Journal: Work on Addition, & Tooth Twubbles

By last Tuesday, Larry was doing fairly well with his dentures.  He even managed to eat several things that weren’t run through the blender – cottage cheese, a few bites of soft crackers, and some chicken and dumpling soup.  He was happy that when he blended the venison, potatoes, carrots, and onions I’d baked in the Mexican Dutch oven, it tasted like venison stew.  I’d thought to blend each thing separately, so he’d have all those separate flavors, but he wanted them together, and liked it. 

He got more of his deer meat cut up, and he fixed the Traeger grill (the pellets wouldn’t feed through) and started smoking some venison.

I printed and taped together the rest of the foundations for ten more New York Beauty Variation blocks, cut the fabric for them, and sewed three of the tapered-square arcs.  I’m sure there’s a better name for it... I should look up a labeled diagram of a New York Beauty block, and see what all these various elements are actually called.  Hmmm...  Well, how ’bout that.  It’s called a ‘tapered-square arc’.  😁

Wednesday morning, we arose at 6:00 a.m. and got ready to go to Lincoln for Larry’s first (and much-needed) checkup and denture-adjustment at the dentist office.  We were almost ready to leave when they called to say the office was closed on account of the weather:  2-4” of snow overnight.

I looked up road conditions in Lincoln, and saw that all main roads and most arterial roads had already been long cleared, de-icer applied, and travel was moving well.  Furthermore, it was sunny and bright outside.  Buncha weather wimps.  🙄  Bah, humbug.  The dentist must’ve wanted to stay home and play indoor wiffleball.

{Yeah, yeah; I understand all about ‘better safe than sorry’; it’s just that when I’m ready to go, I want to go!  Plus, Larry needed to go.}

Ah, well. I had a nasty ode code, ibbyway.  I would stay home and quilt.  I couldn’t go back to bed, ’cuz I’d just fixed my hair up all purty, and didn’t wanna squish it, ya know.  (At least, I didn’t want to squish it yet.)

We ate breakfast, then headed upstairs:  me to my quilting studio, and Larry to work in our partially-done addition.

He started by building a fire in the wood-burning stove, moving a few totes out of the way, and sweeping up sawdust.  I walked in a little while later, opened a bin to see what was in it – and found a few old pictures, including this pre-wedding photo.  This picture is 40 years old.  I was 18. 

Larry also had to clean up and replace some insulation the squirrels had pulled down.  Horrid, destructive critters!  They’re cute – so long as they stay out of my house!

Loren and Norma came a little before noon that day, bringing us a trailer load of wood Loren had cut.  Larry went out to help Loren unload it.  Can you see them, there in front of our ‘new’ fifth-wheel camper?

That evening, as he had each evening since the tooth surgery, Larry had a headache, from his neck all the way over his head to his forehead.  Most likely it was from the strain of that three-hour surgery, with all that pressure against his neck and jaw. 

We stayed home from church that night – Larry, nursing his mouth and headache, and me, nursing a cold.  (Why do we ‘nurse’ a malady?  Why don’t we instead ‘murder’ a cold, or at least permanently maim it, for pity’s sake?)

Larry ate a supper of ground venison, mashed potatoes/gravy, cottage cheese, and pudding – the biggest meal he’d had since his surgery.  He felt quite a lot better after that.

Thursday, thinking Larry would be able to see the dentist that day, we once again got up early and got ready to go.  By this time, he really needed to have those dentures adjusted, as his gums had healed and changed enough that the dentures weren’t fitting well, and were causing a lot of pain, as they were cutting into his gums, mouth, and tongue.

At 8:00, Larry called the office.  But instead of reaching someone at the Lincoln office, he could only get the off-site answering service for the entire Affordable Dentistry chain.  They told him that the earliest appointment he could get was for Monday, at 10:00 a.m. 

He kept calling, and finally got someone in the office... and was told that the doctor had been called in for emergency dental work during the night, was up most of the night... and Thursday and Friday were solidly booked.  One lady assured him that ‘there’s almost always a cancelation, and then we can get you right in’ – but that wouldn’t do any good, probably, since we are two hours from the office. 

Sooo... Larry left off wearing his dentures.

But... we had scrumptious scrambled eggs for supper that night, and Larry mixed cheese and ground venison into his, and then we had delicious smoothies of pears, tapioca pudding, cherry yogurt, and almond milk.  Mmmm, mmm.

That day, I put together the main parts of the ten more blocks I needed for the New York Beauty Variation quilt and two king-sized pillow shams.  I still needed to sew on the large arcs and curved corners; but the majority of each of the blocks was done.

While I sewed, Larry worked again in the addition just down the hall, and Teensy kept vigil on the banister above the stairs.

It’s cold out there in the addition.  The wood-burning stove was going, though, and it brought the temperature up from 15° to about 55°.  Once we get the three-car garage underneath that room insulated, it’ll be easier to keep it warm in the winter, cool in the summer.

Saturday morning, Larry went off to get some supplies at Menards, to collect a few tools and things back from this one and that one who had borrowed them (or where he’d left them when he was working there), and to help a friend install a dipstick tube in a vehicle. 

When he got home, he worked a bit more on the addition.

Our house, while it does have two stories, is actually called ‘a story and a half’, because the upper hip walls are only 4 feet tall, so the ceilings are slanted, and there are several dormers – four smaller ones facing north, and one big one facing south.  The south dormer has the patio door in it.  We don’t have an attic.  The addition is comprised of the lower three-car garage, and the story above it, which will be the master bedroom and bath, plus that big closet.  In the master bedroom, the ceiling rises to the ridge beam, a little over ten feet. 

The original house was 32" x 30", with basement, main floor, and second floor.  Larry added 30" x 42" – the three-car garage and the second floor.  There is no basement under the garage.  While working in the basement soon after we got the house (a farmhouse brought some 90 miles by truck), we discovered some really old beams, and determined that the house had only been about half the original size... and then we found a huge, even older, hand-hewn beam, and saw that it had once been even smaller.  

Made us wonder... maybe it started out as a tiny claim shanty on the prairies of Nebraska, back in the early 1800s?  Or maybe it was a chicken coop.  😆

I removed the paper foundations from the New York Beauty blocks, and then sewed Venice lace on the arcs – 39 of them, as one already had the lace attached.  One of these days, I’ll be wishing for the Shoemaker’s Elves to help me sew on the 10,000 little pearls!

By bedtime, all 40 blocks were done, and the lace was sewn on.

Sunday, Larry put in his ill-fitting dentures and went to church.  I stayed home, as this cold is still in full swing.

My alarm went off at 6:00 a.m. this morning, since I planned to go with Larry to his dentist appointment in Lincoln.  But I decided I didn’t feel well enough to go, and he didn’t need me to drive, in any case.

But... he got to David City, a little more than halfway there, and then got a call:  appointment canceled again, as the doctor had just been called into emergency surgery.

So... Larry turned around, came back to Columbus, and went to work.  Sans dentures.

The wind has been blowing at 60-65 mph since about 11:00 p.m. last night, and there is something banging loudly on the roof.  Larry just came home for lunch, and he says the banging is the plank he has up there for standing on while he puts on shingles, and adds that it’s fastened down and can’t come loose.  Well, it sho’ ’nuff sounds loose.

Ah, well.  I don’t plan to be under it if it goes flying; I’m heading for my quilting studio, runny nose, sore throat, headache, earaches, and all.

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