Last Tuesday, I hemmed a dress for Emma. It was lined, and the top layer was a sheer
knit that wasn’t hemmed in the first place, so I didn’t hem it, either, but
just cut it as straight as possible. That
stuff was slippery! The lining
was tricot, and it’s pretty slippery, too.
I used my Bernina serger on the edge, and my Bernina 730 for the
topstitching. I should’ve rethreaded the
serger and done a coverstitch... but it was just lining and wouldn’t show, and
this way was quicker.
When I was done, since Emma’s 17th birthday and
Grant’s 10th birthday were the next day, I put some gifts into bags
and signed a couple of birthday cards for them.
We gave Grant a black fleece sweatshirt, a little pewter and brass train clock, and a set of knit hat and gloves.
For Emma, we had a black skirt with ribbons and
embroidery on it, a coral knit hat, a matching coral purse, and a big Scripture
reference book.
I gathered up the dress, the birthday gifts, and my purse,
and headed out the door.
One of Larry’s pickups was behind the Mercedes. Furthermore, it was the big truck that has no
running boards, and is too tall for me to get into without endangering life and
limb.
I came back into the house and waited ’til Larry came home
and moved the beast, then off I went to Teddy and Amy’s house, which is a mile
or two to our east.
They sent me home with a few things, including a Starbucks
set of red mugs and packets of hot chocolate.
The perfect way to finish the evening – with a steaming cup of Starbucks
hot chocolate, made with milk.
I then spent a couple of hours quilting. Before quitting for the day, I rolled the
quilt forward – and the last bird made its appearance.
Perhaps
some of you might recall that when I was collecting the fabric for this quilt, I
was a bit unhappy with those pieces that have a lilac cast to them. I hunted in two or three different fabric
shops, but couldn’t find the mid-range-to-light plum or light maroon I
wanted. Now I’m quilting them with the
ice blue Omni thread that I’m using on the pale blue and the light pink patches,
and it’s actually making them blend a little better with the pinkish and
plum-colored fabrics. I think it’s going
to be fine.
Or
if it’s not, it’s a little late to worry about it now.
Wednesday morning as I was getting ready to
head to Lincoln for an appointment with the eye doctor, a quilting friend
wrote, “I went to quilt club
yesterday. I wore my favorite Mighty Mouse sweatshirt. Nobody noticed. Being an adult is dumb.”
That made me laugh right out loud. “I’m wearing my sweater with a kitty and a
basket of apples appliquéd on the front.
Reckon the doctor or nurse will notice?” I asked. (They didn’t.)
 |
| Canada geese on the frozen Platte River |
Larry went with me to Lincoln that day, as he hoped
to stop at Affordable Dentures office and have his dentures adjusted. We were surprised to find the office closed,
with a sign referring patients to the office in Omaha. Nevertheless, I was glad he was along to
drive, as my eyes were a bit irritated and blurry. Also, I can take more pictures while he’s
driving. 😉
We got back home with enough time to spare before the
evening church service that Larry could take a nap while I edited a few photos.
I like taking pictures of houses. I find the subtle change in home styles from
not only state to state, but from city to city, intriguing.
In these shots from a week ago Saturday, a farmer
was burning old brush, and possibly some old haybales, too. We were too far away to tell for sure. Not to worry; it’s farther from the barn
than it looks in the picture. It appears close because I was
using my long lens at 300mm, which compresses distance notably.
While burning old brush does release
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, in these parts it’s often the better option
(as opposed to letting it decompose), because we often have very dry weather,
and prairie fires are a real hazard. A
small, controlled fire on days of low wind, with snow cover to prevent the fire
from spreading, is much better than an out-of-control fire that might wipe out
whole fields with crops, or pastures full of livestock, or people’s homes. We saw too much of that last year, and several
people were hurt, and two died.
Sometimes hay bales spontaneously combust. If they’re in a barn with tractors or other
equipment, everything can be gone in a hurry – and parts of rural Nebraska are a
long way from a fire department. That
happened a couple of weeks ago, but, fortunately, a neighbor spotted the
burning bales in the barn, jumped into the farmer’s truck that was in the
building, and backed it out before it, too, caught on fire. He had big hoses connected to a water supply,
and kept the fire from spreading until the first firetrucks got there.
As I edited pictures, I zoomed in on the photos of geese
filling the sky somewhere near Schuyler.
I had thought they were Canadas, but on my big computer screen, I could
see they were neither Canadas nor Snows.
What where they? There were huge flocks of them covering the skies.
I plugged a description and location into
Google, and soon discovered what they were:
Greater White-Fronted geese, so named because of the white
patch above their bills.
I went to pick up Loren’s tax papers at the
accountants’ office Thursday; they were all done. I signed the papers, and they e-filed them for
me. Loren got a sizeable refund this
year, on account of all the money paid to the nursing home.
So taxes are behind us for another year. I dropped off some things at the Goodwill,
then came home and quilted until suppertime. We had deer burgers on toasted whole wheat
sesame buns with tomatoes and steamed green and red peppers and onions, with
thin slices of Hickory Farms jalapeño cheddar cheese that Kurt and Victoria gave
us. About the time we finished the
burgers, a strawberry-rhubarb crumble pie was ready to come out of the oven. We put Kemp’s Old-Fashioned vanilla ice cream
on it while the slices were hot.
When supper was over, I returned to the
quilting room for a little while. When I
quit, I was past the middle point, and
beginning to work on the bottom half of the quilt. Here is the top part of the birdbath.
Sometimes I wish I had a larger quilting space, so the
plumes could extend farther vertically; but I might have a difficult time
reaching any greater distance than I already must reach. My machine has
an 18” harp.
Late that night, I posted a few pictures of
the quilting progress.
“Beautiful!
I wish I had your
patience,” commented one quilting lady.
I
thanked her, then remarked, “My friends and family snicker when people accuse
me of being ‘patient’. The truth is, I don’t need to be
patient, because I’m enjoying what I’m doing!”
Friday, Keith sent a picture of the mountains to the east of
Salt Lake City, from his viewpoint behind the windshield of his front-discharge
cement truck.
“There is a pass and canyon
on the very right of that picture that has received over eight feet of snow
this year,” he told me.
Nebraska has had its third
wettest January since 1889.
Next, we discussed the
fact that three of our children and seven of our grandchildren have birthdays
in February, including four on one day, the 8th.
“Winter holidays and
birthdays are difficult when you work in construction and the winters are harsh,”
commiserated Keith.
“Yes,” I agreed, “people
should be more considerate and get borned in July and August.”
That made him laugh. He has one of the February birthdays; he’ll
be 43 on the 22nd. Victoria
will be 26 on the 24th, and Hannah will be 42 on the 28th.
“Can one change their birthday?”
wondered Keith. “Everything else
can be changed these days!”
“Sure,” I answered, “people
do it all the time. ’Course, it’s
usually when they’re on the lam from the law, or when they’re a movie star, and
their age doesn’t match their facelift.” 🤣
I got a little bit of quilting done Friday, but not much; there
were too many other things to do – such as go to Willie’s first birthday party. He’s the youngest of our 27 grandchildren.
“How in the world do you
keep all those designs in your head??!!!” asked a friend and fellow quilter. “I know you look on Pinterest for ideas, but
still...”
“Wait...
you think those designs are in my head??!!!” I exclaimed. “I thought they were in my longarm handles. I get a grip on them... start going... and
these things... happen!” 😂
Saturday was a blue, sunshiny day without a cloud in the sky, and it was 50°.
Larry needed to paint the Jeep he was
working on in Genoa, and he also needed to clean out a couple of pickups, wash
them, take pictures, and advertise them. So he didn’t come with me to visit Loren that
day.
When I walked into the main commons at
Prairie Meadows, the lady named Nina came to meet me. I greeted her. She muttered something, giving a little push
to my shoulder, which could have been construed as a friendly pat. Except...
When I said, “How are you today?”, she gave
a hard shove to my shoulder, saying, “You get over there RIGHT NOW!!!”,
pointing off to her left.
I braced my feet, then took a step closer
to her, and, with a hard stare straight in her face, said quietly but
adamantly, “DON’T
DO THAT.”
She looked surprised, backed up, and did
not touch me again.
I met her several times in the hallways
thereafter, and each time, she gave me wide berth, even though I gave her a
friendly smile each time.
I wonder just how scary I looked,
anyway?! And I wonder how many people
she’s caused to fall, doing things like that?
I hope she wasn’t the cause of any of Loren’s falls. She’s the one who tries to ‘help’ people, and
gets residents and staff alike all riled up, with residents howling, and the
staff scurrying about like chickens with their heads cut off, trying to stay up
with her and redirect her.
Loren is doing pretty well again, though he’s
been frailer since those falls – at least three, last month. He’s had physical therapy, and it has
definitely helped. He’s not in the
wheelchair anymore; he uses a walker. He’d
forgotten it somewhere, though. So when
I walked with him to his room and then back to the dining room at suppertime, I
held his hand, and then he could walk fairly well. As we exited the lounge where he’d been
sitting, he told the woman who’d been sitting in a wheelchair beside him, “We’re
going to walk over to my house.” He
gestured out the window.
She craned her head to peer out, though the
window only opened into the inner commons.
“It’s the ranch-style house with the bay
window,” Loren said helpfully.
“Yes, I see it,” the woman answered – but
now she was looking straight at the TV, where there was indeed a house on the
screen (though not necessarily ranch-style, or with a bay window).
As we headed for his room, a woman in a
chair in the commons area said to him, “I had to move, because the sun was in
my eyes.” She gestured down a hallway to
the wide glass door that leads into the courtyard. There are chairs near the door – and the sun
was indeed shining right in from the west.
Loren stopped and gave her a concerned
look. “I’ll have to do some research on
that,” he told her. “I just haven’t had
a chance to read about it yet, but I do know the fields are still covered with
snow.”
{He was confusing a title he’d just read in
one of the magazines I’d brought him with what she had said, I think, as he’d
thanked me and said, “I’ll take it to my house and read it later. I enjoy this kind of ...” (he fished for a word) “... research,” he decided,
tapping the story about ranchers in western Nebraska, and their winter
hardships.}
Mrs. Sun-in-Eyes frowned a bit and gave a
little shake of the head. Every now and
then, some of those non sequiturs that float around so freely in that place
give someone pause. 🤣
When we were visiting in his room, Loren
explained very thoroughly to me what had happened to make his hip hurt: he’d been walking in the church parking lot,
and a Jeep had pulled in and bumped him right on his side, not very hard, but
enough to hurt his hip. He gave me such
a thorough demonstration, I quickly moved closer to him, in case I needed to
catch him. Yikes.
I waited until he was done describing this
incident, then gave him a wide-eyed look, tapped my chest with a finger, and
said, “Well, it wasn’t me!!!” which of course made him laugh. (He remembers that we had a Jeep. Several Jeeps, actually.)
 |
| Canada geese |
I spotted the walker in the dining room by
the table where Loren usually sits when we walked in. “Yes, that’s mine!” he said happily, and I
helped him move it closer to his chair so it would be handy when he was ready
to get up.
A woman sitting at a nearby table in her
wheelchair wasn’t eating.
“Eat your supper, sweetie!” said one of the
staff – a very young girl I had not seen before. She looked to be about 14. No, 12.
(Ever notice how, the older you get, the younger the young look??) (She was probably in her mid-20s.) In any case, she was fast and efficient with
everything she did, and johnny-on-the-spot to help any of the residents who
needed anything, and careful and kind with them, too.
I was impressed. That’s the kind of a person I want at
a nursing home where my brother is.
The woman she was addressing glared at
her. “I can’t!” she
announced.
The young lady, swiftly doling out plates
of food from the rolling cart, asked, “Why not, dear?”
“Because I don’t have my chair!!!”
said the woman.
Loren snickered so suddenly, he dropped the
bite of food on his fork. He grinned at
me, that familiar old sparkle in his eyes.
“She doesn’t have her chair!” he said.
I raised my eyebrows. “Well, supper isn’t right, when you don’t
have the right chair! Why, roast beef
can turn into liver, and a nice mashed potato can change to spinach, right
before your eyes – if you don’t have the right chair!” I told him.
He laughed and laughed, over that.
(And no, we didn’t make a scene; no one was
listening to us. There is always music
playing in the background during their meals, and people are talking, and there’s
noise from the kitchen, too.)
The young nurse came back to the woman, and
then, saying, “Here’s your chair!”, helped her stand up, made sure she was
steady, then rolled the wheelchair out of the way and rapidly slid a chair behind
her. She helped the woman sit back down.
This
changed the woman’s stance at the table nary an iota, but she picked up her
fork and began to eat.
The nurse gave her a gentle pat on the
shoulder and moved on.
As they often do, one of the nurses offered
me a plate of food. “No, thank you,” I
said. “I’ll just drink this juice,” I
added, pointed at a small glass of what I thought was grape juice on the table.
I picked it up and sipped – and was amazed
to discover it was not grape juice, but Pepsi! Pepsi?!
What in the world. Pepsi with their supper, for dementia
patients.
Listen to this: “The Framingham Heart Study has shown through
its data that people who more frequently consume sugary beverages such as sodas
are more likely to have poorer memory, smaller overall brain volumes and
smaller hippocampal volumes – an area of the brain important for memory.”
People who draw up menus for nursing homes,
particularly nursing homes for Alzheimer's patients, should really do a little
research on what’s good for them and what isn’t good for them.
The corn syrup in the Pepsi left a bad
taste in my mouth. I picked up the glass
of water to wash the stuff down – and it tasted like chlorine!!!
Again, listen to
this: “Studies have discovered that
patients with dementia have a much higher chlorine level in hair samples than
those patients who do not have dementia.”
That’s from the National Library of Medicine at the National Center for
Biotechnology Information.
Good grief, why
don’t they use spring water??
If I can learn these things, so can –
and so should – those who are responsible for caring for our fragile elderly! Siggghhhhhh...
When I bid Loren adieu, he said cheerfully,
“Goodbye, honey!” just like he has ever since I was a little girl. My Daddy called me ‘Cookie Doodle’; my
brother called me ‘honey’. I thought
that was fine and dandy. He married
Janice when I was 8, and she called me ‘honey’, too. I was quite pleased with that.
I got home at about 7:30 p.m. Supper that evening was creamy chicken noodle
soup and Oui blueberry yogurt, with strawberry-rhubarb pie for dessert.
A man on the MeWe
quilting group was having trouble with his longarm machine skipping stitches,
and the readout screen was flickering on and off. He finally dug out some old telephone cables,
put them in place of the cords on his machine, and, voilá! The machine was working properly again.
Telephone cords! It would never have occurred to me that there
was even a possibility of telephone cords working on a longarm machine.
 |
| Military plane from Offut Air Force Base in Omaha |
Mind you, I am no
electrician, but I figured the wires inside that rubber or plastic coating
would be device specific. I would be
inclined to think that, once hooked up with old telephone cords, my longarm
would start taking calls from telemarketers or dialing Time & Temperature,
entirely without my permission. Or,
seeing me quilt myself into a corner as I so often do, perhaps it would call
‘Dial-A-Prayer’ for me. 😏
The only thing (other
than connecting telephones) that I thought those old cables were good for was
tying Tonka trucks and tractors and graders and whatnot together in order to
make long trains. (Well, that’s
what our boys did with them, anyway.)
Sunday morning, I turned on a news station on my tablet to
listen to as I got ready for church. The
weatherman informed all and sundry that it was Saturday.
He also told everyone that they needed to push their
crocuses back down into the ground, because wintery weather is coming.
Larry forgot his hearing aids last night. He didn’t bother putting them in after we got
home from the evening service. We chatted
during and after supper... until finally I informed him, “I’m hoarse, from
trying to talk loud enough for you to hear me!”
And he said (can you guess what he said?)... he said, “Huh?” 😂
This afternoon, Victoria sent a picture of Willie in the knit
outfit we gave him. I put it side by
side with the one Hester sent of Oliver a few days ago in the outfit we’d given
him. They're sooo cute.
Two little boys, five
days apart. This is such fun!
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky today, and
it got up close to 60°. I had to turn
off the pellet stove this morning. We’ve
been keeping it going since the week before Christmas, and it nearly cut our
last electric bill in half.
When suppertime was approaching late this afternoon, I
pulled the thawed deer burger from the refrigerator, preparing to make meatloaf
– and realized we had no ketchup for the topping I usually make with brown
sugar.
Hmmmm. I rummaged
through a cupboard and came up with chunky Ragu. Another cupboard yielded half a pound of spaghetti. I mixed one egg, salt, and pepper into the
meat, shaped it into meatballs, and set it to cooking; then dropped the
spaghetti into a pot of boiling water.
Ten minutes later, I drained the spaghetti, then added the meatballs and
the Ragu to the pot. A little
simmering... and supper was ready to be served.
Tomorrow I shall quilt! Lord willing, that is.
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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