There’s an ad for farm equipment that plays on Rural Radio each morning: “We have 99% satisfaction. That’s right, 9 out of 10 people are happy with our products!”
Me: “Sir, 9 out of 10 is only 90%.”
Surely I’m not the only one who notices this?
Tuesday was Victoria’s birthday. Our youngest child is 29 years old! She and Kurt, along with Willie and Arnold, were in St. Paul at Gillette Children Hospital seeing a specialist. We’re all hoping he can help Willie with his walking gait.
It got up to 55° that day, but there was enough snow out there that it wouldn’t be all melting. In fact, there’s still snow in a few places, despite two or three days of warmer temperatures.
After a bit of housecleaning, I spent the rest of the day cropping and editing the recently-scanned photos. This is the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, taken in 2000.
I kept wanting to hunt through some of my saved patterns or created designs in EQ8 to look for the quilt I would soon be making; but told myself, No, no; just keep cropping and editing! You’re allllmost done, alllllmost done...
Below is the Christmas picture I took of the children at Pawnee Park, October 24, 1998.
When I was done taking pictures and fiiiiinally removed camera from tripod, Victoria, who was 21 months, gave a huuuuge sigh, pointed at the playground we could see a couple of blocks away, began heading that way, and asked, “Nowwwwww go slide and swing??!”
I said, “Imagine what your Christmas dress would look like, if you played in the playground with it on!”
“Ohhh,” she answered, soooo crestfallen. She’d been just sure she could go play on the swings and the slide, taffeta dress and all!
She was so cute and sweet about it, I wound up promising we’d go home and change clothes and come back and play and eat supper there at the park. And so we did.
That day in Omaha, a couple of drivers were startled when, as they sat at a stoplight, the earth suddenly opened and gobbled them up! It was a big sinkhole right on Pacific, a main road in the city. Good thing it happened when they were stopped; neither driver was injured, and they managed to scramble out of the hole, with help from passersby.
That evening for supper, without knowing that the following day would be National Clam Chowder Day, I had clam chowder, Sweet Hawaiian club crackers, applesauce, a few nuts, and cranberry cherry juice.
Sometimes I bake fish to go with clam chowder; but since Larry had gone to Detroit to pick up another container trailer, the chowder was enough for me.
I took this photo of a Golden-mantled ground squirrel in Rocky Mountain National Park in late summer, 2000. I posted it on Facebook, and some man promptly wrote, “chipmunk”
I wrote back, “Not a chipmunk. It’s bigger than a chipmunk; also, note the lack of stripes on its head.”
No answer.
I then posted this picture (below) of a Least chipmunk, also taken in Rocky Mountain National Park – and some man immediately informed me, “Somebody should be fined. It’s illegal to feed the wildlife in Rocky Mountain National Park.”
I even more immediately deleted his comment. First, they were a whole lot less fussy about that back in 2001 – and anybody who had crumbs fed the chipmunks, ground squirrels, and Clark’s nutcrackers. Park Rangers even pointed them out to the children. Second, I don’t remember whose hand this was in the picture; maybe not even one of my own kids; but I do remember that people were offering the little chipmunks stuff off the ground – stuff that he was already eating. I wanted the hand in the shot, in order to show how tiny this type of chipmunk is – even smaller than our 13-lined ground squirrel.
Here is a photo with both a Golden-mantled ground squirrel and a chipmunk, by Lorraine Snipper Photography.
Wednesday, there was still snow on the ground, and we would soon be getting a few more snowflakes before the temperature got high enough to turn it to rain. At least, that’s what the weatherman said. I think we got three raindrops. Possibly four.
Larry, on his way home from a north suburb of Detroit with the aforementioned container trailer and semi, stopped east of Jackson, Michigan, on account of heavy snow, lack of sleep, and brakes that kept locking up on the trailer.
Victoria sent me some pictures from St. Paul, including this one from an aquarium they visited – Sea Life, in the Mall of America.
Did you know there are over 35,000 species of fish in the world, with roughly half of them freshwater and half of them saltwater? Furthermore, that number increases regularly, as new species are found frequently – a good 300 every year, especially in deep-sea and unexplored habitats.
There’s a narrow aquarium in the clinic, too. Victoria got a shot with Arnold looking at her through it.
I like aquariums, big and little – so long as they belong to someone else. I’ve had my fill of cleaning aquariums in my life. 😏
A quilting friend was telling about choosing thread in a quilt shop – and some young worker didn’t think she should buy thread labeled ‘embroidery thread’ for some other purpose, such as quilting or piecing. Of course, embroidery thread is generally long-stapled, and therefore usually works great for quilting in long-arm machines.
The same thing happened to me in a big quilting store a while back. I was happily looking through all the threads (‘Oooo, pretty! Shiny! Ooooo!’) when along came Helpful Hattie – young Helpful Hattie – asking what I needed thread for.
I considered giving her a long paragraph of four-year-old Victoria’s theology:
Me, seeing Victoria threading a large needle: “What are you doing?”
Victoria: “Right now, I’m threading!” Pause, while she caught her little pink tongue between her teeth in studious intent, working a strand of thread through the needle’s eye. Then, triumphantly holding up the threaded needle, “And now I’m going to needle!”
Instead, I told Ms. Hattie I was going to be quilting — and here she interrupted before I could continue, informing me adamantly that that thread was embroidery thread.
I looked at her. “Oh.” Then I grinned at her and said, “In that case, I’m going to embroider.” 😏🙄😅
That afternoon, I sent Dorcas two photos of herself taking pictures, the first at Henry Doorly Zoo in 1988, the second at Branched Oak Reservoir in 2001.
“A Wrinkle in Time,” I labeled them.
“LOL,” responded Dorcas. I probably still look like that quite a bit. LOL”
“I was once taking pictures of flowers and insects in the front gardens of our house on 42nd Avenue,” I told her. “I wound up in quite the position, all inside out and upside down and pretzelized, the better to get the best viewpoint – and then when I finally extracted myself and stood up, I discovered a dozen small noses pressed to the glass of the school library across the street!” 😆
Larry called about 4:30; he was just east of Chicago. He’d spent a good part of the day clearing out old airlines that were all clogged with debris. He thought everything was now working well. At least the delay kept him from driving into a snowstorm in southwestern Michigan, where I could see on a highway conditions map and also on a Facebook page from that area that there had been numerous accidents.
At 6:30 p.m., I cropped and edited the final photo. The scanning job was done! – and it was done about a week earlier than I’d expected. I’ve scanned 6,883 photos since December. Four or five years ago, I scanned 37,314 pictures. That makes 44,197 scanned photos. These were the pictures taken with film cameras, printed and put in physical albums. Since 2004, I’ve used digital cameras. You want to know what the total number of pictures is, I suppose?
Okay... I’m plugging in one of my external hard drives...
Annnnd... the absolute total photo count is... (are you ready?) ... 342,631 pictures.
Here are Willie and Arnold, sound asleep in their hotel room in St. Paul.
In the 35 minutes I had to spare before time to head to church for our midweek service, I brought my downstairs laptop (the one I carefully keep updated and current) upstairs, connected one of my external hard drives to it, and began backing up all data on to that hard drive. I left it working away and headed to church.
After the service, I picked up some groceries at Walmart, came home and ate supper, then trotted back upstairs to continue the data-backup process.
I connected that first hard drive to the other laptop, put such things as I desired onto it, then plugged in the other two external hard drives and copied all data from the updated external hard drive onto both of those.
I can’t keep all my data on my laptops, as each of them only has a one-terabyte drive, and I have approximately three terabytes of data. The oldest and smallest of the external hard drives is now full. I won’t get another unless and until another of my hard drives is running low on space.
Larry called; he’d made it to Iowa City. He was still having trouble with air lines. They were no longer all stopped up with debris, but there was one that was cracked. He repaired it with electrical tape, and it worked for a while; but one somewhat tight corner in a truck stop, and the repair came loose and the trailer brakes locked up and brought him to quite an abrupt halt.
It wouldn’t be nice if that happened on I80, especially since the roads to the west were ice and snow-covered. There were no parts houses open. So he would sleep in his truck there, and fix the thing the next day.
Thursday, I launched into the sorting and organizing of my fabric.
The Sandhill cranes are coming back through Nebraska on their migration back to the tundras of the Northern Territories. Here are a couple of pictures I took of them on April 1, 1999.
Larry got home around 1:00 p.m., rushing around telling me he had to leave for Santa Ana, California, by 2:00 p.m. in order to get there by 2:30 p.m. Friday to pick up the third container box he’d purchased. Otherwise... what? The owner would blow the thing up?
He was going to drive his gray Dodge pickup, since he can go faster than with the orange semi, and the trailer is light enough that the pickup can handle it fine, so he says. He would have two mountain ranges to cross, though. GPS doesn’t seem to understand one must needs go slower over mountain passes. Larry never figures he might have to sleep, either.
He was finally on his way by 3:00 p.m. When I said, “You can’t get there that fast, by 2:30 p.m. tomorrow,” he glibly informed me, “I gain two hours, heading that direction!”
It was as good as an extra day, in his eyes.
According to Google maps, he had a 21-hour, 33-minute drive of 1,480 miles.
By a quarter after four, fabric in two big bins from my late sister-in-law had been sorted, and one bin now holds leftover batting, while the other has faux leather and fleece, and has been put on a basement shelf with other bins of other-than-cotton fabric. Three boxes with partially-sewn blocks that my daughter-in-law found at thrift stores have been consolidated into two boxes, and the panel prints I bought a few years ago have been duly admired, refolded, and replaced in their box. All the other bins – 14 of those not-too-tall 28-quart 24”x16”x6” bins, plus three 54-quart 24”x16”x11” bins – were lined up, lids off, and I was ready to start stacking like colors with like colors.
I took a time-out to rub Two Old Goats Arthritis Formula on my back and neck, which were protesting after hauling all those bins hither and yon, including the two from the basement to the second story, and then one all the way back down.
I like this formula, because not only does it help quickly, it also has a decent fragrance to it. It’s made with these essential oils: lavender, chamomile, rosemary, eucalyptus, peppermint, and birch bark; 1.35% menthol (which provides the majority of the pain relief), along with almond oil, aloe vera, a bunch of unpronounceable things, and of course goat milk. Five minutes later, I had recovered and was ready to launch back into the sorting. Look at this pretty stuff just waiting, waiting, for me to use it.
Here’s the pattern I will use; it’s called Coastal Stars.
Below we have a bin of blues. I have lots of reds... quite a few greens... a whole bunch of cream colors... and many other colors.
I got so busy trotting around putting fabric into stacks, and then into correct bins, I totally forgot about the Celsius I made myself over two hours earlier.
In talking with my brother G.W. on the phone that evening, he told a few old stories, some which I’d never heard before, as they happened before I was born (he’s 17 years older than me) – such as the time he got a couple of phone poles free from the power district in town. He erected them, one on either side of the church, stringing a wire over the church to the house for his ham radios. He painted the poles, so they looked nice.
Then, early the next Sunday morning, Mama came running down the stairs, telling him, “Get up, get up! Your wire is rubbing on the church roof and squeaking, and Daddy won’t be able to preach with it doing that!”
So G.W. hurried outside and lowered the wire.
Trouble is, that’s not where it was squeaking. It was squeaking where another wire ran through an eye ring on the side of the church.
Since that wasn’t removed, the squeak went on, all the way through the service!
I don’t imagine that went over very well.
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| Clark's nutcracker |
My expectations of getting all my fabric organized Thursday was a wee bit optimistic. I had about ten bins filled neatly with matching colors – and there was a whole lot more to go. The last couple of years’ purchases, especially from Marshall Dry Goods, have added quite a bit to my stash.
It was a pretty day Friday – 53° on the way up to 68°. Since Thursday’s long sleeves were too warm, and it only got up to 64°, you’d better believe I put on short sleeves Friday!
I finished Volume 3 of The Civil War by Shelby Foote that day. In his bibliographical note he writes, “By way of possible extenuation, in response to complaints that it took me five times longer to write the war than the participants took to fight it, I would point out that there were a good many more of them than there was of me.”
It was just that style of writing that kept my interest throughout the 3,000+ pages of these three volumes, the majority of which I listened to on YouTube audiobooks. Unfortunately, the final audiobook ended before the written book did; so I borrowed this third volume from Bobby in order to finish the reading.
Alpine Asters
At 4:30 p.m., I was done sorting fabric! Or at least I’d quit. Same approximate difference, right? 😅 I now have 18 of the smaller 28-quart bins and two of the large 54-quart bins full – and a bunch of cardboard boxes emptied and thrown out. The first dozen bins are neat as a pin, each holding various hues and shades of the same colorways. The last six, and those large ones, too, are a bit of a mishmash, because... what else can one do, when a bin is plumb stuffed full of reds, another of greens, another of orange and peach, etc.; and then one winds up with handfuls of each of those colors, but the original bin simply won’t hold another thread? Thus, mishmash.
But... all the fabric is put away, the bins are neatly stacked, and who but me knows about the mishmash? (Well, other than you, anyway, heh.) All that bending over, folding, and refolding, and lifting bins had made my back protest. I rubbed some Absorbine Jr. on it, and made myself a thermal tumbler of blueberry lemon Celsius and a hot cup of Thompson’s Irish tea. It was time to decide on a quilt pattern for son and daughter-in-law Joseph and Jocelyn! Here’s Joseph in Colorado, in 2000.
Yep, I will soon be unorganizing all that newly-organized fabric by pulling out pieces for a new quilt.
I opened the windows in my quilting studio, and could hear finches and sparrows warbling their springtime tunes. Then I heard a red-winged blackbird, and a robin, too. I love to listen to the birds in the springtime.
Here’s the quilt I’ve chosen. It’s called Star Crossed; I designed it in EQ8. It’ll be king-sized – 108.25” x 108.25”.
The quilt will have a paper foundation – meaning, I print the pattern pieces on thin newsprint paper, sew fabric right to the paper, then tear off the paper later. It makes for really accurate sewing. Plus, it’s fun to do.
I began printing the pages. The thin paper confuses the rollers on my printer. It kept dragging through more than one sheet.
At a quarter after 9, I stopped the print job in order to go pick up groceries at Walmart. The printing was taking so long, I was beginning to wonder if the printer restarted the job every time there was a paper jam (and there were a few; nothing serious). I’ll not print more until I get all the pieces taped together that need to be, and learn if I need more.
The grocery order was fairly small – milk, cottage cheese, peanut butter, bananas, rice pudding, and a Gerber multi-tool for Andrew’s upcoming birthday.
A friend of mine shudders at the very thought of ‘cottage cheese’. There are numerous brands of cottage cheese that are indeed pretty yucky. I like Hyland 4% milkfat, large curd, and not very many others. Nordica used to be good, 10-15 years ago; and then they changed their recipe. The flavor and the texture both changed, neither for the better. Booo, hissss.
I put the groceries away, made sure the cottage cheese tasted good, and went back upstairs to continue putting together pieces of newsprint.
Larry, meanwhile, was arriving in Santa Ana. As I mentioned, he was supposed to get there by 2:30 p.m. Friday. He got there around 9:00 p.m. And yes, I mean 9:00 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. That’s 11:00 p.m. CST.
He’d had several mountain passes to traverse, and somewhere in Colorado he had to wait while the road was cleared of snow. An avalanche was reported near Officers Gulch along I70 (that’s between Frisco and Copper Mountain) that day, but the report noted that this particular avalanche “didn’t make it to the highway.”
Here’s an elk we saw in Rocky Mountain National Park in 2000.
It was chillier Saturday morning than the previous morning; 29° at 10:30 a.m., feeling like 21°, and on the way up to 43°.
Levi came to tune my piano that day. His parents, Bobby and Hannah, along with their daughter Joanna, had flown to Los Angeles, where they attended a conference for Lilla Rose, the hair jewelry that Hannah sells. They also toured the factory.
While playing the piano that morning, as I usually do, I noticed that it needed to be dusted. I did that just as soon as I blow-dried and curled my hair and ate some breakfast. It was Hannah’s birthday that day, so I sent her an animated ecard.
Hannah sent me some pictures, saying that some of the mountains still had snow on them, though it was in the 90s in the city that day.
The passionflowers are in bloom.
When I was about 10, my parents and I visited some friends who lived in Los Angeles. The elderly man, Mr. Austad, with whom my father had once sold Bibles in Fargo, North Dakota, lived in a little cottage on a wide gravel road near LA International Airport. His daughter and her family lived in a more upscale neighborhood not too far away. We parked our vehicle and Airstream camper on the gravel road right out front of the man’s cottage. I played with some Mexican children who lived nearby; they were the first Mexicans I had ever met. They laughed when, every time a big plane flew low overhead, I stopped everything and stared, intrigued and fascinated. Their laughter did not at all deter me from doing it the next time. And the next, and the next.
A banana tree grew outside Mr. Austad’s front door, and an orange tree grew right outside the back door. At breakfast time, the kindly old man told me to go pick one of each of the fruits to go with the oatmeal he was cooking for us. I thought it was Top Novelty. Plus, I loved oatmeal (so long as it was cooked properly).
As promised, Levi arrived at noon, and quickly got to work tuning my piano. He asked if I wanted a brighter quality, or a more mellow quality. I choose... brighter! Every time. 😊
I had a window open that afternoon. There were a whole lot of birds out in the front yard, singing their springtime songs and busily gathering up dried bits and pieces of vines and stems and leaves from the flowerbeds, material they use to prepare their nests. This is just one of the reasons I always leave old winter growth until springtime.
When Levi got to a certain high note on the piano, every time he played it, a blue jay warbled back the exact same note. He played the note a half-step up – and the blue jay obliging sang that note.
When the piano was done, Levi requested that I come play it. I did, and found it just as beautiful as expected, since, after all, I’d been listening to him tune it.
I love how it sounds now.
For supper that evening, I had vegetable beef soup, rice pudding, cran-grape juice, and mint/chocolate chunk ice cream.
Hannah wrote to say that she and Joanna had made Flexi clips that day. Here are Hannah’s; Joanna’s are below. Aren’t they pretty?
Larry called that night. He was still in Santa Ana, California. He’d spent the entire day struggling to load the container onto his flatbed trailer. His winch had broken, so he had to use his manual come-along. Then he needed to put air in his trailer tires (which he’d kept low on the route out west in order to have more traction through the snowy mountains), and he had a hard time finding a place to get air – and the loaded trailer with its too-low tires was swaying and misbehaving if he went over 20 mph – and of course he accidentally wound up on one of the freeways.
Ugh, I do not think this is going to be a safe journey home. ☹
Sunday at 7:45 a.m., it was 18° with a windchill of 2°. The high would be 34°. I had just put the bird feeders out, and I can attest: it did indeed feel like 2°. Looking at that temperature, I wondered if the Mercedes would start. I’d make sure I went out early enough that I wouldn’t be late for church, even if I had to put the jump pack on it. The battery is going bad, and it doesn’t like cold nights.
Accordingly, I went out at 9:05 a.m. and gave it a try.
It started, but with a bit more cranking than usual. At least it cranked! Sometimes, it barely tries before giving up.
At 1:00 p.m., there was an unusual incident in Nebraska, about 120 miles to our south: an earthquake of 4.1 magnitude. An hour and a half later, there was an aftershock of M 2.6, followed six hours later by yet another at M 2.6. 🫨 People felt it quite some distance from the epicenter, even in Omaha; but I did not.
Larry, meanwhile, spent the day unsuccessfully hunting for a heavy-duty tire for his flatbed trailer, as the steel cords were showing through on one tire, and he certainly didn’t want it blowing out on some remote stretch of highway. He finally found a place where he could buy what he needed, but they wouldn’t open until the next day.
Here’s a picture Hannah sent. It’s the Point Vicent Lighthouse, with Catalina Island visible out there in the Pacific.
She wrote, “It was worth the Uber cost to see the sunset. Now we’re tearing along in another car. 😵💫”
A minute later, she wrote again: “Bobby just texted me, ‘It kinda makes you homesick for Aaron’s driving.’”
“Haha!” I answered. “I presume Bobby is somewhere nearby, in the same car?”
“Yes, in the front seat, right in front of me,” replied Hannah.
I waited a minute or two, then wrote back, “When I see the three little dots bouncing, signifying that you’re writing, and you’ve already given me a review of the driver’s driving, and then no text is forthcoming, I assume you’ve crashed.”
She soon texted again: “We’re almost done with this thrill ride. One more turn, and then we’ll see if we can walk.”
“I prefer big honkin’ Escalades and full-sized Hummers and suchlike, if the driver likes to play ‘Chicken’,” I told her.
She sent me a video of the sunset over the Pacific. As she stepped toward Joanna, I could hear Joanna humming; then, as she walked closer to Bobby, I could hear him adding in the harmony. 😄
They were not all that far from Larry – yet ne’er the twain would meet, since Hannah and family had not rented a car (other than the Uber ride to the nearby coast), and Larry and rig were stymied.
It’s cloudy and chilly today, 33° at 10:00 a.m. I refilled and rehung the bird feeders, and they were soon being visited by English sparrows, house finches, goldfinches, juncos, and red-winged blackbirds. I hear Eurasian collared doves, robins, blue jays, and cardinals nearby.
I put sheets and blankets into the washing machine; there were three more loads of clothes and towels to do. Next, I cleaned the bathroom and the kitchen.
Larry was still in San Bernadine, California, trying to find a heavy-duty tire and wheel for the flatbed trailer. Reckon I’ll ever see him again in this lifetime? I’ve been afraid this was an ill-advised endeavor from the moment it started. 😟
At least Kurt and Victoria and the little boys got home safely from Minnesota last week. Now they have some decisions to make about Willie. The specialists at Gillette Children’s Hospital in St. Paul can help him with his walking gait, but it will be a big job for that little boy, and his parents, too, what with all the ensuing physical therapy. And first, they need to find out about insurance.
This afternoon, Larry found the right tires for his trailer – and bought eight of them. 😲
After that, he changed the pintle hitch to a ball hitch.
By 2:30 p.m., the last load of clothes was in the washer, the previous load in the dryer. The bed was all made with fresh sheets and blanket. My clothes were done; the last two loads were Larry’s.
A friend sent me the link to a YouTube video of a man in protective gear opening a can of biscuits. Now I’m hungry for Grands Butter-Flavored Biscuits.
The boys used to leave the cans out in an obscure place for a little while in order to let the dough expand a bit (for a bigger explosion), then quietly tuck them back into the refrigerator. A while later, they’d hand the thing to Dorcas to open, because... she always screamed. Every time. 😂
This is kite-flying month! My experience with kites makes me sympathetic with Charlie Brown.
Yesterday, I heard a radio ad for Legacy Box – they convert old photos, film, slides, etc., into digital files. With their 50% sale going on right now, converting photos, so long as one has over a certain minimum amount, is $0.07 per photo. At that price, my 44,197 scanned photos would’ve cost me $3,093.79. Wow. And yikes. Anyway, I’m glad it’s done!
Changing the tires and the hitch on Larry’s flatbed trailer helped, but he can still only go about 40 mph without the trailer swaying, especially when big trucks go around him. He’s needing sway controls – but all the camper dealerships are closed for the day. A man at one camper sales told him there are more dealerships to the northwest, so Larry will probably head that direction. This will take him through the mountains, on interstate highways with three or four lanes going each way. 🫤
Now, back to the Star Crossed quilt. 😉
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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