Why are there 33 pages in the rough draft of my weekly journal, right when I barely feel like editing one solitary page?! Well... let’s get on with it, and see how much I can pare it down.
Last week, I told about Violet’s funny
lingo, which mirrors her big sister Carolyn’s, and sometimes sounds pretty much
like they are misplaced Southe’ners.
We used to say that Bobby and Hannah’s
kiddos were Bostonians. They definitely had that easte’n patois!
When Nathanael wasn’t quite four (he’s
now 14), we were walking together through some of our schoolrooms, and in the
science room he pointed out a glass receptacle, and asked, “What liquids ah
coagulating in this beakuh?” haha
For his 4th birthday, he
asked for:
1. A lightning toy
2. A tornado toy
3. A David City water
tower
I got him a Plasma Ball Sphere Lightning Lamp, a Pet Tornado, a Tornado Alert Book, and a Thunder and Lightning Book. Someone else would have to worry about
the water tower.
And someone else did: his older sister Joanna (hmmm... she would’ve been 7, I guess) did draw and color a water tower for him.
Every once in a while through the
years, I have informed Hannah, “Your kids are not normal!” 😅
When Levi was 6 months old, she had him
at the doctor’s office for his checkup. The doctor was asking her the
regular questions about the baby’s development, and Hannah, in answering,
added, “... and he’s just starting to put together a few words in short
sentences.”
The doctor paused, then smiled
indulgently, and Hannah thought, Well, he didn’t believe that.
Then, as the doctor bent over the baby,
checking ears, eyes, nose, etc., his stethoscope swung above Nathanael’s
face. Quicker’n a wink, Nathanael caught it, put it to his ear, and said,
“Heh-woe?”
Dr. Luckey looked around at Hannah,
eyes wide, obviously thinking, You weren’t just a-spoofin’, were you?!
There’s a baby cardinal at the feeding
station, along with both his parents.
The mother is doing the lion’s share of feeding him, while he makes his
high-pitched, metallic baby tweeting noises.
Now a male downy woodpecker is at the
suet feeder, and a Eurasian collared dove is jerk-walking along the
railing. The cardinal family is
unconcerned about the dove, even though he’s more than twice as big as they
are.
There’s a little mourning dove in the
open garage, sitting on a cord hanging from the rafters. There are barn swallows on either side of the
dove, and they are quiet, not doing their usually constant twittering, and
tipping their heads curiously to look at him.
What are you doing here? Don’t
you know garages are for swallows, not doves?
We got a little more than ½” of rain Monday
night and Tuesday morning – first rain in a long time. It only got up to 46° Tuesday afternoon.
Suddenly it occurred to me that I
needed to order flowers for Helen’s funeral.
I ordered online in time to have them taken to the church for that
evening’s visitation.
The rain was not
unwelcome; we’ve been needing it for over a month.
Loren’s supper
consisted of Alaskan cod, green beans, a cranberry-orange muffin, French bread,
American cheese, peach-mango drink, and pears.
That evening, Keith told
me that they’d had winds anywhere from 70
to as high as 112 miles per hour, and there was a lot of damage in the area from
falling trees. Electricity was out for a
lot of people. Keith has a generator, in
case they lose power.
I quilted part of Row 3
on my customer’s Dear Jane quilt that day.
Wednesday morning was Loren’s appointment for a checkup on
the eye that had most recently had cataract surgery done. This was the eye that the doctor was a little
concerned over, as it had a bit of a ‘shimmer’, as he called it.
I arrived at Loren’s
house at about 20 ’til 10. He didn’t
hurry out to the driveway and jump in the Jeep like he usually does, so I went
to the door. I rang the bell... tried
the door... It was locked. I heard Loren calling, “I’m coming!”
He opened the door –
dressed in black suit, white shirt, and dark tie, ready for the funeral.
I stepped inside,
and said, “You’re dressed for the funeral! – but we’re going to the eye doctor,
first. You might want to remove your suit
jacket and tie... and then you’ll be fine.
And get a casual jacket, because it’s chilly out.”
He hurried to do
it... hunted for his jacket... finally found it in his Wrangler.
We got to Eye
Physicians with six minutes to spare, donned our stupid masks, walked in, used
the hand sanitizer (which always squirts for the most part all over the floor
and probably presents more of a danger to life and limb than the coronavirus
does)... and the ladies at the desk were staring at us like we hadn’t many
brains.
“May we help you?”
asked one.
“We’ve come for an
appointment for Loren Swiney,” I told her.
She then informed us
that we didn’t have an appointment for that day; it was for Friday, September
11, at 2:45 p.m. (but when she wrote it on a card later, she wrote 2:50
p.m.).
I said, “Our card
says the 9th, at 10:00 a.m.”
“Do you have it?”
she asked in as superior of a tone as she could manage behind her mask.
No, Loren didn’t
have it with him. But 1) I heard
Dr. D say that he, specifically, wanted to see Loren, instead of
having his assistant see Loren, on account of the new lens ‘shimmering’,
and he would do it Wednesday morning, instead of having Dr. S see Loren Tuesday
morning, as originally planned; 2) I heard the surgery office receptionist
call the other office (at the opposite end of the building) to make the
appointment, asking Loren if that time would work; 3) I saw her write it
on a card and hand it to Loren, and 4) I have seen that card on his
table every day since. Furthermore, it
is their customary procedure to see patients five or six days after a cataract
surgery; so for them to act like we are nuts for coming in on day 7
instead of day 9 is just... uh... nuts.
Those receptionists acted like both of
us must be suffering from senility. They said we couldn’t see the doctor
in any case, because he was in surgery (whether on the giving or receiving end,
she did not clarify).
So we took our (new)
appointment card and departed.
Ugh, I dislike wasting
time.
After taking Loren home, I went home
and quilted for a couple of hours.
Loren has been enjoying reading some of
his favorite books this last week, books he hadn’t been able to read for a
while because of the small print and his cataracts. That day, he was reading a story about World
War II. He’d been so involved in it, he
said, that he’d gotten mixed up as to which place he was supposed to go first
that morning – funeral or eye doctor.
When he got home, he changed out of his
good black suit pants and white shirt, and went back to his book. A few hours later, suddenly noticing that it
was time to go to the funeral, he threw on a different tie and his black suit
coat and came – in light tan pants and a medium blue shirt. Sigghhhh...
Oh, well. No harm done, really, though the first outfit
had been more appropriate.
Here is Helen’s obituary: Helen
Tucker I was the flowergirl for her wedding when I was not
quite three, on September 1, 1963.
After the service, Loren,
Ethan, Emma, and Lyle rode with us to the cemetery. It was only about 45°, and windy, and I didn’t
have a coat. At least it quit raining
just long enough for the graveside ceremony. We eventually wound up with another inch of
rain.
That evening I was
cold upstairs in my quilting room, so I went into the library and opened a
large drawer under the twin bed – and there, lo and behold, I found all the
summer clothes I’ve been missing. A
little late now, hmmm?
I
got the rest of Row 3 done on the Dear Jane quilt, and made a good start on Row 4.
Thursday morning, I
woke up with a fever of 99.5°. That’s not hay fever.
That was 2° higher than my usual temperature, and was
accompanied by aches and pains, a cough, sore throat, earaches, and a bit of congestion.
That afternoon, so as not to give whatever it was I had to
Loren, I called Jimmy Johns and had them deliver a sandwich to him, along with
an oatmeal cookie and a bottle of iced tea.
Not as good as a meal cooked in my kitchen, and lacking
vegetables and fruit; but better than nothing.
On my
online quilting group, ladies have been telling
about the spaces they have used for sewing and quilting and crafting, ever since
they began doing these things. This all started because one lady, upon
seeing pretty pictures of another’s sewing space, admitted to feeling ‘sewing
room jealousy’. She has made similar
statements to me, regarding my quilting studio.
Knowing that, just like me, most ladies raised families and made do with
whatever little sewing spaces they could eke out during those years, I presented
a question to the group at large: “Did
you have a designated room, or did you use a corner of the kitchen table
between meals? We’d love to see pictures
of your special (or not-so-special) places.”
And then I told my own
story:
In 1978, at age 17, with two of my very first paychecks (I had a job in Nebraska Public Power District’s Word Processing Center), I bought Bernina’s top-of-the-line machine: the Electronic 830 Record.
My father bought the cabinet for me, and I
set it up in my bedroom. What a wonderful, trusty little job that turned
out to be! It was my only sewing machine until September of 2011, when I
got a very nice used Bernina Artista 180.
When Larry and I were first married, we
lived in a nice mobile home a little ways out of town, not too far from where
we live right now. I put my sewing machine and cabinet in the kitchen
under a big window, and could look across the countryside while I sewed.
The kitchen table was right behind me, and I used it as a cutting table.
We moved to town a year later (with one
baby and another on the way), and I fixed up a room in the basement for my
sewing room. There were block walls on two sides, and I painted flowers
in every other block. It, uh... wasn’t as pretty as it sounds. 🤣 On another wall, we put a mural of mountains and a
beach, with palm trees. I loved that mural (and hoped people looked at it,
instead of at those pathetic painted flowers).
Later, when Baby #3 came along, we
turned the room into a bedroom for Keith, our oldest. He, being an
ambitious little guy (and artistic like his Mama, ahem), used permanent markers
to draw a hat on the clouds over the mountain, a face in the middle of the
clouds, and a highway complete with trucks and cars on the beach. The
clouds, from then on, looked like a melting snowman reclining on the
mountainside.
Meanwhile, I took my sewing machine and
cabinet back upstairs to our bedroom. However, with toddlers trotting
around the house, one doesn’t sit in a back bedroom and sew. (Or at
least, one shouldn’t.) So during the day, I carried my sewing
machine out to the kitchen table and sewed there, with kiddos playing around
me.
Once upon a time, as I sat at the table
sewing, Hannah, age three, was attempting to put the lid on a quart jar of
honey – yes, a quart – as she cradled it in the crook of her arm.
WHAM!! The
honey jar slipped from her arm and hit the deck.
“Oh!” I cried, “Did it spill???”
“No,” she assured me, picking it up and
screwing the lid on, successfully this time.
In retrospect, I think she must have
meant, “No, not all of it spilt.”
Life went on. Hannah went to
play, liberally smearing several dolls with her honeyed hands. Dorcas,
age two, trotted through The Lake and beyond to the far reaches of the house. Keith, four, walked through it, got the cat
food out of the cupboard – bag upside down – and poured some in the cat’s bowl,
leaving a trail of Kitty Nibbles. He went downstairs, layering each
carpeted step with honey. Teddy, eleven months, crawled through the
honey, sat in the honey, and commenced to eating Kitty Nibbles coated with
honey.
This, just four feet from me, but with
the table blocking my view as I industriously sewed long lengths of ruffles for
little girls’ skirts.
I am not usually so oblivious.
I finally awoke to the mess when Baby
announced, “Bleah!” and began spitting out foreign matter.
I jumped up, ran to see what he’d put
into his mouth ---- and found...
“Houston, we have a problem.”
One bright spot: the cat didn’t
have one solitary speck of honey on herself.
 |
Calico Kitty & Baby Joseph |
When Joseph, Baby #5, was a year and a
half, in late 1986, we moved to a bigger house about a block away, right across
the street from my parents’ parsonage, the church and, later, the school, and
next door to my sister’s house. Handy –
but a bit fish-bowlish. heh
I had a very large part of the big
basement as my sewing room, and there was plenty of room for a playroom for the
children, too; that was nice. Larry used to work late at his auto
rebuilding shop, come home as quietly as possible, sneak down the stairs – but
I could hear even his breathing. I’d start on a long seam, the
better to convince him I didn’t know he was coming. Just as he got ready
to grab me, I’d yank whatever I was sewing out from under the presser foot,
whirl around, and throw it at him. He would invariably yell and run in
place several feet above ground, before gravity got the better of him.
That was lots of fun. 😂
(Fortunately, he has a strong heart.)
Then we learned Baby Hester was on the
way, so we turned my sewing room into a bedroom for the little boys, and I took
my sewing machine and cabinet upstairs and positioned it at the front window in
the living room, which had turned into the playroom, by necessity.
But I didn’t really like the mess right
there for all to see, so I moved the sewing cabinet into our bedroom.
Sometimes, though, I removed machine from cabinet and carried it to the kitchen
table, so I could be right in the middle of family busyness. 😊
In 2003, when Victoria, Child #9, was
6, we moved out here to the country. Our house is an old farmhouse, moved
here via big truck from 90 miles away. Larry added onto it, so now it is
more than twice as big as it was – but that addition is not yet complete.
Siggghhhhh... That upstairs bedroom with its vaulted ceiling and huge
half-circle windows is soooo pretty... and there’s a wonderful, gigantic
closet... a big bathroom with a whirlpool tub and double sinks... reckon
I’ll be able to use that room before I’m too old to clamber up the stairs to
get there??
My sewing room out here was first in
the little office upstairs, next to Caleb’s bedroom (now a library). I
had my rolltop desk, cabinet and machine, a tall bureau of drawers, three
filing cabinets, an ironing board, and later, a small cabinet with my new
serger in there. Did I mention that that
room was little?! ‘Cozy’ is an extremely kind way to describe
it. The ironing board, rolltop desk, one filing cabinet, tall bureau, and
six bins of fabric are in there now. It’s just across the landing from my
quilting studio.
Five years later, in 2008, Hester and
Lydia got married and moved out, just eight days apart. I moved my sewing
things downstairs to Hester’s old room, which Larry fixed all up for me as a
sewing room. We put a maple table in
that room: My
Sewing Studio
When I got the HQ16 and Larry
lengthened the 10’ frame to 14’, we put it in the front part of the walkout
basement. When I got the Bernina Artista 180, I bought a beautiful marble
table at the used furniture store and put it in another part of the basement,
pretty much taking up the entire basement for my sewing and quilting.
(Larry says I go into furniture stores, look all over the place for the
heaviest thing in the store, and that’s what I choose. 😆)
Victoria got married in 2016, and
before too long (after a major cleaning/sorting/donating of all of Caleb and
Victoria’s left-behind, unwanted things) I moved my sewing machines, serger,
and maple table upstairs to her old room. The room downstairs became my
gift-wrapping room.
Just before Christmas of 2017, Larry
got me a Handi Quilter Avanté: Quilting
Studio
My room isn’t as big as some (and that
big frame sho’ ’nuff shrunk the space), but I have windows that look out on
pretty country scenery, and my children have given me some lovely things for
decoration. So I’m thankful for the area(s) I have, and my machines.
A
friend responded to this story, “I will never see a jar of honey again that I
do not think of you. LOL Nine children, how did you ever find time
and energy to sew?!”
Matter of necessity. And yes, I
had lots of energy. I had rheumatoid arthritis from the time I was 12 or
younger, but I was healthy otherwise, and did my best to counteract the
arthritis with a good diet and lots of exercise, as I continue to do today.
The children needed clothes! I
had fabric... I knew how to sew... and I kept them well entertained while I was
sewing with stories... and various sewing tools that wouldn’t hurt them... and
lots of fabric scraps. I showed them how to match scraps to shapes in
coloring books. I taught them numbers from my measuring tapes, and showed
them how to measure things.
Once upon a time, Keith, about 2 ½, was
busily measuring everything in the room. He’d measure something, mark it
with his thumb, and come and show me – and I’d tell him the number. He
measured my arm... my foot... the leg on my chair... and then he went behind me
and measured the behinder of me, and without showing me the number, said in
great wonderment, “Wowwwwww.”
hahaha Way to give your Mama a
complex, sonny boy!
Last
week we learned that Larry’s brother Kenny and Bobby’s brother Jonathan both had
pneumonia caused by COVID-19, and Jonny was in the hospital, quite sick. Kenny, after a few scary days, is improving. Several other friends and family are sick,
too, and a handful have been diagnosed with COVID-19. Others were not tested, but probably do (or did)
have it. We figured it was only a matter
of time before it made its rounds here.
Kenny
felt well enough Saturday that he was talking about going fishing. Larry told him to be sure to use a six-foot
pole, so as not to give the fish COVID-19.
“And whatever you do,” he added, “No catch and release!”
Caleb
called Friday to invite Larry and me to come see the new baby – but I was
sick. My temperature was higher than it had
been the day before – 100°. Waa waa waa Caleb promised to send more pictures. The one I particularly like features tiny Baby Eva giving a giant yawn. 😍
I was
supposed to take Loren to his appointment with the eye doctor that afternoon. Since I was sick, he went there alone, while I
hoped he’d get there all right. When he
gets worried, he’s more liable to forget things. When I talked with him on the phone, he was a
bit confused about where the place is, even though he knew exactly where I was
supposed to turn, every time I took him.
He did
make it all right, but I suspect that he went there much too early, as he told
Larry that he waited for 2 ½ hours to see the doctor. He reported that his eye is fine, which is as
we figured it would be, since he is so pleased with how much better he can see
to read and drive.
Larry
picked up chicken, coleslaw, and mashed potatoes and gravy at KFC and took it
to Loren that afternoon.
That evening, Lydia sent a picture of the children with their new Bibles that had just arrived that day. “They all have their names printed on them,” she wrote. “Obviously, it was very exciting.”
And they are all indeed making expressions of great delight and excitement, silly kids. hee hee
That
night, I finished Rows 5 and 6 on the Dear Jane quilt,
with guest appearances by Teensy (underfoot, as usual) and Tiger.
One time when Lydia was about 4, she
got a cold. No one else in the family
was sick; only her. She, having heard people
discussing ‘catching’ things from each other, told my mother mournfully, “I’m
the only one in the family who’s sick!” She shook her head sadly. Then, turning palms up, “I must’ve caught it
from my dolly,” she decided.
One time some of the kids weren’t feeling well, so I
brought home a gallon jug of lime Gatorade.
Hester was about 3. She stared at that big jug of Gatorade, and
then, eyes wide, exclaimed, “Why did they do it?!”
“Do what?” I asked.
“Make lemonade out of
alligators!!!!!” she replied in a horrified tone.
A friend sent me a short video clip of
her six-year-old granddaughter doing a cartwheel.
I was
impressed. When
I tried cartwheeling at that age (and I did try), I looked pretty much like a
drunken frog with epilepsy.
I did once perform a
triple backflip in the middle of the night — in order to keep from stepping on
a stuffed panda that looked remarkably like Calico Kitty in the dark.
Saturday evening,
Hannah wound up with something similar to what Larry and I had – cold symptoms,
including chills and fever. She first
thought it might be the result of being outside on a day that turned chilly, and
not being dressed warmly enough; but since she’s still not feeling well,
probably it’s something more than that. Of
course we all wonder if we have COVID-19 when we get sick, but the symptoms
don’t exactly match.
https://www.emersonhospital.org/articles/allergies-or-covid-19
But that’s not
definitive. People can and do have
additional symptoms with either colds or covid, and, contrariwise, some have
very few symptoms at all.
By Saturday night, I had quilted Row 7 and a little
bit of Row 8 on my customer’s Dear Jane quilt. Someone asked me for ‘Before
and After’ shots, so I did that with a few of the blocks.
The quilt measures 108” x 108”. The blocks each
measure 6.5”. I’m using 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.
A quilting friend wrote,
“I’ve noticed that many longarm quilters after having quilted some of the quilt
have those ripples in the unquilted part. I don’t seem to ever have any of those. Am I doing something wrong? I always check for square and straightness of
sides, etc., when I advance the quilt. Any ideas?”
Larry and I both
stayed home from church yesterday. I called
Loren around 1:00 p.m. to see if he needed some food.
“I thought I’d just
fast,” he said, not entirely kidding.
“That’s not good!” I
exclaimed.
“Sometimes it is,”
he argued.
I informed him that
I would bring him some food in a bit “and just set it on the porch and
skedaddle,” but he came out to get the lunchbox from me. I sure don’t want him to catch this cold! I backed away quickly. 😕
In the evening, Larry
and I walked up to the neighbors’ house to care for the goats and the chickens,
as they are gone. That is, the neighbors are
gone. The goats and chickens are still
there. (English, tsk. Always with the needed clarifications.) The chickens love me because I give them
clover and dandelion greens. The goats
love me because I give them biscuits. Larry
fixed the hinged lid on one of the chicken coops, as it was coming apart.
Soon after we went
back home, the sun went down and it was getting dusky, but there were still
Northern cardinals at the feeders, including a couple of babies. It’s late in the year for baby birds. But if we have good weather for just a little
longer, they’ll be all right, I guess, as they are learning to crack seeds,
though it takes them longer than it takes the adults, because their little
beaks are still soft. The whole time
they are working at a seed, they are fluttering their reddening wings and
peep-peep-peeping, and if a parent arrives with a mouthful of hulled seeds, the
babies open their beaks wide, regardless of the seeds they were working on. Sometimes the parent leans over the railing
and watches the dropped seed fall to the ground, one story below, as if
thinking, Wasteful little birdbrained flapper!
Teddy, always hoping to fix up and keep
his parents well, brought us some powdered calcium with Super C mixed in.
It has Vitamins C, D3, B12, Calcium Magnesium, and Potassium. There’s
enough in the jar for several doses. The price on the lid:
$44. 😲
Before
going to bed, I checked my temperature, and found it way off the end of the
thermometer, beyond 106° some inch and a half. That, because I remembered
to wash it off, but not to shake it down since Larry used it, and he evidently
shook it down when he was done with it – only he had hold of the wrong end
and shook it up. Either that, or I was about to have a seizure
right that very moment.
I
tried again.
That
time, it registered at 99.1°. My ‘normal’ temperature is 97.6°. So
that explained why my head hurt. It’s
been at 97.8°, today.
I’ve washed five loads of clothes,
including the upstairs and downstairs bathroom rugs, which I will switch
around. They’re all hanging outside on
the deck railing. Too bad I didn’t wash
them earlier, so they would’ve had time to dry.
Larry, after sleeping most of the day
yesterday, feels better today. After he got off work, he picked up some
food at Cubby’s – sandwiches, salads, fruit, and juice, enough for two days –
and took it to Loren.
We ate a supper of clam chowder, and
then Larry went to Genoa to work on a vehicle.
I have my camera
sitting in the window on a pillow, big lens aimed at the feeders, hoping to
get a shot of the cardinals feeding their babies. Thinking I heard the high-pitched, tinny ‘cheep-cheep!’
of a baby cardinal, I tiptoed in there to peek out the window – and found
Teensy sitting in the sill beside my camera, big as you please. I reckon I shouldn’t expect to get a shot of
birds with the feline patrolling the vicinity, hmmm?
Okay, this journal
has now been shrunk down to 14 pages, and that’s even with lots of added photos. Don’t you wonder what else I had to
say, in all those other {now deleted} pages?!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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