Journal: I'm Well! -- Just Feel My Nose

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 9^th 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.

Then off we went to church.

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 6^th 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          ,,,>^..^<,,,