Journal: Photos, Flowers, a Coffeehouse, & Quilts

Last Monday was Memorial Day... and June 6 was the anniversary of D-Day.  I was always especially intrigued with World War II, because my father was in it, in the Pacific Theatre.  I read a lot about the war when I was a teenager (and we studied it in 11^th-grade history class), in all the different areas it was going on... but I often stopped in the middle of a book and returned it to the library, because it was simply too awful for me to read.

Daddy was right in the thick of things, several times.  He had troubles hearing some sounds, and he thought it was probably because of the deafening noises from the ship he was on when they bombarded islands by the Philippines.  He recalled that they sailed up to islands that were jewel green with jungle foliage – and by morning, there was nothing but brown earth.  But they managed to take the islands from the Japanese and give them back to the Filipinos.  He liked those people – and they liked him.

A third of their convoy went down one night.  He spoke of seeing the ships burst into flames... blow up in huge fireballs... and then roll over and go down in a matter of seconds.  The ships that weren’t hit were for the most part unable to help any possible survivors, because they were being attacked themselves.  But there were most likely no survivors anyway. 

He told of a tracer hitting the potato locker up on deck, blowing it up – and potato pieces flying everywhere.  The sailors were all firing back with the big canons and machine guns... ducking shrapnel... yet he remembers someone yelling, “Where’s the gravy?!” and someone else shouting, “Now let’s point out the beans for their next target!”

But even though they tired of some of the food, they knew they might be in dire straits if they didn’t have their food supplies.

A quilting friend was telling about losing her thimble – and finally finding it in the bottom of her coffee cup.  She had no idea how that happened.

I was glad to know such things happen to others besides me.

I was hand sewing one evening some years ago, as we visited with Lawrence and Norma, Larry’s stepfather and mother.  I poured everyone a fresh cup of coffee, returned to my chair and my sewing – but my needle had gone AWOL.

Where was it??  I looked everywhere I could think of, but no needle materialized.  I trotted up to my sewing room, got another needle, and finished my sewing.

We visited... sipped our coffee...

And then the needle made its appearance.  It was at the bottom of my coffee cup.

No, I don’t know how it got there.

My mother-in-law exclaimed, “Oh!!  That could’ve been bad!” – but she couldn’t quit laughing.  For a good while after that, if anyone lost anything, she’d ask, “Did you look in the bottom of Sarah Lynn’s coffee cup?”

Speaking of losing things while sewing...

Once upon a time, many years ago when we were in our 20s, a friend and I were sewing together at my house.  I lost my scissors.

I always lost my scissors.  Big, honkin’ thangs they were, too!

Now, my friend had her own tools.  Neither of us borrowed the other’s tools without asking, and we always gave them right back.  So what I said next was only and entirely for the sake of being a smarty pants and livening up the party, as it were.  Plus, it was my standard thing to say when I lost my scissors.

I said in a peevish tone, “I can’t find my scissors.  Did you take them?!”

“Nope,” she said without a pause in her sewing.

“I’ll bet you did,” I persisted.  “You’re probably sitting on them.”

Remember ‘big honkin’ thangs’. Add ‘skinny friend’ to that.  I pretty much knew she couldn’t sit on anything without noticing.

She put on a show of great exasperation.  “How could I possibly be sitting on your scissors!!!”

We both giggled.

She put down her sewing and flounced to her feet to help me look.

My scissors were on her chair.  She’d been sitting on them.

She stared mutely.  I laughed ’til I cried.

Nope, we don’t know how that happened.  Maybe I set them down there?  And she did have a penchant for perching on the very end of her chair, so that would explain why she hadn’t felt them.

I duly reported the story to the rest of our friends, and for a looong time after that, anytime any of us lost anything – seam rippers, spatulas, curling irons, chihuahuas, babies... – we inquired into whether Darlene was sitting on it.

Larry worked through the night until about sunrise Tuesday morning with Maria’s father Dwight and his sons, moving vehicles to his new place of business, as the old place where he’s operated for several years is being sold.

Tuesday was Kurt’s 24^th birthday.  We got him a pocket watch with glass front and back so the gears can be seen, and a pair of leather and canvas work gloves.

I weeded the large, tiered flowerbed in the back yard that morning.  By noon, I was blow-drying and then curling my hair, clothes were in the washing machine, bread was rising in the oven, and soon I was heading upstairs to my little office to resume the scanning of old photos.

Mmmm... I love fresh-baked bread.  I like the crunchy heels, and I want it cut while it’s hot.  I have to really saw away gently at it, so as not to smoosh the soft bread), and then I butter it liberally.  The only drawback is that when you take a bite, your bottom teeth press against the crust, your top teeth sink into the soft bread – causing the whole piece to flip up and ker-smack you in the schnozz, liberally coating it with butter.

Here are a couple more pictures from our trip into the Sandhills a week ago Saturday. 

More are posted here:  Traveling in the Sandhills

In cleaning Loren’s lower level, I found this soft, pretty, afghan, done in corner-to-corner crocheting.

I took pictures of it so I could send them to various family members and inquire into who might have made it, and if they might want it back again.

Teensy, as usual, had to come see what I was doing:  “Did you make that for me?  What’s it smell like?  Is it mine?  I think I can hide behind it.  Is it for me?  (Rats, she saw me.)  Can I lie on it?  Who’s it for?”

No one admitted to making it, or said they wanted it; so I steamed it in the dryer with dryer sheets – and kept it.

Loren’s lower level is looking better and better.  I should have taken a picture of it before I started!

A couple of weeks ago, I got an email telling me that Country Traditions, the very large quilt shop in Fremont where we purchased my Handi Quilter Avanté, was up for sale.  When I informed Larry of this, he gasped, all wide-eyed, “Oh, no!!!  Who will time your machine when it needs it??!!!”

Silly man.  He himself has been timing my machines since I got my first one.

I do hope somebody buys that place.

In the wee hours of Wednesday morning, Larry headed to Rapid City, South Dakota, with his truck to pick up a mobile home office for Dwight.  It was an extra-long load, so Larry could only drive between sunup and sundown.  He got the mobile home and made it to Wall, South Dakota, by nightfall.

Wednesday morning, I worked in some of the gardens for a while, then set up the water before coming in.  

For breakfast, I had a fat slice of the previous day’s fresh-baked bread, toasted, with butter and Toe Jam, haha.  We had to get a jar of that – it said ‘Real Flavor’ on the side of the jar, after all! – when we saw it in the store recently, and it’s delicious.  It’s made with tangerines, oranges, and elderberries.  It’s from Blackberry Hill Farms in Rich Hill, Missouri.

Soon I was back upstairs scanning photos.  I finished one big box of Norma’s old family photos, then trotted downstairs and retrieved the other box I had discovered.

Here is Norma (on the right) with her sisters Nora (left) and Betty (center) riding one of their horses when they were young.  

Below are Roy (left) and Junior (right), Larry’s two oldest brothers on horses at their Jackson grandparents’ farm near El Moro, Colorado.  Roy died of a brain tumor at age 7; Junior died a few years later in a car accident at age 12.  Very hard times for their family.

That would be the last day of scanning pictures for a while.  I now have 19,522 photos scanned.

When I headed out to the BMW to go to church a little after 7:00 p.m., Loren was just pulling into my driveway in his Jeep.  He said he didn’t know where the church was. 

I asked if he wanted to follow me to church; so that’s what he did.  He drives all right, but a little too slowly on the highway.  Fortunately, he rarely needs to drive on the highway.  He got home all right after the service.

After church, I was explaining to grandson Jacob, who will be 12 later this month, what causes a person to forget things.  You see, after your brain gets clear full, you have to put an earplug in whichever side you plan to sleep on, or information will leak out.

“My pillow is chockful of important information,” I informed him, “All for lack of an earplug!” 🤣

Thursday, I got up early (sorta) to work in the yard... then decided it looked quite nice enough to skip the weeding for a day.  Instead, I put the water on here and there and freshened the birdbaths.  After cleaning the kitchen, I was about to go back to scanning pictures when the post lady came lumbering grumpily (as is her wont) down the sidewalk with a big box.  When she got to the porch, she flung it onto the top of the porch, ka-WHUMP!, and stumped her way back to her vehicle. 

I brought the box in and opened it.  It contained a quilt from a lady in Washington State.

So instead of scanning pictures, I loaded the quilt, ‘Play Day’, onto my quilting frame. 

And then it was time to take Loren some food.

After leaving his house, I went to Fremont, 45 miles to the east, to meet a quilting friend at Milady Coffeehouse, which is in a big old warehouse that’s been converted to a coffee shop.  She had a quilt she wanted me to do the quilting on.  I promised to start on it the moment I finished the one I’d loaded on the frame that very day.

Milady is a neat coffeehouse, but kinda pricey.  In addition to our coffees, I bought a big, fat cinnamon roll and asked for it to be cut in half.  The lady who was serving me put them in separate containers, so I took one home for Larry.

The Texas Pecan coffee I made this morning in my very own coffeemaker was lots cheaper than the hazelnut latte I ordered at Milady.

Still, I always think it’s nifty when they make pretty designs with the cream in the top of the latte.  If you sip carefully, the design pretty much stays there right down to the bottom of the cup! 😁

That stretch of road to Fremont is surely the flattest in the state.  There is nary the slightest rise or hill to break the monotony, but at least there are always plenty of red trucks!

Larry got home from South Dakota while I was in Fremont.  He was mowing when I returned, and completed the job right about the time I finished supper.

I had just enough spizzerinctum, as my father used to say, to get the top border of the quilt from Washington quilted that night.  I used silver So Fine 50-weight thread on top, the same color as the silver print on the light fabric, and charcoal Bottom Line 60-weight thread in the bobbin.  The pantograph is ‘Alfresco’.

Again the next morning, and for the last three mornings, I let the weeds in the flower gardens have a few more days to live while I concentrate on getting quilts done. 

Ohhhhh... there’s a cardinal perched on the lilac bush outside the kitchen window singing his heart out.  He’s not more than a foot and a half from my elbow.

I whistled back at him, and now he needs a chiropractic treatment from craning his neck every which way to see where that whistle was coming from.  😂

Loren’s supper that evening was a hamburger, Stovetop cornbread stuffing, green beans, a blueberry streusel muffin, peaches, applesauce, and cran-raspberry juice.  He was pleased with that meal, exclaiming over how much he liked the stuffing, though he once several years ago said he didn’t like it at all.  He may have been used to the kind of stuffing that is baked ‘in the bird’.  I never make it like that; it’s too greasy to suit me.  Maybe he’s getting used to my cooking?  Or maybe his tastebuds don’t work as well as they used to.  😏

A quilting lady on an online quilting group mentioned that she wanted to make a Card Trick quilt.  I told her about the time I used the Card Trick pattern to make a table topper for a wedding gift.

When I posted the pictures of it, someone wrote to tell me that that was a very bad idea, because there was way too much thickness in the center, and anything the poor bride placed on it would topple over.

My evil imp was alive and well that day, so I wrote back and said that this was my way of teaching a new bride that she must have balance in her life.

And then fellow quilters went and spoilt everything by informing the worried soul that blocks in a Card Trick pattern aren’t really stacked; it’s only an illusion accomplished via piecing. 

Hmmmph.

I liked my explanation best.

I went outside to reposition the water, and brought back in an old-fashioned rosebud from a bush that came from my mother’s rosebush, which in turn came from her mother’s rosebush in North Dakota.  The old-fashioned roses – even the unopened buds – have so much more fragrance than the hybrid roses.

A couple of earthquakes were reported in Nebraska that day.  One measured 3.7 and the next 3.1 on the Richter scale.

Have you ever felt an earthquake?  I haven’t.  Or if I did, I thought it was just Larry getting another skid loader off his trailer.  😂

Late Friday night, I finished my customer’s ‘Play Day’ quilt.  It measures 77” x 91”. 

The next day, I sent her these photos, writing, “Note the picture of your empty box.  Well, sorta empty.  If your quilt gets to you with Teensy cat stowed away inside it, send him back, would you?  🤣 ”

When I spread the quilt out on the deck to take pictures, Tiger showed up, as usual.  I put up a hand like a traffic cop and told him, “Stay off!”  He did – but you can see by his ears’ back-quirk (should be a word, and would be a word, had Noah Webster’s cat ever had reason to back-quirk him) and the tail straight out behind him (as opposed to its usual lofty attitude straight up into the air) that he is not pleased with being disallowed on the quilt.

A friend wrote and asked some questions about my scanner, saying that she needed to scan her photos, too.

My mother spent a lot of money in her later years making good copies of old family photos for her children.  We very much appreciated it. 

Scanning is, in itself, ‘free’; my biggest expense will be the 4-1-compatibility thumb drives I’ll buy for each of the kids.  I want the drives to work with any device. 

Hopefully, someone will someday, years from now, care enough about the pictures to update the thumb drives to whatever the latest storage device is, before it becomes obsolete.  😏  Imagine if you discovered a cache of old family photos – stored on those old 8” floppy disks.  Where in the world would you find a device that would read one of those things?  There would have to be a really tall stack of them – and the photos wouldn’t be very good quality – because even the ‘newer’ 5 ¼” floppies (which were encased in hard plastic cases) usually held only 360 KB. 

Funny that many of my software programs continue to use ‘Save’ icons that look like 3 ½” floppy disks.

Saturday morning when I went into my quilting studio to start on my friend’s ‘Missy’ quilt, I found the rosebud fully opened.  

Teensy and Tiger followed me upstairs, and it wasn’t long before Tiger was asleep in his bed at one end of the quilting frame, and Teensy was asleep in his bed at the other end of the frame.  Under the frame, that is.  😊

Loren arrived at our house in his suit at about a quarter ’til 7 that evening, thinking it was time to go to church.  Again he didn’t know where the church was – or even what church it was.  He was relieved when we told him it was Saturday evening and there was no church service, for, he said, he was very tired.  But he visited with Larry for an hour before heading home, getting there 15 minutes later without any trouble.

I got three rows of quilting done before bedtime.  I’m using light sand-colored Gutermann 40-weight thread on top and matching Bottom Line 60-weight thread called ‘Statue’ in the bobbin.  The pantograph is named ‘Paisley’.

When Larry called Loren Sunday morning, he still seemed quite mixed up.  Larry told him to put his cell phone with his Bible so he wouldn’t forget it.

When we got to church, Loren wasn’t there.  Larry dropped me off, then called Loren.  Fortunately, he’d remember his cell phone.  He was clear out by the corner where we turn to go to Teddy’s.  When I checked SpotTrace later, I saw that he’d been to our house, which is a couple of miles west of Teddy’s.  It had taken him a while to get back to that corner, so he’d probably tried getting in our house.  Finding the front door locked, he likely walked around back, and maybe wandered in through the patio or garage door doing his usual shouting of “Is anybody here?!”

So he was headed back to town – but instead of continuing on 81 to Howard Boulevard, which would have taken him straight to the church almost in time to avoid being late, he turned onto the bypass again.  Larry told him to turn south on 33^rd Avenue when he got there.  He went on talking to him until he got to Super Saver, and told him to turn right again.

“What church am I going to?” Loren asked.

“Bible Baptist,” said Larry, “our church where we always go.”

“Oh!” said Loren, “I know how to get there!  You should’ve just told me that in the first place!  I didn’t know why you wanted me to go somewhere else.”  🙄

He came into the church when we were on the last verse of the first song, sat down close enough to me that Larry would have no place to sit, then moved over just a smidge in order to put his Bible down there.  Right where Larry would need to sit.

Larry came in a few minutes later.  Loren didn’t seem to understand that there was no place for him to sit.  I hurriedly picked up his Bible and handed it to him.  He didn’t act like he wanted to take it – so I practically put it right in front of his face, almost pushing it against him. 

You almost have to take something, when someone is doing that, right?

He took it – and actually moved over so Larry could sit down.

And the congregation sang on.

We took him his food at 1:30 p.m.:  battered Alaska cod, mixed vegetables, a blueberry streusel muffin, peaches, applesauce, and cranberry juice.  While I set his food out and gave him his new debit card, Larry went downstairs to get out the mattress, the exercise bike, and a large log that were too big and heavy for me to manage.

Meanwhile, I told Loren his debit card pin.  He hasn’t known his pin for over a year, and the bank would not give it to me, saying they ‘had no way of knowing’.  Is that true??

Well, I wrote the number on a little slip of paper (which is doubtless lost by now) and said I didn’t want to write anything else, such as “PIN for Bank of the West”, because if he put it into his wallet, someone might find it and clean out his checking account.

“Do you think I’m retarded?” Loren asked me.

“Nope,” I answered, “but I sure don’t want another episode like that Social Security number fiasco.  That wasn’t fun at all.”

He remembered.  (He gave his number to someone on the phone who was threatening him with a visit from the sheriff.)  So he stopped being all defensive over my ‘don’t put that PIN in your wallet’ advice. 

“Did we get that problem taken care of?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, “and I’ve monitored your credit card, investments, and your checking account, and everything is fine.”

He hadn’t noticed that Larry had vanished until I told him that Larry was getting a few things that were too heavy for me.  He laughed, and as Larry came back into the kitchen, he said, “That was pretty handy for me to just sit down and start feeding my face while you did all the work, wasn’t it?!”

Then he asked Larry, “Have you seen all the work that girl who’s been coming here each day has done down there?”

I pretended to take great offense.  “That’s me!” I informed him, stabbing a finger at my chest.  “I’m the one who’s cleaning down there!”

He was quite surprised.  “Oh!  Sorry!  But who’s that girl who comes with you to help?”

“There’s nobody who comes with me,” I told him.  “It’s just me.  Me, me!”  I thumped my chest again for emphasis.

He shook his head and laughed.  “I’m sorry!  I’ll give credit where credit is due!  I like credit, when it’s due me!”  Then he paused and thought about it.  “I didn’t realize it was you.  I thought it was the other sister!”  (Lura Kay?  Or is there another sister I don’t know about?)

When we got home, I took Teddy’s advice and ordered another tracker for Loren’s Jeep.  This one should give real time locations, instead of merely dropping a pin if the Jeep is stationary for a short length of time.

Larry called Loren at a quarter ’til 6 to remind him of the church service.  He was all ready to go, didn’t seem confused at all, and apologized for the ‘goose chase’ of the morning.

He was already at the church when we got there.  SpotTrace showed him home at a normal time after the service. 

And so we continue, step after step...

We went to Super Saver after the service, and got a cartload of the dairy products I can’t order online and have delivered to my house.  We bought a couple of ready-made salads – Southwestern, and Spinach Bacon – and had them for supper when we got home.

This morning I fed the cats... petted the cats... set up the water outside... petted the cats... rinsed out the birdbaths... petted the cats... filled the bird feeders... petted the cats...

After I curled my hair, I ate breakfast, put the ‘Play Day’ quilt in a box to ship back to the lady in Washington State, took it to the post office, and then dropped off the aforementioned exercise bike at the Salvation Army.  Two frail old men lifted the exercise bike from the BMW.  I stood by and cheered them on.

They didn’t want the mattress, so I somehow wrangled it out of the BMW, and now it’s in a heap by our garbage can.

The birds love all the water features around the yard (different sprinklers, and a couple of birdbaths with fountains).  I just peeked out the front door, and there are cardinals, blue jays, brown thrashers, sparrows, Eurasian collared doves, grackles, starlings, and finches out there.  This time of year, water is a bigger draw to the birds than food is.

Blue jays are often quite aggressive birds.  Plus, they eat other birds’ eggs – and even the babies!  My mother used to keep a can with a small chain in it to shake when the jays got close to her wren house.  She got so upset at one persistent blue jay, she threw can, chain, and all at him, then scurried back into the house (from her back deck) to find more ammunition.

She then had to call us and ask for one or more of the kids to run across the street and retrieve from the lawn all the things she’d thrown.  She was laughing, apologizing – and blaming the blue jay.  😄

The kids were struck quite funny to see their sweet, quiet, ladylike Grandma’s more fiery side.  She did save the wrens.

Gotta go reposition the sprinklers – oh, for an underground watering system!

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Okay, I’m back.  Did you miss me?

I got out the bag of red grapes we got at Super Saver last night... started eating them... and couldn’t get stopped before I’d eaten one entire cluster, bigger than my fist.  Back into the refrigerator they go.  That’s a big enough afternoon snack.

A few minutes ago, I sent a friend a screen shot, which I didn’t crop. 

She promptly wrote back and asked, “Exactly how many windows do you have open?”  Before I could respond, she asked further, “How many browsers do you have open?”

Uh, ... counting ... 47 tabs in Chrome.  Okay, that’s really unnecessary.  I could close... ummm... 3.  🤣

Browsers?  3.  Chrome (44, now that I closed those unnecessary 3), Firefox (only 3 tabs open on that one), and Edge (16 tabs here).  I usually finish with Edge and close it, but (gasp!) I forgot to finish reading the news, the funnies, and check the Spam folders in my blind friend’s email addresses. 

Windows?  16.  Outlook (2), Word, Chrome, a Bible Reader from Chrome, Edge, Publisher, Excel (2), Folders (2), Photo Editor, Verizon messages app, Weather app, and Adobe Reader.

Good thing I have a high-speed, high RAM gaming computer, huh?!

And now I shall put all those tabs and programs to sleep at once by thwacking my laptop shut.  Byeeeee!

,,,>^..^<,,,          Sarah Lynn          ,,,>^..^<,,,