Remember last Monday’s bread pudding? I had a piece for breakfast Tuesday
morning... we had some for dessert that night... another piece for breakfast
Wednesday morning... Larry had some that night – and suddenly it was all gone.
One
of my quilting customers told me, “I share your love of bread pudding. I
have known a few people who do not like bread pudding, but I felt that decision
on their part demonstrated a character flaw, and I did not feel we had enough
in common to continue our relationship.”
haha
Bread
pudding is good with all sorts of berries, raisins, or other fruits. You’d
really have to work at it, to go wrong with bread pudding!
I washed clothes and bedding Tuesday, and then
put the Harvest Star quilt away, replacing it with the wool/velvet/corduroy winter
quilt. It had been in the teens the last few nights, and was only 22°
that afternoon, with a windchill of 10°. I went out to fill the bird
feeders, and yesirree, it was Brrrrr! Cold! out there.
That wool/corduroy/velvet quilt looks worse
and worse, every time I get it out. The
pillows still look lovely, reminding me of what it should look
like. But some reds have bled into
certain of the creams, turning them a sick pink; and some pieces have continued
to shrink, so the quilt doesn’t lie flat.
It was an error to quilt it with no batting. I thought since it was so heavy and warm, it
would be best to leave it out, and a whole raft of people told me that was a
very good plan, they’d done it successfully, etc. Never again!
My quilts will have batting.
I think when we’re through with it for the
winter, I will cut it down into a couple of throws, maybe add thick batting and
new backing. Really, if I was going to
do it right, I would take out all the old quilting... but that’s not gonna happen,
huh-uh, nosiree. Way too much trouble
for way too little gain.
I tucked our picture and pretty bookmarks
into 120 Christmas cards, paid some bills, downloaded a National Federation of
the Blind conference call for some blind friends (because the website the
Federation uses for their calls is not at all blind-user friendly, of all
things), and then sewed tucks, tucks, and more tucks into border #4 for the
Atlantic Beach Path quilt. I completed
several yards that day.
We had Black Angus burgers with red and green
peppers and onions for supper, with broccoli, strawberries, applesauce, and
bread pudding added to the menu.
Larry’s brother Kenny and late wife Annette
once brought us a dessert that had been intended for someone else. But
they thought they could no longer take it to the intended recipients, because
... ... ... one of their children had stepped in it.
So they brought it to us, Kenny of
course laughing, while Annette was all apologetic. She said, “We thought you’d understand, and
we already have some at home, and thought you’d enjoy it, if you just cut
around the little footprint...”
We assured them that we could, and thanked
them for the yummy dessert, and laughed over it. Still, I wondered, How
on earth did one of the kids step in the dessert?!
It wasn’t more than a month later that we
went to Omaha to watch the fireworks display. We had most of the kids
with us. I almost always took along our
food; we could rarely afford to eat out.
So... in the very back of the Suburban, we had a giant pot of vegetable
beef soup and a large baking dish of peach cobbler.
We arrived early, in order to find a good
parking spot. We chose a secluded alleyway with a little jog beside a
stone wall just big enough for our vehicle to fit in – and with a perfect view
of the pyrotechnics right down the hill. They would be ‘bursting in air’
almost directly over our heads.
We put down the tailgate for some of the kids
to sit on, pulled out a few lawn chairs, and I started ladling soup into bowls
and doling it out.
And then Caleb, who was about 4 years old and
all excited over this tailgate party (and hungry, I’m sure), came clambering
around the third seat in the Suburban in order to get his bowl of soup
--------- and stepped splat ker-smooosh into the peach cobbler.
So I quit looking down my nose at people who
would somehow allow a kid to step in the dessert.
Once again, we cut around a little footprint
as we ate our dessert. Only this
time, we had to wash off a shoe, too.
Wednesday, I carried on with the tucking and pleating. It was 29°, and my weather app said it was ‘mostly
sunny’. Someone at Weather App should’ve
looked out the window. It was entirely overcast.
While I sewed, the cats camped out under the
quilting table. Teensy finally decided he likes the little round fur bed,
and slept in it for the first time. When
I spotted him in it, I crept over and plugged it in – it has a warmer in it. It must’ve felt good on that cold winter day,
because when I went downstairs to get ready for church, the cat stayed put. He
usually follows me wherever I go.
A two-hour break for our
midweek service, a late supper, and then I returned to the tucks.
My To-Do List for Thursday: Tucking! Pleating! Tucking, pleating, tucking, pleating. Repeat, with a short time out from sewing to
clean the kitchen.
Larry took an early flight to Nashville that
morning to cut a record.
((pause))
Kidding, kidding. He took an early flight to Nashville to get a
dump truck.
((pause))
Not kidding. But not for himself; the truck is for the
company. Walkers, that is, where he
works. (The company is owned by my
niece, widow of my nephew who was killed by the drunk driver who rammed into
their house in the middle of the night.)
The plane went to Charlotte, and after a
short layover he boarded another plane to Nashville. He took a taxi to the location of the dump
truck.
He shortly discovered that the passenger
window was rolled down about six inches, and it wouldn’t roll back up. And it was a cold winter’s day. So he stopped at a Lowe’s Home Improvement store,
got the tools and parts he needed, and repaired the window before heading for
home, some 845 miles to the northwest.
The driver’s door handle didn’t work, either, but the fix would’ve been
extensive, involving removing the entire door panel, and he didn’t want to take
the time or buy more tools. So when he
needed to open his door, he rolled his window down, reached out and grabbed the
exterior door handle, and thereby opened the door.
He called at about 6:30 p.m. from just east
of Paducah, and we talked while he crossed the Tennessee River, then took a
wrong exit (one of those left-side exits) and headed south on I69 instead of
staying on I24 northwest. He knew it was
the wrong way, but there were too many cars in the right lane for him to move
over. (Larry’s invariably in the
wrong lane, even when his GPS is up and running, and telling him which lane he
needs to be in. I think he likes to
discombobulate the thing. Or maybe he
just doesn’t like it being so bossy.)
A friend posted a little video clip of either
a beaver, a muskrat, or an otter; I couldn’t tell which, and she hadn’t been
certain, either, as the animal was in a little creek, and mostly
submerged.
There was a muskrat living in the deep ditch
beside the highway at the bottom of our hill, back when we had all that
flooding. They’re fun to watch. But the otters are the most fun;
they act like they’re entertaining us on purpose.
There’s an old wooden bridge over the Loup
Canal to our north. On bright, moonlit nights, we have sometimes stood
there silently, waiting... and soon, along came the otters, usually a pair, but
sometimes more, swimming smoothly toward us through the water, not making a
sound. All that could be seen were sleek, dark heads, and silent V’s of
black water widening behind them.
Then, suddenly, they’d rise out of the water
in unison, execute a perfect end-over-end, and SMACK! themselves back down on
the water before swimming agilely back the other way.
Every bit as much in unison as the otters, the
little girls would jump out of their skins and shriek – and the boys would go
into peals of laughter. 😂
This picture was taken at Utah’s Hogle Zoo
(not by me):
I ordered
some new cleaners, one for stainless steel (Weiman Cleaner & Polish), the
other for chrome (Krud Kleaner), and the UPS man brought them that day. Astonishingly, he hadn’t used the box for
wheel chocks, nor had he run over it, nor had he played polo with it. It was still shaped like a box, and the
bottles of cleaner were still whole and unharmed.
I promptly shined up all the chrome fixtures
and the stainless-steel sink.
Or at least I tried. They do look better; but they are old,
and haven’t looked too great from the time we got this old farmhouse. I’ve used the cleaners several times now, and
the fixtures and sink continue to improve.
Larry has promised that, one of these days, I’ll have a new and bigger
kitchen. Until then, I’ll just keep
polishing up what I have. They work! –
that’s always a plus. 😉
That night, Larry stayed at a motel a few
miles west of Mt. Vernon, Illinois. He
walked across the street to a truck stop to get a pair of vise grips with a
wire cutter and some mouthwash. He
needed the vice grips to remove the cable that held the truck’s key to the
steering column, where it had been attached by the auction company.
Friday, after vacuuming, sweeping, and
mopping, I trotted upstairs to continue sewing tucks.
Larry got home around 7:00 p.m. Anticipating that he’d be hungry when he got
here, since he’d called midafternoon to say he’d be home ‘around suppertime’
(that’s a hint, right?), I had sirloin steak, spiced baby bakers (potatoes),
baby carrots, and onions baking in the cast iron French oven Kurt and Victoria
gave me for my birthday. Yum, that was a
good supper.
That night, I finished tucking border #4,
pressed it with tucks going one way at the top and the other way at the bottom,
with the twist undulating in an S shape along the length, and attached it to
the quilt.
It took 7 hours Saturday to cut both sets of
strips for borders #5 and #6, sew them together, press them, sew the flange to
the wider strip, sew the set to the quilt, and press again.
While I sewed, I listened to an audio
book. It’s a good book, but oh me, oh
my, the reader is atrocious.
She reads like this (consider the lower case
part of the sentence a low-pitched rapid monotone, and the all-caps words
loudly accented, half an octave higher with a downwards slur at the end of the
word, and spoken a whole lot slower than the rest of the sentence:
On Sunday October 8 1871 as Moody came to the
end of his sermon for the EVENING the city fire bell began to RING. At first no
one thought much about it as these city bells often RUNG. However this night
was DIFFERENT—it was the beginning of the Great Chicago FIRE. Moody’s first
concern was for his FAMILY locating them and making sure they were somewhere SAFE.
After securing his family’s SAFETY Moody and his wife stayed on the north side
of the CITY to help other RESIDENTS. The fire finally burned out Tuesday AFTERNOON
after consuming much of what Moody had BUILT.
This was a poignant time in Moody’s LIFE and
the fire forced him to reevaluate his MINISTRY. It was during this time of EVALUATION
he realized he needed to heed the Lord’s call on his LIFE. For years he had
been moving forward and then asking God to support his PLANS. He knew from this
point ON his call was to preach the Word of God to the WORLD.
Aaarrrggghhh!
This makes me want to look up the reader and personally slap her
SILLY. Yes yes I know she’s probably a
perfectly sweet li’l ol’ LADY but why has no one ever told her she can’t READ. YIKES I CAN’T QUIT!!!!
Let me just hit myself in the head a few times
with this BOOK...
...
... ... ...
...
Okay, I’ve RECOVERED.
Uh, OH.
Only one more border to go! The
Atlantic Beach Path quilt now measures 113” x 114”.
Sunday after the morning service, we had a scrumptious
dinner of roast beef, potatoes, carrots, and onions that Victoria gave us.
When we got home, there was a box on the
front porch – delivery men are working Sundays now, during this month before
Christmas. In the box were the two
wooden teddy bear dress-up puzzles that I’d ordered from J. C. Penney's – and
been charged for – that hadn’t come with the rest of the order. These are for Elsie and Malinda.
A boy’s sweater that also hadn’t come is
still on the way, scheduled to be delivered Wednesday. And then I will have everything.
When the quilting is done,
I have some three-dimensional hexagons to make.
I’ll soon need to order the hexagon-shaped crystals I intend to sew in
the middle of those 3D hexies. I need to
buy backing and wool batting for it, too.
The new augur for the pellet
stove arrived Thursday, and last night Larry installed it. The stove, which is downstairs, is now
burning away, feeding pellets through nicely, and helping to heat the
house. Last month’s electric bill was double
that of the month before, and it’ll continue to rise for the next three months. Right when construction work slows, the
electric bill doubles and then triples. 😲
Unfortunately, with the
stove in the basement, it doesn’t heat the house a whole lot, and wood pellets
are pricey. Larry would like to bring
the stove up to the main floor, but there really isn’t a very good place for it, and
I would be so afraid one of the grandchildren would get burned on it.
I did the laundry today; still need to put
away the last load. After filling the
bird feeders at 12:45 p.m., I peeked out the window at 4:00 p.m. and saw that one
feeder was totally empty already! Are those
birdbrains out there just throwing all the seed on the ground??
I’ve packed two large boxes with the
Christmas gifts for Keith, Korrine, and the children, who live in Salt Lake
City, and for Todd, Dorcas, and Trevor, who live in Blaine, Tennessee, a little
northeast of Knoxville. I’ll ship them
off tomorrow. I need a handcart, so I
can take both boxes into the post office at the same time! Oh... I do have a polyester-sided folding
red wagon.
(( ... considering ... ))
I’d be quite conspicuous, trundling that
thing along behind me. Embarrassin’. I shall make two trips from Jeep to post
office, even if I do wind up standing in line twice. 🙄
Or maybe I can manage both at once. à
Brrr... it’s only 6° this evening.
Now for border #7!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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