Journal: For the Birds

Last Monday was the last day of school for the elementary students at our school.  Victoria sent pictures of Violet and Carolyn in the parking lot in front of the school.  It was a rainy day, making the parking lot shiny and wet, which somehow contributed to the picture looking quite pretty.  (The photo above is from Google Maps, and was taken on a bright, sunny day; so you'll have to use your imagination for the rainy day.)

I’m thankful for our school.  We wanted a church school when I was their age, but after having someone from Bob Jones University come and talk to us about it, we found we could not afford it.  We were able to build our first school in 1991.

Midmorning Tuesday, it was 49°, on the way up to 60° on that sunny, breezy day.  Annnd...  we were issued a frost advisory for the next morning!

I did some housecleaning, then edited photos.

A papa house finch brought one of his fledglings to the bird feeders, and baby was setting up quite a ruckus, begging for ‘More! More! More!’  

A cardinal was on the other feeder, making loud ‘Chip! Chip!’ calls.  I think he was telling me I need to refill those things; their favorite feeder was empty.  But I let them work at the feeders that are a little more difficult for them to extract seeds from.  Some of the seeds may have gotten slightly damp the previous couple of days, so they needed to be used up quickly.

That afternoon, we went to LensCrafters in Lincoln to return my craft glasses and, hopefully, get the correct prescription of lens put into them.  I need the focus at fingertip distance when I stretch my arm straight out, not at 10” from my nose.  I told them this.  Three times.

After leaving LensCrafters, we went to Harbor Freight, where Larry got a bead breaker tool to assist in removing tires from wheels.

We then went to Seward, where we ate supper at the Pasta Barn.  I got a plateful from their generous salad bar, and Toscana white bean soup; Larry ordered some kind of pasta with tasty sauce on it, and we shared a thick, just-out-of-the-oven brownie, à la mode, afterwards.

We then drove through the countryside, going by Homestead Lake between the small villages of Abie and Bruno.  Some kids were there fishing.  It’s just a small lake, with no amenities.

We continued on, and saw wild turkeys and deer.  Look, that deer is going the wrong direction, blatantly disregarding the directions on the sign!

The sunset was spectacular the last few miles of our drive home.

That evening, Hannah sent a cute picture of her Australian shepherds, Chimera and Willow.

Victoria then sent a couple of pictures of Violet with a Western Meadow-lark she had colored.   Next, she sent audio clips of Violet explaining that she had colored it for me, and had planned to give it to me, but there was a problem:  she wanted to keep it.  😄

The solution:  send Grandma a picture of it, along with a picture of Violet herself holding the picture!  She ended, as usual, with, “I love you!”

I immediately wrote back:  “A picture is perfectly fine, and very nice, and I really like it!  The Western Meadowlark is a beautiful bird – our State Bird.  Thank you!  I love you, too!”

I then told her the following story:  “Meadowlarks sang from telephone wires and fence poles the entire time we were bringing new baby Hester (your Aunt Hester) home from the hospital in David City when she was one day old.

“Here are several recordings of their songs and calls:  Meadowlark Songs

“In the video clip on that page, can you hear one – maybe two – far-away meadowlarks answering the one up close.”

Wednesday, Hannah came to have Larry change the oil in her Palisade.  We had a nice visit while he did so.

A friend of mine has been trying to locate and get rid of mildew or mold in her apartment.  Ugh, I feel for her, for I understand how difficult it can be to try to find and eradicate bad and possibly unhealthy odors.  I’ve coped with bad smells from mildew/mold, squirrel, cat, raccoon, gas, diesel, oil, welding – and I’ve always had extremely sensitive olfactory senses! 😏🥴😕😐😜😛😑😶

Furthermore, I live with a person whose only odor sensitivity is to cigarette smoke – and we rarely come in contact with that.  If I complain about some odd smell, he sometimes pauses what he’s doing, takes a gigantic breath, thinks about it momentarily, then announces ‘nothing smells’.

Okay, that made me laugh just writing it; but when it happens when I’m actually smelling an aroma that’s bothering me somethin’ fierce, eyes a-waterin’, nose and throat a-burnin’, head a-thumpin’, it gets me Irish dander up, it do, it do!

I snarl, “Never mind, you’re right, nothing smells anymore; you snuffed up all fragrance, good and bad, in the entire county.”

He laughs. He laughs!!!

I once decided that the writer of the comic ‘Pickles’ evidently has a live streaming mic in our house somewhere, because immediately after one of these ‘I smell something WHY CAN’T YOU SMELL IT’ episodes, there was a comic depicting Mr. and Mrs. Pickles strolling down the sidewalk.

Opal sniffs. “What’s that smell?”

Earl: “SNUFF!!!!!!” Then, “I don’t smell anything,” he says.

Opal glares at him. “It’s really strong!”

He tries again: “SNNNUUFFFFFF!!!!!!” Then, “Nope.”

Opal, enraged, whacks him with her umbrella. 😆

The most aggravating thing of all is when, after I comment on a bad odor of some sort, Larry suggests it must be one of the flowers currently blooming in one of my flower gardens.  

AAAAAAAAAA, flowers indeed!!!

I think he’s trying to be funny. I think.

When I was little, my father sometimes traveled with gas cans in the back of our Peugeot station wagon, when he feared it was so far between gas stations that he might get stranded somewhere.  (It never was, of course; but he always thought there was the possibility.) 

It was my job when we went over the mountains to clamber over the seats and press the release valves on those cans, since pressure in the cans rose as air pressure in the higher elevations diminished.  Good grief, that wasn’t good.  The valves didn’t just release pressure, you understand; they released fumes!

Daddy also worked on cars in the garage that was connected to the house.  In the winter, he’d open the door into the kitchen, the better to warm the garage.  Every once in a while, he’d start the car in order to determine if he’d gotten the valves (or whatever he was working on) set properly.  He thought just a moment of the car running wouldn’t hurt much – but of course gas fumes would come into the kitchen, and Mama and I would wind up with bad headaches. 🤕 Back then, we really didn’t understand how bad that was for us.

When Hannah was here, she spotted a mother mourning dove and her baby, newly fledged, in the ponderosa just outside the door.  I have hardly ever seen baby doves, except a time or two when they were still in the nest.  I ran for my camera.

I sent pictures to some of the kids, writing, “Did you know a newly fledged mourning dove is called a squab?  And isn’t he just the cutest little thing?

“Squab sounds like an insult!  Lol” Hester wrote back.

“Yes,” I agreed, “couldn’t they have named it, oh, I don’t know, a ‘tuli-puff’ or something?”

That evening, I sent this picture, one of the newly-scanned, cropped, and edited ones, to Hester, writing, “I found this little dress, sent to you from my Turkish penpal Emine who grew up in Germany, in a box of keepsakes downstairs.  It’s in the car now; I’ll give it to you after church.”

This picture was taken in December of 1989, when Hester was six months old.  She called her necklace a “neck’ace” and her barrette a “headess”.

Coincidentally, her Keira, age 8, was wearing a dress made of nearly identical fabric that evening:  narrow-gauge blue seersucker!

Not too long after sending this gift, Emine married a Turkish man and moved to Izmit, Turkey, southeast of Istanbul.  My last letter from her told of her sadness at losing a baby.

And then a 7.9-magnitude earthquake struck northern Turkey on August 17, 1990.  It lasted for only 3.7 seconds, but the city of Izmit was very badly damaged.  There was a death toll of 17,127 and 43,959 injured.  Other sources suggest that the actual figure for fatalities may be closer to 45,000 with a similar number of injured.  The earthquake destroyed 120,000 poorly-engineered houses, heavily damaged 50,000 houses, and caused 2,000 buildings to collapse while 4,000 other buildings were badly damaged, leaving more than 300,000 people homeless.

I never heard from Emine again.

Larry left early Thursday morning to go to east Iowa somewhere to pick up another container, this one, quite an eyesore.  He sent me a picture of it at 3:00 that afternoon when he was on his way home, saying he was glad he’d reset the axles on his trailer, so it followed nicely behind his pickup without swaying like it had done when he was coming back from California.

“That’s good,” I answered, “but that thang sho’ hain’t very purty.”

“Needs a Dupont overhaul, 🤔” said he.  (That’s paint.)

“Not sure that would be enough,” I retorted.

“Maybe a scrappy quilt or two painted on it,” he suggested.

I protested.  “Then I would get the blame for it!” 

Half an hour later, he called to describe a doe with a very small, spotted fawn that he’d just seen.  The fawn was having dinner, and they were not very far off the highway.  Not far enough off the highway.

It got up to 65° that sunny, pretty day.  All my peonies were blossoming, and there were more fancy irises blooming, too.

A female Rose-breasted Grosbeak was on one of the feeders that afternoon.  They look so different from the males.  (Male is below.)

Hester downloaded the Merlin Bird ID app, tried it out at Pawnee Park – and it heard a Clay-colored Sparrow and a Common Yellowthroat.

The Common Yellowthroats are so pretty.  I’d never seen one until we were in a park in Minnesota several years ago.

Hester asked about Blackbirds, wondering what kind she was seeing.

“There used to be a lot of the smaller Brewer’s Blackbirds in town,” I told her.  “They’re about the size of Robins.  Now black birds in town are mostly the bigger Common Grackle – and sometimes I even see the Great-tailed Grackle.  

“Their territory is expanding northward.  When we were in Florida, and along the Gulf Coast into Texas, we saw the Boat-tailed Grackle (below).  The Great-tailed is bigger.  They often look like they can barely haul their own tails up into the air with them when they take off, those tails are so big!”

“I see a big flock of what looks like huge crows that comes over our house now and then.  I didn’t think they were vultures, but maybe so,” said Hester.

“We do have plenty of crows and vultures, too, right there in town,” I answered.  “Do you have a good pair of binoculars?  I was once watching a hawk soaring waaaaay high above our house.  I got my binoculars... took a look --- and discovered he was having dinner served in-flight!”  ((...pause...))  “Snake, to be precise.”  😬😜😝

“I think so,” Hester replied.  “I’m just usually doing dishes at my kitchen sink/window when I see them, so I just wonder about it.  lol”

I promptly quoted, “It’s hard to lose a friend when your heart is full of hope; but it’s worse to lose a towel when your hands are full of soap.”

I wrote that in someone’s autograph book when I was 7 or 8.

It was Levi’s 16^th birthday that day.  I sent him a bunch of animated ecards of dogs wishing him Happy Birthday and doing all sorts of goofy things.

A new Chipotle restaurant opened in Columbus last week.  This was duly reported on a certain local Facebook page.  In the comment section, someone wrote, “Why is there security personnel outside the restaurant?”

The owner of said page immediately replied, “For security.”  😆

A distant cousin of Larry’s who lives in a nursing home in Minnesota, upon hearing some of my stories of all the birds around here and seeing pictures I send her, informed me that the only birds in her neck of the woods are robins and blackbirds.  I knew better than that, because the area is covered with woods, pastures, streams, lakes, and marshes.

I looked it up, and then told her, “You have a whole lot more birds in the vicinity than it might appear at first glance!  Just listen to this:  the state of Minnesota hosts over 450 recorded bird species, with significant activity in the Yellow Medicine County area (where she lives).  During spring migration, millions of birds fly over Minnesota, making areas like this one key stopover locations.”

I sent this picture⇧, then hunted for a book she might like.  It couldn’t be a big, heavy book, as she would have trouble holding it.  I found the perfect book.  It should arrive tomorrow.  It says ‘Kids’ Guide’ on the cover, but I scrolled through it on Amazon, and it’s very nice for adults, too.  It’s paperback, so it won’t be too heavy for her.  There are 240 pages, and pictures of 85 birds that are common to the area.  There are beautiful pictures on one side of the page, and easy-to-read descriptions on the other.

I had just finished placing the order when Victoria sent me a video, writing, “The kiddos are watching David Attenborough’s hummingbird documentary while I make supper.”

There were all the children sitting on the couch, looking at Victoria's laptop, which was on the coffee table in front of them.  Yuki kitty was sprawled on Carolyn's lap, and he was getting petted by two kids at once.

“I just made ground venison meatloaf,” I told Victoria, as I got out a can of green beans to go with it.

“I’m making burgers and fries,” she said, and before long, sent me a picture of the meal, which also included her homemade pickles and various fresh vegetables.

She then sent an audio clip of Arnold, age 2, singing Why Wooey, When You Can Pway!  He got Doubting Thomas’ name mixed up, stopped singing to give a brief explanation of the error smack-dab in the middle, and was then somewhat surprised to find that the song, being sung by his siblings in the background, had gone on without him.  But he managed to catch up!

Another clip arrived, this one of Arnold citing, “The Lord is my Shep-ood, I shall not want.  He maketh me to lie down in gween paschoos.”

I wrote back, “That’s so sweet and cute.  Be sure you save all these little clips somewhere safe!  You’ll love them more and more as the years go by.”

Kurt has been working on the flooring in the girls’ new room downstairs, and Victoria has been working on the nursery.  She knitted the blanket that’s hanging on the crib, and stenciled the wall behind it.  She got a pretty wooden highchair for only $20 on Facebook Marketplace.

“Ours had a broken rung,” she said.  “The tray can be taken off, and then it fits at the table like a chair.”

I told her the following story:  Hester was barely past a year when she reached under the big plastic tray on her highchair, released the clamps, and started to walk straight out of the chair!

I cried, “STOP!”  

Her eyes got big and she sat bolt still.  Thank goodness she obeyed; I was too far across the room to catch her.

Speaking of trying to keep kids safe...  My sister Lura Kay once told her son David when he was about two that he mustn’t run into the street, because “cars go past really fast, and if one hit you, it would kill you!”

David, eyes wide:  “Would I need a band-aide?!!!”

That evening, I heard squirrels galloping madly on the roof.  One came running up onto the front porch, scrambled right up the front outside wall of quarter-round logs, and perched atop the porch light like an ornamental fixture.

Larry got home around 10:00 p.m.

It rained all through the night and most of the morning, mostly gently, which is unusual.  By 11:00 a.m., it was 58° on the way up to 70°, and the weather app said it was now sunny (it wasn’t) and it would stay sunny the rest of the day. 

The peonies were in a riot of bloom, apparently enjoying the rain.

In looking up names of different species of birds at different times of their lifespan, I found this from the Wild Bird Foundation:  

A fledgling pigeon that has just left the nest or is learning to fly is commonly called a squeaker.  While young pigeons in the nest are called squabs, they are referred to as squeakers once they are weaned and start making high-pitched, chirping noises to beg for food.

Not all the bird books and websites agree with each other on such details.  I go with the ones I like best.  😅  Like ‘squeaker’, for instance.  It fits those baby flying pigeons so well, don’t you think? – pumping wings with all their might and main, squeaking as they go!  Their wing movement is turning their lungs into squeak toys. 

And how about ‘puffling’ for a baby puffin?  Then there’s ‘cheeper’ for a young pheasant, ‘peep’ for a baby sandpiper, ‘squealer’ for a grouse fledgling, and, one of my favorites, ‘pea-chick’, those new little peacock babies.

“What is the act of ‘fledging’? 🤔😳” asked Keith when I sent him a picture of the baby dove.  “Sounds scary.”

“Fledging is ‘fluttering off the edge of the nest and into the big, scary world!’” I told him.

“Oh,” said he.  “Never knew I needed to know that word, haha.”

“Well, now you’ve learned a new word for the day,” I responded.  “You can go to bed happy! – as Aunt Virginia used to say.”

Aunt Virginia used to write at the close of her letters, “Well, I don’t know anything!  Love, Aunt Virginia” – meaning, she didn’t know anything else to write.  hee hee

Here’s a picture I took at Henry Doorly Zoo in 2004:  a peahen with her peachick(s), teaching them how to peck up bits of food.  

“What’s that little yellow one, anyway?” I asked some friends.  “It looks like a regular, ordinary chick.  Is it having an identity crisis? 😄”

I asked the right friends.  One soon replied, “The yellow chick may be a white peacock.  This is what Google says:  The white peacock is a stunning, all-white color mutation of the Indian Blue peafowl.  Contrary to popular belief, they are not albinos, but, rather, leucistic.  They retain dark eyes and skin and are primarily bred in captivity rather than found in the wild.  Because they are leucistic, they do not have the pink eyes associated with albinism.  Chicks are born with yellow down that gradually turns white as they mature.  The males (peacocks) boast a dazzling, snow-white train of ‘eyespot’ feathers that they display during mating rituals, while females (peahens) are completely white but lack the long tail feathers.”

I’ll bet that’s right.  There was a partly white female peacock there; I got a picture of her.  (This was in 2004, so it was taken with my Minolta film camera, shortly before I got my Canon digital.)  

Neither the peahen nor the light-colored peachick we saw were albino.  I did not see a white peacock, but there certainly could’ve been one there.  (This picture is from Instagram.)  The zoo is huge; it’s impossible to see everything.

That afternoon, I received a notice from LensCrafters telling me that my glasses were already done!  That was fast.  I’ll probably pick them up Thursday. 

Here’s a newborn layette (below) that Victoria just finished knitting.  It only needs buttons, and it’ll be done.

When I hung the bird feeders Saturday morning, the birds were singing like anything.  I turned on the Merlin Bird ID app, and it immediately identified all the usual suspects:  American Robin, Mourning Dove, Eurasian Collared Dove, House Finch, and American Goldfinch.  I heard sparrows and vireos and orioles, too, but the nearby robins conducting a Dueling Tweet-Off drowned the others out – at least for Merlin, they did.

I played the piano, did a bit of housecleaning, and made myself a tall thermal mug of Cherry Almond Pie cold-brew coffee, the first mug from the jug I had started steeping Friday.  Mmmmm, it’s good.  I blow-dried and curled my hair, ate breakfast, washed dishes, and – you guessed it – edited photos.

Typing that paragraph reminded me that I needed to order more coffee beans.  So...  I did.  I ordered 4 one-pound bags of various fruit-flavored beans.

I’m expecting to wrap the photo-editing project up by the middle of this week.  Hmmm...  maybe I’d better pause and get things ready for Violet’s handkerchief lady and butterfly quilt so I’m not stymied when I’m ready to start.

I made cheesy scrambled eggs for breakfast, and had them atop the last piece of 12-grain Nature’s Craft bread – the heel, which I particularly like.  I made enough scrambled eggs for Larry, and toasted a Hawaiian Artesano bun for him.  It was 11:45 a.m.:  my breakfast, his lunch.  I have never felt like eating breakfast until I’ve been up several hours.  Larry, on the other hand, likes to eat right away.

Larry makes coffee in the mornings these days, since he’s retired.  I sometimes make us tea in the evenings.

I didn’t work outside last week, as it was either too cold, too windy, or raining.  (“There’s a lion in the streets!”)  This coming week should be quite nice for outside work.

Here’s a mural (above) on the side of one of the Missouri Star Quilting Company fabric stores in Hamilton, Missouri.  About 18 of the stores on Main Street belong to MSQC.  It was fun going through them, and a few of the town’s other stores, too.

There were shelves of vintage sewing machines here and there.  Many of them were beautifully made – but I’m sure glad to have my new-fangled machines!

On trips like that, I take along several pairs of shoes; it helps to trade off periodically.  I was wearing some that didn’t have enough support when we walked around a lake at a State Park, and I hurt the arch of one foot.  It’s been a bit troublesome since, but it’s getting better.

For Mother’s Day, Hannah gave me a stick (rub-on) of Magnesium (essential oil blend) and a roll-on tube of Magnesium oil that I put on that sore spot, and I do believe it helped.  Hannah sells these things along with Lilla Rose hair accessories at her vendor events; they’re from Jordan Essentials company.

My neck, then feet, and then hips gave me the first clues that I had rheumatoid arthritis when I was very young.  I was only 6 when I first noticed my neck hurting.  It had been injured when a little girl crashed her bike into mine, knocking me headfirst into the curb.

I remember trying to look up at the songbook on my piano rack as I practiced the piano, age 6, and that big bone at the base of my neck would be burning like fire.

Maybe that’s why I learned to play by ear – because it was just plain too painful to look up at the page and play by note.

Saturday night after supper, I pulled out the blender and began making smoothies with Breyer’s Extra-Creamy Vanilla ice cream and big, fat, frozen blueberries.  I should’ve at least partially thawed those blueberries first, because a couple of chunks from the hard rubber coupler between blender motor and glass pitcher broke.  I dumped the concoction into a bowl, extracted the majority of the blueberries into another bowl, and while Larry warmed them a bit in the microwave, I removed the little broken pieces and wiped the shredded rubber residue from the bottom motor section of the blender.  The motor still sounds fine, thankfully.  I chopped and puréed the ice cream and the few berries that were stuck in it.

I then put the softened blueberries back into the ice cream and blended the whole works without further trouble.  That done, I divided the smoothies into cups, and we sat down to eat them – and to order new rubber couplings for the blender.  They’re in the mailbox even now.

At the quilt museum in Hamilton, Missouri, there was a room chock-full of all manner of toy sewing machines.  Some looked like good-quality machines, miniatures of the big ones.  Others –newer ones, usually – looked like nothing more than toys.  I wonder how many little girls got a toy sewing machine for Christmas, and then when it didn’t work worth a hoot, decided they’d never ever sew another stitch in their entire, live-long lives?

It was a sunny 57° Sunday morning at a quarter ’til 8, on the way up to 85°.  The little birds were so anxious for their breakfast, they were landing on the feeders before I had them all hung.  Soon I was blow-drying my hair, getting ready for church.

May 24 was National Escargot Day.  I posted this picture on my Quilt Talk group:  Garden Snails, designed by Lindsey Neill of Pen & Paper Patterns.

One quilting friend wrote, “This is so cute!  Makes me wonder why someone is inspired to make such a quilt, though.”

I wrote back, “I wonder that about lots of quilts ’n clothes ’n stuff!  Maybe some people (or little kids, if that’s who the quilt is for) feel about snails like some of us do about birds and puppies and kittens and lambs and such. 😅”

I have a snail story!

Once upon a time, when I was about five years old, my parents and I were traveling on Route 70 heading west from Denver.  It was a narrow two-lane then, winding its way through the Colorado River Canyon out toward Grand Junction.  We stopped at a little old-fashioned rest area with our car and camper, and I played along the river (it looked more like a creek, at the moment), stepping on big boulders and dabbling fingers and toes in the cold, cold water.  My mother gave me a small shoebox so I could collect rocks, as I loved to do.

Well, I found not only rocks, but snail shells.

Remember, I was only five years old.  So perhaps I could be forgiven for never having understood that snails and seashells are – or once were – something alive.  I thought they were like rocks, nothing more than pretty things that lie alongside ocean beaches – and, to my surprise, mountain creeks.  I filled my box.

A bit later, we climbed into the car and continued on our way.  Somewhere in the middle of the Salt Lake Desert, I opened my shoebox to admire my rocks and shells.

The first discernible problem:  something stunk to high heaven.

I did not connect box and smell.  I had already learned that when one travels, one sometimes passes by stinky areas.

But I did notice something else:

“Where are all my snail shells?!” I cried in dismay – and, very soon thereafter, I was not the only one who was dismayed.

The few snails still in the box were deceased.  Most of the escaped snails were deceased.  

A few hardy individuals still crawled about the car, probably in some mode of hot, thirsty panic, for a snail.

My father had to find a place to stop, and then we conducted The Great Snail Search, after which we thoroughly cleaned the car.

Daddy seemed to be in a state of amazement – astonished that his small, previously-thought-to-be-smart daughter hadn’t had a clue that snails are actually real, live pulmonate gastropod molluscs.  But after all, the living part of the thing had retracted into its shell each time I picked one up, and if I noticed anything in there at all, I had assumed it was nothing more than riverside mud.  No one had ever told me!!  How was I to know?!

Well, I learned.  And being the inquisitive child I was, I didn’t stop there.  Once we got home again, I begged my mother to take me to the library, where I checked out as many books and encyclopedias as allowed, on every type of mollusk I could find.

What a lot of things to learn about!  I was totally enthralled.

I never again collected snails with ‘riverside mud’ in them, though.

This little Necchi sewing machine is a toy.  My mother had a full-size Necchi.  One of the slogans they advertised with was, “Can sew through a yardstick!”

Well, that’s nice; but did you ever try sitting in a dress made of yardsticks?

We stayed after church a while last night chatting with Caleb.  I showed Eva and Maisie some of the pictures from the Missouri Quilt Museum, and they took great interest in the toy sewing machines, especially the red ones.  Girls after my own heart!

Here’s a red Featherweight in nearly pristine condition.

When we got home, we had venison meatloaf for supper, and peas.  Why did I believe the hype on the side of the steam bag saying ‘New and Improved Method of Steaming!’??  Peas are never good steamed in bags.  Never mind the fact that with the recommended shorter cook time, they weren’t overcooked and mushy.  This time, they were undercooked and mushy.  Not sure how both were accomplished at once.  Peas are best boiled or steamed in a pan on the stove, and not so long that they get mushy.  The microwave ruins them, no matter how they are cooked in there.

I should add, ‘—in my opinion.’  But it’s not just an opinion!  It’s fact!  Right?  Right.

With that issue resolved, let us continue.

Since I didn’t want to use the blender with the damaged coupler to make smoothies, and we had fresh bananas and strawberries and a new jar of Mrs. Robertson’s Caramel Sauce, we made banana splits.  Yummy.  They would’ve been yummier had Walmart not substituted Hershey’s Hot Fudge Sauce for the Mrs. Robertson’s Chocolate sauce I’d ordered.

Larry, as usual, doused his banana split with too much of both sauces and was afterwards groaning, “That was too much!  Now I’m half sick.” 

It’s been a tradition for years; he can’t change now!

At 10:00 a.m. this morning, it was 73°, heading up to 91°.  I filled and rehung the bird feeders, watered the houseplant (a large, straggly begonia that has kept on a-blooming without letup since Caleb and Maria gave it to me for Mother’s Day three years ago), showered and shined the bathroom back up, played the piano, made a mug of Cherry Almond Pie cold-brew coffee, and then blow-dried my hair whilst listening to the news, and answering posts and texts.

Larry spent most of the day getting his pickup and trailer and two winches ready to go pick up several wrecked cars in Kentucky.  He sells the aluminum wheels and catalytic converters to various buyers, and the rest to scrap metal companies.  I’m not much in favor of these excursions, but ... well, at least I can’t accuse him of being a couch potato, right?  🙄😏

I enjoy traveling – but not so much in a pickup on a long trip, half of it with an empty flatbed that gives the pickup a good hard jerk with every bump it hits. The ride smooths out a little when the trailer is loaded.  But I always feel like putting on a fake nose and mustache when we’re traveling with crunched vehicles.  I’d rather go somewhere with our fifth-wheel camper or our Mercedes SUV, thank you kindly.

When he had everything ready, he showered, ate supper, and headed off at about a quarter ’til 8.  He has approximately 780 miles to go, and he had hoped to be there by 7:00 a.m. tomorrow morning.  Driving time alone is 11 hours and 40 minutes.  I sure hope he doesn’t keep driving when he gets tired.

I could go to Lincoln tomorrow to get my glasses, but there’s a strong chance it will be raining there, and I’ve been hoping to go to the Sunken Gardens.  Larry seems to avoid the place when he’s with me.  It’s nothing but flowers, you know!  And maybe a few koi.  No dirt bikes.  No tools.  No trucks that need only a few sharp raps with a hammer to be running like a, uh, ... like a Detroit.  Just... flowers.  And plants that haven’t even put out buds yet.

I think what I’d better do is figure out how I’m going to make Violet’s quilt, and order whatever I might need for it.

But right now, it’s bedtime!

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