Journal: Quilts, Snow Geese, & Hospitals

 

Last Monday, my daughter-in-law Amy sent a link to a video on Instagram, ‘Sarah’s Sewing Studio, Sewing with Chickens’.  It shows people hauling in a pretty shed, and then finishing it all off as a sewing studio, complete with a number of vintage sewing machines displayed on the wall.  But... as advertised... there were chickens in that studio!  🐓😯🐤🐔😮

First, I don’t believe I’d want chickens in my sewing/quilting area.  Second, the studio is nifty, but I like being in the same building as my washer, dryer, stove, refrigerator, and various water necessities.

A lady on a Facebook quilting group posted a picture of a baby goat in her sewing room.  Her mother rejected her (that is, the baby goat’s mother rejected her kid; the quilting lady’s mother did not reject her daughter – at least, so far as I know), so into the house came baby goat – and now that little kid follows the lady everywhere she goes.

“It’s funny how some people love their chickens like any of their other pets,” commented Amy.

Chickens are smarter than we think – and they can be ever so affectionate, if they are treated well.  I know a lady who, if she goes outside and sits on her porch bench, a couple of chickens come hurrying over to sit on her lap – and one particularly likes to perch on her shoulder.

(This isn’t her; this picture was posted anonymously on a chicken forum several years ago.  The lady did tell the names of her chickens, though:  Marble and Cream.)

Aarrgghh, that afternoon I went downstairs to look for something – and found three small, fat albums chockful of pictures that may or may not have duplicates in the albums I scanned!

“Pretend you didn’t see them!!” advised Victoria, with whom I was chatting at the moment.

Yes, I believe that’s exactly what I’ll do.  Except... one of them has Lydia’s six-month pictures... I should probably check...  🥴🙄  Yes, when I have a chance, I’ll check and see if I’ve scanned duplicates.

Someone sent me a link to the Whirls ’n Swirls YouTube channel of a quilting lady, Tracey Russell, who was doing a sashing motif very similar to the one I was doing on my customer’s Starry Log Cabin quilt.  I called my motif ‘Swirly Feather Things’; she calls hers ‘Pearly Curl’.  Since several friends had been asking me to make a video of my work so they could figure out how I was doing it, I promptly sent them the link. 

“So pretty!” commented one of my friends.  “She seems really good at it, too!!”

“Yes,” I agreed, “she does it so effortlessly.  Me, I go quilting nicely along, realize I’m painting — uh, quilting myself into a corner, and make a sudden messy SCRIBBLE!!! in mute panic and horror.”  😂  (—which is precisely why I don’t make videos.  That, and the fact that I don’t have a professional photographer to take the videos, heh.)

(Why do I never hear of Julia Quiltoff or Judi Madsen or Karen McTavish or Bethanne Nemesh or Margaret Solomon Gunn having such things happen as they’re quilting along??)

(“Because they would never tell you about it,” laughed one of my quilting friends.)

Here was my view out my east window as I quilted last Tuesday.  See that farmstead out there in the middle distance?  Across the road from that farm is Teddy and Amy’s place. 

My quilting studio used to be our youngest daughter Victoria’s bedroom, before she was married.  I would never have painted it that pale grayish lavender (and one wall is a metallic sparkling plum); but I didn’t change it, since it was newly done by Victoria and a couple of her cousins – and now I enjoy it.  It’s on the second floor, and has two windows, including this north-facing one in a dormer.

Looking back in time... my older children ran me out of my sewing rooms when they came along, and sewing rooms turned into bedrooms.  Finally, there were no more extra rooms, so my machine and cabinet were in our bedroom, or sometimes in the living room; and when the children were up and playing or doing chores or homework, I removed my machine from the cabinet and carried it out to the kitchen in order to be smack-dab in the middle of all the goings-on.

By midnight, I had finished Row 4 and started on Row 5, the final row of this quilt.  The second half of a quilt almost always goes faster, especially if the quilting motifs are repeated.

I worked on it for a few hours Wednesday until time for church, and Thursday afternoon I finished it and removed it from the frame, trimming it as I unrolled it from the take-up bar.

A break for supper, and then I trotted back up the stairs to load the Postage Stamp quilt, made by the same lady.

I hope my machine keeps plugging away through the next two quilts!  I keep getting a ‘Motor Stall’ notice.  I think I know what the trouble is – there’s a little piece inside the head at the top of the shaft that holds the hopping foot, and it broke about three years ago.  Larry did his best to fix it, but it really needed a brand-new part.  I couldn’t take it to the tech right then, because I was in the middle of the New York Beauty quilt – and they didn’t have the part in stock in any case.

The foot has not been perfectly synchronized ever since, and there’s just the slightest bit of drag on the quilt, which makes it a little harder to push the machine – and that was one of the things I loved about this machine, as compared to my old one — how easy it was to push!  So it’s time to get it fixed, after the next couple of quilts. I was surprised to realize I’ve had it for five years.  It’s time it was serviced.

I usually don’t think Carolyn looks a whole lot like Victoria; but this picture of Victoria went scrolling through on my screensaver, and for a second or two, I actually thought it was Carolyn.  😊  I quickly grabbed a screen shot, and sent it to Victoria.

Shortly thereafter, a picture of Hester scrolled through.  I grabbed a screenshot of her, too, and sent it to her, writing, “You can tell your little girl (Keira) is related to you!”  

Thursday was a cold, blustery day, with a bit of freezing rain, some sleet, and a skiff of snow blowing through on a strong wind.  It was much too windy to try any outdoor pictures with the completed quilt, what with the wind gusting over 55 mph.  Why, I saw a long-haired Chihuahua go sailing past my upstairs window, followed closely by a woolly mammoth, rumbling its displeasure, with a tumbling Tasmanian sheep hot on their heels! 

(I nevah, evah exaggerate.)

My customer and friend, JoeAnn, ask me, “Did you get tired of those curly feathery things?”  Then, “This is exciting,” she added.  😊

“Nope,” I told her.  “I rarely get tired of any of the various parts of quilting.  I just keep trying to do each design a little better, a little more accurately.”

By midafternoon, it was 30° with a wind chill of 13°, and wind gusting up to 55 mph.  

Amy sent pictures of the Anatolian shepherd puppies their dog had last December.  She once got up in the middle of the night and found all eleven of them sleeping like this:

The last of those puppies got a new home on Saturday – and their other female dog just had fourteen puppies, a week or so ago!

A lady on a Facebook quilting group posted this question:  “How do you get the folks out of batting?”

Now, I know she means ‘folds’.  But I very badly want to tell her that you can get folks out of your batting the same way you get cats out of it:  you grab one end and jerk.  They’ll come rolling right out, slicker’n a whistle.  Just try it and see.  😂

Another lady tried to help her:  “All you do is spray the foods with water and let it rest overnight,” she wrote.

I wanted to ask, “Do you need to put it in the refrigerator, so the foods don’t spoil?”

(Give me a gold star.  I didn’t say a thing.)

I like to listen to the rural radio as I shower, wash my hair, and get ready for the day.  The man who gives the crop prices does just fine during the morning reports – but immediately after noon every day, he hiccups and burps his way through the market roundup.  😂  Reckon he needs to eat slower?  Chew longer?  Eat smaller portions?  Learn where the mute button is?

A quilting friend was telling about a misadventure she and her husband had when they took their car to the auto wash.  “All went well as we paid, went through, and got all clean.  The blower started up to dry us off.  One problem:  the bay door did not open to let us drive slowly under the dryer and exit.”

They honked, hoping an employee would be in the little control room.  No such luck.

After the dryer shut down, the lady got out, wound her way around the dripping machinery to the door, and pushed the red ‘Open’ button.  

Nothing happened.  

She pushed it again, to no avail.  

By this time a car was behind them, and had already paid to enter the wash.  She signaled that they needed to back out.

But as they started to reverse, guess what?  

The thing started washing them again, with the next driver’s paid wash!

There was only one way in, and a line had formed, but they finally got out of the place.

“It took a long time to settle down after that!” she said.

I once asked Larry, while we were having our car washed, if he was ever afraid that one o’ them thar thangs would forget it was a carwash and turn into a car crusher.

He laughed.  He laughed!  I considered it a legitimate concern!

When Victoria was little, she thought that the good-smelling, colored bubble-wax the machine spit on our car after the soapy wash and the rinse was the funniest thing ever.  Last year she sent me an audio clip as she drove through a carwash – and her two little girls, Carolyn and Violet, were in great throes of hilarity over the experience.  Silly little girls.  

Amy sent a picture of Warren all decked out in a camouflage outfit they found at a thrift store somewhere.  It even has real pins on it.  He’s quite pleased with it.

Thursday afternoon, I got a call from Prairie Meadows.  They’d called me the day before to tell me that Loren had a pressure wound, and to ask my permission to have the people who come in to care for such things treat it.  I gave permission.  However, by Thursday, infection had set in, he had a fever, was shaking badly, and had fallen early in the morning.  They thought he needed to be taken to the hospital, and I agreed.

“Will you be transporting him?” asked the woman.

!  It doesn’t matter that the documents are sometimes right before their eyes, there are a couple members of the staff who cannot get it through their heads that there are other towns in the world besides Omaha, and some of us do in fact reside in these ‘other towns.’  Furthermore, I wonder just how they think I am capable of transporting Loren somewhere, when he is having trouble walking and cannot get himself from chair to wheelchair to bed without assistance?  I’m too little of a pipsqueak for that job!

I politely told her I couldn’t, and she asked my permission to call for an ambulance.  I gave it.

A nurse from the hospital called later to tell me that they had put Loren on antibiotics, and that he would be staying there for a few days, and they would let me know if there was any change.

Friday, a doctor called to tell me he believed they needed to do surgery on the wound, and asked if I would agree to that.  I did, and he put the phone on speaker so a couple of nurses could hear my statement as they recorded it.

A couple of hours later he called again to let me know surgery was over, and all was well.  They would keep Loren there for a few more days to keep an eye on the wound and to administer the antibiotics.

Meanwhile, I went on quilting the Postage Stamp quilt.

In the middle of the afternoon, I heard a whole lot more snow geese than I’d been hearing, as they flew low over our house, flock after flock, for days on end.  I went to my window and looked toward the east – and there I saw tens of thousands of snow geese circling, landing, and taking off from the nearby cornfields.  What a sight!  I’ve never seen so many snow geese here before.

Our local news said there are somewhere in the vicinity of 3.5 million snow geese concentrated in our area of Platte County.  I wonder how they got the geese to stand still while they counted them?

When I shut down my quilting machine late Friday night, I had finished the top border and three-quarters of the first row of the Postage Stamp quilt.

My machine didn’t give me the ‘Motor Stall’ notice that entire day.  Maybe it just had the 24-hour stomach bug?  😄

No, it definitely needs a ‘real’ fix for that hopping foot that Larry ‘temporarily’ fixed about three years ago.  Pretty good mileage on that temporary fix!

When I finally went to bed a little after 2:00 a.m., I glanced at my weather app:  it was 14° with a wind chill of -3°.  No wonder I’d been putting on extra layers of sweaters and socks.

Saturday, Hester sent pictures of her ‘vintage sewing corner’, with a treadle machine she had found somewhere.

All the drawers in that old cabinet have things in them, as if the sewist had merely gone off to powder her nose, and would soon be returning.  One drawer holds wooden spools of thread.  In another is a case with various presser feet and tools.  In the bigger bottom drawer, there is white eyelet fabric and lace – a sewing project in mid-construction.  Mid-fabrication?  😉  {Pun alert!  Pun alert!}

I opened a new bag of Blueberry Crumble coffee beans, ground some, and made a new pot of coffee to take with me to Omaha.  Mmmmm...

Bobby, Hannah, and Levi happened to be in Omaha that morning, as Levi was participating in the regional spelling bee, so they stopped by the hospital to visit Loren.

“Uncle Loren always seems almost normal when I visit,” Hannah told me later.  “He was eating, and was so happy when I said, ‘Hi, Uncle Loren!’”

That’s how he seems when we visit, too – until he gets to talking very much.  Then things take a turn for the ridiculous.  

Larry would not be coming with me to see Loren that day.  He’d been working on the Duramax pickup and having all sorts of troubles.  He hasn’t even started putting it back together yet; on the contrary, he’s still working on taking it apart!  It’s not an easy vehicle to work on.

When I talked to him on the phone at about 3:30 p.m., he was just leaving Genoa and heading to Bobby and Hannah’s house to work on Nathanael’s BMW – the one he bought from us.  Larry had put new throttle plates in it a week or two ago, but they were bad, and the parts store had to order more.

So off I went to Methodist Hospital in Omaha.  It takes over an hour and a half to get there.  It was a cold, windy day.

This semi came around the curve near Rogers too fast for comfort.  The cab was tilting, and the load of hay looked unstable, too.  I was glad it wasn’t tilting toward me.

I got to the hospital around 5:30 p.m.  It felt like a long walk from the multi-story carpark to the hospital lobby in that 35 mph wind, with the temperature down around 25°.

I took the elevator to the fifth floor, walked down a long hallway, then into Loren’s room – right into a melee.

A male nurse and a female nurse were habbin’ ze debbil’s own time trying to get Loren up to go into the restroom – solely because he had said he needed to go – but he did NOT want their help, nosirreee.

When I walked in, the nurses glanced at me, gave me a distracted greeting, and went back to trying to convince Loren to give them his hand, and let them help him up.

Loren looked up, grinned at me, happy to see me, told the nurses my name – and redoubled his refusal to let them help.

I scurried to the far corner of the room in order to be out of everyone’s way, and removed my coat and scarf.

The young female nurse (I didn’t get a look at her nametag, so let’s call her Gertrude) got a grip on Loren’s arm and tried to haul him out of bed. 

He jerked back and snarled, “Wait just a minute!!!” – and gave her one of those first-class glares of his. 

She backed off, and looked at me.  I smiled politely, and began extracting all manner of paraphernalia from a chair in the corner, where I could sit and observe the show whilst blending into the woodwork.

“Let me tell you what’s going on here!” announced Loren, turning so he could look at me.  “It seems that the neighbors up north—” he pointed north (how does he always know his directions, no matter whether he thinks he’s in Timbuktu or Beijing?) “—are all going together and buying a home, and these people—” he jabbed a finger at first one nurse, then the other “—think I have to go in with them!”

Both nurses looked at me, wondering if I was as nuts as my brother, and what, exactly, they should do about it if I was.

Loren then pointed at the nearby walker and said, “They think I should buy that, too!”

The nurses chimed into duet:  “No, we don’t want you to buy it” and then Gertrude made a fundamental error and said soothingly, “You’re just... renting it.”

“OH, NO I’M NOT!!!” blustered Loren.  “I WON’T!  You can’t MAKE me!!!”

(How could she have guessed that he has always hated renting anything, considering it a terrible waste of money!)

He stared at me.  “You see what I’m talking about!!!  They just keep pressuring, pressuring, pressuring!”

“It’s all right; you aren’t buying it or renting it, either one,” I said, smiling at him.  “It belongs to the hospital.”

Loren looked surprised.  “Oh,” he said, and glared at the female nurse.

The male nurse (I don’t know his name, either; let’s call him... hmmm... how about Maximilian?  Okay, Maximilian it is) put his arm around Loren’s shoulders and gently tried to persuade him from the bed. 

Loren grabbed his arm and flllllunnng it off of him.  “DON’T YOU DARE TOUCH ME!!!” he said.

Both nurses were young, both seemed like nice-looking persons behind those stupid masks they’re still wearing – and neither one knew how to handle this recalcitrant patient.

Siggghhhh...  I decided it was time to throw myself into the furor.

I got up, went around to the other side of the bed, collected the walker, and pulled it directly in front of Loren.  The bed was high, and his feet were dangling a good foot off the floor – and he had on socks.  If he came off the bed the way he was planning to, he’d wind up flat on his back on the linoleum.

I also pulled my stupid mask down under my chin, the better to talk to him.  You can talk to anyone better without a mask, but dementia patients especially need to see your face.

I said, “Okay, here’s your walker.  I’m putting my foot against the wheels so it can’t roll away, but you have to let the man help you.  They aren’t selling anything; they’re here to help you, and they’re doing the best they can to do their job.  But you have to let them; it’s the right thing to do.”

He subsided, and sat quietly for a moment. 

“I’ll be waiting right over there when you come back out,” I added, pointing at the chair in the corner.

Then, “Okay,” he said, and started scooting forward, with Maximilian’s help. 

Gertrude went around to the back side of the bed to pull pads and sheets back into place, and to replace old with new.  A wadded-up bit of sheet bumped Loren’s arm.

He came unglued all over again.  “I’M NOT TAKING THAT WITH ME!” he yelled.

“I’m not making you take it!” Gertrude said testily.  “I’m just moving it out of the way!”

(She apparently needs a brush-up with her Dale Carnegie course.) 

(Actually, I think Loren talks so normal most of the time, those who have just met him cannot get it through their heads that he has dementia.  First they think he’s nice as can be, then they think he’s just a horrid, crabby old man.)  (And sometimes he is.)

He was only just recovering from that dustup when Maximilian produced the gait belt – one of those straps to buckle around patients so that the nurses can hang onto them better and prevent them from falling.

Loren nearly went ballistic over that. 

“They have all these rules and regulations, rules and regulations, and think I have to follow them all!  Well, I DON’T!!!”

“It’s so he can keep you from falling,” I said.

“I NEVER FALL!” announced Loren.

“That’s how you broke your hip,” I told him.  He made his old amazed face.  “We don’t want that to happen again,” I continued.  “That was awful for you.”

“Yes, it was,” he agreed.  Did he actually remember that?  He doesn’t, usually.

Maximilian hastily seized the chance to put the belt on Loren and cinch it up quick (sort of like one might do to an ill-behaved horse), whereupon Loren immediately announced that he couldn’t breathe, and this was EXACTLY why he couldn’t have that thing on him.  While he complained fiercely, he tugged it down until it was around his middle.

“There,” I said, grinning at him, “Now your lungs are free to breathe, and you can get up.”

He looked at me a moment – and then let poor ol’ Max help him up.

I retreated to my chair while Maximilian guided him toward the restroom.  Gertrude remade the bed.  I took the opportunity to tell her that Loren has Lewy Body dementia – since it didn’t exactly seem like she knew it.  I mentioned that he’d been like this when he was at his home, before moving to the nursing home – “so perhaps he hasn’t had his medication, on account of the surgery?”  She didn’t know, but seemed to consider what I’d said.

Next, there was a giant argument over whether he needed anyone to be in the restroom to help him.  One of the problems was that the nurses kept using words some people use to teach their small toddlers to go to the restroom – words we don’t use. 

“I’m just going to help you ---,” said Maximilian, and Loren snarled, “I don’t talk like you do!”

Maximilian looked properly apologetic.  “I suppose not.  I probably sound like a young kid.”

Somewhat mollified, Loren let that point go.

But then Max asked, “Do you need the toilet?”  (Gertrude had remarked earlier, “He just went, ten minutes ago.”) 

“No,” said Loren in his best sarcastic tone.  “Do you?”

“No, I don’t,” said Maximilian, trying to stay reasonable.

“You must!” said Loren.  “I can pull it out and give it to you!”

At that point, Gertrude, with an exasperated sigh, asked Loren if he had already been to the restroom.

“Of course I have!” he retorted with a good deal of teeth in it.  “If I hadn’t’ve, I’d be DEAD by now!  I’d’ve been dead 35 years ago!!!”  ((pause))  “Longer than that!!!!”

She tried to be more pointed, asking with greater detail.  That only served to rile him further.

“I DON’T HAVE TO TELL YOU ANYTHING!!!” he shouted, making a wide sweeping motion with his arm.  (Fortunately, he can’t shout too awfully loud, as his voice is somewhat weak.)

Gertrude turned her head and looked at me.

I looked back.

Loren then insisted they remove the gait belt, and finally Max did.  Loren complained about something else, and Max said, “No, I can’t do that; we’re already letting you get by without wearing the belt.”

“Letting me get by!” exclaimed Loren.  “Letting me get by??!!!  You people are very oppressive!  You can’t treat people the way you do!”

“We just don’t want you to fall!” put in Gertrude, going back over to the door to see if she could help.

“I don’t fall!” said Loren.  “You might fall!  Anyone can fall!!!”

Gertrude then said for about the fourth time, “Your sister is waiting out here to visit with you!”

“I KNOW THAT!” said Loren.  “YOU’VE TOLD ME ENOUGH TIMES!!!”

Gertrude and Maximilian simultaneously said, “Let’s call his sister over here; he listens to her.”  (Ha, fat lot they know.)

I can’t just barge in on my brother’s privacy (which no one understands, these days); but as soon as I knew they were trying to get him to come out, and he didn’t want to – at least not with their help, I went to see what I could do.

He’d started for the door, pushing his walker, then changed his mind, let go of the walker, and wandered into the shower, which had a tile step-up curb (seems dangerous).  Maximilian was trying to help him, Loren was shoving his hands away, and teetering alarmingly.

I thought sure he was going to fall.  I grabbed his arm.  “Where are you going?!!” I asked.  “You’re about to fall!”

He laughed.  “I need a Kleenex!” he said, trying to get one out of the shower gel dispenser.

“They’re over here,” I said, pointing out the tissues.

Maximilian scurried for a paper towel (made out of cornhusks, near as I could tell), while Gertrude grabbed some tissue and tried handing it to Loren.  He ignored her and took the cornhusks.  I went on holding onto his arm, and he didn’t fuss about it. 

Max tried to help him, and he pushed his hand away.

“No, let him help you,” I said.  “If you fall, you’ll take me right down with you, and I’ll land in there,” I added, pointing at the commode.  “And then we’ll ALL be sorry.”

That made Loren laugh again.  “Nooooo, you won’t,” he told me.

“Well, I might!” I answered.  “You just said anyone can fall!”

His face looked funny, and I knew he actually remembered saying that.

He then tried to head off without Max to help him.

I stopped in front of him, held onto the walker, and put my foot in front of the wheels.  “Let him help,” I said.  “I won’t be able to hold you up if you fall, and we’ll both go down.  He’s much stronger than me.”

So without another word, Loren let Maximilian help him.

(Despite my names for these poor hapless hospital workers, they really were trying their best, poor things.  The young man, especially, seemed ever so kind and gentle.  The young woman more likely wanted to box Loren’s ears, and I could hardly blame her.  She tried to do her job by being forceful, and I suppose that method works, most times.  It didn’t, that night.  Not with Loren.)  (Well, come to think of it, it worked for me; but then I was grinning at him while I did and said those things.  She was most assuredly not grinning.)  (The nurses at Prairie Meadows get him to do what they want him to do by honeying and sweethearting him to death, haha.)

They got Loren back in the bed, and Gertrude pushed the button to raise the head of the bed up a bit.

“See that?” Loren remarked to me.  “It’s automatic.”

“No, she’s pushing the button and adjusting it for you,” explained Maximilian, pointing at Gertrude.  (Some people never learn.)

Loren tried to pop up, winced (you can tell he’s in some pain, though it’s not too terrible), and hissed to me, “That’s what I’ve been telling you!  They just push, and push, and push a person!  They want to force me into whatever they want!!!”

“No, she’s doing her best to make you comfortable,” I said.  “They’re treating you very good, and we should be thankful for that, and treat them right in return.”

He was very quiet for a moment or two, and then proceeded to tell Maximilian, pointedly ignoring Gertrude, “I want to thank you for what you’ve done for me,” – and Maximilian, who wasn’t doing very well with this crash course on Lewy Body dementia, took the opportunity when Loren paused momentarily to assure him that he was just doing what he’d been taught to do, mentioning the helping him out of bed, and Loren’s not wanting his help. 

(Aarrgghh, let well enough alone, Max, let well enough alone!) 

Loren glowered.  I quickly said, addressing Loren, “And they’re excellent at knowing exactly how to help you, too.”

So Loren turned back to Maximilian and said, somewhat testily, “I would never do anything to you!!”

Max smiled and nodded – and wisely kept still.  (Yer a-learnin’, Max, yer a-learnin’.)

Loren then began telling me all sorts of stories about people trying to force him into buying things, including (but not limited to) John Deere riding tractors.  Gertrude and Maximilian both started to say that no one was doing any such thing, but I butted in and told the story of trying to look at vehicles at a dealership in Omaha, once upon a time, but the salesman was so eager to sell us a vehicle, that he wouldn’t even let us look at vehicles, but practically shanghaied us into his office, where he started grabbing papers and documents hither and yon, nearly frothing at the mouth in his fervor to sell us that one (the one and only) vehicle he had seen us looking at.

We didn’t buy anything.

But the salesman called Larry as we were traveling away from the place, obviously thinking that if he could just talk with that nice man without his shrew of a wife throwing a monkey wrench into the machinery, he could still get his Sale of the Day.

Loren laughed over the story, but started to tell me about ‘these people’ wanting him to buy the hospital bed he’s in.

When Gertrude, who’d been typing something into the in-room computer, started to dispute that, I quickly got out my phone, and was hastily pulling up Instagram in the hopes of heading down a new route of blather and gabble.

Loren, seeing me doing this, frowned, put up a hand like a stop sign, and said, “I know what you’re doing, and ... !!”  He shook his head, unable to find the words he wanted.

(What, did he think I was going to try selling him my phone?)

“I’m showing you pictures of a new baby!” I announced cheerily, glad that the very first photos in the queue were of Matthew and Josie’s new baby boy, Martin. 

Loren really does love seeing pictures of the little ones.  His favorite of that set was one of Brooklyn holding her baby brother. 

When I said, “I really like Matthew and Josie,” he readily agreed, “I do, too.”

Both nurses stopped what they were doing, peered at my phone, and then smiled at me.

The picture of little Brooklyn with Baby Martin in her arms was terribly cute.  Brooklyn and Martin are Loren’s and my great-great-niece and great-great-nephew.

The story and the pictures distracted Loren enough that Max and Gertie were able to escape without him noticing.  As they went out the door, I heard Gertrude say to Maximilian, “I can see why you wanted me to come with you in there!” and Max returned, “We just needed his sister!”

(What do they do all those times when I’m not there?)

Loren was still pretty sure someone was trying to force him to buy something he didn’t want to buy.  He told me, “I don’t have the money to buy all these things!”  He gestured around the room.  “I used to have money to buy all sorts of things, and if I didn’t have the cash, I’d get a loan.  But I don’t have the money now, and there isn’t anything I need anyway, and I don’t spend money like that anymore!”

I assured him that he didn’t need to buy a thing, and that all was well with his money.  That seemed to settle him.

He switched to telling me that he had worked most of the previous day, but only managed to work in the morning, that day.  “And then I had to come home and take care of... things,” he explained.

After a while, he was rubbing at his forehead and looking tired, and when I asked if he had a headache or was getting too tired, he said yes, he was just starting to get a headache, and he was awfully tired.  “That’s why I came in this room in the first place,” he told me, “to take a nap.”

So I showed him two last pictures, one of a Great Horned owl and one of a White-Booted Racket-Tail hummingbird from Ecuador.  He always enjoys the bird pictures, especially those brightly colored exotic ones he’s never seen before. 

“I think God enjoyed Himself, making the birds and the butterflies!” I remarked, and Loren laughed and said, “I think He did.” 

I promised to see him soon, told him goodbye, and left.

I saw the male nurse as I headed down the hallway, and told him Loren was tired, and planning to sleep, and that he had a slight headache.  Perhaps I should not have mentioned the headache, because he immediately promised me that he’d tell Gertrude (I still couldn’t tell what he called her – those masks garble people’s speech!).  I wanted to say, “Haven’t you ever heard of ‘letting sleeping dogs lie’?”  But I didn’t.  Nope.  I didn’t.  There are a few things I think of and don’t actually just say, right out loud.  A few.

My hands didn’t stop shaking until I got to Fremont, reminding me of how it was, those last two years before Loren moved to the nursing home.  Not much fun.  I’ll bet those nurses had no idea under the sun that that episode was more upsetting to me than it was to them.

As always, there was a lot more to this story, but it didn’t make a lick of sense, and was too far-fetched to find a spot to stick in my [somewhat] [still trying to be] reasonable (but addled) brain, and therefore I can’t remember it.  (Or perhaps I have Halfzeimer’s, which isn’t nearly as bad as ALLzheimer’s, as I only forget half of everything, instead of all of it.)

I stopped at Sapp Bros. Truck Stop in Fremont and got myself a Mocha Frappuccino to soothe my nerves.  😂

I didn’t get home until a little before 8:00 p.m., driving a good part of the way straight into a blinding sun.  As Hannah used to say when she was wee little, “Doo bight!  Doo bight!”

Larry didn’t get home until nearly midnight.  But he’d gotten Nathanael’s BMW fixed! 

“It’s running like a top now,” he said happily.

It hadn’t taken him too awfully long, and then he’d returned to Genoa to work on that troublesome pickup.

Meanwhile, I typed up the day’s saga and emailed it to the kids.  If I don’t do it right away, I forget the details, since it all has an Alice in Wonderland aura to it. 

Sunday morning, with the previous day’s upheaval fresh in my mind, I was in a very good frame of mind to say with King David, “I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go unto the house of the Lord.”

Once I figured the kids would all be up, I sent them a text to tell them I had sent them an email.  The things one must do to correspond with kids these days!  🤣 

I wrote, “I sent y’all (say that with a southern drawl, please) an email about Uncle Loren.  Don’t read it now, or you will be late for church.”

Hannah promptly responded, “I already read it to Bobby... and I’m late for church. 🙈”

Last night after church, I visited with Lura Kay for a while, telling her about Loren.  She is quite frail these days.

When we got out to the Mercedes, I found a bag with a quilt in it that a friend had asked me to finish for her; she made it for her father.  I picked up my phone to send her a text letting her know that I had found the quilt – and discovered that someone from Methodist Hospital had tried calling me three times while we were in church.  She’d left a voicemail, too, asking me to call.  That always makes my heart pound.  🥴

While Larry went into Hy-Vee to get some groceries, I called the hospital and talked to a nurse (the one who’d called was off duty by then).  She thought probably the only thing the first nurse had wanted to tell me was that they’d moved Loren to a larger room so there is ‘more room to move around’, as she said.  (Probably also so there is more room for multiple nurses, the next time they need reinforcements, ha.)

“He’s been a sweetheart all day,” she informed me chirpily. 

I asked, “Are you sure it’s the same person we’re talking about?” and she laughed. 

“I had him up earlier,” she said, “and he walked down the hall with me, and did well.”

I asked about his medications.  She looked it up and told me they had ‘restarted his Sertraline’ Saturday night.  So that tells me that he was indeed ‘off his meds’ late Saturday afternoon when I was there.  I’ll betcha the nurse I called ‘Gertrude’ did something about that; I knew she paid attention when I told her he was acting like he had done before being given that medication, and asked if they might have left it off for fear of a bad interaction with the anesthetic or the antibiotics. 

The Mercedes’ ‘Low Fuel’ notification was on, along with the query on the dash asking if we would like it to hunt for a gas station for us.  We declined (we know where we’re a-goin’, in our own little town), fueled up at Phillips 66 – and got 12¢ off per gallon, using the Upside App.

About the time we got home and I started putting away the groceries, my toes started cramping, just like they used to do when we were trying to clear out Loren’s house a year ago.  First a couple of toes on the left foot did it.  An hour later, toes on the right foot were doing it if I so much as lessened the pressure I was applying to them, bending them upwards against the hassock.  The second toe wanted to point straight down at the floor, all by itself.  Yeeowie.

Here’s a story I told a cousin of mine last night.  Seems like I put it in a recent journal, but I can’t find it... so, if I’ve already told you this, well, as Victoria said when she was about three, “Twice is better than nunce!”

When I was young, maybe about ten years old, I was sitting at the kitchen table with my parents, and Loren was there, too.  He would’ve been about 32.  He was reading the newspaper.  Daddy was drinking his coffee (‘Coffee Soup’, we called it, because he put so many different ingredients in it, hee hee), and Mama was tidying up the kitchen.  

Loren was reading the newspaper, and now and then he’d exclaim in horror or astonishment (he always was the dramatic sort), and then read aloud some dire piece of news to the room at large.

Daddy, who’d been reading (or trying to read) a pamphlet he’d gotten in the mail (probably ‘Sword of the Lord’ or something similar), finally looked at this grown son of his with some exasperation.  Then he slid his Bible (always right there handy) over in front of Loren, gave a little tug on the newspaper, and said, “What you need to do is to stop reading all that bad news, and read the Good News!”  He tapped a finger on the Bible.

Loren looked sheepish.  Then he folded up the newspaper and agreed, “Yeah, I do get a little carried away with that stuff, don’t I?”

I love the Bibles that were Daddy’s, with so many little notes jotted in the margins.  When I was wee little, I used to love carefully opening the cover of Mama’s Bible in order to read what Daddy had written in it when he gave it to her:  “To my darling wife Hester.”

We have Larry’s father’s Bible, too.  He had underlined Psalm 57:1, probably when he had cancer and knew his time was limited (he died when he was only 52):  “Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me:  For my soul trusteth in thee:  Yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast.”  He’d written in the margin beside that verse, “This is my prayer.”

So we had ‘Resting ’neath the shadow of His wings’ engraved on his headstone.  I still miss him; he was such a wonderful person.

We finally had a lovely, sunshiny day today with the wind only blowing at about ten mph – a rarity, for middle Nebraska in March.  So I swept (and swept) (and swept some more) the deck and took pictures of the Starry Log Cabin quilt outside in natural lighting.

The starlings are back!  There’s one right outside my kitchen window, making his funny vibrating metallic chirp.  His feathers are already brightening, and will soon have a gold gilt appearance to them.  (Picture is from Be Your Own Birder .com, taken by Hedera Baltica.)

A social worker called this afternoon to say that Loren might be discharged as early as tomorrow, and would need to be sent to a nursing home, since he will need wound care each day.

Now, several times when Loren was at the hospital, both this time, and when he broke his hip, there were workers who mistakenly thought he was living with me.

So I said (in what I thought was a nice, matter-of-fact tone), “He does live at a nursing home.”

And then the social worker said in a pitying voice, as if I was too stupid for words, “He lives in an assisted living facility.  They cannot care for the wound there, and workers who can only come every other day.”

Social workers are so much more intelligent and knowledgeable than us mere mortals.

I wonder if I need to inform all those workers at Prairie Meadows, who mistakenly refer to their facility as a ‘nursing home’, that it is not a nursing home; it is an assisted living facility?

I did know it was an assisted living facility; and it’s also a Special Care Center.  It sure seems like a nursing home, what with all the registered nurses running around the place nursing this one and that one. 

No, I must be wrong.

They are assisting this one and that one.  They are caring for this one and that one.

Ah, well.  Let’s hope that if the hospital staff again neglects to give Loren his Sertraline, it’s Little Miss Know-It-All Social Worker Princess who must next cross his path.  He is – and always has been – totally unenamored with Know-It-All Princesses.

Back to the quilting!  Do you ever wonder if ladies who have put together really beautiful quilts ever worry that their quilter will like it so much, she’ll go on the lam to some foreign country with said quilt tucked under her arm??  😂

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