Journal: Dogs & Cats, Opossums & Starlings, Oh, My!

 

Several people were asking about these bales when I posted the photos last week.  They are baled cornstalks, and they are used for supplementary feed for cattle.  On average, stalks baled after corn harvest contain about 6% protein and 50% total digestible nutrients, which is below the protein and energy level required to winter a beef cow.  The usual baling method is to cut the cornstalks with a swather or use a stalk chopper on them, leave them to dry for 2-7 days, then rake them up (with a big tractor rake) and bale them, just like hay is baled.

One lady commented on how large Nebraska farms look, so I gave her some statistics.  This is from the Nebraska Department of Agriculture:  “Nebraska had 44,800 farms and ranches during 2021; the average operation consisted of 1,000 acres.”  The largest ranch in Nebraska is the Spade Ranch out in the Sandhills, and it encompasses around 500,000 acres.  That’s huge!

“That’s the size of a city with subdivided neighborhoods like New York City!” she exclaimed.  “I can’t picture this.  How many employees are there?”

I did a bit more research, and found this: 

New York City’s land acreage is 193,644.  So the city is only 38.7% the size of the Spade Ranch.  Here’s an aerial view of it.  

The majority of the time, there are only about five employees, as so many things on a ranch are automated these days.  But they bring in a whole lot of workers for hay harvest and for cattle round-up (for vaccinations, branding, selling, and suchlike).  The Bixby family owns the ranch, and they raise Black Angus cattle.

It was Elsie’s seventh birthday Tuesday.  We gave her a pink bookbag.

Keira saw it one day when she was here, and it was easy to see that she really liked it, so I ordered one for her with purple trim where Elsie’s is pink.  I’ll save it for her birthday next April.

By Tuesday night, two more strips were done for the Playful Kitties quilt for Elsie.  

Wednesday, I remembered to pick up Larry’s suits.  The cleaners closes at 3:00 p.m. on Wednesdays.  I didn’t realize that, the last time I took suits there.  Larry was really rummaging through the closet that evening before church!

This time, though, he wound up working late at a job some distance from home, and didn’t make it back in time for our midweek church service.  

A friend was saying how she likes to make extra soup and then freeze it.

“I often do that these days,” I agreed.  “I never used to, though; with nine children in the house, leftovers didn’t last long enough to worry about freezing anything!”

  I once remarked on how the boys, especially, seemed to acquire hollow legs when they got to be teenagers.  

Little Caleb, eyes wide, felt of his legs, then said quietly, “Mine aren’t hollow yet!”  😆

I didn’t like the way the first two strips for the ‘Playful Kitties’ quilt turned out, so I redid them. 

After church, I put together a handful of small pinwheels.

Larry got home, found the big stack of suits lying on the bed, and started to hang them in the closet. 

The stack was too big and heavy, and the rod too high, for me to hang them up.

However, he discovered that the cleaners had done a lousy job of cleaning quite a few of the jackets.  So... I would be taking those jackets back to the cleaners.  Ugh, I don’t like doing stuff like that.

😑🤨😒🫤😖🙁

The next day, I looked online to see what time the cleaners would be closing.  7:00 p.m., so it said on the website.  I would do three errands at once while I was in town:  stop at the cleaners, go to Wal-Mart for a birthday present for grandson Leroy, whose 12^th birthday was that day, and drop off some things at the Goodwill.

I got to the cleaners at 3:45 p.m. 

The door was locked; they were closed.

I progressed on to Wal-Mart.  I hunted high and low, and then I hunted low and high, for an age-appropriate gift Leroy would like, and that I could afford, both at the same time.  I spotted a couple of things that looked promising, put one into the cart – and then noticed that it was for ages 8+.

I put it back on the shelf.

Then I found a bright red 1:18 remote-controlled Jeep Gladiator to put together, happily grabbed it, and went my merry way to the grocery department.

After dropping off the stuff at the Goodwill, I came home to wrap Leroy’s gift – and discovered it was for ages 6+.  Botheration. 

Ah, well.  I took it to Leroy.  Maybe he will enjoy it.  Certainly his little brothers will.

I found a more up-to-date schedule on the cleaners’ Facebook page.  According to that, the place was only open three days – 21 hours – a week!  I would learn the next day that that schedule wasn’t right, either; they are usually open five days a week.  On three of those days, they close at 3:00 p.m.  On the other two days, they are open until 5:00 p.m.

The business has been up for sale for the last two years.  And there are no other dry cleaners in town, that I know of.

For several nights running, there had been an animal cleaning up bird seed under the back deck, one story down.  It was too dark to see him, but whatever it was, it sure made a lot of commotion when it went scurrying off through the dry leaves.  I guessed it to be either a raccoon or an opossum.

Thursday night, the critter made its way up the steps and onto the deck.  Larry had his flashlight handy and I had my camera.  It was an opossum, licking up dropped sunflower seeds.  They will eat the whole thing, shell and all, and later regurgitate the shells.

The little creature paused and looked at us and our bright lights, took a few more bites, then decided we were too scary.  He tried leaving the scene, stage left.

There is no exit, stage left.

He tried stage right, but that was going to lead him too close to us.  He ran left again... then right... and we, not wanting him to fall through the railing and get hurt (remember, it’s a whole story down to the ground), backed right back into the laundry room, shut the patio door, and turned off the deck light.  That should’ve calmed him down quickly.

Friday, I had another load of things to take to the Goodwill.  I itemize our donations on our tax returns, and it has been well worth it for the last few years.  I’ve been a bit neglectful in gathering up stuff and donating it this year; gotta make up for that in the next month and a half!

Annnnd... since I found yet another schedule for the dry cleaners, I picked up my phone and called one of the various numbers that are also scattered about the Internet.  To my surprise, someone actually answered.  She told me they closed at 5 that day.  Nowhere online was that listed!  🙄 

So off I went, Larry’s poorly-cleaned suits in tow.

Thankfully, I managed to arrive when the friendly clerk was working.  She was nice and very apologetic about the obviously not-well-cleaned-at-all suits.  They will be done tomorrow.

The other lady has never learned how to smile or greet customers.  You walk in; she may or may not glance up at you.  She lets you stand at the counter for a few moments, and then she snarls, “Number,” to which I say (though I know what she wants), “Huh?”

This makes her look up at me somewhat contemptuously and say, “Phone number.”

I grin at her and tell her the  number.  This makes her allllmost smile back (it’s an instinctive response, like when a dog barks and makes another dog bark, too; she can’t help it), which was my sole purpose for saying ‘huh?’ and making her look at me.  Now she is wondering if I’m pulling her chain.

She plugs the phone number into her computer, turns and counts the items I’ve brought in, adds that to the info, asks, “Ticket?”

I say ‘yes’ on Tuesdays, ‘no’ on Wednesdays, ‘yes’ on Thursdays, ‘no’ on Fridays, etc., just to keep her alert and attentive.  I’m helpful that way.

There is a page taped to the front counter with the store’s hours on it – and they are different than what’s printed on their door (and both are different from any hours listed online).  That place needs help.

Home again, I paid some bills, then trotted upstairs to sew.  I was beginning to sew the rows together, adding a lot of white background. 

Saturday, I got ready to go visit Loren.  I ran upstairs to grab my camera, and paused to look in the drawer of longarm thread.  I have several shades of light blue thread in 40-wt. Omni... some pink, but in 60-wt. Bottom Line... but what I really want is this Omni variegated Fairy Floss (below).  It’s $15.95, plus $4.95 shipping.  Hmmm...

Okay, I talked myself into it; I ordered it.  We are $21 poorer.  See, that wasn’t very hard at all!

Victoria sent Larry and me a text that morning:  “If you want to come over for a turkey dinner and pumpkin pie tomorrow for lunch tomorrow, you’re invited.  😁”

Larry promptly responded, “Sounds great!”

Victoria then critiqued her previous text:  “I apparently put tomorrow in there twice just so you wouldn’t get mixed up. 🤨”

“It’s tomorrow, by the way,” she added a few seconds later.

“I just figured I’d come twice, 😉” her father told her.

“Okay 😆, you do that,” laughed Victoria.

I didn’t get these messages until shortly before 7:00 p.m., when I got home from Omaha.

“These messages just arrived 🤔,” I told Victoria.  “Anyway, thanks for the invitation!”

“😄 Phones just don’t work the best,” she answered.

“The rotary-dial type worked pretty good,” I replied.

“Sometimes seems like we should go back!” said Victoria.

“They don’t offer long enough cords 🤨!” objected Larry.

Victoria proceeded to send a link to a 100-foot-long telephone cord, which reminded me of a story (most things do, you know):

We used to have a cord that was about 30 feet long.  I once found Hannah, age 4, using it as a tether as she leeeeeaned against it, letting it hold her up.  It was plugged into a jack in the bedroom.  Hannah was in the living room.  Had the cord let loose of wall or phone, she would’ve plummeted right out the front door.

When I got to Prairie Meadows, I found Loren in one of the large back rooms with three other residents watching the movie ‘Fluke’, which is about a couple of homeless dogs, at least one of whom used to be a human (yeah, it’s all real sensible – the perfect movie to show those suffering from dementia).  At one point, they (the dogs, not the residents of Prairie Meadows) run into a junk yard to find a place to sleep.

Loren, upon seeing all the wrecked cars, turned and said to me, “Ohhh, those cars all went through that tornado.”  He looked back at the screen, then at me again, asking, “Did yours get damaged, too?”

“No, it’s fine,” I assured him.

He gave a shake of the head and said, “That’s amazing.  I wouldn’t’ve thought anything could’ve made it through un–” he fished for the word “– unscathed.”  Then, after a moment’s thought, “Did Daddy’s cars get damaged?”

“No, they’re all right,” I replied.

“They were probably in the big garage,” he decided, and looked at me for confirmation.

“Yes, that’s where he always kept them,” I agreed.

He looked at me, probably wondering why I was using past tense; but then Fluke the dog, actually sleeping in the car that used to be his ‘when he was a human’, by one of those many strange bits of coincidence that screenwriters like to throw into their movies, whether plausible or not, had a flashback of driving his car over a cliff.

It saaaaailed down, down, down—and CRASSSSHED, making Loren jump clean out of his hide.

“Fender bender,” I said, making him laugh.

Then the lady (one of the nurses) who was casting the movie from her laptop got up and rolled the other two residents out of the room in their wheelchairs, one at a time,  and then returned to put chairs, tables, and suchlike to rights.  It was getting close to dinnertime.

“Are you wanting to close up shop?” Loren asked her. 

I was surprised that he’d noticed.

She said she was, so I gathered up the National Geographic magazines I’d brought him, he picked up the Messenger newspaper, and we got up (Loren with some difficulty) and walked out, leaving Fluke the dog to his mishaps, misfortunes, and misadventures.

We went to Loren’s room (he called it his ‘office’ that day; sometimes it’s his ‘cabin’ or even his ‘house’).  I saw that the digital picture frame was on again.  I wonder if anyone knows how to change it from one folder to another so it displays different pictures?  I wonder where the remote is?  There’s no way of changing folders without that little remote. 

A picture of Lyle and Norma, Larry’s parents, scrolled through.  It had been taken in the late 1950s, when Lyle was stationed in California.  Junior would have been a baby then.

Loren pointed at the picture.  “That’s Larry’s brother,” he said.

“That’s Lyle and Norma,” I told him, “Larry’s parents.”

“Oh!” said Loren.  “That’s right.”  Pause.  Then in an odd tone, “Does Lyle still live with his wife?”

I wondered just what memory was pressing at the surface, to bring on that tone.

“They’ve both passed away quite a few years ago,” I told him.  “Lyle died of cancer in 1988.”

Loren looked surprised. 

Seeing their pictures, he asked about Larry’s older brothers, and then, when I told him, seemed to remember that Roy, the second oldest, had died of a brain tumor when he was 7, and Junior, the oldest, had died in a car accident at age 11.  However, he thought it had just happened recently.  “This must weigh awfully heavy on Larry,” he said.

“It was a long time ago,” I said.  “Both of those boys died in the 1960s, when Larry was a little boy.”

That seemed to make Loren feel better.

Junior was born in 1956, and died in 1967.  Larry was 6.

Roy was born in 1958, and died in 1965.  Larry was 4.

A picture of Mama and me came on the screen.  I was 5 and in Kindergarten; so Mama would’ve been 48.

“Do you know who that is?” I asked Loren.

“Sure!” he smiled.  “That’s you and Mama!”

He was soon asking how Mama was doing.  I decided I had talked enough about people dying, so I told him, “She’s doing just fine.”

Because she is.

When it was nearly 5:00, I said, “It’s time for you to eat dinner!  And it’s time for me to head home.  Are you hungry?”

“Yes, I’m getting hungry,” he answered.  He went on sitting on the bed, and gave me a somewhat puzzled look.  “I don’t know where I’m going to eat tonight.”

“You’ll be eating in the dining room,” I said.  “I’ll walk there with you.”

He went on sitting.

“We’d better hurry, before everyone else eats all the food!” I exclaimed, turning off one of the lights and heading toward the door.

So he got up, and we walked to the dining room, said our goodbyes, and went our separate ways.

When I got outside, the setting sun shone brightly in my eyes; but by the time I pulled out of the parking lot a couple of minutes later, the sun had sunk below the western hills of the city.  I was glad for that; it’s hard driving straight into the evening sun.

Somewhere north of Ames on the new bypass, a 2012 orange Chevrolet Camaro began tailgating me, and kept it up for the next 20 miles or so.  Maybe they thought they could get better gas mileage if they stayed in my wind wake?

Hester sent a picture of Keira in an old-fashioned dress, wondering if I could shorten it a couple of inches.  Keira wanted to be a Pilgrim for her school Thanksgiving party on Tuesday.  Hester had ordered the dress online and didn’t have time to reorder.  “The dress is actually in Little House on the Prairie era, but this is what Keira really wanted,” wrote Hester.  “She’s walking around singing, ‘Oh, I’m a pilgrim!’ 🎶 🎵”

“Sure!” I answered.  “Just put a pin or clip in it so I know exactly where to hem it.  She looks cute as can be, by the way.  Maybe Pilgrim/pioneer styles didn’t change all that much from the 1600s to the 1800s.  Nothing like styles changed throughout the 1900s, that’s for sure!”

Look what I found on Google Street View when I was looking for the name of the waterway I see from State Street:  The Google Street View camera got a picture of a Monarch butterfly!  That was in July of 2021.

Anyway, the waterway is North Branch West Papillion Creek.

After we ate supper that evening, I finished putting the quilt top together, other than the borders.  It looks all lopsided at the moment, because of the way I put those panel strips together with plain white-on-white squares at opposing ends of the strips.  But... I have a plan!  I plan to do fancy kitty quilting with that variegated thread in those white areas.  If it’s not enough, I’ll just keep adding steadily darker blue thread, echoing and bordering and fancying it up until I’m happy with it (or until I can’t stand to look at the same spot a moment longer, one or the other).

No pictures yet, because... lopsided.  It’ll turn out all right.  Yes, it will!

Yesterday afternoon, as planned, we had dinner with Kurt and Victoria and the children.

Victoria had indeed fixed a Thanksgiving dinner:  turkey breast, gravy, homemade stuffing using some of her sourdough bread, sourdough dinner rolls, homemade peach jam, cranberry sauce, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and coffee with a dash of maple syrup and half-and-half cream.  She sent a couple of slices of pumpkin pie, two sourdough rolls, and a big jar of her peach jam home with us.

We gave them a large frozen pork roast (Teddy’s meat) in return.

I think we got the better deal.

As we climbed the steps of our porch after arriving back home again, I’m almost certain I heard a chickadee in the nearby maple trees.  I could see a little bird in the branches up there, but it was mostly in silhouette against the sky.  It was about the right size for a chickadee.

A friend once gave me an adorable little hand-carved chickadee.  I put it atop the tall hutch on my dresser.

Socks, who could make leaps like a cheetah, managed to fly clear up there and knock the hapless birdie over. 

I heard a crash and an odd ‘Prrrrft.’  I hurried into my bedroom and found Socks pretending he’d been sleeping on my bed the whole time.  But his eyes were slitted open a bit sheepishly, and his fur had a couple of dust bunnies on it.  (Don’t tell anyone; the top of my dresser hutch was dusty!)

I looked around the room – and spotted the chickadee knocked over and still rocking back and forth on its rounded side.

“Did you do that?!!” I asked Socks, amazed at how high he must’ve jumped to get there.

He turned his head away from me, squinted his eyes even tighter, and purred like all good Christian kitties do.

No chickadees, wooden or otherwise, were harmed in this fiasco.

Redrock Threads called this morning to tell me that the Fairy Floss variegated thread I ordered Saturday is out of stock until Friday.  So I canceled the order and ordered from Superior Threads, which cost a couple dollars more and, as it turns out, probably won’t get here any sooner.  🙄  I signed up for their email promotions in order to get a 15% discount code.  It has not come yet, and I am an impatient person.  My order is ready NOW!  I will click Submit NOW! – but I did not spend the extra $3 to have the thread delivered in two days.

Sometimes it has been delivered in two days regardless of the 4-6-day shipping estimate.  Let’s hope this is one of those times.

I took another big bag of Larry’s things to the Goodwill this afternoon.

Shortly after I got home, a gigantic murmuration of starlings (really!  That’s what it’s called!) came swooping in and landed in the cottonwood tree in the back yard, filling it completely, and making an earsplitting racket with their funny squeaks and squawks and twitters.

Earlier this evening, I had a text-chat with Levi, and he sent me this picture: 

There’s an animal of some sort gallumping about in our eaves.  Squirrel?  Raccoon?  I went out and thwacked the eaves with the broom handle.  There was a scurrying... and now all is quiet.  Wonder what it was, and where it went?

Bedtime!  Tomorrow I hope to get the borders on the Playful Kitties quilt and put together a backing for it.

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