In just a couple of weeks’ time, Keira is
walking like anything. Andrew, Hester,
and Keira went on a vacation to Pilot Cove, North Carolina, a week ago, and
Hester sent a video of Keira walking – doing noticeably better already. Plus, she was multi-tasking – she was stirring
vigorously in a little bottle as she went along. She was sporting a big grin on her face (and
a bow on a headband tumbling down rakishly over one eye). She’s such a happy little thing.
Hester sent a picture of the view from their
deck in Pilot Cove, and there was Keira, trotting across it big as you please.
Monday night, I found a youtube video showing ten ways to use the Mix ’N Chop tool (do you think I should write to Pampered Chef and tell
them how to make the apostrophe in front of the N curve the right way? – they
have it as ‘N) (and that they should make the N lower case?). The video depicted ten different types of
foods being twirled, mixed, swirled, and chopped. One of those foods was ‘polenta’. What in the world is ‘polenta’? I
wondered.
*doing research* ... ... ...
Okay, I done larnt me what polenta is, and it
turns out I used to make it all the time:
Polenta is a dish of boiled
cornmeal that was historically made from other grains. It may be served as a hot porridge, or it may
be allowed to cool and solidify into a loaf that can be baked, fried, or
grilled.
I’d cook it at night and pour it into loaf
pans. The next morning, I’d slice it and fry it in butter, and we’d put
syrup on it. I haven’t thought about that for years. I really liked
it. ’Course, I didn’t boil it plain; I put some salt in it, and after it
cooked, I added a little sugar.
Loren and Norma gave me $$$$$ for my
birthday, and I used it to get all sorts of fresh fruit and dairy products,
which we’ve been enjoying ever since. Mmmmm...
I spent Tuesday appliquéing hexagons onto the
center panel of the Atlantic Beach Path quilt.
Someone wrote to tell me it would be easier if I did one side at a time,
rather than gluing and pinning the entirety of the hexagons on all at once.
That
might work sometimes, but since this one is king-sized, I wanted to be sure the
panel was perfectly centered in the middle of all the hexagons. And I knew
there wasn’t even half an inch of wiggle room. Sooo... I laid it on a big
table, positioned... measured from side to side and from corner to corner...
repositioned... measured... repeated (several times)... and then glued the
edges under, and finally pinned them before picking it all back up again and
heading to the sewing machine. Perhaps I
could’ve made it work, doing it one side at a time, but... 😏 🤓
By 7:30 p.m., I was all
done with the central appliquéing. It
took three hours. I sure was glad for my
new folding table beside me, which helps hold big things as I sew them.
I trotted downstairs to
fix supper: turkey and rice with summer
squash (from the neighbors’ garden) and broccoli. And lots of butter. Scrumptious.
Wednesday I began working
on the first border for the Atlantic Beach Path quilt. I got one side pinned onto the border, and
then it was time for church.
Lydia and the children (Jacob,
Jonathan, Ian, and Malinda) came over that night after the service, bringing me
some things for my birthday: a soft, beautiful robe, soft
leather gloves with touchscreen fingertips (exactly what I’ve been needing),
and a pretty coffee mug.
Late that night (or early the next morning 😏), I was almost done appliquéing the
first border on the quilt (well, actually, the appliqué is the other way around
– the hexagons are appliquéd onto the border) – but I ran out of fabric.
I thought I might go to Country Traditions in
Fremont Thursday, but it was cold, rainy, and windy that day, so I stayed home
and scanned old pictures in my cozy little upstairs office.
This was taken at Yoho National Park, British
Columbia, Canada, August 16, 1994, 25 years ago. Too bad I didn’t hand my camera to somebody
and get in the picture, too!
Here’s Lydia; she was 3 years old.
We crossed Lakes Kootenay and Revelstoke on
the Canadian ferries that are part of the highway system (and therefore free),
and we camped right alongside Kootenay near the little town of Balfour, British
Columbia.
 |
| That's Teddy, walking toward the water. |
That was such an enjoyable trip.
Teensy likes to be near
me. He was seriously hindering my
progress in the scanning of pictures, because every time I sat down in my
chair, he hopped up on my lap. So... I
went and got the cat mat my sister gave me, put it in the corner, patted it,
and told Teensy, “This is your bed!” He
knows what ‘bed’ means.
He stared at me... stared
at the mat... sauntered slowly over to sniff at it... turned his back... and
sat down. But as soon as I stopped
looking at him, he stepped on it... pumped his paws on it... and laid down.
He tried it this way... that
way... and finally found the perfect way to lie on it.
Friday afternoon, Larry
called to tell me that Caleb and Maria had lost their baby that morning.
It was just too early, and he didn’t make it. It was a little boy, and
they named him Liam Everett.
Caleb
and Maria, and the rest of us, too, have hoped and prayed, and we rejoiced with
them when we learned they were expecting this baby. Maria had had some trouble, but we had begun
to think everything was going to be all right.
We are so sad and so sorry for them.
And to think some would destroy a little life
like that, on purpose. Horrible,
horrible.
I believe with all my heart that all those
who commit such crimes against the innocent are absolutely guilty of murder –
and that includes all those who sanction it, too. There is no doubt in my
mind but that God is angry with this nation because of this. He said very
clearly that we are to hold life dear, because “man is created in the image of
God”!
Some destroy... others would give anything to
have an infant.
Larry told me that he had made a 2:00 p.m.
appointment at Columbus Motors to have them look at the Jeep, as we’ve been
getting a warning readout on the instrument panel telling us to service the 4wd
system. It was already almost 1:30 p.m.
right then. Larry had almost forgotten
about the appointment. Since he was
working, I would need to take the Jeep there.
Aarrrgghh! I needed to go to
Fremont!
I got myself in high gear, fixed my hair, ate
something, and managed to get to Columbus Motors with a few minutes to spare.
And then I waited.
I sat in the customer lounge and waited...
and waited... and waited.
I got stalled out in the Columbus Motors
customer lounge for 2 ½ hours, because someone had accidentally double-booked
the day. The lounge was full of people who had been waiting for
hours. At least they were nice people. I got to know a man in his
early 50s whose wife at age 49 had to go into a nursing home. He had cared for her for 28 years after she
had a debilitating stroke, leaving her almost totally helpless. I made
friends with a young man who had his 5-month-old baby (who’d been a preemie)
with him. He’d been waiting an hour longer than I had. He fed the baby... played with the baby...
made the baby laugh... The baby fell
asleep. The man conducted business on
his phone until a dingbat from the service department came in and started
talking to another couple in the loudest booming voice he could manage, despite
the fact that he had looked right at that sleeping baby when he walked into the
room. The poor baby jumped out of his
skin and woke up. The father, rolling
his eyes, got him out of his little carrier before he cried, and then he sang
to the baby... changed the baby (in the restroom)... fed the baby... walked the
baby... played with the baby some more... I liked that young man.
They finally delivered the diagnosis on the
Jeep: it needs a new ($3,000) or rebuilt ($1,600) transfer case for the
four-wheel-drive.
I thought this was very bad news, but as it
turns out, the ‘junk’ Jeep Larry bought a couple of years ago – just like ours,
same year, same color, etc., but someone stole the entire dash and console out
of it – has a perfectly good transfer case that he can use. (Now I’ll
have to apologize for bawling him out for buying the junked Jeep! 😏 He got it to use the
undercarriage to build or rebuild another vehicle.) (We tease him and say
that he can build an entire truck out of nothing but a garbage disposal, a
paperclip, and a bit of hair tonic.)
Meanwhile, I can still drive the Commander; it
runs and shifts just the same as always.
Larry is somewhat suspicious of their diagnosis; we’ve gotten false
readings before, and Columbus Motors has then given us faulty diagnoses.
Getting out of there at 4:25 p.m., I needed
to get to Country Traditions in Fremont before they closed at 5:30. And
it’s an hour’s drive, if all goes well.
I wound up behind what I thought was a plumb
skeert li’l ol’ lady (I can say that now, since I are a li’l ol’ lady,
heh) ------ but it turned out, it was a plumb skeert young lady. I
declare, she slowed down to 45 mph every time the road curved. And of
course it was a two-lane road with heavy traffic, so I couldn’t pass. Aaarrggghhh.
Just look at this semi loaded with
haybales! His load has shifted, and
those bales are listing far to the side.
Yikes.
The road from
Columbus to Fremont is perhaps the flattest road in the whole state. I like the hilly, wooded areas better. But
the sky made it a pretty drive that day.
I think that road between Columbus and
Fremont is the flattest part of the whole state. But if you keep going east, you get to the
hills and bluff all along the Missouri River; and from our house all the way to
the western border, there are deep rolling hills with quite a lot of woods,
both deciduous and evergreen. To the
north are the Missouri bluffs, too.
Interstate 80 is pretty flat, though.
People drive through the state on I80 – 455 miles – and they decide, ‘Nebraska
is the flattest, most boring place I’ve ever been!’
I like the woods and the hills better than
the flats. We never take the interstate
unless absolutely necessary.
I called Country Traditions and told them my
dilemma: I was on my way, knew exactly what I needed, and would they be
really aggravated with me if I came skinning in at 5:29:30??
The lady laughed and said they would wait for
me.
I arrived at 5:26 p.m., and departed at 5:30
p.m., so I didn’t keep anyone past closing.
Whew.
Thank goodness I took along
a scrap of the fabric I needed, because the Stonehenge line by Northcott has no
less than half a dozen slightly different gold-marble fabrics! I’d
have had to get pieces of every last one of them. (Wouldn’t’ve I?)
Here are more pictures: Trip to Fremont I also posted pictures of Larry and I: When We Were Very Young
I eventually cut that entire suit of Larry’s (jacket,
vest, pants) down to a size 2T for Teddy. That thing had all bound
pockets... suit-shape interfacing and seam tape and shoulder pads especially
for men’s suits... I did my dead-level best to make it equivalent to high-end
suits of the day. And I had an almost-new Bernina Record 830 to sew it
on!
These pictures remind me of what Larry said
to me when he asked me to marry him: “I
want to grow old with you.”
I was touched... and I felt the same... but
wouldn’t you know, I just had to say, “Right now?!”
If we knew back then what all we’d go
through, the good and the bad, the joys and the sorrows, it would be entirely
too daunting, wouldn’t it?
I talked with Caleb on the phone as I drove
home. He sounded all right, and he said
Maria was doing okay, too. He said there would be a memorial service
Monday morning at one of our local funeral homes.
The hope of the resurrection gets us through these
heartaches. We’re sad... but we know we
will see our lost loved ones again, and that gives us much hope.
When I got home, I
fixed some supper, then headed up to my quilting studio to finish the border.
A couple of weeks ago, the lilacs
rebloomed. Now three spring-blooming
hosta plants decided to bloom again.
Saturday, I began packing things for a trip
to Wyoming. More on that later...
Kurt, Victoria,
Carolyn, and Violet came to see us that afternoon, bringing us some
pumpkin/chocolate chip cookies Victoria had made.
Sunday night after our evening service, Caleb and
Maria came over for a little lunch. It
was their 6th anniversary, and Caleb’s 26th
birthday. We love them so much. They’re sad, but in good spirits. How do people with no faith make it through troubles??
We need our heavenly Father for comfort!
We lost a baby on the very day of our 11th
anniversary. It wasn’t the same, for I hadn’t known I was expecting, and
we already had six children, who were a comfort. Then when Victoria was 2,
we lost what would have been twins.
Even when life is brand-new and barely begun,
we dearly love those precious little ones, and mourn their loss.
They had a framed
picture of the baby’s footprints and handprints ... so perfect, so unimaginably
small. Lydia made a little white satin
and fleece blanket for the baby, and machine-embroidered his name in the corner
with a beautiful font in glossy thread. It was under the tiny casket and the
arrangement of white roses, which were all prettily arranged on a podium.
Such a tiny little
box for the baby... and when Caleb carried it so carefully to the grave site,
out at the cemetery, it made me cry.
But, as King David said, “We
shall go to him.” We know he’s ‘Safe in
the Arms of Jesus’, as the beloved old hymn says.
Here’s a picture of Caleb at 10 months, sitting on Larry’s lap somewhere
in the northern panhandle of Idaho, on our way back from the vacation to Canada
25 years ago. He was such a happy little soul. Still is.
I gave granddaughter
Joanna my white rose from atop the little casket stand, since we won’t be home
this week. We were going to Pavillion,
Wyoming, to pick up a large air jack Larry purchased.
Since Pavillion is only 180 miles from the
Tetons, we’re going to go on to Grand Teton and Yellowstone National
Parks.
While I finished packing, Larry went to have new tires put on the Jeep. His friends at the tire shop offered him some
new tires and wheels already mounted, which someone who’d just bought a new
Jeep Wrangler had traded in on bigger, more aggressive tires and wheels. They offered him a good price, and Larry took
them up on it, since our wheels were oxidized and looking sort of bad anyway.
When he got home, he put new brakes on the front end and changed the
oil.
Loren stopped by to pick up some split wood,
and I ran out and helped him load it into his trailer.
We left a little before 6:00 p.m. An hour later, on the other side of the
village of Spalding, we were stopped at one of those self-serve, 24-hour gas
stations with no attendant (that some people say do not exist), and I spotted a
bald eagle on a nearby hay bale and had to get out and take his picture.
It’s a little blurry, because the sun was
nearly down, and he was a long ways away.
A
little later, a mule doe ran across the road in front of us, and we saw a
coyote scavenging alongside the road, too.
The sun went down in a riot of oranges and turquoises and pale blues,
with ribbons of bright yellow running through the streaks of clouds.
Larry and I had been wishing we could go on a
vacation somewhere; but I figured our vacation money was in his mouth!
Literally. In the form of dentures.
I’m very glad he hasn’t been coping with
toothaches and abscesses and broken teeth, though.
Anyway, Larry came up with
enough money for this trip, and it looks like the weather will be good, though
a little chilly at night.
George Beverly Shea (I used to say it all
funny – ‘Borge Sheverly Bay’, etc. – just to mix up the kids and make them
laugh) is singing, “How Big Is God... He’s big enough to rule the mighty universe...”
and before I finished writing that, the song finished and then our own church
choir started singing (I’ve uploaded 2,298 songs onto the Jeep radio/player’s
hard drive), “Then ask me not to linger long... ... for I am only waiting here
to hear the summons, ‘Child, come home.’” I dearly love these beautiful
(and lively) old hymns.
Here we are at our motel, Trade Winds, in
Valentine, Nebraska. And a very nice one
it is. Time to haul in the bags!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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