Journal: Two Road Trips in One Week

 

After I posted some pictures of ducks and geese on Fremont Lakes, a lady asked me, “Isn’t it getting too cold for the ducks?  Do they get to stay in farmers’ barns during winter?”

I considered telling her that we Nebraskans let the waterfowl indoors to warm themselves by the hearth, but she was in earnest, and... well, if you don’t know, you don’t know!

So I told her, “It was a very nice autumn day.  But ducks don’t mind cold water; they have plenty of downy insulation.  They were finding all sorts of yummy morsels, every time they dived underwater.  Some migrate thousands or even tens of thousands of miles to the south; some fly south just far enough to find open water and food when lakes and ponds here freeze over; and some will find a place right here where the water never freezes and there’s an abundance of food, and they’ll stay throughout the winter.”

The lady wondered how they can migrate, flying so high where the air is so cold.

“It’s like they’re all bundled up in downy coats!” I answered.  “Their bodies have a layer of cold-resistant fat and multiple layers of feathers for keeping the water out and the heat in.  The feet of waterfowl don’t freeze, because of the counter-current blood exchange that takes place.  Warm blood flows from their heart to the feet and the cold blood from the feet flows back to the heart.”

Geese can migrate at heights of about 24,000 feet.  Do you know how they breathe, way up there where the oxygen is so thin?  Their wing flaps help them breathe by pumping air from air sacs around their chest area and forelimbs in a one-way circuit around the chest.

All of God’s creatures are wonderful and amazing, as is His entire Creation.

Tuesday evening, I got the machine-embroidered label for Malinda’s quilt done.

I would’ve liked to have sewn it onto her quilt, but I needed to rush to bed and sleep fast, because I had to get up a little before 4:00 a.m. in order to get to Lincoln in time for an early appointment with my eye doctor for Botox treatments for the Benign Essential Blepharospasm.  

Benign Essential Blepharospasm doesn’t feel very ‘benign’.  At times, it feels downright malicious!  The treatment isn’t a whole lot of fun; but I’m ever so thankful that it helps.

Accordingly, I went to bed earlier than usual, slept for an hour – and got awoken by Larry coming home from Genoa, where he’d been working on a pickup.  After that, the harder I tried to sleep, the less sleepy I felt.  I finally fell asleep – and my alarm blared rudely half an hour later.

I got up, showered, and applied the usual lotion and powder.  I then donned an over-the-head navy knit sailor top, carefully turning it and rolling it so that nothing on the outside of it would touch the lotioned and powdered part of me.  Lotion and powder is noticeable on navy knit.  I got the top on, smoothed it out – and discovered it was wrong side out. 

I took it off, wiped it down with a wet washcloth, and put it back on.  I sincerely doubt if it was as pristine as it had been.

I was ready to leave by 6:15 a.m.  Larry, who hadn’t headed to work quite yet, helped me carry paraphernalia out to the Mercedes:  large and small camera bag, lunch cooler, two thermal mugs of coffee, purse, extra shoes, coat, scarf, gloves (it was cold that day), sweater, and a bag with magazines, newspapers, and a knit hat for Loren, in case I decided to go to Omaha after my treatment.

Then off I went toward Lincoln under a navy-blue, almost black, sky.  The sun would not come up for another hour and ten minutes.

I drove through the dark, sleepy town of Columbus, and soon got to the corner where one turns onto Highways 30/81 and goes over the viaduct that spans the railroad tracks.  I pulled out – and immediately hit the brakes, because there was a box truck stopped right in front of me in my lane, and its backup lights were on!

It was not backing, however; it was just sitting there, rocking a bit in the attempt to back up.  It seemed to be snugged right up to the guard rail, too.

After a couple of vehicles went past, I was able to go around the truck.  I looked in my rear-view mirror and saw that the truck had evidently impaled itself on the guard rail, and was stuck tight.

Well, nothing I could do for him, and the police would be there soon; so on I went.

The sky was beginning to lighten, and traffic was picking up a little.  I got stuck behind some lollygagging idget whose speed varied between 45 mph (during those times I could not pass) and 65 mph (during those times I could’ve passed, but preferred not to get a speeding ticket).  Aarrgghh.

Two or three miles north of David City, I finally had the opportunity to pass.  I hit the accelerator, started pulling into the left lane – and spotted a whole lot of flashing red and blue lights up ahead. 

I coasted back into place behind Mrs. Piddle Britches – and then she proceeded to slow down to about 25 mph, from there all the way to those flashing lights half a mile up ahead. 

There had been an accident, but it was still dark, and I couldn’t see what had happened.  Two cars were on the right shoulder, one on the left, and there were several police cars with their blinding lights on.  People were out of the vehicles, milling about.  I think one vehicle had a caved-in right rear quadrant, but I couldn’t be sure, what with all those bright flashing lights.  It didn’t seem to be anything too awfully terrible, in any case. 

The pokey driver in front of me poked along at 35 mph the remaining mile or so to the town.  Aaaauuuugggghhhh.

As I drove through David City, I suddenly realized why the streets seemed brighter than usual:  they already have their Christmas decorations up – and they were all lit!  🙄

The sun came up, making it clear that my windshield was a grubby mess.  I stopped in Valparaiso and cleaned it, and was back on the road in three minutes flat.

The drive from our house to Eye Surgical Associates should take an hour and a half.  I had allowed myself an hour and 45 minutes.

It took me an hour and 46 minutes to get there, thanks to Mrs. Dawdleton.

After the treatment, which didn’t take long, I decided against going to Omaha to visit Loren, as that would have kept me out another couple of hours or so, and one is supposed to rest one’s eyes after getting Botox injections.  And I had only gotten an hour and a half of sleep the previous night.

Instead, I went to Holmes Lake a couple of miles south of Eye Surgical Associates, and walked a little ways around the lake.  There were mallard ducks on the water.

In the news that very morning, there had been a story about  a police officer who had saved a woman from Holmes Lake just three days earlier, after her kayak flipped. 

The officer took off his duty gear, jumped into the water, and swam out to the woman.  He helped get her, and the kayak, too, to shore. 

I got home from Lincoln shortly before 11:00 a.m.  The dash cam I’d ordered with the gift certificate from Keith and Korrine had arrived.  I’m letting the box sit on the table a while to see if it installs itself in the Mercedes.

According to the reviews, it’s one of the easier dash cams to install.  I know how to read, and I’m good at following instructions; but here’s the thing:  if I do it, it’s fairly certain that similar endeavors will then be expected of me from now on until the day I die, and, more, it is not in my job description.

By the middle of the afternoon, I was very sleepy, so I took an hour-and-a-half nap, then went upstairs and sewed the label onto Malinda’s quilt.

About the time I started getting ready for our midweek church service, Larry called.  He was in Valley, an hour and 15 minutes from home, picking up forms.  It was for a big job, and there were more forms than would fit on his truck and pup, so he had to take a load to a job in Fremont, drop the forms, and go back to get the rest.  So he would be late getting home that night, and I would be going to church by myself.

I pulled out all the fabric Amy gave me for making Elsie’s quilt – more of the pretty fabrics she found at secondhand stores.  Elsie will be 7 tomorrow.  She is the youngest of Teddy and Amy’s nine children.

Soon I was in the process of trying to stare the fabric into a proper quilt design.

Belted kingfisher

Do I cut it all apart?  Do I leave some of it whole?  Do I piece?  Do I appliqué?  I did decide on a name for it:  ‘Playful Kitties’.

It sure bugs me when the person who cuts fabric with printed pictures or panels apparently does so with a dull butter knife, not bothering to cut exactly in the middle between the pictures, but making it so jagged as to nearly eliminate the printed ‘sashing’!  Whoever does that should be forced to try to actually even it up and then sew it together ....... no, never mind; that wouldn’t work, either, because the person would be just as unconcerned about her sewing as she was about her cutting.  Grum grum grum grum grumble. 

And then it was time for church.  I took careful notes during the sermon so I wouldn’t be thinking about cat fabric and what to do with it.  😹  I will not draw quilt designs in church.  I will not draw quilt designs in church.

After my Botox injections that morning, the doctor told me, as he usually does, that it would be about five days before it took effect.  I smiled and told him that it usually takes effect in about two days for me, three at the most.  But that night at church, I could definitely tell a little improvement.

Thursday, I cleaned the kitchen, ordered some groceries, paid some bills, and then off I went to my quilting studio (sounds impressive for such a small area), where I got back to staring at that fabric (and at pictures of cat quilts online).

A friend sent a picture of the river and trees she sees from the back deck of her cottage in the country, commenting, “I never get over the view from my deck.  Which might explain why I have taken basically the same picture hundreds, if not thousands, of times.”

Holmes Lake Park

I answered, “That view is beautiful.  I’d love to see that every single day.  And it’s not the same picture, is it, when the clouds are always different, the trees and shrubberies grow and change, and the water flows and reflects differently?  This is what I tell Larry, when he accuses me of taking a picture of the same thing I have taken pictures of multitudes of times before!”  😄

It wasn’t long before I had the fabric cut and spread out on my bed in a tentative first layout.  I trimmed a little excess ‘sashing’ from one side and sewed it to the side where someone had hacked it off, getting it evened up quite nicely.

Friday morning, I filled the bird feeders, and soon the English sparrows, house finches, and downy woodpeckers were flocking around them.  The cottonwood leaves are falling.

I finally got an answer from our insurance company, telling me (again) that they will not be helping us with the bills for the blepharospasm treatment.  “They are not eligible on the Silver level,” they wrote.  “It is not a matter of whether the procedure was medically necessary.  The Silver level does not share the expense of office visits or testing or treatment done in an office setting.”

It’s pretty much an insult when they sign off, “It’s a pleasure to serve you!”

So they don’t pay for ‘office visits or testing or treatment done in an office setting.’  At least, not for folks on our plan, the ‘Silver level’. 

Why didn’t they say that in the first place, before they made me fill out two dozen forms, and submit birth, death, and wedding certificates back to the thirteenth generation before me?  (That’s what it felt like.)  So that’s that.

Insurance companies have it all figured out how best to avoid paying for the majority of their customers’ bills, don’t they?

Ah, well.  At least the geranium from Caleb, Maria, and little Eva is still blooming.

That day, I got a French Braid done for one strip section on Elsie’s Playful Kitties quilt.

I’m not quite happy with it yet... but hopefully everything will start coming together, and with enough white spaces, it won’t look ‘cluttered’.

Saturday morning, I heard this on the Chicago news station:  Too many “thank you for your service” remarks ‘threatens the structural integrity’ of the ear.

What this proves is that the Chicago news station reporters and their ilk have had such a loss of structural integrity to their respective brains, that innocent and hapless people have a constant and continuous loss of brain cells, just by listening to the rubbish on that radio station.

I had the window in the bathroom open as I curled my hair, and the wind, gusting strongly, blew a wasp nest the size of my fist into the tub!  Fortunately, the occupants had vacated their condo before it got wafted into the house.

I had only put a couple of curls in my hair when there was a knock at the door.  It was Andrew and Hester with Keira and Oliver, bringing me a heavy two-piece birdbath they’d found at an antique or secondhand store.  It’s just like the one that got broken in very high winds a year and a half ago.

I suddenly realized that I had Keira’s quilt draped over the leather loveseat in the music room (I like to admire it as I walk by) – and her name down the side was glowing in the dark, as it were!  I dashed in there and folded it shut quickly, Keira tagging along to see what I was up to.

“There!” I said, patting the loveseat, “Now you have a place to sit, if you want to!”

So we avoided spoiling that surprise.  I showed Oliver his little fabric book, because, well, just because.  He smiled at all the little animals, especially the hedgehog, because he has a favorite hedgehog toy – and actually had it with him, out in their vehicle, that day.

I showed Keira the bookbag I’d just gotten for her cousin Elsie’s birthday.  They’re good friends.  And then, judging from Keira’s reaction, I saw that I definitely needed to get her one for her birthday, come April!  After they left, I ordered it quickly, before I forgot.  The bags are alike, except Elsie’s is mostly pink, and Keira’s is mostly purple.

The squirrels in the back yard are adding leaves to their nest, fluffing it up and insulating it better for winter.  Every now and then they take some time off from the fluffing and the collecting of food to chase each other madly up and down and around the branches and trunks.

That afternoon, I headed to Omaha to visit Loren.  He was pleased with the National Geographic magazines, Messenger rural newspaper, and a 2024 calendar from Baptist International Evangelical Ministries that we get because our church supports their missionaries.  In the calendar, there are pictures from Istanbul, Turkey; the Himalayas in Eastern Asia; and a church in Ukraine.  Loren read the captions (the smaller print, I read to him).  Because he liked the picture so much, I looked up the population in Istanbul: 15 ½ million.  The Greater Dallas-Fort Worth area, where Loren’s two sons and daughter live (a younger son died of alcoholism on his 55^th birthday in 2017), only has half that number of people!

Shell Creek

Looking at the calendar, Loren began ‘remembering’ all sorts of things.  For instance: driving and driving (and driving) with our father through Istanbul, and Daddy remarking, “We’ll never get out of this place!”  (I heard Daddy say that, plenty of times; but it certainly wasn’t in Istanbul! 😄)

Loren also ‘remembered’ riding his big Gold Wing motorcycle through those mountains between Nepal and India.  “It was pretty tricky, with all that snow and ice!” he laughed.

Elkhorn River

He did actually ride his motorcycle in the mountains – the Rocky Mountains – in snowy, icy weather, all bundled up in a World War II flight suit, battery-powered warm socks, etc., long, long ago.

I nodded and listened.  Sometimes he can’t think of enough words to explain what he’s trying to say; so when he can, I’m glad to just listen.  Many of his ‘memories’ have a basis in fact.

He actually remembered (though it had gotten a bit convoluted) the story I told him last week about stretching out in the back seat of Daddy and Mama’s little Renault Dauphine, touching one side of the car with my toes and the other side with my fingertips (I was not yet 2), and then protesting, “Too tight!  Too tight!”  (Loren thought it had happened in Turkey.)

Here’s a crane at the sight of a new bridge construction northwest of Fremont.  The first picture was taken as I drove east at 3:30 p.m.; the second picture was taken as I drove west at 6:30 p.m.

It takes about an hour and a half to get to Prairie Meadows, maybe a little more, if I go on any sight-seeing detours.  With the time I spend visiting with Loren, the trip usually uses up a good half of a day.

Loren’s favorite nurse told me he was getting ready for me to come, just before I got there, shaving, and stacking up his magazines neatly on his bedside table.  This, even though not only do I not always go on the same day each week, but he also is not able to keep track of time, days, weeks...  But I was glad that, if he was preparing for me to come right then, I came right then!

He is always happy to see me, and has never gotten upset when I leave, often telling me cheerfully, “Come back anytime!”  This time, because I told him it was very windy, he cautioned me several times, “Drive carefully!”

Oh! – his digital picture frame was on!  I was happy to see that.  I’ll betcha anything that nice nurse turns it on for him.

She told me a couple of weeks ago, “I know one shouldn’t have favorites amongst one’s patients, and I try hard to treat them all the same; but I admit it, I particularly love your brother.  He’s special.” 

I looked for the velour hoodie I took him last week, so I could put a nametag on it.  I forgot to do that last week.  It was not in his closet.  I apologetically described it to the nurse, and she went to the laundry room and soon returned with it.  It’s a Carhartt hoodie.

She told me that Loren is very generous, and that she found him trying to give away his heavy Carhartt coat to another resident, because he thought the man was cold.  She saved the day, rescuing the coat.

“Carhartt coats are expensive,” she said, “and they last forever!”

Here’s an old barn and silo I saw near Elk City, an unincorporated village west of Bennington.  I like to take different routes, in order to see different sights.

Because of the Botox treatments Wednesday, my drive to Omaha Saturday was actually enjoyable instead of a struggle.  

I got home a little before 7:00 p.m., just in time to fix supper:  ground venison meatloaf, mixed vegetables (corn, carrots, peas, and green beans), black cherry Oui yogurt, cranberry-watermelon juice, and a Nutty Buddy bar for dessert.  After supper, I worked on Elsie’s quilt until bedtime, getting half of the next strip of French Braid done before I fizzled.

So far, this quilt is not turning out at ALL like I envisioned.  But I have a loooong ways to go.

Loup Canal

Remember the wasp nest that got blown into the tub that morning?  Well, partly because I was curling my hair when it happened, and partly because Andrew and Hester arrived shortly thereafter, and partly because I had already emptied two mouse traps and was getting tired of coping with the local wildlife, and partly because I forgot, I neglected to get the wasp nest out of the bathtub.  (Why give just one excuse when you can come up with a whole lot more?!)

Fast forward to late Saturday night:  Larry started to get in the tub, saw what he thought was a pine cone in it, leaned over to pick it up – and then ran in midair several feet above the floor for a few moments (trying to escape the wasps, don’t you know) until gravity got the better of him.  😆

On the way home from our morning church service yesterday, we picked up some milk at Casey’s convenience store.  It tasted slightly ... off.  I looked at the expiration date.  November 8!  😜😝😛

Good thing we only got half a gallon.

Last night after church, we picked up the groceries I’d ordered from Wal-Mart.

Home again, we ate the last of the ground venison meatloaf, some vegetables, apricot Jello with pears and bananas in it, and cottage cheese.  

Meanwhile, I cooked a venison roast in the Instant Pot.  Larry had started marinating it Saturday afternoon.  One shouldn’t leave meat marinating longer than 24 hours, as it can break down the tissue and make it mushy.  So...  I cooked it, along with four big potatoes and a bunch of carrots, which I put into an aluminum foil ‘bowl’ so they didn’t fall under the wire rack that sits in the bottom of the pot.

It smelled sooo good while it was cooking – and there we sat, eating meatloaf.  That’s cruel and unusual punishment.  But we were half starved half to death, and it took 40 minutes for the roast to cook, plus whatever time it took for the Instant Pot to heat up to the proper pressure, and then to release pressure afterwards.

We were plumb full by the time the roast finished cooking, and the meatloaf was good; but we had to try a couple of bites of venison roast anyway.  It was scrumptious.

I let it cool, then covered the inner pot and put it in the refrigerator.

When I went out this morning to refill the bird feeders, there was a bald eagle soaring in spirals directly over our house.  He was close enough that I could see him tilt his head and look down at me.

Photo taken by Claire E. Elliott.  He was a young bird and wildlife photographer whose online postings stopped suddenly in 2016, and I can find nothing more about him.

This afternoon, I took a couple of large bags full of Larry’s suits to the cleaners, then dropped off some things at the Goodwill.  Larry actually went through several bins and drawers of his things last night, and filled three big bags full of shirts and pants to donate.  Astonishing.  (That is, ‘astonishing’ that he would ever get rid of anything, haha.)

I cleaned the bathroom and kitchen, and washed three loads of clothes.  When Larry got home, we had a yummy supper of the venison roast with the baked potatoes and carrots that I cooked last night.  There’s enough for supper tomorrow night, too.

Question:  When someone who calls himself ‘Honest Franklin’ wants to be in your Facebook Friends’ list, do you fall all over yourself hasting to hit the ‘Accept’ button?  😄

This afternoon Dorcas sent pictures of Trevor with a ‘Mayflower ship’ he constructed today using the bottom of a carton, with popsicle sticks and paper for mast and sails.  She’s homeschooling him, and they are enjoying it.

There was $9.48 left on the gift certificate from Keith and Korrine, so I went on a search on Amazon – and found a bag of Allegro Mocha Java coffee beans.  The price?  $9.48.  😁  I’m so proud of myself.

I went out to collect the bird feeders into the house a little while ago, in order to keep the raccoons from gobbling up all the birdseed, and found a big ol’ roly-poly opossum under the deck, one story down, scarfing down spilt birdseed.

Time for bed!

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