Journal: Laundry Room Fun (and Quilting, of Course)

Many of the photos in this letter, such as this elevator (right) and the radar weather sphere (below) are from our Texas trip.

A few days ago, a friend was telling about a half-gallon of bleach falling from her washing machine and landing hard on one of her toes.  Yikes, that makes my hair stand on end.

I’ve had a few broken toes in my time, and they’re no fun at all. 

One happened back when Caleb was a baby, Lydia was 2, and Hester was 4.  While I was changing the baby on his high-sided dressing table, the little girls would come sneaking in the door, trying in vain not to giggle out loud.  They’d heave pillows at me and then run for their lives.  (Those things are called ‘toss pillows’ for a reason, after all.)  I’d yelp, grab the pillows and dash after them as they fled down the long hallway, flinging pillows as I went.   Then I’d trot back to Caleb, who was greatly enjoying all the hullaballoo.

Well, about the third or fourth time of this, I kicked the doorjamb as I raced past it.  Unable to come to a sudden halt while traveling at such a velocity, I commenced to hopping on one foot until I could get stopped.  The little girls, convinced I was doing all this solely for their entertainment, stood convulsed at the front door, nearly bent double in mirth.

But my little toe was broken.

As often as possible while caring for a household of eight children and getting ready for Christmas besides, I sat with that foot propped up.  At least I got all the cassettes recorded I’d been planning to give the children in my Jr. Choir.  But there was a lot to do – including playing the piano for Christmas program practices and rehearsing with the orchestra. 

And then came the night of the actual program itself, just a few days later.  I’d sewn myself a purple satin suit, had a purple wool fedora with gorgeous feathers on one side ----- and purple high-heeled shoes.

One must wear one’s matching heels with one’s utterly too-too (à la Nellie Olson) outfit, now mustn’t one?  So... I gritted my teeth... andcrammedmyfootinasfastaspossiblebeforethepainregistered.  Then I staggered off to church with my family.

I made it through the program all right, even though the broken toe was on my right foot – the foot I used on the piano pedal.  It sort of went numb after the first few minutes.

The program was a long one, almost an hour and a half.  When it was over, the children all filed down from the choir loft, and then I arose to follow them down to my seat beside Larry.

I sat back down again as quickly as I had arisen. 

Then I put on a stiff upper lip, made up my mind to just stand and walk on that foot, no matter what... and up I got.  I would not limp. 

I walked back to my seat... managed to sit there for a few more minutes while that toe came painfully back to life again... and then made my way home.  We lived just across the street from the church, back then.  I pried off my shoes (making temporary rainbows behind my eyes), changed clothes, and ensconced myself in the recliner with the foot rest up for the rest of the night.

Early Tuesday afternoon, Larry reattached the wood trim around the edges of the laundry room.  He would need to buy a narrow decorative piece to go between the wider wood trim and the floor.  This is going to inspire me to make that rag rug for which I have many of the double-knit pieces already cut! 

It wasn’t long before the washing machine was in place, and Larry was in the garage getting the dryer out of its box.  Soon both appliances were in the room, and he was hooking up the hoses and pipes.  This dryer needs a hot-water hose connected to it, because it has a ‘steam’ setting.

And then... ((drum roll)) ... I put in clothes, detergent, chose the setting, and held the button, as instructed.  3... 2... 1...

Chimes sounded, the display read ‘Sensing’ – and the first load of clothes was being washed.

By early evening, the second load of clothes was in the washing machine, and the first load was in the dryer.

And the answer is...  Yes!!!  I like my new washer and dryer.

It was 40° and sunny that day, but with a 30 mph wind, the wind chill was 30°.  I filled the bird feeders, and soon the sparrows and finches and cardinals were swarming them.  Just today I noticed that the goldfinches are starting to acquire the bright yellow feathers of their summer plumage.

I paused what I was doing long enough to make a doctor’s appointment; I needed a spot on my face checked out.  And then I, entirely chicken about this matter, scheduled my first mammogram.  😲  The appointment is tomorrow.

In looking up something on a medical website, I noted that the page is rife with grammatical errors and typos.  They need a proofreader!

Speaking of proofreading... here’s an excerpt from an old journal of mine:

My boss Lona at Nebraska Public Power District asked me during my six-month job evaluation why I stayed so cheerful, even when she dumped so much editing on me (as opposed to the more prestigious typing of this and that Very Important Document).  I was 17.  They’d hired me (against company policy) when I was only 16, thanks to my Business Administrations teacher, Mr. Jackson (no relation), who’s still a good friend – he even came to Victoria’s wedding.

Now, we’d gone through probable evaluation questions in our Business class, and had been well instructed on the answers we should give. 

This question had not been covered.

I replied, smiling, “Well, Lona, I guess it’s just because I like to find fault with people.”

I can still picture my decorous and proper boss tossing her bouffanted head (should be a word) (needs to be a word) and laughing.  In fact, she thought it was so funny, she told the Big Guys up on third floor.  The next day, I innocently dashed up the steps (there were elevators; I took the steps) ---- only to find a couple of the Head Honchos, including the CEO of the WKC (Whole Kit and Caboodle), waiting for me at the 2^nd-floor landing.

“So!” said Whitey in his big booming voice, “I hear you like to find fault with people!”

I thought, That Lona!   I grinned at him and said, “Only if they need it!”

He and his crony laughed, told me to keep up the good work, and headed to the elevator banks, never dreaming how shy I was, or how sweaty my palms had suddenly become from that short exchange.

At a quarter after eleven that evening, I said impatiently to Larry, “Okay, it’s fifteen minutes after midnight in Daytona Beach.  What’s the holdup here?!!!  They said they would issue the winner announcements on February 26^th!”

Larry laughed at me.

I found it, right around midnight.  Daytona Beach AQS winners are listed here.

My quilt was not in the list.  Since I expected nothing, I was not unduly disappointed, nor was I wailing and gnashing my teeth.

If I refuse to expect anything from quilt shows, since I know there are many other gorgeous quilts, I will not be all distraught and disappointed, right?  And I do indeed love the quilts they chose.  It’s always an aggravation if the winning quilts are ugly mutts.  But they are all truly beautiful.

(However, I did ask a friend who lives in the vicinity of Daytona Beach to kindly put bubblegum on the judges’ seats.)

Have you ever belonged to a group, whether physically or online, that had an early-1900s member of the Dragon-Library-Lady Club as a leader?  One of those sorts that suffer from an extremely exaggerated notion of their own importance?  They strive to make all other members of the group very, very small peons.  The fact that their kingdoms – uh, groups – are slowly (or quickly) going extinct fazes them not at all; in fact, it might even make them worse.

I think some women buy shoes that are too tight so that their feet look smaller, and then they’re crabby with everyone all day long because their feet hurt. 

I used to belong to a group for those with any type of quilting machine, from shortarm to longarm.  The women who ran it thought they were the, uh, let’s call them... I know, I know!  BOWOWITYs!  (Bosses of the World, of the World, I Tell You!)  hee hee  BOWOWITYs. 

They adamantly told everyone not to EVER quilt on a ‘good’ quilt until they had quilted 382,982,120,321 (+/-) ‘practice’ quilts, and to never EVER do quilting for others until they had quilted for themselves a good 8 hours a day, for 10 years.  (That first number may or may not be an exaggeration.  Ahem.  The second part is a fact.)

Along came me.

Larry and I (well, Larry) set up my quilting machine (I’d never even seen one until a month or so before I got mine, used), and I quilted a picnic quilt for a friend’s birthday for my ‘practice’ quilt.  Then I quilted a baby quilt for my mother-in-law – and she of course insisted on paying me.  So my second quilt was a ‘paying-customer’ quilt.

Next, I quilted my king-sized Harvest Sun quilt.  After that, the California-king-sized Thimbleberries quilt for Teddy and Amy.

Juvenile great-tailed grackle

The group owners were appalled.  They as good as told me I was “an heretick after the first and second admonition”.  They told everyone else in the group not to follow my bad example.

I responded, “LOL  I run with scissors, too.”  And then I left the group.

Isn’t it something how people one doesn’t know, has never met, will likely never meet, and who really have no say-so over one’s life, can actually make one feel badly?  (Though perhaps I made them feel worse than they made me feel, since I felt partly peeved, partly amused, and nothing more.)

Female great-tailed grackle

I took that experience as a very good lesson to treat my online friends and acquaintances kindly, encouraging and helping whenever possible. 

My father used to say, “When everybody else in the whole world is being troublesome, ... ... ... step right over to the mirror and take a good, long look.”

A friend who was attending the Daytona Beach AQS quilt show on Wednesday sent me pictures of my quilt hanging at the show, writing, “The comments we heard on yours were extremely positive and highly complementary.”  (She assured me that that’s not a rumple in it on the right side; it’s a shadow from the adjoining panel creating an optical illusion.)

Wouldn’t it be clever if we could insert little mics into our quilts and then activate them when the show is on, so we could hear what people say?  (Of course, we’d have to be willing to hear criticism, too...  😉)

Ah, well.  Lack of Big Important Ribbon notwithstanding, I was happy as a lark that day, because I had finished washing the clothes that had piled up since my washing machine went kaput nearly four weeks earlier.  The new flooring is pretty, and the washing machine and dryer are superb.  They are large commercial machines, with countless (or at least numerous and plentiful) bells and whistles, and they’re soooo efficient and quiet.  The Cadillac of washing machines and dryers!

Plus, I was typing on a brand-new ergonomic Logitech keyboard, and that was a pleasure, too.

That night after church, I was in our library with several members of the family, holding Violet.  After a while, I told her, “It’s time for Grandma to go!  Here’s your Daddy,” and I turned to hand her to Kurt.

Violet, in her exuberant way, in that low-pitched voice that really carries, said right in her Daddy’s face, “Go away!!!”

We all cracked up.  We knew perfectly well that sweet little Violet only meant to tell him that her Grandma was ready to go, and was going away.  But that’s not what it sounded like!  hee hee

I washed the bedding Thursday.  It’s always a treat to climb into a bed made with fresh sheets, blankets, and pillowcases – especially if I’ve tossed a couple of Mrs. Meyer’s dryer sheets into the dryer.  The ones I have right now are geranium-scented, and smell sooo good.  There are 25 different scents, would you believe.

The quilt upstairs on my quilting frame was starting to cry from lack of attention.  I scurried up there and got back to quilting, though I felt all out of practice, and kept doing things I wasn’t sure I liked.  😏

Six hours later, most of another row was done – and the batting was off the floor!  As I’ve mentioned before, that bottom layer of cotton/poly batting consists of many pieces, butted and attached together with wide zigzag stitches.  That’s what you call a ‘Frankenbatt’.  🤣

More pictures here.

Friday, February 28^th, was Hannah’s birthday; she’s 39.  Imagine, the majority of our children are in their 30s!  😮

I went to the doctor that afternoon.  The spot on my face was actinic keratosis (a pre-cancerous spot usually caused by sun exposure).  The doctor removed it with a treatment called cryosurgery, in which he sprayed liquid nitrogen on the spot to freeze it.  I am now sporting a red lump of a spot on my cheek.  In three or four weeks, the new skin that replaces the old should be healthy, and the lesion should not return.

It’s a 40-minute drive to the doctor’s office, and driving is tiring for me these days, on account of Blepharospasm (neurological disorder of the eyelids).  Imagine if many times when you blinked, you had to purposefully open your eyes back up.  Ugh.

I didn’t get very much quilting done that day.  I was soooooooo tired after I got home, I only quilted for an hour, during which time Teensy curled up on the rug behind my quilting frame, lying right down on the cord to my machine and then sticking his hind feet underneath the cord.  Why, Teensy, why??

A friend asked, “How do you know you haven’t repeated a pattern?  How do you keep track?  I would forget what I did the day before!”

Well, I have pictures of each hexagon... and each hexie just... feels different.  Now that I’m quilting the hexies with more of a print on the fabric, I’m using that print for a quilting template – so that ensures that they’re different, right there.  At any given moment, I may repeat one without knowing it, though!

I fixed a late supper and went to bed soon after we ate.

Saturday morning, I lollygagged around, slowly getting ‘unstiffened’ from sleeping too long.  Then I headed upstairs to my quilting studio.  Seven hours of quilting later, by comparing older pictures of the quilt with what’s showing on my frame right now, I realized that there are just five rows of hexies left, plus the bottom borders.  Hope springs eternal!  More pictures here.

That afternoon, Teensy slept in his bed at the top landing, just down the hallway from my quilting room door.  He started out curled neatly in it, but then he stretched and wound up sprawling right out of it.

Kurt and Victoria invited us for dinner yesterday after church.  On our way to their house, we got a chip in the brand-new windshield on our Jeep.  waa waa waa

The Chevy pickup got the first chip in its windshield on our trip to Texas.  We need to repair those chips before they turn into cracks.

At Christmas time, Lydia gave me a purple, teal, and fuchsia flowered corduroy skirt that she made from a jumper I used to wear some years ago.  The fabric was still like new, and when she said she could make something with it, I gave it to her rather than taking it to the Goodwill.  I expected her to make a dress for Malinda!

One thin purple cardigan, one bulky cream cardigan, and two purple sweaters later, I have found the perfect purple sweater to wear with that skirt.  Now I need to rummage up a scarf to wear with the outfit.

It got up to 64° yesterday, a bright, sunny day.  Migration is picking up steam, and every day long V-shaped streams of geese fly over.  I love to see the snow geese flying when the sun is shining on them.  Their white feathers shine and sparkle.  When they fly over bright lights at night, they look like pale, winged specters sailing through a dark sky.  A sight to see.

Can you tell the difference between the honk of the snow geese and the honk of the Canada geese?  The snow geese are quite a bit higher in pitch than the Canada geese.

We saw hundreds of Sandhill cranes when we were in Texas last week.  Swarms and swarms of them, circling above fields of grain, lakes, and ponds.

A friend in an online quilting group was telling about a quilting class she took many years ago.  Among other things, she was told that 1) one must never use a sewing machine when quilting; quilting is hand work only; and 2) natural colors, civil war era prints, and fabrics and designs popular in the 1950s or earlier are the only acceptable fabrics to be used in quilts.  Bright colors, children’s prints, and busy design motifs are not acceptable.

Wow.  Whoever taught that class was in such a narrow box, I’m surprised she wasn’t a solid rectangular parallelepiped.

Once upon a time I was standing at a grocery store magazine rack looking at quilting magazines.  Along came a lady, perhaps in her 60s, pushing an elderly lady in a wheelchair who was very likely in her late 80s.  (The lady, not the wheelchair.  The wheelchair was probably not a day past ten years old.)

She stared hard at me.  “Do you quilt?!” she inquired imperially.

I smiled at her.  “Yes,” I answered.

“By hand, or by machine?!” she demanded, giving me a piercing look.

“Machine,” I replied.

“Then it’s not real quilting!!!” she snapped authoritatively.

I grinned; couldn’t keep from it.  “Do you travel?” I queried.  (I knew she did; I had seen them unloading her wheelchair from an out-of-state motorhome in the parking lot.)

“Yes,” she responded in a questioning tone.

“Well,” I told her, “It’s not real traveling, unless you go by horse and buggy.”

The woman pushing the wheelchair burst out laughing.  I wished them a safe journey and proceeded on my way.

As I type, Teensy is on the table.  He doesn’t know I’m watching him.  He sniffed at a bowl still sitting there from our supper.  Then, pulling his lips back from his teeth so far he made wrinkles in his cheeks, he picked up a piece of broccoli in his teeth, put it on the table, pushed it a little farther away with a paw – and commenced to licking the butter out of the bottom of the bowl.  😂

(Yes, yes; I will wash the table off.  I’ll even use Mrs. Meyer’s lavender multi-surface cleaner on it.  You can stop cringing.)

Larry still has a few pieces of trim and part of a wall to finish in my laundry room.  I hope he gets it done soon; my houseplants are looking sad from being relocated to the basement!  Despite the south-facing patio doors and window, it’s too cold and dark for them down there.

I washed a couple of loads of clothes today, enjoying the new washing machine and dryer.

Note:  M&M wrappers left in jeans pockets that then wind up in the dryer will melt just enough to stick to the pristine white barrel of that brand-new dryer, and color it red.  😡🤬😠👿

I did get it off.  Most of it, anyway.

You know, I am often accused of being patient.  No, not by those who know me personally; only by those who see pictures of my quilting and suchlike (though I keep telling them, there is no patience required when one is doing things one enjoys), and recently by someone commenting on my writing.

“Oh, no,” I protested, “That’s not patience; it’s the OISWICQ Syndrome!  (Once I Start Writing, I Can’t Quit.)”  🤣

And with that, I shall quit.  For the moment, anyway.

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