Last Monday evening,
Teddy sent a video of himself feeding his three little pigs. The camera takes a 360° view, and I can pan
the scene any which way, as I’m watching the video. Here’s a screen shot of the piglets, chowing
down. They slurp so loudly, you’d think
they were having a splish-splashin’ bath.
The one on the left
decided his side wasn’t nearly as tasty as what the others were getting, so he
rushed around to the other side, used his nose and head to root the other two
out of his way good and proper, and went to slurping over there. Before
long, he decided the food was better where he’d been in the first place, so he lollipy-galloped
back to his original spot, ears a-flap. 😄
Late Monday night –
actually, early Tuesday morning, about 1:30 a.m. – Loren called. He had a
severe stomachache, bad enough that he began worrying that he might be having a
heart attack. Larry went and stayed with
him for a few hours, and would have taken him to the ER had he not started
feeling better. But he was
finally able to sleep at about 4:00 a.m., and when he awoke at 6:00 a.m., the
pain was gone. Most likely, it was a virus that has been going around. Our great-niece, Danica, who’s 18, was in the
hospital for four days last week with extreme stomach pain. Levi, too, had a very bad stomachache Monday.
Tuesday afternoon, Hannah
called; she was back in town after her trip to Lincoln for her appointment with
the specialist. I was so glad to hear that she really likes this doctor. Unlike the doctor she saw here in town, this
one was careful and compassionate. When he used a scope in her nasal
passages, he was gentle, and it wasn’t nearly so painful as it was when the local
doctor did it.
The most
objectionable part about the previous doctor was that he was just plain rude,
conceited, and mean. Hannah was feeling so very unwell the day she
was there, having difficulty breathing, her oxygen level a bit low, suffering
from a migraine headache ---- and he decided that what he first should do was to
put her through the Spanish Inquisition.
He asked her for
her definition of asthma. She gave a short answer... she’s had asthma for
28 years, since she was 9 years old (probably longer, but that’s when she had
pneumonia, and was also diagnosed with asthma). He asked her to tell him
how she would define ‘wheezing’.
Finally she told
him, “I’m sorry; I don’t feel well enough to answer all these questions right
now. My brain is pretty foggy.”
So then you know
what he told her??! He told her she needed to see a psychiatrist!
Now, mind you, he
had already determined that she had one of the most severe cases of
nasal polyps he had ever seen, and he knew her oxygen level was a bit low,
and that she had a bad headache. So to say such a thing to Hannah was
downright nasty. Is it any wonder that on the websites for the
clinics where this doctor has worked, both here and in other towns, while other
doctors in those offices have good reviews, he has none? Makes us wonder if he did have reviews, but they were
objectionable, and he discarded of them.
I suggested that
Hannah not, under any circumstances, go back to that doctor. There are
plenty of other doctors, good doctors,
within driving distance.
So. Fast
forward to Tuesday. She has found a doctor who treated her well, who seems
knowledgeable, and is a good surgeon, according to one of our family
doctors. She’s on another round of antibiotics, steroids, and nose spray. They will probably do surgery on the polyps
in a couple of weeks.
Hannah had Levi
with her that day, since he was sick, too.
As if all this
wasn’t enough, their pretty little dog Misty, a miniature Australian shepherd
whose IQ is higher than the IQ of some people I know, has been having breathing
troubles for two or three months. They
all really love their doggy, and it makes them feel so badly to see her
sick. That morning, Hannah took her to the vet, and they checked her
lungs, etc. Even though she’d been breathing harder the day before, it
actually appears that she’s on the mend.
The vet gave her a shot to get rid of remaining fluid on her lungs. Here’s a picture Hannah took of her:
Siggggghhhhhhh... Did you ever feel the truth in the old saying, ‘When it rains, it pours’?
Hannah still doesn’t
feel well, but hope renews the spirit! As King Solomon, often called ‘the
wisest man who ever lived’, wrote in his Proverbs, “The spirit of a man will sustain
his infirmity; but a wounded spirit who can bear?”
I talked to my
brother on the phone that afternoon, and he was feeling much better. The stomachache was completely gone. But
he was fretting over how Larry could work that day after not having enough
sleep. He apologized for calling, but I assured him we would much
rather he call us when he is ill than to weather it alone. After all, it just might be something
serious!
To those of you who
prayed for my family, thank you so much. Now let’s pray that the local ENT
specialist stubs his toe, and the attending physician pounds it with a mallet.
Well... maybe
not. As you please. 😉
We could just let the Lord deal with him as
He sees fit.
I headed for my
sewing room to add some pink satin
sleeves to a pink satin and chiffon dress for Elsie for Easter and to sew a contrasting hem band and sashes to another of
her dresses.
Next,
I altered a skirt of my own that I’d purchased on eBay. It was supposedly my size, but it was waaaay
too big, and waaaaay too long. But as
Victoria once remarked when she was about three or four, watching me alter a
dress for her, “It’s easy to smaller things, but it’s really, really hard to
bigger them!”
Amy sent me a video
of Jeffrey, age 7, sitting on a riding toy and pushing Elsie around in an
unzipped rolling luggage case. Elsie was
making motor noises, which got exponentially louder when she wanted the speed
increased.
I wrote back, “If
Elsie survives her childhood, she’ll doubtless think she had lots of fun.”
Amy responded, “She
is so funny. She loves to be pulled
around. If she sees anything remotely
big enough laying on the floor (towel, blanket, rug, mat) she will sit on it
and make noise to get somebody to
pull her around!”
The more I looked
at the Americana Eagle quilt, the more I knew I wasn’t done with the background.
I wouldn’t quit, until the eagle showed up properly against that
background. So on Wednesday, I worked on
it with my new Inktense pencils.
After church that
evening, we took Amy the dresses for Elsie, and she gave me the other dress for
Elsie and two for Emma, along with the coordinating fabric.
Late that night (or
early the next morning, if you prefer to look at it that way), after using a
watercolor painting of mountains as my model, I decided I was finally finished
with the background of the Americana Eagle quilt. I’d been disappointed over the center
section, wishing I’d’ve just gotten the background right in the first
place, so I didn’t have to do all this Inktense painting, trying to make the
head and tail show up all right. Now they show up... and the feet are
blending in!
Well, maybe not too
badly. In any case, I’m done with
the painting. Any other accents of the central area will be done with the
quilting.
It was such a
lovely day Thursday, I opened windows and doors and let the warm spring breeze
waft through while I worked on Emma’s and Elsie’s dresses.
The gray dresses
have a tiny lavender dot, and the lavender fabric Amy got to go with them has a
small gray dot. The striped dresses are for the Fourth-of-July picnic.
When the dresses
were finished, I went back to the eagle quilt, and got four of the nine borders
sewn on. (The pinwheel borders were
already sewn together, as you may recall.)
Late that night, I
heard Tiger somewhere out in the front yard having a big, bad cat fight. I grabbed a flashlight and shined it around
out there, but never did see those cats. The other one was doubtless the stray cat that
has come into the house a few times. When
Tiger finally came inside almost an hour later, the poor thing could hardly
walk, and he had bites and scratches on his ear and head and back. I put triple antibiotic on his owies, and
they seem to be getting better.
Friday, I started
on border #5 of the Americana Eagle quilt – Prairie Points. The majority of these folded triangles are
leftovers from the same project that the pinwheel triangles came from. There weren’t enough, so I cut more – and
made too many. So now there are more
leftovers. Quilt pieces are like
sourdough starter – every time you use them, it’s like ‘feeding’ the starter
for the next batch... and it lives forever.
Maybe I can use
them up on a matching pillow.
Only four more
borders to go... four more borders to go... four more borders to go...
Saturday, Larry and
I went to a farm near the little town of Ashton, some 82 miles to our west, to
get some tires and wheels for his pickup, along with a bumper, a grill guard, and various other
pickup parts that he purchased on the Big Iron online auction.
Upon leaving Ashton, we turned south and headed toward Kearney,
where we planned to use some of the Cabela's gift cards the kids have given Larry. Since Bass Pro Shop purchased Cabela's,
either gift card works at either store.
But first... we drove right through Kearney and on south
to Fort Kearny State Historical Park (spelling of the State
Park is different than spelling of the town) in order to see the Sandhill cranes that are
at the peak of their migration right now.
Every year, 400,000 to 600,000
Sandhill cranes – 80 percent of all the cranes on the planet – congregate
along an 80-mile stretch of the central Platte River in Nebraska to fatten up
on waste grain in the empty cornfields in preparation for the journey to their
Arctic and subarctic nesting grounds. It’s an amazing sight to see.
There
were baby calves in one field after another.
Some were itty-bitty, fresh-hatched, and cute as buttons. One was running and jumping... another having
a head-butting contest with a big ol’ yearling.
I saw one galloping along pell-mell with a big mouthful of corn husks,
while another one chased lickety-split after him. I’ve never seen them do that before –
grabbing stuff in their mouths, playing keep-away with it. They’re so frisky and funny.
At the State Historical Park, we walked around and looked
at the old sod blacksmith shop, the old wagons, the canon, and the plaques
telling where the buildings once stood that were part of the Fort, and what
they were for.
Sandhill cranes alternately rose and settled in nearby
fields, often flying directly overhead.
They are loud birds! – the
call of one crane alone can carry for five miles on a quiet day. Imagine what the sound of half a million
birds sounds like!
It was a dark, overcast day, but I got a few halfway
decent photos. See more here.
We were about to leave when I pointed out the earthen
mound with a wooden door. “What’s that? We’ve never looked at that before.”
We went to see.
Turns out, it was where the ammunition had been kept. We went inside.
It was pitch black in that ammunition hut, and we didn’t
have a flashlight. I took pictures... and it never even occurred to me that
while I had the 75-300mm zoom on my camera, which was really too big for the
area in the hut, Larry was holding my 18-55mm lens right in his hand, the
whole time!
He didn’t think of it either, even when I grumbled, “This
lens is too big for this space!”
We couldn’t see these cannonballs at all, but the
camera’s flash illuminated them.
A friend and I were discussing sod homes and
dugouts. Pioneers on the plains often lived
in soddies, 150-250 years ago. Those homes with their two-foot-thick
walls were cool in the summer, warm in the winter. But as for me, I like
my many-windowed house!
Some houses were better than others. Take a look at these pictures: Sod
Houses Here are some that were in Kansas: Sod Homes and Soddies on the
Plain.
Here’s the Interior
of a Sod Home. Notice the quilt on the bed.
People certainly persevered through hardship, back
then! Makes me thankful for all my niceties. One more website, with good photos and
interesting reading: Building
a Sod House
Scroll down and click on the two-story sod house.
Now there’s an example of somebody who knew how to build one of
those things, and build it well! It’s still standing, too, north
of Broken Bow, Nebraska. We’ve been through Broken Bow dozens of times,
and never knew about that house. Now I want to go see it. Broken Bow is 130 miles to our west, out in
the Sandhills. I’ve always loved
studying our history.
After leaving Fort
Kearny State Historical Park, we went to Cabela’s. Larry got a 60x60 Herter’s spotting scope
with a tripod:
I got some soft,
fuzzy slippers.
Hey! I’ve just discovered that this very scope is
on sale for less than half price online.
Aarrgghh, that’s a cruel trick! I
wonder if we can complain, and get some money back?
Before leaving
Kearney, we made use of yet another gift card – this one, for Applebee’s
restaurant, given to us by our neighbor man for caring for his goats and
chickens while they were gone.
On one of the online
quilting groups, we were discussing how we began quilting.
I almost got
started quilting when I was 17, when I saw a satin puff quilt (or biscuit quilt
– with the puffy squares) in the J. C. Penney’s catalogue. I loved to
sew, and was willing to try most anything, so I bought lengths of brown satin
and peach-colored satin and cream-colored satin ......... and then, before I
got around to making the quilt (I had a full-time job, so I didn’t have a whole
lot of time for such a frivolity as a quilt) — anyway, before I got around to
making the quilt, we began making plans for our wedding. We were 18 when we got married. Being a
frugal soul, I decided, since I’d already purchased it, to use the satin for
the bridesmaids’ gowns – floor-length, full-skirted dresses with hooped
underskirts, one peach, one brown, both with cream accents and laced-up fronts,
sort of an old-fashioned Swiss style. Remember the Gunne Sax
patterns?
Larry had a brown
suit; the groomsmen had cream-colored suits. (Are men’s suits colored ‘cream’?)
Everyone then
concluded that peach was my favorite color, and for years I got peach this and
peach that. My favorite colors are bright, bright blue, bright, bright
red, and bright, bright purple! But I lived with peach. ha
Anyway, that
quilt didn’t come about, but by the next year, I needed a nursery ensemble –
and once again, I was drooling over the J. C. Penney’s catalogue. Nursery
ensembles – at least the ones I was drooling over – were beyond our
budget. But I had fabric! So... I sewed. I made curtains and
bumper pads and sheets and rocking chair cushions and a ruffled crib skirt and
a ruffled crib canopy and a quilted toybox cover and a pillow – and a crib
quilt. That was for Keith.
The next year, I
did it again, this time for Hannah. Years later, before Hester was born,
I made a cross-stitched quilt similar to this design: Cross-Stitched Bunnies. But I didn’t have much time for
quilting until about 2005 or so, because I made a good many of our
clothes.
I enjoy sewing
clothes, but... quilting feels like recreation!
Last night after
church, we went to Kurt and Victoria’s house.
We took along a snack to share: orange
juice, cheese curds, and sweet potato/cinnamon Sun Chips.
My nephew Kelvin,
who went through treatment for colon cancer last year and had surgery in
January, has made it to several of our church services lately. He’s recovering fairly well from the surgery,
and has been feeling better. It’s been a
rough year for him.
And now, I must get
back to the Americana Eagle quilt. I have
to hurry! – a customer quilt is on the way! Plus, I want to make a wildlife panel quilt
for son-in-law Jeremy’s birthday, which is April 20th, and if I’m
going to enter the Americana Eagle quilt in the Chadron, Nebraska, quilt show,
I have to get it done before April 19th. I hope to enter the Baskets of Lilies quilt
and the Mosaic Lighthouse quilt, too. If
I call one a throw, one a wall hanging, and another a bed quilt, that should be
permissible, hmmm?
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
