Journal: The Electricity Is Off! No, On. No, Off. No, On. ...

 

Last week, a friend was wondering how many miles I travel in a week.  “I’ll bet you fill your tank twice a week,” she said.

“It’s less than you think – only about 250 miles a week,” I told her.  “My vehicle has a 26.4-gallon tank, and it gets 22 miles per gallon at highway speeds (about 17 mpg in town).  So I can go over 500 miles before filling the tank.”

Last week, there was an extra 200 miles or so, on account of the trip to Lincoln and Fremont.  Sometimes I add to the total by detouring to a lake or park to take pictures.

The Sandhill cranes were at full peak in middle Nebraska last week!  There’s a live-streaming camera at the Rowe Sanctuary west of Grand Island, and I like to look at it now and then.  Watching the cranes rise off the Platte River in the very early mornings is amazing.  There are over 625,000 cranes there, can you imagine?  And they are LOUD.  Just one crane’s call can be heard 2 ½ miles away.  Think of the noise of hundreds of thousands of them!

There are at least two whoopers (I accidentally first wrote ‘whoppers’, haha) in that humongous congregation.

We once went to see the cranes, knowing there were six whooping cranes in the vicinity.  We traveled numerous country roads – and suddenly, we saw them!  There they were, off at a distance on a hillside!  Six white whooping cranes!

Except we were wrong.

They were not six whooping cranes at a distance.  They were six snow geese, up close.

Look at these two Sandhill cranes: 

Crane on the right:  “Look at me!  Look at me!  Look at me!”

Crane on the left:  “I can’t seeeeee yooou...”

I spent Tuesday quilting away – while the birds outside my windows were singing away.

When I stopped for the night, I was on the second row of the Gone Fishin’ quilt.

“If the shoemaker’s elves show up,” I remarked to a friend, “I hope they know how to use a longarm.”

See the backing on the top bar?  That’s the fabric I got at Nebraska Quilt Company, week before last.

Wednesday, I scrubbed and shined the bathroom, put away a few groceries that arrived via FedEx, and was just about to head upstairs to my quilting room when my stomach growled.  

“Ooops, I’d suppose I should eat breakfast first?” I said to Larry, who was getting ready to head back to work after eating lunch.

Then, “Yeah, yeah, I know what time it is,” I retorted, in response to the face he made.  “But if it’s the first thing I eat, it’s breakfast, no matter what time it is! 😆”

I quilted until time to go to church, and then I actually managed to quilt a little more after we got home and had a quick supper.

I was feeling like I must be quilting in slow motion when I rolled the quilt forward and realized, Hey, this is the middle row! 😃

Thursday afternoon, Victoria sent the cutest pictures of Baby Maisie and Baby Arnold together, side by side.  Arnold was smiling at the camera, but Maisie was sound asleep, arms over her head.  I told Victoria, “Your Grandpa Jackson (Larry’s father Lyle) always used to say that when babies slept with their arms over their heads, they felt secure, and they were growing properly, and were not hungry (for the moment, heh).  Arnold looks happy – probably thinking, ‘Wouldja look at that!  Someone smaller’n me!’”

Lyle was a quiet person, but every now and then he said something like that.  I’ll betcha it came from his own mother, or maybe even his mother-in-law, Norma’s mother Ruby.

Lyle and Grandma Ruby were great friends – especially after he took her for a hair-raising ride on his motorcycle, doing his dead-level best to make her screech.  Mostly, all she did was leeeean into the curves – but if he got too stupid, she pinched.  She did NOT screech.

I should mention, the ride was on mountain trails.

We had a lot of thunder and lightning Thursday night.  It was windy, too, and some small hail fell for a few minutes.  The electricity went off once.

An online friend was surprised to see the photos of the white pelican I posted last week. 

“They are migrating through,” I told her, “heading to their nesting grounds, mostly in the Canadian provinces.” 

I then told her the following story:

 When I was 12, traveling with my parents to Newfoundland, I was walking along a dock in North Sydney, Nova Scotia, not noticing that a big brown pelican was perched on one of the posts.  It suddenly clack-clack-clackity-clacked its bill at me, and I, who am not at all jumpy, nearly bailed into the Gulf of St. Lawrence.  😆  (I can verify, in case verification is needed, that pelicans have bad cases of halitosis.  Or at least this one did.  I think he had at least three aging herring in the gular pouch of his lower mandible.)

Here’s a funny:  ever since I placed the picture of myself wearing a cowboy hat as my profile picture on Facebook, the offered auto-replies under comments from friends include, “Thanks, y’all!”  🤠

Friday was an overcast day, but the suncatchers Jeremy and Lydia and family gave me were still glowing in the afternoon light.  Aren’t they pretty?

When I stopped quilting Friday night, there were two and a half rows to go on the Gone Fishin’ quilt.

Saturday, I went to see Loren.  It was 30°, with a wind chill of 19° – a cold day for a drive.  I appreciate the Mercedes’ heated seats.

About the time I arrived, my nephew Kelvin sent me several pictures of his children from years gone by.  Some were from vacations they had taken, including a few from Rocky Mountain National Park.  I showed them to Loren; he always enjoys looking at pictures.  And of course, he seems to remember people better from the old photos.

Here are Kelvin and Rachel’s oldest three, Jodie, Sharon, and Jason, at Bear Lake.

“Have you been to Bear Lake?” I asked Loren, knowing that he has.

“Oh, yes!” he answered.  “I’ve walked all the way around it!”

This is true (though he may have only walked part of the way around it).  But I wonder, does he really remember?  After all, he thinks he has also walked around Lake Khövsgöl, after seeing a picture of that Mongolian lake in one of the National Geographic magazines I brought him.

Kelvin, upon learning that I was showing his pictures to his uncle, and that Loren was enjoying them, sent more.  “This was our first trip in the Airstream,” he wrote.

There are Jason, Jodie, Jamie, and Sharon by the camper, and Kelvin is videoing, which means Rachel took this picture.  Jamie is a few months younger than Victoria, and they were born in 1997.  So if Jamie is 2 or 3 in this picture, it was taken in 1999 or 2000.  This was my parents’ Airstream, before Daddy died in 1992.

Meanwhile, Loren, paging through the National Geographic, had found a story about various kinds of lemurs, and absolutely would not be convinced that I had not been in Madagascar taking the pictures of them.  He was quite sure those animals were in the woods around my house, despite my continuous telling him, “They are in Madagascar, that island off the southern coast of Africa, in the Indian Ocean.” 

He nodded in understanding – then turned the page and came upon a picture of a fossa.

The fossa is a slender, long-tailed, cat-like mammal that is endemic to Madagascar.  It is a member of the carnivoran family Eupleridae.  It’s the largest mammalian carnivore on Madagascar and has been compared to a small cougar, as it has many cat-like features.

A relative of the mongoose, the fossa is unique to the forests of Madagascar, an African island in the Indian Ocean.  Growing up to six feet long from nose to tail tip, and weighing anywhere from 11 to 26 pounds, the fossa is a slender-bodied creature with little resemblance to its mongoose cousins.  Its tail makes up about half of its overall length.  The fossa is a speedy runner, able to reach a speed of 35 miles per hour.

 Loren stared at the picture as I told him this information, then asked in concern, “How close was this to your house?”

“I didn’t take the picture,” I told him.  “Someone took it in Madagascar, that island in the Indian Ocean.”

He looked relieved and nodded – then turned the page and found yet another photo of a fossa.

I sidetracked him from the fossa by looking up lemurs on my phone and showing him cute pictures of them while I told him some of these facts: 

Lemurs are endemic to the island of Madagascar.  Most of them are small, have a pointed snout, large eyes, and a long tail.

There are 107 species of Lemuroidea, and they are divided into five families.

Trouble was, there was a scary movie on the TV, the volume was turned up, and it was getting mixled (Caleb’s word) with lemurs and fossas and Airstreams.

Loren was somehow getting the notion that Kelvin’s children were my children, and we were in the mountains with the Airstream, and some (or all) of the children had been kidnapped, and the rest of us were chasing (or being chased by) lemurs, which were in turn being chased by fossas. 

“How did that happen?!” he asked, gesturing worriedly at the TV screen.  Fortunately, he is not capable of the same horror he used to be capable of.

“That’s just a movie,” I said reassuringly.  “Not a real story.”  I grinned at him.  “Notice how they play spooky music at exactly the right moments, so you know when to be properly scared.”

That made him laugh, but it wasn’t five minutes before a lemur got inside Kelvin’s Airstream and made off with yet another one of the kids.

Aarrgghh, dementia patients should never be anywhere near televisions!!!  But they use TVs for babysitters for the residents. 🙄  Come to think of it, people do that with children, too – they use TVs and electronic devices as babysitters.  The results are every bit as adverse and harmful.

When I got home, I put a venison roast, potatoes, carrots, and a big onion in the Instant Pot.  It wasn’t long before the aroma was making the whole house smell good.

I sent Kelvin a few pictures of some of his children and some of ours playing together.  His oldest four (they have 5 children) are of similar ages to our youngest four.

“The kids sure had fun playing together,” remarked Kelvin. 

“They did,” I agreed.  “I’m happy that a number of our grandchildren are good friends, too.”

Caleb still considers Jason one of his best friends.  Jamie’s girls like to play with Victoria’s girls and with Keira, too. 

Victoria and Jamie are still best of friends, and Hester and Lydia are good friends with Jodie and Sharon. 

Here’s a picture of Jason and his blankie that Kelvin said he’d been hunting for.  I took it at our Fourth-of-July picnic in 1994.

Looking at the old photos, I am once again so very glad I took the time to scan those 38,000+ printed photos, from my very first roll of film, when I was 9 years old, to the last roll of film before I went all digital in 2004. 

The first roll of film?  I spent most of the 12 shots on that roll on Loren skinning a rabbit he’d shot.  Here he is, his dog Bullet beside him.  It would have been in late 1968 or early 1969.

After my mother got those photos developed, she was never in a hurry to develop rolls of film thereafter.  🤔  (And she was probably thankful she had purchased black-and-white film rather than color.)

The house in the left background is the little house where Loren and Janice lived after they were married.  Later, it was an elderly lady, Mrs. Stotts’, house.  We all called her ‘Grandma Stotts’, even if she wasn’t our grandma.  She was Bobby’s great-grandmother.

The spot where Loren is standing is in an area where my father’s big garage would later be built.  The garage was big enough for him to park his Suburban and 31-foot Airstream on one side, with plenty of room for two more cars on the other side.

This area was a big garden back then, with rows of blackberries and red raspberries, planted by the old couple who lived there from the time they were married until the old man passed away when I was quite young.

The old man showed me how to tell if the berries were ripe.  Then they would give me a little basket and tell me I could pick berries and take home all that was in the basket.

He had pipes stuck into the ground by all his fruit trees, and he’d pour water in the pipes, and those pipes would deliver water down to the roots of the trees.  His fruit trees were the nicest in the neighborhood.

Those old people were kind to me.  Most all of our neighbors were.

Daddy once called me home from the house behind and directly west of ours, though, across the alley – because I was having great fun leaping in piles of leaves that old man was trying to rake.

I never dreamed I was causing any trouble.  Surely he was making piles just for me to jump in??  (He probably wanted to smack me with the rake!  😆)  But those elderly people were nice to me, too.  They’d give me apples from their tree.

I texted Larry that evening and asked him to bring home some juice to go with our supper.  I almost always have a cup of juice with my supper. 

Now, when I buy juice, I specifically look for 100% juice.  Larry knows this.

He brought home peach ‘drink’.

If it says ‘drink’ on the jug, you can be sure it is not 100% juice.

In fact, this peach ‘drink’ is only 7% juice, and it’s sweetened with sugar.  I don’t buy this junk!

“But it’s the good stuff!” Larry assured me.

“What’s so good about it?” I asked in a hostile tone.

“It’s cane sugar!” he informed me.

Cane sugar.  “And just what is good about cane sugar in my juice?!” I demanded.

He pointed out the small print on the front of the jug:  “All natural.”  🙄

Does he really believe his own hornswoggle?!  (Of course not.)

We had light rain most of the day Sunday.  The weathermen had been saying it would turn to snow last night and today, but by midafternoon snow had been removed from the forecast for our area.  However, out in western Nebraska, there were blizzard warnings, and they were advising that some places might get 8” of snow, and there would also be high winds.

On our way home from church last night, we stopped at the grocery store for milk, peanut butter, and Band-Aids.  How’s that, for a grocery list?

Larry ordered a new tablet from Verizon for me Friday, as my old one will no longer hold a charge and must be plugged in all the time.  It was supposed to arrive Saturday, or Sunday at the latest. 

It arrived today.

Larry found it on the porch in a soggy, dripping wet box when he came home for lunch.  If the FedEx deliverer had tried to put it in the front door, he was stymied, because the handle is frozen.  Larry thawed the handle and blew it dry with canned air; but it wasn’t long before it was frozen again. 

The tablet itself was fine, as it was inside a second box.

Once again, I80 in western Nebraska has been closed today because of blizzard conditions.  It will be closed until at least tomorrow morning.

On a Facebook weather group, someone mentioned that one of the weather apps had announced that Neligh had ‘a trace of snow’. 

The first comment under this remark stated, “3-4-foot drifts mean we have more than a trace north of Elgin.”  (Neligh is 11 miles north of Elgin.)

At 3:00 p.m., we still had rain here, even though it was only 29°.  The wind chill was 1°, and the wind was blowing steadily at 24 mph, with gusts up to 40.  Raindrops were frozen on the windows.

A weather app on my laptop announced cheerily, “No need for umbrellas today!”  I guess they want everyone to look like drowned rats?  Frozen drowned rats.

At a quarter after 4, I learned from the abovementioned Facebook weather group that many people had no electricity, including a wide swath around Humphrey, 18 miles to our north.  Someone posted a video of lines covered with ice galloping crazily and breaking in the high winds. 

I wrote in my journal, “We still have electricity here.”

And then, immediately thereafter, “Huh.  I barely put the period at the end of that sentence, and the lights went out.”

Fortunately, I had just made a new pot of coffee.  It was good – salted caramel, as opposed to the earlier French Café yuck.  I hastily grabbed insulated coffee mugs and thermoses and filled them with the hot coffee, winding up with two mugs full and one Thermos full – plus a Thermos of French Café Yuck if times got desperate. 

That took only about five minutes, and it was already getting cold in the house.

I tried calling Cornhusker Public Power District, but the lines were all busy.  I called Larry, instead.  He was at Walkers’ shop in town, and they had no electricity, either.  He said he would be coming home soon to fire up one of the generators.  Even the small one has enough oomph to run refrigerator and furnace and a few other things besides.

I put on another sweater and went on working on my journal.  I figured I’d better type fast, before the battery on my laptop ran down.

Larry was just heading out the shop door to come home when the shop lights came on.  He called to learn the state of affairs here. 

“No electricity yet,” I reported, “and the house is getting chilly, especially standing here by this kitchen window that lets the Arctic gales blow right through.”

“Well, stand by a warmer window!” Larry advised.

“You come on home,” I retorted, “and then you can hold my laptop for me while I stand by a warmer window.”  (There’s no other place here on the main floor for me to work on my computer.  I could go upstairs to either the little office or my quilting studio; but I had not had the heater running up there, and it was cooooold.)

At 4:40, the lights came back on.  I called to tell Larry, catching him before he left the shop.  (What was that he’d said earlier about being on his way home??)

I went to turn my old tablet back on, as it’s the only device that still has a high-speed hotspot to connect to; the high-speed on my phone is all used up. 

I couldn’t get it to boot up again, the dumb thing.  I even did a hard shut-down, then tried again.  It gave a small effort and gave up.  I gave up, too, and came back into the kitchen – then wondered why the EdenPURE heater was off again.  Did the electricity going off and on damage it?  Then I belatedly realized, Oh.  No lights again.

Meanwhile, Larry had gone from Walkers’ shop to the shop in Genoa, bypassing his cold, cold house on the way, since he assumed that the electricity had come back on and stayed on.

He eventually answered his phone, and said he’d come home and start a generator just as soon as he got the heaters started in the shop.  He needed it to warm up so he could paint a vehicle.

While all this was going on, Kurt and Victoria, along with Willie and Baby Arnold, were on their way to Omaha.  They planned to check into a motel in order to be ready to take Willie to one of the children’s hospitals there, as he is having surgery on a tethered spinal cord early in the morning.  Please pray for this sweet little grandson of ours, that this surgery will repair and correct the issue that is causing him to have trouble walking.

It is snowing in Omaha, and there is a glaze of ice under the snow.  It’s liable to be awfully slick, right about the time they need to drive from motel to hospital.  They are supposed to be at the hospital at 5:30 a.m.  Their doctors said to prepare for a 1-2-night stay.

By 6:00 p.m., the temperature in the house was down to 60°.  I put on my fingerless gloves, but then I couldn’t type worth a hoot.

I added fleece pj pants to my ensemble of two sweaters, a down-filled coat, a fleece scarf, and fleece slipper socks.  With that get-up, I was allllmost warm enough.  My hands were still cold, though.

At ten after six, Larry drove up in his pickup, parked – and the electricity came back on.  The lights flickered a couple of times, but stayed on.

Larry, having glanced at the house and determined it was still dark when he pulled up, went directly to the garage and, unbeknownst to me, started the generator.

Ten minutes later he came in, cold and windblown, only to discover that the electricity was on.

It’s been on ever since.  Many other locations around us are not so fortunate, however.  Both linemen and road crews have been called in until morning, as it’s too dangerous for them to continue working through the night.

Look at the pictures someone posted of these poor linemen, out working in this weather!

Larry headed back to Genoa.  He got the vehicle painted, but not without some trouble.  Whoever had done the bodywork on it had done a poor job, not sanding it smooth enough; so it was difficult to get the paint sprayed on smoothly.

By 7:00, the temperature in the house was back up to 63°.  I still had on multiple layers of fleece, and was nice and comfortable.  I could hear the wind gaining in ferocity, though, and decided I had better warm up the baked potato and carrots I was planning to eat for supper, in case the power went off again.

It is now 2:30 a.m.  The electricity is still on.  It is 24°, with a wind chill of -12°.  The wind is blowing at a steady 25 mph, with gusts up to... 33?  No, that’s not right.  I can hear it, and it’s blowing much harder than that.  I’d say those gusts were hitting at 45 mph or more.

Bedtime!

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