Last week, granddaughter Joanna sent
me some pictures – a child’s drawings, and her father’s reconstruction of same,
using real pictures in PhotoShop to match the drawings. Here’s the woodpecker.
I snickered so loudly when I looked at
this picture, I roused Teensy, who was trying to nap on my lap.
You know, that original drawing could’ve
been done by me, when I was in kindergarten – and everyone thought I was a
baaad artist! But look how true to life
it is. 😂
As I scanned photos last Tuesday, I
came upon this one, taken November 7, 2004.
Just look! – Victoria was already making eyes at Kurt, and they were
only 7 years old!
It was rainy Wednesday
morning, so I didn’t get outside to work in the yard.
That afternoon when I
gathered up things in Loren’s basement, I found a cute baby quilt that Janice
had partly cross-stitched, and I found the pattern and floss, too. It so happened that Hester had recently
mentioned that she likes to have a cross-stitch project handy for those rare
moments when she feels like doing something ‘sewingish’, as she called it. So that little kit went to Hester.
Upon seeing our BMW X5
SUV, Hester told me, “We rented a BMW car in Ireland when we were there. They really are a step above most vehicles.”
“Was it strange
driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road there?” I asked.
“It was,” she laughed,
“but Andrew did great! I never tried. The hardest part was when we were driving down
highways, and sometimes we would gradually head towards the wrong side of the
lane we were in. 😆”
The next four pictures
are Hester, 13, Lydia, 11, Caleb, 9, and Victoria, 5, in 2002.
I worked in the gardens for an hour and
a half Thursday morning. I pulled a bunch of poison ivy – a never-ending
job, since the stupid stuff put down roots about three years ago. So far,
no rash.
The Lintelek Fitness Tracker (a cheap
version of Fitbit) that I’d ordered arrived, so I synced it with my phone and
put it on that morning before I went outside. When I came back inside,
the tracker told me I had put in 2,673 steps. That was all?!
I would have to run up and down the
stairs refilling and/or rewarming my coffee mug several times that day to get
to 10,000 steps (recommended for ‘fit seniors’), wouldn’t I?!
While a fresh pot of coffee is brewing,
or while a cup of coffee is warming in the microwave, I play the piano.
Right now, I’m working my way through a very old hymnbook, with somewhat
obscure songs written by many of my favorite songwriters. A lot of these
songs were written in the mid to late 1800s. Modern-day musicians could
learn a thing or two from these talented composers and lyricists!
I scanned photos for almost three
hours, then took Loren some food and collected more things from the lower level
at his house. It’s looking a lot better down there, but there’s still a
lot of work to do. Before coming home, I
stopped at the UPS Store and shipped the Cabbage Patch doll Janice made to
Dorcas. She remembers Janice letting her
play with some of those dolls when we visited them. I tucked a small porcelain Mexican doll into
the box, too; it was Dorcas’ when she was little.
When I got home, I sorted the load of
stuff, and then took a whole lot to the Goodwill. I discovered a box of
old family photos; they will go into the scanning queue.
That day, I got an email informing me that
the Nebraska State Fair will be accepting quilts and crafts again this year.
Hopefully, Platte County will do the same. Guess I’ll beg to borrow back
the quilts I gave the kids for Christmas! 😄 Ah,
well... I’ve done it before, and they go on acting like they still like me all
right.
I looked at my Fitness Tracker.
It informed me that I had put in a mere 4,511 steps so far that day – and it
was already after 5:00 p.m.!
I learned that
running downstairs and back up with a cup of coffee only registers one
direction on that tracker, because when I come back up, I hold the coffee in
the hand connected to the wrist that sports the tracker, and I trot up the stairs
without moving my arm much at all, the better to not spill the coffee.
So now I know
that the tracker registers motion, rather than GPS coordinates.
Shortly after 7:00
p.m., SpotTracker gave me an alert. I
looked at the map – and discovered that Loren had just gone to the church. The previous night’s service must’ve seemed
like a looong time ago, as he evidently thought it was Wednesday evening all
over again. 😕
Soon he was heading
back home again, according to SpotTrace, and before long the Moultrie
game cam on the front of his house showed him pulling into the driveway, so he
was safely back home again. So much
for hoping he’d pay attention to that new clock on his table! Most likely, he awoke from a nap, thought it
was Wednesday, hurried to get ready for church, and never once thought of
looking at that clock.
In the morning, he’d gotten out his big tractor with the cab and
mowed the grass along the entire sides of the road to the south, and after that
he mowed his yard with his smaller riding lawn mower. (These pictures were taken by the Moultrie
game cam.) So I’m sure he would’ve been
tired, and perhaps he took a longer nap than usual.
He does not mention these mishaps to me. I don’t know if he forgets, or if he does not
want me to know. Both, maybe. I do think it troubles him a bit, because after
this happens, he doesn’t go anywhere for a couple of days.
The little tune on the washing machine
played; it was time to put Larry’s jeans into the dryer and start Loren’s
laundry that I’d picked up that afternoon.
Friday, Larry went to Lamar, Colorado, to get a pickup he
bought. He will use it to fix the transmission
on his red pickup. It was an 885-mile
round trip.
That day marked the day I finally made it all the way around
the yard, neatening and weeding all the flowerbeds, and starting over again
with two in the front.
When I ran out of steam outside, I came back in, got all
nice and clean again, and then typed out in numerical order the contents of a
538-page hymnbook for some blind friends, whilst periodically rubbing lavender
DMSO and Soothanol X2 drops on my back. I had pulled too, too many
hard-to-pull weeds! Both my back and my right
hand and wrist were declaring the folly.
By the third application of the analgesic combination, my
back was burning like a house afire. Ahhhh. Felt great.
😂
By 2:30 p.m., the Fitness Tracker had recorded 2,529 steps
so far that day. My back informed me that the stupid tracker was calculating
low by several thousand steps.
It was Lyle’s 14th birthday (he’s Teddy and Amy’s
third child) and Levi’s 11th birthday (Bobby and Hannah’s fourth child).
We gave Lyle a light blue polo shirt, a big book of Charles Spurgeon stories,
and a tall metal thermal water bottle with wood-grain-print sides.
For Levi, we had a bright blue polo shirt, a book of animal
stories, and a fat green plastic water bottle with pop-off top. Oh, and
an old book, printed in 1951, called ‘To Be a Christian’, which I found in a
bin of craft items at Loren’s house. Loren has given Bobby and others
many books from his large library; he’s always glad if someone wants another
book. And this one wasn’t even in his bookcase, but in the piles of stuff
he wants removed. Levi will consider it
a special keepsake.
That
afternoon, Caleb sent these pictures of himself, Maria, Eva. Such a nice-looking couple, and such a pretty
baby! Nope, I’m not prejudiced. Totally factual, totally factual.
I wrote back to him, “Thank you!
I can never have too many pictures of offspring’ns, offsprings-in-law,
and grandoffspring’ns!” 😁
When I took Loren some food, I checked to make sure nothing
had gotten in the way of the new clock on his table, and that he could see it
all right. He told me that he didn’t
know what had become of the girl who had brought that clock and put it on the
table; she hadn’t been back since she left it there. And he didn’t know why she’d just left
it like that.
I informed him, “That was me! And the clock is for you!”
He was properly amazed.
“But it’s not my birthday!”
I laughed and said, “I reckon I can give people stuff most any
time; it doesn’t have to be on a birthday.”
So he laughed, too, and thanked me, and apologized for
forgetting who had brought it.
After filling the Jeep with more things from his basement, I
took Levi his birthday gift.
Here are a pair of mourning doves enjoying the birdbath.
Home again, I sorted through everything, threw the junk away
(I’d gotten to a bunch of boxes and old newspapers that had been saved for
kindling for the fireplace, which we don’t want him to use anyway), put some
fabric and books away in the house, and loaded a few things back into the
Jeep. There wasn’t enough to warrant a
trip back to town; I would combine the next day’s haul with this one and take
it all at once.
Then it was back to scanning photos, and a little later I
took Lyle his present.
Amy has been helping clean her grandparents’ home. They are elderly, and not doing very well. She gave me some fabric she’d found there,
including a few quilt squares.
I petted lambs, kittens, and young chickens, and headed back
home.
Larry
got back Saturday morning at 6:45 a.m. and went straight to work without even
coming home first.
By
the time I quit scanning that night, I had scanned 146 photos that day, making
a total of 18,950 photos scanned. I have
finished the 64th album; there are 63 to go. I’m more than halfway done!
Yesterday after our morning church
service, we took Loren a lunch of yogurt, grapes, V8 cocktail juice, a banana –
and we stopped at KFC on the way there and got him their ‘Famous Bowl’, which
they describe thusly: “Creamy mashed
potatoes, sweet corn, and bite-sized chunks of crispy chicken are layered
together then drizzled with home-style gravy and topped with a perfect blend of
three shredded cheeses.”
This is a quick way of getting a good
lunch to him, and we were in a bit of a hurry since we’d chatted with various
friends and family after church, and Kurt and Victoria had invited us for lunch. Victoria had purchased a cast-iron griddle at
an antique shop in town, and wanted us to have pancakes with them. That wasn’t all; she also made a casserole of
diced, fried potatoes with a mixture of melted Mexican cheese and sour cream
poured over them, and there was crispy bacon, and watermelon for dessert. A yummy lunch.
After church last night, we filled the
BMW X5, and discovered it holds 24.3 gallons of gas. The new 2021 model only holds 21.9
gallons. Our 2008 Jeep Commander holds
21.1 gallons. I wonder whose bright idea
that was? That thing needs a
bigger tank! (On the other hand, I am
not opposed to frequent pitstops.)
We stopped by Larry’s brother Kenny’s
house to give his daughter some framed family pictures I’d found in Loren’s
basement, and we gave Kenny the fiber optical orchid lamp he’d given Norma many
years ago, before he was married. I’ve
been wanting to return it to him, because I well remember how pleased he was
when he gave it to his mother. But it
sat right on the table in Loren’s living room, center of attention, and I didn’t
feel like I could just take it without explanations that would get him
all confused about Norma all over again.
But yesterday afternoon, Larry took a
ladder out to Loren’s detached garage for him, and Loren went along to open the
doors for him. The moment they got out the
front door, I scampered pell-mell at that lamp, scrambled under the table to
unplug it, and then absconded with it, squirreling it away in the BMW with nary
a pang of conscience.
Now... if Loren notices it’s gone and
asks me about it, I’ll tell him the truth.
But if he doesn’t mention it... well, then, neither will I.
After a nice little visit with Kenny, a
couple of his daughters, and three of his grandchildren, we drove to Loren’s
house, stealthily snuck some mail into his mailbox, and then went home, well
pleased with our clandestine activities of the day.
I
worked in the yard this morning, pulling weeds and using the big loppers to
extricate volunteer mulberry trees from the middle of the Eastern red cedar
tree. That tree has the strangest
pinecones. The top photo is what they
looked like two weeks ago; the lower photo is how they look today.
And
then I discovered poison ivy under the tree.
Bother! I thought we only had the stuff down on the south
side of the property!
I
saved it for last, then pulled it, stuck it in a bag, washed my long gloves
with the hose, and hurried to the bathtub. So far, the only red spots I’m
sporting are on my upper arms, compliments of the cedar tree that I was
reaching into.
The hostas are growing fast. I wanted to separate and transplant some of
them to the east side of the house, but I think I’ve waited too long.
Rabbits used to eat the hostas when we
first moved out here, but the cats soon convinced them of the error of their
ways.
This evening our neighbor man came with
a big tub full of frozen vegetables and fruits.
They are moving back to Texas, and can’t take it with them. I thanked him and asked how much I owed him,
but he wouldn’t take anything; so I gave him a couple of bags of flavored
Christopher Bean coffee beans – Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup and Chocolate
Glazed Donut.
(Then I had to order more for us,
since we’ve never had those flavors before, and we were looking forward to trying
them. 😉)
...
...
Okay, now I got interrupted by Larry
coming home from work, and I have no idea what I was planning to write next, or
if I was done and just needed to sign my name.
The letter looks long enough; I
guess I should just sign off. (Sort of like Larry at the grocery
store: if the cart is full, he’s done shopping – never mind if he
actually got what we really needed.
hee hee)
The Fitness Tracker says I put in 8107
steps today. Hmmm... according to the
10,000 Steps Organization in Australia, I have reached the ‘Somewhat Active’
category. Bah, humbug.
Ah, well. Bedtime!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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