Last Monday, I looked online to see where the
flash flood warnings were located... and found some videos and documentaries
from March 2019’s flooding that I hadn’t seen before.
Never
before were there such floods in Nebraska. Some say it was a 500-year flood; others say
it was a 1,000-year flood. There are
fields that may never be planted again – or at least not for many years –
because river sand, feet or even yards deep, was deposited in them.
I
recognize quite a few of the names in that documentary. We knew James Wilke
and Betty Hamernik, who died in the floods. We went to school with Betty
Hamernik’s son. Larry did auto work for Betty’s husband. Friends
and relatives have worked with Wilke farms and nurseries.
The Loup
River came across Shady Lake Road, a couple of miles to our south, and right up
the driveway of Jeremy and Lydia’s beautiful new home. Larry helped them
sandbag their garage door – but the water stopped just a couple of feet away. Across the road from them, our nephew and his
wife, Nathan and Abbi, had just bought a home and renovated it beautifully.
The house was surrounded with water, but the sandbagging held.
Some of
our friends could only get to and from their homes via boat, and some had
basements fill with water. But none of our close friends or relatives
lost their homes, and only a few belongings were damaged or lost. We were more fortunate than many.
There are
areas along the Missouri where the water has not yet drained away or soaked
into the ground.
As I read
some articles to find out what the farmers have done in the year since those
floods, I learned that some have moved, some won’t be farming – and more than I
expected have recovered their fields.
Some
bulldozed the sand and then had good soil hauled in. Eight inches of sand can be incorporated into
soil; but more than that, and it needs to be taken away. Some farmers had
dunes 8-10 feet high. I read of several who purchased 16-foot blades for
their tractors, and with these they pushed sand into flood-cut ravines and
gullies.
* * * * *
You know,
I no sooner sent out last week’s letter saying that the CDC agrees with me – “Don’t
wash anything, don’t even take baths!” (that’s the right quote, isn’t it?) –
than they reversed (again), and announced that contaminated surfaces can
easily transmit the coronavirus: “Oh,
never mind! Sterilize all boxes, cans, containers! Sterilize your
cats! Sterilize your parakeets!” 🙄
I try to remember
not to touch my face after I’ve been places where contaminated people may have
contaminated Stuff and Things — but the very instant I think about it, my nose
itches.
Late
Tuesday morning found me sitting in the Jeep at the doctor’s office, while Larry and
Loren went inside. Loren was feeling better that day, after being a bit under the weather Monday.
We had an enjoyable ride to
David City, discussing cars, telling old stories about our parents, and
suchlike.
Loren hadn’t eaten
breakfast, so it was a good thing I’d brought him a cup of Cream of Wheat,
which he likes just as well as I do. We
both like most all kinds of cooked cereal, but only if it’s cooked properly, sugared and salted exactly
right. A dab of maple syrup in it is
good... and so are a few berries. I
like oatmeal, grits, rice, bulgur wheat, Ralston, cream of wheat, cream of
rice, hominy...
It was a
cloudy, rainy day, but the bullfrogs, robins, house wrens, Baltimore orioles,
and Eurasian collared doves were in full chorus. When it stopped drizzling, I clambered out of the
Jeep and trotted around Memorial Park across the street.
They gave
Loren quite a few tests, including a CAT scan, blood test, cognitive tests,
etc. We were to return in five days to learn the results.
On our
way home, we took a short detour to Shelby for E-85 gas for the Jeep, which
makes it run considerably better. The convenience
store there makes fresh foods throughout the day, so we got sandwiches, potato
salad, coleslaw, and peach Danishes for lunch.
Loren and Larry ate theirs on the way home, but I saved mine for later.
After
taking Loren home, Larry put a new upper ball joint on the right front of his
red 1994 Chevy pickup, and I got the wool/corduroy/velvet Jewel Box quilt cut
down to a smaller size. It was ready to
have the binding reattached as soon as I got the piece I wanted to use detached
from the other part of the quilt. That
binding was going to have two or three more seams in it than expected, because
I made a couple of holes in the fabric in my zeal with the seam ripper. 🙄
By 4:30
p.m., we were heading off to south Omaha for a grille guard for the 2017 Dodge pickup
Larry is rebuilding. I needed an energy drink! I’d only gotten three
hours of sleep the previous night.
Several
years ago, Bobby and Hannah were having devotions with their children, reading
the story of Samuel. Remember when his mother Hannah was praying
silently, only moving her mouth, and the priest Eli thought she was drunk and
called her a ‘daughter of Belial’? He judged her, but the Bible
says his own sons were ‘sons of Belial’! (meaning ‘wicked’ or ‘worthless’)
Bobby
asked their youngest, Levi, if he knew what a ‘son of Belial’ was. Little
Levi, all wide-eyed and sincere, nodded, “Yes! It’s someone who drinks
beer and wine and energy drinks!”
hahaha
Don’t
tell Levi his Grandma was wanting an energy drink.
Our
excursion took us traveling on a hilly, wooded road alongside the Platte River. The river is very wide there just before it empties
into the Missouri. Beautiful country.
We
decided to see if we might possibly be able to eat at the Cracker Barrel
restaurant. We pulled up outside – and
while Larry politely called and asked if they had room for us (since we knew
they are not serving nearly at capacity yet, on account of the coronavirus),
three couples, including friends of ours from Columbus, drove up, jumped out,
and went striding in!
“Let’s
go, let’s go,” I exclaimed, “before these people take up all the available
tables!”
We
skedaddled in, and soon, for the first time in two and a half months, we were
actually eating in a restaurant. I got
roast beef, fried apples, fresh strawberries and pineapple, corn, a biscuit,
and a cornbread muffin. The cornbread
muffin came home with me and served as breakfast the next morning. Larry had meatloaf, mashed potatoes and
gravy, fried apples, ... and I don’t remember what else. I was much more interested in my own
plate than in his, you see. 😅
I like to
look around Cracker Barrel’s gift shop. Their
soaps and candles smell sooo good.
I used to
save favorite soaps (as opposed to using them). I love handmade soap. Then I discovered, to my dismay, that they
lose their scent after decades of being stashed in a drawer. So... now I use them. Much more satisfactory.
People
now know I am fond of handmade soap, and they give me enough that I have to
make lots of bubbles with them to use up the Mother’s Day bars before I get the
birthday bars, to use up the birthday bars before I get the Christmas bars, and
to use up the Christmas bars before I get the Mother’s Day bars. 😉
In
addition to restaurants, salons are opening back up, too. I opened mine, Wednesday morning, by pulling
out the drawer in the bathroom, retrieving the hair-cutting scissors, and
trimming a couple of inches off my just-washed hair. I’ve been cutting it myself since I was 13
years old. Soon I was all cute and coiffed for the evening church
service. 😆
I remembered
to pick up Larry’s suits from the cleaners, and took five more to be cleaned
whilst I was at it. I dropped off some
things at the Goodwill, then came home and paid some bills and ordered
necessities from Wal-Mart before getting back to work on the Jewel Box quilt.
Noticing
a flash of color near the window, I glanced over, and... Ohhhhhhh! A monarch butterfly had landed on the just-blossoming
lilacs! Pretty, pretty. More
irises were opening, too. I stopped with the quilting and popped outside to
take some pictures. By the time I got there, the monarch had vanished,
and a dark form Eastern Tiger swallowtail had taken its place on the lilacs.
While out
there, I discovered that the rhododendron Caleb and Maria gave me for Mother’s
Day a couple of years ago is blooming, too.
After
church that evening, we went to visit Norma for a little while.
Then we
hurried over to see Kurt and Victoria’s ‘new’ house. They would sleep
there for the first time Friday night.
I spent a couple of hours working in the flower gardens Thursday morning, finishing the front gardens and working
my way around the garden on the west side of the house. I was nearly done with it when robins,
starlings, and grackles began throwing fits and tantrums. All of them had fledglings nearby, were
trying to feed them, and the babies were getting too close to me. Any ol’ birdbrain can tell by looking at me
that I eat baby birds for breakfast, right?
Hearing a
scrabbling overhead, I looked up, and discovered a just-out-of-the-nest baby
grackle trying to perch on a Boston ivy vine way up under the second-story eave
of the house. He teetered one way and
then the other, looking as though he would come crashing down most any
second. Mr. and Mrs. Grackle were
screaming at the tops of their respective lungs.
Since I
had recently reached the end of my energy anyway, and was struggling along with
nothing left but enthusiasm, I decided it was an excellent time to hang up loppers
and snips, head for the bathtub, and leave the birds in peace.
Half an
hour later, my newly-washed hair got an extra-fast dry when I walked around the
house taking videos of the yard, especially the areas I’d been working in: Walk Around the Yard
All the
flowerbeds on the north and west side of the house look nice; now if they’d
just stay that way while I proceed on around to the south and east!
They never do, though.
As I’ve
mentioned a time or two, I switched to decaffeinated
coffee a couple of years ago or so, with an occasional cup of ‘real’
coffee, as Larry calls it, now and then. I had no adverse effects when I
switched, and can tell little difference when I have caffeine.
Recently, Eight O’Clock coffees had a marvelous bargain on a
set of eight flavored coffees: Texas
Praline Pecan, Florida Caramel Flan, Maine Blueberry Crisp, Michigan Cherry
Pie, Florida Berry Shortcake, Vermont Maple, California Toasted Almond, and Hawaii
Coconut Cream. That all sounded good,
but none came in decaf.
However, many of my favorite decaf coffee flavors have been in
short supply. Evidently people have been
making their own coffee instead of having it at the office or at
Starbucks. I looked again at the price of that set of Eight O’Clock
coffees – and ordered it.
As usual, I can tell little difference in how I feel,
drinking caffeinated coffee, though possibly if I drink it on an empty stomach
I’m slightly jittery. I don’t like strong coffee, and generally make
rather weak. Maybe that’s why it has
less effect on me than it does on some people, to switch back and forth.
At the moment, I’m sipping Vermont Maple, and it’s mmmmm, good. 😋
I went to
town to get a refill of Teensy’s thyroid medication and dropped off a few
things at the Goodwill. Both Wednesday and Thursday, there was a line of cars
waiting to drop off things. Thursday, a pickup at the forefront contained
an older couple. They were slower’n molasses
in January. They weren’t doing much of anything (sitting in
the front seat arguing over whether or not to leave their prize possessions,
perhaps?), and nobody else seemed inclined to do anything either. Many
were parked smack-dab beside the donation carts, but do you think anyone would
get out and put their articles into those carts?!
Nope. They just sat.
Five minutes of that was all I could stand. I pulled to
the side, hopped out, grabbed my bags, marched up to one of the carts,
deposited it, asked for a receipt, and got it – via the long-handled grabber
again, which only makes sense in protecting her from me, and not
the other way around, since the girl had to touch that receipt in order to
write it – and she didn’t even have her mask over her nose and mouth; she was
protecting only her chinny-chin-chin. I
then trotted back to my Jeep, smiling at all the patiently(?) waiting other
drivers who had been both in front of and behind me. They did not smile
back.
Probably they were peeved that I was done and departing – but
none of them even pulled forward or got out to put anything in the carts! What in the world.
That night, I rebound the
cut-down wool/corduroy/velvet Jewel Box quilt, originally made in April of 2012.
I had once thought to just toss it, but
Larry howled. I hate to see a grown man
cry.
The quilt was a disappointment, because
despite prewashing everything in hot water with color catchers twice, a couple
of the reds ran in subsequent washes, soaked into one particular white, turned
those patches pink, and spoiled the Jewel Box effect. They behaved
exactly like Color Catchers, every time I washed that quilt.
Also, I didn’t use batting, figuring the
quilt was thick and heavy enough. But I discovered I don’t like
quilts with no batting. Plus, one of the pieces I used for backing shrunk
a little more with every washing, and the thing didn’t lie flat. Another
thing: I didn’t like how some of the fabric feels whilst I was a-tryin’
to sleep under it. Also, it’s too heavy. Obviously the thing to do
was to cut it down and create throws out of it.
So there’s the first throw. The
pantograph is Bear, Moose, and Pines, from Urban Elementz. Quilting was
done on my old HQ16. I zigzagged the binding, because the wool is a loose
weave and I didn’t want it to ravel.
Larry promptly used the throw when he took
a nap on the loveseat. He was happy as a
turtle on a conveyor belt with his ‘smallered’ quilt (Victoria’s word, when she
was little).
This picture shows the original quilt in
2012.
Another
reason Larry likes the quilt: the
wide-waled green corduroy on part of the back was left over from a jumper I had
when I was a teenager. Larry helped me
cut it out on one of our dates. Then I
made him a western shirt with that same green corduroy for the yokes, plackets,
and cuffs. The rest of the shirt was a
soft yellow-cream linen-like (or maybe chambray) fabric.
Friday, the
Schwan lady came. We have a full freezer
now.
I spotted
baby house finches at the feeder and dashed for my camera. They’re so funny, as they beg for food from
their papa. They look bigger than him,
all fluffy and floofed, tails up, wings flapping – but when he finally gets a
craw full of seeds and turns to feed them, they hunker down low, open wide, and
make high-pitched peeps, doing their bestest to sound like wee hatchlings.
And then
there was the pretty little male house finch trying to impress his lady love –
but his serenading went totally unappreciated:
Spurned Suitor
I took
Loren some supper that evening and returned his clothes that I’d washed. He’d
mowed his lawn that morning, and trimmed the trumpet vine, too. It all
looked quite nice.
When
Larry got off work, he helped some friends paint the basement floor at Kurt and
Victoria’s house bright white.
Everything looks clean and fresh now.
The downstairs area will be a family room/playroom.
Saturday,
I was all primed up to work in the yard – but it started raining before the sun
came up, and kept it up all morning.
It was
Kurt and Victoria’s moving day. The house they’re moving into is a little
smaller, but newly renovated – and the month rent is less. The money
saved will go toward a down payment on a house someday.
That day,
I worked on the Log Cabin blocks that used to make up the border on the Jewel
Box Log Cabin quilt. It’s taking a year and a day to remove the quilting!
But soon
the blocks will be ready to put back together in some sort of a throw.
This has been almost as much work as cutting and piecing in the first
place! Almost.
I was
glad I saved part of that quilt when Hannah and Joanna visited for a little
while that afternoon, and Hannah pointed out various fabrics that she
remembered as skirts, jumpers, vests, etc.
Do you
know, that quilt was supposed to have been a throw for Larry in the first
place, but it grew. And grew. And grew. He did
like it as a king-sized bed quilt, but he likes it even better now.
At
suppertime, I caught an iridescent glitter at the front window – and there was a
tiny ruby-throated hummingbird buzzing around the lilacs, collecting nectar lickety-split
from one tiny blossom after another. I promptly got out the sugar and
made some nectar for the hummingbird feeder.
We had
Sunday School yesterday for the first time in 2 ½ months. No one went to
separate classes, though; everyone stayed in the main sanctuary in their
assigned seats.
After the
service, we took Loren some dinner, picked up the flowers at the cemetery, and
dropped off a little heater at Kurt and Victoria’s house, because the paint
they put on the basement floor isn’t drying in one particular spot where there
used to be tiles.
This
morning I filled the bird feeders, and soon they were again swarmed with
birds.
A little
after noon, we picked up Loren and took him to his doctor’s appointment in
David City to learn the results of last week’s tests.
When we
arrived to get him up at noon, his rear garage was open, his big lawn tractor
out. Larry shut the door.
“Strange
things have been happening around here!” Loren said. “That door keeps
opening.”
Now...
that can happen now and then, if some frequency somewhere is right (or
at least it used to happen, with older doors)... but most likely, he
opened the door and forgot to close it. (I just looked that up,
about garage doors randomly opening, and found a website wanting to explain to
me why my furniture moves across the room during the night.) 😲
(And no, I don’t know why the ginkhead who
wrote that article thinks the furniture moves. I refrain from reading malarkey, if at all
possible.)
We got
back a bit before 2:00 p.m. Loren’s tests were good, healthwise. He
didn’t pass the word test. He did all right on the numbers test, and would likely do better if he could see better; he has a cataract.
The CAT
scan showed a slight shrinkage of one section of the left side of the brain;
that’s what’s causing the memory problems. The doctor prescribed a
medication that he hopes will stabilize this for a while. He is to take
one tablet a day for three months, and then we’ll go back and see how he’s
doing. The doctor said it was nothing to be alarmed about; the scan actually looked quite normal for a person of that age. So that was good news.
Loren
went and picked up his medication later, then came out to our
house to pay me for the gas we used taking him to David City. I didn’t
want to take his money, but he insisted. I gave him a pill sorter to help
him keep track of his tablets.
It’s Kurt’s
birthday today; he’s 23. And the jeans I
ordered for him will not arrive until tomorrow.
Rats! I thought I ordered them in
plenty of time. Meanwhile, birthday
gifts I ordered for other members of the family who have birthdays in June have
already arrived, even though I ordered them later.
I’ve slopped
the fowl and watered the felines. There’s housework to be done, and then
I’ll work on the Jewel Box quilt.
I walked
around the side of the house and discovered that the peonies are all in bloom.
Ooops, I just
cleaned my glasses... put them in the case and donned the other pair... and
wondered why they were still dirty.
Maybe I
should take that cognitive test myself.
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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