Journal: It's A Bird! It's A Plane! It's... A Kite?

Last Monday on the way to Loren’s house, I again saw that boomerang/banana kite/UFO thingamawhatzit whipping around in the sky along the Lost Creek Parkway.  What is it?  It surely must be remote-controlled.  I looked at Google Images, typed in all sorts of descriptions and combinations of words, and found nothing like it at all.  It’s shaped sort of like a curved or bent skateboard, and is most black, with some thin stripes of blue or teal on one end.  The first time I saw it, from a distance I thought it was a black garbage bag tossing on the wind.  But as I got closer, I could see that it was thin and had some rigidity of shape, though I believe it does flex in order to change direction and spin and twist.  It can travel for quite a long distance along the highway, and is usually a bit to the south of the road.  Maybe the operators are parked beside one of the lakes or ponds south of the highway?  I may have seen them standing beside a pickup there.  Why can’t I find anything similar online, I wonder?

Tuesday, with permission from Lydia, I re-entered the New York Beauty quilt in four 2022 AQS quilt shows.  

The quilt was accepted in each of their shows in 2020, and then all shows after the first one in Daytona Beach were canceled throughout 2020 and 2021, and the quilt was ignobly shipped back home again, licking its wounds.  I will learn some time in January if it’s admitted into the Branson show.  If the quilt is accepted in the Paducah show, which takes place at the end of April, I hope to attend.

That afternoon, my brother’s meal consisted of a chicken breast filet, broccoli, peaches, strawberry jello, lemon pudding, prunes, a couple of slices of Schwan’s American cheese, and cran-grape juice.

I got 160 photos scanned that day, which is more than usual.  This is not a quick project.  It takes some time, taking pages from albums and carefully pulling back the plastic so as to scan the photos – or, if the pages have pockets, to remove the photos from each pocket.  I label each photo, and edit if necessary (and most often, a little editing is necessary).  The newer albums go faster, because the pictures were taken with better cameras, thus giving me less editing to do.  By 10:30 p.m., my neck was complaining and telling me it was time to quit.  I could get so much more done, if I didn’t have a pain in the neck!  😏

It rained all day Wednesday, but gently, for once.  Tiger came marching into the kitchen several times, loudly telling me to turn off the rain, “Nnnnnoowww!”

“You don’t have to go outside, you know,” I told him.  He stared at me reproachfully.

That silly cat dried himself off by rubbing against my skirt while I was rushing around fixing Loren’s food.  I didn’t realize he was so sopping wet until I reached down to pet him, came up with a dripping hand, and had to wash before I could proceed with the meal-making.

“Yuck!!!” I exclaimed.

“MrrrrOOOWWW!” retorted Tiger.  (That’s ‘I can’t help it; don’t blame me; it’s not my fault,” in Cattese.)

Loren’s meal was steak and vegetable stew, sweet potatoes, peaches, Activa pineapple fiber yogurt, lemon pudding, and peach-white-grape juice.

The BMW allllllmost decided to cause trouble when I started it.  The orange triangle with an exclamation in the middle came on, on the dash – which usually means the vehicle will go into limp mode about the time I get over on Old Highway 81.  I turned it off and restarted it after giving it a few seconds to gather its wits about itself, and it worked okay.  I will get stranded with that thing one of these days; just you wait and see.

When we headed out to go to church, we had to go onto the deck, and it was dark and slippery, hard to tell where the steps were.  Near the bottom of the steps, I stepped too far and put my foot (in its slippery but cute little church shoe) on the edge of the step, and it slid right off.  I had both of our Bibles and my small church purse in my left arm, my big purse on my right arm, and was also holding an umbrella in my right hand, so I wasn’t holding the rail.  So I crashed onto the landing, injuring knees, wrists, fingers, back, and dignity.  Was I one step up, or two?  Probably only one; something surely would’ve come apart at the hinges, had I been two steps up.  I scrambled to my feet, and on we went to the BMW and off to church, where I tried not to fall off the pew or anything.

Thursday, Kurt & Victoria got the keys for their new house!  

They soon had the moving van at their old house, collecting furniture.  

Friends came to help, and they were in their new house by evening.  There’s the new house, and those all-important keys.  Wasn’t that a nice gift for their fifth anniversary on October 30^th?  Fortunately, the rain was over, and it was a blue-sky, sunny day.

“We moved in rain,” recalled Hannah.  “Our carpet was so dirty.”

As I scanned photos that day, I found a picture of Maria with her younger sister Heidi, sitting on the bench of the very piano that’s now in her own house.  That’s the Kimball grand piano my father bought for me when I was 13 years old, on the very day Jacksons came to town.

In this picture, the piano is in my nephew and niece David and Christine Walker’s house; my father gave it to Christine when they were married, as I had a larger Baldwin grand piano in my own house.  The Kimball had been in my parents’ home.  Some years ago, Christine got a new piano and gave Lydia the Kimball.  Then Jeremy and Lydia got a new piano (the beautifully refurbished one that arrived on their anniversary, June 25^th), and they gave the Kimball to Maria.

I sent the picture to Maria.

“I really like the piano,” she wrote back.  “I remember playing it at Aunt Christine’s. ❤️”

I scanned pictures in a couple of albums that belonged to Dorcas, then shipped the albums to her on Friday.  When she moved to Tennessee a few years ago, she hired a ‘cheap’ moving company – and they ‘lost’ a whole lot of her things, including every last one of her photo albums.  These two, along with a few others I’ve returned to her, had been packed into my bins when we moved out here to the country.  Dorcas is looking forward to receiving a flash drive full of all my photos, after losing so many of her own pictures.

She tried contacting the moving company as soon as she realized so many of her things were missing, but she could no longer reach them by phone, mail, or email.  They seem to have vanished off the face of the earth.  Cheap services sometimes cost a lot!  😑

Dorcas has been painting a dresser for the nursery they are preparing at their house.  “These were the dressers that were in the room I slept in at Grandma’s house,” she told me.  “Aunt Lura Kay gave them to me when I got my apartment.  When the movers moved my stuff to Tennessee, they roughed them up so badly, I painted them black to match the bed I had back then.  But I’ve always wanted them a farmhouse white.  So that’s what I’m doing.”

“No wonder that dresser looked so familiar!” I exclaimed.  “I just enlarged it, and I definitely remember those handles, and the design of the top drawer.  I used those dressers for years, until I got the set that we have now, just before we were married.”

There’s a tall dresser that matches this one; Trevor will use it.  “He’s all excited they are going to be white now,” said Dorcas.  “He gave me a huge hug and said, ‘Thank you, Mommy!’”

He’s a sentimental little guy, and always so delighted when Dorcas makes things for him.

I stopped at the Goodwill on the way home from the post office.  It was the first time I’d been there in two years.  Maybe three.  I went there for the express purpose of looking through their stuffed animals in the hopes of finding a few really nice ones, and hopefully unique ones, for the littlest of the grandchildren.  I like to get one-of-a-kind animals, and then find a book to match.  There’s always a humongous bin of stuffed animals at the Goodwill.

There were none.

None!!!  None anywhere.  Not even perched atop the racks where they sometimes put the best ones.

What, did all the stuffed animals around the vicinity get Covid-19???  Rabies?  Blue tongue?  Pox?

What in the world. 

The place was all fixed up and much nicer inside than it used to be – but a whole lot sparser, too, with a lot fewer things to choose from.  Lacking the animals, I thought I’d look for an off-white denim skirt. 

I found no skirts at all. 

Now, it’s possible I could’ve missed them, because I did trot through the place at a pretty good clip.  But surely I’d have spotted a rack of skirts, had there been one?  I walked through every aisle, but quickly.

I even picked up a shoe or two and looked at them.

And then I departed with nothing more than I walked in with.  Nothing more than that with which I walked in.  That with which in I walked.  Aarrgghh, English. 

I departed with nary a blame thing!

There.

Here’s Victoria in 2002 when she was about five, wearing the red polka-dot scarf that was my very first sewing project at age 8.  Loren, who sold sewing machines back then, had given me an older Singer, showed me how to use it, and helped me make that scarf, which matched my favorite red polka-dot dress. He showed me how to attach the ribbons that tied under the chin, how to put navy lining on it, right sides to right sides, how to sew around the edges, leaving a hole by which to turn it, and then how to turn it right side out and hand-stitch the hole shut.  You cannot imagine how delighted I was with both Singer and accomplishment.  All the girls loved that scarf (probably because of the story I told them about it), but none more than Victoria.  When she wasn’t wearing it, she often put it on a big teddy bear that reposed on her bed.

I made the doll dress, too, to match Victoria’s Thanksgiving Day dress of 2000.  The denim strawberry jacket was one of two that I’d made for Hester and Lydia about five years earlier.

That night, I ordered a few more Christmas gifts, including jars of jam from Oak Creek Farms.  Last week when I mentioned Gator and Frog Jam, I had not noticed the following:

GATOR Jam is made from Ginger, Apples, Tangerines, Oranges, and Raspberries.  FROG Jam is made from Figs, Raspberries, Oranges, and Ginger.

The picture of Gator Jam in last week’s letter shows the fifth ingredient to be elderberries, instead of raspberries.  No wonder I didn’t catch on – they done spoilt the acronym! 

I chose Gator Jam (from a company that knows what the ingredients should be, heh) and Bear Jam, whose ingredients are Blackberries, Elderberries, Apples, and Raspberries.

Next, I ordered Better Homes and Gardens towel sets and lamb’s wool thermal socks.  I wonder if I now have enough for the adults in the family? 

Oops; I just noticed that I gave the menfolk lamb’s wool thermal socks last year, too.  Oh, well; maybe last year’s socks are all worn out by now.  In any case, one can never have too many pairs of lamb’s wool thermal socks, can one?

I ordered some magnet sets for several of the grandsons; colorful ones for the littler guys, and all-chrome for the older boys.  My mother gave our boys magnet sets, and they all enjoyed them a lot, even the older boys.

Here’s Victoria at 9 ½ months.  Hannah, who was 16 ½, crocheted the bonnet.  It was December 11, 1997.

And here’s Lydia, and there’s Jeremy, whom she married in 2008.  Both pictures were taken December 25, 1997.

When I got home, I washed Loren’s clothes.  He always has the strangest collection of things in his hamper.  What does he do with all the clothes he wears?  Does he wear the same thing over and over again?  Not dress shirts; that’s for sure; he generally has more dress shirts in the hamper than he ever wore to chur--------------  OH!  Maybe he puts those shirts into the hamper that he’s just put on, minutes earlier, when he tries going to church on the wrong days?  He finds the church empty and comes back home and deposits the shirt he just had on in the hamper, maybe?  Hmmmm.

Sometimes there are the right number of socks in the hamper for all those days between now and when I last washed his clothes.  Last time there was one pair.  One!

Did he wear the same pair of socks, all those other days??  I know that’s one of the symptoms of dementia... but he’s always fastidious, and has always taken a shower every day.  I think he still does...  I think.

Here’s what I do know:   He dresses in nice clothes, he knows the difference between work, casual-nice, and church clothes, and both he and his house smell fine.  And I have the credentials to say that, too:  according to various (and numerous) members of my family, I have the olfactive sense of a bloodhound. 

Well, so long as everything still smells fine and dandy, I shall not worry about it.  It’s possible he has put dirty clothes in odd places; if so, I reckon I’ll find them, one of these days.

Also taken on Christmas day, 1997, here are Hester and Joseph.  

Below is Caleb in the Dalmatian sleeper his Grandma Swiney (my mother) gave him for Christmas.

Saturday, I took Loren his laundry and some supper:  Alaska wild-caught salmon, sweet potatoes, apple pie, prunes, peaches, and white grape/peach juice.

He gave me a pair of his work pants that had ripped out, asking if I could fix them.  Again.  They sported a great big rip on the back of the leg up through the crotch.  My previous stitching was still intact.  The fabric immediately beside the stitching was not.  He showed me how the rip needn’t be patched, but can just be ‘lined up and restitched’.  If anybody other than him had’ve said that to me, I’d have suggested they do it themselves, since they already know how.  😂  Because it was him, I nodded and smiled agreeably, and then went away with the pants, glad to note that the brand, description, and size tags were all still readable.

Two new pairs of khaki Dockers are now on their way from Wal-Mart, sans big, bad rips.  The old pair is presently residing in the trashcan, pondering its evil ways.  I’ll give Loren one pair when they arrive, and save the other to give him for Christmas. 

And that’s how I ‘lined up and restitched’ pants that day.

When I got to the end of the photo album I was scanning, I stopped with the scanning and got on with the Christmas-carding.  22,368 photos are now scanned. 

While I worked, I backed up all the data on my computer onto two external hard drives.

I addressed and signed (via my HP printer) a heap (141, to be exact) of Christmas cards, including three for my blind friends.  For the Braille, I used the little slate and stylus you can see a glimpse of in the first picture, below and to the right of the card.  Penny gave it to me when I was 9 years old.  I still remember most of the Braille letters and many of the abbreviations, though I keep the key handy, just in case.

I bought cards from Current Catalog last year after Christmas, taking advantage of their 50-75%-off sale.  They come non-folded.  I stick them in the printer, pull up my ‘Christmas-card signature’ document, plug in the number of cards, and click print.  Same with the envelopes, after I scroll through them to see if I need to add or delete any names.

I ordered a bunch of scenic bookmarks with King James Version verses on them; I’ll put those into the Christmas cards.

We were late to Sunday School yesterday morning because, first, Larry needed a turbo booster to get himself going; and, second, the BMW wouldn’t behave for a while.  The app on Larry’s phone wouldn’t clear the bad coding, either; but eventually the warning lights on the dash stayed off when Larry restarted it, and we were able to drive.  Ugh. 

That afternoon, we took Loren ancient-grain-encrusted cod, mashed potatoes, broccoli, pears, prunes, and cran-grape juice.  For our lunch, Larry fixed waffles.  Yummy.

Both the morning and the evening services were taken by Pastor Laurence Justice, a retired preacher friend who used to have a church in Kansas City.  He lives in the woods of Mississippi now, and we don’t get to see him – or hear him preach – very often.  He’s 80 years old, but he certainly doesn’t look or sound that old!  Yesterday’s subject was ‘Heaven’. 

Pastor Justice asked the question, “Why do you want to go to heaven?”

If your answer is, “To see departed loved ones,” or “to see the streets of gold,” or “to avoid going to hell,” those are the wrong answers, and you’d better re-evaluate whether or not you’re going in the direction you think you are going.

The answer?  It should be, “To be with our Lord and Savior, forever and ever!”

I well remember my father asking that very question.  Daddy’s answer was the same as Pastor Justice’s, too.  Here is one of my favorite songs (in our hymnals, it’s in the key of A♭):

 

Notice that the lyrics are by the dear blind hymnwriter, Fanny Crosby; and the melody is by that well-known author of so many of our sweetest songs, John R. Sweney.

Loren either napped too long or almost forgot about the 6:30 p.m. service last night, though we made sure he knew the correct time, and had it on his calendar that afternoon.  He didn’t leave his house until 6:35 p.m.  At least he got there in time to hear all the special music, and Pastor Justice’s sermon.  He had on a plaid everyday shirt and no tie under his suit jacket.  First time that’s happened.  Hopefully, it was just because of his great rush to get there, and things will be back to ‘normal’ again at the next service.

He came in and sat down in the middle of the first special number.  We had three last night in addition to our congregational songs; we usually only have one.  First, a young girls’ group sang Palace of Light, then a couple of young men played a duet with trombone and trumpet – Someday the Silver Cord Will Break.  The congregation then sang the song with them.  Later, two of our blind ladies sang I Want to See My Savior First of All (not the same as the song pictured above). 

After the service, we went to see Kurt and Victoria’s new house.  We gave them an anniversary gift – a set of towels.  They fed us chocolate chip brownies and coffee with creamer.

A third variety of animal has discovered Larry’s feeder out in the woods – a cute little fox squirrel:

Loren’s meal today was a southwestern burrito, green beans, pears, Schwan’s American cheese, applesauce, and white-grape peach juice.

I saw the kite again today!  This time, the kite came close enough that I could see there was a long tail on it – and strings.  I could clearly see the lines attached to the kite; it’s not remote-controlled after all.  But, wow, were those lines ever long.  The kite was doing acrobatics high over the high school parking lot south of Lost Creek Parkway, evidently entertaining the students as they got out of school for the day.  I couldn’t tell where the lines went; there was too much traffic to stare at the sky and drive, both at the same time, particularly since other drivers thought they could safely do that.

On my way home, the kite was rippling and bounding along toward the west.  (This picture isn’t it, but it’s similar; I got it on the Internet.)  I spotted the lines and followed them down, down, down...

And then I saw him.  A man was standing on the west side of one of the small lakes south of the bypass.  Not just standing, either!  He was squatted down, hanging onto a control bar with all his might and main, and ‘steering’ or ‘guiding’ it vigorously.

The kite was closer to him now, as he pulled hard against the wind; but when I first saw it, it was over a third of a mile away.  Those must be some mighty strong lines!  I saw at least four.

I turned south on one of the avenues, the better to see the sight. 

From now on, I’m going to put my camera with the 300mm lens in the vehicle, so I can get pictures if I see that kite again.

It’s cold tonight, only 35°.  North Platte, 200 miles to the west, got 5 ½” of snow last night.

One more Christmas gift arrived today – the first of the little furry, stuffed, sleeping kittens and puppies.  It’s smaller than I expected, but it’s really cute, and its fur is sooo soft.

Almost all of the family’s Christmas gifts are ordered, and many have already arrived.  Soon I shall bag and label them.  I purchased gift bags from Current Catalog last year after Christmas when they were 50-75% off; I’ve almost used up all the wrapping paper from years gone by.  Bags cost more; but time is of value, too, and bags are much faster.

And now I shall scan photos!

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