Journal: Memorial Day Busyness

 

Victoria, 3

I spent several days last week scanning old photos, and got two more albums done.  I now have a total of 28,549 pictures scanned.

I was working in my quilting studio, as it’s the largest of the upstairs rooms (not counting the unfinished addition), and has two windows, one facing east, the other north.  It’s a pleasant room to work in.  I used the maple table as a desk. 

But! – I could hear animals in the rafters.  I sent a text to Larry:  “Could you please bring home some bug bombs?  There are mice or squirrels in the rafters.”

He brought the requested cans, but I didn’t use one that night, because I scanned photos until quite late, and didn’t want to set a ‘bomb’ off while I was up there, as the smell usually runs me out of the room.  It isn’t a bad smell; it’s quite good, actually; but it’s strong.  I didn’t use one the next day either, because I didn’t hear anything in the rafters – and by the day after that, I was glad I hadn’t, because I could hear baby birds squawking raucously away right outside the windows, and I came to the conclusion that what I had heard, rather than squirrels or mice, were baby birds in their nest preparing to launch themselves into the Big, Wide World.  I don’t want to kill birds!  I’d rather they weren’t nesting in unfinished areas of the eaves; but they’re certainly not as destructive as rodents are.

The pictures on this page and on the next few pages are from the summer of 2000.

Caleb, 6 1/2

Tuesday, the HP Smart scan-and-print app suddenly quit working, as it is oft wont to do.  It’s a good and handy app – when it works.

I rebooted both computer and scanner several times to no avail.  Next, I uninstalled the app, and began downloading it all over again.

Meanwhile, I used the HP Scan & Capture app as a stand-in.  I downloaded it months ago as a backup, since HP Smart, uh, isn’t, sometimes.  Isn’t smart, that is.  🙄  I now have three or four ways to scan photos, which is pretty handy when one or more apps are being temperamental.

HP Smart is the best one – when it’s working.  Scan & Capture has compression settings of High, Medium, and Low – and there’s no way to turn off compression entirely.  Totally aggravating.  Photographers don’t want their photos compressed when they are scanning and editing them!  People who make apps like that – and I have found a couple – are not diehard photographers, I can say that with some degree of certainty.  They probably take a snapshot now and then with an inferior smartphone, post it to Instagram and Facebook, and then assume they know what everyone in the world wants to do with their photos.  Ha!

Hester, 11

The other two apps are little rinky-dink things that have very slim portfolios of options.  I only use them if I must.

Eventually, HP Smart app finished downloading.  However, it would not allow me to sign in.  I rebooted both computer and printer/scanner.  Three times. 

The third time was the charm.  The newly downloaded HP Smart scanning app finally allowed me to sign in and get it running.  Shortly thereafter, a little box popped up, asking how very delighted I was with the app. 

It was now working perfectly. 

I clicked the little radio button beside ‘Not at all.’

The popup box practically wailed, “Whyyyyyy?!!” 

I clicked ‘Decline to answer.”

Lydia, 9

I had stuff to do, after all!  I need to make hay while the sun shines!  Or scan pictures while the app works, as it were.  Besides, they have only to read their very own forums, and they will find plenty of complaints about the app behaving (or misbehaving) exactly as it has misbehaved for me.

But... it’s been working great ever since Tuesday.

Wednesday, I took all the things from Loren’s north garage that I’d stuffed into the back of the Mercedes to the Salvation Army.  It was rainy and very windy, and I wished I would’ve done it the previous day, so as not to demolish my cute little hairdo for our evening church service.  But the shellack held pretty well, and I didn’t look too much the worse for wear.  😅

The battery on the Mercedes has held steady ever since Larry discovered the DVD player on and turned it off.  Why can’t they make that thing go off a minute or two after one shuts off the car, like everything else in the entire vehicle does?!

Larry, 39

Thursday, I washed clothes, watered houseplants, and continued scanning photos.  It was another chilly and damp morning, so no working in the flower gardens.  As I scanned and edited pictures, a piping hot cup of Jamaica Me Nuts coffee by Christopher Bean sat steaming at my elbow.  Good stuff, ’tis.

For supper that evening, we had broiled Black Angus burgers, scalloped potatoes, strawberry Oui yogurt, and grape juice.

Sarah Lynn, 39

As I type, there’s a bright red male cardinal in the lilac bush outside my window, singing his heart out.  He has quite the repertoire of tunes, and he goes through them all, one after another.

Oh!  A June bug just went sailing through the kitchen!  I grabbed a flyswatter, pressed it into service as a Junebugswatter, and went sailing after him.  Got ’im, too. 

What’s wrong with the stupid bug?!  It’s still May, for cryin’ out loud.  I don’t like June bugs.  They’re too, too big.

When Caleb was a little guy, 2 or 3 years old, if he spotted a June bug (or a tick, or a squash bug, or a stink bug, or any number of other bugs), he’d lean over to take a reeeeal close look, whilst simultaneously calling out, “Ohhh, yuckkk!!!” and putting up a hand like a stop sign to his older sisters, saying, “Just don’t look—” (still all hunched over staring hard, himself).

Hester feeding ducks & geese at Ft. Morgan, Colorado

I got 176 pictures scanned Friday.  The photos I was scanning were taken with one of my good Minoltas, so I didn’t have nearly so much editing as when the photos are from early and lesser-quality cameras.  I finished one last load of clothes, watered the houseplants and the porchplant (why is that not a compound word, if ‘houseplant’ is?), backed up all my data onto all three of my external hard drives, and transferred 8 GB of music onto an SD card for the Mercedes.  Reckon it’s plug-and-play?  Or will I have to whistle Dixie backwards, cross my middle two toes, and do a hand-spring on my left arm in order to make it play that music?

That night, we had Schwan’s turkey breast for supper, along with green beans and Thursday night’s leftover scalloped potatoes, applesauce, and orange juice.

Caleb

Larry didn’t get home until after 11:00 p.m., having just gotten off work.  An air hose had broken on his truck when he was at a job north of Arlington, which is about 75 miles to the east.  A friend and coworker, Brian, took him a big air compressor, in the hopes that he could finish the job and get the forms to the next job in Omaha, another 35 miles to the southeast. 

No such luck (not that I believe in ‘luck’); the generator couldn’t pump air fast enough to help.  Larry can’t hear well enough to know if there was a leak, or if it was the gauge, or what.  But Brian heard it, pointed out the location of the leak, and then Larry found it.  It would need a new hose.

So the truck was loaded – and incapacitated.  It’s always a little more difficult to get such things fixed on weekends, and even worse when there’s an approaching holiday.  And of course, this seems to be when these things are most likely to occur.  Furthermore, the #2 truck, the one Larry drove before this newer one, was at a repair shop in Omaha having some leaks fixed.

They were down to one truck – the one they call Old #1, their oldest truck.

Larry, Caleb, Lydia, Hester, & Victoria climbing up the mountain

It was insult added to injury.  Literally.  Larry had hit his head on the metal ‘halo’ that surrounds the forms on his truck that morning, and cut the top of his head (right through his cap) and hurt his neck again.  The bill of the cap had kept him from noticing the steel edge of the halo.  However, the cap kept him from needing stitches.  So it both hindered and helped.  He’s had a headache and a neckache ever since.

Larry figured he’d be working all day Saturday to get forms to and from all the jobs they were working; but Brian managed to get the hose fixed with help from friends at Gehring Ready-Mix (their trucks use big air hoses too, after all), and Larry’s boss (our nephew Charles) told him to quit at his usual time, and launch in again Tuesday wherever he’d left off Saturday.

What we found when we got to the top and looked down into the valley

I’ve been working my way through the old hymnbook Andrew and Hester gave me for Mother's Day.  Many of the songs are by P. P. Bilhorn, a favorite hymnwriter.  I have found many beautiful ‘new’ old songs.  When I find one I love, I stop right there on that page, and play it until I learn it well.

As I go through some of my very old songbooks, I often wonder, Why did this sweet, heart-touching song not make it into our major hymnals?  On the other hand, the book would be too heavy to hold, if it had all of my favorites in it!

I wonder how many songs we know, in total?  Thousands, I’m sure.

Once upon a time, many years ago, I was singing in a trio.  There were three or four verses of a particular song, and we were doing each verse differently.  One of my friends and fellow singers sighed in exasperation after we made yet another blunder that brought us to a grinding halt, “Can’t you mark the page somehow, so we can remember?”

So I got out a red pencil and wrote at the top, “PLEASE REMEMBER WHAT TO DO!”  Then we all got struck funny and couldn’t sing for a while.  The funniest thing, though, was that we did it perfectly from then on.  🤣

Here are a few of the kids on go-carts Larry built for them.

Joseph

Caleb

Hester

Our showerhead, which has several different settings, including rain, pulse, direct, mist, etc., was getting clogged up from minerals in the water.  I looked online to find out what to do about it – and before long had the head detached and soaking in a bowl of distilled white vinegar.

I left it there for several hours, then screwed it back onto the hose and gave it a try.  It worked like brand new.

Since Larry got off work a little after noon Saturday, he decided to go to Iowa to pick up a skid loader.  He left at 2:30 p.m., telling me he’d be gone approximately ten hours.

He was gone 22 hours.

I decided not to go see Loren by myself that day; instead, Larry and I would both go on Monday, Memorial Day.  Loren really likes to see both of us.

Larry sent me the following note at 4:41 a.m. Sunday morning:  “I had a really hard time getting the skid loader loaded.  The wheels wouldn’t turn.  The cables for the battery for the winch were corroded, and I forgot to bring along battery cables for charging the battery.  It took from 9:30 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. to finally get the loader onto the trailer far enough that it pulls right.  My GPS says that I won’t be home till 8:49 a.m., but I am tired, so I am going to sleep a couple of hours.  So I won’t be home ’til about 12:00 p.m.”

Although I’d put my phone on the nightstand beside the bed, I didn’t hear the text.  So when I awoke at 6:30 a.m. and Larry wasn’t home yet, I got worried and called him without even thinking to look for a text.

I woke him up.

Teddy at Ta-Ha-Zouka Park, Norfolk

He was still some 250 miles away.  Having had a couple of hours of sleep, he decided to start driving.  He made it to Fremont, 45 miles to the east, before he was too tired to continue.  So he pulled into Fremont Lakes State Park, slept a little while, and then made it home at about 12:30 p.m.

That evening, there were storms out in the Sandhills, about 100 miles to the west.  Storm chasers collected hailstones that were over six inches in diameter, softball size and bigger.  A little later, storm chasers to our north and northeast found hailstones even bigger – grapefruit-sized.

Today we were invited to a noon get-together at Kurt and Victoria’s house, as it will be Kurt’s 25^th birthday June 1^st.  We gave him a hatchet in a hand-tooled leather case, a small whetstone, also in a leather case, a fancy pocketknife, a Frisbee, a booklet by Charles Spurgeon, and a pair of suede and canvas work gloves.

All of Kurt’s family was there, along with Jeremy and Lydia and family, Andrew and Hester and family, and Caleb, Maria, and Eva.  There were hamburgers on the grill (and of course buns and lettuce and tomatoes to go with them), fruit/jello salad, strawberry-blueberry pie (made by Kurt’s mother Ruth), watermelon slices, pasta vegetable salad, and more.  Brownies, too, I think, also made by Ruth.

Victoria made a carrot cake late Sunday night after church, and had a terrible time trying to frost it (using lots of cream cheese and butter), because the cake was too warm to slice, layer, and cover with frosting.  A friend recommended she put it in the freezer for a while, which helped.  Victoria’s picture of the cake before she got it frosted was pathetic.  And hilarious.

“Poor girl,” I said, when she showed us the picture, and pointed out the cake itself, looking somewhat wilted.  Or melted.  “Her mother taught her to cook.”  🤣

Little Eva was enjoying a slice of watermelon, but it was slippery’n all get-out.  She didn’t drop it, though; she kept it corralled – against her dress. 

“Good thing her dress is the same color as the watermelon!” laughed Maria.

Once when that evasive slice started sliding, Eva hastily got a better grip on it – and wound up with watermelon juice and pulp all over her hand. 

She held the little hand out to me.  “Bidda bodda hand?” she requested.

“Do you need me to wipe off your hand?” I asked.

She smiled and gave one big nod.  So I wiped off her hand.  Ever notice how delighted the little ones are when you figure out what they’re saying?

Eva, 20 months, is talking more and more, and getting less shy.  Caleb is proud as can be of his little girl.  They went camping at Mahoney State Park last week, staying in the neat little camper Caleb put together.  One day they went for a hike, and little Eva wanted to walk, rather than to be carried.  She trotted happily along, and when Caleb asked if her legs were tired and if she wanted him to carry her, she trotted all the faster and responded, “Walk!”  That sturdy little girl walked a mile and a quarter.

Baby Oliver, Andrew and Hester’s baby, and Baby Willie, Kurt and Victoria’s baby, will soon be four months old.  Willie was trying to suck his thumb as I held him, but he was having a hard time keeping a good suction, because he kept grinning at me.

At one point, Malinda came hurrying into the house, found her Aunt Hester, and reported that Keira was scared to go down the slide. 

So Hester went out in the back yard and helped Keira down the slide.  Malinda was every bit as pleased and relieved as Keira was.  Malinda, who will be 5 next month, is the oldest of our five littlest granddaughters.  She’s not quite 3 months older than Carolyn... about 10 months older than Keira... and she takes her ‘older-than-the-other-little-girls’ role quite seriously.

I asked Carolyn and Violet, “Can I take your pictures together?” – and they promptly got into a pose with Violet leaning her head on Carolyn's shoulder. 

I took the shot... showed them the picture on my camera... and Carolyn crooned, “Awww, isn’t that cute,” reminding me quite a lot of her Mama, who used to peer at herself in the mirror after I’d help her get dressed for church or school, and say, “Awww, don’t I look cute?” 

Victoria, 3

“Yes, and you’re so humble about it, too!” I would reply. 

She’d look at me quickly, eyes wide, and say, “Huh,” in quite a humble tone.  🤣

After reluctantly leaving the party, we went to Omaha to visit Loren.  We found him (and his friend Roslyn, of course) at the far end of one of the hallways, looking out the glass doors into the courtyard. 

“You got here just in time!” he told us.  “I was almost ready to go home.”

Roslyn was trying to help another man with... something, I couldn’t quite tell what.  (Neither could he.)  Loren called, “Norma!” and pointed at us, letting her know we had come to visit.

As we headed back down the hall, I heard someone from an adjacent hall call, “Loren and Roslyn!”  It was probably a nurse, wanting to tell them we were there.

Roslyn started to turn back, but Loren picked up his pace.  He gave me a crooked grin.  “Did you hear that?  They sometimes call us Loren and ‘Roslyn’!” he said.  Then, walking a little faster, he added, “The farther away we get, the more their words will drift away in the breeze.”  He made ‘drifting’ motions with his hands and fingers.

Haha  He still has the same sense of humor.

I decided it was nothing to worry about.  I didn’t see who called his name; they didn’t see me.  That’s as good as if it never happened, right?  Besides, the place isn’t so huge but what they could find him, if they needed to.

I wonder if Roslyn ever tells him her name is not Norma?

We went to the lounge with the TV, though Loren kept wanting to head off another way ‘upstairs’ and ‘to his house’, as he said (toward his room).  We sat on the far side of the room from the TV, and it wasn’t as loud as last time, so it wasn’t really a problem.

Sitting lounge.  Dining room is through the French doors.

There are often thin blankets on the chairs in that lounge.  Roslyn likes to spread them out on the chairs and sit on them.  Loren likes to fold them up. 

Roslyn spreads one out over a chair... goes on to the next one... Loren comes along, folds up the blanket, and then wonders what to do with it.

I hurriedly took it, tossed it over the back of one of the large easy chairs, pointed out where Loren and Larry could sit, and pulled up a smaller chair next to Loren’s.  Roslyn finished spreading out blankets, and then came back and sat on one of the blanket-covered chairs.  She didn’t seem to notice that Loren had discarded of the blanket with which she had so nicely covered his chair (which was why I pointed out the chair for him to sit in, and sat myself down quickly, hoping he would do the same).

I showed him pictures I’d taken at Victoria’s house (and the pictures Caleb took of Larry and me with babies Willie and Oliver), telling him stories about each person in the pictures as we went along. 

I talked about the four young couples who will soon be getting married at our church:  Juliana and Trent, Roy (Jeremy’s younger brother) and Samantha (Loren does not know that Roy bought his house – you’ll remember that he no longer understood that that was his very own house, back before he moved to the nursing home), Jared (Kurt’s younger brother) and Robin, and Isaac and Elisabeth.  Elisabeth and Roy are Tucker cousins.

When I mentioned the last name ‘Tucker’, Roslyn thought I said ‘Cotter’ or ‘Cotner’, and no amount of repeating ‘Tucker’ could convince her otherwise, even when I spelled it.  I finally said, “Tucker with a ‘t’ as in ‘Tom’!” 

Front 'commons' area.  Sitting lounge is behind the chair and dresser, on the other side of the glass window.

She laughed and shook her head.  “Cotter!” she said again (though sometimes it was ‘Cotner’).  She nodded, agreeing with herself.  “They are teachers right here in Omaha!  I’ve known them for years.”

This evidently proved that I had the name wrong.  😅

“They live in Omaha, right?” she prompted, determined to get the issue squared away.

“No, they live in Columbus,” I answered.  I tried changing the subject.  “Were you a teacher?”

“Yes,” she smiled, “for many years.”

So that verifies what we thought, that she was the one about whom we overheard the nurses talking, the very first day we went there to sign papers for Loren. 

“I just love her,” said one nurse.  “She can get everyone joining in a conversation, even if they hardly ever talk.  She puts forth a subject, then goes around the room asking each one what he or she thinks, and won’t take no for an answer.”

Judging by the long words she uses (both real and made up), I imagine she was quite intelligent, and probably taught at a high school level.  Nowadays her subject matter gets convoluted and distorted, and is liable to wind up in Guatemala when it intended to go to Guam. 

Pretty sad, what dementia and Alzheimer’s does, isn’t it?  Such an awful disease.

Roslyn enjoyed looking at the pictures along with Loren, and he is still ‘himself’ enough to make sure she sees each one before we go on to the next.

But in about 45 minutes, I could see that they were both getting tired.  Roslyn confirmed this by reaching over, pulling back the cuff on Loren’s sleeve, tapping his watch, and asking, “Did you call and let them know we were going to be late?”

At a salvage yard in southeast Nebraska

“No,” said Loren, looking concerned.  “I thought you were going to do that!”  He glanced around the room, saw no phone, then pointed at my camera.  “Does that thing do anything else, besides...”  He simulated taking a picture.

He meant, is it also a smartphone.  After all, phones take pictures these days.  Surely a camera can place a phone call?

“Nope,” I laughed.  “It’s nothing but a camera.”

Larry kept his phone safely hidden in his pants pocket.

As Loren and Roslyn debated over how to let the unknown party know they were going to be late to some unknown meeting, I created a diversion by getting up, asking Larry to put my chair back where it had been, and saying we’d better get going before the bad weather hit town (and there really was bad weather approaching that we wanted to avoid).

“How long has it been since you were here?” asked Loren.

“A week,” I told him.

He was surprised.  “That’s all?” he queried, then asked, “When will you be coming back?”

“In a few days,” I answered.

Eastern kingbird

“Oh, that’ll be nice!” he exclaimed.  “I really do appreciate you making the trip here.”

Roslyn nodded in agreement, and added her thanks to his.

So, after a visit that was much nicer than last week’s muddled visit, we bid them adieu. 

Loren seems frailer to us lately – probably because he’s not working outside... and because of the medication they give him... and because the Lewy Body dementia itself causes people to steadily become frailer.  But he was happy, and glad to see us.

Great blue heron

The SD card with all the music on it was plug-and-play!  I stuck it into the slot on the dash of the Mercedes – and presto-ka-bingo, music instantaneously started playing.  It took a while longer before I found the route to the folders, artists, song names, search function, and so forth.  I looked and looked for a way to make the songs play in random order, but I don’t think it will do that – at least not with an SD card.  Oh, well; I can easily switch to different albums and songs.  We are just glad to have a huge collection of our favorite music to listen to as we drive.

We then traveled south to a farm near Pawnee City, population 976, to collect a battery cover Larry had forgotten there when he picked up a Something-Or-Other a while back.  Then, looking at radar maps and listening to NOAA weather, we weaved our way between the storms back to Rockford Lake State Recreation Area.  We walked down to the water’s edge, listened to four ignoramuses (ignoramusi?) on a pontoon boat bellowing their heads off (probably drunker’n skunks), tried to ignore them, couldn’t, and walked back up the hill.  It looks like a nice, secluded, and (hopefully) quiet place to camp overnight.  There are neatly leveled spots for campers, offering water and electricity.  

We drove on west to Beatrice and ate supper at Arby’s, one of the few choices on Memorial Day and at that hour of the evening.  Big raindrops splashed on the windshield as we drove, and the line of billowing thunderclouds with its flashing lightning looked threatening; but it stayed to our east and we had time to eat before continuing on.  I had a pecan chicken salad sandwich, a cherry turnover, and a Jamocha shake.  Larry had a chicken bacon ranch sandwich, French fries, a salted caramel and chocolate cookie, and an orange cream shake.

Soon we were back on the road.  The storm kept moving steadily northeast, and we were going straight north; so it wasn’t long before we were back under clear skies again as we headed toward Lincoln.

By then Larry was falling asleep (and proclaiming that he wasn’t, as usual), so I drove the rest of the way home.  

Too much riding and driving in the car, too little walking today!  Now I’m stiff and sore, despite the comfortable, adjustable, and heated seats in the Mercedes.  At least we weren’t traveling via horse and buggy like the Amish people we passed!  

Whataya bet they had fish for supper?  (See the fishing poles?)

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