Journal: When Things Go 'ka-BLOOEY!'

 

The geranium Caleb and Maria gave me for Mother’s Day last year is blooming like anything.  It looks straggly, but it sure is blooming!

 

There were originally three separate geraniums in this pot: red, coral/peach, and white.  The whites have stopped blooming; but the reds and corals did double duty.

This coming week, my schedule will be changing from night owl to early bird, because I need to get out in the flower gardens and put in a lot of work on them.  I have 13 – thirteen! 😮 – big flowerbeds around this house.  I like to work on them in the early morning hours, especially during the summer when it gets hot by late morning.  I planted the majority of these flowers right after we moved out here.  I was 42.  I must’ve thought I would always be 42.

My friend Sherri’s Nursery Rhymes quilt had more rows than I thought it did!  I quilted two rows Tuesday, rolled the quilt forward, and discovered there were still two more rows to go.

 

That night as I quilted, I noticed something:  the print on the lavender fabric is lily-of-the-valley! – and the baby’s name is Lily Joy.

That evening, Amy sent a picture of Emma with one of their Anatolian shepherds, paws on her shoulders.  

 

“I think that dog is part yak!” I wrote back.

Female Anatolians can weigh up to 120 pounds; males can weigh up to 140 pounds.

Kurt and Victoria and their children had been sick for several days with bad colds and flu.  Most of them were getting better – but Kurt was not.  He has asthma, and if he gets a cold, it can turn serious quickly.

He wound up with pneumonia, and was checked into the hospital that evening, as his oxygen levels got quite low.

After rounds of oxygen, antibiotics, and steroids, he’s doing better, and was able to come home on Thursday.

Wednesday, I filled the birdfeeders, polished up the bathroom, watered the houseplants, washed the dishes, and then headed back upstairs to my quilting studio.

 

My fast Internet speed returned on the 10^th.  This time it’ll last a little longer than it did last month, since I won’t be loading programs onto my new laptop, or having both laptops connected to the Internet at the same time. 

I like my older laptop best, because it has the bigger screen, and it has my photo editor on it.  But it’s more of a data hog than the newer one.  I’m using them both:  the older one is downstairs, and the newer one is upstairs in my quilting studio.  It makes things a lot easier, when I don’t have to lug this big, honkin’ laptop with me up and down the stairs.  Yeah, I’m livin’ in the lap of luxury – two laptops.

 

Actually, it’s a bit of a pain, because I wind up with a document on one, and then need to pull it up on the other.  And I don’t want my data in the cloud, though now and then I do save a document or photo to the cloud.  Indeed, the cloud couldn’t hold all my data!  Not without making me pay for storage, anyway, it couldn’t.

The service with the most free data storage is Blomp (yes, there is a cloud storage called ‘Blomp’), with 200 GB of free data storage – if you meet certain criteria, such as recommending their service to enough friends who then use it, too.  Some might need to be paying customers; I’m not sure about that, as there’s conflicting information on the matter.

 

Anyway, my method is to put a needed file on an SD card and then take it with me upstairs (or downstairs) to the other computer.

Now, if only laptop manufacturers had not removed the SD card slot!  Because they did, I have to keep my card reader handy, too.  Like I said, it’s a bit of a pain.  Yeah, yeah, I know.  First World hardships.

We went to Wal-Mart after church Wednesday night and got tool sets for Josiah’s and Ethan’s birthday gifts.  We then went into the produce section and got a big carton of huge strawberries.  Mmmm, they’re just as good as they look!  I ate the last five strawberries for my afternoon snack, a little while ago.

Both of us were starved, so I got a chicken salad sandwich on a croissant, and Larry got a beef and cheese sandwich.  We ate them on our way home.

I opened up a new bag of Amana coffee Thursday morning:  Swiss Chocolate Orange.  I don’t usually care much for chocolate-flavored coffee beans, but this is good stuff.

Later that afternoon, I ventured out in the high winds to take the birthday gifts to Ethan and Josiah. 

One wintry day a few years ago, I took a stack of suits to the cleaners, opened the door of the Suburban – and it flew all the way open, hauling me straight out of the vehicle without any effort at all on my part, while I valiantly went on hanging onto the door.

 

With difficulty, I got the door shut again – and then the wind gusted again.  The parking lot was covered with ice, and I scarcely had to take two steps before I was across the lot and at the front door of the business.  Getting it open with a pile of suits in one arm took some heroics.  And getting back across the icy lot to the Suburban — !  Skating against the wind is no easy task.  Actually, I think I’m still there, struggling, and this is my clone writing this.

Early that evening, I finished Sherri’s quilt.  Here’s the back.

 

Some lady on a big Facebook quilting group (the one where they sometimes get big, exciting, snarly fights) decided I was nuts in thinking the embroidery was done by hand, because she ‘Googled it’, and didn’t find it.  That proves it, right?  😂

 

I wrote, “Try plugging in ‘vintage nursery rhyme embroidery’, and you’ll discover that it’s Aunt Martha’s iron-on designs, and you can buy it on Etsy, eBay, and various other places.”

She did not deign to answer.  🙄  Several other ladies found it and bought it, though.  I wonder if Aunt Martha is surprised at her sudden influx of sales?

Friday afternoon, I headed to town.  I planned to take Sherri’s quilt to her, drop off some things at the Salvation Army, take one of my suit jackets to the cleaners, stop at one of the fabric stores to look for some fabric to coordinate with a piece of Farmall-scenery fabric I was planning to use for Warren’s quilt, and then pick up an order of groceries at Wal-Mart.

The majority of that was aborted, however.  At least I got Sherri’s quilt delivered.

But then, as I rounded a corner toward town, there was a terrific ka-BOOM!!! in the rear of the Mercedes, and it abruptly collapsed several inches.  The big pickup that was tailgating me backed waaaaay off.  (‘The li’l ol’ lady’s a-shootin’ at me!’)

The vehicle was still running and driving all right, but it wobbled and thunked over the bumps; so I knew something had gone badly wrong with the air suspension.  Most likely, the rubber bladder had blown up.

I tell you, it was LOUD.  It sho’ ’nuff made my hands shake for a bit, before I understood what had happened!

I maneuvered around another corner to a spot where I could pull off the road, then got out and took a look at my nice car.

It was hanging low over the back tires, with only about three inches of clearance.  There was a loud hissing, grating noise behind the right rear wheel – it was the compressor trying to adjust the air in the spring.  It wasn’t long before it shut off, and the readout on the dash informed me, “AIR SPRING MALFUNCTION.”

I called Larry to relay the event.  He said, “Sounds like something went wrong with the air suspension.”

Yeah.

I didn’t want to drive around town like that, since any bump might make the tires bang into the inner fenders.  Larry recommended I drive home via Shady Lake Road, and in fact the spot where I’d pulled off continues right on toward Shady Lake Road, which has thankfully been recently repaved.

This road goes through the countryside some distance south of the main highway, and ends a couple of miles south of our house.  It goes past son-in-law and daughter Jeremy and Lydia’s house... a couple of nephews’ and nieces’ homes... and the homes of five good friends.  If any of them happened to look out their windows as I drove by, I’ll betcha they were thinking, Oh, dear, something’s wrong with Sarah Lynn’s car! – she’s only going 45 mph!  😄

I made it safely home, though the last few hundred yards up our bumpy road and down our bumpy lane were a bit bone-jarring, even though I was barely creeping along.

Larry said he would pick up the groceries I had ordered from Wal-Mart – but I was scheduled to collect them between 4 and 5, and he wouldn’t be off work yet.  Furthermore, he was on his motorcycle.  Would they still have the groceries rounded up, ready and waiting, when he finally arrived?

I looked online to see how much it costs to replace air springs in the Mercedes GL450 and found this:  “The average cost for a Mercedes-Benz GL450 Active Suspension Air Spring Replacement is between $795 and $833.”  And that was only one spring!  It would be best to replace them both while we were at it, since the vehicle is a 2016, and the air spring bladder can start getting brittle at 6 to 10 years.  Aaauuuggghhh.  That’s not very long, for such a high-dollar car.

I hunted around a bit more, and discovered some air bag suspension springs for our vehicle on eBay – listed at just $73.  I sent the link to Larry.

 

“O’Reilly wants $203 each for those bags, 😳” Larry texted me.

The labor part is expensive, too.  Thankfully, Larry can do it.

I waited until he got home and removed the blown air bag from the Benz, in order to be sure we were getting the right thing, before I ordered them.  They’ll be here next Monday. 

Wow, no wonder it was a loud bang!  Just look at the tear in that thing.

 

Oooookay.  I didn’t get to the Salvation Army or the cleaners or the bank, but those things could wait.  As for getting fabric...  As soon as we finished supper, I trotted upstairs and started searching through my fabrics for anything that might possibly go with that Farmall fabric.  Maybe I could save a few dollars, if I could find something suitable.

I played around with EQ8 a bit, measuring the various fabrics I came up with, and adjusting the design until I could make it work.  Here’s the Farmall fabric, which I found in one of the bins of fabric my late sister-in-law Janice gave me a few months before she passed away.

 

Here is the design from EQ8:

 

I ordered the fabric with the barns from Marshall Dry Goods.  It cost $8/yd., is a little more than half what it would’ve cost elsewhere.  It should be here Wednesday, which will be fine, since I won’t have those tractor appliqués done by then anyway.

Larry got off work, came home to get the BMW, and headed back to Wal-Mart for the groceries.  He was almost two hours late, but they hadn’t returned the stuff to the shelves yet, and brought everything right out when he got there.

That night, Hannah sent me an audio clip of her family singing Thy Word Is Like A Garden, Lord, at our friends the Parrows’ church in Oklahoma on Sunday.  They sang it a cappella.  Everyone was perfectly on tune, and blending so perfectly that I couldn’t tell who was singing what part.  Most – maybe all – of the children have perfect pitch – meaning, if you tell them to sing a G♭, they will immediately sing a G♭.

When I was little, I heard someone ask my father if I had perfect pitch.  He said he didn’t know. 

I was all indignant.  I had never sung off-tune in my life! 

I eventually learned from my friend Penny that perfect pitch is the ability to sing a certain note or know what note one is hearing, without benefit of ker-plunking the note on the piano.

Oh. 

Well. 

Hmmph.

I can hum a note, make a mad dash for the piano (still humming), plink a note, and get within a note or two of what I’m humming, and now and then hit it on the first try! 

So there.  I might not have perfect pitch, but I gots downright-purty-close pitch!

Late that night, I found some things that I had ordered and thought had gotten lost in the mail.  They probably arrived days ago, but I didn’t find them until Friday night, because whoever delivered the boxes had put them in the big black toolbox Larry put on the porch.  He actually put it there months ago for that very purpose, but none of the delivery people have ever used it, and I didn’t think to look there.  It’s quite an unsightly box, being one of those heavy-duty plastic toolboxes that belong in the back of a pickup truck box, right behind the cab. 

I should find something that looks prettier.  Trouble is, our front porch faces north, and with our house situated right below the crest of the hill to the north, the winds swoop down over the hill and hit us with force.  It has taken heavy iron benches right off that porch and into the lilac bush, and it has slid that heavy toolbox right down the front steps.  I haven’t put pots of flowers on the porch for a couple of years now, because I’m quite tired of having to run out and get them every other night or so, in order to save them from bad weather.  That gets old.  Especially since I’m getting old!

I did not go see Loren Saturday, because the engine safety warning light on the BMW is on; so I don’t want to drive it out of town, especially if I’m by myself.  That vehicle sometimes goes into limp mode when that light is on, and then it will run no more than 15 mph.

Instead, I worked on Warren’s Farmall Scenes quilt.  I took a tractor out of the middle of the design and replaced it with a cow portrait; I’ll appliqué that.

 

Finding no dark and light grays in my fabric stash, I changed the Attic Window sashes to dark and light blues.

At 7:30 p.m., I went downstairs to refill my coffee mug – and realized it must be time to eat, because Larry was putting food on the table!

We had baked battered pollock, lettuce salad with sunflower seeds, cranberries, bacon bits, etc., Oui peach yogurt, cottage cheese, strawberry kiwi juice, and strawberries.

I sewed until 11:30 p.m., attaching the Attic Window sashes to all the Farmall scenes, and adding some of the narrow sashing and little yellow cornerstones.  

 

We were glad to see Kurt at church yesterday.  He carries a small oximeter with him in order to keep track of his oxygen levels, which are still too low.  He can’t laugh without coughing – and that’s hard, for Kurt!  He’s a cheery person, with a ready smile and laugh.

The temperature got into the 80s yesterday and today, the highest it’s been so far this year.  We are expecting heavy rain to start late this evening, and continue all through the night and a good deal of the day tomorrow.  There’s a possibility of hail and tornadoes, too.

I don’t want anything destroyed; but I love thunderstorms.  I remember when I was a little girl, standing in the open garage door under the eave overhang beside my Daddy, watching it pour, listening to the thunder, seeing the lightning, my hand tucked in his.  I felt safe and secure, and was delighted with the noise and the excitement.  😊

The gel for the TENS pads arrived!  The pads were no longer sticky, and I thought I might have to get new pads; but they are kind of pricey.  I did a little research and learned that there was such a thing as TENS pad gel, made expressly for this purpose.

I’m giving it a try right this minute as I type, and it’s working very well.  When I repositioned one pad, it was stuck quite well, but adhered in another spot just fine.  I chose another mode for my TENS unit and reset it for an additional 60 minutes.  I’m so happy I don’t have to order new pads for it!  It really is a helpful little gadget.

Here’s a picture of Loren from a week ago Saturday, wearing his new shoes, new pants, and new shirt.  He wears the hat with the Walker insignia that Larry gave him all the time, as he is often cold – and because he really likes that Walker insignia.

 

Now to print out tractors and cow face, and then cut some fabric and freezer paper for the appliqués.

 

 

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