Last Sunday, ladies on my online quilting group were discussing jams and jellies they had made from wild grapes. It reminded me of the wild plums we have picked at rest areas in Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Missouri, Colorado, Nebraska... and maybe even Arkansas. Here are pictures I scanned last year from my old albums – Hester, Lydia, and Caleb picking wild plums in Kansas. We wound up with many jars of jelly from all the wild plums the children picked.
Look closely at
Lydia’s eye (above). Can you see that it’s turning into a shiner?
That’s because
Caleb got a brand-spankin’-new baseball at a big truck stop, using his ‘souvenir
money’ from Grandma – and somewhere in the middle of Oklahoma where we were
picking up some wrecked pickups from an auction house/salvage yard for Larry’s
auto-rebuilding business, Caleb wound up from the shoelaces and let fly with
his baseball toward a big empty field on the far side of our truck ------ just
as Lydia rounded that same truck.
I, seeing what
was about to happen just a little too late, yelled, “STOP, STOP!!!” Both kids
stopped – Caleb, frozen in place immediately after letting go of the ball, and
Lydia, stalling out directly in the line of fire.
SMACK. That ball hit her right in the eye.
Caleb was crying
(“Is she blinded??”)... Lydia was trying not to... and she kept saying, “It’s
all right, you didn’t mean to,” and little sister Victoria, with every bit as
much interest as concern, kept inquiring, “Is blackenboo?” (All one word, after hearing Hester gasp, “Oh,
it’s turning black and blue!”)
Meanwhile, I was
running for a towel and some ice from the cooler. It was late May, 1998, so Victoria was 15
months, Caleb was 4½, Lydia was 7, and Hester was 9.
Later, Victoria
informed everyone at home, friend, family, or foe, “Lyddle-uh got blackenboo
eye!” until Lydia, who always had loads of sympathy for her little brother,
told Victoria, “Let’s not talk about it. It makes Caleb feel bad.”
“Oh,” said
Victoria, wide-eyed. So then she told a
few members of the family, “Club feels bad!” and left them to work out their
own conclusions. 😄
Our kids all
talked early. They were sometimes a
little short on explanation, though. 😂
The first picture
was taken on our way south, two days before the blackenboo eye.
Above is the six-door
Ford truck Larry built, towing the load of wrecked or burned pickups Larry
hauled back home to rebuild and sell, and here are our tents. We had all nine children with us on that
excursion; the three older boys had the smaller tent. There’s Keith, looking out the door. Caleb is just coming out of the big tent. We were at Kanopolis Reservoir, Kansas.
And right here is
exactly why I’m tickled pink that I got all those old photos of mine scanned.
When I go out to get the
bird feeders in the evenings this time of year, the tree frogs and the katydids
and other little night insects are having rip-snorting conversations. The tree frogs sound like souped-up crickets. I love hearing all the night sounds.
The hostas with the big white flowers are
starting to bloom. In a few days, the
yard will be glistening with all the white blossoms.
A recent
conversation with some friends reminded me of another story, this one from
September of 2011:
My sister Lura
Kay called and asked if she and her husband John H. (we always called him ‘John
H.’ because of the multitudes of other friends and relatives named ‘John’)
could bring out a bunch of cat food, because their kitty had to have a special
kind of cat food from then on, since he’d wound up with ‘feline kidney sand’.
Our cats smelled
that food and promptly went all gaga over it. John H. got some out of the box and let Tabby
eat it from his hand, and then he put a handful on the floor for both Kitty and
Tabby.
There they were,
both gobbling it down, side by side, their heads right together, and I remarked
on how unusual that was, since they usually fussed at each other if they got
too close when they were eating — and the words were barely out of my mouth
before Kitty snarled and lifted a paw, obviously planning to rake a quiff off
poor little Tabby’s hapless pate.
I shouted “HEY!!!!”,
stopping Kitty in mid-swat. Then, after
we scraped my sister off the ceiling, we all laughed till we cried. I tried to apologize, but I might not have
sounded entirely sincere through all that snickering and chortling.
“I don’t know why
I jumped so,” said my sister when she could talk again. “I used to shout at my kids like that all the
time!” hahaha
(No, she didn’t.)
Here are Lura Kay
and I in early 1962 (probably Easter Sunday). I was a year and a half, so she was 21. She sewed her dress, my coat and the matching
dress under it, and made her own hat.
Hannah went to the doctor on Monday, because
the suspected Covid had turned into what she feared was pneumonia. She
had an unsatisfactory visit with a young doctor who barely gave her five
minutes of his time, decided her lungs didn’t sound ‘wet’, whatever that means,
and then, despite giving no diagnosis at all, prescribed antibiotics and
steroids, just as if she did have pneumonia. Hannah’s health is fragile, as she
has severe asthma and sinus disease. After several quite frightening
bouts with allergies to various medicines, she has been trying hard to go the
homeopathic route, and has found some relief using various ‘protocols’, as they
call it; so this is a fairly big detour. We worry about those very
serious reactions to medication that she has had.
Last Monday, I attached the
final narrow dusty green border to the ‘Puppies & Kittens in the Flowers’
quilt, sewed the backing together, and then cobbled together some batting. The backing is a thin cotton, probably ‘lawn’,
that came from my late sister-in-law Janice’s stash. While it’s thin, it’s a nice quality and ever
so soft. It will be lovely for the
backing on Keira’s quilt. But... have
you ever pieced together a quilt backing in the only way possible to make it
fit the top, and one part runs on grain, and the other part runs cross-grain? Sometimes, it doesn’t matter. Other times, it shows, because the print is
not the same vertical as horizontal. I’m
using it anyway, and hope it’s not too awfully noticeable. The print is very small. I hope these pieces running at crossroads don’t
bug Hester (Keira’s mama) like they bug me!
That evening, Amy
brought a couple of boxes full of fabric and quilt blocks that she’d found at
the Et-Cetera Gift & Thrift Shop in Seward and I’d agreed to buy for $10. There’s a lot more than $10 worth of fabric in
these boxes. I don’t know if I’ll finish
the patterns as they were begun or not; I certainly won’t be using those thin
plastic templates for the Log Cabin blocks that were in one of the boxes! A note in one of them says, “An older lady put
the blocks together and cut all the strips and squares in the box.”
Tuesday, I got a notice telling me that an
order of Christmas gifts had been delivered the previous day. Neither Larry nor I had seen it. I walked all around the house, checking in
the garage. No big box.
The notice said, “Delivered, Garage / Other Door / Other Location at
Address. Your item was delivered to the
garage, other door or an alternate location at the address at 1:59 pm on August
7, 2023 in COLUMBUS, NE 68601, COLUMBUS,NE,68601.”
I notified the company that it was not here,
as they had requested me to do.
They responded:
Our courier
partners have suggested some common places where the package may have been
placed for safekeeping.
Carrier may
have placed it in a safer location, kindly check:
- Mailbox
- Porch
- Garage
- Any area out
of potential weather hazards
- Exterior
doors and other secure locations out of view of the street, such as under a mat
or near a back entrance.
In addition to
these locations please
- Check your
mailbox again as some packages come separately from your regular mail.
- Check with
others in your house or neighbours that may have accepted it.
We hope that
one of these suggestions helps you locate your package. If you’re still unable
to find it after checking these locations, please let us know within the next
24 hours.
We’ll do
everything we can to help you find a resolution.
Once more, I walked all around our
property... through the garage... was about to give up – when suddenly I
spotted two totally dilapidated boxes way out on our driveway beside one of our
vehicles. The box with the Christmas gifts was nearly open and falling
apart, and the other box looked like it had been used as a chock for the USPS
truck; but everything was still inside, thankfully. I let the company know, and went back to
quilting.
What in
the world is this soft, soft, lovely white batting that, every time I roll the
quilt forward, clings to the fabric and tries to shred itself?! Arrrgggghhhh! Now I remember having the same problem when I
used it before, some time ago, and thinking, I will never use this
stuff again, soft and nice as it is. Of course I couldn’t bring
myself to just toss the leftovers out (soft, soft!), and I didn’t mark it,
because I thought I couldn’t possibly forget. It’s lovely and nice, but it clings and shreds
dreadfully – and you’d never know it, until you try rolling it onto a frame between
fabrics.
I used it anyway.
And this will use it all up. Not all of the batting for this quilt is the
same kind, though it’s the same thickness and the same color. I like to break rules! – such as, “Never
combine different battings!” But ugh, I
had to remember to slide my hand between quilt top and batting with every inch
or two I rolled the quilt. 🙄 All of that stuff
is quilted in place now, thankfully.
Wednesday,
Victoria sent pictures of Willie; he is 18 months old. He’s so cute and funny.
That
morning while listening to the radio, I heard the news about the wildfires in
Maui – where Jeremy and Lydia and their four children had just arrived for a
vacation! 😯
I grabbed my laptop and texted them, “Are
the fires in Hawaii affecting you?”
Lydia replied, “You could say
that!” (You’d think she was English,
what with her penchant for understatements.)
(Come to think of it, she is English.) “Our place burned down a little more than an
hour after we evacuated. We have a place
to stay for now. There’s lots of smoke,
so Jonathan’s not having a good time with asthma. We hadn’t unpacked much, so we mostly got
everything out.”
Meanwhile, Jeremy called, and I talked
to him on the phone. He then sent me a
photo, captioning it, “View from our place now.” The fires can be seen not far to the
north.
They are now staying on the south
shores of the island. They
managed to get most, but not all, of their things out before they left the
Airbnb where they were staying. Some of
the clothes that had been wet from swimming, and Jeremy’s nearly new shoes, got
left behind.
The prairie grasses are so dry and
brown, it’s hard to imagine it’s Hawaii.
I picture Hawaii as green, green, and more green.
“You should’ve gone to Norway!” I told
them. “It’s nice and wet there.” I sent a picture – Norway is having severe
floods right now.
By afternoon, it was reported that six
people had died in the fires on Maui. That was bad enough; but now that toll has
risen to 99, and there are about 1,300 people still missing. It’s horrible; but as cellphone service
returned, the number listed as missing has come down from 2,000.
I’m so very thankful Jeremy and Lydia
and the children are safe, and so very sorry for those who have lost loved
ones, homes, and businesses.
By the next day, the 80-mph winds
caused by Hurricane Dora, some 500 miles to the south, had calmed, and they
were able to get helicopters into the air to drop water on the fires. The smoke died down enough that Jonathan is
fine now.
“Well, I hope you can somehow enjoy the rest
of your vacation,” I told Jeremy and Lydia. “Don’t let the alligators or the polar bears
cart off with any of the kids! And tell
all the kids, Grandma says, ‘I love you, each one of you!’”
I continued quilting Keira’s quilt, trying not to peel apart that soft
batting. These days, I pretty much stick
to Quilters’ Dream, using their wool (my favorite), 80/20, cotton, or poly in
various thicknesses. If I don’t have
time to place an order and have to buy locally, I usually get Hobbs Heirloom,
as no place in town carries Quilters' Dream. One of these days, I’m going to try Quilters’
Dream silk. But in the meanwhile, I’ve
been trying to use up all my batting scraps. I’m about to ditch that effort. Right there under my quilting frame is a nice
big roll of Quilters’ Dream wool, and under the cutting table is a new package
of Hobbs Heirloom, after all! You’d
think I went through the Great Depression, the way I scrimp and save. (Well,
come to think of it, I did have to scrimp and save, keeping nine
children fed and clothed.)
Someone on Facebook informed me in no uncertain terms that wool shrinks
every time you wash it. Plus, it’s
itchy, she added.
High-quality wool batting like Quilters’ Dream doesn’t shrink much at all,
only a wee little bit at the first wash, no more. In fact, Quilters’ Dream wool has a shrinkage
rate of about 1%, while most cotton battings has a rate of about 3%. (Quilters’ Dream cotton has a shrinkage rate
of 1%-3%, depending on the thickness [there are four thickness choices].) It is very soft, not itchy at all. It’s wonderful in quilts, not a bit like that
horrid old wool batting some companies used to sell. Also, it’s lighter in weight than cotton, and
more breathable, so you can use it year around. Next time you are in a fabric store that sells Quilters’ Dream, just feel
it, and you’ll see what I mean.
I’m very allergic to cheap wool; it makes me itch and causes little red
bumps all over. But if you could afford
Vicuña wool, you’d realize you aren’t allergic to all wools, after all. However... it’s $3,000 per yard! A Vicuña wool coat can easily cost $20,000. This wool comes from South American vicuña
camelids, which roam the Andes Mountains.
There are other, more affordable, wools that even sensitive people can use,
though. It all boils down to the
strength of the fiber. Thick, stiff
fibers do not bend, which leads to itching and irritation. The average thickness of normal virgin wool is
around 37-40 micrometers. The human
sensitivity threshold lies at around 25-30 micrometers.
All that big, lovely sales pitch – and Whatzername pooh-poohed the whole thing
in six words: “just not interested in
buying wool.”
Well, bah, humbug. And “Pshsshhawww,”
too, for good measure. (Learned that
last word from Larry’s grandma. 😆)
This is one of Murphy’s Lesser-Known Quilting
Laws:
If you wind up painting – uh, quilting
– yourself into a corner, and the distance you will need to travel to get to
where you need to quilt next makes it debatable whether it would be better to
retrace or to stop and restart, and you decide to retrace, you will immediately
run out of bobbin thread just as you complete the retracing and begin quilting
the new section.
When I started these quilts for the grandchildren, I said I was going to
‘quilt with restraint’, i.e., not quilt them too intensely.
Then I put together Keira’s quilt.
Look at all that white space in the borders, just look.
“How’s your restraint bone holding up??!!!! 😉” teased a quilting
friend after seeing my pictures.
As you can see, not well. Maybe this will be Keira’s ‘bed quilt’,
and I’ll have to make her a ‘cuddle quilt’ later? (Of course, then I would have to make all the
grandchildren ‘bed quilts’ and ‘cuddle quilts’. Help!)
All righty then, never mind all my blarney
about ‘not quilting too intensely’. But
at least I didn’t echo-stitch all those organic feathers arching over the
letter ‘K’, okay? Okay?!
By
Thursday afternoon, 36 people were known to have lost their lives in the fires
in Maui. It was hard to wrap my brain
around the fact that my very own son-in-law and daughter and their four
children have lost clothes and Jeremy’s new shoes to wildfire flames almost
3,700 miles away.
I went to wind another bobbin, glanced out my
upstairs window, and spotted what I thought might be an Amazon box out in the
front yard peeking out from behind a Douglas fir, perched atop a pile of Larry’s
insulation for our roof.
I went downstairs, put on my flip-flops, and
headed out to see.
It was not just one box, but four. The others could not be seen from the
house. They’d been there for a while;
one with an electric citrus juicer in it had been there since a week ago last
Sunday – 11 days. We’ve had many
thunderstorms in that time. Three of the
boxes were soggy and falling apart. Most
of the labels could no longer be read. They
were delivered by USPS – doubtless the same woman who put boxes out on the
front drive where they couldn’t be seen from the house two or three days earlier,
and then marked them as having been ‘delivered to garage or other door’. At least one of these boxes had been marked
as ‘delivered to front porch’.
The biggest box, the one I had finally
noticed from the upstairs window, had been delivered late that morning, and had
been out in the hot sun for at least five hours – and it had various things in
it that should not get hot (eye drops, Celsius drinks, etc.). That post woman knew good and well we
couldn’t see the boxes there on the northeast side of the front yard, as we
were not bringing them in the house! She
could clearly see they were getting damaged, too.
If I complain, though, she would probably
complain about our mailbox, which, after new neighbors put up their
boxes, isn’t level with theirs, and probably creates a problem for her. Also, she’d probably say Larry’s pickup and
that construction stuff is in the way, if she tries coming to our porch
straight from the front lane (though one can walk around it). Obviously, though, she sometimes pulls into
the paved driveway on the west and walks down the front sidewalk. It would be nice if she’d scatter our stuff
in the same general vicinity, instead of creating a scavenger hunt for us!
The light green diamond-shaped fabric in the
middle of this big 17” block was from a ribbon-tied fat quarter that Keira
herself gave me for my birthday a couple of years ago when she was just
3. She picked it out because there are cats, raccoons, squirrels, and
owls in the print.
For the letters of Keira’s name, which I am
putting down the right side of the quilt, I
used the Algerian font in Microsoft Word, enlarged the letters to the size I
wanted, printed them on thin newsprint, trimmed off excess paper, pinned the
letters to the quilt, and then for the first line of stitching, I stitched
right through the paper, using a ruler to keep the stitching straight. I then removed the paper and continued
echo-stitching with other thread colors.
I tucked another layer of batting under the border strip with the
letters.
Below is a
picture of my Wright’s EZ Flex Ruler. This
bendable ruler is great for marking the spines of feather plumes where I don't
want a spine heavy with thread. It has
inches on one side, centimeters on the other.
Sometimes I like to use it to make matching curves in opposing corners – I
just flip the ruler over to reverse the curve.
When I posted the picture, people thought
that bendable red and white ruler was a snake.
😂 One lady wrote,
“I can understand people posting pictures of their kittens and puppies on their
quilts, but a pet snake?!!!” and then, “Yes, I did eventually realize it
was not really a snake.” 😄
Speaking of snakes, one of
my bratty boys once found a small curvy branch with the bark colored sorta like
a snake, in green and brown patches. The
disrespectful urchin crept up behind me as I was hunkered down planting
flowers, and wiggled and rustled that stick through the leaves beside me. I, who am not {usually} too awfully, horribly
frightened of snakes, did three backflips and four cartwheels in quick
succession before capturing sonny-boy and throttling the giggles out of him. (No, I didn’t really throttle
him. He still lives.)
“I would
have just about had a heart attack,” responded one of my quilting friends. “My daughter woke up with one in bed with her.
I would have died for sure.”
“Yikes!!!”
I replied. “And eeeek, too!!!!”
One
morning Teddy, when he was a teenager, woke up, started to get out of bed, and
found a big garter snake on the floor of his downstairs bedroom. He dashed upstairs, got an extra pillowcase
out of the linen closet, ran back downstairs, captured it, and released it
outside.
His little
sisters, Hester and Lydia, listened to his tale, wide-eyed.
“How did
you get around it?!” asked Hester, shuddering.
“Oh,”
explained Teddy, “I just flipped upside down and used the suction cups on the
bottom of my feet to walk across the ceiling and step over the door frame, then
I dropped down in the hallway.”
They
giggled.
But Caleb,
who was a wee little guy of about 2 or 3, was later spotted over in the corner,
removing first a shoe, then a sock, whereupon he twisted his small foot as far
upside down as he could in order to inspect the bottom of it. 😂
Thursday, August 10th,
was Andrew and Hester’s 15th wedding anniversary. Since I was now in possession of two citrus
juicers (I have written to the seller to say I need to pay for it), I thought
maybe the one in the non-soggy, non-falling-apart, box would make a good gift
for them. Accordingly, I wished them a
‘Happy Anniversary’ and asked Hester if they had a juicer.
“We just have a
vintage glass citrus reamer,” she answered.
“Okay,” said I. “I’ll bring you a gift on Saturday, and you
must act very, very surprised when you get it.”
Friday, I posted some pictures of Keira’s quilt on a few quilting groups.
Here’s the kind of comment (given to me on one o’ them thar humongous
quilting groups on good ol’ Facebook) that I don’t really like. Read my answer and tell me if you can tell it
sorta lifted the feathery hackles on the back o’ me scrawny li’l chicken neck:
A lady wrote, “I hope she’s 30 ...not 3...so she can maybe....really
appreciate it!”
I replied, “Looks a lot like a little girl’s quilt, to me! She’s 5. She’s a dear little sweetheart. She’ll appreciate it, and she’ll give me a
big, huge hug, and say, ‘I love you, Grandma!’ And I’ll wish I had several more treasures to
give her.”
I’ve had people say similar things about other quilts I’ve made. Someone wrote, regarding the Colorwash Patch
quilt for Kurt and Victoria, “I do hope they properly appreciate and care for
this quilt; most young people don’t.”
And here’s another comment I got on one of my ‘overquilted’ photos that
same morning, on another of ‘those’ groups:
“On family quilts I just all over patterns. All others fancier”
Feeling testy, I replied: “I, on
the other hand, make my fanciest quilts for family.”
Give me credit, I did not add, “Grrrrr!” Or, “I obviously like my family better than
you do yours!” Or, “My family is
obviously a lot more lovable than yours!”
This kind of stuff sure does make me appreciate my lovely, nice MeWe Quilt
Talk group, where people don’t say such stupidities. I made it a point that day to thank them all
for being so pleasant, and for making it such a nice group.
I admit, I take things personally. I read comments like the one saying, “I hope
she’s 30..... not 3”, and I immediately think, You insulted my
little Keira!!! Put up your dukes,
old woman!!!
😆
A lady from Kearney called to talk to me about
showing the cream and white New York Beauty quilt in the Threads Across
Nebraska quilt show there October 13-14.
I had totally forgotten about it!
She contacted me... what, two years ago?
Three? And I had agreed to show
the quilt. I am to take it to the Kearney
Buffalo County Fairgrounds Expo Building on Thursday, October 12th,
by 11:00 a.m. – providing Jeremy and Lydia agree to let me abscond (again!)
with their quilt. I need to write a
paragraph regarding the ‘inspiration’ for this quilt.
That day, Loren’s sister-in-law, Judy, along
with her daughter Sara and Sara’s four boys, visited Loren, taking him a few
things for his birthday. Sara played the
grand piano there at Prairie Meadows and they all sang, and Loren joined
in. One of the songs was Day by Day,
which is one of Loren’s favorites. Then
they all sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to him.
He told Judy that Janice had made him a birthday cake.
He pretty much seems to have forgotten Norma
now, certainly that she was married to him; and now he has forgotten that
Janice passed away in 2014. A month or
so ago, he asked me how Janice was doing.
I said, “She’s fine.” Because she
is, in her heavenly home.
I was quilting away Friday evening,
really concentrating on my work, when suddenly, Aaarrrggghhh, a bat
came swooping into my quilting studio! I
did what I do best: I ran for my life and called for Larry. I have no pride, when it comes to bats. They always try to lay eggs in my hair!
A few minutes later...
Chapter 2: Larry got the bat, and I was quilting again. He was making fun of me. I was threatening to fix his clock. So everything was back to normal.
The bat has
now gone to a better place. ((Respectful
tilt of the head, complete with downcast eyes.))
If Larry isn’t around, I close off access to as much of the house as
possible and open a door in whatever part of the house the bat is doing
laps. He will soon exit the house.
Larry complains about this technique:
“You’re letting bugs into the house!”
‘Bugs’, indeed. Who cares about eeny-weeny leetle thangs
called ‘bugs’, when there’s a PTEROSAUR in the house, for cryin’
out loud?!!!
Late that night, I stopped with the quilting and
was responding to a few comments on Facebook regarding the Puppies &
Kittens in the Flowers quilt, when Facebook blocked me for “going too
fast.”
Huh?
I protested... they
let me back in... but it happened a dozen more times throughout the next couple
of days. Facebook is plumb nuts. I made my protests scintillating, sparkling,
and witty, in case an actual human should happen to read them: “I type 160 wpm. You’re just mad because you can’t type that
fast!” And “I know there are lots of
things you’ve programmed your bots to disapprove of, and lots of people you
don’t like; but I didn’t think you’d vent your spleen on innocent li’l ol’
white-haired quilting ladies like me, just trying to give other quilting ladies
a nice ‘thank-you’ for compliments on my quilting! Are you jealous, or what?!”
Some of my
friends told me they were no longer on Facebook because of snotty people saying
rude things, and because of Facebook’s ridiculous bots that block people who
aren’t doing anything wrong but let scammers and other scum through with
apparent ease.
I’m still on Facebook
because I’m evidently a descendent of that little girl Gypsy in ‘Night of the
Grizzly’ who, upon exiting the general store, walking out on the boardwalk, and,
spotting her brother out in the dusty street at fisticuffs with several town
ruffians, rubbed her palms together and exclaimed delightedly, “Oh boy!! A
fight!!!”
Saturday as I drove
through Columbus on my way to Omaha to visit Loren, I stopped at Andrew and
Hester’s house to give them the citrus juicer for their anniversary.
Here are ‘Before
& After’ shots of the Airbnb where Jeremy and Lydia and their family
were staying on Maui. They were told to
evacuate immediately... had time to get most of their belongings... and a
little more than an hour later, it burned to the ground. The photos were taken from the same vantage
point. Sobering pictures, aren’t they?
I got to Prairie Meadows at 5:00 p.m. and found
Loren asleep in the TV lounge/sitting area.
The staff was collecting people and taking them into the dining room.
The TV was blaring, so he didn’t wake up
right away when I said “Hi,” and called his name, though each time I did, he
smiled in his sleep. I patted his hand,
and then he awoke.
I gave him his birthday gift from us – a big
National Geographic book with beautiful scenic photos. Then I tried to get him to come into the
dining room, but he was positive he’d already eaten “at 5:00, and I’m full.” I showed him the time on my watch – 5:05
p.m. “You haven’t had a meal since noon,
and probably a small snack at about 2:30.”
He was surprised. “I must be confused!” (He used to never, ever admit to such
a thing.)
We went in the dining room, found a fairly
big table over against the wall with just two chairs, and sat down – with our
backs to the rest of the room, which suits me fine. Loren doesn’t get quite so distracted — though
he got distracted enough with the magazines I’d brought him. I kept pointing at the food on his plate...
asking if it was good (he said it was)... telling him it was getting cold (he
was unconcerned)... trying to stack up the magazines and the new book at the
back of the table (he retrieved them).
At one point, he extracted a couple of M&Ms from his pocket and
offered them to me, saying he’d ‘saved them’ for me. I declined, saying they hurt my teeth.
A while later, he pulled the entire bag of
M&Ms from his pocket (it was a birthday gift from Randy and Judy), offered
me some, and then ate a handful himself.
“Oh, no,” I exclaimed, “You’re back to eating
dessert first!”
He laughed, put the bag back in his pocket,
and had a few more bites of turkey. The
meal looked and smelled delicious, but I don’t think he touched his
vegetables. They looked good, too – a colorful
combination of snap peas, broccoli, carrots, sweet red peppers, and maybe chickpeas.
I finally pointed out the little dish with
his dessert – some type of cake – in the hopes he would at least eat that. He did.
He got interrupted once by a man with a
walker who came trundling up to Loren’s end of the table and began trying to ask
Loren something. His speech was garbled
enough, and there was enough noise in the dining room and kitchen, that I
couldn’t catch everything he said (and wouldn’t’ve understood even if I could’ve
heard). But finally he said, “I was
wanting to ask you if you noticed...” a bit of unintelligible gibberish... “...ice
cream sandwiches!”
Loren said yes, he liked ice cream
sandwiches, and wanted to know if the man was selling them.
Sometimes when Loren is having a conversation
with another resident, they each carry on their own conversation somewhat understandably,
with the usual hiccups as subjects change on them without notice – while the
other resident does the same, and the two conversations never meet, though they
are face to face. Trains on parallel
tracks, it is, with the occasional derailment.
Other times, they are actually listening to
each other and putting forth some effort to comprehend and respond accordingly;
but they stump each other regularly and often.
This time, it was the latter.
The man said no, he wasn’t selling them, and
wondered what Loren wanted to know about ice cream sandwiches.
“I thought I heard you say something about
ice cream!” said Loren with a laugh.
“No,” said the man (although he had). He mumbled a bit, trying to gather his
thoughts, then said something that Loren heard as ‘boat’ and ‘dock’, though I’m
fairly certain that’s not what the man really said.
“How many boats do you have docked out here?”
asked Loren with a good deal of interest.
The man was nonplused. “Boats?”
“Yes,” nodded Loren, “It’s a nice dock! You can keep quite a few there.”
The man looked blank.
“Are you trying to sell them?” asked Loren.
“Yes,” said the man, evidently deciding to go
with the flow.
“Well,” said Loren with a pondering look on
his face, “I could probably get out to see them in a day or two. It’s just past that big building and on up
the road over the hill, isn’t it?” He
gestured vaguely toward the windows.
The man, with some difficulty, turned his
walker and peered at the windows. “I
think so,” he said, looking back at me to see if I knew anything about this
confabulation. Loren looked at
me, too.
I smiled vaguely.
“All right,” answered Loren. “I’ll be there then, and we’ll see what you’ve
got, and how many I can use!” He frowned
thoughtfully. “I might need
some...” A pause while he tried to pull
up the word he wanted. He gave me a
hopeful look. Surely I would know
the word he was hunting for?
I gave him a vacant smile. I sure wasn’t going to suggest ‘money’,
though I knew that’s what he was trying to say, and have to spend the rest of
my visit explaining where his checkbook and his wallet and his money are!
He pushed coagulating items around on his
plate and looked up at the man. “And you
say you’ll have ice cream for us, too?”
Now the man really was discombobulated,
having wound up in a conversation with entirely different subject matter than
he’d ever intended.
He mumbled, he started to say something, he
gave up, he tried again. Finally, “I
guess I’ll go,” he said, sliding the walker around in a quarter-circle.
“Yes, you’d better,” agreed Loren
congenially, “You’ve got a lot to do before everyone gets there!”
The man went off looking a bit
shellshocked. He hadn’t even known he owned
a marina, and now he needed to go get all the boats shipshape and ready for
Loren to buy!
Loren looked at me, grinning a bit
sheepishly. “You never know when you
might need one,” he told me.
“Which, an ice cream sandwich, or a boat?” I
asked.
He snickered, then laughed. “Both!” he answered.
When he acts like that, I sometimes wonder
exactly what he really understands. But
if I ask questions, I’ll get a completely disjointed, disconnected, and
incohesive bit of illogic and absurdity.
And I was still hoping he would eat more of his meal. So I kept quiet.
Over on the other side of the room, a man
coughed loudly. He cleared his throat several
times — and the last ‘clearing’ went on and on and on, until he apparently ran
out of oxygen in his lungs wherewith to continue.
“I hope he gets it done,” remarked Loren with
a chuckle, looking at me with that familiar twinkle in his eyes.
Loren’s Word
for the Day Saturday was ‘prosperous’. I
showed him a card Dorcas had just texted to me, telling of Trevor’s upcoming baptism. “I’m glad Dorcas and her family are so
prosperous!” he said, after I explained the card. (Because baptisms are expensive?)
I told
him about Jeremy and Lydia being in Maui.
He remarked, “People these days have to be quite prosperous to go to
Hawaii.” He exclaimed over the
wildfires... and soon forgot.
I handed
him the Messenger newspaper. On the
front page, there was a picture of a female pilot with her plane; she’s a NOAA meteorologist
working in Alaska.
“She’s
very prosperous, to have a plane like that, and to be flying to Alaska!” exclaimed
Loren.
“Did Judy
and Sara and Sara’s boys visit you yesterday?” I asked, wondering if he would
remember.
“No,” he
said, “but Judy and Randy and their four boys visited last week. We had a nice time.” (They hadn’t visited – and Judy and Randy only
have two boys, both grown.) “I’m
thankful they are prosperous enough to do that,” he said.
He kept
looking at the birthday card I gave him, reading what I wrote: “Happy 85th birthday!”
“Am I
85?!” he asked several times, just as surprised the tenth time as the first.
I
assured him he was.
“I
thought I was only about... 35!”
he decided, then laughed.
After
leaving Prairie Meadows, I headed toward Lincoln, hoping to see the Sunken
Gardens. I was traveling at one of the
busier hours of the day – just after 6:00 p.m. This is the Interstate between Nebraska’s two
largest cities, Omaha and Lincoln. The
majority of Nebraska is rural. The
population of the entire state is 1.964 million – even though it is 77,358 sq.
mi. (200,356 sq. km) in area, the 16th largest state in the U.S. It measures 459 miles (739 kilometers) across
at its widest point.
As I
approached the northwest side of Lincoln, I met a number of fire trucks and
ambulances. I would later learn that
they were heading to an assisted living and memory-care facility, where smoke
had been detected in the laundry room.
As it
turned out, it was coming from a smoldering box of rags. The problem was quickly taken care of, and
none of the residents were displaced.
En route
to the Sunken Gardens, I stopped at the State Capitol Building and walked
around it, taking pictures of it and of the churches across the street. The sun was at the perfect angle to enhance
all my shots.
Get a
load of the kid in the luxury vehicle! 😆
On I
went to the Gardens – and changed my mind about going in, because the smallish
parking lot was clear full of vehicles, and they were even parked along the
nearby streets.
However,
next time that happens, I believe I’ll go on in, because, after all, a park
full of people in a big city is safer than an empty park in a big city,
isn’t it? But I do prefer less
crowds.
Oh,
well. I got good pictures of the
Capitol, and I drove home into a beautiful sunset. Had I gone into the Gardens, I would’ve
missed the sundog!
The
Capitol Building was already closed for the day. When it’s open, people can walk around inside
it, either joining the free tour groups, or doing a self-guided tour (maps are
handed out near the door). We like to go
up to the dome, and then walk around the external promenade up there.
As I
headed home, the sky grew increasingly dramatic. For a while, there was a bright sundog on the
south side of the sun. Can you see
it? (picture on next page)
After our Sunday morning service, Kurt and Victoria invited us for lunch. We like to take some groceries to our kids when
they invite us to eat; this time we took some of Teddy’s frozen pork.
It was Teddy’s 40th
birthday yesterday. We gave him some
cash and one of the knives from Loren’s big collection. I’ve been doling those out to sons,
sons-in-law, and grandsons ever since we cleaned out Loren’s house last year. We also gave him a jar of Unker’s
Deep-Penetrating Pain Relief Gel and a bottle of Aspercreme with
Lidocaine. His back was hurting him so
much, he wasn’t able to come to church or go to work today.
As I feared would happen,
Hannah had an allergic reaction to the antibiotics she was given, breaking out
with a rash. Trouble is, she’s still not
feeling well, and sounds quite congested.
When you get a text like
this, do you have any sort of suspicion at all that it might be spam?
“Netf’Iix:030664 Your Sub5cription is on ho!d,Rene’wal
your biIls now.”
Renewal my bills now, indeed. I don’ta wanna renewal my bills now. Furthermore, we don’t have and never have
had Netflix. Or “Netf’Iix”, as it
were. 🙄
The last load of clothes is in the washer; the
previous load is in the dryer.
Oh! I just remembered! I need to baste a piece of fabric over each
of the labels on the quilts I’m taking to the State Fair, so they can’t be read
during judging! Gotta get that done. And I want to embroider Oliver’s name on his
book, too. The quilts and pillows and
the fabric book are all due at the Fair in Grand Island on Thursday.
Everything will need to be
picked up the evening of September 4, Labor Day, and then we are (maybe) planning
to go to the Black Hills in South Dakota and camp near Hill City, where there
will be a quilt show that weekend, and I hope to enter some quilts there.
When I went into the laundry room a while
ago, I discovered that the geranium that Caleb and Maria gave me for Mother's
Day is putting out new blooms again.
Below is the sunset as I turned off
the highway and headed up the old road on my way to our house Saturday.
And now I’d better git bizzy! I have another two days of quilting, I think,
before Keira’s ‘Puppies & Kittens in the Flowers’ quilt is done.
I will have to live to be 285 years
old in order to finish everything I need and want to do!
I wonder if Methuselah had finished
everything he wanted to do when he finally died at 969 years of age?
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn
P.S.: I
made that comment about ‘bats laying eggs in my hair’ once upon a time in
another group somewhere, and a certain lady hastened to inform me that bats don’t
lay eggs. Yeah, yeah. Ah done knowed it. In fact, the female bat has her baby – one
baby – whilst hanging upside down, and she catches the baby in her wings as it
falls.
Bats are amazing creatures, it’s true. And I want them to keep their amazingness
outside where they belong. Actually,
what the lady said was, “No mammals lay eggs!” – which isn’t true.
Did you know that there are five egg-laying
mammal species? There’s the duck-billed
platypus, plus four species of echidna (also known as spiny anteaters). All of them are found only in Australia and
New Guinea. And that’s your Monotremata
News of the Day.
Photo from the Carnegie Museum of Natural
History:
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.