Journal: Scanning, Scanning, Scanning

Last week, as the week before, I spent every moment available scanning old pictures.  A large bin full of albums and a few framed pictures is finished, and another bin is started on.

Here’s a picture of Hester sweeping the front hallway, taken June 11, 1994.  

She still likes things nice and neat.  When she got her first little broom for Christmas at age 2 ½, she cried in delight, “Oh, I got a little sweep!”  Leaving all the rest of her unopened gifts behind, she dashed for the kitchen, calling back over her shoulder, “I’m gonna go broom the kitchen!”

Tuesday evening, Hannah and Joanna came to choose some of Norma’s clothes for Joanna.

After they left, I went back to scanning pictures.  This is one of my senior pictures.  It was 1977, and I was 16. 

Larry came in from mowing and went to take his evening siesta in the tub. 

A little before 12:30 a.m., I went downstairs.  I thought I saw a flying shadow as I came down the stairs... but when I stood still and watched, I didn’t see anything, so I proceeded on into the gift-wrapping room.  When I exited, there was the suspected bat – and of course he swooped right at my head.

I fled up the stairs.

An hour and a half later, I finished scanning a humongous album of about 800 photos.  I needed something else downstairs (two flights down from my upstairs office), so I went trepidaciously back down the stairs, going along stealthily and cautiously, looking for bats — and found a spider with a body as big as a medium-sized mouse in the bathtub down there. 

I nevah, evah exaggerate.

I grabbed a nearby sponge mop and squished him.

He sat on nonchalantly, unsquished and unfazed.

I ker-smushed him.

He, un-ker-smushed, pointed at me, jeered, and slapped his knee(s).

I turned the mop just so and brought the hard end down on him.

The spider laughs no more.

Here’s Dorcas on her 10^th birthday, 07-04-92.

The photo below was taken at Grandma Jackson’s and Aunt Lynn’s place in 1984.  

The horse is Prince; Aunt Lois, Aunt Lynn, and Aunt Lorraine rode him when they were young, as did Larry and his siblings.  The horse lived to be over 30 years old.

Here are Keith and Hannah on their Big Wheels.  Or Little Wheels, as the case may be.

Hannah said, “I remember that being my favorite toy as long as I fit it.”

She had only one speed:  as hard as she could go.

Friday, I sent off yet more documents to Transamerica Life Insurance company, trying (again) (and again) to get them to send us the money for the policy Norma purchased especially for funeral expenses.  It’s been a month and a half since she passed away.

Then I tried to create an online account at Loren’s bank for him, but didn’t have his debit card number at the time – and so got locked out, because I continued without it.  ’Tupid site didn’t say I’d get locked out! – it gave me the option of continuing! 

So now I have to go there in person – wearing a ’tupid mask – and... uh... do sumpthin’. 

One institute after another seems to have no solid understanding of what Power of Attorney means.  Verizon... the insurance company... and now the bank all tell me they have to talk to Loren... have him fill out papers... have him there to sign...  Good grief, have they no knowledge whatsoever about Alzheimer’s??

What is it with people?  Do they just like being in places of authority, where they can make things difficult for others?  It would certainly seem that way, and sometimes I think it’s the absolute truth.  

I will say that the people at his local bank are kind, and try hard to be helpful.  I told the man on the phone that I’d rather Loren didn’t have to come; he won’t totally understand what’s going on, and is liable to worry about it – and, I added, “Just to give you one little clue, he thinks Norma is still alive, and comes to his house fairly often to do the dishes.” 

He was immediately sympathetic, and told me I could come alone.

Rich people don’t have to cope with all this, I think; their lawyers do it for them.  😕

Verizon is particularly difficult.  They demand that they absolutely must talk with Loren on the phone before they’ll allow me to do anything with his account, never mind the fact that they have the Power of Attorney papers, and Norma’s death certificate (she was ‘owner’ of the account).

I quit trying to be nice, and said, “No, you’re wrong about that.  I don’t believe you understand what Power of Attorney does.”  And I asked for a manager. 

The manager wasn’t much more help – but at least she spoke an understandable English.  Why do companies hire people to man their phones, who cannot be well understood by the majority of the people who call in?  They were supposed to review the papers I emailed them and call me.  That was two weeks ago.  🙄

I finally just signed into their Verizon account and gave a stab at a possible PIN – and it was right.  So I was able to cancel Norma’s smartphone line and jetpack (Internet) and pay the bill – the very day before it was due.

Here’s Teddy at age one, August 13, 1984.

Thursday afternoon when I took Loren some food, I adjusted the game cam a bit.  It was aimed too high – 50% of the picture was sky – and tilted a bit.  It’s better now.  There I am in my Jeep, just leaving his house.

I then drove to Humphrey to put E-85 in the Jeep, and then got back to scanning old pictures again.  Here’s Dorcas at age 2, 1984.

Taking a little break to go through some correspondence, I read about a quilting friend’s troubles and trials with the quilt she’s trying to put together.  “Oh well,” she finished, “trail and area, that is what quilting is all about, I guess.  It’s learning from your mistakes.”

‘Trail and area!’  haha  I must put that in my memory bank for possible future use.

The same lady often writes something like this:  “As I was cleaning threw out the house...” 

It always stops me cold, while I ponder how she could throw out her entire house.

Two new specimens of the Asian Giant Hornet, aka ‘murder hornet’, have turned up in the Pacific Northwest, suggesting that the invasive species made it through the winter despite efforts last year to stamp out the menace to North America’s honeybees.

Dubbed the ‘murder hornet’ to the annoyance of entomologists, the predator earns its nickname from its proclivity to nab a flying honeybee and carry it home to nourish young hornets.  Raiding parties of several dozen Asian Giant Hornets can kill whole hives containing thousands of bees in a few hours.  When these hornets are finished attacking, they can leave what amounts to piles of bees with their heads torn from their bodies.

The world’s largest hornets, they are about the size of an average thumb and they have sharp, serrated jaws and stingers that can pierce through denim jeans.

In this photo, Chris Looney, a Washington State entomologist, displays a dead Giant Hornet on his jacket.

After multiple alarming news articles and broadcasts regarding this hornet, ‘sightings’ have been reported all around the United States.  However, the giant hornet is still localized to the Pacific Northwest.  The hornet that people are often seeing is the cicada killer, a plenty big hornet in its own right, but not really comparable with the Giant.

Such was the case recently when people in San Antonio, spooked by recent reports, feared they were being invaded by murder hornets.

Reminds me of when people in Omaha thought they were seeing a mountain lion in the outlying areas.  Most were actually seeing bobcats (much smaller than cougars or mountain lions), and some even got in a panic over a large house cat.

We do have a few mountain lions in the state, and some have followed the Loup River and shown up just a mile south of our house.  Some of our friends who ride and hike the trails and country roads along the river have come upon mountain lions in the early morning hours.  Made their hair stand up on end.  They changed their biking/hiking routes for a couple of months, until it was verified that the lions had moved farther west into the arroyos and gullies of the Sandhills.  Jeremy and Lydia, who live near the river, didn’t let their children go out alone after dusk until they knew the big cats had moved on.

As I worked my way through a big album, I found another of my senior pictures.  It was taken in mid-1977, so I was 16.  I had fun sewing that dress.

A quilting friend was telling about her sister’s family losing their home to fire last week.  Among all their possessions were many quilts her mother had made, including one for each child.  One had been given as a graduation gift just weeks earlier.

My friend is already in the process of helping her mother re-create those quilts, so that hopefully the family will have them when their new home is ready.

A surprising number of other quilting ladies chimed in with their sympathies, telling about fires they had had, too.

I’m so sorry for all those who have had house fires.  Fire is so devastating.  

We had a house fire in 1986.  We were able to save a number of things, but Hannah and Dorcas’ room was destroyed.  Dorcas, who was about 6, would look at pictures, see a lost doll, and say sadly, “That was my favorite doll.”  She’d spot a dress she no longer had, and say, “That was my favorite dress.”  If she thought of something – anything – now gone forever, it was always that mournful refrain, “That was my favorite ----- (fill in the blank).”

Friends, family, and insurance replaced most of what we lost, but there are always a number of those irreplaceable items.  

Our fire started in the morning, shortly after Larry had gone to work (he owned an auto rebuilding shop back then).  We were all sleeping – but the children heard the fire crackling in a downstairs closet (electrical fire), and Dorcas ran to get me.  I ran down the stairs two at a time – and by the time I got there, fire extinguisher in hand, entirely half of the closet was full of flames to the ceiling.  The extinguisher spit out one drip of foam and was done – because, unbeknownst to me, one of the little urchins had emptied it, in an evident quest to become a fireman or a scientist when he grew up.

We raced back up the stairs (three of the children had bedrooms downstairs).  I dashed for the little boys’ room (we had five children at the time, ages 1 ½, almost 3, almost 4, 5, and 6), grabbing the phone as I ran, and dialing 911.  I got a snotty dispatcher who, when I said, “We have a fire in our house, burning in a downstairs closet!” said in a sarcastic tone, “Ma’am, do you actually see flames, or do you just smell smoke?”

I said in the same level tone of voice with which I’d started the conversation, with a touch of mockery added to it, “Ma’am, it’s a raging inferno.”

So she yelped at me, “Well, get out of the house!” – and hung up on me.

I guess she finally got the picture?  😂

I scooped up Joseph from his crib, grabbed Teddy’s hand, called for Keith to get our Black lab, Ebony, put Teddy’s hand in Hannah’s, and picked up Calico Kitty.  Black smoke was already billowing out the floor vents.  As we headed out the door, I thought, Oh, the poor little hamster and the parakeet!  I looked back – and the hallway was full of smoke.  So I followed the children out and pulled the door shut behind me.  There are lots of parakeets and hamsters in the world.  There is only one each of my children.  And of me, for that matter.

The hamster, in a cage on the floor, survived.  The bird did not.

Here’s some backyard fun from the summer of 1984 – Keith, Teddy, Dorcas, and Teddy in their wading pool.

I went on scanning photos...  Uh, do I repeat myself over and over and over again?  The same old thing, ad infinitum, ad nauseum?

Ah, well.  Remember the old Baptist preacher who, when training young pastors, admonished, “Tell ’em what yer goin’ to tell ’em, then tell ’em, and, finally, tell ’em what you told ’em.”  😃 

So I’ll just blame my penchant for retelling things on the fact that I am the daughter of a Baptist preacher.  heh

Dorcas was delighted when we got this rocking horse.

Below is Keith at age six months and at age one year. 

Saturday evening, Amy and Emma came to look at Norma’s clothes, and Emma found a few things that she liked and that would fit her.  Jeffrey came, too, and I gave him one of his birthday gifts – a book by Richard Wurmbrand, Tortured for Christ, the story of Mr. Wurmbrand’s life behind the Iron Curtain.  He was a Romanian evangelical Christian minister of Jewish descent.  In 1948, having become a Christian 10 years before, he publicly said Communism and Christianity were incompatible.  As a result, he experienced imprisonment and torture by the then Communist regime of Romania for his beliefs.  After serving a total of fourteen years, he was ransomed for $10,000.  His colleagues in Romania urged him to leave the country and work for religious freedom from a location less personally dangerous.  After spending time in Norway and England, he and his wife Sabina, who had also been imprisoned, emigrated to America and dedicated the rest of their lives to publicizing and helping Christians who are persecuted for their beliefs.

Two other gifts I ordered for Jeffrey won’t come until Tuesday.  Everything is soooo slow these days.  Those things should’ve come Saturday.

That night, Larry got home late – about 11:00 p.m. – after working on his friend’s vehicles in Genoa.  “What did you have for supper?” he asked, peering hungrily around the kitchen.

Now, if I fix a nice big supper for Larry, he will undoubtedly pick up something at a drive-through or a convenience store to eat, and not be hungry when he gets home.  If, on the other hand, I fix only enough for myself, he will most certainly arrive famished.  Murphy’s Law.

I named a few things I’d eaten:  broccoli, pears, cottage cheese, cheese curds, pretzel crackers, cran-grape juice.

“No meat?” asked Larry.

“No meat.”

He sighed.  “If it wasn’t for me,” he informed me, “You’d be a vegetable!”  😂

After he ate, he went in the living room and began listening to something on his tablet.  Before long, he fell asleep, and soon it was anybody’s guess what the tablet was playing.  Near as I could tell, it was a squadron of pelicans declaring war on a flamboyance of flamingos.  Or maybe they were just laughing at them.

Hey, whataya know! In scanning old pictures, I came across a picture of Larry in the three-piece suit I made for him when we were both 17.  He’s 18 here, and it’s 1979.

I gave him the watch fob, chain, and pocket watch for Christmas, 1978.  The set had a matching pocketknife.  Hmmm... here we go!  Larry found them in his jewelry box, and I took a picture of them.  Larry used the pocket watch so much, he wore some of the finish off.

Back to the photo scanning!  I have a looong ways to go before this project is over.

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