Here’s one of my favorite things to do
(if it’s not one of my favorite things, then tell me why I do it so often!): Walk into a store from the east. Buy something, pay for it, walk out – and head
due west. Go around the corner, and “AAAAA!!!
SOMEONE STOLE MY CAR!” Then... “Oh. Yes. Quite
so.” (In a Winnie-the-Pooh tone.)
I walk into a ladies’ restroom in a
truck stop... walk back out – and nearly enter the men’s room. Or, walk straight into the wall at the back. “Huh.
How’d they build this wall so fast?!”
If it’s dementia causing this
particular phenomenon, then I’ve had dementia since I learned how to walk.
I think it’s the “I Must Always Turn
to the Right” Syndrome. IMATRS.
Actually, this deficiency has improved
during these last few years as I’ve been traveling back and forth to Omaha,
mostly by myself. I purposefully take
note of where I park, which direction I walk, and landmarks that will guide me
straight back to my vehicle. See, you can
teach an old dog new tricks!
I was telling this to Hester the other
day, and she laughed, “I never follow my instincts when trying to find my way
back to the car, or a road. They’re
always wrong. I wouldn’t have made it
very far on the Oregon Trail! 🤠”
“Just to trick people,” I told her, “the
pioneers named multiple spires ‘Chimney Rock’, not just the one in
Nebraska. There are ‘Chimney Rocks’ in Colorado,
Wyoming, Montana, Idaho... There are
probably Conestoga wagons still making big circles from one Chimney Rock to the
other, wondering where in the world Oregon is.”
Last Monday evening, Levi texted me, “Here’s
a haircut you might like!”
I immediately texted back, “I like this one
better.”
Tuesday, Kurt and Victoria were in Omaha, as
Willie had a couple of checkups there. The
appointments were a few hours apart, so they went to Bass Pro Shops where the little boys enjoyed the aquarium; and then
to the Corvette Café inside the Gregg Young Corvette Dealership.
Victoria reported, “A real trained
chef runs the place and he’s verrrrrry happy to make anything that sounds good
to you. I heard him customizing random
meals for people who didn’t know what to order, having such a good time. The man said he has done cooking podcasts and
shows. He is obviously extremely
knowledgeable about food. He made the
salsa himself, and it was delicious.”
I tried to convince Larry that we
should eat there a time or two when we were in Omaha. He seemed unimpressed with my descriptions of
the place and the pictures I found online.
Reckon he’ll change his tune, now that one of his offspring has given it
a thumbs up?
For supper that evening, I fixed ribs that my
nephew Kelvin gave us for Christmas. He
had partially cooked them, adding various spices and flavorings, before sealing
them in airtight packaging. I froze them
until we were ready to use them, then thawed them overnight in the refrigerator
before baking them for about half an hour.
Just a few bites of those scrumptious ribs,
and I was texting Kelvin to tell him that I was pretty sure those were the best
ribs I’d ever had. Mmmmmm, they were
good.
Tuesday morning, I had an appointment with an
attorney regarding Loren’s finances. Accordingly, I got up nice and early
in order to be ready in plenty of time.
It was a cold, cold day, -10° when I got up
at 6:30 a.m., with a windchill of -35°.
By the time I was ready to leave the house, it had warmed up to 0°, and
the windchill was ‘only’ -25°.
The car
wouldn’t start. It behaved all goofy and
odd, with strange, never-seen-before readouts on the dash, and the brake pedal
feeling all wrong. I pushed the button
to start it, and the interior lights flashed twice and then stayed on, while
the starter gave a couple of wimpy whirs and then gave up. I called Larry, hoping he was nearby and
could come and get the vehicle started.
He didn’t
answer his phone.
I went
back indoors before I froze to death, called the attorney, and told him my tale
of woe. He said I could come later that
afternoon, should we manage to get the car running.
I called
one of my great-nephews, who is also one of Larry’s bosses, and he went and
roused Larry, who was out in the shop constructing the bed for the newest boom
truck. Larry was welding away, phone in
pocket – but hearing aids not in ears, so he didn’t hear his phone ringing. Larry came home and had the Mercedes running
before too long. His BMW hadn’t started
that morning, either. Too cold for
people; too cold for cars!
I called
the lawyer to ask if I could still come, half an hour later than expected, and
he said that would be fine. I don’t
imagine the place was overrun with clients, on a morning like that. The law office is in the upstairs part of our
bank, there on the left corner of the picture.
I left the
Benz running while I was in the office, as I didn’t want to chance it not
starting again when I came back out. There’s one advantage to living in a
sorta small town in middle Nebraska – a car left running on Main Street will
still be there when you return. The only
thing that’s happened with our unlocked car recently is that a friend stuck a
very large package of unroasted roast beef in it. 😄
After leaving the attorney’s office, I stopped at Loren’s
bank to give them a copy of his death certificate and ask them to stop auto
withdrawals. They only do that for 30 days, but I would call all those various
places and stop the auto payments in any case.
The bank’s 30-day pause would just add a little protection.
Home again, I went through the list without
too much trouble. A few refunds
are on the way, and one auto deposit of benefits is halted.
That done,
I called Loren’s oldest son Richard, who’s 3 years older than me. He and his younger brother Paul, 1 ½ years
older than me, and sister Jayne, 3 years younger than me, live in Texas. They’ve requested that I be the Personal
Representative, so my attorney drew up the papers, and I sent him the necessary
addresses.
Then, having done as much as possible on that
score, I went upstairs to my sewing room and put together a little more of
Levi’s quilt.
Wednesday,
I did some cleaning in the kitchen, then headed back to the quilting studio.
It was a lot warmer that day than it
had been the day before; but in the early afternoon, the wind suddenly blew ferociously,
and it began snowing like everything – or at least that’s what it looked like.
I later realized that the ground was all
covered with tiny little balls of sleet.
Our midweek church service was that
evening. Afterwards, we had a late
supper of chicken, broccoli, and noodles.
Thursday, I order birthday presents
for several of the grandchildren and children; we have numerous birthdays in
February. On February 8th alone,
there are four birthdays. All told in
February, there are eight grandchildren’s birthdays and three children’s
birthdays.
I paid some bills, and then worked on
Levi’s ‘Heaven & Nature Sing’ quilt the rest of the day.
Friday at 1:00, I picked Levi up and brought
him to my house to tune my piano. Since
I didn’t want to be upstairs working on his quilt while he was all by his
lonesome on the main floor tuning the piano (he might get hungry, after all!),
I brought up from the basement my late mother-in-law Norma’s photo albums and began
going through them, pulling out any pictures I thought Larry’s sister Rhonda
would want. If any albums contained more
photos she might want than not, I reversed the procedure and pulled out the
pictures she wouldn’t want.
Meanwhile, the charging port on Levi’s
electronic tuner had come loose inside the device, and stopped charging. He was quite troubled over this turn of
events, but I know he has perfect pitch and a good understanding of the tuning
process.
I told him, “Just keep going in octave
sections, and then stop and make sure all octaves are blending, and
check the harmony of the chords, too. Then
continue to the next octave section. You
can do it! You have the ear for it.”
Thus encouraged, he headed back to the
piano.
Hannah came later to visit and take
Levi home again when he was done with the piano.
When he finished, he told me that it
wasn’t as good as he could have done, had his tuner been working; but when I
played it later, it sounded quite lovely.
He really is good at this work, and he’s getting better quickly. I hope he can get his tuner fixed; they are
expensive.
I don’t like to quit in the middle of
a project, so after Hannah and Levi left, I continued searching through Norma’s
albums. I turned a page in one album and
whataya know, there was an old Polaroid picture of the quilt Larry’s Grandma
Ruby Berry had made for his mother Norma in 1974. I think Grandma Ruby took the picture, since
it was with a few other Polaroid pictures she’d taken. It seems I remember she had a Polaroid camera. It’s a poor picture, but there’s no mistaking
this Double Wedding Ring quilt.
About the time I thought I was done
with the albums, I found another big bin full of albums and a large box with
albums and envelopes of loose photos.
I plowed my way through all of those,
and then grabbed the bin full of very old Jackson family photos and mementos
that I scanned a couple of years ago and added that to all the pictures and
albums I’ll give Rhonda.
Next, I pulled out the Double Wedding
Ring quilt. There were a few spots that
needed to be fixed. Once that was done,
it, too, would go to Rhonda.
My stomach growled. I looked at the clock, thought about what was
in the refrigerator and the freezer, and sent a text to Larry: “I would be really happy if we could have
Mexican food for supper.”
That notion made him happy, too; so he brought
home ‘Build-It Bowls’ from Amigos, which are basically enchilada dinners, minus
the tortillas. He’d gotten himself this
entrée the last time we got Mexican food, and I thought it looked good; and I
always wind up with too much tortilla.
Here’s the description on the Amigos
website: “It starts with cilantro lime
rice and sour cream. Choose marinated
steak, marinated chicken, or shredded beef. Then pick your beans (pinto, black), veggies
(corn relish, cilantro onion, fajita peppers), cheese (queso sauce or shredded
pepper jack cheese), and veggies (pico de gallo, diablo salsa, salsa verde).”
They
list ‘veggies’ twice. The second one in
the list should instead be ‘sauce’. They
need an editor.
It was pretty good, yes; but I have to admit,
I missed the tortilla.
Saturday, I
began working on the Double Wedding Ring quilt.
Grandma Ruby machine-pieced and hand-quilted it. There were patches made of loosely
woven fabric that had raveled and frayed, but Norma gave me an entire section –
one of those melon-shaped sections, complete with the wedge-shaped patches
around it – with which I could repair it back when she gave me the quilt in late
2016. Just 8 years later, I got it done! I think (I hope) I found all of the
frayed-out pieces.
Grandma Ruby really did a beautiful
job with that scalloped edge. It’s
perfectly smooth, and you cannot even see the thread where she sewed it down by
hand on the back.
Once that
was done, I got back to work on Levi’s ‘Heaven & Nature Sing’ quilt.
Late that afternoon, I texted Larry, “Could
you bring home some tortillas for our leftover Mexican bowls?”
He could, and he did. I heated them in butter in a pan on
the stove while heating the leftovers in the microwave – and we enjoyed the
food more than we had the previous night.
Furthermore,
the tortillas were a whole lot better than those from Amigos, as there wasn’t
too much all bunched in a gob of dough at the ends of the enchilada or burrito,
and it was perfectly cooked, just starting to crisp. Yummy.
Maybe we should do this from now on!
By bedtime, the Heaven
& Nature Sing quilt top was all together, except for one more cream-colored
border. You’ll recall, Levi’s other
grandmother, Bethany had started a quilt with these animal and scenic pictures;
I took it apart and redid it. As it was
reversible, I have more of the pictures, and will use them for Nathanael’s
quilt.
Hannah found an
envelope of large, embroidered, iron-on letters amongst Bethany’s
sewing things, and they spell out LEVI DANIEL. I made sure to leave space to incorporating
these letters onto the quilt. They aren’t
ironed and sewn on yet.
Yesterday after our
morning church service, we ate lunch at Kurt and Victoria’s house – nachos with
pulled pork, cheese, diced tomatoes and peppers, and homemade spicy sauce.
After we ate, Larry was holding little
Arnold on his lap, playing with him. He
had a small wooden toy piece, which Larry set upright on the table. Arnold gave a silly little high-pitched
giggle – and reached out and tipped the block over. Larry howled, and Arnold laughed uproariously.
Larry set the block back up, and
Arnold giggled in anticipation just before tipping it over again. Larry howled.
Arnold tossed back his head and laughed.
Larry repositioned the block.
This time, Arnold moved it some
distance across the table before tipping it over.
Larry pretended he couldn’t reach
it. “Can’t reach it!” he said, wiggling
his fingers just millimeters from the toy.
Arnold giggled, looking up into
Grandpa’s face.
And then, instead of moving the block
closer, that baby proceeded to grab Grandpa’s wrist and pull his arm far enough
that his hand could reach the block!
That little boy just turned one.
One!
And that wasn’t
all. After a few more verses of ‘Grandpa
set the block up, Arnie tip it over,’ Arnold snagged the tipped-over block
before Grandpa did, and repositioned it himself.
New rules!
The gears in that
baby’s cute little head are turning just fine, yes indeedy.
One of the
funniest parts of all was how hard big sister Carolyn laughed at her baby
brother.
It was a fairly warm day today, for January
in Nebraska – 42°, with a windchill of 34°.
The lawyer called; he had papers ready
for me to sign in accepting the appointment of PR. There are a lot of steps to go through, and I
know practically nothing about these things. I’m thankful for my attorney.
I picked up the mail on my way home,
and found that Loren’s 1099-R tax form had arrived. So now I need to get everything ready for the
accountant. Larry will soon be bringing
home his 1040 form, and I’ll need to do our taxes, too. Wheeee, the fun never stops! 😂
Aarrgghh, I’d rather quilt.
I guess I shouldn’t look at it as such
a trial, since we do usually get a fairly decent refund. But I’m not terribly fond of doing taxes. Math was always my favorite subject, from
first grade on. So why do I dislike
doing taxes?!
Here’s a picture of Grandma Ruby. She passed away in 1989 at the age of 80.
We had lasagna for supper tonight,
with apple crumb pie with caramel swirl ice cream for dessert. Now I’m having a cup of Oriental Treasures
green tea, not necessarily because I like it (though it isn’t bad), but
mostly because Larry drank the last of the coffee, and I didn’t want to make
another pot.
Tomorrow, Loren’s taxes!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
.heic)
