Sarah Lynn's Nature's Splendor: July 2021

Wildfires far to the north and to the west have given us some brilliant red sunsets lately. Beautiful, but too bad they’re caused by devastation somewhere else.

Tuesday afternoon, as usual, I took Loren some food. He’d been in high gear for the last two days, mowing and cutting weeds and going to Wal-Mart and I don’t know what all. I knew this over-agitation would soon result in something odd – and it did.

He was all up in arms because ‘Norma June’ had been gone for four hours (said in a loud voice), and he didn’t know where she’d gone. “She goes to town and won’t bring anything back for the home!”

As I usually do, I tried to ignore this and talk about something else, but he wasn’t having it. He demanded, “Well, what would YOU do, if that happened to YOU?”

I tried my old standby, “I don’t know who you’re talking about. The only Norma any of us know has been dead over a year; she’s in heaven.”

This made him more upset than ever, and he said, “I’m not talking about her!!! I’m talking about NORMA JOOOOOOOOON.”

I tried explaining, “Norma June was your wife, my mother-in-law, Larry’s mother, and she passed away---” but he wouldn’t let me finish and said (loudly), “You’re mixed up! You’re telling people I’m insane! You’re a liar!”

Hasn’t gotten that bad before. I said, “No, you’re wrong, and you shouldn’t talk like that. All of your friends and family have tried to explain this to you, and we all try to help you, and you shouldn’t act this way.” Since that didn’t slow things down at all, I added, “There is no other Norma June. The person you think you’re talking about doesn’t exist, (he kept trying to butt in, so I just kept a-goin’ – thought I’d add in the Heavy Hand of the Law here), and this is exactly why you wound up in the North Platte State Patrol office last year – because they knew perfectly well you were looking for someone who had died, and was no longer here.”

That slowed things down only momentarily. He does remember the stint in North Platte, and until now, it has stopped the argument. Finally I said, “I’m not going to talk about it anymore. It doesn’t help a bit, and I don’t like talking to you like this. So I’m going to go.”

I headed for the door, and he hurried after me and demanded, “What would you do, if someone kept telling you –” he gestured, as he does when words escape him.

Sometimes when I try to remember later what he said, and can’t, it dawns on me that this is because his sentences often peter out in the middle, because he can’t come up with the words he wants.

I answered, “I hope I would be able to understand they were trying to help me – which is exactly what all of us try to do with you.” And I went out and shut the door behind me.

Aarrgghh. That didn’t accurately represent my desire to be kind and helpful to my brother! It’s upsetting, that’s the truth of it. But I must stand my ground, or he gets worse. He has to know he cannot run over me; I won’t allow it. Otherwise, I won’t be able to help him. So... that’s what I do. But it’s not much fun.

He also goes to driving around looking for this ‘Norma June’, and this picks up steam until I adamantly inform him that the only Norma we know has passed away. The driving about hither and yon then stops for a while.

I have no idea if he remembers later that such things happened. I pretend like everything is fine and dandy the next day. I can do that, since I certainly don’t hold him responsible for his actions. But isn’t it something the way a person’s worst traits are amplified by Alzheimer’s and dementia? Yikes. I hope I never get it. I have lots of ‘worst traits’.

Whataya bet those persons who insist you should ‘always agree with them, all the time!’ not only wound up contending with Alzheimer’s or dementia patients who were totally impossible to deal with, but also raised the most dreadful brats ever imaginable? I hope someone, someday, who is in a similar position to mine finds what I have written and realizes that yes, you do sometimes have to be firm with those with dementia, just as you do your children; and no, they do not interpret it as a lack of love – in fact, it’s the very opposite. Loren knows we love him. If he ever seems to not know it, I assure him that we do. He does understand this – just as he understands that he will not get by with being nasty and troublesome. I don’t know how long he will understand; but for now, he understands.

Home again, I went back to loading a customer’s ‘Ladybugs & Friends’ quilt on my quilting frame, then began quilting with a pantograph called ‘Bugs & Bubbles’. I’d never used it before, and discovered it was one intense panto.

It was going to take longer than I’d expected and use up a lot of thread, besides. I considered taking out my stitches when I had a few inches done and reprinting the pattern much larger, but I looked at those little ladybugs and thought, ‘If they’re bigger, it’ll be harder to work out exactly what the design is, on this busy fabric. Plus the circles might very well be harder to make.’

So I left it and continued on. It does look quite cute. I cranked up some lively music, and quilted faster. 😅

I used light silver So Fine 50-weight thread on top, and dark charcoal Bottom Line 60-weight thread in the bobbin. People often ask why I use different weights of thread top and bottom. Sometimes, it’s just because that’s the thread I happened to have in the color I wanted to use. But most of the time, I use the finer thread in the bobbin because there are then a lot fewer bobbin refills and changes.

Wednesday afternoon, I called Loren and talked with him like nothing at all had happened the day before. I took him a meal a little before 4. He was (almost) back to his ‘normal’ self, though maybe a little cautious about what he said. And amazed (as usual) that the midweek church service that night would be at 7:30 p.m. (He was just as amazed that it was at 6:30, Sunday evening.)

So maybe we’ll be able to keep stumbling along for another little while.

After church that evening, Larry and I had a late supper of clam chowder, strawberry cheesecake Greek yogurt, peaches with cottage cheese, chocolate chunk/peanut butter chip cookies, with orange banana strawberry Crystal Lite to drink.

I headed back to my quilting studio afterwards, hoping to finish my customer’s quilt; but gave up at 2:00 a.m. with probably another hour of quilting left.

By Thursday afternoon, the quilt was done. It measures 70” x 83”.

I packed the lady’s three quilts into a box and labeled it. It was ready to be shipped.

I took Loren some food before going to the post office: clam chowder, Ritz crackers, potato salad, cheese slices, peaches, strawberry yogurt, and cranberry apple juice.

It was hot – 88°, with a heat index of 92°. The sprinkler was on, the birdbaths were refreshed, the bird feeders were full, and the birds were having a skippety-do-daw fun time out there. I saw Northern cardinals, English sparrows, house finches, American goldfinches, brown thrashers, robins, blue jays, common grackles, European starlings, red-winged blackbirds, Baltimore orioles, Eurasian collared doves, mourning doves, and barn swallows. Quite the array of birds!

Soon I was back upstairs in my quilting studio, a cup of cold coffee on one side of me, and steaming hot coffee on the other. The cats were sleeping nearby. Big ol’ Tiger kitty got too close to the wall of his bed before lying down, and the bulk of him was actually lying on the wall, causing the front side of the bed to tip up and look like it was about to dump him. 😂 These days, after careful monitoring of his food, and putting only diet food for senior cats into his dispenser, he isn’t so much fat as he is big. He’s tall and broad-chested. He still has a hang-down tummy, but I sure don’t want to starve him on account of something that’s only a remnant of days gone by. Maybe it’s just fur and skin, who knows. He’s such a sweet-tempered old thing. He stares at us soulfully when he wants us to pet him, and blunders around our ankles tripping over our feet, trying not to put his weight down on our toes. Funny old kitty. How could anyone have ever been mean to him? I don’t understand such people.

I got back to work on the Colorwash Blooming 9-Patch quilt, trying to figure out where in the world I’d been, in the scheme of things, when all those customer quilts arrived. 😏 I carefully numbered each fabric, each stack of cut pieces, and each stack of sewn blocks. Then I referred to my labeled picture/diagram of the quilt to determine the order of each diagonal row.

It’s an easy pattern, if I can manage to keep everything straight!

That evening I put together 12 of the 9-patch blocks, added a couple of diagonal rows to the corner section, then put together 8 of another 9-patch block.

It’s going together fairly quickly. I’d better get some double-sided fusible ordered! I’ll be ready for it before I know it.

A friend and I were discussing motels and campgrounds, and the rising costs of each. Around these parts, you can sometimes stay cheap in 4H camps, when the 4H-ers aren’t using them. The kids thought it was great fun when we did that once in southwestern Colorado. We didn’t stay in the bunkhouse; we only used the campground and the showers. There were dozens of empty rooms... lots of bunkbeds... big shower rooms... and a huge mess hall. One night the girls and I had taken showers and were headed back to our camper – a large, hard-side pop-up camper. We walked down the long, semi-darkened hall, turned a corner ----- and Lydia, finding herself face to face with a ghost, shrieked at the top of her lungs.

The ghost shrieked, too.

The girl was looking at herself in a mirror. 😂🤣

By late Friday night, I had 37 hours invested in the Colorwash quilt. That day I had made a couple dozen of some blocks... a dozen of others... and added two catty-cornered strips.

Saturday, a friend sent me a picture of her young granddaughter holding a very small lizard, which she had named ‘Larry’, evidently after her cousin’s new husband. 😄

When Lydia was that age, she named several of her favorite stuffed Shar-Pei puppies (those pooches with the saggy-baggy, rumpled skin) after Bobby, Hannah’s fiancé at the time. The favorite of favorites received the exalted name of ‘Rumply Bob-Bob’. Teddy and Joseph immediately went to calling Bobby ‘Rumply Bob-Bob’.

When I called Loren at 3:00, he told me he’d been to visit his mother. I figured he probably meant Lura Kay, but, not wanting to put words in his mouth and wind up with the wrong answer, I told him that our mother had passed away in 2003.

“Not your mother,” he said, “My mother!”

“We have the same mother,” I replied. (That surprised him.) “She passed away December 12, 2003.”

I asked where he had seen this person, and he gave me a general location. I quickly checked the Vyncs tracer, verifying that he had indeed gone to Lura Kay’s house.

I asked, “Do you mean, our sister? Lura Kay?”

No, it was his mother. I told him that that couldn’t be, because she passed away in 2003. “It’s Lura Kay who lives next to Christine, and across the street from Robert.”

Then he laughed and said, “Yes, it was my sister. Who did you think I said?!”

“Our mother,” I answered, and he laughed, “That’s a whole generation off!”

I returned his laundry when I took him his food an hour later – Alaskan salmon, potato salad, Mediterranean vegetables, apple pie, pears, and fresh-made lemon-limeade.

As I left, he stopped me to ask me something... forgot what he wanted to say... finally remembered: “Who did you think I said I went to visit?” grinning like it was me who had the goofy idea.

“You said you visited our mother,” I replied. “You meant Lura Kay, our sister.”

He pondered that. “Well, it was a relative,” he agreed. “She acted like she knew me!”

“It was Lura Kay,” I nodded.

“No, not Lura Kay!” he argued.

I reminded him where she lives... and then he laughed and said, “Oh! Yes! That’s our sister, Lura Kay!” Then, “Who did you think I said?”

I laughed too, and headed for the door. This could go on for who-knows-how-long, if I didn’t escape. “It’s all right,” I told him, “we got it all weeded out.”

He laughed, and I fled for my life.

I drove the Jeep instead of the BMW that day. The poor thing was covered with messes from the barn swallows that nest in the garage. Larry belatedly purchased a large cat door to put in the outside walk-in door, so the swallows won’t be able to get in (unless the cats hold the flap open for them). When they’re done nesting, he’ll install the door. Theoretically.

I like the Jeep better than the BMW, although the brakes aren’t as good. But! – I can get in and out a lot easier, it has a backup camera (which I use regularly), it has heated seats (which feel sooo good on my back), it steers and drives easier, all my songs are on the radio’s hard drive, the seat is more comfortable, it doesn’t rearrange bones in my wrist to turn the key, it shifts easier, and it’s more roomy. Oh, and the windshield is easier to see out of. I wonder if that’s why my eyes didn’t trouble me like they have been doing in the BMW? Hard to say; sometimes there’s neither rhyme nor reason as to what causes Benign Essential Blepharospasm to act up.

My back felt well enough that I was finally able to scrub the tub and some of the bathroom floor. Larry has given it a few half-hearted swipes during the last few weeks, but it looked pretty bad. I fizzled long before I was done, but the tub was once again sparkling clean, and the floor looked considerably better. I washed the dishes and the clothes – and I managed to get Larry’s heavy jeans out of that deeeep washer and put them into the dryer without hurting my back. It did hurt when I lifted the jug of detergent to pour it into the washer, though. Still, it’s getting better.

A friend asked, “Do you always keep track of the hours you put into your quilts?”

I do keep track of the ‘important’ quilts, because it makes a difference in what it’s appraised for, and I’ve been having the last few large quilts appraised.

Another friend wondered, “Wouldn’t that make the quilt value differ, from a quick sewer to a slow sewer?”

There are parameters, and a bit of leeway, so that a quilt made by a fast seamstress isn’t of seriously lesser value than one made by a slower seamstress.

The same goes for the price of materials for the quilt. In my Excel documents where I list hours (and I differentiate between activities, such as cutting, piecing, quilting, etc.) and price of materials, I also keep track of things purchased on sale, or coupon discounts, and have a column where I tally up what the total would’ve been if things had’ve been full price. My appraiser is always pleased with all that information.

By the time I quit Saturday night, two dozen more 9-patch blocks were done and two more diagonal rows had been sewn into place. I was almost halfway done putting the top together. When finished, it will measure 111” x 120”.

As I posted pictures, I looked at the tally of ‘Friends’ and ‘Followers’ on my Facebook page: 4,886 Friends and 2,684 Followers. Most of them, I don’t know from Adam. Or Eve, for that matter. Almost all of them are quilters, and they ‘found’ me through a few large Facebook quilting groups. Periodically I wind up with a few ‘Friends’ that evidently arrived straight from Mars or Pluto or somewhere; I do my part to help them back to their respective homelands via the ‘Unfriend’ button. 😂

I need to pull up my Friends list and weed a few out. I always hope I don’t delete somebody who truly wanted to be in that list. I try to pay attention and respond to the more regular commentators; I don’t want to give them the ol’ Dithers’ boot!

When Larry got home, we drove the Jeep to Walkers’ shop and Larry washed it. It’s a really nice-looking vehicle, when the barn swallows haven’t put their stamp of approval all over it!

I stayed home from church yesterday, having evidently contracted some sort of stomach bug.

Loren forgot his Bible that morning. One of the ushers gave him one of the Bibles they keep for visitors to use. The page numbers were at the top of the page instead of the bottom as we are accustomed to; so when Loren couldn’t find the reference and Larry held his Bible over for him to see, Loren held his hands out, palms up – he was stumped. Larry finally noticed that the numbers were at the top of the page, and pointed them out. When Loren can’t find the page, his page-flipping gets noisy. 😏

A little after 9:00 p.m. last night, I heard Larry pulling into the garage. He’d been to the grocery store to get me some ‘sick food’ – yogurt, Mt. Dew, crackers, etc. ‘Sick food’ is food I like all the time, and have excellent excuse to eat more of when I’m sick. 😉

He forgot the yogurt.

I ate a few bites of cottage cheese (passable substitution for yogurt), and then placed a Schwan’s order for one of my blind friends.

I got everything on her list ordered... clicked Choose Delivery – and wondered why it had my address instead of hers. Turned out, I was using the Chrome browser, which I use for my Schwan’s orders, instead of the Firefox browser, which I use for her orders.

Signing out and back in with her name did not save the order, nope. 🙄

Ah, well. It didn’t take long to redo the order – and I found a coupon that saved my friend $25. She picked a good time to order!

When I checked out, they gave a delivery date of Wednesday, July 28, between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. Well, that narrows it down, hmmm?

Today Larry took Loren some food, since I still didn’t feel so great, and I sure don’t want Loren to catch whatever it is. Hopefully, I’ll be as good as new by tomorrow.

We’ve been issued a heat advisory which will be in place from noon tomorrow until 9:00 p.m. Wednesday night. Daytime heat index values up to 110° are expected. By Friday, it’ll be nice again. Maybe, maybe I’ll be able to get my pathetic flower gardens weeded!

No pulling up sequoias or redwoods.

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

February Photos

Saturday, July 31, 2021

Old Photos: Victoria Maurine Jackson, 6 Months, August 1997

Old Photos: Hester, 8, and Victoria, 5 ½ months

Old Photos: Victoria, Almost 5 ½ Months

Monday, July 26, 2021

Journal: Muddling Along