Journal: Chai & Calzones & Wandering Gliders

 

I spent a good part of last Tuesday in my quilting studio, and managed to cut and piece together four quilt blocks for the Crinoline Ladies quilt.

It got up to 77° that cloudy day, and we got a few sprinkles.

A few days earlier, I was watching a travel tour video on YouTube.  A man and his son were exploring Michigan.  They traveled to Detroit, and got themselves some Detroit-style Pizza.

I had never heard of it, but it looked and sounded totally scrumptious, so I ordered four different frozen varieties of them from Walmart.  We had the Supreme version first, and it was really good.

I had planned all along to pop one into the oven for supper Tuesday evening – and was quite surprised when I learned that it was National Detroit-Style Pizza Day that very day.  This time, we tried the Three-Meat version.  It was good, too, but the Supreme was better.  The pizzas are so large and so thick, they last us for two suppers, and sometimes there’s one last piece for Larry to have for lunch on the third day.  (That last piece is always mine, you know; but... it’s okay; I don’t care.  ☺️)

Funny how it happened to be National Detroit-style Pizza Day Tuesday, just days after I learned about the fare.

Wednesday morning when I rehung the birdfeeders, there was a Dickcissel somewhere nearby, singing away.  I couldn’t see him, but I could sho’ ’nuff hear him!  Dickcissels sing their own name: “Dick-dick-CISS-CISS-CISSEL!”  Photo is from the Minnesota Breeding Bird Atlas.  

You can listen to them here.  (More songs and calls below the video.  Dickcissels in our area sound most similar to the one heard in the third Song audio in that list.)

As I was putting a few curls in my hair that morning, the electricity went off for a few seconds.  I wonder what makes that happen?

After eating breakfast, I headed upstairs to my quilting studio to see how many blocks I could get done before time for our midweek church service that evening.  Three, as it turned out.

Thursday morning at 8:15 a.m., it was 63°, and the high would be 70° – or 71° in Lincoln, where we were headed, as I had an appointment to get another Botox treatment for my eyes.  While I blow-dried and curled my hair, I sipped Southern Pecan cold-brew coffee – the first mugful from the gallon of cold brew I’d made the day before.  Mmmmm.  Much better than the Tiramisu flavored stuff.

When I was ready, I looked at myself in my full-length mirror.

If I wear a longish tan denim pencil skirt with the new-to-me, too-big, navy/tan/cream Hawaiian-print shirt I recently got, it looks oversized-on-purpose, right?  Especially if the entire outfit is ironed to total crispness, right?  😄

We barely made it to the doctor’s office in time for my 11:30 a.m. appointment.  Google Maps says it’s a one-hour-and-forty-minute drive, and I like to give myself an extra 15 minutes at the very least.  But Larry came along (that is, he did the driving) – and you know what that means.  (Don’t you?)  We gave ourselves only an extra five minutes, which is a surprise right there, the surprise being that we gave ourselves any extra minutes at all.  Trouble is, Google Maps does not calculate for pitstops.

We made one 2-minute pitstop, and got to the eye doctor’s office at precisely 11:29 a.m.

By noon, we were leaving the office.  Injections in eyelids top and bottom aren’t much fun, but it is nice to have my eyes stay open when I want them to.

We then drove south to Hickman, where Larry picked up an old Cadillac that he intended to sell for the metal content.  He got it started using his jump pack, and then he drove straight to a nearby gas station and put air in the tires.  I followed in the Mercedes, in case the Cadillac gave up the ghost.  The battery didn’t appear to be charging, or maybe the alternator was bad, or perhaps the dash readout was wrong; who knows.  Rather than wind up stranded on a highway somewhere, we left it in a Home Depot parking lot.  Larry would return for it later with a truck and trailer.  Next, we hit a few parts stores in Lincoln, looking for the right size of connector hoses for one of Larry’s trucks.  With that mission conducted successfully, we headed for home.

It was 4:00 p.m. when we got back.  I returned to my sewing room, and got three quilt blocks done that evening.  39 blocks were done; there were 13 to go.

A friend mentioned that the screen on her phone was turning black when she was attempting to take pictures. 

“Did you by chance have on sunglasses?” I asked.  “The screens on my phone and tablet turn black when held in certain orientations when I have my polarized sunglasses on.  This blackout effect happens when both the sunglasses and the device screen use polarizing filters.  When the light waves from the screen and the vertical filter of the sunglasses cross at a 90-degree angle, they cancel each other out.”

I was so surprised when it first happened to me, some years ago, that I had to do a bit of research to learn why it happened.  I figured it had something to do with my polarized sunglasses, because I knew how they interacted with the tinted side windows in our vehicles, turning things odd colors.  With my new sunglasses, at one angle and with the sun just so, all the cars approaching from the right are purple, with bright teal windshields!  

Friday was a sunny, pretty day, and it got up to 78°.  When I rehung the bird feeders in the morning, the Barn Swallows were out in full force, and there were finch, robin, and cardinal fledglings cheep-cheeping their heads off all over the place.  The swallows like to swoop down and twitter right in my face – which usually means that they, too, have babies nearby, probably also freshly fledged from their nests.  Swallows are often out en masse at dusk, as that’s when those tasty mosquitoes become most active – and so are the Little Brown Bats.  I’m surprised there aren’t any aerial collisions!

Avian collisions are actually quite rare due to birds’ highly refined depth perception and flight mechanics.  Did you know that, in order to avoid mid-air crashes when flying close together or encountering one another straight on, researchers have found that birds strictly rely on two instinctive rules:  they always veer to the right and adjust their altitude?  Amazing, isn’t it!

As I curled my hair and listened to the Rural Radio, I heard a lady talking about the Grand Island Expo:  “We have a lot of anemones...”

She meant ‘amenities’.  😄

These are anemones:  

And here’s a sea anemone:  

Both the flower and the sea creature come in multitudes of colors and shapes.

The Botox was already starting to do its thing. The doctor generally says it will begin taking effect in 5-7 days; but it’s never taken nearly that long, for me.  I almost always start feeling the difference within the first couple of hours.  I have no idea why it works so much quicker for me than for some.

As I said before, injections in one’s eyelids are no picnic (what on earth ails people who have this done for cosmetic purposes?! – they usually look ridiculous thereafter, anyway), but my doctor, Dr. Thomas Clark, has skilled fingers, and he’s quick.  I should time it; I’ll bet it takes him less than two minutes to do all ten injections – five around each eye.  The two tiny pinpricks that showed Thursday were gone by Friday, and there’s rarely any bruising at all.  (I said that too soon; just yesterday I suddenly noticed that a good third of my left eyelid was dark purple.  And I didn’t have any purple eye shadow to make the other side match!  😆)

I’m so glad that the very first appointment I ever made to have these treatments done – in Omaha, with a female eye doctor – got canceled on account of a blizzard, because I have since found that her online reviews cannot hold a candle to Dr. Clark’s all-positive reviews.  

Plus, when I called to cancel that morning after learning that many roads between Columbus and Omaha were impassable and getting worse right along as the blizzard raged on, the receptionist was plumb rude:  “You should have called yesterday to cancel an appointment!”

“This blizzard was not expected, yesterday,” I said, quite reasonably, I thought.

She retorted, and I quote, “Hmmph.”  Then, “When would you like to reschedule this appointment?”

“I’ll call you back, if I want to reschedule,” I said, bringing on a “Hmmmph” that was even hmmphier than the first hmmph.  Putting on my cheeriest tones, I added, “I hope you get home safely!  I see that the snow is getting really deep there, and the wind is picking up, too.”

Her answer:  “Grum grum grum grum grum.”  

At least, I think that’s what she said.  Her feet were probably cold and wet, poor dear.

In contrast, the multiple receptionists, aides, and those who work in the accounting department at the Eye Surgical Associates office in Lincoln have all been friendly and helpful, without exception.

In any case, I’m very thankful for that blizzard, which caused me to look in Lincoln for a different eye doctor who had more experience in treating this condition, Benign Essential Blepharospasm.  (I like to get really important-sounding maladies, if I’m going to have any maladies at all.)

Larry came upstairs to my quilting studio that afternoon to give me a package that had arrived from Marshall Dry Goods.  My fabric was here.  He was barely in the room five minutes, and he made the temperature go up by 20°, I do believe.  😅  Here’s the backing for Violet’s quilt.  It’s even prettier than it looked online.

Do you ever see old pictures of yourself, and think, Where is that top?!  I liked it, and want to wear it again!  I have no idea what became of this one.  It was soft, and had embroidered flowers on it.  I do still have the skirt.

By suppertime, I had 44 blocks done.  Eight more to go, and I would be ready to put the whole quilt top together.

Supper that night was green beans (frozen Bird’s Eye brand – they taste like they’re fresh from the garden), strawberries, banana, cottage cheese, and pineapple orange juice, with ginger snaps for dessert.

I told Larry that if he needed something with meat in it, there are some small frozen meat pies in the freezer that we could warm up in the microwave in five minutes or so.  He declined; he’d had some sort of meat sandwich earlier.

Saturday morning at 9:00 a.m. it was 67°.  There was a light mist falling when I hung the bird feeders out earlier.  It had been another night with little sleep.  I was finally sound asleep – and then Larry’s alarm went off at about 5:45 a.m.  It went on... and on... and on... until he woke up and pressed ‘snooze’.  Five minutes later, a repeat, at which point he turned it completely off and went right back to sleep.  Meanwhile, the mildewy smell that often plagues this old house after it rains seemed to have thickened and settled in the bedroom during the night.  Ugh, ugh!!!  My throat hurt, my nose was stopped up, and my head was starting to hurt.  I fished a cough drop out of a bag in the headboard and sucked on it for a few minutes.  Getting sleepy, I put the cough drop back in the paper wrapper.  But just that small bit of action ‘unsleepified’ me (Caleb’s word, when he was a teenager).  I got up and sprayed mildew odor remover around the window frames where some of the smell was coming from, and opened the bedroom door to allow more air flow.  Hopefully, someday soon we’ll put in new windows.

By then, I was fully awake, so I gave up and went to take a shower.

After a bit of housecleaning, I headed upstairs to my quilting studio.  There were a number of severe thunderstorms and a few tornadoes around the country that afternoon.  I tuned into meteorologist Ryan Hall’s YouTube channel (Ryan Hall, Y’all) to listen to the weather.

Look at this picture a stormchaser got in South Dakota!

By 10:30 p.m., the storms were calming down in most areas.  When things aren’t quite so dire, Ryan often lets his Y’all Bot answer a few questions or pull up various cameras or stormchasers’ livestreams.

Somehow, Y’all Bot managed to pull up a Ghost-Bustin’ streaming cam instead of a weather cam.

Ryan Hall, who’d spent the last several hours warning of one storm after another and telling people how to use the Weather Wise app, proceeded to explain to his audience of tens of thousands strong, “If all you heard was a thump, or if a picture fell off the wall, it was not a ghost.  If you didn’t hear it say ‘BooooOOOOooo!’, it wasn’t a ghost.”

The live chat, which had been moving so fast it was impossible to read without scrolling backwards, paused and nearly came to a total halt for a few moments while everyone pondered and mulled over this information.  Then, one by one, people began writing, “LOL” and inserting laughing emojis, and the chat resumed its rapid-fire pace.  They were a little slow on the trigger, though!

This could’ve been a real can of worms.  Someone wrote, “Spirits can be rebuked in Jesus’ name.”  A person responded with a rude emoji and got booted from the chat.  Someone else donated $10 and earmarked it for The Ghost Hunting Equipment Fund.

Ryan Hall decided to move on by switching to a webcam that was showing the active Kilauea volcano in Hawaii.

This volcano erupted for 9 continuous hours, throwing lava up to 1,200 feet in the air.  Mount Kilauea is one of the most active volcanoes in the world.  It has erupted 28 times since last December.

By bedtime, I had four more quilt blocks put together, and the pieces cut for the last four.  I won’t have this quilt done in time for the County Fair, but there’s time to finish it for the State Fair.

It was 76° by a quarter ’til 8 yesterday morning, on the way up to 92° that sunny and humid day.  I was glad for my Southern Pecan cold-brew coffee as I blow-dried and curled my hair, getting ready for church.

This is a Wandering Glider (Pantala flavescens).  

Here’s what the Illinois Department of Natural Resources says about this dragonfly:  “Also known as the Globe Skimmer, the Wandering Glider is the most widespread dragonfly on the planet.  Famous for its nomadic lifestyle and incredible aerial endurance, this resilient insect relies on monsoon winds to complete multi-generational migrations spanning thousands of miles.”

We picked up an order of groceries after church last night, and then drove home into the sunset.  For a few minutes, the sun was so perfectly split by clouds, it looked like there were two suns.

It’s another hot, sunny day today, with a high of 95°.  I made up for a good three nights of not enough sleep last week by sleeping nine hours last night.  Wow, I practically never sleep that long.  I was as creaky as an old porch swing for a while.

A hot shower helped.  By the time I had done a bit of housecleaning and a load of laundry, I was back in gear.

Late this afternoon, I fixed myself a cup of David Rio’s sugar-free Orca Spice Chai tea, made with skim milk.  It’s good stuff.  Hoping to duplicate the chai tea I got at a restaurant on the way to Wisconsin back in April, I ordered a can of this powdered tea and a box of Turmeric Ginger Instant Chai Tea Latte packets.

The latter did not duplicate the yummy tea from that restaurant.  Maybe if I only used one packet, and poured it into hot milk?  Hmmm...  I should make some like that and politely give it to Larry.  >>...snicker, snerk...<<  Then I could ask for a little sip, ‘to see how it tastes’.  😉

I disliked it so much, it’s taken me two full months to work up any desire to try the Orca Spice Chai.  This time, I heated a fourth cup of milk, dissolved the tea (not too much; I don’t like strong teas or coffees) into it, then added ice cubes and cold milk.  And it’s very good.  In fact, now I need more.

Or maybe I should just fix supper.  Let’s have... hmmm... Calzones!  I got a couple of ham and cheese calzones at the grocery store last night.  I ordered two different brands; we’ll split and share them and decide which we like best. 

Okay, that sounds good.  Let’s turn on the oven!

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