Journal: ♫ ♪ Here We Go 'Round the Mulberry Bush ♪ ♫

Did you ever wonder exactly how many songs you know?  I have a bookcase full of hymnals and songbooks.  Of course there are repeats, but there are also many songs unique to the various books.  A couple of friends have given me a lot of very old hymnals, too, and some of those had one beautiful song after another, all previously unknown to me.  I especially love the tunes by Charles Gabriel, Charles Gabriel, Jr., Haldor Lillenas, James McGranahan, William Kirkpatrick, Philip Bliss, Ira Sankey, ... and so many more.

I’m pretty sure I’ve played straight through every hymnbook I have, one song after another.  I surely must know a few thousand songs... but I like to imagine what all those ‘new songs’ will sound like, when we get to heaven.  Come to think of it, the Bible says, ‘sing a new song’, singular, not plural.  Maybe we’ll just sing one long, continual symphony!  It won’t be boring, we can be sure of that. 

Again I’ve spent much of the last week scanning photos.  Here I am at age 11, in the 7^th grade.

When I was in school, I was very shy and quiet.  (Really!)  But every now and then, I made my stance known; my fellow schoolmates pretty much knew exactly what I thought about most everything.  If friends asked me what I believed about things, and were asking because they really wanted to know, I told them.  If I didn’t know the answer, I asked my father, and returned to school the next day with an answer.  But... once upon a time when I was in 7^th grade, a horrid smart-alecky kid asked me loudly, right in class, if something (can’t remember what) was ‘against my religion’ (stupid phrase). 

Everyone looked at me.  The teacher looked at me. 

My fortitude generally overcame my shyness in these cases.  I turned to the kid and said in a (seemingly) sincere tone, “I can’t answer that, because the Bible says I am not to cast my pearls before swine.”  And then I grinned at him.

Even the teacher laughed, at that.  And that nasty kid left me alone thereafter.

Larry was gone Wednesday and Thursday last week, collecting some pieces of equipment he’d purchased at online auctions.  He couldn’t pick up a snowplow attachment for the front of a truck that he planned to get, because the Mexican men from whom he had bought it had gone back to Mexico.  I wonder if that means he’ll never get it?  But since he wasn’t getting the plow, he got a motorcycle instead.  That makes sense.  Right?

I took Loren a meal at 4:00 p.m., and made sure to remind him that our midweek service is at 7:30 p.m.  He assured me he knew this, pointing at the big calendar on which I had written the times.

He headed to church at 5:42 p.m. 

He made it there in good time, arriving at 5:57; but of course no one was there yet.  He took a few false turns afterwards, perhaps looking for someone who could tell him what time the service was. 

He went back home, getting there at 6:21 p.m. – and he didn’t come back to church later.  He was probably worn out from that 40-minute drive.  It usually takes him only 10 or 11 minutes each way.

Siggghhhh... At least we can see his driving statistics on Vyncs, and know that he’s still driving safely.

After the church service, I went home, had a late supper, did a few household necessities, watched a beautiful video of exotic birds, and then went sleepily to bed at 2:00 a.m., setting my alarm for 7:30 a.m. in order to get up and take the garbage out.

My head itched.  My knee hurt.  I checked the alarm to make sure I’d remembered to slide the button to ‘on’.  I was too cold.  I was too hot.  The blankets were squishing my toes.  My shoulder itched.  My hip hurt.  I thought about Loren.  I thought about Larry, who was doubtless sacked out dead to the world somewhere near Wichita.  He’d had some troubles with his pickup, so the trip was taking twice as long as expected.  As usual, I should add. 🥴

I jerked my pillow out from under my head, re-plumped it, and shoved it back behind my neck and head.  I laid very still in order to make my brain think I had fallen asleep, and then, hopefully, said brain would follow the example.

It did not.

I thought about my children and grandchildren, several of whom have bad colds.  I thought about the bins of Junk and Stuff in my basement that I should get rid of.  My ankle itched.  My neck hurt.  My shoulder was cold.  My legs were hot.

THONK!  Bonk-bonk-bonk THONK!

An animal on was the back deck.

I scrambled out of bed, trotted around to the laundry room, peered out the patio door – and discovered a cute little raccoon indulging in birdseed.  I scurried for camera and flashlight.  Here’s the raccoon, having himself a tasty breakfast at 4:00 a.m.

He’d thought he’d found himself a smörgåsbord, what with the black-oil sunflower seeds, the suet with nuts, and the Nyjer seed! 

I went back to bed and tried sleeping for another hour and a half.  At 5:45 a.m., I gave up.  I turned off the alarm, dressed, took the trash out, showered, redressed, and curled my hair.

Preparing to vacuum, I sprinkled Carpet Fresh on the rugs.  Tiger, knowing what comes next, clambered off of his cushy bed and started waddling off for the back door.  Then, noting that I was getting out cereal and milk, he turned around so fast he skidded and nearly sat down.  😄  This, because I usually let him lick the last couple of drops of milk from the bowl when I’m done.

At a quarter after 7, the sun came up, and I had to take a few pictures of it.

I ate breakfast, cleared off the table, paid some bills, vacuumed the rugs, and swept the floor.

Next, I trotted upstairs to clean out my sewing cabinet, as Kurt and his brother Jared were planning to pick it up that evening.  Victoria finally has room for it now, there in her new house.

I filled two fairly large boxes with Stuff & Things from those drawers.  I haven’t laid eyes on most of it for years (elastic, ribbon, snaps, hooks and eyes, zippers, and so forth), and any good housecleaning guru would say I should therefore pitch the whole works.  If you haven’t used it for, what, three months?  Six months? – throw it out.  If it doesn’t bring you joy, throw it out.

That’s just aggravating.  My things aren’t what bring me joy.  My Savior brings me joy.  Beautiful old hymns bring me joy.  Favorite passages in my Bible bring me joy.  My family brings me joy.  My friends bring me joy.

Those who put their joy into mere things will regularly find themselves disheartened, disillusioned, and disappointed with life.  They will be totally devastated if they lose their cherished things to any of a variety of disasters.

So... here are all these things that I haven’t used for a coon’s age.  Uh, sorry, raccoon, ol’ buddy.  I haven’t used them for a tortoise’s age.  (Just doesn’t have the same ring to it.)  And while the items themselves don’t ‘bring me joy’, the thought of incorporating them into, oh, say, doll clothes, makes me look forward to watching little granddaughters opening gifts of handmade doll dresses, gowns, coats, and hats.

The boxes are now labeled and sitting happily (if not joyfully) on a shelf in the upstairs library closet.  Gotta make those doll clothes someday soon!

I found a few gadgets and tools in the drawers for Victoria, and I filled a little extendable-spout oil bottle with lily white oil for the Bernina 830 Record I gave her a couple of years ago.

I still needed to sweep and dust the upstairs floors, but my back was yelling ‘uncle’; so I stopped with the housecleaning and went to my little office to scan photos.

Here’s Joseph, April 27, 1996, with the new Schwinn bike we gave him for his 11^th birthday three days earlier.  

And here are Hester, almost 7, and Lydia, almost 5, on May 1, 1996.  It was a Wednesday, and their hair is all curled fancy for the evening church service. 

I’d just barely begun scanning pictures when Loren’s sister-in-law (Janice’s sister Judy) called to tell me Loren had just called her, saying he was at his ‘home in Grand Island’, and needed to go pick up Norma; she was working somewhere, and needed a ride home. 

I’m not sure why he called Judy... maybe because he didn’t know where to pick up Norma?

She asked him if he wanted her to call me.  No, NO!!  He did not want that.  “Sarah Lynn’s at her job, working!” he told Judy. 

That’s the first time he’s ever said that.  More likely, he just didn’t want her involving me, since I tend to throw monkey wrenches into his Big Plans.

Judy told him to ‘sit tight’ until I called him in a little bit.  

He ‘sat tight’ for ten minutes, and then he headed north in his Jeep.

I soon got a notification from SpotTrace.  Loren was northeast of Platte Center.  He didn’t have his cell phone (he never does).  The two vehicle trackers on his Jeep are always a little delayed in pinpointing his location, especially if he’s moving.

At 2:46 p.m., he was at Creston, 19 miles to the north.  At 2:55, he was at Leigh, 7 miles farther east.  At 3:01, he was at Clarkson, another 7 miles east.  2 miles east of Clarkson, he turned south on Highway 15, heading toward Schuyler, 22 miles to the south, and I figured he was now on his way home. 

I started fixing some food for him, checking Vyncs and SpotTrace periodically.

He got to Schuyler at 3:22, and turned west toward Columbus.  It’s 16 miles from Schuyler to his house.

When I got to there at 3:38 p.m., he wasn’t home yet.  The doors were locked, so I set the lunchbox on the bench on his porch and headed back to the bypass, wondering if I should go meet him, or wait, or what.

But there he was, just coming around the corner; so I pulled a Russian U-Turn (see, those car crash videos on YouTube have done me a good service after all!) and went back.

He was totally exhausted, as it was a windy, windy day, with gusts of 55 mph, and his Jeep Wrangler is square and catches the wind.

He started telling me that roads to our north were being worked on, and many were either down to one lane or closed, so he wound up having to go a lot farther than he’d expected.

That’s not the case; those roads are open, and any other roads he might have taken would not have been paved; they are gravel county roads. 

I have no idea if he truly thinks things like that are true when he says them, or if he just comes up with them in order to give me ‘good’ excuses.  It’s more likely the latter, I think.

I asked, “Where were you going?”

He blustered, “I was trying to get home!”

“But why did you go to Creston in the first place?” I asked.

“Well, I was just trying to get home!!!” he exclaimed again.

Of course, I know from what Judy told me that he thought he needed to go pick up Norma from her job – and I also recall times he’s pointed northwards and said, “Norma’s working at someone’s house up north.”

I reckon he didn’t know ‘north’ was that far, hmmm?

“I was going to come home and go straight to bed,” he said.  “I need to rest.”

I quit asking questions, because he was obviously worn to a frizzle-frazzle.  I set out his food and handed him some silverware.

“Well, anyway,” I told him cheerfully, “You got home in time to have a hot meal before you take a nap, so everything worked out all right.”

He smiled and agreed.

I went home and resumed the scanning of old photos.  Here’s Caleb in his room.  It was May 1, 1996, so he was 2 ½.  

This is Amy, 13, and Maria, 2, both of whom would one day become our daughters-in-law.  That picture of Maria, cute as it is, has always made me laugh.

Back in the mid-90s, every glasses-wearing person in my photos sports large-framed spectacles.  Those glasses were stylish and didn’t look out of place or unusual to us at all, because everyone who wore glasses had that style.  Many of them were quite pretty, as Amy’s are.

Glasses frames got so small a few years back that it was difficult to see properly without the frames getting in the way, and my graduated lenses (aka ‘by-lines’ – trifocals without any lines) had the various focal points too close together.  I put up with them for a couple of years (glasses are expensive!), and then got new ones with larger frames, never mind what the style happened to be.

That evening, the wind was howling at 45+ mph (a little less than it had been earlier), making the 42° temperature feel like 34°.  Kurt and his brother Jared came and got the sewing machine cabinet.

I fixed stuffed peppers for supper.  Mmmmm, mmmm.  One of our favorite meals.  Wouldn’t you know, Larry didn’t get home ’til late, and he wasn’t hungry because he got food at a convenience store somewhere.

At 20 after 8 that evening, the raccoon came back.  Here he is, just Livin’ The Life of Riley.

But the camera flash disturbed him, and soon he decided to make an exit.

A little later, an opossum strolled through, and found the old Nyjer seed I’d poured out.  Look, the little seeds are all over his funny pink nose.

See more photos, complete with captions, on my post:  Raccoon & Opossum

My sister Lura Kay, upon seeing these pictures, wrote, “I hope you are keeping your distance from that little critter!” (the raccoon)

“Yep,” I assured her, “I was inside the patio door, ready to shut it if he decided to try out those teeth on my shins.  We’ve seen even the cute little roly-poly babies bare their teeth, snarl, hiss, and jump toward us, when they felt threatened!”

 I always worry a bit if they seem more aggressive than usual, or not quite ‘right’, because they can carry rabies.  There was a report of rabies in Columbus a week or two ago – a domestic dog had got it from some kind of wild animal.  Several people had to have rabies shots, and the dog had to be put to sleep.

I keep my distance from the wild critters.  I even jumped out of my hide when I was filling the bird feeders, and a cute little house finch got overly enthused and nearly landed on my arm!  Scared the poor bird into the next county.

Late Friday morning, the winds were blowing steading at 37 mph, with gusts to 47 mph.  The temperature was 32°, and the wind chill was 16°.  Brrrrr!  I looked out the window, and saw a few snowflakes whipping about on the wind.

I continued scanning photos – but moved from my coooold little office into my quilting studio, which is much warmer.  The little office has a door into the unfinished addition, and cold air flows through the cracks.  The quilting studio is nicer anyway, as it has a couple of windows. 

We had a favorite kitty, Tad, who wasn’t afraid of anything.  

He was born to our Black Kitty, and so was in our house from his birth, and we were all so gentle and kind to him, he never, ever knew anyone or anything could be anything else.  

He’d lie in the street when ladies were coming to the school – right across the street from our house when we lived in town – to pick up their children, because he liked them, and wanted them to pet him.  I’d spot him, see the cars carefully driving around him, fling open the kitchen window, and call, “Tad!!!  Get out of the street!”

He’d complain, “Nnnnooooooooooooo!!!!!!!” – but he’d get up and saunter over to our curb and throw himself down like a petulant toddler.

I knew this wasn’t good... so I wasn’t too surprised when he wound up getting hit over on the four-lane a block and a half away.  He was only 14 months, and he was the most wonderful, unique cat we’d ever had.

The kids kept crying over him, so we got Socks to take his place. 

“Substitutes would irk a saint, For ye hope they are what ye know they ain’t!”

We liked Socks, too, but he could sure be a pill!  He might’ve been of similar color to Tad, but he certainly wasn’t of similar disposition.

We should’ve called him ‘King Tut’.

A friend asked me if the raccoon would keep coming back, now that he found a good place to dine.

I told her, “He – and his grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents, etc., etc. – have been coming around for years, ever since we moved out here in 2003.  Sometimes they bring babies – and once, a baby took a wrong turn and came through our pet door!!!   ”

“Better than the skunk I had come up to me on the front porch!” another lady remarked.

We have those, too.  Larry once petted a skunk in our garage one dark night, thinking it was our Black Kitty.  The skunk turned... Larry saw the stripe... and he came shooting up the steps – backwards – into the house so fast he nearly created a sonic boom.  Pressure waves were building into a vapor cone just before he reached the door. 

Three of the kids were watching the show, and they laughed ’til they were weak.  I think the skunk laughed, too.

That afternoon when I called Loren, he told me that I don’t need to bring him quite as much... uh... hmmm... he couldn’t quite think of what it’s called ----- but it was green!

I laughed, “I knew you were going to pick on the vegetables!”  He laughed, too.  I told him, “Vegetables are the foods that are the very best for us.”

He agreed, he knows that... and then began assuring me that he likes all of the food I bring, never has had any he hasn’t liked (that’s not really the case, but we’ll let him go on thinking that as long as he wants to).  He thanked me and told me how much he appreciates it.

That’s one of the things I read that seems to be different from Alzheimer’s, usually:  a Lewy Body dementia patient often stays appreciative of what people are doing for him quite a lot longer than Alzheimer’s patients do.  Alzheimer’s patients are more likely to not even give it a thought, after a while, about what others might be doing for them.  Of course that’s not absolute, and people are different; but that appears to be the general consensus.

Anyway, if he had to have one or the other, I guess it’s better that it’s Lewy Body dementia, and not Alzheimer’s.  But either one is pretty sad, really.

Now... what would I fix for him?  Spinach and green beans and broccoli and asparagus?  With pistachio pudding for dessert?

Levi, who’s 11, texted me, “Having a good day?”

“Yep!” I responded.  “My wig blew off once, and three long-haired chi-hoo-uh-hoo-uhs flew past the upstairs window, followed closely by a yak, but I’m having a fine and dandy day!”

“Good,” answered Levi.  “I logged some decent flight time today; I went outside with an umbrella.”

I wrote back, “!  What’s the umbrella look like now?”

“Inside out,” said Levi.

I sent him a few clipart pictures of people being blown along by the wind, clutching inside-out umbrellas.  Levi is a fun little kid to chat with.

I finished scanning one photo album and started on another – and discovered two albums that were full of postcards purchased on a couple of our trips, rather than photos.  So that’s two less photo albums that need to be scanned.

This is my late brother-in-law John H. and my sister Lura Kay.  The photos were taken May 20, 1994.

This is the crewcab Larry put a Cummins engine in and repainted.  He fixed up the popup pickup camper and the bumper-pull Holiday Rambler, repainting them both and rebuilding a part of the popup camper that had been damaged.  The Holiday Rambler was a 1966 model, but whoever had it before we did kept it in pristine condition inside.

We took this rig to Yellowstone National Park in August of 1994, also going to the Black Hills and Mt. Rushmore.  That’s Loren and Janice’s dog Bullet II in the foreground, and our house is on the right.  The photo was taken from my mother’s front porch.

Remember the picture of Victoria wearing the polka-dot scarf and a navy jacket with strawberries printed on it?  I had earlier made matching jackets for Hester and Lydia, but didn’t remember until I came to this picture that I’d also made them jumpers with ruffled straps and peasant blouses.  When I sent this shot of Hester to her, she wrote back, “I couldn’t remember why I recognized the strawberry fabric in that other picture.  I really liked that outfit!”

Here are Lydia and Teddy at Christmas time 1994.

Okay, I was nice.  I didn’t even take Loren any green stuff at all that day.  Instead, I fixed Philly steak, sweet potatoes, cornbread with maple syrup, rice pudding, applesauce, and lemon-limeade (odd day for the lemon-limeade, what with it being so cold and windy, but I’d made it a couple of days earlier when it was warm and sunny, and it did still taste good, and it needed to be used).

Here is my Jr. Choir in June of 1994.

Saturday afternoon, we dropped off some food at Loren’s house.  I wondered if he would remember how to use his microwave on the two dishes that needed to be warmed up.

We then headed to Omaha so I could get a new laptop at Nebraska Furniture Mart.  It was cold, windy, and rainy – which is often the only type of day Larry can get off work early enough to take such a jaunt.  

I got an Acer laptop, the Predator Helios 300 model.  It has a 17.3” screen and one terabyte of storage, and it’s rumored to be fasssst.  It is a gaming computer, after all (though I never allow anyone to put games on my computers).  It has 16 MB of RAM and a 6 GB graphics memory card.  I’ll find out more about it as soon as I fire it up.  And I’ll do that as soon as I finish this letter.

I’d have likely gone with HP again, since I’ve had good experiences with each of my HPs; but they didn’t have any of this ilk – that is, the high-performance gaming ilk.  I need one that’s fast enough to run a lot of programs at once, one that has a big screen and excellent graphics, and plenty of storage space.  It makes me want to boot salesmen in the shins when they say things such as, “Nowadays, people don’t store data on their computer.  It’s better to store it in the cloud!”

Sherrrrrrr.  Go look at Twitter on those days when cloud storage has crashed, and no one can get to their data, and see what people are saying about it! 

It’s true, I post quite a bit online; but, for one thing, the photos I post are almost always compressed.  I will always keep all my original – and uncompressed – data right here under my own roof.  I should get a fireproof box to store the hard drives in.

I also got a new ergonomic Logitech keyboard, as mine has begun displaying a few little glitches now and then.  It’s a pain when it starts adding in multiples of various letters, and I have to go back to the previous line and delete them.  Ugh.  Of course, at the moment, the old one is working perfectly.  Until it croaks, I’ll keep one upstairs and one downstairs.

In addition, I got a 4 TB Verbatim external hard drive.  Since that was the only brand they had, it didn’t occur to me to find out if it was one of those hard drives that must have its own electrical supply, or if it can draw from the laptop.  Turns out, it has to be plugged into an electrical outlet.  Rats!  I was so pleased when my last two hard drives, both WDs (Western Digital) only needed to be plugged into the laptop via USB connection.  Furthermore, the Verbatim is much bigger, about the size of the early WDs.  It was in a box, so I couldn’t see the actual device.  But why didn’t I think of that, when I picked it up and it was fairly heavy?  A lot heavier than the WDs.  But nooooo, the thought didn’t occur to me.

Ah, well.  It’s a good one; I’ll keep it and use it.  I see it has excellent reviews, and they (whoever ‘they’ are) say transfer rates are much faster than they are with the smaller, more ‘portable’ hard drives, which includes the WD.  It takes several hours to overwrite or transfer a terabyte of data to the WD.  If the Verbatim can speed that process up, I’ll stop griping.

After leaving Nebraska Furniture Mart, we met Joseph, Jocelyn, Justin, and Juliana at the Bass Pro Shop.

I gave Justin and Juliana coins to use in one of those hand-cranked penny-squishing/stamping machines.  Here’s Joseph helping Justin select his penny.  The big hand crank on the front of the machine was almost too much for little Juliana, but she wanted to do it herself badly enough that she got it done.

We tried (but failed) to use up all the gift cards our kids have given us for the last two years.  

I trekked through the store looking for something to buy with my gift cards.  Larry found a camouflage sweatshirt and a warm hat/gaiter combination.  He looked for ammo, but didn’t find what he wanted.  Mostly, he visited with Joseph.

When finally my back and feet were protesting and I hadn’t found anything to buy, I said, “Okay, that does it.  I have to pick things out, even if they are pricey.  This isn’t the Goodwill, after all, and I’m using gift cards, so I need to just look for things I like.”

We were in the balcony area where the shoes and socks are, so the first thing I chose was a pack of two pairs of thick, wooly-fleece slipper socks. 

They’re too big, just like most slipper socks.  If I walk very far in them, they wind up hanging off my toes an inch or so, and I find myself stepping high to avoid tripping over the ends of them.  Looks funny.  But at least they’re warm and comfy when I’m sitting down!  😄

Hopefully they’ll shrink a bit when I wash them.

Slipper socks in hand, I announced, “Now I’m going to buy some food.”

Juliana immediately pointed out the rack of cotton candy.  😂

“Not junk food!” I cried, making Justin laugh.  “I only buy good food.”

Juliana, looking resigned, rattled off, “Carrots.  Broccoli.  Potatoes.” in a long-suffering tone.  haha

Below are Jocelyn, Larry, Justin, Joseph, and Juliana at the shooting range.  Joseph is showing Juliana how to properly hold the gun and sight down the barrel.  (They don't shoot real ammo; it's all done with lasers.)

We took one of the glass elevators back down to the main floor then, and I started hunting in earnest for something to get with my gift cards.  Don’t think about prices at the Goodwill!  Don’t think about prices at the Goodwill! I told myself.

I chose a soft fleece cream-colored sweater, strawberry preserves, peach preserves, apple butter, mango-peach salsa, a large Smith Farms candle in a glass jar in Apples & Pumpkins scent, a big can of Uncle Buck’s cashews, and Tennessee Honey pecans.

We still have a couple of gift cards left; maybe we’ll go to Cabela's the next time we’re in Omaha.

After a couple of hours of shopping and visiting, we all went to Cracker Barrel for supper.

I ordered grilled maple bacon chicken with chives, and it was totally scrumptious.  I had steamed broccoli and coleslaw with it, and they put a big basket of biscuits and cornbread muffins on the table.  I took half of my food home.  Oh, and they had mulberry iced tea!  Mmmm.  I had coffee, too, which is always very good there.

Poor little Juliana had had quite a long day.  She leaned back against her chair, on which hung her down coat, and her eyelids started fluttering.  Jocelyn, not realizing her ‘Baby Girl’, as they call her, was falling asleep, said, “Eat your hash browns!”  Juliana obediently picked one up, stuck it in her mouth – and fell asleep.

Fortunately, someone made a loud enough racket a few tables over that Juliana roused, chewed, and swallowed.

Here’s Justin walking along the little stream and pool in Bass Pro Shop.  Can you see the window into the aquarium to Justin’s left?  There are several big fish – some type of trout – in the stream, and they swim along beside people who walk nearby, evidently hoping for handouts.

By 9:30, we were heading home, half of my supper in a Styrofoam box in the back seat.

The BMW has been working fine, by the way, ever since Larry used carburetor cleaner on the throttle plates. 

When Larry called Loren yesterday morning, as he does each Sunday morning, Loren told him ‘those girls’ had been there, though he didn’t know where they were right then.  He didn’t think he’d go to church... he thought he needed to go to the ‘other house’ to get his suit... and he didn’t know what town he was in.  Larry told him he was in Columbus, and he was in his own home, and had plenty of suits right there in his closet.

“Yes, I do have a couple of suits here I could wear,” Loren decided.

Since Loren hadn’t known it was Sunday, Larry asked him about his big clock/calendar on the table.  Loren didn’t seem to know what he was talking about, so Larry described the clock.  Sometimes Loren can look right at an item and not seem to see it, or not recognize it for what it is.  He has previously gotten his razor and his cell phone mixed up.

“It hasn’t been running,” Loren told Larry (though I knew it had been, the previous day).  “I don’t know how to run it.”

After a little stint of going ’round the mulberry bush about this and that, Larry said he needed to go, as he had to finish eating his breakfast and getting ready for church.

Loren was suddenly all upset, quite surprising Larry.  “Well, you sure know how to make a guy feel bad!” he said.  “Of course I’m going to church!”   And then, “I’m not insane, you know!” 

Larry tried his best to just smooth things over quickly. 

Loren got to church at 9:07 a.m.  Sunday School starts at 9:45 a.m., so he had a long wait before the service began.  He didn’t say a word to us all morning. 

One of the things I found in a drawer of my sewing cabinet when I cleaned it was a little bag full of teeny, tiny, flocked teddy bears.  I stuck the bag in my church purse to distribute to small granddaughters.

The only small granddaughter I found after church that morning was Violet.  She was plumb delighted with her tiny little bear.  Victoria and Carolyn weren’t feeling well, and had stayed home.

We stopped by Kurt and Victoria’s house, as Victoria had fixed food for Loren and for us.  Carolyn flung open the door for us when we got there.  I fished in my pocket, pulled out a tiny flocked bear, and handed it to her, which made her squeal in delight. 

“I knew Grandma would have one for me, too!” she cried.

Little things mean a lot to children, don’t they?

These little girls always rush to show their parents whatever I happen to give them.  A few days ago, I handed Violet a small card (those that I cut from the backs of calendars) with a picture of a bull elk on it, and explained, “This is a bull elk.  Daddy elks are called bulls, and Mama elks are called cows, and their babies are calves; they’re named the same as cattle.  Bull elks whistle really loudly, when they’re calling for their mates!” 

She looked up at me solemnly, big hazel eyes unblinking.  The moment I finished talking, she whirled around and scurried to her Daddy and repeated what I just told her word for word.

While Kurt and Victoria put food into partitioned covered dishes, Larry sat in the living room holding Carolyn and Violet on his lap, reading a book to them.  I lamented the fact that I had no camera, so Victoria poked her cell phone around the corner and took a few shots and a short video.  A couple of her pictures have a gray furry ear in the way, because Luna, their littlest kitty, was perched on a bookcase right around the corner, and when Victoria stuck her cell phone over her, Luna popped up to give it a good sniff and find out what was happening.  😸

See the big ol’ ear, there on the bottom left?

Victoria fixed strip steak, potatoes (which she mashed), carrots, onions, and gravy.  Victoria also gave us a piece of soft Scottish shortbread she’d made.  Yum!

I added applesauce, grapes, cornbread and maple syrup, and cranberry juice to Loren’s lunchbox, and Larry and I took it to him at about 1:30 p.m.  He was back to his usual self, as if nothing was wrong.

We made sure he knew the evening service started at 6:30 p.m.  

“They just keep on changing it!” he exclaimed, as I showed him that I’d written the correct service times on his big calendar.

He left home last night at 5:19 p.m. and got to church at 5:33 p.m.  The doors must’ve been open, because he stayed there.  Maybe he goes so early because he doesn’t know how far he is from the church, or how long it’s going to take to get there?  Dates and times are hard for him to comprehend.

Since I’m back to wearing velours and wools to church, and they’re often in black or navy or dark brown, I’ve been making good use of the lint roller.  Cats regrow two hairs from each and every follicle from which they shed a hair.  ((...pause...))  Surely they must! 

Question: when you sit down in church and spot cat hairs on your skirt, where do you put them after you pluck them off said skirt??

This afternoon Hester, with help from Keira, 3, was looking online at suits Larry might like.  She texted to ask me his size, and also the brand of a couple of his western suits.

I trotted off to look.

Then, “The brand is Dry Clean Only,” I told her.

Hester:  😅

Me:  Oh, wait; the tag must be elsewhere.

Here we go:  Tregos Westwear from Woodward, Oklahoma.

On the webpage where Hester was looking at western suits, the models were decked out in boots and cowboy hats.

Hester told me, “Keira’s very impressed with the cowboys.  She wondered if Grandpa was going to ride horses in the suit.  And then if he was going to wear the hat to church. 😄”

“She’s such a funny little sweetie,” I wrote back.  “Tell her Grandma says, ‘Grandma loves Keira!’”

Hester soon responded, “She wants to know if you’re coming over after I told her that 😅  I told her you probably don’t want to be coughed on.  🤧😷😬” (Keira has a cold.)

She sent a picture of Keira with her dolls, one lying on the piano bench, two more on folded blankets on the rug, all covered carefully with blankets.  “She’s taking care of a baby hospital,” wrote Hester.

“Tell her I have a little teeny tiny thing in my purse for her, and I’ll give it to her the next time I see her.  It’s a fuzzy teeny tiny thing,” I said.

Soon Hester replied, “She’s very excited about the fuzzy thing.  🙂🙃🙂🙃  ‘What issss it?!’”

Me:  Tell her, “It’s a **secret**!”

Hester:  😆 I said it was a surprise and that she’d have to wait and see.  Then she said, ‘What is it?!’ again. 😅  We are not patient.”

Me:  Grandma says it’s a thingama doodly googly bliggety wiggety.

Hester:  😅😅  👧

There are cute little juncos hopping about on the lilac bush right outside my window.  Every now and then cardinals land in the bush, too.

Here’s Lydia, who would be 3 in  five days, and Caleb, 8 months.  The picture was taken June 20, 1994. 

These photos of Dorcas, almost 12, Teddy, 10 ½, and Amy, 10 ½, were taken June 24, 1994, at one of our Jr. Choir sessions, in front of the painting in the baptistry of our old church. 

I called Loren at 3, but he didn’t answer his phone.  He’d been outside at 2:30; perhaps he was still out there?  I made him a meal of Philly steak, mixed vegetables, cornbread with maple syrup, cottage cheese, pears, rice pudding, and cranberry juice.

When I got to his house, he came from his bedroom to greet me; he’d been lying down (which was evidently why he hadn’t answered his phone when I called earlier).  He was all troubled, said he didn’t know the right thing to do, said he’d been trying to rest, thinking about what he ought to do, and he’d been praying that God would show him what to do. 

“There are just so many things,” he said.  “I have to decide what to do.”

I put his food on the table, got him some silverware, and asked, “About what?”

It seems he was trying to decide if he should ‘move back home’.

“You are home,” I told him.  I patted on the table.  “This is your home.  It’s your one-and-only home; you don’t have any other home.”  (I said that because he often tries to explain to people on the phone that he’s at his home ‘here in Columbus’, or, more recently to Judy, at his home ‘in Grand Island’.)

“Yes, I do,” he argued, a bit agitated, “I have one in Columbus.” 

He pointed off to the east.

“This is Columbus; you’re in Columbus, your house is in Columbus,” I told him.

He laughed a little, shaking his head like I was not quite bright, and tried to explain.  He thought maybe Columbus was in Nebraska, but he wasn’t sure.  (My brain, which apparently has a bit of malevolence in there somewhere, immediately thought of suggesting Ohio... Georgia... Kentucky... New Mexico... Indiana... Wisconsin... Missouri... etc., etc.  Thanks a lot, Mrs. Griffith, my nice fourth-grade teacher, for teaching us that.)  (I kept me big mouth shut on that topic of ‘multiple Columbuses’, uh-huh, I did.  Yep.  Give me a gold star.)

Turned out, he thought he was in Colorado.  His spatial cognizance is going away.  It has been doing so for a while; but it’s getting a lot worse.  He agreed, it’s Columbus he can see to the south... but he can’t understand why that’s Columbus, or where it is in the scheme of things.  And if he’s truly in Nebraska, he has no idea what part of Nebraska he’s in.

I gestured all around, toward all his windows, speaking in a cheery, reassuring tone.  “You’re in Columbus; everywhere you can see, that’s Columbus.  It’s a bigger town than it used to be, growing on all sides.  There’s a population of over 23,000 now.”  I pointed toward the north.  “Yankton, on the Nebraska/South Dakota border, is 2 hours away to the north.”  I pointed south.  “Hebron, on the Nebraska/Kansas border, is 2 hours to the south.”  I pointed east.  “And Omaha, on the Nebraska/Iowa border, is 2 hours to the east.  But Scottsbluff, way out west by the Colorado and Wyoming border, is a looong ways – a good 6-hour drive.  Nebraska is a big state!”

He looked amazed.  “That helps,” he nodded, “but I can hardly figure it out.”  He considered, then told me, “My problem was, I didn’t know where I was, what town I was in, where I was supposed to be, or where God wanted me to be.  This started about an hour and a half ago, and I just didn’t know what to do about it.”

I felt so sorry for him; he doesn’t usually admit things like this to me; he prefers the ‘All’s Well on the Western Front!’ facade.  But he really was distressed about it.

“You’re exactly where you should be,” I assured him.  “God wants you to be right here, in your very own house.  It’s totally paid for, the house and everything in it.  You don’t owe a dime on it, except for property taxes once a year, and that’s all taken care of for a while, and I’ll take care of paying it again in a few months; you don’t need to worry about it.”

He thought about that, then decided, “I do know I bought this house about 3 years ago, but I didn’t know if it was paid for or if I needed to make a payment,” he said.

“It’s been paid off for about 28 years,” I said.  “And you have plenty for anything you need.”

He wanted to know where he’d lived before.  “Solon, Iowa,” I said. 

He wasn’t happy with that answer.  I don’t know if it’s because he meant here in town, or what.  I couldn’t tell if he remembered living in Solon.  I said he’d lived in the house across the street from the church 35 years ago; then we lived there for a while, and now Sarah and Eugene live there.  He shook his head, like that didn’t make good sense.

He asked, “Are you planning to live here in this house for a while longer?”

“I don’t live here,” I told him, “Larry and I live ten miles to the west.”

He seemed surprised, then asked if ‘my husband’ and I owned our home.  I said we did (although it’s really the bank who owns it, but I didn’t mention that). 

“And our children live even closer to you,” I remarked, gesturing toward town.  “If you had a really strong pair of binoculars, you could probably see some of our grandchildren playing outside right now!”

He smiled about that.

“If you ever need anything,” I added, “and Larry or I am not able to come right away, any one of our children or the grandchildren who are old enough to drive would come and help you.”

But numerous times, he asked about his location, trying to figure it out, and I couldn’t tell exactly what the trouble was, so I could say the best thing to help him. 

I picked up some old pictures taken of his house not long after he and Janice moved in; I’d found them in his lower level when I was cleaning it.  He has them on his piano – but he often forgets they’re pictures of this house he’s living in right now.  I showed them to him. 

“These were taken when you and Janice first moved in, 28 years ago.”  I pointed at the motorhome beside the house.  “You moved from Solon, Iowa, and while the house was being built, you lived in this motorhome for a little while.  You parked it in Daddy’s big garage.”

He seemed to remember something about Daddy’s garage, but then he remarked, “I have trouble remembering things and keeping things straight.”  He pointed at one of the pictures and said, “This is that other house.”

“No, it’s this one,” I said.  “See the detached garage there?”  I pointed it out, then gestured toward the garage.  “But things look different, because there’s no latticework under the deck, and your spruce trees and Douglas firs have grown a lot.”  I pointed at two little trees in the photo, then pointed out the window.  “Just look at the difference!”

That seemed to click, probably because he enjoyed planting those trees, and enjoys them now, having grown so tall and full.  He worked hard keeping them watered, all through the years.

Finally I said, “You really are exactly where you should be, and where God wants you to be.  God has given us a lot of blessings.”

He agreed quickly and wholeheartedly with that.  Lewy Body dementia has not shaken his faith.  He then began eating (ignoring vegetables, meat, and cornbread, and starting on the pears), and was soon smiling and happy again.  He thanked me for what I’d said, saying he felt at peace now, and would be all right.  “I can’t tell you how much that puts my mind at ease,” he said, “knowing that you and Larry live nearby.”

He ate a few more bites of food, and then thanked me for the food, too, “and everything you do,” he added, “paying the bills and things.”

“Oh, it’s okay,” I answered, gesturing at the food.  “It’s just scraps, you know.”

That made him laugh and shake his head; he knows better than that!  I decided all was well, and told him goodbye.

It’s sad, isn’t it?

I took six of Larry’s suits to the cleaners.  They’ll be done Wednesday – and the place closes at 3:30 p.m. that day.  Gotta remember to pick up those suits!  Setting a notification on my computer...  Okay, I’ve chosen Scott Joplin’s The Chrysanthemum to notify me.  Now I need a notification to remind me not to turn the volume down too low on my laptop.  Oh!!! – by then, I hope to be using my new laptop! 

It takes a good long while to get all my data transferred, and to get all my programs set up on a new laptop.  I enjoy it, actually; but I have so many other things to do, it gets a little frustrating if things don’t fall right into place properly and quickly.  I shall keep the mind-frame, ‘I enjoy this,’ and that’ll hold the frustrations at bay.  Plus, I have all the Christmas gifts ordered, so there’s nothing extremely pressing (despite the fact that I always consider everything on my To-Do list ‘pressing’ – Gotta do it now!  Gotta do it now!).

The Moultrie game cam on Loren’s house took a pretty picture at sunset tonight.  Too bad I didn’t notice the sunset out my own window and get a picture with my good camera!

I ate the rest of Saturday’s Cracker Barrel meal for supper tonight – grilled maple bacon chicken with chives, and steamed broccoli.  Mmmmm, mmmm.  That’s good stuff.  It’s usually a pretty good price, for me to eat at Cracker Barrel, because my meal generally winds up being two meals.  I added red grapes, strawberry oatmeal Oui yogurt, and Alo watermelon and peach Aloe Vera juice to the meal, and it was just right.

When Tiger eats his Fancy Feast soft food from the saucer I put it on, he starts by licking it – and invariably winds up licking chunks right off the saucer, and he then has a hard time picking the pieces up from the floor.  So he comes over to me and stands staring soulfully up into my eyes.  I wonder, Why are you begging for more food?  I look at his saucer – Oh.  The stuff is on the floor.  So I grab a knife and a spoon, scoop it off the floor, and put it back on his saucer.  This time, he just eats it, taking big smacking mouthfuls, instead of licking it.

Larry is going to Genoa to work on a vehicle.  As he headed out the back patio door, he called, “The ’possum is back!”

By the time I got to the door, the opossum was waddling down the stairs, as Larry had frightened it away.  Soon I heard him shuffling through the leaves out in the back yard (the ’possum, not Larry).  I dashed back into the kitchen for a flashlight, and then we watched as the little critter trundled along.  A couple of inches of leaves are deep, when your legs are only three or four inches long!

I turned the flashlight toward Larry’s ‘new’ motorcycle, which he’s riding to Genoa.  It’s been in the 70s today, and it’s still 49°, even though it’s 10:00 p.m.  Fine motorcycle weather.

The leaf-rustling suddenly intensified.

I rushed back over the deck railing and shined the light down into the yard – and there was a passel of half-grown baby opossums scrambling madly through the leaves, trying to catch up with their mother!  (This photo is from the Internet.)

Even if you think opossums are horrendously ugly, I think you would’ve had to agree, that was awfully cute.

And now... let’s get that new computer started!