Journal: New Specs & More 'Naders

 

Last Tuesday morning, it was nice and cool when I went out to work in the flower gardens.  There are baby birds in many of the Blue spruce and Douglas firs in our front yard.  Little black ants were busy gathering nectar from the peony buds. 

Have you ever been told, as I was some years ago, that peony buds won’t open, they’ll remain glued shut, if the ants don’t lap up the nectar on the buds?  Well, it’s a fable.  Peony buds in ant-free greenhouses everywhere open fine and dandy, robust and healthy.

Nebraska is home to at least 104 documented ant species.  The more common ones are House ant (first on the list), while others include the Black carpenter ant, Field ant, and Thief ant.

The purple irises were still in bloom, and the clematis Bobby and Hannah and family gave me three years ago for Mother's Day had put out a blossom, too.

By a quarter after 11, it was 73°.  The high would be 78°.

Have you ever seen a bird like this?  It’s a Barn swallow, made by Jeremy Mayer:

And then there’s this owl, which apparently is merely a digital print from Art House Whimsy.  😅

It was quite windy that day.  We were issued a Red Flag Fire Warning.

That afternoon, hearing a hawk and thinking my Merlin Bird ID app could tell me what kind it was (though I was fairly certain it was a Red-tailed hawk), I turned on the app and stood at the back patio door.  The bird was silent after that, of course.

The app lets you use eBird to record your sightings/hearings, and it gives you the exact location in GPS coordinates.  So if you record a really rare bird in your yard and post that on eBird, you just might look out your window in the morning to find a whole volley of old fogies back there in their dungarees and polo shirts and white walking shoes, binoculars to eyeballs, gazing deeply into your trees and bushes.

Hannah saw what she thought were bluebirds at Pawnee Park – and sure enough, her Merlin app soon detected them.

Bluebirds and wrens like mealworms, and they like to eat them from a flat hanging tray.

I got a tray once, along with some mealworms.  When we didn’t get a shepherd’s hook put up right away, I put the tray on the deck table.

The opossums were totally delighted.

“I got mealworms once,” remarked Hester, “but no one wanted them here.”

“Maybe if you dipped them in chocolate,” I helpfully suggested.

Hester laughed, “I guess I should specify ‘birds’...”  hee hee  “I thought robins would like them,” she added, “but maybe they only like worms if they’re alive.”

In my experience, robins will hardly eat mealworms unless the ground is frozen or covered in snow.  But bluebirds, chickadees, wrens, titmice, nuthatches, and woodpeckers will usually eat them, unless there’s yummier food around.  Some people say robins eat mealworms every time they put them out.  I have rarely seen robins eat them, though.

That night, I had a cup of the Toffee Chocolate Hazelnut tea Kurt and Victoria and family gave me.  I sent Victoria a note:  “This tea is really good.  Also, the teacup is a nice, big size.  Just right.  Thank you!”

Hannah is still crocheting little animals for the children in the classroom where she assists her sister-in-law, who’s the teacher.  The children get to choose which animal they want her to make for them.  Here’s the latest – a chameleon, for one of the little girls.

Here are a lion and a turtle she recently made.  The lion glows in the dark.

She’s made 7 for this class so far, and has 5 more to go.

I spent an hour and a half working in my biggest flower garden – a four-tiered garden in the back yard – Wednesday.  It was a pretty morning.  When I quit, I was alllllmost done weeding and removing old growth, but I fizzled before I finished the last three or four yards of the top tier.  I took down a number of volunteer trees, too.  Things are looking better out there!

After a shower, I blow-dried and curled my hair, sipping Blackberry Crumble Pie cold-brew coffee and taking a little extra care with my hair, since the graduation service was that evening.

I ate breakfast, cleaned the kitchen, and returned to photo-editing.

That afternoon, a  bunny lollopy-lopped into the patch of dirt out front where the birds like to take dust baths.  He scritch-scratched vigorously, then rolled and rubbed in the dirt before popping back up to scritch-scratch some more, then roll and rub some more.  I’ve never seen a bunny do that before.  I reckon most all animals and birds do it, though, in order to maintain healthy fur and feathers.

Victoria sent an audio clip of Arnold, 2, quoting this verse in his cute little voice:  “Children, obey your parents in all things:  for this is well pleasing unto the Lord.”

She wrote, “I used to be baffled at how the Children’s Bible Hour kids could memorize verses at ages 2 and 3.  But Arnold is the child of mine who is absolutely a sponge.  He started saying this verse to me the other day, though I never really taught it to him specifically; he mostly just heard me saying it to the other kids.”

When Joseph was 3 and 4, he learned all his older siblings’ verses and poems for the Christmas program, just by listening to me practicing with them.  Caleb did the same. 

One day I said to Caleb, “Now, if any of the kids get sick before the program, you can trot right up there and say their poems for them!”

His eyes got huge, and he breathed, “No, I couldn’t do that!”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because of all the people!” he answered, looking a bit shellshocked.

“But they’re all our friends!” I protested.  “What would they do to you?”

“They might... they might... tickle me!” he responded.  😆

Here’s a screenshot from our graduation service.  Grandson Levi is in the brighter blue suit on the right, front row, playing a French horn.  In the front row of the choir loft on the far right are grandsons Grant and Leroy.  I could name all the great-nieces, great-nephews, great-great-nieces, great-great-nephews, and a few cousins thrice removed, but no sense in boggling anybody’s brains (and my own).  {In case you’re worried, as a dear [but slightly nosy] older missionary lady used to be, about ‘too many cousins’, let me mention that there are a whole lot more who are not related to me than those who are. 😅}

Thursday morning, I finished the garden I hadn’t gotten done the previous day, then did another one farther out in the back yard.  It was 62° when I went outside, windy and chilly.  I put on a cap, then exchanged it for a knit headband.  At 9:00 a.m., I called it quits and headed inside to warm up in the shower.  By a quarter ’til ten, the temperature had risen to 72°; but the wind had increased to 23 mph with gusts up to 36 mph, making it feel a good 10° colder.

I put a few curls in my hair while reading posts, texts, and news, sipping cold-brew coffee that was a combination of Blackberry Crumble Pie and Cherry Almond Pie flavors, and listening to the news on my tablet.  The cold brew was good, but I hadn’t watered it down enough in my mug.  A few more sips, and there was room to add more water.  And then it was just right.  Cherry Almond has a stronger flavor than Blackberry.  I like coffee, cold or hot, that’s not too strong.

When the wind gusts got up to 40 mph, a Red-Flag Fire Warning was issued for several Nebraska counties.  On the news I heard that a housefire near the western town of Scottsbluff the previous night had spread to grass and trees, and the local fire department called for help from other agencies.  There were fires near Chadron and Harrison to the north, too.  Extra help for those areas had arrived from South Dakota.

The wind increased to 45 mph, and I heard the bird feeders clattering and banging as they swung violently to and fro.  I hurried out to get them before the wind ruined them.  Fortunately, I hadn’t finished curling and combing my hair yet, or the wind would’ve ruined me.

Here’s a Northern house wren – the smallest bird in our area, but with one of the loudest, prettiest songs of all.  He runs the much bigger Baltimore oriole a good run for his money, song-wise!

We had salmon, sweet corn, and mango juice for supper that night.  I made smoothies for dessert, blending Breyer’s Extra Creamy vanilla ice cream with frozen peaches, strawberries, mango, and pineapple.

That evening, Keith texted to ask if I knew what his blood type is.

I didn’t.  Wondering if it might be in his baby book, I looked in the bookcases, didn’t see it, and wrote, “I’m going to run downstairs and look in one box where I’ve saved a few keepsakes.  Just a minute...”

I came back to find that Keith had inserted a stopwatch into our chat.  😄

“I found the baby book!” I told him.  “The cover is slightly damaged from the fire.”  (That was in 1988.)

The book contained no information about blood type, and the pages are rather sparsely filled out, but I promised to send it to him, nonetheless.

I paged through it, and offered Keith a few of the details:  “You were five months old when you said ‘Kitty!’”  (I still remember people’s unbelieving stares and patronizing smiles when I told them that.)  “At 6 ½ months, you’d look in the mirror and say, ‘KEEE!’”

At 3 months:  “Keith rolled over 3 times in a row, scaring himself half to death each time.”

Back then, I must’ve thought ( ' ) could stand for pounds and ( " ) for ounces.  So I wrote that at 9 weeks Keith was 13' 7 ½".  😆  He was gaining almost a pound a week.

At about the same moment, we both found a well-recommended home blood test on Amazon.  “This test has a 72% 5-star rate,” I told Keith.  “I always like to click on the 1-star rating and see what the reviewer has to say.”

He laughed.  “I do the same thing.”

“Listen to this one,” said I.  “‘This test was much too difficult to complete on my own...’”

“That was doubtless one of those persons whose teachers wrote on her report card, ‘Does not follow instructions well,’” said I.  “And ‘Has trouble with comprehension.’”

“And ‘talks too much,’ added Keith.  “They all go hand in hand.”

Here’s another guy who gave it 1 star.  He first assures us, “Having an engineering background I’m pretty good at following instruction.”

“Haha,” said Keith.  “Red flag, when you have to say so.”

And then there’s this guy with, apparently, rhinoceros hide:  “The needle on the tool is WAY TOO small to puncture skin.  Did everything in my power to try to puncture skin but it’s very ineffective.”

This all reminded me of my Grandpa Winings cutting his thumb while working out in the field on their farm near Fargo, North Dakota.  He wrapped it tightly, came to the house, sterilized a needle and thread, then went out and sat on the front porch and carefully sewed it up.

That done, he went back to work.  Some while later, he showed his doctor, who examined it and then exclaimed, “That’s a neater job than I could’ve done!”

“I would pass out even at the thought of such an attempt,” remarked Keith when I told him the story.

“Makes my hair stand up on end,” I agreed.  “But I reckon I’d do it iff’n I had to.”

Friday, we headed back to LensCrafters in Lincoln, as all three pairs of my glasses were ready to be picked up.  Before leaving town, we stopped at the post office, and I sent Keith his baby book, and also a stack of ‘New Baby Boy’ cards we’d received when he was born.

When we got to LensCrafters, I tried on each pair of glasses, and thought all was well.  It was not all well, but I would not learn this until later. 

The only objectionable thing I could see at the moment was that one of the eyeglass cases they were trying to foist off on me was an ionizing, fallout-radiation yellow.  I mean, the color of that case had enough bad energy to damage cells, tissues, and DNA.

Larry, always ready to play Devil’s Advocate (mostly only with me), said, “But you wouldn’t be as likely to lose it, if it’s yellow!”

I stared at him, then said, “Yeah.”

He snickered and subsided.

“When have I ever lost my glasses?” I asked him, while the LensCrafters Associates – at least, those not fishing about in deep, dark drawers for other colors of glasses cases – looked on with interest.

Larry had the grace to look sheepish.  He grinned at one of the EyeCare Advisors.  “It’s actually me who is always misplacing my glasses.”

He hovered precariously on the brink of telling one or two lengthy stories on the subject, and then we were all saved by the young man returning with not one, not two, but three colors of cases for me to choose from.  I chose light blue.  In addition to getting the case, I also got a light blue sturdy box for the case itself to fit into.  That’s nifty; I like boxes that fit inside of boxes – but not when I’m in a hurry to put on my glasses.  It’ll make a cute gift box for something someday.  I wonder why they hadn’t given me the outer box for the yellow case?  Maybe it self-disintegrated.  

After leaving LensCrafters, we went to Menards, where we got some long soaker hoses, a little pump for the bird bath, four-way hose splitters with levers instead of those small twist dial thingamarolphgidgets (scientific term), and a few other doodads.  In looking for a more simplified term, I have discovered hose connector splitters with much longer flow switches, including some with rubber grips on the handles.  If the splitters we got aren’t easy to use, or if they break, I’ll try those with the longer rubber handles.

We had planned to get some food and take it with us to a park somewhere, but it started to rain, so we got some sandwiches at Subway and ate them there.

Larry had the Chicken Bacon Ranch, and I had a Titan Turkey.  We had more vegetables in them than the pictures show.

Heading west out of Lincoln, we drove first around Pawnee Lake, and then around Branched Oak Lake.  Both are State Parks.

Way out on Pawnee Lake, there were at least three Great blue herons.  The one on the left is a little smaller; I’m not sure what it is.  It was too far across the water to see it clearly.

There were Eastern red columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) and Blue False Indigo (Baptisia australis) blooming at Pawnee Lake State Park.  

As I took pictures of the flowers, a Gray catbird perched in the high branches of one of the many trees nearby and serenaded me with gusto.  I looked and looked for him, and then I looked some more.  I looked with all my might and main – and then I saw him.  I even managed to get a few pictures, but he’s nothing but a silhouette.  Still, I know a catbird when I hear one; and besides, Merlin Bird ID agrees with me!

It was hot that afternoon, getting up to 95°.

After driving around Pawnee Lake, we headed north to Branched Oak Lake.

The campgrounds at both lakes were lively with people and campers of all sorts, and there were boats and jet skis out on the water.

The sun went down over Branched Oak, reflecting orange and gold in the water.

We could’ve picnicked at one of those lakes after all, had we only known the rain would soon stop!

But now it was time to head toward home.

We stopped at a little old gas station/convenience store in Valparaiso, and I got a bottle of Pure Leaf tea.  Just to tell you how old this station is, in the restroom, instead of paper towels or an electric hand dryer, there’s one of those continuous fabric roller towels, where you tug down new sections of toweling in order to dry your hands in a clean spot.  🫤

Okay, I know you can still buy these things; but this one is not new.  In fact, it’s been there since I was a little girl!  (We can hope they’ve installed a new roll of fabric toweling a few times through the years, eh?)

As we headed north, Hannah texted to tell me the sky was brilliant, and changing quickly.  I wrote back, telling her where we were.  “I’ve been taking photos right along!” I said.

It was odd how, immediately after the sun disappeared from view, the storm clouds to the east became brighter and brighter for a time.

Saturday morning, I weeded one of the gardens on the east side of the house.  The Fireworks clematis Bobby and Hannah and family gave me for Mother’s Day three years ago has half a dozen blossoms on it now.  I’m pleased; I feared it was dying last year.  The Cabbage white butterflies like it.

The fancy irises are just starting to bloom.  Here’s the first one (below).  The fall petals haven’t even completely unfurled.  This is one of the irises my sister gave me when we first moved out here to the country, 23 years ago.

The peonies are beginning to blossom, too.

After trying to use my craft glasses Friday night and again Saturday morning, it seems they got the focus much too close.  It’s not at fingertip at all; it’s almost at elbow (when holding my arm straight out in front of me).  I need it at fingertip for the song rack on my piano, for my laptop, for various sewing/crafting work, and even for looking in the mirror when I curl my hair.

I just put them on and gave them another try.  The focus is definitely too close.  They’re like some of my drug-store variety magnifying glasses, with a very close focus, and no depth of field.  I was trying to edit photos, but I can’t use them at all.  I’ll have to return them.

The last time I got craft glasses at that place, they put in lenses that focused at about 50 yards.  I couldn’t see a thing from approximately 20 feet and closer.  And they had the audacity to act all amazed and surprised when I said those wouldn’t work.

At least my old craft glasses are still okay; the prescription is not much different, but there’s a smudgy scratch on one lens just about in front of the pupil.  I can still use them all right, though.

The temples on all the new glasses are a little too tight, too; I’ll have that adjusted when I go back.

The bottom focus area (reading segment) in my progressive-lens sunglasses should have been larger, but I forgot to ask for that.  I have to lift them up a bit in order to read anything.  I usually ask for a larger close-focus area in my progressive-lens glasses, but I totally forgot about this issue.  It’s been too long since I got glasses!  But really, the people in the eye doctor’s office should know to ask people about such things.

When we were at Subway, we each ordered foot-long sandwiches and only ate half of them; so we had the other halves for supper Saturday night.  I scrape off the stuff we don’t want hot, pop the rest into the oven for a few minutes, and then put the cold things back on the sandwich, and it’s almost as good as new.

Larry put the new pump in my bird bath, and the birds were soon coming to check it out.  Nothing brings them faster than the sound of a fountain.  He rigged it so that there’s constant fresh water running to it.  Of course, this will make a muddy mess if it’s left too long. 

A little chipping sparrow decided a small puddle at the base of the bird bath was the perfect size for a bathtub.

A robin came along and tugged two gigantic worms, one after the other, from the mud lolly under the bird bath.  He had to gulp really hard to get the last big ol’ wiggly thing down.

Worms can be strrrrrretchy! The photo below is from the Ohio Birds website.  Photographer Jim McCormac took the picture.

I edited several hundred photos that afternoon, labeled all the wedding photos I took recently, and posted a few on my blog and on Facebook. I did some writing and some housecleaning, and listened to the weather when thunderstorms and a tornado or two got a little bit close to us.  We wound up with a nice rain, nothing more.

Sunday morning at a quarter ’til eight, it was a cloudy 61°, on the way up to 85°.  As I curled my hair, getting ready for church, I had the window open, and was listening to an Eastern warbling vireo singing his heart out.  A Brown-headed cowbird made his funny waterdrop sound now and then.

Anytime I see or hear a cowbird, I look around at the other birds nearby and wonder, Which one of you poor little birdbrains raised that big ol’ honkin’ thang?

Eastern warbling vireos are highly efficient at removing Brown-headed cowbird eggs from their nests, ejecting them 90-100% of the time in some studies.  They recognize the parasitic eggs – likely by spotting patterns – and use their bills to either puncture and remove them or grab and discard them, sometimes within seconds of returning to the nest.

Larry made his scrumptious waffles for our lunch when we got home from church.  He made extras, as usual, which meant that we needed to buy more syrup.  We were nearly out of milk and other necessities, so I placed a grocery order at Walmart, and we picked it up after church last night.

In the afternoon, I began hearing bad-weather warnings on some of my weather apps.  Severe thunderstorms began turning into tornadoes.  The first tornado warning I heard was for South Dakota.  By a quarter after five, a tornadic storm was heading straight in our direction, and at least two homes to our southwest had been demolished.  A family of four, parents and two little girls, ages 2 ½ years and 4 months, along with their pets, were trapped in the basement, and the upper part of their home was destroyed. 

Stormchasers came on the home immediately after it happened, made sure no one was hurt, and assured them that help was on the way.  People from the family’s church showed up quickly and were soon helping to clear debris and save whatever they could.  I’m not sure which one of these two homes is theirs. 

The lady said she was watching the clouds out her kitchen window, and all of a sudden that huge tornado dropped right down to the ground.  They snatched up their little girls and ran for the basement.  They are all unhurt, but in a bit of shock, I thought.

One of these houses was brand new; the people had just moved in two weeks ago! 

Here’s a video showing Tornado Damage in St. Paul, and this one shows the St. Libory tornado.  St. Libory, Nebraska, is 68 miles to our southwest.

We hurried to get ready for our evening service, hoping to be in the car or already at church before it started raining.  When I saw that a PDS-warned tornado (Particularly Dangerous Situation) was still coming our way, I dashed upstairs, gathered up all the quilts except a small one hanging on the wall in the stairwell where I can’t reach it, and carried them to the basement.  Two are new; I’m saving them for a couple of the grandchildren.  One is Larry’s Americana Eagle quilt, and the other is the Sunbonnet Sue quilt I put together with blocks made by my ancestors in 1936 – irreplaceable.  I grabbed the matching throw pillows, too.

Next, I went back for my external hard drives, and I took my newest laptop downstairs.  I left my older (and favorite) one upstairs in my sewing room, as it has a faulty jack, and moving it is liable to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.  It sits on the table up there, and I try not to so much as wiggle it.  All the data on it is backed up on external hard drives.

Larry, meanwhile, sat calmly at the table eating crackers and cheese and drinking a cup of coffee.  “We can’t lug all your machines downstairs,” he said, “And they’re the most valuable.”

Ha!!  Fat lot he knows about ‘valuable’! 

‘Valuable’ is ‘that which cannot be replaced’.  That includes the aforementioned quilts, and all that data, which is comprised of photos, journals, music, digital patterns, etc. – over 2 terabytes of data.  Imagine if I lost all the photos I’ve taken since I was 9 years old – including all those printed photos that took me over two years to scan.  Most of the old photo albums are in bins upstairs, so if a tornado goes off with the upper story of our house, it’s bye-bye photo albums.  But if the external hard drives are safe, so are all the photos.

Anyway, I got those things that I consider important downstairs, and Larry got his cheese and crackers done et.  So everyone was happy.  (Well, I did sorta wanna tie his ears behind his head; but we won’t talk about that now.)

Larry finished getting ready for church (I was already ready), and off we went.  The large tornado shelter at church – under the church, to be precise – is much safer than any of our homes are.

When we left home to go to church, it wasn’t raining yet; but we heard it pouring and thundering during the service.  The tornado that had gone through St. Libory diminished in strength as it went over us, so we only got 3” of rain – no tornadoes or hail.

The rain had stopped by the time church was over.  We headed toward Walmart on the east side of town under skies that were mostly blue directly overhead; but it felt like we were in the eye of the storm, as strangely-shaped clouds on all horizons were going every which way, and fast.

The sky kept us entertained while we waited for someone to bring our grocery order out.  it wasn’t long before mammatocumulus clouds were filling the blue sky.  Strangest thing, the way these ‘bubble clouds’ lined themselves up in rows. 

When we got back home, the ditches and fields were covered with water, and there were deep ruts in the gravel road from the old highway to our house, caused by rainwater gushing down the lane.  We were glad we didn’t have to haul groceries in while the rain poured down.

The storm redeployed and became severe again to the east a little while after we got home, and roofs were ripped off of homes in Ashland, Nebraska, 86 miles to the southeast.

There were about 12,000 people without electricity for a while, but that was restored quickly.

Last night, Hannah sent a video clip of Indigo buntings she saw yesterday.  (Photo taken for Wikipedia by Dan Pancamo)

They’re such pretty birds.  Some years ago, I saw one come sailing in and land on one of my feeders – but the house finches immediately took great umbrage and flew at it in High Indignation.  It skedaddled, Stage Left, and I’ve never seen one again.

Hannah told the following story:  Saturday she and Bobby were walking along the dike.  Bobby was looking at Hannah’s Merlin Bird ID app and sort of hum-whistled.

“You can’t fool the app,” Hannah informed him.  “Plus, you have too much voice in it.”

Bobby then whistled a bird sound.

And the Merlin app was fooled. 

It thought Bobby was a Western meadowlark.  Over and over again, that’s what it thought.

“I don’t even know what a meadowlark sounds like!” protested Bobby.

“Now you do!” Hannah told him.  😂

The Merlin app does get a bird wrong now then, as I discovered when I played a birdsong video from YouTube while recording from the app.

But I’ve decided that as long as I can’t see the bird, and there’s no Professional Birder with me, and Merlin tells me the name of a bird I’ve never heard or seen before, I’m going to say, “YES!!!!  THAT’S EXACTLY IT!!!  A NEW BIRD FOR MY BIRDERS’ LIFE LIST!!!!”

Sunday morning when it identified an Eastern warbling vireo, I looked it up at All About Birds, just to be sure – and yep, that was exactly it.  I’ve wondered for a long time what bird was singing that pretty song.  I’d thought maybe it was just an exceptionally enthusiastic and musical house finch.

As I look at pictures of the tornado’s aftermath today, I see that neither one of the pictures on the previous pages show the home of the family with the little girls.  Here it is.

Looking at this photo, I am struck to realize that this house had a walkout basement.  And the tornado nearly cleared that basement out.  The fact that those people, Bo and Michaela Bruning and their little girls Oakleigh and Paisleigh, survived, and were not even hurt, is astounding.

My house has a walkout basement.  The room I put the quilts and external hard drives in, while some distance from the patio doors and window, would probably not have protected those things in a tornado of that magnitude.  We have a strong shelter under our front porch that has poured cement walls, but it gets a bit damp.  I’d better keep a few empty plastic bins on shelves in there, ready to store things in the next time this happens!

Nathanael spotted a foundation in the background of one of these tornado photos that he, along with other workers in one of Walkers’ crews, helped pour recently.  It doesn’t look like the tornado hit it.  He took this picture at that job.

Teddy was the crew foreman on that job.  He asked one of the older workers if he was older than the tractor.  😄

It’s been a rainy, chilly day today.  I finished the laundry a little while ago.  I was watching a couple of bunnies in the front yard when suddenly I noticed that the newly-fixed bird bath was tipped over and in pieces, probably from the wind last evening.  The bottom bowl is broken.  So much for all of Larry’s work in putting the new pump on it.  🥴

This afternoon, Larry brought me some fresh pineapple chunks and strawberries that he picked up at Love’s Truck Stop.  Mmmm...

We had Red Baron Supreme pizza and cottage cheese for supper tonight, and ice cream with Mrs. Robertson’s Caramel Sauce on top for dessert.  Walmart has finally started selling Breyer’s Extra Creamy vanilla ice cream.  Until recently, we could only get it at Hy-Vee.

And now it’s 8:30 p.m., and Larry has come in from the garage to put on a warmer coat.  “It’s cold out there!” he exclaimed, rubbing his hands together.

I pulled up one of my weather apps —

No wonder he’s cold.  It’s 48° – and feels like 29°!

Meanwhile, there’s a blizzard going on in Wyoming, and some places are getting two or three feet of snow.  Why do I wish I was in a snug little log cabin, fire crackling away in the fireplace, in the middle of that?

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