It went on raining last Tuesday, as it had been doing since Sunday. I did the laundry... a bit of cleaning in the kitchen... and then finally finished a webpage on my quilting website, adding all my pantographs, and the prices of each: Pantographs, Sarah Lynn's Quilting
I
should’ve finished that webpage years ago...
Or maybe not. Years ago, I
wouldn’t have known as well which pantographs work well, and which ones I never
want to do again – unless by some miracle I find myself with a computer-driven
longarm.
That done, I went back to scanning photos. It’s a looong project, yessirree, but I’ve
been wanting to do it for years, and what better time to do it than right now,
when all the quilt shows have been canceled?
Here
are a few from a funny series with Caleb, 7, and Victoria, 4, having a race at
Pawnee Park. Caleb always slowed down so
his little sister didn’t get left too far behind, and sometimes he even let her
win. In this set, he wound up tripping
and falling ker-splat, after all his gallantry – and his little sister couldn’t
keep from laughing. 😅
The
things we did in all these pictures don’t seem all that long ago, and yet Caleb
and Victoria are both all grown up now, married, and with their own sweet
little ones!
Victoria
loved to ‘race’ with Caleb, who is 3 ½ years older than she is. At this age, I suspect she really had no idea
that her older brother slowed his pace in order to let her keep up. And no, I didn’t tell him to do that; that
was just the way he was.
But
note those last two shots, where he thought he’d pull a fast one, whirl around
and take off again – and things didn’t quite pan out. 😂
Wednesday, I scanned these photos
from May 2001. Beside me are Hester,
Lydia, and Caleb, and Victoria is in the front.
Friday afternoon, I took Loren a supper
of a tall hamburger made with Black Angus burger, lettuce, romaine tomatoes,
sweet relish, mayonnaise, ketchup, and mustard on a toasted whole wheat bun, a
vegetable mixture of green beans, peas, corn, and carrots, Chobani Greek
strawberry yogurt drink, Dannon blueberry yogurt, and a banana.
Home again, I paid a few of Loren’s
bills, then went on scanning photos. I really don’t see how I can get
them all scanned in time to give those thumb drives full of photos to the kids
for Christmas. But I’m working as fast as I can!
Do you ever hear ad jingles that you
don’t like – but can’t stop remembering?
The McDonalds jingle bothers my musical sensibilities. The ads
themselves are usually okay (stupid, but okay), but that jingle! I don’t
care if it’s done with a xylophone, or an opera singer, or a mandolin; it’s
totally grating. You know the tune I mean? If it’s in the key of G
flat (which it sometimes is), the notes would be G flat, A flat, B flat, E
flat, D flat. They do vary it once in a while to A flat, B flat, B, E
flat, D flat. Or maybe it isn’t supposed to be varied, but someone
is just singing off tune. Both versions are
baaaaad.
McDonalds never makes an ad without
that stupid little tune in one form or another, whether by fife, tuba, bagpipe,
spoons on water glasses, bows on saws, or human voice, ugly or nice. Simply typing ‘McDonalds jingle’ makes the
thing play in my head, now with the most recent ad, which features an old man
humming it in a hoarse voice, “Buh, buh, buh, buh-buh!”
Aaaccckkk.
I scanned this picture
and sent it to Keith, asking, “Remember when you pulled this picture out
of the garbage where I’d tossed it and ‘fixed’ it? Made us laugh so hard.”
My
camera had focused on the background, thus causing Keith to be blurry and the
flash to go off way too bright, totally obliterating his face. He pulled out a crayon and got busy, adding
in eyes and mouth, and shadowing the ears.
It
looked so funny, I put it right into the photo album.
Here are Keith and Hannah at
Christmastime, 1985.
I found a few of the five older
children’s class photo cards from West Park School, where they went before we
had our church school. There are thumbnails
of all the students and the teacher. I’m
glad I wrote their names on the cards; it’s surprising how names fade into the
mists, when once I thought I could never possibly forget them.
My Kindergarten teacher – at West Park,
the same school our children attended – got married in the middle of the year,
and we had to learn a whole new name for her. I don’t remember her maiden
name, but her married name was Mrs. Babst. I really liked her. She
taught us The Hot Dog Song, after all!
I know a wiener
man;
He owns a
wiener stand;
He sells most
anything,
From hotdogs on
down;
Someday he’ll
marry me;
I’ll be his
wiener wife;
Hot dog!
I love that wiener man!
I sang it very quietly and sedately in
school; I was shy! But when I got home, mind you, and sang it to my
parents, I belted it out with full gusto and vigor. 🤣
Upon telling this to Keith, he said, “I feel like I remember Grandpa singing that song to us as
kids... or was it just you?”
It’s quite possible my father did
sing it to the kids. I only had to sing
it to him once or twice, and he had it all down pat. Daddy could memorize things at the drop of a
hat, and never forget them. He knew a
great deal of the Bible by heart, and knew right where a passage was located,
too.
When he was 5 years old, his Sunday
School teacher gave the children a poem on Easter Sunday. It was a full page long. He had it memorized before the following
church service was over. “But I have no
idea what the sermon was about!” he’d laugh, telling us this story.
Why did I never write that poem
down?? I remember very little of it
now. I don’t believe Daddy ever quoted
the entire thing right through, but he’d often rattle off a verse or two, if
the words happened to ‘fit’ the occasion. Let’s see what I can recall:
It’s raining
too, I do declare; there are dandy raindrops in the air!
(and sometimes,
‘dandy puddles everywhere’.)
The ducklings
rushed out in the yard, and laughed to see it rain so hard.
The wind, it
blew; it blew so hard, it blew Dab’s hat into Dolly’s yard.
Said she, “Why,
I believe this hat was meant for me, for it fits quite perfectly!”
That’s it; that’s all I can
remember. I did an online search... but
Mr. Google has not heard of the poem.
The search function on various poetry pages yielded nothing
helpful. Who knows, maybe the Sunday
School teacher herself wrote the poem, and the only airing it ever got was when
she handed it out to the five-year-olds in her class!
Here are Dorcas and Teddy,
Christmastime 1985.
Speaking of rain, at about 9:30 p.m. it
was suddenly pouring rain, thunder crashing.
WeatherBug right that minute was saying, “Slight chance of rain before
midnight.”
It rained almost every day last week. The cats go outside
(though they don’t need to, as there are litter boxes in the laundry
room and in the garage, and they have access to the garage via a pet door)... they
get all wet... and then they come back in, stare at me reproachfully, and
loudly demand, “MeeeeeOWWWWWW!!!” – which I’m fairly certain means, “Turn it
off!!!” Teensy always wants up on my lap, to dry off and warm up his cold, wet
little feet.
“No, stay down!” I tell him, holding up a hand like a
traffic cop. “You’re all wet! Dirty! Icky! Yuck!” I
make a big production of dusting off my skirt, if he has put a paw on it.
He looks at me. Of
all the noive. Then he takes himself
off a little distance and conducts thorough ablutions. Isn’t it amazing how cats’ tongues can be
either sponges or squeegies, whichever they deem necessary at the moment?
When he thinks he’s all dry and clean again, he comes back,
sits beside me, and requests, “Mrrrowpprrrrrow?”
“Okay,” I tell him, “Jump up.”
And up he comes.
They say (whoever ‘they’ are) cats can learn 25-35 words,
while dogs can learn an average of 165 – with the really smart ones learning up
to 250 words. Well, I personally think
cats can learn at least 100-150, but simply prefer not to let us know
they can.
Here’s Joseph in early Spring of 1986.
This album started with several pages of me as a baby and
toddler. My sister Lura Kay, 20 years
older than me, is holding me in this picture. She made me that cute little sailor coat, and
under it is a matching dress. I remember
it well, for I loved it, and I loved those little white gloves, too.
With
WeatherBug still proclaiming that ‘slight chance of rain up until
midnight, then a chance of rain after midnight,’ it went on pouring rain and
thundering. At 10:00 p.m., hail started
coming down. It was a slushy hail, and soon
it was about two inches deep on the front porch.
A
couple of hours later, I was sitting in my recliner, laptop on lap, when a
mosquito went sailing past! It always
seems so odd when, right in the middle of nearly-insectless weather, a mosquito
comes visiting.
Saturday
afternoon, about half an hour before I usually call him, Loren showed up to inform
me, “Your Jeep needs the oil changed, and the dash is displaying something else
that needs to be done, too... and I thought you’d want to have Larry take care
of it.”
This
confused me, because my Jeep is indeed displaying a ‘Needs Oil Change’ notice
on the dash, along with a ‘Service 4WD’ notice and a few other odd things; but
... how would Loren know?
I
looked at him. He looked back.
“My
Jeep?” I asked.
He
nodded. “Yes, it’s right there on the
dash of your Jeep,” (with an expression indicating that he wondered why I hadn’t
done something about it already).
“What
Jeep are we talking about?” I asked.
He
laughed. “Your red one!”
Oh.
“That’s
your Jeep!” I said, and he laughed, like I’d cracked a funny.
I
asked who usually changes his oil. “Does
Jerry do it?” (Jerry is Larry’s cousin’s
husband, who owns an auto repair shop.)
This
puzzled him a bit. After agreeing that
Jerry does it sometimes, he then got Larry and Jerry’s names (and maybe their
entire personages) mixed up.
He
laughed again, “Well, they do rhyme!”
I
promised to tell Larry about it, saying that Larry was working (this always
amazes him) and might not be able to do it that day, but probably can in a
couple of days.
Loren
thanked me, explaining that he doesn’t really feel up to changing oil himself
anymore. He was a bit hoarse, and being
out in the chilly wind makes it worse.
Larry
later told me that Loren has always changed his own oil, which explains why he
couldn’t really remember Jerry doing it.
I
considered giving Loren the new insurance cards I’d just received for his
vehicles; they were right there on the table.
But then I thought that might confuse matters all the more right then,
since it says “c/o Sarah Lynn Jackson” under his name. Maybe Larry can sneak them into the proper
glove compartments when he goes there to change the oil.
Loren
noticed right away when the registration paper for his camper said “c/o Sarah
Lynn Jackson”, and wondered why it said that.
Larry
explained (in his usual ‘tell ’em about New York City when they ask about Los
Angeles’ way), “That’s so that when you die, the state won’t take everything.”
Aaarrrggghhh,
Larry, aaarrrggghhh. 🙄 Nice mix of apples
and oranges there.
Larry
thought it was a dandy explanation, since Loren didn’t ask anything else, and ‘seemed
satisfied’.
“He
wasn’t ‘satisfied’!” I exclaimed. “He
was just so bumfizzled by that ‘explanation’ that he couldn’t at all form
another question; he probably didn’t even know what the subject was, anymore! And he didn’t want you putting him even closer
to the grave with some incomprehensible follow-up explanation.”
Larry,
of course, laughed.
On
the other hand, is that why Loren thought his Jeep was mine?
I noticed yesterday
that there are multiple broken branches in our big sugar maple. We should really take that thing down before
it lands on the house. But... I like
it! And so do the birds and
squirrels. It arrived out here at our
country house as a one-inch, two-leaf sprig in the middle of the irises I’d dug
up at the house in town and transported out here. The sprig came from a tree at my sister Lura
Kay’s house next door to us there in town. I extracted the itty-bitty thing from the
irises, planted it – and in 18 years it has grown to about 75’ tall. Our son-in-law Jeremy, who owns a tree-removal
service, calls sugar maples ‘weeds with trunks’. That, because they break easily in high winds
or ice storms – and we have both, fairly often.
Someone sent me some pages out of an
old magazine the other day.
I commented, “Hey, I need that list of
1,001 things I can get for free!”
She retorted, “They can skip
the 50¢ list and just send me the 1,001 things!”
I told her, “You’ll wind up with a gel
pen with your name engraved on it (misspelled), a sheet of address labels (with
a long-ago previous address), a box of expired Avon cologne samples, a small
pair of round-tipped scissors (that don’t cut anything) with glow-in-the-dark
handles, Oil of Olay face cream in a jar the size of the tip of your little
finger, a wee bottle of lime green metallic fingernail polish (with a brush
that doesn’t reach the liquid), a miniature box of Crunch Bunch Kellogg’s cereal
(stale), a small magnetic-wand flashlight with someone else’s name inscribed on
it, a plastic shower loofah in construction orange, a hotpad that cannot be
used with anything above the temperature of 98°, and three fuzzy ponytail
holders.
“You will only get the other 990
freebies if you are willing to fork over a credit card number ‘for security
purposes’ (not your security, obviously).”
Here are a couple more photos of me as a
toddler.
When
I quit with the photo-scanning Saturday night, I was up to 14,008 photos, and
close to finishing the 48th album.
There are 78 albums to go... unless I have some with identical numbers
and an ‘A’ or ‘B’ after the number. I’ve
found a couple like that, evidently because when I got a new album and went to
the bookcase to see what the previous number was, the last album was out of the
bookcase and I wound up with two of the same number. Let’s blame the kids for that, shall we? 😏
Yesterday was Palm
Sunday. A young girls’ choir sang before
Sunday School. We are appreciating these
things a lot, since last year our services were shut down. It was ridiculous, really, because Covid-19
had not yet even hit our area.
I’m just glad we
have a good governor who didn’t let Big Important Hats keep us closed
down. Our state has weathered the
pandemic a lot better than most, in terms of not only illnesses and death, but
also economics. For many months through
the last year, we had the lowest unemployment rate in the nation.
“That’s because the
buffalo didn’t know the phone number for the Department of Labor,” one of my
disrespectful friends told me.
Right. Haha.
For the last couple
of months, we have tied for third lowest at 3.1%. South Dakota has an unemployment rate of
2.9%, Utah has 3.0%, and Vermont has 3.1%, same as us. Kansas is next at 3.2, and Idaho and New
Hampshire both have 3.3. Highest are New
York and Hawaii, at 8.9 and 9.2, respectively.
Wanna make any
guesses what the politics of each of the above-listed states are? Do I need to tell you?
After the morning
church service, we took Loren a big bowl of KFC stew, a cookie, iced tea, and
V8 cocktail juice. Noticing
that the Bunn coffee maker was not on his counter, I asked about it, and
learned that it had quit working. We
told him we’d get him one after church that night.
After the evening service, I happened
to mention the coffee maker to Hester, and she told me that they had a
nearly-new Mr. Coffee they never use anymore since getting one of those fancy-schmancy
Keurigs, and they’d be glad to give it to Loren.
So upon leaving the church, we went to
Andrew and Hester’s house, ate some Oreo cake she’d made, got lots of hugs from
dear little Keira, and then took the coffee maker to Loren. He was quite happy with it, and kept asking
how much he needed to pay Hester. I assured him that I’d asked several
times how much it cost, and she wouldn’t tell me. 😊
The Bunn filters fit it, and he had a
big can half full of Folgers coffee, so I got it all ready to start; he would
only need to switch it on in the morning. It’s like one he used to have,
so he’ll have no trouble using it.
Larry put batteries in a large clock
high on a wall over Loren’s refrigerator, just under his vaulted ceiling, while
we were there. He and Loren had to bring
in a tall ladder from the garage in order to reach it, and then they rummaged
through a large bin full of batteries to find a ‘good’ one. I played the piano to keep them entertained
while they did the job. Or maybe it was
to entertain myself.
Then off we went to Schuyler for the
elusive E-85 gas.
In answer to someone’s
question as to why we use E-85: The Jeep is a flex-fuel auto. We had no troubles with it for
several years... but a couple of years ago the motor started missing and
sometimes dying, even at highway speeds.
Neither Larry nor the mechanics at the Jeep dealership could figure it
out; but Larry learned from online forums that some Commander owners had solved
the problem by switching to E-85. We switched – and the problem was solved.
Now and then we put in a tank of unleaded by necessity; but two or three of
those in a row, and the thing starts missing again.
I hope to get a few bills paid off before the vehicle goes
kaput. We’d like a newer model of... something. I wish
Jeep hadn’t stopped making the Commander in 2010. This has been my
favorite SUV I’ve ever had.
Here are Keith, 5; Teddy, 2; Joseph, 6 months; Hannah, 4; and Dorcas, 3.
And
here’s Joseph, again at 6 months.
This afternoon, I emailed Hester:
Subject: Heavy
equipment
Ah haff a birthday qveshun! (raising
hand)
Now, you have to promise to be honest, and just
answer exactly what you think, all right? Promise?
Okay. Here it is:
I ordered a little loader, complete with tools
to take it apart and put it back together again, for Ian’s birthday.
Problem: The description online said it
was for ages 5+ ..... but when it came, I discovered on the box that it was for
ages 3+.
Figuring that any 5-year-old grandson of mine
would be waaaaaay too bright for a toy for a 3-year-old, I got him
something else.
Problem #2: We have no 3-year-old
grandsons, nor any 2-year-old-soon-to-be-3-year-old grandsons, nor any
1-year-old-soon-to-be-2-year-old-soon-to-be-3-year-old grandsons!
So the question is, do you think your li’l
girlchild would suffer from an identity crisis, should we give her a loader for
her birthday? (I have something else that’s pink to give her, too, heh.)
If you think a loader would be a ridiculous gift for a little girl, I can
save it for possible future grandsons or great-grandsons.
You know, Steve Koch (Carolyn and Violet’s
great-grandpa who owns an excavating company) gave his little
great-granddaughters loaders and backhoes and suchlike for Christmas... but
that’s different. 😉
Just tell me whatya druther (à la Rufus, in
Gasoline Alley), and don’t be timid with your opinion!
Love,
,,,>^..^<,,,
Mama ,,,>^..^<,,,
Soon she replied:
😄😄😄😄 Keira
would Absolutely Love that. She has cars and trucks that were
Andrew’s that she really enjoys, and one of her favorite things to do is
get little screwdrivers and go around “fixing” things.
So a loader it is (along with a little
pink First Bible with lots of pictures and a pink faux leather cover). Keira will be three on April 16.
I loved tools, too, when I was that
age. One winter when my little red tricycle was downstairs in our basement
where I could ride it out of the snow, I gathered up a handful of my father’s
tools from the connected garage (I was out there ‘helping’ him work on a
vehicle), and headed down the basement steps.
It really was amazing that one small
tricycle had so many parts to it.
Some time later, I came back upstairs
and asked if anybody could help me put a ‘few pieces’ back together.
I recall people looking amazed, and I
remember either Daddy or Mama (or both) saying in an astonished tone, “Why,
Sarah Lynn!” ... and I remember that I was sad that it took a little while for
them to get the trike back together again so I could ride it; but I don’t
remember much of anything else.
They probably looked at my face and
thought, “Her own sin corrected her,” and Daddy was doubtless secretly as proud
as he could be of his small daughter’s ‘mechanical prowess’.
Oh! – I just looked in my folder of
recently-scanned photos, and whataya know, there I am on that very tricycle! This picture was taken in my room. It was 1963, and I was two years old.
Here’s another picture of Joseph at
about 7 months.
This afternoon I took Loren deer burger
meatloaf, broccoli, a banana, a blueberry streusel muffin, yogurt, and mango
juice.
He pointed out the clock that Larry had
put a ‘new’ battery in last night. It
had run for about four hours, making it to 12:30, before stalling out.
This makes a very good argument against
buying truckloads of batteries all at once when they’re on sale for a smashing
bargain, like Loren and Janice used to do.
There’s almost always a reason for those ‘bargain batteries’ – old age
being the first on the list. Janice used
to store them in the freezer, which further shortened their life spans. To make matters worse, Loren likes to toss
used batteries back in the bin with the new ones, because they just might have
a little spark of life left in them, and who knows when someone might want a
flashlight with a nice, soft, barely-there beam, right?
Sigghhhhh... I think I’ll
send Larry back to Loren’s house with a nice, new battery.
I should start a load of clothes...
wash the dishes... dust a few things...
That’s one of the chores
I don’t get done nearly often enough – dusting. Therefore, I instruct all visitors to kindly
turn toward shelves and flat tops of furniture when they feel sneezes coming
on, and not to block said sneeze.
Off I go to my
little office!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah I Can Dissemble Things Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
