Journal: Sunset, Sundogs, and Photo-Scanning

 

Last Monday evening, I found the first section, and today I found the entire 2,971-page book, a Christian Directory, by Richard Baxter, a Puritan who lived in the 1600s, from which Brother Robert read for our Thanksgiving service.  If you would like to download this book, it’s here, in three different formats:  https://www.monergism.com/christian-directory-4-ebook-set

Supper that night was baked chicken, potatoes, carrots, and onions.  I had the last slice of cherry crumble pie for dessert.  I ate all but one slice of that pie (one slice per day, mind you), because Larry had a difficult time eating it, as the crumbles got under his dentures.

Now, you can say you want to eat all the pie; but, in truth, pie tastes better shared.

If you have seen this picture in my posts and wondered what it is, these are bridges for the wheels of an irrigation pivot.  If the pivot turned and there were no bridges, and the wheels did not go down into the ditch exactly at the same time (which of course they cannot, as the pivot is making a circle), it would twist and tip over.

Here’s a close-up:

The woman who, after I posted a picture of our ripe chokecherries, told other followers on my Facebook page they must not eat ‘choke berries’ or elderberries (saying they were the same fruit; they are not) because they are poisonous and will kill anyone who consumes them (“There’s a reason they are called ‘choke berries’!”), decided she would also enlighten the world-at-large about the structures in this photo.

“They attach big hoses to these pipes,” she announced, “and run them around throughout their fields to water them.”

You know, like open-ended garden hoses.  🙄

Never mind the fact that in other pictures of that same field, an irrigation pivot with multiple sections can clearly be seen.

Ah, well.  She does make my Facebook page more interesting.  😄

Larry hurt his left thumb and wrist that day when he was hopping up out of a basement where he was working.  He put his foot on some dirt clods that rolled, caught himself, and went on scrambling out.  He didn’t realize it was hurt until hours later.  He rubbed Unker’s Deep-Penetrating Pain Relief Formula on it, and that helped considerably. 

Here are Hannah and Dorcas in the silver silk jacquard dresses with the pink lace that I made them for Christmas of 1983.  They loved spinning in these ruffly dresses. 

Tuesday, after scanning 182 pictures, another (big!) album was finished.  Two more to go.  There were 580 pictures in that album!  (Well, actually, there were a handful more than that; but a few were blurry or otherwise not good enough to waste time on.)  The last two albums are not as big as this one.  The smaller one I’m saving for last.  I picked it up, opened it – and discovered it’s the pictures from our honeymoon!

Early that morning, there was a freezing rain.  Here’s the icy window on our front door.  We got some snow on top of that.  It was slippery out there!

Poor little Oliver has had a cold.  Hester sent a video of him playing and jabbering and smiling at the camera.  He sounded congested, but Hester wrote, “He’s pretty jolly still, though.” 

Victoria then sent some pictures of Baby Willie grinning happily, writing, “Willie in his usual good spirits.”

It was fun having six little granddaughters in a row – and it’s fun to have two grandbaby boys just five days apart, too.

I sent a few pictures to Victoria, remarking, “Your baby looks a little bit like his Uncle Teddy.”

Teddy, 1983

In this picture, Hannah, 2 ½, had laid her doll down beside Teddy.  He was lying on his blanket, sucking his thumb.  He turned his head, looked at the doll – and lost suction on his thumb.

Then his thumb popped out of his mouth, and he grinned.  Hannah turned the doll a little so Teddy could see its face better – and the baby laughed right out loud.

Hannah was always so delighted when something she did made her small siblings laugh, whether she was 2 or 16.

I got 72 photos scanned Wednesday before time for our midweek church service.  That thick album looked like I had only about a tenth of it done.

It was cold when we went to church, colder when we got out, and by 11:00 p.m., it was 16°, with a wind chill of 5°.

This is a picture of me at the piano in the old church.  It was September of 1978, so it was a month before my 18^th birthday.

Here’s Hannah with Calico Kitty in 1989.  Hannah was 8, and Kitty was 10.  If Hannah was ever sick, Kitty was sure to be found right next to her or on her lap.

Thursday morning, I donned parka and galoshes in order to go outside and fill the bird feeders.  It was cold and windy, with gusts up to 40 mph and higher. 

“If you don’t hear from me again,” I wrote to one of the ladies on my quilting group, “send a Saint Bernard with a big flask of Southern Peach coffee.”

Larry headed off in his boom truck that morning for a job by the Dismal River (what a name, eh?), out in the western Sandhills.  He and a crew from Walkers will be working at the Dismal River Club, about 243 miles away, for a few days, putting in foundations and walls for new cabins.  It’s a big project.  Lodging and all their meals – breakfast, dinner, and supper (‘lunch’ just doesn’t cover the spread) – are provided by the Dismal River Club, and they employ a cook who knows how to cook.  A lot of rich people from all over the world are members of that club.

That afternoon, Hannah sent a picture of her newest Australian Shepherd, Willow.  The subject line:  “My Dogs are Toddlers.”

She wrote, “Last week I decided to give the bone Chimera and Willow were tugging on to Chimera, and Willow sounded like she was crying (with sniffs), just like a bratty little kid.  After wondering exactly what was happening, I told her to quit it, and she did.

“Well, she’s been parading around with a bone for a good while this morning, and then both dogs came in the kitchen by me after a scuffle.  Chimera laid down with his back to me.  Willow went under the table, walked around my chair a few times, and went back under the table, all while coughing and gagging dramatically. 

“It finally clicked in my head that she was probably trying to tell me something.  Sure enough, Chimera had the bone that had been her prized possession.

“What a dog.  😂

“This dog is always conniving, and thinks of things that floor me!

“Oh, and she hasn’t coughed or gagged once since I gave her bone back.”

I had 143 pictures scanned when I took some time out for supper – chicken noodle soup with Ritz crackers, applesauce with cinnamon, cottage cheese, and vanilla and chocolate Oui yogurt (which is more like dessert than yogurt).

A friend has been trying to set up her printer, with no luck.  Finally she gave up and went to the library to use the printer.  “I did find a good use for my new printer,” she said.  “I use its flat top for storage.”  😂

The kids learned not to use the flat top of my printer for storage, because if I spotted something on it, I immediately opened the lid.  hee hee

Hannah and Levi stopped by that night on their way back from one of Hannah’s events, and Levi dashed in and gave me a cream cheese kolache.

I had thought to save it for breakfast the next morning, but I took one look at it – and promptly popped it in the microwave for 12 seconds, slathered butter on the outer edges, and down the hatch it went.  Good thing I hadn’t had any real dessert with supper! 

Here’s Larry’s father Lyle at his mother Louise Jackson’s and sister Lynn Jackson’s ranch on the outskirts of Raton, New Mexico, in 1987, the year before he passed away.

I stopped scanning at midnight, with 232 pictures done.  My ‘usual’ amount is around 100.  There were 1 ½ albums to go.  I had scanned a total of 36,312 photos. 

I talked to Larry on the phone before going to bed.  On his way to Dismal River that day, knowing he was going to get there too late for dinner, he got a slice of pizza at a convenience store somewhere. 

And broke a tooth right off his dentures on that pizza crust. 

Oddly, it was the same tooth that he broke years ago, back when it was a real tooth.  He had it capped, but it broke a few more times until there was just no fixing it the last time it broke, a couple of months before he got dentures.

Here’s one of the dining halls at Dismal River.

Friday was even windier than the previous two days, with gusts up to 50 mph.  

I did the laundry.  It took the majority of the day for the washer and dryer to finish five large loads of clothes.

In the middle of the afternoon, I checked the temperature.  It was 19°, with a wind chill temp of -1°.  The wind gusts had ‘calmed down’ to 33 mph.

Here’s Keith in his room in early summer of 1989.

By evening, the wind had regathered itself, and those 50-mph gusts were really howling around the eaves.  I was glad the tall, gangly Black Locust tree and the snap, crackle, and pop sugar maple had been taken down.

Below is Joseph in his room in May of 1989.  I wonder what became of that puff-quilt I made with the stenciled teddy bears?  Joseph liked to stand on that little stool and bump the stuffed parrot in the cage with a toy plastic pipe, because it made the parrot chirp and whistle.

I tried stenciling matching teddy bears on the upper parts of the wall.  It wasn’t what I did best.  Ahem.  I thought if a little paint was good, a whole lot more was better.  The teddy bears ran down the walls.  

So I repainted the walls and put wallpaper trim around the upper edges.

And then Baby Hester was born on June 8, 1989, weighing just 5 pounds, 2 ounces.  She was so tiny, I was afraid she would break!  And just imagine, her own little baby Keira would only weigh 2 pounds, 8 ounces. 

Here’s the very first picture taken of her, when she was just two hours old.

In the next picture, the children are in Hester’s room and Keith is holding her.  It was June 11, 1989, and she was three days old.  She’s wearing one of two little dresses a friend – Kurt’s grandmother – made for her from a doll pattern.

See the picture on the wall behind her crib?  It’s of Larry leading the good old horse Prince around, with one of the older kids on his back (can’t see which one, from here 😏).  We were at Aunt Lynn’s place in Raton, New Mexico.  Larry rode on that horse when he was little.

By the time Hester was a year old, she’d stand in her crib, point at that picture, and yell, “Daddy!!” or “NEIEIEGGHHH!!!”, whichever suited her fancy at the moment.

Littlest baby, biggest voice.  But after Lydia was born, she liked to put an index finger up to her lips and tell the older kids, “SHHHH!!!”  😂)

When she was 2, she’d go to the top of the stairs, make a little O with her mouth, and then call out a dreadfully high-pitched “WHOOOOO!!!” – and the older kids would all come running, thinking it was me, because she’d hit the exact same note with that hoot that I whistled!

She sure was proud of herself for doing that. 

Here she is in the little doll dress I made for Dorcas to wear home from the hospital.  It looked a lot bigger on Hester than it did on Dorcas!  Dorcas weighed 6 pounds,11 ounces.  The matching bonnet (pictured in last week’s letter), was too big for Dorcas.   We would not have been able to find Hester in it.  😄  Doll bonnets are proportionately big, because dolls usually have big heads.  I did not think of that when I was making it before Dorcas was born.

 I let Dorcas use it for her dolls, years earlier.  😊

Here’s Joseph, age 4, holding his little sister.  Everyone else had gotten to, and he kept wanting to... but, like I said, I was afraid she’d break.

Then one morning after I got the baby dressed, I turned around, and there was Joseph, sitting on the floor in her room with a soft blanket draped over his lap, and he said very earnestly and with big, sincere eyes, “If I sit on the floor, I can’t drop her!” 

So I very carefully put her in his lap – and reached for the camera.  😊

After sending some of these pictures to Hester, she wrote back, “Keira uses some of her preemie clothes for her dolls.  I don’t think she realizes how little they are.  😄”

Here I am with brand-new baby Hester.  She was two days old, so it was June 10, 1989.  I was 29.

Friday night, I was surprised when Larry came driving in, as he’d thought they would stay at Dismal River until Saturday afternoon.  But it had gotten so cold, the cement trucks were having trouble pouring, and the nearest town only had a couple of trucks, and it was a slow process.  They’d considered having trucks come from North Platte, 87 miles to the south; but the weather kept deteriorating, and they decided not to risk it.  They will return tomorrow; they’re planning to leave at 5:00 a.m.  It’s a 243-mile drive, and takes over 4 hours to get there.

Saturday, I went to see Loren.  Larry didn’t come, as he was working on the roof.  See the lace in the window of that dormer?  That’s where my quilting studio is located.

Just look what a number the awful winds these last few months have done to the shingles!

Loren is doing well.  I gave him a Reader's Digest, showed him pictures on my phone, told him what Larry has been doing, and described various things I had seen on my drive there.

As I was traveling on the four-lane north of Fremont, I spotted a hawk flying over the highway some distance ahead.  His flight was oddly patterned, sometimes zigzagging, sometimes diving, and I wondered, What in the world?  He went back and forth across the highway twice before I got close enough to see that he was hot on the heels of a seagull!

Oft's Bed & Breakfast, Bennington, Nebraska

A seagull is normally much more agile than the larger hawk, but this one was obviously tiring, and the hawk was still going strong.  They flew directly over my vehicle as I passed, and I watched in my rear-view mirror as long as I could, but a curve in the road put the birds out of sight before the saga in the sky ended.

A few years ago as I drove home from town, a red-tailed hawk chased a mallard drake across the highway right smack-dab in front of me.  Flying low, the duck was frantically turning his head this way and that, and seemed to peer right into my windshield, quacking loudly.  I thought sure I was going to hit both big birds, but they rose just enough that I passed underneath them, probably ruffling their tail feathers as I went.

I looked quickly into my mirror in time to see the hawk take that mallard down in a huge swirl of feathers.  Aiiiiyiiiiyiiiieee.

Life was better in Eden, when the wildlife didn’t eat each other.

Again the sun was setting as I traveled home.  5:00 p.m. seems much too early to be taking pictures of the sunset; but I do get some pretty pictures.  As I traveled south of Fremont, I saw a sundog on the south side of the sun. 

There was none on the opposing side.

By the time I was on the southwest side of Fremont, the southern sundog had disappeared, and a less distinct one could be seen to the north of the sun.

There were hundreds of geese and ducks flying over the Platte River as I crossed it south of North Bend.  Sights like this make it well worth going a few miles out of my way when I travel to and from Omaha.

Larry was putting away his tools and things when I got home.  He got another section of the roof done, and needs to make the valleys and edges around the dormers.  To have them done is pricey, so he’ll do it himself.

I put chicken and carrots into the oven, and made Stovetop dressing to go with it.

I got 111 pictures scanned that evening, finishing the second-to-last album.  That brings the current total up to 36,545 scanned photos.  One more album – our Honeymoon Album – to do.  Oh, and a small handful of old family photos I found, in a very old album with wooden covers.  Mama must’ve put it together; the pictures are from when Loren was a new baby.  I will need to have it done one of these days; might as well do it right now – and the children will like these very old photos of Loren and their grandparents.  I’ll worry about fixing the album after Christmas; it’s falling apart.  The pages are black construction paper, and they are very fragile.  Glued-down corner tabs hold the pictures in place.  I’ll probably need to make new pages; these are deteriorating into nothing but black dust.

A while back, I got a heated neckroll cushion that plugs into my laptop.  I thought it was just the ticket for when I sit in my recliner.  After trying it out for 2 or 3 evenings, and winding up with worse neckaches than ever, I decided it wasn’t the ticket.  Instead, I got a very soft heating pad that can be rolled, and tucked that behind my neck.  Much better.

Here’s Teddy playing his little ¼-size violin.  He was 5, and he could really play that thing.

Sunday, I put a little keyring with a tiny blue LED light into my purse.  When the children headed off to Sunday School after the first couple of songs, I quickly attached the keyring to a ring on the Bible case belonging to the young boy, Benjamin, who sits beside me.  He is always so helpful with the communion plates, and I like to give him a little doodad every now and then.

After Sunday School, we have a short break, and then return for the main service.  I made sure I was back in my pew before Benjamin.  I opened the Spurgeon pamphlet I’d picked up, and began reading.

In Fremont

In walked Benjamin.  He sat down.  He scooted his Bible case over a bit.

Clinkety, said the keyring.

Benjamin turned his head and looked down at his case.  Then he detached the keyring and took a good look at it.

I kept my nose in my pamphlet, but I felt that sidewise glance he gave me.

He tucked the keyring in his inside suit pocket.

He got the keyring back out and looked at it.

He tucked it back into the pocket.

He pulled it back out and looked at it.

His mother, Kay, was in the choir loft by then, so he couldn’t show it to her, as he likes to do, and his father was down the pew a little way, a bit too far to unobtrusively show him anything.  Benjamin put the keyring back in his suit pocket and left it there.

The prelude ended, and the congregation sang.  At the end of the song service, the choir sang.  When the song was over, they returned to their respective pews.  Kay got back to hers mere seconds before Robert started to pray.

Benjamin hastily pulled forth his keyring and showed it to his mother.  She gave a small shake of the head, tapped his knee gently, closed her eyes, and bowed her head.  Benjamin reluctantly returned the keyring to his pocket and bowed his head, too.

And yes, I saw all this while I was minding my own business, looking straight ahead, then bowing my head to pray, too.  My eyes might be troublesome, but I still have good side vision! 

The minute the church service was over, Benjamin grinned at me and said, “Thank you!”

After church last night, we went to Walgreens to get a repair kit for Larry’s dentures – for $7, as opposed to the $350 or so it would cost to go to Larry’s dentist in Lincoln.

Next, we put gas in the Benz.  We’ve been using an app called Upside, and saving about $10 per tankful.

By then the taco pizza we’d ordered from Pizza Hut was done, so we picked it up and headed home to eat it.  We had Señor Rico Rice Pudding for dessert, and then Larry fixed his dentures.

Saturday Dorcas texted me to ask if we had sent a package they’d received – a Lego police car set.

Turns out, it was one of the gifts I had ordered for Warren or Jonathan, and it was supposed to come to our house.  I pulled up my Wal-Mart orders and discovered that the ‘technical glitch’ they’d had while I was ordering had caused the address switch I’d made to not be recognized.  I had ordered a couple of gifts for Dorcas’ baby Brooklyn, changed the address to theirs in Tennessee, then ordered birthday gifts for Warren and Jonathan, and changed the address back to my own house.  I had to give it several tries before it would take, and I thought it was the fault of my Internet connection.  But I guess when a little box pops up saying, “We’re having a problem on our end; please try again later,” maybe the problem really is on their end!

Since Trevor had already seen the Lego police car/plane crossover, and was totally delighted with it, I told Dorcas to tell him it was an early Christmas gift from us.

The package said ‘Baby Brooklyn Ellison’ on it, as I had it set for her birthday gift.  Dorcas said Trevor was excited and laughing when he saw what was in the package, and informed his baby sister, “You can’t have Legos!  You would choke!”

Today the hat and glove set I’d ordered for Jonathan arrived – at Dorcas’ house.  I took another look at my Wal-Mart account – and discovered that the second Lego set, also for one of the grandsons here, will be arriving at Dorcas’ house soon.  This time, Trevor had not seen the package.  So Dorcas will hide the hat and gloves, and save them and the soon-to-arrive Lego set for Trevor’s birthday in February.

I tried ordering a few necessities from Wal-Mart, along with another hat-and-glove set, and got a pop-up box reading, “Bad link, sorry,” and then the page saying, “Sorry, we’re having technical issues.”

Yeah, I noticed.  🙄  After multiple tries, I picked up my phone and finished the order from it, making sure the shipping address was mine.  For some reason, that worked.

I finally got to the page showing the gifts I’d ordered for Brooklyn.  Wouldn’t you know, it says they are ‘delayed’.  One item will get there December 8, supposedly, two days before her birthday; the other one not until December 19.  Plumb aggravatin’.  At least she’s too little to know!  When I placed the order, the delivery date given was December 3^rd.

One time a year and a half or so ago, no matter what I ordered from Wal-Mart, they sent me another big package of Charmin tissue!  I suppose I was single-handedly responsible for running their warehouse out of toilet paper, right when they needed it most.  🤣

The birds – and a squirrel or two – are busy at the feeders.  I wish the local photographer would take a picture or two of them.  I’m too busy!

And now I’d better get busy with that last photo album.

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