Journal: Sandhill Cranes, Calves, Buffaloes, & Buffleheads, Oh, My!

Every time my screensaver comes on (I have it set to activate after four minutes of nonuse), a few recent pictures and a few old pictures go scrolling through – and I am so glad I spent all that time scanning my old photos.

I recently sent this picture to Victoria, asking, “Do Carolyn and Violet know what your room at our house on 42^nd Avenue used to look like?”

(Do you think the child had enough dolls?)

The grandchildren enjoy seeing old pictures of their parents, whether indoors or out, doing all sorts of interesting things.

I spent the majority of Tuesday quilting.  The nifty thing about my 4” swag ruler is the open circle in the middle.  I’m not so good at using it for making actual circles (they come out looking like amoebic squircles), but I am really good at using it as a trigger guard.  I can spin that thing around so fast, I’d do Wyatt Earp proud.

Keith and Korrine recently received results of DNA tests.  Keith has been looking at an ancestry website, and he found a little clipping about my Great-Grandfather William Alexander Bennett, from the Journal Gazette of Mattoon, Illinois, June 06, 1932.  He wrote to ask me about it, and to make sure it was the correct Grandpa Bennett.  In the clipping under his picture, it says, “W. A. ‘Eck’ Bennett, who holds the longest membership in the Ash Grove Christian Church.  He has been a member for more than 60 years.  Mr. Bennett is a son of William ‘Uncle Billy’ Bennett, one of the charter members.”

I wrote back, “Yes, that is my Grandma Swiney’s father.  Everyone really loved Grandpa Bennett.  He was the one who would preach when the minister was gone – and people said quietly to each other that they should contribute more to the pastor’s vacation fund, so that Mr. Bennett could preach more often.

“When he got old, he sold his house, divided his sizeable fortune and gave it all to his six children – and then he traveled from house to house, living with each one for two months of the year.  The children and grandchildren could hardly wait for him to come, and were sad when he’d leave.  People in the community called him ‘a gentleman of gentlemen’.”

Here is Great-Grandpa Bennett and his wife, my Great-Grandma Ella Ada Bennett.

Below is their daughter, my Grandma Lola ‘Essie’ Bennett.

That evening, Hannah wrote a funny little tidbit about her newest Australian shepherd, Willow:  “I have thought Willow didn’t catch on when we were teasing up until today.  I was holding coffee with a lid on it, and she came up on my lap to ask for something.  I said, ‘Here, have a drink.’  She sniffed the cup, and then held very still, just staring, with her piercing gaze, into the room.  Suddenly she whirled around and pounced on me with her front paws.  She was quite pleased that I thought it was funny.”

Willow is such a smart and funny doggy.  Plus, when pets are treated with love and care and are close to us all day long, they learn to understand laughter, and cause and effect, pretty quickly.

When I quit quilting for the evening, I wasn’t quite done with the second row of the quilt.  I posted pictures on a few Facebook quilting groups, writing “... my customer’s Postage Stamp quilt.” 

The first comment under the pictures:  “What is the name of the quilt?”  🙄

I politely answered.

Knowledgeable Nellie took over the conversation thread:  “It’s not a Postage Stamp quilt.  They are nothing but the tiny squares, no white spaces between.”

I generally let these things go – but it was my thread, my post, my photos, and the other lady had asked me.  So I replied.  I try to be factual, and nonconfrontational (although perhaps my desire to box someone’s ears comes through, in the end, heh):  “There are many varieties of ‘Postage Stamp’ quilts.  Some are indeed nothing but small squares (usually 1”, as is the case with this one).  Others have blocks of small squares interspersed with other blocks.  For instance, here’s a vintage Postage Stamp quilt.  Isn’t it pretty?  😊”  (Look, I even added a smiley face.  That’s as good as saying ‘Bless your heart’, don’t you think?)

The actual pattern name of my customer’s quilt is ‘Settler’s Trail’, and is available here:  

www.primitivegatherings.us/the-settler-s-trail  

The first lady wrote back after a bit, “Just called the store.  The pattern is on its way.  Thank you!”

Nellie arrived back on the scene.  “Not to be argumentative [ha!], but a classic Postage Stamp quilt was/is 1” finished squares in any manner of arrangement.  Look it up.”

Well, that was snotty.  (And I did look it up.  That’s how I found the vintage Postage Stamp quilt, above.  Furthermore, it does not have to be 1”; it can be ½” and up to, oh, say, 2”.)

This, from a woman who posted a picture of a Tumbling Block quilt and asked how to quilt the ‘Tumblers quilt’. 

Here’s a Tumbling Block quilt:

... and below is a Tumblers quilt:

The Tumblers quilt is so named because the shapes resemble tumblers, or drinking glasses.

And no, I did not correct her.  (I’ll just write about her in my journal, haha!)  People who believe they know more than everyone else will continue to labor under that delusion, no matter how often it is proven otherwise.  I only responded to her first statement because she had addressed the lady who had asked me for the pattern.  It’s aggravating when people shanghai my posts to spread their misinformation.

(Ever notice how people who want to argue often start off their argument by saying, “Not to be argumentative, but...” before they launch into argument?)

Wednesday, Loren was released from the hospital and moved to a nursing home where they are equipped to do specialized treatment for wounds.  Hopefully, he will be able to return to Prairie Meadows when the wound heals.  We are reserving his room there.

That night after church, Larry began attempting to set up his new hearing aids, which had been delivered that day.  They come with a tablet fully programmed to aid in this endeavor, and it needed to be linked with his phone.   BUT.  He fell asleep while working on it, fingers on his phone – and he managed to inadvertently turn on Bixby Voice, and didn’t know how to turn it back off.

Voice apps make a phone work differently.  When you tap on an icon, for instance, the voice first tells you what the app is – and then you must double-tap it to activate it.  This happened another time, only the voice he turned on that other time wasn’t Bixby.

I looked it up, found instructions, disabled Bixby.

The phone went on listening to us and trying to answer us, in both word and speech.  Furthermore, the speech balloon covered a good section of the apps, including the Settings icon; so if we wanted to click on something in that location of the screen, we had to be vewy, vewy quiet until it went away.  Rotating the phone didn’t help, since everything rotated, speech balloon included.

I re-enabled Bixby.  I re-disabled Bixby. 

The phone went on listening and talking. 

I restarted the phone. 

It listened.  It talked.

I hate smart-alec phones.

I disabled the side button as an on-switch for Bixby.  The phone, still listening to everything we said, went on trying to answer.  The majority of its answers consisted of “I do not know the answer to that.” 

I hate stupid smartphones.

I finally, finally realized, when the stupid ‘answer line’ got out of the way long enough that I could read something under it, that Larry had not only activated Bixby, but also Voice Accessibility, in addition to another function of the side button.

I disabled the side button for anything other than the Restart/On/Off function and disabled Voice Accessibility.  And then his phone was back to normal, and I finally got to go back to my quilting room at 12:30 a.m., where I quilted for an hour and a half before throwing in the towel.

Row 3 was finished; two more to go. 

Here are Dorcas and me taking pictures at Henry Doorly Zoo back in... hmmm... 2000, I think.  Reckon we got identical pictures of the same animal?  😄

Keira has the cutest little gold shoes with ruffles on the vamp.  I admired them Wednesday evening after church – and that very night, a picture of her Mama, Hester, scrolled past on my screensaver – and Hester was sporting cute gold shoes.  I pressed PrtSc, pasted it into an email, looked for a couple more shots in the folder that one had come from, and sent them to Hester, writing, “Tell Keira that her Mama and her Aunt Lydia had shiny gold shoes when they were young, too! 😊”

Thursday afternoon, Carolyn got new glasses.  She looks ever so cute in them, and was so pleased yesterday after church when I oohed and ahhed over them.

I quit quilting at a quarter ’til midnight.  I wasn’t quite done with Row 4, but my back was done.

I sat down in my recliner, turned on the heating pads, and then, wondering about a quilting friend, Mary Hulick, from whom we quilters on the MeWe Quilt Talk group had not heard for nearly a month, looked up her name.  And there was her obituary.  She had passed away March 8, just two weeks after her last post to our group, with pictures of a pretty quilt she was making.  She has made quilt after quilt for charity groups in the Ohio town where she lived.

She will be missed.  Funny how you can get to know people so well from online correspondence.  It’s always a surprise to realize I’ve never met some of the ladies I consider such good friends, after having known them 10, 15, and even 20 years.

I wrote a sympathy note on the funeral home’s obituary page, and let the MeWe group know.

Thursday, this picture of Victoria and Larry showed up on my screensaver.  I sent it to Victoria, and wrote, “You loved this little hooded jacket – and those shoes!  You liked to be ‘all pink and pink and purple!’, as you put it.”

Next, a picture of one of our kittens, Tad, scrolled through.  He was just a tiny new baby in this photo.  Hannah is holding him.

I got a little over one row of quilting done both Thursday and Friday.  I rolled the quilt forward at one point, thinking, There’s a possibility I could finish this ------ but there was yet another row!

“I hope this quilt isn’t like the widow’s oil and meal,” I wrote to the lady who pieced it, “and just keeps replenishing itself and growing, when I’m not looking.  😅”

Look how pretty the back is, there on the take-up bar.  It’s always fun to see the design work itself out on the back of a quilt.

We went to visit Loren on Saturday.  As always, he was very happy to see us.  He was doing well, and so will probably be returned to Prairie Meadows soon.  One of the nurses had told me on the phone that he thinks he is in a schoolhouse.  Saturday, a nurse told me that sometimes he decides it’s time to go home (which, amazingly enough, he thinks is in Columbus, even though he did not think he was home, when he was actually in Columbus).  They don’t have a secure enough system for someone who is as mobile as he is.  No locked front door, for instance.  They do have an alarm over his door – and he sets it off regularly.  He can go in and out of his room, of course, but they have to know when he does in order to monitor his activity.  Thus, the alarm.

Larry showed Loren pictures of the bed he is making for Walkers’ new boom truck (it is now mounted on the truck), and pictures of a pickup he’s working on in Genoa.  Loren must’ve asked at least half a dozen times how big the pickup is. 

“It’s a three-quarter ton,” Larry answered patiently each time, just as if it were the first time Loren had asked.

After leaving Omaha, we went west to the other side of Grand Island to see the Sandhill cranes.  Each year, about 600,000 of them migrate through Nebraska on their way to nesting grounds in the Arctic. 

We also saw buffalo grazing in a pasture near the river, and a large herd of cows with their very young frolicking, rollicking, romping calves.  The rancher and his son came along in their pickup to feed the cattle some hay while we were watching.  The truck was equipped with a bale bed that held two big round bales of hay.  They could be lowered, one at a time, to the ground behind the pickup.  I’ve never seen a setup like that before.  Pretty neat, the way it worked.

It started out as a pretty, sunshiny day, but got chilly and overcast.  Late in the afternoon, cold raindrops fell now and then.

We ate supper at the TA Travel Center truck stop near Alda.  While we waited for our food, I ordered hot tea, and it was brought to me with hot water in a cup, along with a pretty handled ceramic tray holding a small plastic teapot with more hot water, a couple of Earl Grey teabags, and four packets of honey (though I had asked for lemon, and no honey).  But that was okay; I like plain tea just fine – and I could see that the only waitress was hurrying to and fro, doing her best to take orders and get everyone’s food to them as quickly as possible.  Fortunately, there weren’t too awfully many people there.

I put a teabag into the water and let it steep for a minute.  I tasted it.  Mmmm... it was good.  It was soon more than half gone.  I picked up the little teapot and refilled my cup — and ruined the tea.

It tasted (and smelled) like bleach!  Sodium hypochlorite bleach, to be exact.  That’s what restaurants often add to the rinse water for their dishes.

I opened a packet of honey, picked up my spoon, and ate the honey straight out of the packet.  I slurped down a few swallows of Larry’s diet Pepsi.

Oh, why didn’t I smell the water in that little plastic teapot before pouring it??  Plastic absorbs the odor and taste of chlorine bleach.  We’ve been to cafeterias before where the plastic plates smell the same way – and they make the food taste bad, too.  Do they have to poison me, to keep bacteria from killing me??!!!

When the waitress, a lady who was probably in her mid-50s, came hurrying back to our table with the food, I asked for a glass of diet Pepsi.  I did not complain about the water.  It wasn’t her fault, and what could she do about it?  I knew she had another table to serve, and I also could see there was only one cook.  There were tables that needed to be cleaned off, and it looked like the waitress was the only one to do it.

It would take her half a minute to get the Pepsi; but a complaint about the tea would make things difficult for her.

I tucked the second teabag into my purse and launched into my buffalo burger, with sliced jalapeños, onions, lettuce, tomatoes, bacon, and some kind of spicy sauce.

Yummy, that was good.  Really hot, and really good.

I ordered fresh fruit with it, expecting strawberries, pineapple, blueberries, etc.  But I didn’t ask.  Why didn’t I ask?!

It was honeydew.  ((...shudder...))  I don’t like honeydew.  It’s even worse than cantaloupe!  Aauugghh.

BUT! – the jalapeño slices were sooo hot, I couldn’t even taste those honeydew chunks.  They were cold and juicy... exactly what I needed to cool off my mouth.  I scarfed them down until suddenly I could taste them, and then I switched to diet Pepsi.

Larry, meanwhile, ordered a southwestern omelet and pancakes.  It looked scrumptious, and he said it was scrumptious.  However, they brought him only a small cup of syrup and a few butter patties to go on all those pancakes.  This, for a man who likes a generous amount of peanut butter with a lot of syrup stirred into it, until his pancakes are simply drowning in the mixture.  It’s a wonder he didn’t cry.

But we got full, full enough that we left food on our plates when we departed.  We left the waitress a tip, and commiserated with her at the cash register – and yes, she was the only one running the register, too.  She told us one worker had moved away and another was sick, and they had been shorthanded all day.  Poor lady; she looked tired.

We headed for home.  It rained a little, but by the time we turned northeast from Grand Island, it had stopped.  I figured the one inch or less of snow that the weatherman had predicted would probably turn into nothing but a cold wind, as often happens.

More pictures from our excursion are here.

Sunday morning, I got up a little after 6:30 a.m. and began getting ready for church.  Shower... shampoo... make coffee... dry and curl hair... 

At twenty ’til 8, I happened to glance out the window.

!!!

We had almost a foot of snow out there!  I dashed for my camera.

See the little dark-eyed junco on the railing, far left?

Next, I woke Larry up.  There was a lot of snow-blowing and plowing and scooping for him to do, if we wanted to get to church!

He headed outside at 8:30.  He scooped the front walk, then attached the snow blade to his pickup and plowed driveway, lane, and enough of Old Highway 81 that we could get to the main road.  At 9:10, he came in for the keys, then went out to start the Mercedes and back it up the sloped driveway a bit. 

It wouldn’t go.  There was ice under that snow.

Larry scooped some more.  We’d used up all the deicer a while back.

At a quarter after 9, I texted the kids:  “If we aren’t at church this morning, don’t worry; it’s just because we couldn’t get out of the driveway.  The Mercedes needs snow tires.”

Teddy responded, “The highway is slick also; a couple of vehicles slid off by my house.”

Larry finally got the Mercedes backed up the drive to the front walk.  He came in to take a shower and eat breakfast.  We wouldn’t make it for Sunday School, but we’d be there in time for the main service at 11.  I pulled up the church’s website and listened to the Sunday School service as it was streamed live.

Last night, this picture of Lydia, at about age one, with her little toy piano scrolled past on my screensaver.  I grabbed a screenshot and sent it to her, writing, “I showed you (with a great deal of enthusiasm) that you could play Taps and Amazing Grace on this thing.  You watched silently.  When I was done, you stared at me with big eyes and said, ‘Loud.’  🤣”

She wrote back, “😂 I actually remember that.”

This morning Keith sent pictures of the snow they are getting in Salt Lake City. 

“We had up to 6” predicted,” he said.  “We have over a foot, and it’s still snowing.”

A surprising amount of our snow melted yesterday afternoon in the bright sunshine, even though it only got up to 36°.  It was 29° at noon today, but the snow on the roof was melting so quickly, it looked like it was raining when I looked out the windows.

Larry came home at 5:20 p.m. today wondering what was for supper.  I’d just put a deer roast, potatoes, and onions into the French oven not 15 minutes earlier. 

“If you wanted supper at 5:20,” I informed him, “you needed to tell me a whole lot sooner!”

He laughed and said he would eat a ‘snack’, go to Genoa to work on vehicles, and eat supper when he got home.  So down the hatch went some yogurt, applesauce, cheese, Cheetos, and orange juice.

Remember the remark a woman wrote last year under one of my photos from Wyoming that I posted on Facebook?  She wrote, “Why do people post all the photos they took??  Especially when so many are duplicate??”

A quilting friend who likes to look at my pictures just found that woman’s remark this afternoon.  After putting an emoji with a teardrop under the comment, she wrote, “Maybe they post them because people like me, people who never get to travel, LOVE to see them and oooh and ahhh over the beauty of our country!  If someone doesn’t enjoy them, they are free to scroll on by!”

I replied to my friend, “If she knew how many pictures I’ve taken and have NOT posted, she’d at LEAST give me credit for THAT!  😂😄  (Besides, I didn’t post them on HER page, did I?)”

Mrs. Don’t Duplicate won’t see these replies, though; because shortly after that first remark, she made another even nastier comment on another photo, and I decided she didn’t need to be in my Friends’ list.  Some people, I leave in the list for the entertainment value.  Her, I gave the ol’ Dithers’ boot.

(’Course, my Facebook page is Public, so anyone could click on it and view it; but she won’t automatically receive any posts, as she would do if she was in my Friends’ list.)

Back to the quilting!  It will take at least two more days to finish this quilt, and another one is waiting in the wings.

 

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

 

P.S.:  How to Get People to Give Blood Donations