Journal: Earthquakes & Other Jarring Issues

Last Monday, there was an earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale on Mexico’s Pacific Coast, about 295 miles west of Mexico City, where some missionary friends live.  Our friend wrote to say that their son and daughter-in-law were at the baby doctor for her first checkup, in a high tower.  “They were all pretty scared,” he said.

He sent a video showing parked cars and trucks rocking violently back and forth.  The noise was loud.

We’ve had minor earthquakes around here, but if I felt anything, I probably just thought it was Larry unloading a scissor lift from a flatbed in the back yard. 😄

I was really surprised years ago to learn that each increase of one unit on the Richter scale represents a ten-fold increase in the magnitude of an earthquake.  So that means that the earthquake in Mexico was almost 400 times stronger than the one we had in southern Nebraska back in mid-July.

Tuesday evening, Hester sent this picture, writing, “This is the first quiche I’ve made!  I love this cookbook.”  (It’s the cookbook from the Green Tree Inn, the Bed & Breakfast where we stayed in Elsah, Illinois, which we gave them for their anniversary.)

Here’s another view from the Loveland Scenic Lookout Tower I climbed last week.  I’ve always loved being way up high, looking down on the scenery.

When I was young, I liked climbing a tall tree near our house, situating myself on a branch that made a comfortable ‘chair’ against the trunk, and reading a book.  It was also fun to say in an odd, high-pitched (or low-pitched, as the fancy struck) voice to passersby, “Hi!”  They’d look to the left, the right, then turn around and look behind them before proceeding on with question marks hovering over their heads, doubtless wondering if they were in their right minds or not, what with these strange audio hallucinations they were experiencing.  I knew better than to ever repeat myself.  A second ‘Hi’ would very likely cause said passersby to look upwards, and I didn’t want that.

We have caught several mice in mouse traps in the last week – and we have also lost one trap entirely.  That’s not good.  Sometimes a mouse springs several traps and departs.  That’s not good, either.  What we don’t want is an injured mouse expiring unseen on the premises.

Larry found a really big mouse in one of the traps a few days ago, and it was still very much alive and kicking.

Anybody have any bear traps they aren’t using??

Tuesday night, I got a notice from UPS saying that the New York Beauty quilt would be arriving the next day, and I would need to sign for it.  Accordingly, I got up bright and early, looked at the clock, and saw that I had plenty of time for a shower before the UPS man would make his usual mid-morning stop at our house.

I neglected to take into account that UPS personnel, when delivering parcels that need signatures, head out well before sunrise, sneak onto recipients’ properties, and listen silently and intently for the sound of the shower to start.  Then and only then do they approach the front door to pound ferociously on it before leaving a note stating that if the homeowner isn’t on the premises to collect the box the very next day, they will tow said box out to sea and destroy it with a small nuclear blast.

Thirty minutes later, I trotted out to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee, glanced out the front door – and discovered a big box in the unmistakable shape of AQS’s quilt boxes on the front porch.

The UPS man had left it without making me sign for it after all.  Astonishing.

With some delivery companies, one can request to have one’s signature kept on their files, to be inserted electronically whenever a signature is required, so that parcels can be left at one’s door without one having to physically sign for it.  I have done that, when possible; but this is one of the few times it did me any good (if indeed that is why the box was left sans signature).

Anyway, I’m very glad Jeremy and Lydia’s quilt made it safely back home.  It is now back in their keeping, and I have promised not to take it away from them again.

Here are the pictures I took of all the quilts at the AQS Show in Des Moines:  Quilts

I spent the day editing photos.  Soon it was time for our midweek church service.

Larry was running late, coming back from a job to our northwest; so, rather than take his truck back to the shop and then driving all the way home again, he came home first, and parked his truck over on Old Highway 81.  He was still going to be late, so I went off without him, and he came later in the BMW. 

That worked out fine, though, because our 16-year-old grandson Nathanael had bought the BMW from us.  So he took it home after church.

Thursday afternoon, I was doing something in the kitchen when suddenly there was a great rustling in the lilac bush just outside the window.  It was a flock of Northern Flickers landing on the bush and chowing down on the ripening berries of the Boston Ivy that grows all over it and up alongside my kitchen window.  There were adult parents and about four fledglings.  The youngsters kept landing on vines that were a little too small to support their weight, and then flailing and flapping for dear life, trying to stay upright.  One juvenile went completely upside down, started to scramble back upright – but then spotted a cluster of berries right over his head, so he just clung there and gobbled down berries.  😄

I went on working on photos that day, taking a short time-out to put this montage, which I call Playground Equipment vs. Work Stuff, together:

Late Friday afternoon, Carolyn, who’s 5 now, called me. 

“Hello?” I said.

“Hi, Grandma, what are you doing?” she asked in her sweet little voice.

She was inviting Larry and me to Kurt and Victoria’s house for dessert that night.

While there, Victoria and I were looking at Kurt’s brother’s wedding pictures from last month.  Next, we looked at Kurt and Victoria’s wedding book... and then Victoria told me that her cousin Jamie and her husband Mark were recently looking at their wedding pictures with their children.  Jamie is Kelvin’s daughter; she’s the same age as Victoria.  Mark and Jamie, like Kurt and Victoria, have two little girls and a little boy (named Kelvin after his grandpa) about the same age as Carolyn, Violet, and Willie.

So there were Mckenna and Laura, looking silently at their parents’ wedding pictures, until finally, with a good deal of offended umbrage, Mckenna, 5, exclaimed, “Why aren’t we in any of your pictures?!!” 

Jamie started to explain, “You weren’t there –” but before she could continue, Laura, 4, cried, “Didn’t you invite us?!”  🤣😂

I got 168 photos scanned that day, and 84 pictures scanned Saturday, making a total of 35,058 scanned photos so far.  I have decided what to do, if I don’t have time to finish:  come the first of December, I’ll get the grandchildren’s things wrapped and bagged.  Then I’ll scan photos until the midpoint of December, and regardless of whether or not I’m done, I’ll load photos onto the 2TB hard drives, place them in the little mini trunks, and put them into gift bags. 

If there’s time, and if there are more photos to scan, I’ll keep at it until time for our get-together.  Whatever’s left can be finished after Christmas, at which point I’ll collect the thumb drives back again and add the rest of the photos.

There.  It’s a plan.  But I think I can get done.

Saturday, I went to visit Loren.  Harvest is in full swing.  I did not notice until I was looking at my photos on my large computer screen that there was a bald eagle on the post there behind the tractor and trailer.  Can you enlarge the picture enough to see it?  

At the nursing home, after walking into the commons from the lobby door, I paused, looking around for Loren.

“Sarah Lynn!” I heard someone calling from off to my right. 

I turned, and there was Loren hurrying toward me, grinning a welcome.

He seems a little better than he did last week, though he was clad in flannel pajama bottoms with his western shirt.  ?  (Mind you, he didn’t look out of place, amongst his fellow residents.  😉)  He was better able to converse this week, (in his forgetful way), and he seemed stronger.

When I got back home, I finished the album I was scanning.  There are five to go, unless I find the other missing ones – and I hope I find them.

That night, we had Creamy Chicken Pasta soup by Bear Creek, with strawberry-rhubarb pie for dessert.

Yesterday after our morning service, Victoria asked us to stop by to pick up some lunch:  baked turkey, potatoes, carrots, and onions just out of the oven, along with half a loaf of sourdough bread baked fresh that morning.  I love homemade sourdough bread.

Last night after church, we stopped at Hy-Vee for milk and Lipton Theraflu tea, since I was getting a cold.  Larry went in to get it. 

He purchased Kemp’s skim milk for me, Vanilla Silk Almond milk for himself, bananas, yogurt, rice pudding, tapioca pudding, Diet Dr. Pepper, Diet Mt. Dew, orange juice, cottage cheese, string cheese, and a Java Monster Salted Caramel energy drink.

He forgot the Lipton Theraflu tea.

Meanwhile, I was sitting in the Mercedes watching a UFO in the eastern sky.   It was very odd, like a long, skinny star.  The bottom part appeared to be red, and it almost seemed like there were wings, angling upwards.  When Larry came out of the store, we headed east out of town, away from the city lights, so as to see the object better.

We could, but not much.

We turned back toward town, stopping at Walgreens to get the Theraflu tea Larry had forgotten to get at Hy-Vee.  When he came back out of the store, he had Alka-Seltzer Plus for Cold & Flu, and he informed me that they had no Lipton tea for colds.  Now, I knew better than that.  But what do you do, when you don’t feel like going into the store, yourself?!  You take what you can get, that’s what.

Today I sent him a picture of the Theraflu box.

“Oh!” he said, surprised.  “They had that, but there was a sign on the rack covering up the word ‘Lipton’, and I didn’t think it was the right stuff!”  🙄😏 (Well, Alka-Seltzer was definitely not the right stuff, though it’s not bad.)

He promised to bring me some when he gets off work this evening.

As we drove on home, we spotted two more of those odd lights in the sky.  They were sort of cross-shaped.  One was low on the northern horizon; the other was in the west, in front of us as we came home.  The one we had first seen in the east was a lot closer, and very bright.  The main part of it was bright white, with red and blue appearing at the bottom.  We carried the groceries into the house, and I ran for the binoculars.

The binoculars confirmed only that it was not a star.  It didn’t look cross-shaped or long at all, with the binoculars.  But there were definitely colored lights on it.  In researching various things that might be in our night skies, I see that satellites do not have colored lights.  Drones, in addition to their white lights, have red and green lights.  Some police drones, along with their white lights (which are sometimes spotlights) have red and blue lights.  I’ve checked the online pages where people often report on lights they see in the night skies, but found nothing.

So... I have no idea what we were seeing, but I know what it was not:  it was neither a star nor a planet, nor was it a plane.

And that’s all I know.

This morning for breakfast I had a slice of Victoria’s sourdough bread, toasted, with lots of butter, and honey on half of it and Berry Blend jam on the other half.  It was so good, I sent her another thank-you note.  😊

At noon today, I texted Lydia, “Does Ian know there’s a big, bad hurricane coming toward Florida – and it’s named after him?!”

“I told him,” answered Lydia, “and now he’s giggling about it. 😂”

“Does he know what a hurricane looks like from space?” I asked.  “It’s pretty impressive.”

I sent this picture of Hurricane Floyd, taken way back in September of 1999, and wrote, “Just look at the statistics:

Total fatalities: 87

Lowest pressure: 921 mb 

Highest wind speed: 155 mph

Date: September 7, 1999 – September 19, 1999

Category: Category 4 Hurricane (SSHWS)

Damage: $6.5 billion (1999 USD)

Affected areas: North Carolina, Florida, etc.

This is your Friendly Lunchtime News, now signing off to curl her hair!”

Lydia then sent me their lunch menu, along with a picture of one of the entrées:  “We have bread that has been buttered and warmed in the oven, cheesy cauliflower, and pineapple smoothies.  It’s pineapple and frozen strawberries blended with watermelon juice.”

This evening, a little after six, I texted Lydia again:  “Tell Ian that he has now turned into a Category 2 hurricane with 96-110-mph winds. 😁”

We once called Uncle Earl and asked him what he was doing, cattin’ around in the Atlantic!?  (He had not yet heard that there was a Cat 3 hurricane by the name of ‘Earl’ barreling straight for the eastern seaboard.)

Well, I am feeling decidedly icky.  So I shall bid you adieu and head for my recliner.  I need to be well enough to pack for our trip to Boise, Idaho, in a day or two! 

Pictures of my drive to Des Moines are here.

Pictures of all the quilts at the quilt show are here.

Pictures taken at the Botanical Gardens are here.

Pictures from my drive home again are here.

Pictures taken on my drive to Omaha Saturday are here.

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