A drive to visit my brother at the nursing home
Suddenly, at 4:00 p.m. last Tuesday, it occurred to
me: I had planned to give Victoria’s
mother-in-law Ruth a thumb drive with pictures of her late mother, Mary, who
was a dear friend of mine who passed away much too early. She was only 44 when she died of cancer,
leaving behind a young family. Her
youngest was only 4. I had sent Ruth a
couple of pictures of Mary last summer as I was scanning photos, and she told
Victoria she was so happy to get them, because she didn’t have any photos of
her mother. Not any!
I told Victoria back then that I had a bunch, and
would give them to Ruth when I was done scanning. Well, I’m done, aren’t I?!
I got meseff in gear, because the very next night,
Wednesday the 21st, we would have our Christmas program, and all our
Christmas cards would be doled out thereafter.
I ran upstairs for one of those underdeveloped thumb drives. It would work fine for this.
I plugged it in, and learned that it had 15,988 photos on
it, from when I tried uploading all the photos for the kids. That’s about 42GB – and it was supposed
to hold 2TB. I deleted all those. 42GB would sorta be overkill for the few
dozen pictures I thought I’d give Ruth; but she would be able to use it for other
backup if she wished.
Then while I ran searches for pictures of Mary, I backed up
all my photos – over a quarter million of them – onto two other big hard
drives. I like photographical insurance!
As usual, my project grew. There was a lot of room on that 42GB thumb
drive, after all! After finding quite a
number of pictures of Mary, I decided to hunt for other members of Ruth’s
family whilst I was at it.
Mary used to play the organ at our church while I played the piano, and together we had a Jr. Choir that we enjoyed so much. She left a big empty spot when she passed away. Here she is with her little girl Ruth, who is now Victoria’s mother-in-law.
Victoria couldn’t ask for a more loving,
generous, and always-willing-to-help mother-in-law than Ruth.
In chatting with a friend a few days ago, I used the word ‘serendipity’. I hardly ever use that word, since it often
means ‘luck’ or ‘karma’ – and I don’t like that notion, when I know that
everything is and was in the Master’s great plan since before the world began;
nothing befalls us by chance. But every now and then I use it to mean, ‘Things
worked out just right.’ The first time I heard someone say it, when I was
about, oh, 3 years old, I think, I was insulted, because I thought they had
said, “Sarah is dippity!” I wasn’t sure what ‘dippity’ was, but I figured
it could hardly be good, a word like that!
As I searched through photos, I found this one:
Now, that’s already funny enough, with Victoria holding her
hands out for what reason I cannot remember, and Kurt caught in mid-blink; but
Victoria made it hilarious by tossing it into her photo editor, inserting a
beribboned box into her hands, and putting google-eye glasses on Kurt. I laughed when she did it, and I laughed all
over again when I came upon them.
Wednesday afternoon as I finished loading thumb drive and
hard drives, a little male downy woodpecker landed in the lilac bush right
outside the kitchen window. They’re the
cutest little things. (Picture from
American Bird Conservancy)
By 3:30 p.m., I was done with Ruth’s thumb drive. Instead of ‘a few dozen’ photos, as I’d first
intended, I had found 2,704 photos for her.
When do my projects and Big Ideas ever stop where I had
planned for them to? 🙄
Anyway, I finished in the nick of time. It
was almost time to get ready for our Christmas program that night. It would start at 6:30 p.m., and we needed to
get there a little early in order to put our Christmas cards into the
designated bags in the Fellowship Hall.
I tucked the thumb drive into Bill and Ruth’s Christmas card and sealed
it.
If you would like to watch the program, it’s posted
here: http://www.bbccolumbus.com/thirtyone.htm
Here’s one of the pictures I put on that thumb drive – Baby Willie, Ruth and her husband Bill’s first little grandson, taken at the Fourth-of-July picnic, 2022.
He’s our
youngest grandson, one of 18 grandsons for Larry and me; but let me tell you a
fact: that doesn’t make us love him any less!
🥰 When you have more
children and grandchildren, you don’t divide your love by
whatever that number might be; you multiply it!
This photo is Mary, Ruth’s mother, taken December 26, 1992, as she worked in the church kitchen at our annual Christmas dinner. That would’ve been just eight months before she passed away.
And here is
Ruth’s daughter, also named Mary, at our Fourth-of-July picnic in 1999:
Victoria’s oldest little
girl is named Carolyn Ruth, after her Grandma. Ruth was so pleased with that.
At ten ’til four, I glanced out the window
again, and saw that the snow had begun. According to AccuWeather, wind would pick up
later, and we would be in for near-blizzard conditions. Hopefully, we would get home from church
before the roads got dicey and visibility dropped. Winter arrived at exactly 3:46 p.m. that day (according
to the meteorologists), and a cold one it was: 11°, with a wind chill of
-5°.
I sent a text to Larry, informing him that
I was heading to church at 5:50 p.m., whether with him, or without him.
He must’ve taken me seriously, because,
amazingly enough, he came home early enough that he was ready to leave by ten ’til
six. We got there with plenty of time to
put cards into bags and then seat ourselves well before the prelude began.
The brass ensemble played a few Christmas
songs... the congregation sang some... Brother Robert (my nephew, our pastor)
(do I say that often enough that I no longer need to?) preached a sermon from
the dear old Christmas story... and after that was the program by the children,
with songs and scriptures and poems.
I love watching the littlest ones walk up
on the stage and sing their little songs.
Of course, that particular group of
children included our five littlest granddaughters.
Keira marched up on the stage, turned toward the
audience, and smiled, despite her shyness.
Malinda sang every single word, looking serious and earnest. Violet, upon turning and gazing out at the
vast audience, looked somewhat petrified, but she, too, sang with all her
heart. Carolyn somehow wound up behind a
boy who was a wee bit taller than her, so I only saw her as she walked up the
steps and crossed the platform, and then returned to the pew; but she was so
cute and pretty in her Christmas dress and long curls. Elsie spotted her Grandpa and smiled a tiny
smile, and then gave extra effort to her singing.
We visited with several of our children and grandchildren
after the service – and I was totally delighted and surprised to discover that
a sweet teacher of mine from Jr. High – the ‘helper teacher’ in my 7th-grade
Home Ec room (that was 50 years ago!) – was visiting! I believe that’s
the first time she has come. I loved her then... and I love her
now. She’s a dear.
One time I was sewing away, and she, a quiet, ladylike
person who never, ever created a scene, crept up behind me, walloped me
with a rolled-up paper, and said quietly in my ear, “Sarah Swiney! (pronounced ‘Swunny’) Just because the
pedal goes all the way down doesn’t mean you have to press it all the
way down when you sew!!!”
I turned and grinned at her. I was shy, but I liked
her. So I said, said I, “But I sure got to the end of that seam in a
hurry, didn’t I?”
And then my sweet, quiet teacher tried to ‘tsk-tsk’ at me – but
abruptly lost her decorum and gave an uncharacteristic bark of laughter instead.
Oliver is such a sweet baby. Andrew was holding him, all snuggled on his
shoulder, walking around the big Christmas tree in the front foyer. I greeted Andrew, talked to the baby, and he
gave me a sleepy little smile, and then blinked verrrrrry slowly.
We got home safely through the snowy, windy cold, and had a
late supper of beef vegetable soup, yogurt, grape juice, and orange-cranberry
muffins, fresh out of the oven. Soon
thereafter, I was snuggled into my recliner with a big heating pad over the top
of me and a smaller one rolled behind my neck, going
through our many Christmas cards. There were lots and lots of
pictures. Robert and Margaret gave us four black slate coasters with
little rounded ‘legs’ under them, with our church etched into them. They
gave every family in the church a few.
Their daughter Abigail made them with her laser etching machine.
By midnight, it
was -7°, and the wind chill was 36 below. It was snowing, and the wind was gusting up to
31 mph.
“I’m beginning to think you have a photographic memory,” commented a
friend, upon reading the story about my home-ec teacher. “You have memories from such a young age and
remember soooo many details.”
It’s true, I do remember things from way back when. It’s spotty before the age of 3, but I
remember having my picture taken at a studio downtown when I was 18 months
old. I didn’t like the dark room, and I was offended (though I never made
a peep) because they kept handing me a toy, taking a picture, and then without
a word of explanation, jerking the toy from my grasp and handing me
another. Ve ver not amused.
Can you can see it in my face?
But I think I remember things for this reason: I write
about them. I’ve done that since I was able to write, from about age 5
and on. My father, being a minister, got a lot of correspondence, and
every now and then, about once a week, he’d gather up his stationery, his good
pen, and his Bible, in case he needed to look up a verse. He had a good deal of it memorized, or, if
not, he could almost invariably turn right to it.
I, wanting to do everything possible with my Daddy, would
run for my stationery. Mama saw
that I had lined tablets to write on, a sharp pencil, and one of those soft
yellow erasers.
Mama was a good teacher. She told me, “Don’t write, ‘How
are you? I hope you are fine. I am fine. I hope you are very
fine. I am very fine. I hope you are very, very fine. I am
very, very fine.’ (hee hee) Just write the way you talk, and tell
Grandma (or the aunts or uncles or cousins or friends) what you did yesterday,
what you did today, what you thought about it, and what you hope to do
tomorrow. Tell her a funny thing someone said. Respond to whatever
she wrote to you in her last letter. Tell her what it looks like
out the window, and what your kitty is doing, and what he looks like while he’s
doing it.”
So that’s what I did. I have on my computer most of
the letters I wrote to Larry’s Grandmother and several uncles and aunts since
1998. I wish I had all those I wrote the 30 years prior to that!
But just the fact that I once wrote it helps me remember – and all my
pictures bring back many memories, too.
 |
| Teddy, 1988 |
As I scanned the old pictures, I sometimes paused and wrote
down a remembered story from long ago. I
told the kids, “I’m not just scanning pictures for you, I’m pushing back
Alzheimer’s a few years for me!” 😄
Mostly, though, I want to remember the many mercies we have
received from the Lord.
By 2:30 in the morning, it was -10°, with a wind chill of -36°.
Out in Chadron, Nebraska, though, it was 25 below zero, and the wind chill was
52 below! Yikes, that’s cold.
That’s a whole lot colder than it was in Utqiagvik, Alaska, the
United States’ northernmost town: it was
12° there. Even nearby Point Barrow, northernmost point of land, was 10°,
with a wind chill of -10°.
Things were really rattling around outside the house.
The pieces of metal roofing Larry got on don’t have the ridge cap on yet, so
the wind goes swooping down between the panels and the old roof, turning it
into a giant tuba, complete with obligatory roaring and bellowing.
The
cold did not let up on Thursday, either.
In fact, it got colder. At
noon, it was 12 below zero, and the ‘feel like’
temperature was 41 below. The main floor of our house was only 61°, even
though I had the furnace set at 70.
“I
reckon I should put on some flip-flops before I go out to fill the bird feeders,”
I remarked. (Don’t worry; I put on parka
and galoshes and gloves.)
I put
another large space heater in the kitchen. Nevertheless, the temperature on the main
floor dropped steadily, almost a degree each hour. When I turned the water on at the sink, the
pressure was low. Eeek, that meant there was ice in the lines
somewhere. I turned it on hot, full blast, and left it that way for a couple
of minutes, until water flow was back to normal. I went downstairs and
turned a space heater on low in the bathroom. It was not terribly cold in
the basement; I decided things would probably be all right.
 |
| Jr. Choir, June 24, 1994 |
Meanwhile,
I was in my usual toasty condition after taking a steaming hot shower, and
then sipping coffee whilst blow-drying and curling my hair.
The
coffee was a mixture of Winter Wonderland and Amarillo? ... nooo...
Armadillo? ... noooo... Amaretto! That’s it. The combination
is because I ran out of Winter Wonderland coffee beans before the grinder was
full, so I added some Amaretto-flavored beans.
One
time some years ago, an acquaintance, upon learning that I was drinking
Amaretto coffee, and knowing that I’d had a cold, complete with ear infection,
and was still taking antibiotics, got all concerned and informed me that I must
not, must not, combine antibiotics and alcohol!
I
thought, Huh?
I
looked up Amaretto, and surprised my poor little naïve brain, having thought
all these years that it was merely an almond/apricot flavoring, with the
expensive stuff being ‘real’ and the cheap stuff being ‘imitation’. However! – Amaretto (Italian for “a
little bitter”) is a sweet Italian liqueur(!) that originated in Saronno. Depending on the brand, it may be made from
apricot kernels, bitter almonds, peach stones, or almonds, all of which are
natural sources of the benzaldehyde that provides the almond-like flavor of the
liqueur. It generally contains 21 to 28
percent alcohol by volume. When served
as a beverage, Amaretto can be drunk by itself, used as an ingredient to create
several popular mixed drinks, or added to coffee.
!
My woid.
Now, I
was almost certain that none of the coffee beans I purchase from Christopher
Bean are alcoholic; but I wanted to be sure. I don’t
want to be drinking anything alcoholic, whether I’m on antibiotics or not.
I went
to the Christopher Bean website posthaste, and was glad to see I was right; it’s
nonalcoholic.
I ain’t
no shtaggerin’ drunk, ya hear?!
I toasted half a bagel, slathered it with butter,
and put honey on one side and apple jelly on the other. Then I sat down to read the funnies while I
ate.
I turned on the little heater beside me. Another bite of bagel, and I covered my legs
with a lap blanket. One more bite, and I
put on another sweater.
 |
| Hester and Lydia, Christmas 2000 |
By the time I’d finished that bagel half, my hands
were freezing. I cleaned off the table
and donned my fingerless gloves. I can’t
quite type at my usual 200 words per minute with them on, though.
As soon as I’d read the funnies, the news, and a few
emails, I got in gear and started cleaning the house with vigor. Best way to warm up I could think of!
Hester, upon learning how cold our house was,
invited me to her house to warm up. I
thanked her, assured her I was fine, and had plenty to do to keep myself warm,
but added, “I’ll remember that!”
She asked if I could bring our coffeemaker to our
get-together on Saturday. “Caleb said he’d
bring some coffee,” she told me.
“Caleb makes turpentine, though,” said I, making
Hester laugh. “I’ll grind some coffee beans
and bring enough for two or three pots, just in case anybody other than me
likes non-turpentined coffee.”
She said that would be good and added, “My K-cup
machine has a reusable cup for grounds. So
the turpentine people can use that.” hee
hee
Back when he still lived at home, I liked it when he
made coffee, because somehow he made it just right. (Except for the time when he unknowingly spilled
a gob [definition: heaps and mounds] of pumpkin spice onto the spout of the
coffeepot, and I, not noticing, poured myself a cup – with the entire gob of
pumpkin spice going into that one hapless cup.)
Nowadays, though, he makes it so strong. So does Teddy, for that matter. I take a sip – and ask if they have a fork
handy.
The little birds clustered around the feeders looked
like butterballs, their feathers were so puffed out in their attempts to stay
warm. Amazing that they can survive such
weather. Some that normally don’t eat
suet were struggling to hang onto the feeder long enough to grab themselves a
beak full. It’s full of protein, and
would help them stay warmer.
What was really funny was late one spring when a
young, still-speckled robin was having an identity crisis, evidently, and
thought he was a nuthatch or a woodpecker.
He was popping up from the railing trying to grab bites of suet. At one point, he latched onto the bottom bars
on the suet cage, flapped madly, got a bite, and then tumbled loose and barely
got himself upright before landing back on the railing all in a sprawl. His mother was sitting a little ways over on
the deck, staring at him, probably thinking, You birdbrained teenager.
The suet he liked was full of berries; that’s one of
the things robins love.
By 6:00 p.m., the house had warmed all the way up to
63°. The floors were vacuumed and swept,
a bit of dusting was done, shower curtains, window curtains, and rugs were in the
wash machine and dryer, and I was scrubbing away in the bathroom, where it
wasn’t too cold at all. I’d even removed
my scarf and one sweater.
“How many did you start with, though?” asked
Hester, having again inquired into my welfare.
 |
Hester (with Lydia behind her) 01-02-94
“Only two!” I told her.
“I accomplished getting my hair done at the Keira
salon,” she said, “and some laundry.
So you’re doing better than me.”
“Those Keira salons are important!” I assured
her.
Sometimes while I was sitting on the floor doing one
girl’s hair on a Saturday night, a little girl would be behind me doing my
hair, and another little girl would be behind that one doing her hair. Teddy called this ‘The Hairdo Choo Choo’. 😂
I took a little time out to eat Larry’s Snickers bar
out of his bag of nuts and candy that we got at the Christmas program. Out of the goodness of my heart, you know, to
keep him from having troubles with his dentures.
I’ll give him my Milky Way as a replacement. (We won’t mention the fact that I don’t like
it anyway.)
“Last year when we showed Keira what was in the
candy bags at church,” Hester told me, “She very loudly said, ‘Now we have food
for the squirrels!!!’ 🫣”
Years ago, back when some of the early-bird personages
amongst us used to buy nuts at the After-Christmas sales for the next Christmas
(at least, that’s what I accused them of doing), those nuts were almost
always stale and horrid. We’d put them
on the back picnic table and have fun watching the squirrels and the blue jays
carting off with them. The blue jays
could cram about eight peanuts (in the shell) into their gullets, and then have
three in their beaks – double the amount the squirrels could squirrel away in
their cheeks! We were amazed.
The blue jays would fly off awkwardly, looking like
they were suffering from goiters.
I went back to cleaning before I froze to death.
I couldn’t get the mini blinds out of the window in
the bathroom to save my life! I tried
scrubbing the thing while it hung there, and made a muddy mess. Siggghhhh...
I decided to wait until Larry could help me.
Soon it was time for supper. I pulled from the freezer some of the spiral
ham from Larry’s friend in Genoa, warmed it in the microwave, and heated up
Campbell’s potato ham chowder to go with it. While that was heating, I mixed up some cranberry-orange
muffins and popped them into the oven. Oui
yogurt finished the menu.
I kept warm cleaning and scrubbing house a good part
of the day, but when I sat down at the table to eat supper, the wind came whistling
right through the window beside me as if it was no barricade at all.
Meanwhile, the same cold system we were experiencing
was heading toward eastern Tennessee, where Todd and Dorcas and their children
live. “We are worried for our baby goats,”
said Dorcas, “So I made a few sweaters for two of them today. The other goats were smelling them at first,
wondering what they were, lol.”
Here’s Brooklyn, who just turned one:
At a quarter ’til eleven, we lost
power. I called the power company, and was assured they would be coming
soon.
Larry was in Genoa, 20 miles
away. He headed home to fire up the generator. Problem:
his pickup heater wasn’t working right – and he’d also left his coat,
hat, and gloves in it. He put them on,
but they were stiff with cold. So he was
freezing cold before he was even halfway home.
Upon arriving, he got the small
generator running, and plugged one space heater directly into it. It could run the heater and a few lights; no
more.
The big generator kept gelling up and
chugging to a stop. Larry went on
working on it. (He would later discover
that it wasn’t gelled up, after all. The
gas-line switch was turned to ‘Off’. 🙄)
Down the hill, line workers were
repairing or replacing a transformer.
That’s no easy job! A good deal
of the time, they’re out working in bad weather, be it summer or winter.
By the light of my little
battery-powered lantern, I hung the bathroom curtains and the shower
curtains. I had spread them out on my
bed after they came out of the dryer so they wouldn’t wrinkle while waiting for
Larry to get the blinds out of the window.
But he sure wouldn’t want to do it at
that hour of the night, and certainly not after being out in the cold
trying to get the generator to run. And
I couldn’t leave them on the bed; someone might need to actually sleep
in it.
By the time I was done with that, I
was getting really worried about Larry out there in the cold. I called him on his phone. He didn’t answer. After the third try, I started pulling on
boots, coat, hat, gloves – and then several lights came on.
There was no sure way of telling if
the power had come on, or if Larry had gotten the generator running.
 |
Trevor reading a book we gave him.
He came in the door just as I was
preparing to head out. He was so cold,
he couldn’t even feel his feet when he took his boots off.
That man needs a new clock! – his
does not tell him how long he’s been doing something, when he’s intent on the
project.
I checked the water – and
discovered the cold water pipes to the kitchen sink were frozen. Or were
they? The hot water still flowed, and all
the other cold water taps worked. Maybe
there was a chunk of ice in a pipe directly under the sink? I opened the cupboard doors and felt the
pipes. They didn’t feel all that cold, but I left the doors open and directed
a space heater that way, turned the faucet to the ‘On’ position, and hoped it
thawed before it burst.
Larry had turned off a few breakers, including the water
pump breaker (by accident – for some reason, the breakers are not labeled), to
keep the main one from blowing when only the small generator was running.
Sometimes when the pump gets turned off, or we don’t have electricity for a
while, junk gets into the pipes somehow, and Larry has to blow them out with
his big air compressor. Perhaps that was
the problem?
The power had been off for 2 ½ hours,
from 10:45 p.m. to 1:15 a.m., and the house got down to 50°. Why
does 50° feel so much colder indoors on a far-below-zero night than it does on
a balmy spring day outside? I work out in the gardens in
temperatures like that; so why do I feel frozen solid when it’s that
temperature in the house?
Larry took a hot bath, and felt a little better. I stayed pretty warm in fleece-lined leggings
with fleece pajamas over them, a fleece robe, two pairs of thick slipper socks,
a scarf, a wide knit headband with fleece on the inside, and a big fleece
blanket over me.
Everything was nice and soft – except for the scarf. I think it’s made of metal and glass shards,
porcupine quills, and hair of yak and woolly mammoth.
Friday morning, Loren’s sister-in-law
Judy and her husband Randy visited him.
They gave him some Motor Trend magazines
and a box of Baker’s chocolates, which he had to try right away. He proclaimed them very good. Judy’s grown children sent cookies and
pictures, too.
Loren sometimes tells Judy things he never says to me, and
that day he told them that he really likes it there at Prairie Meadows. That’s the first time he’s said that (without
prompting) that I know of.
While they were there, a
young man came in with his guitar, and they all sang Christmas carols while he
played. “He was really good!” said Judy.
When they left, Loren
told them how glad he was to see them.
“Stop and visit whenever you have time!” he said.
“We always feel a little
sad when we leave,” said Judy, “although we’re glad he’s there, and we don’t
have to worry about him, because he’s safe and well taken care of.”
I’m so thankful he
continues to do well there. The staff
really does work at doing a lot of things for their residents, and at doing
many activities with them. It’s so much better
than any place here in town – and the amazing thing is, it’s cheaper, too.
 |
Dorcas, Custer State Park, Black Hills, SD 08-10-93
By 1:00 p.m. Friday, it was -2°, with a wind chill of -29°. The house had warmed up to 60°. By nighttime, it was all the way up to 65°. That, because Larry had gotten some wood
pellets and started the wood-pellet stove burning early in the morning. It wasn’t long before the floor was
considerably warmer.
When I
was a little girl, we had an elderly neighbor (well, I thought she was
elderly; probably she was only a little older than I am now, and I’m just a
young spring chicken, right? Right!) Anyway, my sweet, ladylike mother, who never
said anything bad about anybody (or if she ever did, we all knew they
deserved it), said that she liked chatting with that neighbor lady.
“It’s
relaxing,” said Mama, “because I never have to think of anything to say in
return, since she talks both breathing out, and breathing in!” 🤣
One of
the lady’s favorite things to say – and she said it often – was, “I just mind
my own business—” (totally untrue, haha) “—and pay my taxes!”
We
still say that. “I just mind my own
business and pay my taxes!”
Anyway,
during one winter, we had a cold snap. Mama
checked on our neighbor lady – let’s call her, hmmm... ‘Miss Gaddis’ will do –
to see if she was all right and had everything she needed.
“Oh, I’m
fine, thank you!” chattered Miss Gaddis. “If the power goes off, I’ll just climb in bed
and turn on my electric blanket!”
“I didn’t
have even a split second to explain to her why that wouldn’t work!” laughed
Mama. “She was halfway through the next
subject before I could blink.” 😂
We say that,
too: “If the power goes off, I’ll just
crawl in bed and turn on the electric blanket.”
I went upstairs to turn my quilting studio from a
photo-scanning studio back to its original usage, but after doing only a wee
bit, I came back downstairs. It was too,
too cold up there. I left the space heater (a big EdenPURE heater) running,
and hoped it would warm the room enough that I could do a little work in there
after supper.
Our meal that evening was meatloaf made from ground deer
meat, with lots of eggs and Ritz crackers.
When it was nearly done baking, I put a glaze of ketchup and brown sugar
on it. Quick and easy – and scrumptious. We had green beans on the
side, with grape juice to drink, and blueberry cream cheese muffins, fresh out
of the oven, for dessert.
I paid some bills, put a load of Larry’s warm winter clothes
into the washing machine, and washed the dishes. It didn’t matter that
only the hot water was working; the sink was so
cold that, once it was full, the temperature was just right.
But whataya know, of all things, after
washing that sink full of dishes, the cold water was suddenly and inexplicitly
working again just fine. And the water
was as clear as ever.
The only bad thing is that this will
reinforce Larry’s belief that if you just leave things alone, most of them will
repair and resolve themselves. 😂
All this work, and I only had a little over 4,000 steps on
my VeryFitPro watch! I should put it on my right wrist one of
these days, and see what a difference it makes. Sometimes I run up and
down the stairs with something in my left hand – a full coffee mug, for
instance – and the watch registers practically nothing, because of course I’m
holding that arm vewy, vewy still.
I went back upstairs, and found the temperature in my quilting
studio quite tolerable. I put away a few
more things, and then, as if I hadn’t scanned enough pictures, now I’m
scanning all the pictures friends gave us for Christmas. 😊
It won’t take long; I’ll be done soon.
 |
| Lydia, August 1995 |
It wasn’t quite as cold that night – -2°, with a wind chill of -23°.
Saturday
morning, I started getting ready to go to our
family get-together at Hester and Andrew’s house – but Larry was sick. When he laid down in his recliner at 11:00 in
the morning, I knew, This isn’t good.
He’d gotten way too cold Thursday night, doubtless lowering his
resistance to the bugs that have been going around lately.
I carried
all the presents up from the gift-wrapping room downstairs, and loaded them into
the Mercedes, trying to be quiet so as not to awaken Larry. He carried out one big box that was too big
for me to handle.
Whew,
that was a big job. It was 12°, with a
wind chill of -6°. Going in and out,
from hot to cold, a couple dozen times was a shock to the senses. I had earaches and a headache before I was
done.
I decided
instead of stopping at the grocery store to get fruit and vegetable trays, I
would instead take all the little applesauce and peach cups and yogurt in my
refrigerator, and the deer meatloaf I’d made Friday night. I could warm up the meatloaf in Hester’s oven.
With
everybody else’s contributions, I knew there would be plenty of food, and maybe
everyone would forgive Grandma for not having enough of each food item to go
around the entire tribe.
When I
got there, Kurt promptly came out to help carry things in. Within minutes, Bobby and Hannah and their
family arrived, and all the children grabbed presents, and,
presto-whizz-bang-whoosh, just like that, it was done.
Keira had the job of
telling visitors where they could hang their coats. She hurried to greet me when I first stepped
in the door, pointing out the mirrored closet beside the staircase and telling
me I could hang my coat there. She
looked a wee bit disappointed when I told her I needed to get a few more things
from my car.
When the gifts were all
inside, I finally followed her to the closet, opened it – and then stood and
exclaimed over it.
“Wow,” said I, “This
closet is plumb empty! How’d you
do that?!”
Keira giggled and gave a
little hop.
There were wooden hangers
on the rod, so I made use of one.
Keira, satisfied, went
off to direct more people to the closet.
Teddy’s family arrived. “You can hang your coats in the closet with
the mirror!” she informed them, hopping excitedly from one foot to the other
and pointing. “And,” she added in
her cute piping way, “it’s plumb empty!” 😄
Baby
Willie, who’s ten months now, held out his arms to me and gave me a hug when I
took him. I handed him a toy, and he
smiled and said, “Dee-doo!”
He then abandoned the toy in favor of my necklace, which
consisted of big wooden beads and hearts, with a wooden Sunbonnet Sue on one
side and Sunbonnet Sam on the other. He
tried it out for taste.
Jacob, who’s 12, walked by, paused, looked at Willie, and
grinned. Willie grinned back. I offered Jacob the other side of my necklace
from the one Willie was chewing on.
Jacob laughed, so Willie laughed, too.
Isn’t it fun to see cousins of all ages enjoying each other?
Ethan,
Teddy and Amy’s oldest, gave us a jar of clear, golden honey from his beehives.
Kurt
and Victoria gave me a scrumptious-smelling jar of bath salts that Victoria
made with essential oils, and they gave us a box of cheeses, crackers, and
sausage.
Among
other things, Andrew and Hester gave me a book, Wearable Quilts, by
Roselyn Gadia-Smitley.
Caleb and Maria gave me a
soft, cowl-collared, fringed, southwestern-style navy-and-cream sweater jacket. Did Caleb remember how I used to drool over
sweaters just like this out in the gift shops of the Rockies? They also gave us a bottle of pure maple syrup,
and for Larry, a plaid flannel shirt with thick, soft fleece inside.
Several of the others
gave us handfuls of gift cards to Cabela's, Cracker Barrel, and other places we
like to go.
The children were soon
busy playing. Some traipsed off
downstairs; some went up the stairs to the second and third floors. The third-floor attic is finished off as a pretty
children’s playroom.
Violet came back into the kitchen where most of us adults
were, looking for her mother. She was
sauntering along in her somewhat-nonchalant way, but when she found Victoria,
she announced, “There are too many
people, and I’m scay-oed!”
Victoria scooped her up for a minute or two, and Violet
wrapped her legs around her Mama like a little monkey. After a bit, Violet said in her low-pitched
voice, “I’m all right now,” and off she went.
I found her a little later playing in the office/playroom on
the main floor, happy and content – all by herself.
As we collected paper plates and plasticware and lined up to
go through the kitchen and collect our food, Josiah walked past, giving me one
of his friendly grins. I whapped him two
or three times on the arm with my empty paper plate, just because.
Jacob, walking right behind him, looked at me, looked at the
back of Josiah – and whapped him two or three times on the other arm.
Josiah turned and looked at me, surprised.
“I didn’t do, I didn’t do it!” I cried, pointing at Jacob.
As I wandered around taking pictures, Warren stopped in his
tracks and smiled sweetly every time I aimed my camera anywhere near him. I therefore have a dozen pictures with Warren
in them – and none whatsoever of Jeffrey, except for his back, which doesn’t
count.
I went out to the enclosed porch, where Andrew and Hester
had set up a couple of tables for the children, and there was Lyle. He’s 15, and the tallest of all his
siblings.
“How tall are you now?” I asked.
“Almost 6 feet,” he told me.
“Didn’t anyone tell you,” I demanded, “that it’s against the
rules to spoil the stairstep configuration of your family like that?!”
He looked at me for a second or two, and then promptly
blamed it on Emma, who at 16 is 15 months older than him, for being so short. 😂
Suddenly, in the middle
of all the gaiety and fun, I noticed poor little Malinda over there on the
piano bench with nary a present to her name!
I held out my hand and
called, “Malinda! Come with Grandma, and we’ll go round up that present,
wherever it might be!”
She gladly came scampering
across the room, and soon we’d found her gift bag.
Here she is with the stuffed Shar-Pei puppy we gave her – one of those pups with the rumpled faces.
She really laughed when she pulled it out of
her bag. She was delighted with the bright red silicone mini-muffin pan,
with the colorful paper lines and two bags of muffin mix, and all the other
things in her bag. She forgot she’d ever felt forlorn in her livelong
life.
She thought the sock
monkey at the bottom of the bag was totally hilarious. On the front of the monkey’s shirt, it says, “Shop
’til you drop,” and the monkey is holding a shopping bag. When I read it to her, she laughed, and
hurried off to show her Mama (Lydia).
Keira loves rocks.
Once when they were out in Colorado, Hester told Keira that if she collected
any more rocks, there wouldn’t be any mountains left!
I loved rocks, too, when
I was little. Daddy used to call me his
‘little rockhound’. Every now and then
Mama would give me a bit of money and let me go in a rock shop out in the
mountains somewhere and gets some polished rocks.
For about 55 years, I’ve
had a treasured little box of polished rocks. I used to pour them out,
sort them, look at them with a magnifying glass, and compare them to pictures
of various types of rocks in the encyclopedias.
Knowing how much Keira
loves rocks, I decided to give her this set of rocks for Christmas. So I poured
them into a ‘milk bottle’ that used to have milk chocolate candies in it – and
as I poured, I well remembered each of those pretty rocks. I wrote a note about the rocks, and taped it
to the bottle.
Bobby, who was sitting
beside Keira (Keira has always loved her ‘Unca Bob’), spotted the note, and
read it to her.
I told Keira, “When I
started pouring those rocks into that bottle, I still liked them so much, I
almost decided to keep them!”
She laughed, while
carefully turning the bottle to look at the rocks.
Later that evening, Hester
sent a couple of pictures and a video, writing, “Keira had to get the rocks out
as soon as everyone was gone.”
In the video she says, speaking of me, “She wanted to keep
them, but she still gave them to me! She’s not greedy at all!!!”
Hester added, “😆😆 Apparently
we’ve talked a lot about not being greedy lately.”
In one picture, Keira is sorting the rocks into the muffin
tin we gave her, and she even broke out the package of paper muffin tin liners.
I sent the last pan of deer meatloaf home with Jeremy and
Lydia, because it was one of the few things Lydia could eat that didn’t hurt
her mouth. Her implant (a molar) came
loose last week, and she had to have it screwed back in. Both sides of her mouth are hurting.
By the time Kurt and Victoria were getting ready to go,
Violet was having a grand time playing with her cousins. Look at her face as she tugs on her
boots. Can you tell she wasn’t nearly
ready to depart?
The
kids, upon hearing that their father was sick, all started doing this and that
to help: Hannah went back home and
gathered up their nebulizer and some albuterol to put in it, and took it to Larry
along with a divided dish of various kinds of food.
When I
got ready to go, Victoria asked me to stop by her house for some ‘natural’
additive for the nebulizer (Larry can switch back and forth from albuterol to
this, with no ill effects) and vitamins, etc., that have helped her family when
they were sick.
Hester
and Victoria filled a large tray with even more food (enough for me, too) for
me to take home. Maria tucked in several
of her homemade sweet dinner buns.
Jeremy and Lydia beat me
home, bringing Larry some organic cough syrup (which he pretended to glug and
get the hiccups), and then Jeremy helped me carry in presents and food and
suchlike from the Benz.
Teddy,
goofy kid, texted his father his phone number (as if it was a ‘New Contact’)
and his address (two miles to our east) with a GPS pin on a map. That was to tell him (again!) that Teddy is
just down the road, and Larry can (and should) call him for help anytime, any
hour, he might need it.
Our
kids are good to us.
Teddy
lost a sheep (the oldest in the herd) to the cold Friday, and also a calf. The other animals are having it pretty rough, too.
A milk cow that had parasites earlier
this year doesn’t have as good of a coat of fur as she should have, so Teddy
covered her with an insulated blanket. He’s
feeding them all extra grain; but this kind of cold takes a toll on livestock.
Some friends got their two
granddaughters dollhouses – one for each of them – which they planned to put
together on Christmas Day.
My parents got me a dollhouse when I was 3 or 4. It
was one of those cardboard things that probably looked better in the picture on
the box than it did when it was put together. But it had a piece of ‘grass’
that one unrolled in front of it, and when it was sprinkled with water, it
would grow. Theoretically.
I was sooooooo looking forward to playing with that house –
but no one ever had time to put it together for me. Ever.
There were some cheapie dolls that came with it, about the
size of Barbie dolls, but if you breathed on them too hard, they came apart at
all the joints.
So I played with the dolls – gently – and wished and
wished someone would put the dollhouse together for me.
That, along with a few other unfinished projects in my
childhood (such as a pretty, pale green robe my mother started sewing for me),
might be the reason I so detest unfinished projects.
I did eventually find that green robe
in Mama’s basement, the main part of it, and, wonder of wonders, the
not-yet-attached sleeves. The facings
(and the pattern) were long lost.
But I knew how to create facings. I finished the robe for one of the girls
(Hannah, maybe?), and she was pleased as could be with it.
Here’s Eva, Caleb and
Maria’s little girl, telling me ‘thank you’ for the wooden stack-and-sort toy.
The boys liked their
cars, and several stopped in the middle of gift-unwrapping to come and tell me ‘thank
you’ for this and that.
I always hope they all
considered things fair and equal, and were happy with what they got.
The various cold
remedies, plus some medications we had in the cupboard, seemed to help
Larry. His fever went down, and the
tightness and burning in his chest went away.
The nebulizer treatment with albuterol stopped his wheezing, and he didn’t
cough too much during the night. But a
swelled-up wood pellet got stuck in the auger in the wood-burning stove and the
house got all smoked up about 1:15 a.m. that night. Ugh.
It took an hour to clear
the smoke out, and both of us felt half sick. My head was still thumping a bit when I got up
at a quarter ’til 7 to get ready for church.
Larry wasn’t at all well enough to go.
We had our usual Sunday School and
church in the morning, and then we had Christmas dinner in our Fellowship
Hall. It was roast beef, mashed potatoes
and gravy, green beans, onions, some kind of berry jello, chef salad, milk or
juice, coffee or tea, French bread fresh out of the oven, sliced and buttered
hot, and a variety of pies with ice cream.
Poor
Baby Oliver tipped a bowl of hot gravy onto his hand. He cried, and of course he had gravy all over
his clothes; so Andrew took Hester and Oliver home, then came back after a little
while. Keira, two chairs down from me,
finished eating, then spotted her Grandpa Ricky, and went with him until Andrew
returned. Oliver’s hand is okay, just a
bit red with a small blister on it. Hester
sent a few pictures to show that he’s back in his usual good spirits.
Our usual evening service was moved to
2:00 p.m.
After
the service, as people were filing out of the sanctuary, I went and sat down by
my sister Lura Kay. She looked up,
smiling, and I said, “Merry Christmas!” – which made both of us laugh, because,
you know, we’ve been celebrating Christmas ‘together’, sort of, what with our
program Wednesday night, and Christmas services and dinner all day Sunday. It’s like being out in the falling snow with
someone for hours on end and then saying, “It’s snowing!”
I told Lura Kay how Loren was doing, and we were chatting
about this and that, when along came her daughter Susan to tell her that it was
sleeting and getting slick out, and to ask if Lura Kay would like Susan to
drive her home (in Lura Kay’s car). Lura
Kay is 82.
Lura Kay harrumphed. “Don’t you think I can drive?!”
she asked.
I laughed, and said, “It’s sooo insulting when your
kids act like you aren’t capable of doing anything anymore.”
We had barely stepped into the hallway when along came
Caleb.
“It’s getting pretty slick out,” he told me. “Would
you like me to drive your car up to the front doors under the awning?” 😄
I was not too proud to take him up on his offer.
Here’s little Brooklyn in a hat and jumper Dorcas
crocheted for her.
Jocelyn wrote to wish us
a Merry Christmas. Both Justin and
Juliana are sick, with very sore throats and fever, poor kids.
Larry made waffles this
morning with the new Belgian waffle maker we got last week. Yummy, they were big and soft on the inside
and crispy on the outside; just right.
He was feeling quite
a bit better – and he was getting cabin fever. He had his usual day-after-Christmas phone
chat with his brother Kenny (which they conduct even when they’ve visited with
each other at the Christmas dinner at church). Larry puts his phone on speaker so I can hear;
it’s so funny to hear them talk to each other. I can’t decide if it’s more like Laurel and
Hardy, or like Abbott and Costello. Maybe
a combination.
A little later,
Larry put on warm clothes and went to Bomgaars to get some good oak
pellets. They won’t be swollen out of shape,
nor will they have paint residue and other contaminants in them like those
cheaper ones. They are denser and
heavier, and will burn longer and hotter; so the extra price of a dollar a bag
will doubtless be well worth it.
The last time some
of those cheap pellets got caught in the auger, it ruined it, and Larry had to replace
it with a new one, which cost $200. 😖
Teddy called to ask how Larry is doing. One of his cows is down, and he can’t get it
up. It has a 3-week-old calf. He’s pumping magnesium and ... ?
something else the vet recommended into her. She’s been down since last
night. He keeps moving her from side to side so she doesn’t damage her
legs, laying on them too long. He tries to get her up, but she just can’t
do it. The calf has figured out how to nurse despite his mother being
down. He was shivering last night, so Teddy covered him with a blanket
and banked hay for him. This morning Teddy found him snuggled next to his
mother.
If that cow doesn’t make it, they’ll have an orphaned calf
to care for.
Larry then went to
Genoa to put a new thermostat in his pickup.
When he drove home, he was happy that it got toasty warm inside.
Tomorrow I plan to
go visit Loren. The temperature is
supposed to get all the way up to 48°!
Imagine that. Larry can’t come to
the nursing home with the cold he has, but he plans to go to work.
And now I’d better
make plans to fly into the feathers!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
