As we were driving along last Sunday night on our way home from Illinois, I remarked, “I smell a fire burning somewhere!”
Larry snuffled in a breath with all his
might and main, trying to smell it.
“Never mind,” I told him, “You put it
out. Fires can’t burn without oxygen.”
He, of course, thought this reeeeeal
funny.
I, of course, am personally offended
and affronted when he cannot detect an odor that is strong enough to make my
eyes burn and water, my nose burn and run, and throat burn and get all hoarse
and raspy. Plumb aggravatin’, ’tis,
particularly when he is personally responsible for the toxic gas, diesel, oil,
or grease fumes that are causing the eye, nose, and throat distress.
Here’s a photo of Hester, taken shortly
before the Christmas program of 1991.
She was 2 ½. I sent it to her,
writing, “The little lady in the taffeta ruffles often had a racecar in hand.” 😀
I made the other girls dresses in the
same fabric, but in different colors.
Chatting with Hester, I said, “I wondered
how Loren will be today? The last time I
talked to him was on the phone Saturday when we were in Iowa, and he was all
bent out of shape about his keys (or the lack thereof). I wound up hanging up on him, because all he
wanted to do was argue, and that doesn’t do any good, and besides, I was
missing out on pictures I wanted to take! 🥴😏”
Hester replied, “Hopefully he’s calmed
down!” Then, laughing, “Maybe take him
cake or pie. That’ll distract him.”
He says he never
eats many sweets, can’t, because they make him sick.
However, no matter what I take him, he grabs for whatever looks the most
dessert-ish and eats that first. I generally protest, “You’re going to
spoil your appetite!” and he laughs and assures me that nothing ever spoils
his appetite. But it does. He often winds up putting the
main course(s) in his refrigerator.
I have read in my studies on dementia
that sweets can make symptoms worse – especially the ‘sundown’ symptom, where
the patient gets more confused and/or riled up in the evening.
I do think he gets worse when he doesn’t
eat well. I no longer say, “Would you like some food?” Instead, I say, “I’ll be bringing some food!”
He was his ‘normal’ cheery self when I got
to his house. Maybe he doesn’t realize
that the cantankerous sister he talked to on the phone the other day is the
same one who brings his food? I took him
ancient-grain-encrusted cod, cauliflower, broccoli, and carrots, peaches,
Thompson grapes, Dannon strawberry yogurt, string cheese, Ritz crackers, and
mango/pear/apple juice.
We had unseasonably nice weather
throughout most of November. Last Monday it got up to 71°. Tuesday
it was 56°. The sky was pretty that afternoon, with riffled clouds in all
shades of white, gray, and slate blue, and the setting sun giving them shadows
and depth.
Last week when we were at the rest area
beside the Spoon River in Iowa, where we climbed the lookout tower and crossed
the covered walk-bridge, we saw a couple of trees, mostly bare but for a couple
of odd fruits hanging from them – but the ground underneath was covered with
those same fruits.
These are hedge apples,
the common name given to the fruit of the Osage Orange tree. There are male trees and female trees, but
only the females bear fruit. The fruit,
like the tree, is unusual; it’s a heavy ball, ranging from 3 to 6 inches in
diameter, and it has a tough, wrinkled, or bumpy surface, which turns from dull
green in the summer to bright yellow-green in the autumn as the leaves fall. It’s full of sticky, acrid white latex or milk
(be careful, it just might irritate the skin), along with hundreds of seeds,
and it emits the ‘orange’ scent from which the tree derived its name. Squirrels and chipmunks love hedge apples. Humans do not, but they’re not poisonous. Cattle can choke on them.
Thursday, Caleb sent me several pictures of Baby Eva. She's 15 months now. Soon we're going to have to quit calling her 'Baby' Eva!
After
I posted pictures of our trip to Illinois, a friend wrote to ask if I had any idea what was in
the barges plying Peoria Lake.
That big lake is actually one of a series of dammed lakes
on the Illinois, which connects to the Chicago River and Lake Michigan. So those barges, like freight trains and big
trucks, might be hauling anything under the sun, from anywhere around the
world.
More photos of our excursion to middle
Illinois are posted here:
There are a bunch; you might want to
warm up your tea first, if you plan to look at all of them. 😀
Friday evening, Loren found another set
of keys for his Jeep. I got a notice from SpotTrace that he’d driven out
of the geofence I had set up. I checked, and found that he’d pulled out
of his drive at 5:48 p.m. and was on Highway 30, halfway to Richland, 8 miles
west of his house. Of course he didn’t have his cell phone with
him.
I called Larry, but he was just coming
through Silver Creek, 20 miles to the west.
I called Caleb. He was on his way
home from work and almost to his house, which is about 3 ½ miles south of
Loren’s house on the east side of town.
Caleb headed off after his uncle.
Before too long, I saw that Loren had
turned around at Kent Feeds or thereabouts, and was back on the bypass going toward
his house. I let Caleb know, and he
accordingly rerouted, too.
Vyncs showed this map:
The Moultrie camera showed Loren
pulling back into his drive at 6:12 p.m.
Caleb went past at 6:19, and saw no lights on.
Earlier that afternoon when I’d called
at 3, Loren thought there was a meeting tonight. I told him no, it was
Friday; no meeting... but he thought it again when I got there at 4 with his
meal. Later I learned that he’d called his sister-in-law at 2:30 p.m.,
inquiring about the ‘meeting’. She, too,
had told him it was Friday, and there was no meeting.
But he evidently had himself so sure
there was a meeting that night, no amount of convincing could persuade him
otherwise. He labored under the false
impression that it was ‘midweek’ all day.
Then perhaps he thought he needed to go to Randy and Judy’s house so
they could take him? (We took him to the Thanksgiving Day service; they
have been taking him to the services since then.) That’s the direction he headed, via graveled
country roads. However, he would’ve run
into road construction going that way – and once that threw him off, I think he
totally lost track of where he was going, and why. At least he soon turned back.
That night after we figured Loren was very
likely sound asleep, we drove to his house and Larry sneaked into the garage
and got the keys, which Loren had left in the ignition as usual. He’s so
used to doing that, it wouldn’t have occurred to him that he needed to hide
them, if he didn’t want us to find them.
I was a bit worried about our
clandestine operation, because Larry is somewhat hard of hearing, and his ‘sneaking’
is sometimes like a bull in a china closet.
But once Loren is asleep, he usually sleeps pretty soundly.
Larry found the second set of Buick keys,
too, hanging on a hook in the garage. So
the only other second set we don’t have is the one for the pickup. Maybe
Larry can disable it one of these days when he has an opportunity.
Larry was in the garage for eight
minutes. I was getting a little nervous
by the time he finally exited; but no lights came on in the house; he got the
job accomplished undetected (other than by the Moultrie game cam).
Teddy
said, “Hunting for his keys should keep Uncle Loren busy for at least a
month. And he will think that he lost
them, instead of thinking you took them.”
I
don’t usually learn what he thinks about things like this, partly because he
doesn’t know what he thinks, and partly because he doesn’t want
me to know what he’s thinking. I sure
would like to be a mouse in the corner when he next tries to drive that
Wrangler, though.
At Todd and Dorcas’ little farm, there
are brand-spankin’-new baby goats. Trevor,
5 ½, is always delighted with the new little kids.
Last month, a cousin of mine, Donald
Winings, passed away. He was 68, and
lived in North Dakota. His parents, my
Uncle Howard and Aunt Evelyn, were favorites of ours. They passed away a few years ago.
We visited them once when they lived in
Arkansas. Caleb was 3 ½. As we walked up the path to the front door,
Uncle Howard’s sensor-activated resin ‘watchdog’ out by the front porch started
barking as Caleb trotted by, and Caleb jumped several feet straight up in the
air and stayed there for a while, until gravity got the better of him.
When Uncle Howard asked Caleb a little
later what he thought of his dog, Caleb said, all big eyes and sincere tone, “I
was afraid his bite would be worse than his bark!”
(He was probably repeating something
one of his older siblings had said.)
Uncle Howard laughed and laughed over
that.
Late that night after all the
excitement was over, I was reading the news and came upon a story about an
elderly couple who had left their home in Waynesville, North Carolina, the day
before Thanksgiving, heading to Roswell, Georgia, a northern suburb of Atlanta three
hours away. When they didn’t arrive at
the expected time, the family called the police for help. The police
posted notices on television newscasts, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
The couple was found safe early the
next morning, Thanksgiving Day, in Fayette, Alabama, another three hours west
of Atlanta. The news articles said that the woman has ‘severe memory loss’,
while the man has ‘severe hearing loss’. She is 77; he is 81.
Hopefully, the family will keep them
from driving again – or at least avoid having them drive so far.
Scary.
 |
| Seen on our trip to Illinois |
Loren and Janice took care of me many
times when Daddy and Mama were traveling, and they did it lovingly and without
resentment. I love my brother and have many good memories. Finding
him traveling out in the country again Friday night (crossing the canal!) made
my hands shake so that I had trouble pushing the buttons on my phone to call
Caleb.
As I said to Larry later, “I want my
brother to someday die peacefully in his sleep, not from a car crash, or from
drowning after driving into the canal or a pond!”
At least now Loren won’t be arriving at
our house at some odd hour, Bible in hand, insisting that Norma won’t talk to
him, and wanting us to come put some sense into her head. And he won’t be showing up at strange times
dressed in his suit, thinking there’s a ‘meeting’ somewhere, but who knows
where. So that’s a bit of a relief, and
it’ll be better when we either find the pickup keys or Larry gets the truck
disabled.
Larry went with Teddy Saturday afternoon
to finish dismantling the hog barn he bought cheap near Gresham, about 40 miles
to the southeast. This has been a long –
many months – project, and they need to get it done, because the excavator is
coming soon to bury anything that remains.
They plan to finish getting the rest of it tomorrow. When they get it put back up on Teddy’s
property, it will be a big help to him with all of his animals.
After the
morning service, we called to let him know we would soon be bringing him some
lunch. By the time we got to his house
20-25 minutes later, he had gone to bed and was already sound asleep. I quietly put the food on his table while
Larry took the garbage out. He often forgets
it, and his garbage truck comes on Monday morning.
We crept out
and departed.
Eastern Iowa
He didn’t come
to church that night; he said he didn’t feel well, and he was quite mixed up. Perhaps he was just too tired; his usual
bedtime is often right about the time the evening service begins.
This afternoon, Victoria sent an adorable audio
clip of (mostly) Violet, 3, singing Away in a Manger, with a little help
from Carolyn, 4, and Victoria. She knows almost all of three verses, and
sings right on tune, in her low-pitched voice and Bostonian accent.
Victoria has a longstanding habit of sending such
things anytime she thinks things might be a little harum-scarum around here, what
with Loren’s worsening dementia. And
she’s right – hearing those sweet little girls’ voices is always a delight, and
a reminder of our blessings.
This morning at 8:18 a.m., Loren went out and got his
trashcan and rolled it to some unknown location at the side or back of his
house. This is the large can on wheels
that I found gracing his lower level family room back when I cleared all the
jetsam and flotsam out of that whole area.
It was sitting smack-dab in front of the fireplace, ostensibly for putting
ashes into, though it was plumb empty right then. Loren no longer uses his fireplaces, thank
goodness. Perhaps he remembers that
Norma could not tolerate the smoke, and since he often imagines she’s still
there, he therefore thinks he cannot use the fireplace. So there’s one benefit to his misapprehensions.
In Peoria, Illinois
Larry put the trashcan outside, and we have ever since
tried to help him put the trash in it and get it to the end of the drive on the
proper day, with limited success. He
‘plays’ with it now and then, rolling it from one side of the drive to the
other, who knows why.
The garbage truck
came at 10:03 a.m., but there was no can for them to empty. I discovered this (via the Moultrie game cam)
45 minutes too late to do anything about it. 🙄
The Beemer & trailer
Today the unseasonably-warm weather ended. By 2:00 p.m., it had
finally made it up to 21°, though the wind chill was only 9° on account of the
35 mph winds. I put on a coat and some
furry slippers earlier in order to go out on the deck and fill the bird
feeders. Birds were arriving for their
dinner even while I was still standing there filling the trough.
Next, I
started some laundry. There were four
large loads to do; I finished the last of them shortly after supper tonight.
He laughed. (Things
like this that used to concern him now strike him funny. Sometimes.
He also never questions how I might happen to know such things.) “No, I don’t pay any attention to stuff like
that!” he said – although merely a month or so ago, he’d wait for them to come,
then scurry out there with his bag of trash in order to throw it in the truck
himself, as if he thought that was what he must do, and the only way to
do it.
I tried one more detail that would’ve bothered him, in times
gone by – not to be mean, but to maybe help him remember to leave the can
there, next time. “Now there are two weeks’-worth
of garbage in it.”
He was surprised.
“Oh, is that what’s in it?!”
Sigghhhhh...
I considered saying, “No, actually, it’s full of monkeys!” 😂
But I said, “Yes,” and he then responded in a nonchalant
tone, “Well, I’ll get it out there tomorrow.”
“They won’t be back until next Monday,” I told him, and promised
that Larry and I would help him get the can back where it belongs at the right
time.
He thanked me, and worried no more.
Maybe we’ll have to padlock it to the lilac bush, or the
mail box, or stake it to the ground, or something, to keep him from going away
with it at the wrong time. But that
would foil the garbagemen trying to empty it into their truck with the
hydraulic arms, wouldn’t it. 🤔 Maybe we could
install an audio device on it with sensors like Uncle Howard’s dog had in it,
so that every time Loren tries to move it, it would snarl, “Leave me
alone! I’m waiting for the garbage
truck!”
Trouble is, it would go off when the trashmen got near it,
and scare them out of their boots. 😲
And Loren would think Norma was in the trashcan.
On Peoria Lake
I gave Loren clam chowder on cut-up pieces of ham. He took the lid off the dish, stared at it,
and asked suspiciously, “Do you guys like this?”
I assured him we do.
(It’s true, we do, and we had it for supper this very night.)
I also gave him Yoplait yogurt (and put two in the
refrigerator), a banana (and laid an extra on the table), peaches, apple juice,
and a banana nut muffin.
Before leaving, I reformatted the SD card in the Moultrie
camera, as it was 100% full of pictures (but still taking them, though it
probably would’ve quit by tomorrow).
My phone chirp-whistled as I was driving, and,
astonishingly, I remembered to look at it when I got home. Levi had sent me a picture of their
Australian shepherd, Chimera, by their Christmas tree, writing, “Fluffy
Christmas to you!”
I wrote back, “That’s cute as cute can be!”
He responded, “We call him
‘Snooty McSnootface’ when he’s being silly.”
So I told him, “Haha! There’s a little submarine that’s named Boaty
McBoatface. They had a contest for the
public to name a fancy research ship, and that’s what won, to the consternation
of the council.”
They instead named the ship the more befitting name of ‘Sir
David Attenborough’, and gave the ‘Boaty McBoatface’ name to a small submarine.
The story: Back in
2016, Britain’s Natural Environment Research Council asked the public for help
in naming a new cutting-edge polar research ship. Shackleton, Endeavor, and Falcon were among
the contenders put forth. But the
Internet had another idea. Voters in the
online poll overwhelmingly threw their support behind ‘Boaty McBoatface’.
The U.K.’s
science minister at the time, Jo Johnson, vetoed the people’s choice, saying
the vessel needed a name that was more ‘suitable.’ The ship was ultimately named Sir David
Attenborough, after the well-known natural historian.
But the council did pay homage to the Internet’s
extraordinary naming powers by naming a smaller, more modest vessel – a little
yellow submarine, to be exact – ‘Boaty McBoatface’. The Internet was mollified, somewhat. And the autonomous yellow submarine had a
successful maiden voyage.
Comment on
Twitter: “It’s great they have used the
name ‘Boaty McBoatface’; but I can’t help thinking they should have called that
vessel ‘Subby McSubface’.”
Another: “As Boaty McBoatface
leaves for her first expedition, we wish her all the best from our very own
Firey McFireface.”
You know, they could’ve at least painted a face on that
submarine, for cryin’ out loud.
Larry’s ‘new’ motorcycle that he got in
Kansas last month is a 2002 BMW K1200LT.
It has 58,000 miles on it, and had been kept in very good shape. It has heated seats and handle grips, an electric
windshield, and an electric center stand.
It gets around 50 miles per gallon.
Larry has driven it almost every day since he got it – even today when
it was coooold out there. Fortunately,
he has the garb for cold weather. It’s
9:00 p.m., and he just got home, none the worse for wear.
Time to sign off on this weekly letter
and finish my Christmas letter!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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