Tuesday morning, I woke up and thought, Hey, I think I’m getting well! I felt much better that day. I could actually smell my yummy hand-milled soap when I took a bath that morning. And my Toasted Pecan coffee tasted good. The ‘feeling good’ and the return of smell and taste has ebbed and flowed a bit over the last few days, but the fact remains, I have recovered.
I’m quite fond of handmade soaps.
There’s a little boutique called The Soap Shop in Idaho
Springs, Colorado, that I love to go in. They have a bubble machine over
the front door that sends fragrant bubbles all the way down the street.
My favorite of their soaps is Lilac Breeze.
It smells just like the blossoms on my lilac bushes in the spring. I need to order more!
A
friend and I were discussing a certain acquaintance we both know who considers
herself quite knowledgeable about, oh, just all sorts of things – health
and politics, in particular. You can
imagine what direction discussions of that nature head off to, in this
day and age.
“I
wish she would learn how to social distance,” remarked my friend.
I laughed, “Just tell her that, the next time she starts pontificating on something.” hee hee
By late Tuesday afternoon, I had my
customer’s quilt back loaded and steamed.
I use my Rowenta Steam Station as I’m loading quilts on the frame; much
easier than trying to iron large quilts and backings on the ironing board.
A quilting friend who’s 93 years old
emailed to comment on the Dear Jane quilt:
“This makes me want to pull out mine and work on it again.” Then she added, “I’m not fond of intense
quilting. In this case, the
quilting enhanced the quilt. In my own
quilts, quilting will be used to cover the mistakes.”
Hee hee
That bright lady always makes me laugh.
My late sister-in-law thought that
there was only one way to finish a quilt, and that was to tie them with
yarn. She once informed me, back before I got a quilting machine, that it
totally ruined quilts when, after going to all the work of piecing them
together, a person ‘scribbled thread all over the top of them.’
When Larry got home from work, we went
to Hy-Vee and picked up the groceries I had ordered online the previous
night. Very nice, to be able to do that,
when neither of us felt like wandering about in the store – nor should we have,
if we were still contagious.
Having never picked up groceries from
Hy-Vee before, it took us about five minutes to discover just where we were
supposed to go. Larry nearly had a
meltdown, driving around the building and then through the parking lot in the
direction a Hy-Vee employee told me (via cellphone) to find the grocery pick-up
trailer. You’d’ve thought we were in
direct line for a nuclear attack.
I considered pummeling him to death
with the bagels, but I wanted to eat them.
A few things were unavailable, and I
know perfectly well that if we had’ve been inside the store, we could’ve found other
items we like just as well. I had listed
some substitutes online when I ordered, but evidently they didn’t have those
specific items, either. Oh, well; it was
quite nice having all that work done for us, really. Their frozen
vegetables and meats and fruit cannot equal Schwan’s; but... we’ll make do, I
guess. And the selection is larger.
Home
again, I put away the groceries, then got the quilt top loaded and started
quilting it. This quilt is called ‘Frolic’;
it’s a Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt.
I needed to hurry, because another customer quilt was
arriving the very next day.
Imagine the horror of getting two
quilts mixed up and returning the wrong one to the wrong customer. 😲
I ... W.i.l.l ... N.o.t ... D.o ...That. I won’t!
Not a single soul responded to that
woman who griped about me putting the Dear Jane quilt on my deck – and there
are nearly a quarter of a million people on that quilting group! I was
surprised no one answered her or clicked any icon whatsoever on her
comment. Maybe they all decided if I wasn’t going to acknowledge her,
they wouldn’t either? Maybe they were
all thinking, “Internet Troll! Internet
Troll!” heh
On this quilt, I used a pantograph called ‘Pink
Hibiscus’, pale silver 60-weight Bottom Line thread on top, and a peachy-melon 60-weight
Bottom Line thread in the bobbin.
Every now and then, because of the
fabric or the batting or the thread, or who knows, the weather in Bermuda,
putting different colors of thread top and bottom causes difficulties – little ‘pokies’
of the ‘other’ color show up on the wrong side.
I
like to match thread to fabric top and bottom; but sometimes it’s more of a
headache than it’s worth, and I then just put the same color on the back as I’m
using on the front. This does make the
quilting on the back show up prettily – in which case one hopes the stitches
are nice!
Wednesday, in expectation of a customer
quilt that was supposed to arrive via UPS, requiring a signature, I made sure
to be up early. UPS usually comes before
noon – sometimes a long time before noon.
I waited patiently all morning. In the early afternoon, I waited some more. By late afternoon, I was waiting with all my
might and main. When I finally totally gave
up on them bringing that quilt that day, along came Jones! Er, the UPS
man.
And then, he didn’t even have me sign
for it after all, because one of us might give the other germs, you know.
Our
neighbor man brought us a bag of tomatoes from his garden and a carton of eggs
from his chickens. They’re so generous
with us. And nothing beats tomatoes
fresh from the garden! I had a peanut
butter/tomato sandwich for breakfast this morning. Mmmmm, mmmm.
Remember,
toast that bread, if you try this sandwich, or don’t you dare blame me
if you don’t like it.
By the time I’d been quilting for three
hours that day, it felt like ten. Yes, I
was on the mend, but definitely not up to par yet (or ‘up to power’, as a
friend of ours used to say).
“If I have enough oomph to finish a
quilt tonight,” I told my customer whose quilt had just arrived, “I’ll start on
yours first thing tomorrow. If I fizzle, it’ll be later in the day when I
get yours loaded.”
I not only fizzled, but I had also
seriously underestimated how much I still had left to quilt, even though the rows on this quilt only
take 15 minutes to quilt, unlike the last quilt, whose rows took about four
hours. That’s the difference between
pantographs and custom quilting.
As usual, Teensy was sprawled on the rug behind the frame, right where I needed to walk, and Tiger was cuddled in his Thermabed under the frame.
And the neighbor man combining his corn at the top of
the hill to the north was distracting me.
Friday, a friend told about her cousin who
made the error of taking a shortcut through a particularly unsavory part of
Atlanta. It was midday and she thought it would be
okay. About a mile off the Interstate
she stopped at a traffic light and four young adult black males stepped into
the roadway in front of her car. She was
driving a BMW SUV. As they started
walking towards her, she cut hard left into the open left lane beside her and
ran through the red light.
She heard a pop and her windshield cracked.
She thought someone had thrown a rock at
it. But something didn’t look right in the
rearview mirror. A mile farther on, she
pulled into a parking lot to check things out – and found a bullet hole in the
rear window, the middle seat and her windshield.
She called the police.
A detective called her that evening and
said they could not find the shell casing or any bullet fragments, and there
were no cameras nearby.
The bullet missed her by about 15
inches. Had someone been in the rear
middle seat, they would have been hit.
Yikes, that’s too close for comfort.
One time we were hauling a load of
enclosed trailers home from Elkhart, Indiana. We had the six-door pickup,
a long slant trailer, and six or seven of the children. There was
construction on I80 south of Chicago, and the detour had a low bridge that we
wouldn’t have fit under, so we tried weaving our way around it.
We had no GPS, no smartphones, no city
map, and no knowledge of ‘good or bad neighborhoods’.
We wound up in an unsavory part of the
city. One where able-bodied young men lounged about in the middle of the
day. (That’s never good, you know.) And we seemed to hit every
single light on red.
We were the only white people to be
seen in the vicinity; we had an exceptionally nice (and extremely noticeable)
vehicle where all other vehicles looked old and decrepit; and there were three
big, new, enclosed trailers on the slant trailer. We were o.u.t...o.f...place.
At the first red light, I hit the ‘Lock
All Doors’ button. The kids were all quiet, staring big-eyed out the
windows at people with dreadlocks to their kneecaps, wild afros in all colors
of the rainbow (and clothes to match), or giant mats of hair that must not have
been combed since birth.
The streetwalkers stared back.
We came to another red light. I
hit the ‘Lock All Doors’ button.
After the third or fourth time of this,
Teddy snickered.
On down the street we went – and the
light up ahead turned yellow.
“Hit the Lock button, Mama,” said
Teddy, “the light’s turning red!”
After that, if some large lady looked
our way, one of the kids would call out, “HIT THE LOCK BUTTON, MAMA!” If
a rattly car pulled up beside us, another kid would yell, “HIT THE LOCK BUTTON,
MAMA!” A couple of boys went by on skateboards. “HIT THE LOCK
BUTTON, MAMA!” A mangy dog trotted down the sidewalk and stopped at a
hydrant. “HIT THE LOCK BUTTON, MAMA!” A baby came toddling down a pebbled
walk. “HIT THE LOCK BUTTON, MAMA!”
By the time we were ten blocks through
that area, those kids of ours were all laughing uproariously, and a whole lot
of the people who looked our way grinned, then laughed, then waved. I
have no idea what they thought we were laughing about, but seeing all those
kids laughing like that must’ve tickled their funnybones.
But we were sure glad to get out of
that neighborhood.
Larry and I were on the uphill swing Thursday,
feeling better every day. We were as sure as we could be without being diagnosed
that we had Covid-19.
It was an odd virus. Neither of
us had much congestion at all (even though Larry sounded congested when
he talked). Not much in the way of runny noses... and neither of us
coughed much, either, though Larry’s chest hurt one day. Our biggest
complaint was the aches and pains, headache, nausea, and general unwell
feeling.
“I’m gettin’ bettah!” I told him.
“Just feel my nose.”
One friend mentioned that a nurse had
told him that the main symptoms of Covid-19 are an upset stomach and a dry
cough. In view of that, he wondered if
we may have merely had standard flu symptoms.
“Well, thanks, doc!” I retorted. “Hmmph.
I wanted to have Covid-19.”
(Remember when Madeline [of the ‘Twelve
Little Girls in Two Straight Lines’ fame] had her appendix out, and all the
other little girls in the boarding house wailed, “Boo hoo! We want our appendix out too!”?)
Here’s the latest list of symptoms put
out by the CDC:
Fever or chills
Cough
Shortness of breath or difficulty
breathing
Fatigue
Muscle or body aches
Headache
New loss of taste or smell
Sore throat
Congestion or runny nose
Nausea or vomiting
Diarrhea
We had every symptom, some worse than
others. And it lasted a couple of weeks, which is the usual time for a ‘mild’
case of Covid-19, and several days longer than ‘regular’ flu.
But... ah don’t want nobody stuffin’ an
icepick up mah po’ leeto nosy to the back of mah brain, so ah’m not a-gonna git
tested, huh-uh, nosiree! Not ’less’n ah’m on mah last leg, ah’m not.
So I can’t really argue my case, can
I? 😏
A certain nurse informed us, “It isn’t
time for the flu yet, so anybody in your circle that’s sick has Covid-19.”
And then she added, “And some will die!”
Cheery dear.
I’ve never been totally convinced she
knows everything there is to know, however, seeing as how she flunked her
nursing exam more than once and had to retake the test several times.
Anyway, we’re definitely recovering.
My Vermont Maple coffee tastes just like Vermont Maple coffee again! I
can even smell it. Mmmmm...
Thursday afternoon, I couldn’t get Loren
on either his landline or his cell phone. Instead, I got a recording that
said, “This is Verizon Wireless. Your number cannot be completed as
dialed.”
Had Verizon turned off his account
since he’s not the primary owner, and they rejected Norma’s death certificate
and my Power of Attorney papers? I had not received a bill lately.
So... I fixed him some food, took it to
him, and checked out his phones. When I tried to dial out, I learned that
they had indeed been turned off for lack of payment.
Right.
Why would they expect to get paid, when they had not sent out a bill?
Every other utility, company, and
financial institution that I contacted with the necessary information was helpful
and considerate. Verizon alone refuses
to cooperate or help us.
In addition to food, I had laundry for Loren. When I first arrived, he was whispering,
because he thought Norma was in the bedroom napping. He sneaked into the
room with the bag of laundry, then with some shirts on hangers – and was a bit
surprised to discover that no one was in there; it was a pile of clothes on the
bed that had fooled him.
When I got home, I found the number I
had been given previously by a Verizon employee, whereby I could call, get a link
to a webpage, and make a payment without actually signing into the account.
The number wouldn’t connect.
But suddenly a real, live person came
on the line, helped me make an online payment, and reconnected the phones. She was all sympathetic and nice, but no, she
couldn’t do anything to help me get that account changed into either Loren’s
name or mine. She started giving me a
number to call – same number I’d been given multiple times before, so I joined
in with her and recited the number at the same time she was saying it. 🤣
She finished (couldn’t stop, once she
got going, evidently), paused, and asked, “So you know that number?”
“Yes,” I said, laughing, “and it never
did me a lick of good, talking to anybody there.”
She apologized, and went through a list
of what should probably be done – and of course, “Your brother will have to be
on hand to give his consent.”
Someone needs to give an in-depth
lesson with the powers-that-be at that company, and teach them exactly what
Power of Attorney means! Good grief.
Larry has been planning to take Loren
to the Verizon office in town to set up a new account. But... these
things don’t get done, what with Larry’s long work hours; and then we both got
sick. But at least Loren’s phones were
back on.
The nice and sympathetic lady then
proceeded to call Loren’s number (while I was on the extension), and when he
answered, she jabbered off a whole litany of questions and information,
lickety-split, pell-mell.
Seems the Verizon employees also need a
leeto edjeecation about how to talk to people with Alzheimer's – or just plain people,
for that matter. Wouldn’t a person with
any brain know that one can’t just rattle and reel off page after page of
information, baloney, important data, blarney, and other miscellaneous tripe,
balderdash, and twaddle to someone in the early stages of Alzheimer's, and
expect them to have any idea what was just said??
Persons with a dab of common sense
should know this without having to be told.
All she needed to say was, “Your phones
are back on again, and all is well!”
Instead, she started her speel with, “I’m calling because your sister is
concerned about your safety!”
AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH. I did not say that. In fact, I told her I’d just been
there with some food for him, checked his phones, and learned why they were
disconnected. She’s another of those of
whom her third grade teacher probably wrote on her report card, “Does not
listen and comprehend well.” (But she was
sympathetic and nice.)
At one point, Loren informed her that
his wife (speaking of Janice) had died six years ago. That derailed her momentarily, as she knew
Norma had passed away in June; but she was soon back on track with additional information and misinformation, whether applicable or inapplicable.
The lady then disconnected with Loren,
leaving him wondering What on earth, and went on talking to me. My phone soon started ringing; Loren was
calling. I’d known he would, having been
informed I was concerned about his safety.
🙄
I thanked the lady (she was nice
and sympathetic, you know), and managed to hang up and then answer Loren’s call
before it quit ringing. He, of course,
now had the notion that we absolutely must hotfoot it to Verizon Headquarters
(wherever that is) immediately or sooner, before, oh, I don’t know, the
phones blew up, or something.
I assured him, “The phones are back on
again, and we have a month to take care of your account. Larry will do it as soon as he’s feeling
better – and he’s getting better now every day.”
Thus reassured, he calmed down, and
life went on.
The very next afternoon, Larry took
Loren with him to the Verizon office and had his phone lines transferred to our
account. That will cut $40 off his bill
each month, imagine that. He was very
happy about that, immediately saying, “That’ll save me $480 a year!”
And no more worry about getting the
bill in the mail, as I receive them online.
Later that afternoon, my customer whose
Dear Jane quilt I had quilted wrote to tell me, “Dear Jane arrived safe and
sound. It is beautiful and I love it. I still can’t believe I made
it. The colors are much brighter than I remembered. Does the quilting brighten the look of a
quilt? Thank you so much.”
I answered, “I’m so glad it got there
safely! I always worry, until it does.
“Your quilt’s colors are brighter and
prettier than many other Dear Janes I have seen. Or maybe it brightened
up, because it was so happy over all the compliments it received! hee hee
“It’s a treasure, that’s for
sure. Thank you for letting me have a little part in completing it.”
Speaking of
colors... One of my blind friends has a
gadget that, when held next to something, audibly announces the color. The school children were once totally struck
with hilarity when, upon holding the thing next to one of the girls’ hair, it
announced in its robot voice, “Pale. Green.” Her hair was quite blond. 😆
The lady with the Dear Jane quilt
responded, “You are so welcome. I have saved your notes and the pictures
and hope to incorporate them into the journal I am making about this quilt. If it so moves you, if you would like to send
a little blurb about your experience quilting it I will include that
also. Thank you again. Blessings;
you are certainly special in my book.”
Now, wasn’t that nice?
So here’s my little description of
quilting the Dear Jane quilt:
When JoeAnn, my good online quilting friend,
asked me to quilt her lovely Dear Jane quilt, I was pleased to be given the
privilege. She asked for a light-to-custom quilting job, which I think
was the best possible choice, as this accentuates each individual block.
I stitched in the ditch around each and every
patch. I had fun giving each block its own character. Some were
busy enough that the stitch-in-the-ditch seemed sufficient. With others,
I added curves and straight lines with my rulers (Handi Quilter’s swags,
half-circles, and straights). I like to use a point-to-point method –
that is, making arcs or lines from one point of a patch to another, and
sometimes echoing those lines.
I don’t really plan ahead; I just do whatever
pops into my mind at the time. If there were big enough blank areas in
any block, I added some feathers or swirls.
When I posted the pictures on some large
Facebook groups, people started oohing and ahhing over JoeAnn’s quilt.
Many were pulling out Dear Janes they had started and never finished; others
were buying books (pricey now, as they’re out of print); and some bought the
Dear Jane software for EQ8. JoeAnn and I should get a commission for all
these sales, don’t you think?!
It took 69 hours to quilt this quilt. The
quilt measures 108” x 108”. The blocks are 6.5”. I used Dream Wool
batting, Gütermann 50-weight Tuskegee Gray 100% cotton thread on top, and
60-weight Bottom Line thread in a matching color in the bobbin. The
quilting was done on an 18” Handi Quilter Avanté longarm, employing rulerwork
and free-motion quilting. My Avanté is not computerized.
Thanks to JoeAnn for letting me quilt her
treasured quilt, thanks to Jane Stickle for creating the first Dear Jane way
back in 1863, and thanks to Brenda Manges Papadakis for drafting the 169 square
blocks, 52 pieced border triangles, and four pieced corner triangles and
publishing them in 1996 so others could make the quilt, too.
There was an Eastern Towhee (picture is
from All About Birds), rare around these parts, in the front yard that day,
hopping about catching insects.
Suddenly, a cottontail bunny popped out from under the cedar tree, all
in a froth, and with two quick bounces, the second of which nearly landed him
right atop the towhee, he chased that bad intruder away. We’ll have no alien birdbrains around this
joint!
The bunny then strutted (yes, he did!)
about the yard for a bit, reveling in the fact that One Bunny had finally chased
something, as opposed to the other way around.
Bah.
I was just on the verge of going for the 300mm lens. Dumb bunny.
When I went to
cut the thread for the very last time on the ‘Frolic’ quilt, on that very last
row of quilting, I didn’t need to cut the bobbin thread, because it had
run out. It had run out 2 mm beyond the
last stitch
------- right when the quilting was done, exactly at the precise point I would’ve
cut it. Funny, when that happens.
That evening, Larry finally felt well
enough to go work on his friend’s vehicles in Genoa after he got off work.
He didn’t miss any work the whole time he was sick, though he came
home early a couple of days. (He pretty much works alone, driving the
boom truck, picking up and hauling forms.)
During the time we were sick, we took vitamins
and over-the-counter cold remedies and Tylenol and Zicam. I’m a little
bit allergic to Zinc, but I took it anyway.
Keith wrote to tell me, “My neighbor guy told me Monday he just got the call that his
Covid-19 test had come back positive. So
I came back inside the house and practically bleached the entire house. I’m a paranoid
germaphobe at times.” 😅
We really hope we’ve avoided giving the
virus to Loren. We’ve tried hard to stay away from him, and when we took
him food, we set it on his porch for him.
Still, we were with him the day before I got sick.
This
caused Keith to recall the days of Secret Pals in my Jr. Choir. The children (ages 8 to 12) each chose
someone to be a Secret Pal to – an elderly person, perhaps, or someone who
lived alone – and they would write notes and make little gifts, then drop them
off secretly at their Pal’s home. Before
Halloween, a friend who had grown a large pumpkin patch on her farm let Larry
and me collect enough pumpkins for each of the Jr. Choir children – 36, if I
remember right – and then Larry and I began carving Jack O’Lanterns.
Whew,
that was a bigger project than I had expected. We carved... and carved... and carved. Fortunately, Larry was faster and tougher
than me (to say nothing of more artistic).
We carved pumpkins far into the night, several nights in a row.
Problem:
The
children’s part was to write a nice, chatty letter while avoiding clues that
would tell their Pals who they were. I
didn’t ask the children to carve the pumpkins, because I didn’t want anyone
losing digits, nor did I wish to obligate busy parents when it was my Big
Idea.
I
collected the letters at the next Jr. Choir meeting, which took place each
Friday evening. And then Larry and I,
with kids from Keith down to Caleb in tow, launched into the Delivery
Operation. I think it was 1994, which
would’ve made Caleb a year old, as he was born October 13, 1993. Keith would’ve been 14... with the other six
children in between.
We’d
park down the street from a recipient’s home, gather up Jack O’Lantern, candle,
and matches, sneak down the street, place the pumpkin on the porch, light the
candle, replace the lid, ring the doorbell, and flee for our lives.
There was one younger, unmarried man on
our list – let’s call him Humperdink (Hooper, not Englebert [whose name is
spelt ‘Humperdinck’, in any case]), just for the fun of it. He lived in a garage made into an apartment. I’d put his name on the list for the children
to choose from, because he was a bit of an awkward loner, and I thought he would
enjoy the fun.
I did not properly take into account
his suspicion and paranoia. Mind you, he
knew he had a Secret Pal who was a child of friends, and who had already
bequeathed him with homemade goodies made by the child’s mother.
So there went Larry and one of the boys,
Teddy, I think, sneaking along down the dark sidewalk to Humperdink’s
apartment, Larry toting the Jack O’Lantern, Teddy carrying the candle, the
matchbox, and the letter from Hump’s Secret Pal.
They set the Jack O’Lantern on the
porch, tucked the envelope under it, lit the candle, lifted the pumpkin’s lid,
inserted the candle, replaced the lid, rang the doorbell, and ran.
Humperdink immediately flipped off all
his lights, snuck out the back door, crept around to the front – and then he stompedthatpumpkintodeathquick
before it exploded, or turned into a goblin and ate him, or something equally terrifying.
Imagine this gruesome act being
perpetrated by a tall, ungainly man in size 14 canoes, paddlefooted as a
platypus.
Lydia, 3, was totally horrified that he’d
ruined the Jack O’Lantern we’d so painstakingly carved, and spoiled the candle,
too. The rest of the children had no such compunction. They laughed
until they had no more wind in their lungs, and then it was dead quiet in the
car (except for Lydia breathing in dismay, “Why did he do that?!”)
because they’d spent all the air in their lungs, and couldn’t quit laughing
long enough to pull in more oxygen.
Humperdink, who’d rushed backwards
after his act of obliteration and demolition, peering in all directions as he
went, then spotted the pumpkin-pulp-spattered envelope sticking out from under
the squished pumpkin.
He slinked (can platypi slink?) forward
slowly, strrretched out a long arm, snatched the note, and then skedaddled
backwards again.
The kids hiccupped, grabbed some air,
and shrieked with laughter again.
Humperdink slid backwards all the way
to the back of his apartment, and disappeared.
Shortly the inside lights came back on, and we imagined him reading the
thoughtful little letter we knew his Secret Pal had written to him.
I have no idea what he thought of all
this, or if he ever reciprocated with anything for his Secret Pal, as all the
other Pals did.
Friday, I took pictures of my
customer’s finished quilt, packed it into a box, and took it to the post
office. And with that, ‘Frolic’ was
frolicking back home.
Here is my customer’s ‘Frolic’ quilt, designed by Bonnie Hunter. She tie-dyed the fabric for the backing herself.
When I called Loren at 3:00 p.m., as
usual, to ask if he’d like some supper, he declined, saying he’d had a large,
late breakfast (he likes to cook eggs and toast), and he had other food he
could eat later. He peered into his
refrigerator and cupboard as he told me this, naming off a few foods.
“But you didn’t name the two most
important foods!” I told him.
“What foods is that?” he asked.
“Vegetables and fruit!” I replied.
With that, he launched into a small
tirade about how a steady diet of ‘that stuff’ makes him ‘sicker’n a dog’.
“Any dietician will tell you that you
need a few helpings a day of both fruit and vegetables to stay healthy!” I
argued.
“I’d be bigger’n a barn if I did what
the dieticians say!” he exclaimed.
“Naaaa, it just takes a little
moderation, is all; and you’ve got a long way to go to get to that state of affairs,” I said.
Once again,
he informed me that vegetables and fruit make him nauseous.
“Your parents didn’t raise you right,”
I informed him, which made him laugh.
His ideas about what he thinks he likes
change regularly. And he’s every bit as adamant when he says he doesn’t
like something, as when he said he did, just last week. (This is
not a new, Alzheimer’s-induced occurrence.)
Mostly, he just wants eggs and toast,
and maybe some peanut butter mixed with honey, eaten by the spoonful. So
I ignore him and fix him a good meal. Siggghhhh...
That evening, I began loading another customer quilt on my frame.
The lady wrote to me, “Don’t look too closely at the quilt, as some of my points
don’t match up and my seams are really scant in places. But I’m super proud of it. It’s only my 9th
quilt and the first one bigger than a twin.
😁 ”
“Well, I see a whole lot of perfect
points,” I told her. “In my first quilts, the points were so far off,
they were in another quilt!
“Plus, you’ve done a lovely job of
pressing it. I very much appreciate that. My machine appreciates
it! 😊 ”
This quilt is called ‘Botanica Park’, a
kit from Wing and a Prayer. It measures 108” x 108”.
I’m using Gütermann 50-wt. cotton
thread in Sandy-Gray on top, and So Fine 50-wt. poly thread in ‘Putty’ in the
bobbin. The batting is Warm & Natural
cotton. The pantograph is called ‘Wave on Wave’.
By Saturday night, I’d made it past
midpoint on the quilt.
I’d hoped to give it a couple more
hours, but my back, right hand, and left big toe were protesting loudly. Why does quilting make that big toe
hurt? Well, because I have to hang onto the floor with it as I’m going
along! heh
I applied first Capzasin, then
Soothanol, and finally Pain-A-Trate to my back. That helped, but eventually
the cacophony of complaints brought me to a halt.
Well, that, and the fact that I ran out
of bobbin thread. Sometimes that’s the straw that breaks the camel’s
back. So I fizzled out.
The game cam has been grabbing shots of
nice-looking bucks every night.
If I recently told you the following
story... well, as Victoria said, when she was about 3 years old, and had been
informed by her elder siblings that she had repeated herself several times, “Oh,
well! Threece or fource is better than nunce!”
So... I’m telling this story again.
Twice is better than nunce.
Early one morning a few years ago, I
looked out the open bathroom window and spotted a doe and tiny fawn in the back
yard. I dashed back into the bedroom to
awaken Larry.
“Come and look, quick!” I whispered
loudly, whilst simultaneously grabbing my camera.
He scrambled out of bed, came rushing
in — and stepped kersploosh right on the edge of the cat’s water dish, tipping
it up and sloshing a big ol’ splash of ice-cold water up his leg. He,
being Larry, yelped loudly.
The doe and fawn shot straight out of
their doldrums and landed three counties over in one leap. I hadn’t even
had time to lift the camera to my eye.
{Time out while I pour a glass of milk
to go with the candy bar Larry brought me.
Not too much, or there won’t be enough for breakfast in the morning.}
We had a milk box on the front porch
when I was a little girl, and milk was delivered to us in the mornings, maybe a
couple of times a week. That was in the early 60s. It seems like that
didn’t go on for very long before it was over, and we bought our milk at a farm
a mile or two north of town for a little while.
Eventually, we just got it at the store.
A little friend and I used to press
that milk box into service as a message station, leaving notes for each other
in it. I wonder if the milkman ever came
upon those notes and had himself an interesting little read?
I checked online with some reputable
websites that night to find recommendations regarding how long to stay away
from others after having Covid-19, and decided that yes, indeedy, we were fine
and dandy for going to church Sunday. I felt just like King David: “I
was glad when they said unto me, Let us go unto the house of the Lord.” 😊
PLUS!!! – we would finally get
to see that new little granddaughter, Baby Eva, Caleb and Maria’s new baby!
Maria is gradually getting her strength back, after having had a very hard time
of it for the last few months, with blood pressure too high, and other
problems. She’s mostly been on bedrest all the time. It helps when
one is happy, and has a wonderful, precious little package in one’s arms, as a
reward!
As Solomon, David’s son, wrote, “A
merry heart doeth good like a medicine.” 💖
By 5:00 p.m. last evening, I was all
ready for our evening service, which starts at 6:30 p.m. At 5:50, Larry started
getting ready. He’s the sort who kicks in the afterburner – a few minutes
after he should’ve already departed the house. 😅
I drank a Mixed Berry Yogurt Protein drink
by Dannon to tide me over until we had a late supper after church. Mmmm,
those are good. But they’re aggravating, too, because they’re sooo thick
and creamy, a whole lot of it gets left behind on the insides of the bottle.
I was wishing I had a giraffe’s tongue, in order to lick it out.
((...pause while I look that up...))
Well, that might be overdoing it a
bit. A giraffe’s tongue is 21 inches long. The yogurt protein drink
bottle is only five inches tall.
((...pause while I ask Mr. Google a
question...))
Ah-ha! A honey bear has a five-inch
tongue!
Okay, I need a honey bear’s tongue.
Or maybe a really skinny spatula would
do the trick.
After the
service, as hoped, we got to see Baby Eva for the first time! I looked at
her as hard as I could, to make up for these three weeks of not getting to see
her.
Little Ian (he’s
4) told me he missed me, and Carolyn, Violet, Keira, and Malinda came rushing
to see me. I doled out little square
pictures of puppies and kittens cut from the back of a calendar, so now they
think I’m doubly wonderful, and I feel terribly important.
I told Malinda,
pointing at the puppy, “That’s a WOLF!”
Then at the kitten, “And a LION!”
She readily
agreed with that. Have I confused her
for life?
(I did tell
her what they really were.)
I had enough
little pictures to give Jonathan one, too, but ran out before I got to
Jacob.
“Oh, well,” I
told him, “You’re too old anyway.”
He’s in 6th
grade. He laughed and shrugged up one shoulder, just like his Daddy does
to say, It’s okay, it doesn’t matter.
When I got home,
I rummaged up something even better for Jacob, and sent Lydia a note to tell
him I’ll give it to him the next time I see him (probably Wednesday). It’s a little 2021 calendar book, shaped like
a checkbook register, only bigger.
My mother used
to cut those little pictures from the backs of her calendars and give them to
our kids when they were little. They always loved them. Simple
things mean a lot, to children. I wish I could do more for our children
and grandchildren, but... simple things mean a lot. 💖
Jacob had a
suit coat and tie (in addition to the ones he had on) draped over one arm, so I
made a big deal of it, asking if he always carried around spares, and why
wouldn’t he also carry around an extra pair of shoes, because, you know,
mud!!! (gesturing at the spotless church carpet)
He was laughing
so much, we never did find out why he had an extra suit and tie. Maybe
he took it off after a previous church service and forgot it there? Maybe another cousin grew out of it and
handed it down to him?
I said to
Keira, “I haven’t seen you for so long, and I’ve really missed you! Did
you miss me?”
She nodded in
her quick little way – and then Caleb and Maria with Baby Eva walked by, and
she immediately said to Hester, who was holding her, “Gotta go see her!!!!!”
So they
abandoned me and rushed off to see the new baby.
“Okay,” I told
Caleb, “This isn’t right. Keira just threw me overboard to come look at
your baby, and she isn’t even awake!!!”
Caleb, stepping
from one foot to another, grinned, “Yeah, well. These things happen.”
Yep, I’ve been
a-missin’ all those kiddos!
Hannah is still sick, though she thinks
she’s getting better. She feels like she’s
having an asthma attack all the time, and her chest hurts. Both she and Levi have had to use their
nebulizer. They’ve all lost weight
because they don’t feel well when they eat. Bobby and Aaron lost their sense of taste and
smell. Aaron’s has come back, but Bobby’s
hasn’t yet. Hannah’s oxygen level was at
92 a number of times for a few days, and the nebulizer didn’t help a whole lot. That’s scary, when it gets that low.
Bobby was at church; he’s mostly
recovered from Covid-19, though he still has no sense of smell or taste.
He likes smoking meat on his big Traeger grill – and he likes sending Larry
pictures of it, and gloating over all his good food. This has been an
ongoing combat for years now.
But a couple of days ago, he sent Larry
a picture of steaks on his grill, lamenting that he could neither smell nor
taste them. “Cruel and unjust punishment,” he called it.
Larry, who’d been unable to wear his
bottom dentures for a few days on account of a cut inside his bottom gums,
wrote back, “At least you can eat them!”
Last night after church, we picked up Jalapeño
Bacon Ranch Chicken sandwiches from Arby’s, then drove to Schuyler to fill the
Jeep with E-85, eating our sandwiches as we went. Instead of wraps, we asked for 12-grain
bread, and I asked that mine be toasted.
The only way we could tell a difference
between our sandwiches was that my bread was piping hot; Larry’s was
cold. Does someone in Arby’s think that
putting bread in the microwave toasts it?? 🙄
Ah, well. It was scrumptious, nonetheless.
I have a cousin, Ann, who lives in
Shelbyville, Illinois, where my Grandma Swiney lived. She’s about the same age as Loren. When I was little, I thought she was the most
beautiful young woman. She’s still very
lovely. We connected on Facebook not
quite a year ago, and have been enjoying corresponding and sharing old
stories. Her father Bob was my father’s
next older brother.
Yesterday, she told me about a lift
cushion she had purchased from Amazon. Her son-in-law put it together for
her, but she’s going to return it, because, as she said, “It feels like it
could propel me off the chair if I don’t sit on it right away. The springs
were entirely too tight, and I had to sit all the way back on it before it
would go down.”
That reminded me of when I used to work
at a local office. I used a chair that a coworker used in
the earlier hours of the day. The lady easily weighed 350 pounds.
She was very nice. And she was Large
Economy Size. And tall.
The chair was hydraulic, and quite
stout. She had it adjusted tightly to
stay as high as it would go. At that position, my feet didn’t even touch
the floor. So each day when I arrived, I had to give a hop to land on the
chair, reach underneath it, find the handle, press it down (hard to do, when I
was already nearly at my farthest extension), and hold it until the chair
slowly sank earthward until my feet could reach the floor.
There. All set.
But... the slightest wiggle or movement
made the thing start rising.
It rose higher... higher... higher...
until once again my feet were off the floor.
One day when this happened, I said to
another coworker, a plump (200 lbs. or so) crabby woman named Mindy (who actually
liked me, despite her crabbiness), “Well, at least when I’m happy I can swing
my feet.”
She turned around, frowning at the
interruption, and looked me over from head to foot. I swung my feet and
grinned at her.
She said sourly, “My chair never
does that.”
I couldn’t help it, I went into peals
of laughter. I was laughing, trying to stop, and apologizing, “I’m
sorry! But it’s your own fault, really; you said it!”
An amazing thing happened: she
got struck funny, too. 😂
Back to the Botanica Park quilt!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
