Last week, two 25-pound bags of
black-oil sunflower seeds arrived; I’d ordered them from Wal-Mart. I opened a bag. The seeds didn’t look quite right; they seem
to have a white powdery dusting. They
didn’t smell quite right, either, and when I drug a scoop through them, they
didn’t feel like they usually do – they’re almost clumpy.
I opened the other bag. It’s pretty much the same. I initiated a chat with a Wal-Mart
representative, who, as usual, offered profusive apologies, promised to replace
the items – and then instructed me to return the bags of seed to my local
Wal-Mart.
Huh?
That was different. Maybe they’ve
been having more trouble with fraud as of late?
I’ve been an online customer for many
years, and haven’t ever been asked to do that before. Plus, I returned that laptop that was
mistakenly sent to me, didn’t I? I could’ve
kept it, and no one would’ve been the wiser!
I objected. “You want me to return two 25-pound bags of moldy
seed?! Yuck! Plus, I can barely lift these bags. This isn’t a very good solution for me.”
More apologies, while the nice man
blamed ‘the system’, and toddled off to get his manager.
There are now two bags of black-oil
sunflower seeds on the way, and I have been instructed to discard the musty bags. Much better idea. Now... where shall I discard them?
Last Tuesday when I took Loren some
food, he was all bent out of shape because he doesn’t get any mail anymore. “How would you feel, if you never got
any mail?!”
(The answer to that is ‘fine’, but I
didn’t say that.)
I do give him some of his mail –
magazines and newspapers such as the Messenger that I know he likes to
read. And I show him receipts for such things as the electric bill and
garbage bill after I’ve paid them. He thinks he has to save everything
for taxes – garbage bill and all.
I had his mail transferred to my house
when I started paying bills for him back in June – and he agreed and was glad
for me to do it, and has thanked me many times since. Trouble is, you can’t
pick and choose what mail gets transferred – and we’ve wound up getting
amazingly tall stacks of medical quackery ads, many with giant embarrassing
announcements on the front. I’ve tried to stop these, and maybe there’s been
a slightly reduced volume, but many are still coming. That was the
majority of his mail, right there.
He’d decided he wanted to pay his own
bills, too, having totally forgotten the troubles he was having keeping
everything straight.
So... I promised to bring him his mail,
figuring I could tuck a couple of those medical ads in his lunchbox the next
day, and maybe that would suffice.
It’s always a bit upsetting when things
like this happen. I did what I always do
in such times: I went home and headed
to the piano, opened my big notebook of some 150 Christmas songs, and started
working my way through it.
Half an hour later, I made a fresh pot
of coffee and got back to Christmas preparations.
Loren was himself again the next day,
sorta. He was tickled to find a package
of black dress socks in the top of his lunchbox – I’d noticed when doing his
laundry that his were getting all worn and stretched out. Of course he
wanted to pay me for them, but I told him that they were a Thanksgiving gift,
and you don’t pay for gifts.
“I got them because I don’t want to be
embarrassed when you walk into church and your socks fall down all around your shoes!”
I told him.
He laughed... worried they really had
done that... then laughed again.
He also found the Messenger and two
pieces of junk (medical[?]) mail in the box.
He pulled out a thick envelope that proclaimed, “This man took this
supplement for six months, and now he’s the #3 smartest man in the world!!!!”
(I know that’s a lie, because
nobody tested my IQ yet, after all.)
He said, “Oh, read that!”, all
interested.
“Yeah, that’s medical quack-practice,”
I said.
He was amazed. “Really?!”
He had forgotten, I think, all about
wanting to pay the bills.
He doesn’t have any stamps (Norma took
them, he says, and won’t tell him where she put them), so when he wants to send
for something (such as a Reader’s Digest subscription), he gives me the order
blanks and I then order online. So maybe that’ll keep him from ordering a
truckload of Fountain of Youth supplements.
We continue, one day at a time...
Thursday morning I turned on the radio
to listen to the news as I usually do as I’m taking a bath and washing my
hair. I knew the station would probably
be playing some music, too, and wondered if they’d have some pretty
Thanksgiving songs, as they have in the past.
Nope.
It was all Christmas songs. And
it’s been nothing but Christmas songs, ever since.
We had our usual 11:00 a.m. service before
the noon dinner, where we heard music from both the strings group and the
brass, sang songs, read the chapter from I Chronicles 16, where David and the
people sang and gave thanks to God because the ark of the Lord was back again.
We also listened to a few paragraphs from a book that told of the Pilgrims’
first landing. Just think: it was
a little group of people who had a very small amount of things to give thanks
for who started the Thanksgiving tradition, when they thanked God for passage
across the stormy waters of the Atlantic, and for the little food they still
had. I want to read that entire book!
We
had a very nice dinner – turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn, sweet
potatoes, muffins, rolls, and sweet breads, chef salad, jello salad, pickles
and olives, white or chocolate milk, juice, coffee, tea, and a choice of apple,
cherry, or pecan pie with ice cream or whipped cream topping.
Later
that afternoon, Larry, with a wee bit of help from me, hung the ‘Stitch in Time’
wall hanging I finished July 7. I wanted it to hang above the
stairwell, of all things, and wondered if I would be regretting that notion
while Larry perched on a board resting on the banisters, high above the
steps. 😬
It’s
hanging from a decorative oak quilt hanger Loren gave me a few years ago.
The
quilt measures 36.5” x 50” and is made from a panel by Rosiland Solomon.
I got it at Quilts, Etc., a nice little quilt shop in Sour
Lake, Texas, on the 20th of February. We didn’t stop there to
get something for me, but, as usual when Larry is along, he
spotted it and thought I just had to have it.
It’s
now positioned in the upstairs landing opposite the door to my quilting
studio. The door to my little office is on the left; that’s where my
roll-top desk is, and where I’ve been doing all the scanning of my old albums
of late. The door straight ahead opens into the little library. There are a couple of treadle sewing machines
on the landing.
Way
back in July, Larry had rummaged up a couple of heavy-duty screws especially
for the type of plaster walls we have in this old farmhouse, but the heads were
too big for the notches in the oak quilt hanger. Thursday he ground them
down, then found a thick, heavy board to rest cattycornered across the L-shaped
banister for him to stand on. His perch on that board high above the
staircase made my hair stand straight up on end, and I wondered what on earth
ailed me, to think I needed to hang that quilt there.
But
we got it done with no casualties, and thar she hangs.
Larry assures me that he does scarier things than that at
work, all the time. This is somehow
supposed to make me feel better?!!
At
least a good deal of the time, Larry is either driving his boom truck, or
running the remote for the boom (and I think he knows enough
not to stand under those heavy cradles of aluminum forms), rather than trotting
along on high walls. But several of my
sons and sons-in-law, and now a couple of grandsons, are doing
those scary things!
That night, I heard a Great Horned owl
in one of our nearby trees. I really
like listening to them. I opened the
patio door, and could hear another owl, farther away, answering the first owl.
Friday a quilt arrived from a customer
in Washington State. Look at that box. Do you think the USPS used it for a chock
block?! 😮
All inside the box was safe, thankfully.
I hope to get the quilt loaded on my
frame this evening.
When I took Loren some food that
afternoon, I took along my tablet and showed him the pictures of that oak quilt
hanger he gave me a few years ago, with the quilt hanging from it. He
remembered the quilt hanger; he and his previous late wife (is that how you say
that?), Janice, had once given it to her mother. It’s handmade; he bought it from one of his
customers when he used to work for the National Federation of Independent
Businesses. He was so pleased to see that I’m using it.
Early Saturday afternoon, Loren unexpectedly
arrived at my door, evidently looking for Larry, who was still working
somewhere. Since we were planning to go
to Lincoln to get his new, remade glasses when he got home, I fixed Loren some
food, put it in a lunchbox, and sent it home with him. I made a sandwich with some smoked ham a
friend gave us, putting it on a thin wheat bun with sesame seeds, with a wee
bit of mayonnaise and some slices of tomato.
I added green beans, pears, and cran-grape juice to the lunch, while
Loren protested that that was ‘too much’.
He also told me that he can’t eat ham or pork, as it gives him a
stomachache; but I didn’t have anything else that wasn’t in the freezer, and I
know for a fact that he loves pulled pork (or at least Schwan’s pulled
pork), and, so long as he doesn’t eat too much, does just fine with a good quality
smoked ham. I said I could slice it very
thin, and assured him that adding a thin whole wheat bun and slices of tomatoes
would make it quite digestible. So he
agreed, and later told me it was very good, though I’m not totally sure he
remembered just what was ‘very good’.
I think he has now, at one time or
another, informed me that any and all food I’ve ever given him makes him sick,
or ‘nauseous, just thinking about it’ (it was vegetables, that got that
worthy status). The only food he hasn’t
complained about is the eggs and toast he fixes himself for breakfast. I therefore ignore his complaints and fix him
a variety of healthy foods each day, heavy on the fruits and vegetables.
We picked up Larry’s glasses in Lincoln
that evening. This time, they got the
focus point in the right spot, and they are a perfect fit.
After grabbing a couple of runzas, we
went on to Nebraska Furniture Mart in Omaha to look for a new leather power
recliner for Larry, as the reclining loveseat we got some years back has never
been comfortable for him, and the faux leather has worn off in spots. This one is 100% cowhide, with the seams
double-stitched. It has adjustable lumbar
support and headrest, and a USB port on the handheld control. Hopefully, the chair will prove comfortable,
and last longer than the loveseat, too.
Joseph, Justin, and Juliana met us at
the Mart and gave Larry a birthday gift – a fancy-schmancy hunting knife in a
sheath.
After a short visit with them, we
headed over to the warehouse to get our recliner. Even after Larry laid the seats down in the
Jeep, they had to take the recliner out of the box to make it fit. That thing is big.
Before leaving Omaha, we stopped at
Cold Stone Creamery to use a $10 gift card our neighbors gave us for caring for
their animals. I ordered Red Velvet ice
cream and Irish Cream ice cream (I think that’s what it was) with fresh
strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries added, and a spoonful of caramel drizzled
over the top. Did you know that at Cold
Stone Creameries they churn their ice cream right there in the café, and they
do all the cutting-in of fruits and other toppings such as cookies and candy
bars on frozen granite stones? I like
the sound their tools make as they chop away on the stones.
In an online quilt group, people were
listing names of quilt blocks. I always
take interest in quilt blocks with funny names – especially when, as a bonus,
they are pretty, such as these:
1.
Hearts & Gizzards
2.
All Tangled Up
3.
Crazy Ann
4.
Toad in the Puddle
5.
Old Maid’s Ramble
We
had a yummy lunch of tacos Sunday afternoon with Kurt, Victoria, Carolyn, and
Violet. They have a new little cat with
long dove-gray fur with subtle striping.
Such a cute little thing. They
got it from the Humane Society Saturday, where they were told that it’s about two
years old, and it, along with its two siblings, were abandoned in an apartment
someone moved out of recently. Isn’t
that horrid?
I
think this little cat is much younger than they were told. It looks and acts more like an 8- or 9-month
kitten. Judging by the size of its paws,
I suspect it will grow. It looks a
little on the order of a Maine Coon.
They named him Yuki, which means ‘snow storm’ or ‘snow flower’.
It
was so funny, watching the little girls pull a small furry mouse toy on a
string, with Yuki scurrying after it, batting it and leaping on it, making the
girls screech with laughter. The kitty
was frightened when they first brought him home, and would only quit crying
when Kurt gathered it up and snuggled it in his arms.
Kurt’s
family never had pets, as several in the family had allergies; but both Kurt
and his brother Jared liked our cats, and our cats liked them – and those cats
of ours are picky about whom they like.
The very first time Jared came visiting, Teensy clambered right up on his
lap, to our surprise.
Even
cats can tell when a person is kind!
Today
I took Loren shrimp egg rolls, clam chowder, peas, peach yogurt, a mixture of
peaches, mangos, pineapple, and strawberries, and fresh-made lemon-limeade.
And now a load of clothes is in the dryer, I’ve slopped feline and fowl (again), and it’s high time to hie me to the quilting studio.
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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