in front, and it wasn’t far to the door, and I had just two quilts.  There was a table right inside the door on which to set the quilts.

But at the Textile Arts building I had to park some distance away, and the door was at the far end of that enormous building from where I needed to check in all the crafts.  I had a large bag full of things, a box, and two smallish plastic totes.  By the time I was halfway through the building, I was in pain.

So you can imagine my appreciation when a lady suddenly noticed and came rushing toward me, offering to help carry things.  Believe me, I took her up on her offer, and thanked her profusely.  Other ladies then pointed out sided wagons that were parked near the entrance doors for people to use in hauling stuff hither and yon; but by then I was at the check-in table and no longer needed a wagon.  A wheelchair, maybe; but not a wagon.  heh

In a couple of the craft departments, the ladies checking in the various items took a year and a day trying to decide what category things went in.  So when I finally got to the last check-in table, I hunted around for a chair... thought I’d have to go fetch one ----- and was quite surprised when the lady handed me my papers and said, “There you are!  Thank you for entering your things in the fair!”  And just like that, I was done.

After retracing my steps through that long building, I found my Jeep, following a short foray into the wrong parking lot when I spotted someone else’s black Jeep Commander before I spotted mine – and didn’t realize the error until I got close enough to see the license plate.

I plugged the address for the Omaha Bernina Store into the Jeep’s GPS, and headed off, confusing poor Mrs. GPS no end, since she cannot understand that Fonner Park actually has a front entrance.  When I am on my way to Fonner Park, she invariably directs me to the back side of the park, way back by the farthest stables, where of course the gates are always locked.  Having had that happen the first year I entered things in the State Fair, I now know when to ignore her and head down a different street.

“Please execute a U-Turn at the first possible opportunity!” she orders me over and over again.

One of these days, perhaps I’ll remember to inquire at Columbus Motors about the possibility of updating the GPS, which is 9 years out of date.

By the time I got to the truck stop north of I80, it was 2:00 and I was hungry, having had only a small bowl of oatmeal for breakfast.  I filled the Jeep with gas, went inside, and found myself seriously outnumbered by a sizeable tribe of large people, seemingly all balancing a motley array of hotdogs, hamburgers, chips, and ice cream cones halfway up their arms.  I backed up and let them pass, then looked for something that wouldn’t turn me wrong side out and fill up my caloric quota for the rest of the week, both in one fell swoop. 

I looked this way and that – and zeroed right in on a couple of tall barrels with fruit on top.  One had bananas, the other offered apples.  I chose one of each, then spotted some cartons of low-fat yogurt in a nearby cooler.  Blueberry Dannon yogurt!  Just the thing.

I ate the yogurt and the banana, and saved the apple for later.  It was the perfect lunch. 

Omaha is 140 miles east of Grand Island.  It took over two hours to get to the Bernina Store.  A lady helped me carry the machines into the store, then showed me some of their wonderful new machines.  ((...droool...))

I sure hope they finish servicing my machine before I really, really, really need it.  They have a backup of machines (maybe because of the Bernina Store in Lincoln closing), so it’ll be eleven days before they get to our machines.  In the meanwhile, I have customer quilting to do, and I can use my 830 Record if I need to. 

I brought home brochures and price lists for some of their new machines.  The 790 Plus is mine, as soon as I win the lottery.  That price list.  😲  Scare?!  Scare a witto ode wady?  (à la Caleb, age 2, when his toy dashboard got left on High, with the volume up as high as it would go:  “Scare?!  Scare a witto baby boy?”)

On the way home, I stopped at Fremont Lakes State Park to get out and walk for a few minutes and take some pictures.  I didn’t stay long, though; I was getting hungry, and figured Larry would soon be getting home from work in the same condition:  hungry.

From somewhere east of Schuyler and all the way to Columbus, I ran into swarm after swarm of honeybees.  I might’ve been able to see between the bee splats all over the windshield, had it not been for the millions, billions, trillions, quadrillions, and quintillions of gnats that continuously committed suicide without letup, all over the glass.  Mercy, it was dreadful.  To make matters worse, I was heading directly into the setting sun.  This picture is at the beginning of the ordeal.  It got lots worse, but I was too busy trying to see to take pictures.

I was never so glad to get to the east edge of Columbus, where there is a gas station with windshield cleaners by their pumps. 

I got home at about 8:30, and Larry got home shortly thereafter.  He was kind enough to bring Subway sandwiches with him, so I didn’t have to cook anything.

This beautiful old home is now a doctor’s office in Fremont.  I’d love to have my sewing room in that round turret, and my quilting studio in the larger area there on the third floor.  Isn’t it a lovely place?

My parents used to have a doctor’s scale, with weights to slide until they balanced.  One day we were visiting, and little Joseph, age 3, took my hand and started leading me into the bathroom where they kept that scale.  “Come see how much I cost!” he requested.  😄

One time years ago when I sent out printed copies of my weekly letter to half a dozen aunts and uncles who didn’t use Internet, I forgot to delete a line asking one particular aunt for a poem to put into Hester’s new autograph album.  So the request went to my elderly Uncle Don, my father’s oldest brother.

A week later, what to our wondering eyes should appear but a letter from Uncle Don!  Uncle Don never, ever wrote anything to anyone. 

We carefully opened the envelope... got out a paper...

And, lo and behold, dear old Uncle Don had copied down a poem for Hester’s autograph album. 

I’m telling you truthfully, that was very, very special.

Oh!!  Here!  I just found the story, in my letter of October 20, 1997.  There was more to it than I remembered.  This was written to Larry’s Aunt Lynn:

Do you recall me telling you that each week when I send you a letter, I use that letter, edited, to send to my Uncle Don in Shelbyville, Illinois?  I type the letter, play it out (I had a Word Processor back then, precursor to the computer), file it, and record it on a disk.  Then I retrieve it, edit it, play it out for Uncle Don (he’s 87), and let that file disappear into cyberspace.

Sometimes, however, my editing leaves something to be desired.....like the time I asked Uncle Don if there was still a bear in the arroyo.  (They don’t call them arroyos in Illinois.)  (And there are no bears around Shelbyville.)

Or the time I told him Lawrence was surprised to receive a birthday card from him--and he doesn’t even know who Lawrence is.

Well, a couple of weeks ago when I asked you if you’d like to send a poem for Hester’s autograph album, I forgot to delete that request when I printed the letter to Uncle Don.  He’s been in the hospital recently, and he’s rather frail, and I didn’t want to ask for something that would be difficult for him to do.  So we were quite surprised to find an envelope from Uncle Don in our mailbox last Monday!  Inside was a poem:

Labor for learning

Before you grow old;

For learning is better

Than silver and gold;

For silver and gold

Can soon fade away;

But learning and memory

Will never decay.

Don Swiney

At the top of this poem was Hester’s name.  That was all; nothing more.  But we were all tickled pink---This was the first time anybody ever knew of anybody getting a letter from Uncle Don, ever.  Isn’t that nice?

Sadly, memory does sometimes fade away – at least, on this old earth, it does.  I might not be totally in agreement with the poem’s philosophy; but I still think that was really special, for my Uncle Don to send that to Hester.

Fed-Ex dropped off a box Friday morning – Larry’s new turbo.  The old one had been in too bad of shape to be rebuilt.  So we spent over $1,000, rather than the $500 we’d expected to spend.  But at least the pickup is working well now, and it was such a good deal, it is still a good deal, despite the new piston and the new turbo.

I went into the kitchen to eat breakfast – and discovered the bag with Loren’s pants – the two I had fixed and another I used to cut patches from – sitting on a chair.  I wrote a note to Larry:  “You and Loren sat at the table with his bag of fixed pants right between you yesterday – and there the bag still sits.”

At 2:00 p.m., I called Loren, as usual.  When I told him about the pants, he said, “Well, I had a pair of pants on, and Larry had a pair of pants on, so we didn’t need any others!”

Shortly after ending our conversation, Larry answered the text I’d sent him:  “I wasn’t needing any and neither was he, I guess.”

I informed Larry that he and Loren have been seeing too much of each other.  😆😄😅

That afternoon, I checked USPS tracking, then wrote to my customer, who lives in eastern Washington State:  “Your quilts got to Seattle very early this morning.  They first went to Des Moines, 215 miles to our east... and now they bypassed you and landed in Seattle, 300 miles to your west.”

No wonder people ‘go postal’!  ha

I quilted all day that day, and by the time I quit for the night, I was more than half done with the Minnesota Chain quilt, which was made with 30s reprint fabric.  I kept intending to take pictures when I got the next row done, but every time I finished a row, I scurried around to the front and cranked the thing forward, then rushed to the back again to carry on with the quilting.  And then I’d think, Oh.  Yes.  I forgot again. 

A blind friend wrote to me to say that her computer had informed her, “Connection closed by foreign host.”  “Makes me wonder what happened overnight!” she said.  “And how did my homepage get changed?  Maybe I should shut down my computer instead of putting it to sleep?”

I replied, “Yeah, that sounds spooky.  Like little green men from Mars clambered into it and went to work, sniggling evilly as they committed dastardly deeds.”

I did look it up online, but I found explanations and suggestions that, while written in English, were obviously composed by someone whose mother tongue was not English.  The more I read, the more brain molecules fell out of my head through some unknown orifice.  Realizing I was getting dumber by the second, I hastily clicked out of that website and read the funnies, instead.  Much more enlightening.

Saturday, my customer wrote to tell me that her quilts had arrived, two days early.  Amazing, considering that they went a total of 1,030 miles out of the way! 

That evening, Larry smoked some Ono fish from Kurt and Victoria in the Traeger grill.  Yummy!  I fixed steamed broccoli to go with it, and we concluded with Del Monte pear halves.

Later, I finished quilting the Minnesota Chain 30s-fabric quilt.  I told my customer, “I like this quilt so much, if it should ‘get lost in the mail’, you should consider me the top suspect.  😄”

That night, it rained and thundered, and the power went off for a few seconds, then came back on, requiring the microwave and the stove to be reset.

At 3:00 a.m., I discovered a bat in the basement, and immediately informed Larry of this Extremely Urgent Matter.  He said he’d take care of it—and was shortly snoring again.

At 5:00 a.m., he awoke and headed downstairs to see if the bat was still there.

He saw it flying back and forth in the storage room under the front porch – but it landed and didn’t come back out, and he thought it went into the hole in the cement wall that leads into the closet for my sewing room.  He says it can’t get through, because of the Sheetrock.

Sherrrrrrrr.

As often happens on Saturday nights/Sunday mornings, I couldn’t sleep.  I lay there watching the lightning, listening to the thunder, wondering where the bat was, and how many Stay-Awake tablets I should tuck into my church purse.  I finally fell asleep some time around 6:00 a.m.  My alarm went off at 6:50 a.m.  Ugh. 

There was no bat to be seen when I ironed my clothes for church.  Thankfully, I didn’t have any troubles nodding off during Sunday School or the morning service.

On the way home, we dropped off a belated birthday gift – a shirt – for Teddy, and gave them the eclipse glasses.  They had gone on a little vacation to Kansas City last week, when Teddy had his birthday.  He’s 34 now.  We have another gift for him – a seat cover for his four-wheeler, but Larry hasn’t found the exact right one yet.

The sun was shining and the deck was clean and dry again when we got home, so I took some outside photos of the Minnesota Chain quilt.

The pattern, along with a few others, are in this book – plus, there are scrumptious hot-dish recipes in it, too:  Minnesota Hot Dish

Last night after church, Larry smoked some orange roughy in the Traeger grill.  Mmmm... I really think that was the best fish we’ve ever, ever had, bar none.  Mmmmm-mmm!

I cooked corn on the cob, and we had mango peach applesauce for dessert.  I was starving, so while everything cooked, I sipped V8 Cocktail juice.

Look what was in our back yard while Larry was using the Traeger over on the driveway!  He was chowing down on birdseed (the skunk, not Larry) under the bird feeders just outside the basement walkout patio door.

Larry met up with the skunk’s brother (or sister) later when he went on his bike ride.  Well, actually, he flew past lickety-split as the skunk was waddling happily along.  The skunk seemed unalarmed.

He had another flat (Larry, not the skunk), 13 miles out (fortunately, a few miles past the skunk), and I had to go get him.  Our nephew, Nathan, recommended that Larry get Continental Gatorskin tires, and Larry took his advice and ordered some.

Not long after we got back home, it came to the attention of our (meaning, Larry’s and my) olfactory senses that somebody or some thing had been on the receiving end of that cute little skunk’s bazooka.  And ze schmell, she weren’t neezer purty nor cute, huh-uh, nosirree.  😲 😝  I was concerned over whether or not one of the cats had been on the south end of the skunk when it pulled the trigger, but one by the one the cats strolled into the house, all smelling merely like cats, as opposed to polecats.  Fairly clean cats, at that.  So we’re safe.  Whew.

The cats and the polecats (and opossums and raccoons, too) seem to have a peaceful coexistence.

Shortly after that, I heard what surely must be a gargantuan cricket somewhere in the vicinity of the refrigerator, judging by the vociferant decibels of his chirping.  He hushes up the moment I take one silent step in his direction.

I tell you, this place is a zoo!

A friend, upon seeing a picture of the skunk, asked, “Sarah Lynn, didn’t you want an additional pet?  He’s so cute!”

Ha!  He certainly is cute, but... nobody desmellered him yet!  (Caleb’s word back when he was about 6.)

Friday, Loren twisted his knee while mowing under his fir trees with his push mower, and Saturday when he stopped by, he was using a cane and having difficulty putting weight on that leg.  So we were surprised when we saw him at church yesterday, much improved.

However, when John H. and Lura Kay were coming into the church, Lura Kay twisted her knee, and nearly fell.  She, too, could hardly put weight on it; but by last night it was quite a bit better.

Last night, I reminded Larry that his eclipse glasses were in the headboard.  This morning when I got up a couple of hours after he went to work, I glanced into the headboard – and there were both of our eclipse glasses.  I sent him a note:  “How much good will your eclipse glasses do you in the headboard?”

But he managed to come home just a little after noon, in time to watch the eclipse with me.  I wish I would’ve gotten more glasses; they were all sold out around here.  We heard news of people selling them for $100 apiece.  Real nice, eh? 

I had just one pair for Caleb and Maria, and told Caleb to cut it in half so they could each have a monocle.  ha

Millions of people have converged on Nebraska, and there are traffic jams near Lincoln and Omaha worse even than they have on Husker game days.  When I heard predictions of how many people were going to be all along the route of totality, I decided to stay right here at home.  We had 99.9% totality.

Hannah, Amy, and Lydia sent pictures and video clips of the children watching the eclipse.  That was one of the best parts of the whole shebang.  😊

Bobby and his crew were working near Stromsburg, so Hannah took the children there and they met up somewhere and watched the eclipse together.  My brother Loren went to Shelby, to the city park there.  They had 1 ½ minutes of eclipse totality there.

Amy sent a cute picture of Elsie, writing, “And this little one..... wondering what the fuss is....” and one of Warren:  “Can’t forget the upside down kid...”  His eclipse glasses were on upside down, just like every pair of sunglasses he ever puts on.

In one shot, the kitten, unconcerned, dangled over Emma’s arm just like Rufus’ cat in the Gasoline Alley comic.

The Schwan lady came right at the moments of greatest lunar coverage, so we took her out on our deck and let her look through our glasses, as she didn’t have any.

When Lydia was just past two, we were looking at a low, full moon one night through new, high-powered binoculars.  I squeezed them together to fit her, focused them, and then told her, “Look at the moon, and then lift the binoculars into position.”

She followed my instructions.

She hadn’t been able to see it before, but suddenly she held bolt still for a loooong time, and I knew she was finally seeing the moon. 

Then, with a deep breath, she exclaimed, “It’s not a circle! – It’s a BALL!!!” 

There was a partial eclipse when I was in grade school.  We made pinhole shoebox things that we were supposed to look through, or see a reflection in, or something on that order.

I couldn’t see a thing.  My pinhole shoebox thing was a dud (as were all my other artistic attempts, heh).

By 4:00, a thunderstorm was rolling in, though it bypassed us at the last minute.  The sky was totally overcast for an hour or more.  I’m glad the clouds waited until the eclipse was over.

Here are Larry and I watching the eclipse.  And look – a Silver-Spotted skipper watched it with us.  (Actually, he had his back to the entire spectacle.)

Victoria called later this afternoon, wondering if I’d seen her George Foreman countertop grill.  I looked around, and found it downstairs, so she came out to get it, and visited with me for a little while. 

Kurt’s mother Ruth had gallbladder surgery today.  All went well, and she is already home again.

My blind friend wrote and asked me to check her spam folder for an email she was missing.

I replied, “There was one note from a prince in the Bahamas, offering you his millions because he’s ready to die, and has no offspring.

“I knew you’d rather live humbly, so I discarded of it.  ha!”

We had chicken tortilla soup tonight.  It’s hot stuff! – but it sure is good.

Oh!  Teensy just reached under the stove and dragged out the giant cricket that’s been chirping loudly for a couple of days.  Grabbing a shoe...

*********

Okay, I’m back.  (Did you miss me?)

 Giant crickets can hop long and fasssst, you know that??

But I hopped faster.  😃

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