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| Male house finch |
A week ago or so,
Lydia told of an incident that happened as she was driving in Omaha. She was on an Interstate... noticed cars were
slowing in front of her... and then, suddenly, they had come to a complete
stop. She stopped... the car behind her
stopped --- and then she heard a loud BOOM! behind her. She looked quickly in her rear-view mirror,
and saw, about three cars back, the entire underside of a vehicle that had shot
straight up into the air. In her
side-view mirror, she saw that the vehicle it had hit had been pushed sideways
out into the lane to the left. She
started hearing a series of loud crunches and bangs, looked in the passenger
side-view mirror, and saw a Jeep tumbling over and over along the side of the
road, coming closer. She counted five
rolls, then glanced back into the left mirror, saw no one was in that lane, and
quickly pulled into it and got herself out of harm’s way.
Yikes! That’s too close for comfort. Somebody must not have been paying attention
to what was happening in front of them.
Jonathan asked me if
our Christmas tree was up. I said no,
and told him we had an artificial tree that we had to put together. He looked at me soberly for a moment, and
then said, “You should go home and get it out of the basement, and Grandpa
should build it!”
I promised to relay
the message. 😊
Baby Violet is cooing now. She adjusts her mouth into a perfect little
circle, gets a studious, intent look on her face, and says, “Ohh. Ohhhh.” just as clear as can be. “Oh.
Ohhh.”
When
everybody laughs, she smiles, pleased as can be over her new feat.
Victoria
posted a picture of their pretty living room strewn with toys not long after
posting a picture of everything neat as a pin, captioning it, “The Carolyn
Tornado has struck!” hee hee
Tuesday started
with sweeping, vacuuming, dusting, and washing clothes. Mid-afternoon, I started cleaning our
closet. At 7:30 p.m., I was only half done, and the bed was piled high. I took some time out to eat Mexican pizza (Schwan’s)
with Larry... then I got back to the closet cleaning. We would want to sleep
on that bed sometime that night!
Whew, there was
enough stuff crammed in there to fill 20 large walk-in closets. No, 200.
I went through
every last clothing item in there. I
finally finished at 4:30 a.m. There were eight large boxes
and bags to load into the Jeep and take to the Goodwill... four large bags of
garbage to haul out... and the closet is
still full. Closet paraphernalia
multiplies like bunnies! Plus, it expands once one begins sorting and cleaning.
Magical stuff!
However, it is no longer crammed and stuffed; things look
nice and neat; and everything is easy to find and get to. Much
bettah.
The fun thing about cleaning out one’s closet
and going through one’s wardrobe is that one finds long-lost things that one
hasn’t worn for several years, and can build whole new ensembles with new and
old (but still nice) things.
They say you should pitch out anything you
haven’t worn for a while. Six months, preferably. Two years, at the most. I totally disagree. I love pulling out things I haven’t worn for
three or four years, steaming them (or washing, if they smell like the wooden
closet walls or drawers). I do get rid of things if I truly don’t
like them, or if they don’t fit right.
Wednesday, I hauled bags and boxes out to the Jeep, then took them to
the Goodwill. I went to the veterinarian’s
office to pick up some more thyroid medicine for Teensy, too. The kitty is doing very well. I haven’t weighed him to be sure, but he
feels very much as though he’s gotten back up to his original weight of about
13 pounds. His bones don’t stick out
anymore, and he’s regaining strength to jump up on things, as he used to do.
Having gotten such a good start on cleaning, and never liking to quit
before I’m done, I cleaned out the one last chest of drawers in my room that
hadn’t gotten done a few months ago when I went through the large bureau and
chest. And now there’s another bag of
stuff to take to the Goodwill.
I’ve been slowly – too slowly – gathering things for
Christmas gifts. I like to give people
things that I would like, myself. That’s
why one Christmas about 18 years ago, my mother and I each gave the other a
big, beautiful bird book. The very same big, beautiful bird
book.
Mama really laughed
when I exclaimed, upon opening my book
shortly after she’d opened hers, “Oh,
thank you! I really didn’t want to give that book away (pointing at hers); I wanted to keep it!”
Thursday,
an order from Wal-Mart arrived. I barely
got the flaps open and an armful of things removed before Teensy leaped into
the box and sat there like he owned it.
After he
got off work, Larry took the pickup camper to a man in Omaha who wanted to buy
it. I really do NOT like the process of
transferring a pickup camper from one truck to another. 😲 I
didn’t go along, but I imagined it,
the entire time he was gone.
He got home three
minutes after midnight.
As it turned out,
they did the transferring on a steep street!
Larry hooked up some cables to the man’s other pickup to keep the camper
from tumbling down the hill after he drove out from under it and while the man
was backing another pickup under it. The
job got done with no one the worse for wear.
“Couldn’t you have
done it in a flat parking lot somewhere?!” I demanded.
His answer: a somewhat sheepish shrug. His motto:
A miss is as good as a mile.
Some time later
that night, all 36 of the corners of the New York blocks were complete, as were
12 of the ray sections. The Venice lace had arrived that day from
cheeptrims.com, so I laid it atop one of the arcs above the rays to see what it
looks like. I had 51.5 hours in the quilt so far. It took eight hours just to do ten ray
sections.
Friday morning, it
looked like pea soup fog outside. And
Larry was driving a truck and working
out in that stuff. He texted me, “I have
to get two more jobs picked up before the weather gets bad (snow was expected
later that night), and I’m tired and my tooth hurts.”
That was an unusually miserable note, coming
from him. He really, really needs his teeth worked on. No, he needs dentures. His teeth are all
breaking or crumbling to bits.
The first two
pieces of heat moldable batting I ordered from Sewing Parts Online are still on
backorder; but the second order of three pieces from Red Rock Threads arrived that
afternoon. I should probably cancel
order #1 and order more from Red Rock; they’re always dependable. I decided to finish the ray sections on the
New York Beauty Variation quilt before laying it aside and getting back to
those fabric nesting bowls.
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| Blue jay |
Baby Keira was
awake when Larry got to Hester and Andrew’s house, and he spent some time
playing with her and making her laugh when he meowed at their kitty.
Nobody knows why she thinks that’s so funny, but she sho’ ’nuff does!
I sent a note to
Hester: “Thank you so much for the
scrumptious supper! It was exactly what the doctor ordered. I hadn’t
had a baked apple for so long, I’d forgotten how much I loved them. Mmm,
mmm.”
By a quarter after
nine, rain was coming down in cold sheets, and it was starting to make little plink-plink
noises when it hit, which meant it was starting to freeze.
I made myself a cup
of the herbal tea from Sipology that Hannah gave me. I like it. This stuff is behaving like the widow’s meal!
– I’ve made cup after cup after cup of tea, and yet ‘it does not waste’!
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| American goldfinch |
One of our friends
was recently talking about some oils that are ‘the safe version of Vapor Rub.’
“Oops,” said Hannah
– meaning, she’s been unsafe all
these years.
“Well, you gotta
admit,” I remarked, “it was dangerous for one of the boys when he rubbed
Vapor Rub on the bottoms of his feet and then tried walking through the kitchen
barefoot.” 😅
It took me 7.5
hours to do 13 ray sections that day. This is why it’s worth my while to stick
with a project and to do it in assembly-line fashion: I speed up as I go along!
Saturday, a friend
who lives in Colorado sent me a picture of a buck with Christmas lights all
tangled around his antlers.
I hope he manages
to get untangled somehow, and doesn’t come to harm. But he probably won’t, until he loses those antlers. And that could be any time between late
December and May. Maybe he thought he’d get Rudolph’s job, if he could
just light himself up?
The expression on
the poor thing’s face was kind of woebegone. Reminded me of the
expression on Teensy’s face the time he got a plastic bag handle around his
neck while he was ‘helping’ me put away the groceries, haha. Upon discovering
he was stuck, he sat down and looked at me all sorrowful and wretched, waiting
for me to quit laughing and rescue him.
He’s always had a
fascination with plastic bags, so I make sure none are left where he might get
caught in them. His favorites are Hobby Lobby bags. He’ll stick his
whole head in one, and lick and lick and lick at it. What in the world?
Look, I found the
perfect patch to go on a coat Teddy and Amy gave Larry! I got it on eBay after scrolling through a
bunch of embroidered patches, and finding it on page 45. I don’t usually
scroll that far, but I was too tired to get out of my recliner and go to bed. heh So
I went on sitting... scrolling... going to the next page... scrolling... going
to the next page... and then I found it.
It’s exactly what I needed to cover up a name on the coat. The coat was brand new, with tags still
attached, but someone had already had a name embroidered on it. The stitches are too small and too tight to
easily remove. This patch will solve the
whole problem – and the letters and the framing perfectly match the coat, into
the bargain.
It snowed like
everything all morning, let up a bit, then started up again in earnest.
The winds were whistling through at 41 mph; and soon they were really howling,
with gusts up to 50 or 60 mph.
I didn’t get quite
as much done on the New York Beauty Variation quilt as I’d thought I might;
there are still three ray sections to go. That translates into about 2 ½
more hours of work... and then I’ll get back to those fabric nesting bowls. I now have 66 hours in the quilt.
I might’ve gotten
the ray sections done, but we had a leisurely supper of tomato basil soup with
grilled cheese sandwiches... some chocolate chunk/peanut butter chip cookies...
strawberry jello with fruit... and we had all sorts of things to chat about
------- and all of a sudden it was two hours later. Ah, well.
Chatting with one’s hard-working, seldom-home husband is more important than
quilting, anyway. 😊
Sunday morning, it
was hard to tell how much snow we had, as the wind had scoured it clean off
some spots and piled it into drifts in others. There was a foot-high
drift by the Jeep that I had to wade through when we headed off to
church. In sheltered spots, it looked like maybe there were a couple of
inches – a far sight less than predicted. But we would be getting a bit more
throughout the day.
I expect you know
about the 7.0 earthquake that hit north of Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday, November
30th. Look at these pictures,
posted on Facebook, of sewing rooms from ladies who live in Eagle River and Wasilla,
Alaska, about 25 miles from the earthquake’s epicenter.
Someone wrote in
the comments: “Mine looks like this,
too.” ((pause)) “But we didn’t
have an earthquake.”
Guess it would be a
good time to sort and cull non-necessities! 😕 At least no one was killed or seriously injured, so far as
anybody knows.
There have been
more than 1,800 aftershocks in the last three days. A total of 153 measured greater than 3.0, 18
were at 4.0 or greater, and five were greater than 5.0, according to the Alaska
Earthquake Center. A 5.7 struck moments
after that first 7.0.
That afternoon, after seeing those sewing-room pictures, I looked up
earthquake statistics. I found pictures taken
after the Great Alaska
Earthquake, which happened on Good Friday, March
27, 1964. It hit 9.2 on the Richter
scale. The epicenter was Prince William
Sound.
Port Valdez suffered a massive underwater landslide, resulting in the
deaths of 32 people between the collapse of the Valdez city harbor and docks,
and inside the ship that was docked there at the time. Nearby, a 27-foot (8.2 m) tsunami destroyed
the village of Chenega, killing 23 of the 68 people who lived there; survivors
out-ran the wave, climbing to high ground. Post-quake tsunamis severely affected
Whittier, Seward, Kodiak, and other Alaskan communities, as well as people and
property in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California. Tsunamis also caused damage in Hawaii and
Japan. Evidence of motion directly
related to the earthquake was also reported from Florida and Texas.
As a result of the earthquake, 139 people are believed to have died: Fifteen died as a result of the earthquake
itself, 106 died from the subsequent tsunami in Alaska, 5 died from the tsunami
in Oregon, and 13 died from the tsunami in California.
When I was in grade school, I gave a report on an earthquake that that
happened on Crete in 365 AD, registering somewhere around 8.5: 365 Crete Earthquake. I was so fascinated and amazed
at the power of an earthquake and the devastation one could cause. A list of big earthquakes is here.
After that 1964 Alaska earthquake, a lot of changes were made as to how
buildings, roads, waterlines, gas lines, etc., were constructed in
earthquake-prone areas.
Moral of the story: government interference can be aggravating
sometimes, and now and again those in authority overstep their bounds; but in
this case, the change in building-requirement laws surely saved lives when the
earthquake struck last Friday.
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| American goldfinch |
It was snowing both
times we went to church yesterday. The roads were slick here and there, and
snow-covered in spots. We went to the
grocery store after church last night, and ate a late lunch when we got home.
This afternoon, I
hunted around online for a cheaper place to buy Nyjer seed. That stuff is pricey – sometimes $5.00 a pound! – and the birds go through it like popcorn at the movies, in colder
weather. It occurred to me that Bomgaars
might sell it more affordably, so I picked up the phone and called.
Sure enough, they
had a 20-pound bag for just over $20.
Best price I’d found yet.
I wrote Larry a
note: “Could you get me a big bag of
Nyjer seed at Bomgaars? I called for prices – and they are a whole lot
cheaper there than anywhere else.”
“Ok,” he responded agreeably. “I didn’t know you ate them.”
(And that’s
a more normal sort of note from him.)
😄
Our oldest son
Keith told us about a dentistry chain called Affordable Dentures; his wife Kori
had her teeth done at one near Salt Lake City, where they live. He sent
us a link to one in Lincoln, and Larry now has an appointment for next
Tuesday. The first consultation and X-rays are free.
He needs a whole
set of dentures; all his teeth have had root canals, and now he has at least
two that have broken entirely, and many others that are crumbling away.
He’s had an abscess for the last couple of weeks, and was in quite a bit of pain
from it, though it’s better now.
A dentist once did
root canals on the lower four front teeth – but he did quite a bad job, with
partial nerves left intact. This caused extreme pain for a couple of
years, until Larry had surgery on them that required an orthodontist to cut
into the jawbone.
We had Black Angus hamburgers
for supper – complete with cheese, tomatoes, green bell pepper slices, onions, lettuce,
and either pretzel buns (me) or whole wheat buns (Larry, because they are
softer).
How on earth is one
supposed to get one’s chops around a burger like this?!
Oh! Larry brought in the mail when he came home,
and I just noticed: the Cummins patch is
here! He didn’t even pay any attention
to it. Now I can surprise him with
it. 😉
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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