I didn’t pick up my grocery order last Tuesday as I had
planned, because my right wrist was complaining. I decided to wait until Wednesday evening
after church, when Larry could help me.
According to the webpage where I paid for the groceries, I had four days
to pick them up. And according to the
Customer Help page, I had seven days to pick them up.
Nothing is seriously wrong with my wrist; it’s mostly just
arthritis. But I’d overused it with my quilting machine... lifting a
heavy roaster out of the oven... trying to keep the wind from blowing the door
of the Mercedes open too far... and editing photos. I have to use the
mouse more with photo-editing programs (I use PaintShop Pro); usually I stick
to my ergonomic keyboard as much as possible. My wrist was hurting enough
that I decided to give one of those new-fangled ergonomic mice a try. It has both a USB receiver and Bluetooth.
It arrived in two days, and the mouse pad with the gel
support for the
wrist came a day later. Editing pictures
is sooo much easier, with this mouse and pad.
That day, I went shopping – online – for clothes for the
grandchildren for Christmas.
Time out to send a note to Lydia: “MMMmmmm, this Pink Chiffon body cream you gave me for my birthday is soooo nice, and smells soooo good. Thank you!
“I’m saving the bath scrub and the shower gel as a carrot on a stick in front of my nose, and it will be my reward for using up all the Ivory soap I brought home from Uncle Loren’s house. Some of that soap is so old, the paper comes off the bars in crumbles; but the soap itself is still fine. I prefer yummy-smelling gels and soaps, but I’m being all frugal and parsimonious. 😏 We’ve gone through about ten bars so far, and there are about six to go. I discovered it even works good on stains, scrubbing the bar right on the fabric. I will use up this soap! I will use up this soap! I will use up this soap! I will use up this soap! I will use up this soap!”
Here’s another shot taken in the Shoshone Canyon on
the west side of Yellowstone National Park.
It was so pretty that night, driving through canyon, with the red rock
walls on either side, the bright moon rising and making the Shoshone River
glisten and sparkle in the moonlight.
Someone
commented under some of the pictures I posted, “Hope you get photos from your
phone.”
Since
I rarely use my phone to take pictures, I felt quite blank upon reading
that. Huh?
But
she went on to say, “I lost a lot of mine when my phone went dead.”
Ohhh. She thought I took the photos with my phone.
“I
just back up photos of my husband,” she added. “I lost over 1000 photos.”
I
repeat myself, but, Huh? She only
backs up photos she has taken of her husband?
Eh?
But
I have learned not to ask some people (her, in particular) for explanations,
lest the explanation muddle the issue even further. So I sympathized, “I’m sorry you lost your
pictures,” and explained that I use my Canon Rebel t5i for photos, and have
them backed up on at least three separate hard drives.
She
didn’t answer. Maybe she thought, just
like I did upon reading her note, Huh?
Here’s an excerpt from an old journal I found, written back
when Victoria was not quite four:
Victoria, sitting on the opposite side
of the table from me as I was sewing away, was busily cutting small pieces of
material.
She handed me a rather uneven
shape. “Here you go; this is for you!” she said. Then, in
the next breath, “What is it?”
I took a good look at it. “Well,
it’s almost a diamond shape,” I replied.
“Nope!” she responded
triumphantly. “It’s a boat!!” And it did look
like a boat. She giggled. “Did you know I was going to make
that?” she asked.
“No,” I answered
truthfully.
She raised her eyebrows. “Neither
did I,” said she.
Next, she cut out a rectangle with a
slightly rounded end. “What’s this?” she
queried.
“A rectangle,” I answered, thinking I
couldn’t go wrong this time.
“Nope!” She grinned happily,
having fooled me again. “It’s a mailbox!” she informed
me gleefully.
The next item it seemed, was a perger. After that, she cut out a purler, and then a
surler collar. And no, I did not guess any of
those.
Before long, I was covered with bits
and pieces of fabric that Victoria was cutting and sticking all over my sweater
and skirt. She looked me over critically, and then announced, “I’m having
a Decoration Party.”
About the same time, we went to
Wendy’s in Central City for supper. Victoria announced that she
wanted Candy Crooper with Cheese. I informed her that Candy Crooper
was bad for her health, and would she like chicken, instead; it was not only
good for her, but also quite tasty. She would,
and it was.
Just before her 4th birthday,
we took a trip to Lincoln. A heavy mist came down, all
day. The temperature was falling slowly. When we left Lincoln,
it was 31°. The roads were not yet icy, however, and we traveled
along nicely until we got to David City, where we made one of our many
necessary pit stops.
I jumped out of the Suburban--and
immediately discovered it was slick.
“Careful!” I cried to the children, who
were in various processes of clambering out of the vehicle, “It’s really
slippery out here!”
I reached for Victoria, helped her out,
and took her hand. She, not in the least concerned about
dicey traction of the foot, took off on a dead run. Since it was
windy and cold, and the snow was swirling down faster every minute, I didn’t
complain; I merely loped along with her – until she tried to jump a puddle and
her feet suddenly flew out from under her. I hung onto her hand, and
managed, with difficulty, to keep her – and myself – from falling. I
think we probably looked something like a centipede doing an interpretation of
a millipede.
“Whewweee!” she gasped, when she
was finally safely upright again. “That was sure a good thing I was
holding your hand, or you might have fallen down!”
“Well, it was your fault I ever slipped
in the first place, because you were being such a
maniac!” I objected, scowling.
“Oh,” said she, only slightly humbled.
I recalled a time when Lydia was a
baby, and an ice storm had struck while we were en route somewhere or
other. We stopped at an Interstate rest area. Since Lydia was asleep, I stayed in the car
while the children all prepared to go inside the large tourist center,
hurriedly zipping coats and tying hoods.
Keith, who was eleven, jumped out and
fell flat. He scrambled to his feet and proceeded on with new
caution. Hannah, age ten, concurrently climbing out on the other side,
lost her footing and went down. She got up carefully and walked gingerly
toward the building. Dorcas, who was nine, had seen both her brother and
her sister fall…but being the eternal optimist that she was, never dreamed it
could happen to her.
She leaped out with neither caution nor
prudence.
SPLAT. Down she went. She struggled up,
grasping the door handle to assist herself, and went slowly toward the tourist’s
quarters, a bit wiser about the ways of icy streets and sidewalks.
Joseph, age seven, was next, and he did
no better than his siblings before him. Furthermore, because he had on a
pair of bulky boots that seemed to tangle themselves around the other leg at
every step, he couldn’t get to his feet without assistance from Larry.
The rest of the way to the building, he not only slipped and slid, but he also
tripped and stumbled over those boots with every other step.
Larry helped Hester, age three, from
the vehicle, and started for the tourist center and restrooms. I don’t
believe Hester found her footing the entire distance, and her uncontrolled
flailing made it difficult for her father to stay on his feet.
They slipped, skidded, and crisscrossed not only their own feet, but also each
other’s pathways.
Teddy was the last one out. He
was eight. The little scamp had been sitting in the middle of the back
seat, funny bone in Full Operational Swing.
“My turn!” he called out
gleefully, as soon as everyone had picked themselves up off the icy earth and
gotten themselves out of the way. And with that, he bounded out of the car.
“Bail out!” he cried.
I craned my neck to peer back at him,
expecting the worst – but there he stood beside the car, arms twirling at his
sides like a windmill, feet spinning madly, while he pretending to be powerless
to go forward. He grinned impishly at me through my window.
Suddenly taking off like a rocket, he caught up with the rest of the family and
commenced with a capering cabaret behind them, twirling and spinning like an
accomplished Olympic skater. An accomplished comedic Olympic
skater. He interspersed that skit with periodic
imitations of his father and little sister, crisscrossing his feet, kicking the
backs of his own boots, and lurching along better than Andy Capp has ever
lurched.
And no, he has not changed, neither in
humor nor in balance.
When we departed the convenience store
at David City and pulled onto the highway, I pressed a little harder than
necessary on the accelerator, just to see how slick it was. Yes, it was
slick. The Suburban slid sideways one way, and then the other, and I
decided it would be prudent to slow down from the 65 mph I’d been traveling. I
kept it slightly under 50, until we got to the main highway, where the sleet
and snow were melting on the road, because there were more vehicles traveling
on it.
Victoria told the others about our near
spill on the way into the store. ”It’s because I was being such a
really maniac!” she reported, giggling and quite proud of
herself.
That’s been a description we used for
quite a while thereafter: “You’re being such a really maniac.”
Wednesday I heard on the news that they caught three men who
were responsible for stealing several reefers fully loaded with meat from Grand
Island’s packing plant. Sometimes they made off with the entire truck and
kaboodle. Sometimes they drove it to a remote location, unloaded all the
meat, and left the truck.
During the summer, we heard that similar heists had occurred
in Iowa, South Dakota, and Minnesota; but I learned that they had also occurred
in North Dakota and Wisconsin. The total value of these thefts was around
9 million dollars. The three men were
working out of Miami.
Criminals sure can be brazen! But they almost always get caught.
That
afternoon, a friend wrote to tell me that she had received a ‘friend request’
from me on Facebook, though we are already ‘Facebook friends’.
“Have
you been hacked?” she asked.
“Cloned, probably, but not hacked,” I
told her. “I’ll blow up my computer and
burn my house down, and that should solve the problem. 😂”
Before
the day ended, Facebook had informed me that my ‘violence-inciting hate speech’
was not tolerated on their platform. My
reply had been removed, and I could neither make new posts nor comment or reply
on other posts.
I
protested.
They promptly restored my
privileges, whilst sternly warning me that if I didn’t cease and desist with the ‘inciting
of violence’, my account could be suspended, disabled, or even removed
entirely.
Looks
like their AI (Artificial Intelligence) text-analyzing models aren’t as
intelligent as they’d like to think they are.
I then reported
the cloned account.
Next,
to add insult to injury, some Helpful Hattie tried also reporting the cloned
account – and accidentally (I hope) reported my legitimate account,
instead of the cloned account!
Fortunately, Facebook’s robotic account verifier can somehow tell the
difference between cloned and legitimate accounts. The robo notifier dutifully informed me of
these happenings and assured me that my account was still intact. Robo Noto was so polite and nice, I feel sure
it had not been in recent contact with AI Text-Analyzer, and did not know what
a felonious criminal it was dealing with.
I checked active logins and logouts,
and no one other than me had access to my account.
Here’s the difference between a cloned
and a hacked account:
A cloned account is when someone grabs
your profile picture and name and sets up an account that looks just like
yours. However, there will be
practically no content, and the only persons in the ‘friends’ list will be
those few who mistakenly click ‘accept’ to the clone’s friend requests. The creator of this account will probably
attempt to get personal information from these friends.
A hacked account, on the other hand, is
when someone takes over your very own account, using your own password, then
changing that password to one of their own making, so that you no longer have
access to the account. If you can catch
it quickly enough and get your password changed before the hacker changes
it, you might retrieve that account. Facebook
techs will sometimes help return a hacked account to its rightful owner. But not always. If you don’t know enough of the original
information with which you created your account (phone numbers, email
addresses, etc.), you just might be out of luck.
Now, if only someone would clone me as
a maid, a housecleaner, a cook, and a gardener!
As
Larry and I traveled through the mountains, we talked about what it would’ve
been like when the pioneers spotted the dark foothills up ahead. Imagine them thinking, Wow, this is going
to be difficult.
And then, after a long, hard pull, wherein they maybe had to discard of quite a number of heavy belongings, they’d give a sigh of relief as they topped the hill — and look aghast at impossibly high, jagged mountains reaching up, up, up, into the heavens, and stretching as far to the north and as far to the south as the eye could see. Astonishing that any of them ever made it at all.
I got
a notification from Wal-Mart. I clicked
on it.
“Your
Wal-Mart order has been canceled, because you didn’t pick it up soon enough,” I
was informed.
What
in the world? Even their shortest
time frame for pickup is stated to be four days! It had only been two.
I
pulled up Wal-Mart chat and inquired.
Somebody named Muhammed began the online chat after the automated
responses were of no use. “Hello! I welcome you most warmly, and I do sincerely
hope you are having a completely wonderful day!” he wrote.
Well,
that’s irritating. I responded
curtly, “Hello” (No punctuation gives it
that curt intonation, don’t you think?)
He
answered, “Hello!” (You already said
that, Bub.) Then, “Before we
proceed, I wish to know if you’re having a wonderful day!”
Irritating!!! But since he just might have the power to
reinstate my order, I wrote shortly, “Yes”
(Again, note the lack of punctuation.
I mean something by this!)
(And yes, I realize that it’s probably just like my very ladylike
mother’s sarcasm, which was often done so subtly, and in such a courtly and
dignified manner, the ignorant slobs to whom she was offering the insult had no
idea under the sun that they had just been royally affronted.) (But now I understand that the feeling of
satisfaction simply over having done it is nothing to be sneezed at.)
“Good,
good,” Muhammed gushed. I wonder if he’s
ever been kicked in the shins, and then tell myself, He’s only trying to be
friendly, and he might be able to help.
Wal-Mart should train their help not to be overly effusive in their
online chats, since most customers who make use of said chat are connecting
with said help in order to resolve an issue of one sort or another, and we
aren’t singing It’s Been A Wonderful Day, All Day Long! whilst we’re
a-doing so.
I
told him about my order being canceled and asked if it could be
reinstated. Muhammed, after checking
with his superior, assured me that he could do absolutely nothing about it. He apologized profusely, telling me,
“I’m so embarrassed, my face is red!”
(Oh, brother.) “I am certainly
making a report about this matter,” he informed me. If we had’ve been speaking on the phone, he
would’ve surely been making indignant ‘tut-tut’ noises on my behalf.
He
finished by asking me if I planned to have a delightful rest of the day.
“I would,”
I wrote testily, “if I could have the pie and ice cream I ordered!”
“I
understand, I understand,” he responded soothingly.
What,
did he want pie and ice cream too?
Then,
because, after all, it wasn’t his fault, he hadn’t canceled my
order (or if he did, he wasn’t admitting it), I wrote, “Thank you!” and added a
nice big smiley face.
I signed
off and reordered. I couldn’t just do it
all at once, either; I had to reorder each item individually – and it was a big
order. I consoled myself by adding a
bunch of those scrumptious little Oui yogurts in the cute glass jars.
Just before church, my cousin emailed me: “Interesting tidbit! Apparently there is a mountain lion roaming the west side of Springfield!” (That’s in Illinois, 60 miles northwest of Shelbyville, where she lives, and where my father and his family used to live.) “He’s wearing a GPS collar that was placed on him last year by the Nebraska Game and Parks Division. The article said that our DNR is also coordinating with your biologist in Nebraska on its continued movements. I thought you would find this interesting. That lion has traveled a long way. I just hope some zealot doesn’t try to take it down for a trophy!”
That is
interesting. He’s probably traveled anywhere from 500-550 miles, maybe
more, if he came from the Pineridge area in the northwest part of Nebraska.
Must be a young one, looking for new territory.
I wondered where he would find a mate, in Illinois.
A couple of days later I read this in our local news:
“A mountain lion that roamed residential neighborhoods in
Springfield, Illinois, was sedated Friday and taken to an Indiana sanctuary
that houses big cats, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources said. The young male was tranquilized by staff with
the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services branch and sent to the
Exotic Feline Rescue Center in Center Point, Indiana, the state agency said.
“IDNR wildlife experts, Illinois Conservation Police, the
USDA, and the Springfield Police Department determined the animal had entered
areas of the city where he would be a threat to people or property. The animal, which was fitted last year with a
GPS collar by the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, had wandered to Illinois
from Nebraska. It arrived in Springfield
on Wednesday, and IDNR warned residents not to disturb it while the agency tracked
its movements. The DNR asked people to
leave the mountain lion alone because the animals are a protected species in
Illinois and it’s illegal to kill them unless they pose an imminent threat to
person or property.
“Its appearance in Springfield marks the second time in
recent weeks a mountain lion has been detected in Illinois. The DNR said last week that a mountain lion
was struck and killed on October 16 by a vehicle along Interstate 88 in DeKalb
County.”
Dekalb County is about 185 miles north of Springfield. That’s not all that far, to a mountain
lion. The range of a cougar may cover anywhere from 25 to 785 square
miles. In southern Utah, for example, lions have been known to occupy
home ranges as large as 513 square miles. The size of a mountain lion’s
territory depends on the availability of food and habitat quality.
Thursday,
the clothes for the grandchildren began arriving. The mail lady crammed as many packages as she
possibly could into our mailbox over on Old Highway 81, and brought the rest to
our front porch. Very sensible. Eh?
I
will soon begin wrapping and bagging them, finding out what all I have saved throughout the year, and
what I still need to buy – as in, toys and gadgets. Kids gotta have toys and gadgets, and not
just clothes; or they’ll suppose you think they’ve been bad all year long!
The new ergonomic mouse arrived. I tried it first with the USB receiver, then
paired it via Bluetooth, freeing up another USB port on my laptop, which I’ve
needed at times. I hadn’t used the mouse for ten minutes before I knew I
really, really liked it, and it was really, really going to help my wrist.
“You like the new mouse better than the touchpad on
your laptop?” asked a friend.
I like any mouse better than the touchpad on the
laptop. But this new mouse is better than the other ‘normal’ mice I have
used. The touchpad on my last laptop, an
HP, was better – and had more functions – than this Acer touchpad. It’s not bad; but the HP was better.
That
evening, Hannah texted me from where she was parked on main street downtown, outside
the music store waiting for Levi to finish his horn lesson: “Downtown is an absolute
madhouse with trick-or-treaters.” She
sent a picture, captioning it, “What Chimera looked like as a jack-o-lantern in
a witch hat and black outfit went by.”
A minute later, she
wrote, “Now both dogs are howling about a wiener dog wearing a hotdog costume.”
“It probably made them
hungry!” I conjectured. Then, after
Hannah described a few more costumed persons, “Poor things are going to have
nightmares.”
“Here’s a lady with two
girls: One is an angel; the other is a
devil,” wrote Hannah. “Wonder if they’re
in character?” Then, “Uh-oh, an itty
bitty Care Bear fell down.”
Soon she added, “It’s being restrained in a stroller now, against its will. It’s shrieking loudly.”
Minutes later: “Ridiculous. A grown man in an Eeyore onesie, pushing a
stroller. Chimera is rather stunned by a
walking dinosaur about seven feet tall.”
“He thinks you took him
to Jurassic Park!” I laughed.
That night on the Quilt
Talk group, we were discussing the weather, comforters, blankets, and quilts,
among other things.
We once had an electric
blanket, years ago. In the middle of
winter, it abruptly stopped working right. I was cold. I kept turning the control up... up... up...
and it kept getting colder... colder... colder. “This blanket isn’t working right!” I finally
exclaimed.
“I
know!” agreed Larry. “I’m boiling hot,
and it won’t cool down, no matter how much I turn it down!”
Oh. Uh...
I got
out of bed, turned the light on, pulled the comforter away, and took a good
look at that blanket.
Yep. It had gotten flipped the wrong direction after
I washed and dried it earlier that day. Larry
was adjusting my side, and I was adjusting his.
We
flipped the blanket the other way, climbed back in bed, and readjusted our
respective controls.
Ahhhh. Much bettah.
A lady from the nursing home called on Friday afternoon to
tell me that the nursing home’s doctor will be there November 3rd to
give Covid shots and boosters, and to ask if I wanted Loren to have either or
both shots. I declined. His immunity is high, after having Covid
late last November.
How in the world did we wind up with a nursing home that
actually gives us the option?! I am grateful for that. Also, she
told me that everyone tested negative for Covid a few days ago, so visitation
restrictions had been lifted, thankfully.
None of the patients who had tested positive had any
symptoms. This is so ridiculous, that the testing done for Covid is so ‘sensitive’
that you might turn up ‘positive’ if you have so much as a hangnail.
It made me feel so bad to think of Loren being confined to
his room and not really understanding why. Well, they would have told him
why, of course, and he would’ve seemed to understand; but two minutes
later, he wouldn’t know at all what it was about. The first nurse I
talked to said some of the patients would not stay in their room, and
they didn’t force them to, but tried to get them to wear masks if they wouldn’t
stay put; I hoped Loren was one of those.
He sure got riled up when he was still at home, last
January, when we turned the doorknob to the garage around and locked it from
the outside! (No, it wasn’t a fire hazard; there were plenty of other
doors and windows from which to exit.) Teddy
was staying with him one day when he went into a rant about it. Teddy
obligingly went and tried the door (quite as if he wasn’t the very culprit who
had done the dastardly deed). Then, with a bit of a shrug (and I
can just see that trying-not-to-smile look on his face), “Huh. Yep, it’s
locked.” Then, “Oh, well; we don’t need to go out there right now; let’s
go eat.” 😄
Loren would often say, “I can’t eat when things like this
are going on!” We ignored him and put food in front of him. He
ate. 🤣
Never once since going to the nursing home has Loren acted
like he did while at home, at least to my knowledge. They all tell me he
is always pleasant and helpful and cheerful. Thank goodness for
that! I suppose a lot of it is the anti-anxiety medication they give him;
but I also believe God has been merciful to us, leading us to the right place
for him, and causing things to go smoothly. We very much thank the Lord for
this.
I was voicing my opinion about Facebook to a friend that
afternoon. Turns out, she was in
the Facebook doghouse, too – for posting recipes for Mexican foods!
“Good grief,” I commiserated. “Those bots definitely need a bit of
reprogramming.” (...pause...) “Although, come to think of it, ghost peppers can
be rather violent.”
I just saw a newsflash: The Powerball lottery is over one
billion smackeroos.
Speaking of millions/billions/trillions... Here’s a recent
quote from President(?) Biden:
“My administration has overseen a billion a
trillion 750 million dollars billion dollars off the sidelines of investment on
countering climate change!”
That bit of word soup was spoken whilst he squinted at the
teleprompter. He also said he had been to “all 54 states”. He can’t even talk sense with a teleprompter
going.
On the other hand, maybe the teleprompter programmer
is sabotaging things. How would we know? They never show us what it
actually says on the thing, now do they?
How would you like to be kayaking down the
Bighorn River, just a-mindin’ yer own bizzniss and enjoyin’ the moose and
the grizzlies, when all of a sudden this boulder comes crashin’
down the mountainside?!
It doesn’t look too awfully big, in the
picture. For perspective, look at those
picnic table shelters, there on the far left.
That rock is bigger than our house.
Saturday, I went to visit Loren. When I arrived, I saw
his friend Roslyn sitting in the main commons area, but no Loren. She
seemed out of it. She barely glanced up, and didn’t appear to recognize
me.
After looking around and not seeing Loren, I asked a nurse
if she might know where he was. The nurse
(a new one, I think, and a bit, uh, ... unrefined) proceeded to bellow at the
top of her lungs, “Has anyone seen Loren???”
Several people turned and stared, but Roslyn didn’t even
flinch.
Another nurse replied that Loren was walking in the back
halls, last she knew. I smiled at her. “Then I’ll walk, too!”
And off I went, quick, before the nurse bawled out anything else.
I found Loren in yet another large room I had never
seen before, except in a picture – the room with the pool table in it. I
keep finding rooms I didn’t even know were there! (Probably Loren does, too, whether he’s
really been there or not, haha.) Not
another soul was in the room. It has a
big gas fireplace with a wide stone hearth, a lot of nice recliners and easy
chairs, bookcases filled with books and decorations, pretty paintings on the
walls, and a big-screen TV, which was playing the Nebraska-Illinois game.
This really is a beautifully-constructed, nicely-kept nursing home with a lot
of lovely décor (furniture and wall décor alike). I’m impressed that it
almost always smells nice, too.
Loren was sitting in a nice leather recliner watching the
football game with great interest. As
always, he was very happy to see me. I pulled another recliner up beside
him and showed him pictures from Wyoming, in between bouts of watching the game. Now and then he’d point out some football
player running like anything, exclaiming over how fast he could run — and then
he’d cringe when the other players would bring him down and pile on top of him.
I asked (though I already knew), “Who’s playing, and what’s
the score?”
Loren didn’t have the foggiest notion. I figured that was fine; he probably enjoyed
the game better NOT knowing. 😂 (Yeah, Nebraska lost.
Again.)
We had a nice visit. He hadn’t suffered any ill
effects from the Covid episode. I hope whoever administered the tests was
gentler than that horrid doctor at Urgent Care in Columbus, back in late
November last year.
I commented on how pretty the room was, and Loren readily
agreed with me, saying with an encompassing gesture, “Yes, this is a very nice
place.”
I really don’t know where Loren thinks he is. In the
beginning, he didn’t understand that he was in Omaha; it was anybody’s guess
where he might decide he was at any given moment. Sometimes he thought he was in Schuyler (a little
town 15 miles east of Columbus) – the town where he thought his ‘other house’
was, back when he kept wanting to go there late last year. But now he seems to know he’s in Omaha.
I don’t know if he realizes he’s in a nursing home or not.
Loren likes the
fireplaces in the nursing home. He’s had
one in most of his homes. Last winter when Teddy was staying with him,
not long after he had the bout with Covid, he suddenly got it into his head
that he absolutely had to split some wood and start a fire in his
downstairs fireplace. (The upstairs one ran on gas.) Teddy, with some difficulty, got him
redirected.
So far as I know, he hasn’t thought he had to split wood for
the fireplaces in the nursing home! – though he did once tell us a tall tale
(which originated from a combination of one of Larry’s stories and one of mine)
of a bunny hiding in his woodpile, and when he tried getting it out, it popped
up and bit his fingers.
Here’s one of the sitting areas where
we often visit.
Today friends and I were discussing those nights when
we try and try to sleep – and can’t. Ah,
those sleepless nights!
A quilting friend recently asked, “Do you sleep well at
night, or do you have dreams about troublesome quilting patterns for your
quilts?”
I sleep just fine, I told her, except for those nights
when I really need to sleep, in order to get up early and do
Very Important Things or go to Very Important Places (church, for instance) the
next day. On those nights, I allllmost get
comfortable, and then my ankle itches. I
obligingly scratch it. Then my neck
hurts. I stuff my pillow under it just
right. It will not stay long in this
position.
Next, my shoulder is cold. I pull up the covers and tuck them in tight. I discover my nightgown (or pajamas, whichever
I happen to be wearing) is twisted. I
untwist it. After that, a toe cramps. I use my other foot to pull (or push) the
wayward toe into whatever position is most conducive for uncramping.
By this time, I’m too hot. I fling the covers off. That’s not good enough, so I get out of bed
and go adjust the thermostat. Not too
much, or I won’t be able to sleep on account of being cold. Back in bed and almost comfortable again,
whichever side of me that is most inconvenient to reach itches. I wonder why I gave son-in-law Bobby that back
scratcher for Christmas (taping it atop one of his gifts in place of a bow
because years ago when he was a teenager, he said bows were for girls, and we’ve
been heckling him about it ever since) instead of keeping it myself to actually
use. Next, I need to blow my nose, and
can’t reach the Kleenex box. I scrabble
about, manage to snatch a Kleenex from the headboard, blow my nose, heave it in
the direction of the trashcan, hear it miss, and remind myself to pick it up
next time I get out of bed.
A lilting new melody enters my head. I hum it through (silently) a time or two,
then work my way through it again, adding in alto, tenor, a few trills, and
some bass piano runs. Through the years,
I have written down very, very few of these tunes that regularly pop into my
head at the drop of a hat. Someday when
I’m bedridden or wheelchair-bound, I’ll do that.
I fiiiiinalllly start to drift off – and Larry’s evil
phone flicks itself on – with the screen set to ‘Flashlight mode’, a misnomer
if there ever was one. It should be
called ‘Lighthouse mode’. If all my
scrambling about hasn’t awoken him yet, you can be sure a little thing like a
brilliant light with a gazillion units of candlepower emission flashing on
right before his closed eyes isn’t going to faze him.
I poke him and snarl, “Turn your stupid phone off!” He rouses enough to accommodate me, and goes
immediately back to sleep. The
nerve. I contemplate smacking him
with a pillow.
My kneecap itches. I turn on the light and check for bedbugs. No bedbugs, so I turn off the light and get
back in bed. It’s cold. I get back up, find another blanket, and throw
it over my side of the bed. I try lying
on my side. Wrong side; that makes my
hip hurt. I roll to my back.
The moon shines through the blinds and hits me square
in the eyes. (I see this, regardless of
my eyes being shut.) I turn over...
begin feeling drowsy... and Larry commences snoring.
As for dreaming, I don’t dream about nice things like
quilts. I dream up nightmares, such as
skiing (never mind the fact that I’ve never skied in my life, much as I wanted
to) full bore down the side of Denali, with an avalanche roaring down
immediately behind me, and a bottomless crevice yawning before me. Or driving our camper off the beaten track and
winding up in the Pacific, somehow. Or
flying an airplane somewhere – and finding myself high in the sky, sans
airplane. I dream of not being able to
locate my locker in the halls of Jr. High. Then the scene does one of those
transmogrifications (think ‘Calvin & Hobbes’), and I’m in Wal-Mart – only
it has become a red-bricked maze with nothing but dead ends every direction I
turn, and of course there’s an evil, hatchet-bearing fiend creeping silently
along behind me. (Final scene added on
account of it being Halloween today.)
Really, my life is interesting enough without dreaming
of stuff like that, for pity’s sake!
My alarm goes off. I will sleep tomorrow
night. (I hope.)
“What is it? Looks like a kangaroo.”
A preacher friend answered, “Jackalope!”
“I’ve never heard of them,” wrote
Matilda. “Are they like jack rabbits?”
I sent her a link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackalope
Matilda soon replied, “I actually saw
something similar but they weren’t antlers but had two sets of ears.”
Two sets of ears. Huh.
Did she read the Wikipedia article, I
wonder? The first sentence states, “The
‘jackalope’ is a mythical animal of North American folklore.”
“You understand this is just a joke?” I
queried.
“I guess but I’ve seen demons like that”
she answered.
Oh, brother. And good grief.
(I
wonder if her lack of punctuation means anything.) (I think it means she left out the
punctuation.)
I
have not deleted her oddball comment; I left it there to see if it might garner
any interesting answers. Not from me,
though; I don’t wish to answer such folly, and certainly not on my
Facebook page.
It
was a pretty day today, getting up to about 75°. The forecast for tomorrow says it will get up
to 77°. And to think that we have had
rip-snortin’ blizzards on Halloween a time or two, with snow piling up in
three-foot drifts!
Side
note: You know you’re getting old when
you tweak your shoulder turning
the calendar to the next page.
Sarah
Just-Because-I’m-Paranoid-Doesn’t-Mean-They-Aren’t-Out-To-Get-Me Lynn
