Journal: Faceplants & Partial Kangaroo Curls

Recently I ordered some ThermaCare heat wraps.  I thought they were like IcyHot pain patches and suchlike, but they are not; they’re like the Hotties hand and toe warmers that heat up when exposed to oxygen.

There’s such a long list of warnings on each packet, it’s hard to find the instructions.  Trouble is, the instructions are in such small print, they are hardly readable.  Furthermore, the items in the list that pertain specifically to those who are older than 55 years of age are written in red.  Insulting.

My favorite ‘Do Not Use’ warning is the last one:  “Do not use on people unable to follow all use instructions.”  🙄🤔😖🤣

I fixed spaghetti and meatballs for supper Tuesday night using Schwan’s turkey and pork meatballs and chunky vegetable Ragu.  Yummy!

On our online quilt-talk group, we’ve been discussing the various jobs we’ve held.  Quite the interesting discussion we’ve had. 

My first job was selling potholders.  I made 100% profits, too, because my parents bought all the supplies.  My best sales were made in little towns, rest areas, and campgrounds as we traveled.  That was when I was 8-10, or thereabouts. 

In high school, I took a business administrations course, and my teacher got me a job in the Word Processing Center at Nebraska Public Power District.  I stayed there for 2 ½ years until a few months after Larry and I got married, a while before our first baby came along in 1980.

I sold Avon periodically (and have a number of awards to show for it, including these ceramic figurines)... did sewing/tailoring/mending... taught piano lessons... and kept the books for Larry’s auto-rebuilding business.  I was the pianist and music director for our church for 21 years.

In 2005, I worked part-time for our local Internet Service Provider.  In 2008, I got a job as an Administrative Assistant for Keystone Pipeline.  The job ended when land right-of-way acquisitions were completed.  I then worked as an Administrative Assistant for a church at a nearby town.

When I got a longarm, I started quilting for others in addition to doing my own quilts.  The majority of my time, however, has been spent raising our nine children.  That entailed a whole lot of cooking, baking, cleaning, teaching, playing, reading, nursing, gardening...  I sewed most all of our clothing for many years, and made curtains, quilts, blankets, rugs, etc.

Life these days isn’t quite as hectic as it used to be.  I’m happy staying home and quilting, gardening, playing the piano, cleaning, feeding the livestock (cats and birds), playing with cameras and photos, and traveling with Larry.

Speaking of piano lessons, I was once showing one of our girls what to do when she couldn’t reach all the notes in a chord:  I bent my head down to the keyboard and played the middle note with my nose.  🤣  I would later see the child, who was more limber than I, reach up with a bare toe and hit the final bass note in the song.  hahaha

After our midweek church service Wednesday evening, Larry and I went to Wal-Mart to get a gift for Elsie, Teddy and Amy’s youngest, who would be three years old the next day.  We got her a ruffly pajama set in fuchsia and pink, a soft stuffed white bunny, a coloring book, and a set of fat triangular Crayolas.

One time when Teddy was about a year old, sitting on my lap in church, he was all engrossed in a book.  He turned a page, and then, right out loud, he said, “Duck!”  Then his head jerked up and he stared around with very big eyes (and he was the child with big eyes in the first place).  He’d totally forgotten his whereabouts.

Late Thursday afternoon, I sent a request to Larry:  “Could you bring home some milk?”

He texted back, “Goat milk, sheep milk, cow milk, powdered milk, or white water?”  (He calls the skim milk I drink ‘white water’.)

“Milkweed milk,” I responded.

“We have milkweed out in the yard,” he replied.

“It wilted when it froze,” I informed him.

If one of us loses his or her phone, will the finders thereof think we are nuts?

I took Elsie her birthday presents that evening.  Any guesses as to what she liked best?  It was the colors and coloring book!  She immediately extracted a yellow Crayon, took the coloring book in the other hand, and headed for the table at a fast clip.

Friday, I finished editing the pictures I took on our trip to Wyoming.

Saturday, with all of October and November’s pictures edited, I backed up everything on my external hard drive.  It’s always a good feeling to have everything saved... and resaved.  I need to get another external hard drive, though.  I usually keep two backups, but the second hard drive got full a few months ago.

The Instagram app for my laptop recently updated, adding some new features.  I can now finally save all the pictures when people upload them in groups, instead of having to take screenshots and then crop them.  Plus, I can save photos and videos directly from the photo feed, instead of having to go to each poster’s personal page.  Much improved.

When Larry got off work that afternoon, he went to Teddy’s house to bale hay.  After finishing there, he came home and cut down several dead trees in our back yard.  One had grown into and over the old garage roof, making a few holes in it.  We need to get that shack out of here, as soon as we remove the few valuables that are still inside it.

Later, Larry helped me slide my marble table back against the wall in my gift-wrapping room, and then he hauled the two giant boxes of gifts from J. C. Penney’s downstairs for me.

A few days ago, I received an email from J. C. Penney's, telling me one of the watches I’d ordered was no longer in stock.  They canceled the order and refunded my credit card. 

The watch arrived anyway – as did the one I bought on Amazon to take its place.  The one from Amazon had nearly the same description:  it was also made by Geneva, and cost the same; but it weighs a ton, and doesn’t look as classy as the ones from J. C. Penney’s.  Furthermore, Amazon sent it in a padded envelope.  Remember when that happened with Bobby’s watch?  Twice?  (Once, the envelope wasn’t even padded.)  Both times, it was broken and/or wouldn’t run.  Stupid idgits.  You can’t ship watches in envelopes, for cryin’ out loud. 

A visiting preacher and missionary to Thailand was at our church yesterday, preaching for each service.  He told about how in some little mountain villages in the north part of the country, people have no furniture; they simply sit or sleep on the floors, which are either dirt or bamboo.  They have no dishes; they serve food on banana leaves. 

Once, he and his wife were invited to eat in one of the homes.  The natives placed some type of meat before them, on the usual banana leaves. 

The meat was green, and the missionary believed it to be monkey.  In order not to show disrespect, he ate it. 

Having managed to down this food, he then carried on a conversation with someone at his side.  Then, turning back around, he discovered to his dismay that there was another serving of green meat on a banana leaf in front of him.

He turned his head and looked at his wife, who sat on his other side.

She gave him a guileless smile.

He ate the meat.

This struck Larry quite funny, as he imagined his own wife would’ve done exactly the same thing the missionary’s wife had done.

Larry is right.

I respect people just fine, I do.

But not enough to eat food I neither want nor like – or even suspect I might not like.  Huh-uh, nosiree.

Besides, it’s ruder to gag on a dish than to refuse it in the first place.  Right?  Right.

It was Leroy’s 8^th birthday.  We gave him some pajamas and an electronic football game – one of those classics like Larry and his brother Kenny had when they were teenagers. 

Yesterday, some of my quilting friends were discussing their stashes – how much they have, how they use it, and whether or not they have too much or not enough.

I have heard of ladies who have entire basements and garages full of large totes and bins stuffed with fabric – plus they have dresser drawers, bins under beds, closet shelves, linen closets, and more loaded with fabric.  Good grief.  Even if they made wholecloth quilts with no cutting and piecing at all, they couldn’t use that much fabric in half a dozen lifetimes.

My stash consists of about five 28-quart (23”L x 17”W x 6”H) totes containing mostly smallish scraps from previous projects.  They used to be full, but one is only half-full now, since making that red and yellow table topper and the Bear Paw quilt.  I have a handful of new fabrics that I’m saving specifically for quilts for a couple of the grandchildren.  Oh, and there’s quite a bit of cream-on-white and white-on-white fabric left from the New York Beauty quilt, though not any big pieces.

I do have three or four more of the same size totes downstairs, filled with fabric left over from clothes-making days.  Every now and then I use some of it, so I won’t discard of it just yet.  I will one of these days make doll clothes for those six youngest granddaughters, as I did for Joanna and Emma.

Anytime I launch into a big, new project, I must buy the fabric I need for that project.  Someday, though, I think I’ll make a really, really scrappy king-sized quilt, perhaps a Log Cabin, and see how much of the scraps in those bins I can use up. 

I won’t be buying fabric just for the purpose of ‘adding to the stash’, though.  I like the least amount of clutter, stuff, and things possible (though you might not believe that, if you saw all my knickknacks, clothes, shoes, etc.).  But I just watched another hoarding video, and I gotta clean the house now!  😂😜😲😖😅

After church last night, we went to Shelby to get E85 for the Jeep.  It runs sooo much better on that stuff.  Shelby is a little town with a population of about 715, about 20 miles south of Columbus.  I’d like to know why Shelby, population 715, has E85, but Columbus, population 23,130, doesn’t.  There are two gas stations in Shelby.  There are 15 or more in Columbus.

This doesn’t make a lick of sense.

Oh, well; we have an enjoyable time taking a drive there, and the convenience store is large and has freshly-made food, so we usually get our Sunday-evening meal there and eat it on the way home.  Sometimes we pull into the nearby park, and eat there.  Last night, I got a Junction burger, coleslaw, and Fuji Apple and Ginger Pure Leaf tea.  Larry got chicken cordon bleu, macaroni salad, and Passionfruit and Pineapple Hibiscus Pure Leaf tea.  We bought some cherry turnovers and save them for today.

We couldn’t finish our salads; those Junction burgers and bleus were too, too big.  But we kept a little corner of our stomachs empty for small cheesecake/fruit Blizzards from Dairy Queen when we got back to Columbus. 

This morning, about the time I was washing my hair, I heard my brother in our back yard with his chainsaw, working on the trees Larry cut down Saturday.  He was cutting off all the little branches for kindling, and cutting up the trunks for firewood.

Larry cut some tonight, too, after he got home from work, so Loren will have a little easier time if he returns tomorrow.  All those small branches made quite a labyrinth to work through, in order to get to the trunks.

Here’s Teensy, having faceplanted himself into his Thermabed:  

And here he is again, doing his Partial Kangaroo Curl exercise:

Two more big boxes and a big bag of Christmas presents arrived from J. C. Penney’s.  I need to type up my Christmas letter, then get these things wrapped!

Oh, and I need to break out the fruitcake and decide who to give it to this year.  Now…  where did I put it??

One year I had to make a new one, because I hacked up the previous winter’s loaf with Larry’s axe when the children lost their hockey pucks.  Every now and then I have to make a loaf two years running, because some daft saphead up and eats it.

This afternoon, I took Larry’s check to the bank, and actually remembered our new checking account number, right off the top of my head.  Astonishing.

I paid a bunch of bills online, and even remembered to change that checking account number before clicking the ‘Pay’ button.  Even more astounding.

And I haven’t even been taking any Gingko!

Supper tonight was chicken breast filets, corn on the cob, and baby carrots, all baked in one of my little ceramic casserole dishes.  We had chocolate pudding with bananas sliced into it for dessert.

As I type, I’m sipping a piping hot cup of chocolate cherry coffee (decaf), and Teensy is purring on my lap.  But now I shall sign off, watch a video on silk ribbon embroidery scenic artwork, and then head for the feathers.

P.S.:  The fruitcake thing was a joke.  You can laugh now.

P.S.S.:  Sometimes when I reread these letters, I discover that I’ve inadvertently repeated a particular word (or even a paragraph) several times.  Sometimes that’s because I’ve copied and pasted things from emails and suchlike that I’ve written during the previous week.  (Copy and paste is an ingenious little function that can make people think you are extremely bright – or losing your marbles.)  Other times, my repetition is merely a slight malfunction o’ de ol’ grey mattuh.

Have you ever noticed that one can hear a particular and/or unique word, at oh, say, 6:00 a.m.; and then, entirely without cognizant thought, reuse it at, oh, say, 8:00 p.m., just because it’s been rattling around subconsciously in that specific brain quadrant reserved for such matters?

Or maybe when we do that we’re just reverting back to childhood, when we’d learn an intriguing new word and then proceed to use it several dozen times a day for the next couple of weeks.

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