Journal: Fledglings & Berninas & Instant Pots

 

I’ve been hearing baby cardinals for a week now.  Oh!  I barely typed that, when a female cardinal landed on the vines right outside my window.  She’s looking for bugs, and collecting little buds from the Boston Ivy, too.  Back she goes to the cedar tree.  The babies have obviously fledged, because the locations of the chirps keeps changing, as does the various spots in the trees where the parents return to feed the babies.  You just can’t mistake that high-pitched, metallic peep-peep-peepity-peep of baby cardinals.  The ‘peep-peeps’ increase dramatically in speed when the parents approach.

Last Tuesday afternoon, I took Bobby and Hannah a couple of packages of porkchops and a couple of packages of pork roast for their 23^rd wedding anniversary.  The pork is from a hog Teddy butchered.  He has quite a bit of it stored in our downstairs freezer.

That evening, I fixed porkchops in a skillet on the stove – and they were so tough and gristly, we couldn’t eat much.  I put the uneaten rest of the chops in the freezer; I would try recooking them in another dish with a better method.  That was an unsatisfactory supper.

By the time I warned Hannah that the porkchops would probably need to be pressure-cooked, Joanna had already baked them in the oven – with similar results to my skillet-cooked chops.  🫤

Unfortunately, they’d had an incident of Instant-Pot-on-the-Stovetop-that-Accidentally-Got-Turned-On, and had not yet replaced it.  Hannah then found one on Facebook Marketplace, so they do have one now.

Here’s a picture I found on Prairie Meadows’s Facebook page of Loren reading about the History of Gum to a group of residents at Prairie Meadows.  They’re still celebrating National Candy Month.  (Let’s hope they didn’t also dole out gum to everyone, winding up with a whole lot of dentures having taken leave of the mouths in which they belonged.)

As I sewed that day, my machine was sounding noisy when it was just sitting – like a fan making too much noise.  

When Larry got home from work, he helped me open the back of the machine to see if there might be something we could oil, clean, or repair.  We peeked in – and closed it back up quick, before we did something wrong.  All those electronics!  Lots of electronics.  😬

It still went on sewing okay, so I continued using it until quitting for the night.

Wednesday, I turned the machine on again, and the noise seemed louder than ever.  Not wanting to damage the machine, I turned it back off.  Perhaps you’ll recall that when I was at Nebraska Quilt Company earlier this year to have my Avanté worked on, I discovered that the new owners are now selling Berninas.  I called them, asking if they also serviced the machines.  They do!  I made plans to take my 730 Artista there the next day.

There were a couple of other little qually-fobbles that just started, too:  when I lifted my foot from the pedal, it was stopping before the needle was all the way up, which keeps the top thread engaged with the bobbin; and a couple of times when I lifted foot from pedal, the machine decided, “No, I think I’ll just keep sewing.”  😯

I put the machine into its rolling bag, along with the foot pedal and the cord; then pulled out my Bernina 180.  I haven’t used it since February of 2020, when we went to Texas and bought the 730 from a lady who has been an online friend and fellow quilter for many years. 

I cleaned and oiled the 180, and then got back to the Little Darlings quilt.  The machine was working good, but it, too, was making a funny noise.  It happened when it was sewing, and sounded pretty much like a ‘You haven’t used me enough!’ noise.  I thought it would be all right until the 730 is fixed.  I’ll probably take it in when I pick up the 730.  Hopefully, nothing terribly serious is the matter with the 730.

Early that afternoon, the power blinked, then went off.  It was a hot day.  I hoped the electricity didn’t stay off; it wouldn’t be much fun getting ready for church, donning glad rags, whilst all hot and sweaty!  It didn’t; a minute or so later, it came back on.

That afternoon, Victoria sent ultrasound pictures she’d just gotten, writing, “Cute healthy little baby.”

I wrote back, “Thou knowest not how the bones do grow...” and “For I am fearfully and wonderfully made!”

“Hard to imagine how someone so tiny can be so perfectly formed!” replied Victoria.

Yes, indeed.  And hard to imagine how anyone can think disposing of a precious little soul can be anything less than murder. 

“Before I formed thee, I knew thee!” said our Great Creator. 

In order to get to the Quilt Company Thursday, I drove old Highway 30 instead of taking the new bypass, which now connects to the older bypass north of the city.  The new bypass also avoids the towns of North Bend and Ames.  It sure seemed strange, traveling Rte. 30 almost all by myself; that road has been bumper-to-bumper traffic ever since I can remember.

It was a pretty day for a drive.  I stopped for a few minutes at Fremont Lakes to take pictures.

The lakes were a lot calmer than usual; most of our lakes never show reflections on account of the wind whipping up waves.  Blue vervain was in bloom around the lakeshores.

The girl – I think she was about 12 – who services the Berninas has bright John-Deere-green hair!  (Well, she was probably older than that.  The older I get, the younger look the youngsters.)  (And she did seem bright, so there’s that.)  We plugged in the machine.

Annnnd...

You know what I’m going to say, don’tcha?

After making that rattly ‘loud-fan’ noise for two days straight, the machine was totally silent, other than its cute little John Philip Sousa tune when it comes on.  Even Ms. Green smiled and commented on that tune.

I know just how granddaughter Joanna felt when she was 3 (she’s 20 now) when she was trying to start up her little game on the computer, and it wouldn’t do what she wanted it to do:

“Mama!!!” she called.

“What?” Hannah called back.

“The computer is behaving to me!!!” she announced indignantly.

“What’s it doing?” asked Hannah.

“It’s... it’s... it’s just... looooking at me!!!” said Joanna. 

She’d forgotten that Desktop icons need to be clicked twice.

That’s all my machine would do:  loook at us.

I gave the young lady a short list of things that needed to be checked, then went on to Omaha to visit Loren.  Fremont is over two-thirds of the way there, after all.  It’s 58 miles to the quilt shop, and another 25 ½ miles to Prairie Meadows.

Once again, I got there at suppertime.  Loren was the only one at his table – but there were bowls of yummy-looking chef salad sitting at all four places around the table.

My stomach rumbled.  (I told granddaughter Keira last Sunday night at the wedding reception – she was sitting next to me – that when stomachs make that noise, it’s because they’re so hungry, they’re chewing on your backbone.  She was laughing before I even finished the sentence.)

I helped myself to a bowl of salad.

A girl came along doling out plates of food, and asked if I wanted one.  

“No thank you,” I smiled.  “This will be enough.”

The next time she walked by, I had a plate of food.  🤔

Every table had a big, beautiful bouquet of fresh flowers that day – a different bouquet on each table.  It was quite pretty.  Why didn’t I take a picture of it??  The one at Loren’s table had yellow roses, Shasta daisies, and lilies in it, and looked a lot like this one:

Everything was fairly quiet, while everyone ate.  And then all of a sudden, at a table over in the corner, some man started bellowing, “You stay out of my tray!”  (He meant ‘plate’.)  “I didn’t come in here just to have you reaching into my tray!” 

The sentences were less sensible than that, but I didn’t write it down soon enough, and I can never remember later what they said.

Across the table from him sat a woman with her index fingers in both ears.  😆

No wonder the ladies like Loren better.  If one of them starts reaching for something – anything – of his, he just hands it to them, with a smile.  (He even does that with my phone, if I’m not johnny-on-the-spot to grab it.)

As we chatted about this and that, with me carrying on the bulk of the conversation, Loren asked me, “Is Daddy home?”

I said, “Yes,” and hurried on to another topic of conversation.  (Daddy is home.  Home in heaven.)

He then told me, “I’ll be coming home this weekend.”

If he ever gets truly upset about not coming home, wherever he thinks ‘home’ is, I have not been told about it.  I doubt that he does, since he does not seem the least bit anxious or disturbed about it when he mentions it.

When I left, I told the pretty black nurse who let me out that I very much appreciate how they treat my brother, and how they treat me, too. 

Some friends were discussing the price of U.S. postage stamps, and the cost increase that will happen on July 9^th.  I helpfully suggested buying ponies and delivering one’s own mail by Pony Express.

This caused me to recall how I tried and tried to tell my brother, back before we knew he had dementia, that it really, truly, was better and easier to put a stamp on a bill, put it in his mailbox, and lift the flag.  But no, he insisted on driving each and every one of his local payments to the local businesses.

At one point, I discovered he was putting stamps on the envelopes before he delivered them.  Maybe he’d actually planned to mail them or put them in his mailbox, and then thought better of it?  Who knows.  I think he actually had symptoms of dementia even before his previous wife Janice passed away.

Speaking of ponies and horses, I always wanted a horse when I was little.  I coaxed and wheedled, wheedled and coaxed, until I could clearly see that it would be wise to quit all that coaxing and wheeling.  (But I really couldn’t understand what in the world would be wrong with having a horse in the back yard at the parsonage.  ha)

At last week’s wedding, I was sitting next to Keira, as I mentioned.  I opened my little laser-cut favor box, took out the small net drawstring bag, untied the ribbon, and ate a couple of nuts.  I tried a light blue M&M, and discovered they were quite hard.  My teeth protested. 

“Are the M&Ms too hard for you?” I asked Keira.

“No!” she exclaimed, popping one into her mouth and crunching it in demonstration.

There were cousins on all sides, so I looked surreptitiously this way... that way... and then stealthily slid my three remaining M&Ms onto her plate.  She started grinning.  I put an index finger to my lips, signaling her to keep very, very still.  She wrinkled her nose and grinned all the more. 

I looked up to see Ian, 7, down at the end of the table next to Jeremy, putting an index finger up to his lips, signaling me to be quiet.  hahaha  He’d seen the whole thing.

On my way home from Omaha that day, I stopped at the Wal-Mart on the east side of town, planning to buy an Instant Pot, since I figured the best way to solve the continued problem of tough meat (as we no longer get Schwan’s meats) was to pressure-cook it.  I’ve never had an Instant Pot, but several of our kids do, and they’ve given us some tasty meals made in those pots.  They’ve cooked cheaper cuts of meat that turned out tasting like filet mignon.  (I nevah, evah exaggerate, you know.)

The shelves for the Instant Pots, crockpots, slow cookers, and other electric ovens and pots were practically empty.  There were no Instant Pots at all.  🫤

When I got home, I pulled up the website... looked at the Instant Pots (was told they were in stock and I could pick one up the next morning 🙄)... and ordered a 6-quart one to be shipped directly to my house.

I then headed upstairs to my quilting studio and worked on the Little Darlings quilt.

Before quitting for the night, I had finished the 8-point star blocks and sewn all the blocks together into rows.  I would sew the rows together the next day.  As I’d feared, I ran out of one of the fabrics.  Three blocks sport a few patches that are unlike the rest.  Can you spot them?

One of the blocks is in this picture – in the bottom left corner.  The background triangles are a mottled dark cream color, rather than the itty-bitty squares of the background of the squares.  The mottled fabric registers an almost identical shade in grayscale as the stuff with teeny squares, so I figured I could get by with it.

After using the Bernina 180 since Wednesday, the odd noise it was making when I first started using it had gone away, and it was behaving normally, thankfully.  I thought it probably would; it really didn’t sound like a terribly serious noise.  I’ve refilled the bobbin several times now, and cleaned the bobbin race and put in a drop of oil each time.  I’m sure glad I have a good backup!

Friday at noon, Levi texted me, “How are you today?”

“I’m dine and fandy!” I promptly responded.  “And you?”

“Dine?” he asked.  “What did you eat?”  (He knew what I meant.  😆)  “I’m okay,” he continued, “despite the dog pulling me into traffic.”

“Eeek!” said I.  “Which wayward dog did that?”

“The big one,” he told me.

“Did he forget how to ‘heel’?” I asked.

“It was mostly because I was on my bike at the time,” Levi explained.  “He is bad at that, when beside a bike.”

I told him about the dog I had when I was a young teenager:  “I taught my dog Sparkle to heel, keeping her shoulder right beside my left knee when we walked.  Then I switched to bike riding – and the poor doggy was ‘hardly bestead and hungry’ (oh, wait, that was from Isaiah) — trying so hard to keep her shoulder at my kneecap!  (I had no leash on her)

“She’d lurch forward... slow... lurch forward... slow --- trying so hard to stay lined up where she knew she belonged.  I kept laughing, telling her, ‘It’s okay, it’s okay!’ – and she’d tilt her head up, look at me, and say, ‘OOooorrrph, ooorrrph!’ in her funny way.  Eventually she realized she’d have to line up with the sprocket on the bike, rather than my knee.”

Larry came home for lunch, and mowed the yard before going back to work.  The mower sounded like it was on its last leg.  I peered out the window.  He was riding the John Deere tractor.  Figuring he probably couldn’t hear it well enough to know something was the matter, I texted him:  “That mower sounds terrible.  What’s wrong with it?”

Shortly thereafter, the mower stopped, then started back up again after a few minutes, sounding just fine.  Maybe he’d gotten out a different mower?

No, it was the same mower.  Something that holds the blades and/or the mower deck was loose and about to fall off!  He tightened the bolts, and now he doesn’t have to have bearings replaced like he thought.  It always pays to take a look, particularly if your hearing doesn’t work good enough to tell you exactly what the racket is.  😉

That afternoon, this picture of Hannah and Victoria went scrolling through on my screensaver.  I grabbed a screenshot and sent it to both of them, writing, “I like this picture.  💗”

Hannah wrote back, “I always liked that one.  Wonder where that outfit went?  I liked it a lot.”

“I have no idea,” I replied.  “Did any of the younger girls wear it?  I don’t recall that they did.”

I always wonder, how did some of the kids’ outfits seemingly vanish into thin air?  It’s a mystery.

Victoria sent me a picture of herself with some of her classmates and their children.  If we would add in the rest of their classmates (12, all together) with their offspring, there would be a total of 22 children!  Two of the girls in the class married two of the boys in the class:  Victoria and Kurt, and my great-niece Sarah Kay and her husband Lucas.

Here are a couple more pictures I sent to Victoria that day.  There’s Larry with Victoria when she was 7 ½ months.

Below is Victoria, ready to go somewhere, having collected everything she thought she needed.  (However, the blood is rushing to one of the dolls’ heads.)

That day, I sewed the rows of the Little Darlings quilt together, then attached a border.  What would I use for backing?  I have few large pieces of fabric in my small stash.  I looked at Hobby Lobby’s website to see what time they closed... started to hurry out of my quilting studio toward the stairs – then changed tack and walked across the landing into my little office where I have my fabric totes.  Halfway through the stack of bins, I hit pay dirt on the third one I opened:  there was a large piece of blue and gold flower print.  

It’s from the Countryside Collection by Maywood Studio, and it’s left over from the Atlantic Beach Path quilt.  Perfect!  I could back little Eva’s quilt with leftover fabric from her Daddy and Mama’s quilt.  Some of the blues on the top are from The Quilt Crossing in Boise, Idaho, purchased with a gift card I received when the Atlantic Beach Path won Best of Show at the Boise Basin Quilt Show last year. 

But... would there be enough?  I unfolded it and measured.

There would!  I would need to piece it, but there would be enough.

Next, I pieced together some high-loft poly batting, then loaded everything on the frame.  I was ready to start quilting!  Mañana.  It was bedtime.

It rained all morning Saturday.  I walked into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee – and heard a bird in the living room!  I couldn’t see it, but I could sho’ ’nuff hear it.  Where was it???!  It was chirping away.  It was a robin, and it sounded like a young one. 

After looking around and not finding it, I continued with what I was doing.  Better that it wasn’t flapping frantically about the place.  The rain was supposed to stop in about 15 minutes; I would prop the door open then, and try to round it up.  And out.

How on earth did a bird get into the house?!  We no longer have cats or pet door through which they could’ve brought it.  Did Larry let it in when he went to work that morning??  What in the world.

Larry came home then, and he finally spotted the bird.

It was indeed a robin, and a baby one, as I suspected.  It was in the windowsill, stranded between an inner and outer pane.  It had slipped in from the top, where there’s a gap.  Poor little thing; when I leaned over the loveseat and peered at it, it stared at me with frightened eyes and cheeped loudly.  Its mother was hopping nervously about in the nearby apple tree, chirping worriedly, trying to coax her baby to come.

Larry went outside, lifted the outer pane, and the baby flew, little wings pumping hard, to the tree where its mother was sitting.  Larry got soaked, as it was still raining; but I wish all our rescues were so easy and so successful!  😃

Above picture is from Under My Apple Tree.

Since I had visited Loren on Thursday, I stayed home Saturday and quilted.

In the pictures, the dark cream of the top always looks darker than it really is, and the white background of the backing (above) looks very white, because I used a flash.  But in real life, the colors do match quite well.  I was so pleased to find that big piece of fabric!  I remember that I felt regretful after buying that much of the stuff and then not using a whole lot of it.  I was making the One-Block-Wonder part of the quilt, and had to cut several large chunks from the fabric at equal intervals, so that the repeats matched and I could cut the hexagon wedges from them. 

That afternoon, Lydia sent pictures of her flowering tea ‘blooming’ in the Teabloom teapot we gave her for her birthday.

“This tea is really good!” she said.  “I added a little honey to it.  😋 Malinda was so excited watching it. 😍”

Isn’t it pretty?  It did ‘bloom’, didn’t it!

We gave Dorcas a set for her birthday, too, and today she sent a video of her tea heating and ‘blooming’.

By a quarter ’til eleven Saturday night, I had reached the halfway point in the quilting of the Little Darlings quilt.

The 180 was sounding even better; I think the oil I put in each time I wind and insert a new bobbin has finally worked its way into whatever parts were complaining.

Since Larry helped me drink the Butter Pecan coffee I made that morning, I decided to make a couple of cups using the French press.  It takes longer and is sorta fiddly, but I like it.  It tastes a lot like the first half-cup of coffee I steal from the coffee maker each morning, though I add half a cup of hot water to it.

Yes, yes, I do know that French press coffee, being unfiltered, raises cholesterol and triglycerides.  So it’s a good thing I only make a couple of cups with the French press about once every three years, ay?

The more troublesome way of making it, along with the more bothersome way of cleaning the press, will keep me from drinking so much I’ll have a heart attack, I imagine. 

The Instant Pot arrived that afternoon.  Last night after church, I got it out of the box, read the instructions, and soon had a couple of porkchops cooking in it.  They’d been marinating in some of Larry’s scrumptious marinade for over 24 hours.  The cooking program for meat had decided that 35 minutes was the right amount of time.  Was it?

I figured the thing was smarter than me, and let it do its thing.

While the chops cooked, Larry went off on a 20-mile bike ride.

When the timer went off, I let the pressure release ‘naturally’ instead of switching open the little vent, as this allows it to continue cooking for a few minutes.  Judging from Tuesday’s porkchops, a few extra minutes wouldn’t hurt these chops at all.  Also, they were quite big.

Larry got home, the pressure valve descended with a little ‘tink’, and I removed the lid. 

Yes!  35 minutes plus the ‘natural pressure release’ was indeed the right amount of time.  Mmmm, those porkchops smelled soooo good.  The meat was falling off the bones, it was so tender.  We each ate half of a porkchop and saved the rest for tonight’s supper, which we had with 12-grain toast and vine-ripened tomatoes.  I made smoothies with Schwan’s vanilla ice cream and dark sweet cherries for dessert.

Lydia emailed me this morning, “I completely forgot to give you back your National Parks card.  🙈”

“Well, we won’t need it to get onto Christine’s property for the picnic tomorrow, 😆” I assured her, and then added, “(My children continuously make me happy about my own progress toward Alzheimer’s.)”

Having traveled this road with Loren, I must say that I think of it every time I forget something, or do some oddball thing like trying to flip on a light switch on the wrong side of a doorway.  We’ve lived in this house for over 20 years now; I should know where the light switches are!  🙄

Larry changed the oil in the Mercedes tonight, and then went to the grocery store.  In addition to the usual dairy products, we needed food for our church picnic tomorrow.  I think I’ll make ground venison meatloaf.  I have a large bag of corn on the cob, too.  I have some Martha White Wild Berry muffin mix packets.  Larry brought home green and red grapes, strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries, so I’ll make a fruit salad.  He got lemonade, and we always take a five-gallon Thermos of ice water.  That’ll be enough to add to everyone else’s generous food offerings. 

As I type, I’m sipping a cup of cinnamon tea.  When I was a little girl, I liked tea with a ton of sugar in it – so much that you had to eat the last half-inch in the bottom of the cup with a spoon.  But, knowing sugar isn’t good for me, I’ve been drinking tea mostly sugarless for many years now, and I don’t mind it at all.

The only time I have creamer in my coffee is between Sunday School and church.  It’s my breakfast.  😆

Tomorrow is Dorcas’ 41^st birthday.  When she was five (I think), we were on our way home from Ag Park after watching the fireworks, having had our church picnic earlier in the day.  We were driving through residential areas and stopping here and there to watch people’s personal fireworks. 

Dorcas sighed happily and said, “Isn’t it just the nicest thing, that all these people – even people I don’t know! – are celebrating my birthday?”

I reminded her of that today, and she laughed, “Yeah, I remember when you burst my bubble and said that the picnic had been going on years before I came along.”  haha

The geraniums that Caleb, Maria, and Eva gave me for Mother's Day are blooming again.  They bloom in three colors:  red, pink, and white.  Aren’t they pretty?

Bedtime!

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