Journal: Cats, Bears, Geese, Ducks, Finches, and Raccoons, Oh, My!

 

Last Monday night’s washer-load of towels came out smelling slightly like oil, even after the second time through the wash with Tide.  So I ran them through again, this time with a healthy dose of vinegar and no detergent. 

The towels came out smelling like the Spring Rain-scented Tide I’d put in the first two washes.  I very much dislike the smell of vinegar – but it does dissipate quickly, and the washing machine kept the odor corralled.  Victoria once spilled half a gallon of that stuff early one Saturday morning during one of her cleaning sprees.  My bedroom door was shut, but the fumes wafting under the door woke me up.  Ugh!

As for the towels, how did the vinegar know to leave in the Spring Rain and remove the oil??  I cannot fathom why this should be, after glug-glug-glugging stinky ol’ vinegar into the washing machine with the towels.  Peeeeuuuw.  But it worked.  I held my breath, poured it in, slammed the lid fast, and fled for my life.  The lid seals well enough that the stuff didn’t assault my olfactory senses.

It was our son-in-law Andrew’s 33^rd birthday that day.  We gave him this set of knives to add to his collection:

Tuesday, I got ready to go get my camera at the nursing home, wondering if I should just wait until Saturday when we go see Loren.  But I really, really don’t like my camera off in Timbuktu, when I am in Cochabamba! 

Ah, why am I such a fleabrain?  It’s always somebody else’s fault, you know. 

But the sky was sunny and blue, and the temperature was 47°; so I went on preparing to go.  And then Larry called to say that he had to take his truck to the Crane dealership in Lincoln to have the boom worked on.  I could follow him in the Mercedes, and after we dropped off the truck, we could go on to Omaha to get my camera. 

This was an improvement on traveling there alone.  I printed some pictures to give Loren, put the last load of towels into the dryer, and put fresh water in Tiger’s bowl.  He paws water out of bowl onto the floor (one of the symptoms of hyperthyroidism), so I got him a heavy ceramic bowl with the top edges rounded and curled inwards so he couldn’t do that.  Or at least not so easily.  After that, he drug the entire bowl off his mat and midway into the kitchen floor, and still managed to get water on the floor; so I got a sturdy wooden stand that holds the bowl high enough that he can just reach it if he stands tall and lops his chin over the edge.  That pretty much solved that problem.  He pulls chunks of his fur out with his teeth sometimes – also a symptom of hyperthyroidism.  Poor old thing has troubles getting up (especially from his soft egg-crate-foam bed).  I think it won’t be long before we’ll have to tell him goodbye.  😢

I scanned photos while I waited for Larry to get here.  He said he’d be here at 3:00 p.m.  If he was ever on time anywhere, he’d leave a trail of people in his wake with their jaws hanging down loosely on their respective hinges.

There are several different crane services in Lincoln.  Hmmm... I just looked it up on Google Maps, and found at least eight.  Larry had the address on his phone – but there was a problem.  Remember how, a week ago Sunday, Larry had dropped his phone on the driveway and turned the face into a mass of spiderwebbed cracks? 

Well, earlier Tuesday afternoon, he went to Verizon and got a new phone.  He also got a cord so he could transfer all the data from the old phone to the new.  He got back in his truck and set it to transferring.

Now, he could still make and receive calls while this was going on (I know, because I called him midway to Lincoln); but he could not look up the address he needed or use GPS.

So he guessed.

Of course, he could’ve used my phone to call the place and get the correct address, and then used my GPS; but nooooooo.  He’s a man.  He guessed.

He guessed wrong.

We wound up about 15 miles from the crane service where we should’ve gone. 

This time, I got the correct name of the place, put it into my phone, showed Larry the route we needed to take, and off we went again.

By the time we got there, the place was closed; but Larry parked his truck, dropped off the key in a box for that purpose, and then got in the Mercedes.

He was no sooner behind the wheel than I discerned another problem:  he reeked of oil.

Sooo... we went to the nearest Tractor’s Supply Company and bought him a whole new set of clothes, including a thermal hooded sweatshirt, but sans boots.

After paying for the clothes, he went to a dressing room and changed, putting the old clothes into the plastic bags and tying them tightly shut. 

I periodically caught whiffs of oil thereafter (he probably had some on his boots), but at least it was bearable.

The nursing home was an hour away.  By the time we got there, the front door was locked, and we had to ring for someone to come let us in.  Most of the residents had already retired for the night.  So we picked up the camera, thanked them profusely for keeping it safe for me, and headed off to find a place to eat supper.

We chose Applebee’s, which was just a few blocks away. 

 I discovered I do not like chicken and shrimp cooked together.  Maybe if it would’ve been done over an open grill... but no, the grease was still sizzling and bubbling when they ker-plunked that cast iron platter on its wooden base down in front of me. 

It smelled good.

The description was “Cajun-seasoned chicken and blackened shrimp in buttery garlic and parsley served sizzling on a cast iron platter with sautéed mushrooms and onions.  Served with garlic mashed potatoes.”

No butter!  I needed butter on those potatoes.  Or gravy.  Gravy would do.  The potatoes were good... but just think how much better they’d have been with a big dollop of butter!

Siggghhhh...  The shrimp tasted like chicken grease.  The chicken tasted fishy.  🤪😛

I was glad I had a big chef salad.  I ate that... and asked for a box for most of the rest of the food.  I would find a way to recook it into something better the next day after our midweek church service. 

 Larry got Mozzarella breadsticks, grilled salmon, broccoli, and mashed potatoes.  His meal was yummy.

He ordered a triple-chocolate cake (with warm chocolate drizzled and puddled all over the top of it) with a scoop of vanilla ice cream with chocolate drizzled over that. 

I may have helped him eat some of that.  😉

By the time we left the restaurant, it was 30°, with a wind chill of 21°.  It felt cold out there.

The 115v outlet in the Mercedes won’t run my big ol’ honkin’ gaming computer.  We blew fuses the last time we went somewhere and I tried plugging the thing in.  Larry put in new fuses and brought along an inverter; but inverter wasn’t powerful enough.  It connected, disconnected, connected, disconnected, connected, disconnected, connected, disconnected, --- and stayed disconnected.  The battery on my laptop will keep it running for about 2 ½ hours, if I don’t try running too many programs at once.

Late Wednesday morning, it was 18°, with a wind chill of 8°, and snow was falling.  We got a little more than an inch of snow; the greater snowfall was to the south.

I spent Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday scanning photos.  I scanned 185 pictures Thursday, about 75% more than usual, finishing the last few pages in one album, and scanning another in entirety.  If I could go at that pace every day, I’d be done in a couple of months.  I now have a total of 26,426 photos scanned.

Here are the children having breakfast outside our tent at Johnson Lake in the summer of 1992.  

This is Teddy with Aleutia, our Siberian husky.

And here is Lydia, age one, just learning to walk.

After six hours of scanning, I headed for my recliner, tucked a heating pad behind my neck, and munched on a handful of red grapes.  I had a bottle of aloe vera juice and a cup of coffee on the small table beside me, and the vaporizer was steaming away, putting a soothing mist into my eyes.  I clicked ‘Play’ on Bible Gateway’s audio Bible (I’m halfway through Jeremiah), then pulled up eBay and hunted for a few glad rags for Easter.  😀

Mind you, I do not need new duds.  But I got ’em!  I will donate or pitch out a few old things when the new ones arrive. 

Friday morning when I got up and headed out to the kitchen to feed Tiger the soft Fancy Feast he likes, the floor was freezing cold.  I checked the temperature. 

No wonder the house was so cold – it was only 9° outside, and the wind chill was 1°, with wind gusts at 38 mph.  I turned on the space heater upstairs so that by the time I finished showering and breakfasting and headed upstairs to scan pictures, the room would be getting warm.

One of Teddy’s cows had a new little calf Saturday.  Fortunately, he found it and got it into the warming shed before it got too cold.  Now he has ... ? half a dozen cows, I think.

Here are Hester and Lydia, ages 3 and 1.  Hester says she remembers the blue heart necklaces, and liked the way the hearts felt.

We visited Loren Saturday.  I gave him the pictures I’d printed of the new grandbabies.  He was delighted with those pictures.

We got there just as he was finishing his supper, so we went into the dining room and visited for a bit.  He was at a table with three ladies, including his friend Pam.  The ladies all enjoyed the pictures, too, with Pam saying, “Precious!  Precious!  Precious!  Precious!  Precious!  Precious!  Precious!  Precious!” and “Awesome!  Awesome!  Awesome!  Awesome!  Awesome!  Awesome!” at varying intervals.  She cabbaged onto a couple of the pages (I’d printed the pictures on regular typing paper), and since Loren never seems to be concerned when she does this, I smiled and pointed at the pages and said, “You’ll want to put them back in the envelope (a thick glossy envelope that used to have photo paper in it) so they don’t get lost.”

So Loren smiled and reached for the pages, and Pam, after contemplating the issue for a couple more seconds, handed them to him, then grinned at me, evidently happy she’d done the right thing.  “You are very blessed,” she told me, and I heartily agreed with her, “Yes, we are very thankful.”  She nodded at me, smiling.

It seems to us that everyone – residents and staff alike – likes Loren.  He is pleasant and helpful, and always concerned if someone doesn’t seem to be doing well.  I’m glad to see this.

A younger man, probably about 50 years old, was at a table a little distance away.  He sometimes uses a walker.  He clambered to his feet and walked toward a couple of the nurses who’d been gathering dishes and keeping track of what people were eating, maybe. 

“HEY!!” he said loudly. 

They ignored him and went on tallying up their llamas.  Or doubloons.  Or whatever they were doing. 

“HEY!!” he said again.  ““HEY!!  HEY!!  HEY!!”

They, hardly even glancing up, finally responded:  “HEY!!”

This put him in high form:  “HEY!!  HEY!!  HEY!!  HEY!!  HEY!!  HEY!!  HEY!!  HEY!!”

They then took turns yelling HEY!! at each other until all our respective ears were ringing with the cacophony.

Loren looked at us and grimaced.  “Those women don’t have a very good handle on how to cope with a person like that,” he informed us.  😄

He was right, they didn’t.  What they were doing was obviously exacerbating and escalating the situation.  Maybe they thought it didn’t matter; but it was definitely putting a few residents off their oats.  Good grief.

We took the pictures and the grapes to Loren’s room while he finished his ice cream. 

The framed pictures, album, and annual were still in his room; but the red biplane is still AWOL.  It has his name on the underside of one wing in permanent marker; I wonder if anyone will ever notice that?

When Loren was younger, he learned to fly small planes.  He learned quickly and did it well, just like he did everything else he tried. 

He liked to drop the plane fast and scare his passengers.  He did that to his trainer a few times – dropping fast.  Sometimes, he’d stall out, way up high – and let it go for just a few split seconds longer than the trainer would’ve liked.  Other times, he brought it down to the runway, too high and too fast, and then dropped and stalled suddenly, but always landing smooooth as if he’d brought it in low and easy. 

The trainer said he was ready to solo long before the required hours of training were over. 

Mama said, “The poor man just wanted to quit being your trainer and stay alive.”  😂

Then one day Mama said to him, very seriously, “It’s just another way to die.” 

He decided to stop worrying his mother, and he never flew again as a pilot.

When Loren decided to learn to snow ski, the trainer took him to the ‘bunny hill’.  They strapped on skis – and down they went.  At the bottom, the trainer, who hadn’t been able to stay up, was all peeved and irritated. 

“Why didn’t you tell me you already knew how to ski?!!!” he demanded.

Loren was laughing, “I don’t!  I never have!” – but he couldn’t quit laughing, and thus he couldn’t make the trainer believe him.

Then there was the time he went water skiing.  I was there, that first time the boat took off with Loren holding the ski handle.  He rose to his feet and skied smoothly around the lake, coasting onto the shore after one circuit. 

I, being about ten years old, was as unimpressed as any little sister who’d been expecting gymnastics and aerobics could’ve been. 

“Why didn’t you jump the wake and do some spins?!!!” I wanted to know.

Loren laughed.  “It was exciting enough, just staying upright!” he told me.  Then, to the others, he said, “A skier is not without honour, save in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.”  (paraphrasing Mark 6:4, on prophets)

When we got to Loren’s room, the wife of his roommate, Cliff, was there with her husband.  The poor man had fallen and cut his head earlier that day.  She had been helping him in the restroom, and he lost his balance, and down he went before she could catch him.   She said he’s been suffering from Alzheimer’s for 20 years, and has recently also been diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia.  He’s in a wheelchair, and doesn’t seem to understand much of what goes on around him.  

Loren and a couple of the ladies met us as we walked back out of the room.  Loren noticed Cliff had gotten hurt, and was sympathetic and concerned.  He really seemed totally normal the entire time we were there, though I did have to repeat things several times before he caught what I was saying.  He thanked us for coming, and was content to stay when we left, as he’s been each time we visited.  I do not think he realizes he’s in a nursing home.

After leaving the nursing home, we drove to Standing Bear Lake.  The sun was setting over the water, and the sky was brilliant in shades of orange, red, blue, lavender, and purple. 

There were Canada geese and Bufflehead ducks on the lake.  It looked funny when sometimes a goose was standing on an unseen icefloe directly beside a goose that was swimming in the water.

We had a scrumptious supper at La Mesa Mexican Restaurant.  But they brought us plates bigger than my meat platters!  I never remember to ask for half-portions; but at least we always have enough for another meal the next day.  

 Evidently the lens on Larry’s phone cam is made just like circus mirrors. Look at the size of our hands, in proportion to the rest of us!  😄

When we got back to Columbus, we made a detour into the carwash. 

Once upon a time, when Lydia was not quite two, we went through a carwash that had chamois swishing all over the car, for the first time.  

Lydia curled up in a ball in her seat and shrieked, and I didn’t notice for a few seconds, because the carwash was so loud, and because she’d never made that sound before!  When I suddenly realized what that high-pitched noise was, I quickly patted on her knee hard enough to get her attention, and shouted over the noise of carwash and shrieking kid, “LYDIA, STOP!!!  IT’S JUST A CARWASH!” 

And she, all not-quite-two years of her, stopped, sat up, looked around with enormous eyes, and said, “Oh.” 

The other kids tried with all their might and main not to laugh, and I kept staring at them in the rear view mirror to convince them not to.  I didn’t want Lydia to get a notion that that kind of shrieking was funny!

Then there was Victoria.  She was about three years old when we tried out a new carwash that had multi-colored soap and wax.  It smelled scrumptious, into the bargain.  For some reason, when it bloop-bloop-blurped colored wax all over the windshield, it totally tickled her funnybone, and that funny little tot laughed ’til she cried, which in turn made all the rest of the kids laugh ’til they cried, too.

You just never can tell what might happen, when it comes to kids and woozles (with a nod to A. A. Milne, famed Winnie-the-Pooh author).

At a quarter ’til one a.m., it was 36°.  Heatwave!

This was the weekend we would lose an hour of sleep.  Unless we went to bed an hour earlier than usual.  Booo, hiss.

The old Indians used to say, “White man not know when he cut one end off blanket and sew it on other end, blanket still just as long.” 

Did you know there are many more instances of health issues, such as heart attacks and stroke, immediately after the clocks are set forward?  There’s even a higher rate of health issues when the clocks are set back in the fall.  They (whoever ‘they’ are) know this, and have known this for many years; yet the time changes continue, even though the ‘need’ for it has ended.  This so-called ‘need’ for Daylight Saving Time started when people decided the farmers needed more daylight hours to work in their fields.  I guess it didn’t occur to them that farmers had been starting to work at sunrise and stopping work at sundown for thousands of years?  And nowadays there are these things called ‘lights’ that farmers and ranchers use, in order to go on working in the dark.  🙄

Since I’ve been unable to sign into my Instagram account for several months now, I made myself a new account.  I don’t like missing out on all the pictures my children post of the grandchildren!  Instagram did not suspend my account; all my photos are still visible.  But I am told there’s an error when I try to sign in, and I should ‘confirm my data on the Instagram app’. 

Yeah, well, how does one do that, when they will not let me get to the Instagram app?!  Same story, whether I’m using my laptop, phone, or tablet.

Last time I posted any pictures was in April of 2021.  I can’t remember when I first realized I could not sign in.  Being somewhat occupied with Loren, I wasn’t very much concerned about Instagram.  But now there are new baby grandchildren, and our daughters and daughters-in-law are posting pictures that I need to see!

So I made a new account, pulled up the names of all those I was following on the old account (yes, anyone can still see those), and clicked ‘Follow’ on all the ones I’ve been missing. 

After the service last night, we ate supper, and then headed to Loren’s house to put out the trash.  I looked through a very old steamer trunk that used to be Norma’s.  There were some old pictures in it that I will scan; most of the rest will go to the Salvation Army.

I cleaned out the ‘cleaning closet’, too.  I hadn’t done it yet, because I thought all those cleaning supplies would be useful when it was time to clean the house.  But on closer inspection, I discovered that there were various other things in there besides, and some of it was nothing but trash.  A large bagful went out for the garbagemen to pick up this morning.

Robert has finished painting the interior of the house; now he will put the switch plates and vent covers and suchlike back on.  Larry and I will then do a thorough cleaning.

Next, the carpet will be laid.  Hopefully by the time that is done, Larry will have the tools sorted and divvied up, and we’ll have all the Christmas decorations that are under the back deck hauled out and donated or disposed of.

In the mornings, I turn on the radio (or stream it on my laptop), and then turn up the volume so I can hear the news while I’m in the shower.  News can go on... and on... and on... but as soon as I am where I cannot reach the volume controls, an undesirable ‘song’ immediately comes on, with someone screeching away at top velocity.  (If I forget to turn the volume up, they play no songs, but instead give a vital piece of breaking news that I cannot hear.  This is one of Murphy’s Radio Laws.) 

Invariably when one of the aforementioned stupid ‘songs’(?) comes on, the FedEx, UPS, or USPS person opens the front door to stick a package inside.

They are now convinced of two possible things:  1) that I listen to obnoxious ‘music’, or 2) that I have really good taste in music, since it’s right up their alley, and is maybe the very same station they are listening to right that moment in their vehicle.

The American goldfinches were busy at the feeders this afternoon.  

More pictures are here:  Goldfinches  I also posted pictures of our drive Saturday:  Nebraska Countryside

My mother used to call those little birds ‘wild canaries’.  I think people used to call any little yellow bird, be it finch or warbler, a ‘wild canary’.  😊

When Larry got home from work a little while ago, a raccoon was on the back deck railing helping himself to the sunflower seeds I’d recently put in the bird feeders.  So I grabbed my camera and scurried to the patio door to get some pictures of him.

We had cream of broccoli soup for supper.  I added broccoli, cauliflower, and sliced carrots, zucchini, and yellow squash (Schwan’s Normandy blend) to it.  Mmmmm, it was good.  I also had fresh pineapple (which I got at a convenience store in Omaha Saturday), orange juice, and yogurt – and, for dessert, a couple of big chocolate-covered pretzels that the FedEx man brought this afternoon. 

How can Wal-Mart make money, I wonder, when they deliver so many of the things I order one item at a time??  Often it’s one very small item – in one very large box.

Other times they put a small smushable item such as a little box of crackers into a big box with gallon jugs of juice, and practically no packing.  Smart kids in the warehouse, eh.

And now I shall finish my Blueberry Wild Child Tiesta tea and hit the hay.  This tea has apple, hibiscus, elderberries, rose hips, pomegranate bits, cornflowers, and blueberries in it.  Good stuff.  😋

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