Journal: Making Memories

 

This old barn and the horses in the adjacent pasture are located northeast of Clarks, Nebraska, a village of about 344 residents, founded in 1866 when the Union Pacific Railroad was extended to that point.  It is named for Silas Henry H. Clark, superintendent of the UP.

I took the first two pictures as we traveled to the Nebraska State Fair in Grand Island last week.  The other two are from Google Maps.

Green and Millard Streets are still paved with brick, and businesses still have the false fronts of long ago.  On the side of one of the Strobel Manufacturing buildings is a pioneer mural.

At a family farm that produced soybean, corn, and cattle near this little village, Evan Williams, the American internet entrepreneur who cofounded Twitter (now X) and created major web publishing platforms like Blogger and Medium, was born on March 31, 1972.

That evening, Victoria sent pictures of Carolyn with her new Molly American Girl doll, in their matching outfits, uptown by the old Schweser’s building.  Carolyn got the doll and the first book in the series for her birthday.  She even has a heart-shaped locket like Molly had, with a picture of her Daddy (Kurt) inside.  Molly kept her father’s photo in her locket, while her father, Dr. James McIntire, was serving as a U.S. Army Medical Corps doctor in England during World War II.  Each American Girl doll has a set of six books that go with it. 

Schweser’s department store was started in 1880 by George Schweser in David City, Nebraska.  His sons moved into the Columbus building in 1929, and operated their clothing and retail business here for nearly 87 years.  It is now used as a premium event venue.

My mother used to buy clothes and shoes for herself and for me at Schweser’s, and it’s where I bought her a birthday present when I  was about eight years old, ‘all by myself’ – with her own money, while she sat waiting in the car just outside the doors.  The ladies who worked there knew me, and helped me buy something that cost a little less than the money I had in my little coin purse.

I bought Mama a necklace called ‘Aurora Borealis’, and was sooo delighted to give it to her, never mind that it was her own money that had purchased the gift.  I have that necklace now.

A lady posted this picture on Facebook, writing, “We got a bad groomer for our dog.  I feel like he’s about to ask me for the car keys.” 

Hee hee  How does a groomer who does something like that stay in business??

Wednesday was a sunny, pretty day, with a high of 81°.  There was only a 10-mph breeze, which is unusual.  I drained the gallon jug of Raspberry White Chocolate cold-brew coffee that morning; it was time to make more.  

I wrote that, Wednesday morning – and promptly forgot to make more.

That afternoon, I texted Hannah and Aaron:  “The kids’ quilts are in our Mercedes; I’ll give them to you after church.  If Aaron’s has lemon sherbet on it, it was NOT MY FAULT.”

I attached this picture of a woman in front of Aaron’s quilt, a piled-high cup of sherbet in one hand, spoonful of sherbet in the other.  I’d taken a full-sized photo of Aaron’s Soaring Eagle quilt, never noticing the lady in the foreground until I was looking at my pictures later.  (Photo cropped to protect the identity of a nice lady who never intended to do anything wrong.  Signs are posted saying 'No Food in the Quilt Room', but people do it, nonetheless.  At least hers was somewhat confined to her wheelchair.  I saw someone with a flimsy plate heaped with cheese 'n meat nachos in one hand and a tall ice cream cone in the other dashing helter-skelter down an aisle between the quilts!  Yikes.)

“It could be banana puddin’,” I added.  “Or smashed summer squash.”

After returning the quilts as promised, we went to Walmart to pick up a grocery order.

Home again, Larry brought the groceries in while I began putting them away.  I discovered one loaf of bread – that yummy Nature’s Own® Perfectly Crafted Multigrain Bread – was smashed down to no more than an inch high.  Bread doesn’t do well with a 64 oz. jug of juice ker-plopped atop it!  🥴😵‍💫😵😖😕🫤😒

I would later discover that one of the two clocks I’d ordered was missing, too.

Thursday morning when I went to get my usual tumbler of cold-brew that I like to sip whilst blow-drying and curling my hair, I realized I had forgotten to make more.  Fortunately, I keep bottles of Starbucks or Dunkin cold-brew concentrate on hand for just such emergencies.  They’re not as good as the fresh-made-from-beans-and-steeped-overnight cold-brew I make, but they’ll do, so long as I have a dollop of Coffeemate creamer to add to them.  So that morning I had Starbucks Pumpkin Spice cold brew with Italian Créme Coffeemate creamer added to it.  I reckoned I’d survive!  😉

For supper that evening, I put chicken in the Instant Pot, and while that was cooking, Bear Creek vegetables and noodles simmered on the stove.  It already smelled good, and there were still ten minutes to go!  When the chicken was done, I cut it up and added it to the Bear Creek soup.  Scrumptious!

Larry got home late, just about the time I was preparing to put the big pot of soup into the refrigerator.  It had been out an hour and a half and had partially cooled down.  I was sitting in my recliner, so I didn’t realize he hadn’t put the pot in the refrigerator after he got himself a bowlful, until over an hour later.

I voiced the obligatory complaint, whereupon he protested, as he has done, lo, these many years, never mind how often I’ve tried to edjeecate him, “But the lid is on it!”

This time, I looked it up online, then texted him this (since he was on a different floor of the house):  From a webpage on Cooking and Food Safety:  A pot of hot soup cools more slowly with the lid ON, which traps heat and moisture and allows bacteria to grow much quicker than with the lid off.

Larry responded as follows:  “Interesting 🤔”

“Yeah, act like I’ve never told you such a thing,” I retorted in my politest wifey way.

He replied with a bunch of funny emojis.

Friday I finished putting the Maple Leaf background blocks together, and sewed them into rows.  It was a sunny, pretty day, but hot, with a high of 87°.  The wind was blowing at 25 mph by afternoon.

Here’s a link to an amazing light show via utilization of 2,977 drones, commemorating the 2,977 people killed in the terrorist attacks that took place in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania 25 years ago, September 11, 2001:  Lights Over New York Harbor

I did not know such elaborate displays could be done with drones.  I knew Fourth-of-July displays are increasingly done with them, but I haven’t looked at videos of them; so I was astonished to watch this.  2,977 drones, all in perfect synchronization, swirling upwards and then aligning themselves into outlines of the Twin Towers.  Wow, it was incredible.

The display reached an altitude of 1,368 feet to match the exact full architectural scale and height of the original North Tower, including its telecommunications antenna.

I listened to the last half hour of the reading of the names of those who died on 9-11-2001 by relatives who would read a few, then stop at the name of their own relative, say a few words about them, and then let a couple of others come to the mic to continue reading.  I’ve gotten sappy in my dodderage, and have become an excellent sympathetic crier.

It’s now been posted on YouTube – but the whole ceremony is nearly 4 ½ hours long:  Those Who Died on September 11, 2001

If I start watching footage from back then, and continue on through stories of survivors or families who have lost loved ones, I can’t get stopped, and then have dreadful crashes with myself going to bed and getting up!  I set my playback speed to 2.0 and made it through several videos, doubletime.  (So long as one can understand Hamsterese/Chipmunkese, everything’s fine and dandy.)

A friend wrote to tell me what she was doing (coloring in a coloring book for adults, as she often likes to do), and inquired into my activities of the day.  When I said I was sewing quilt blocks together (and mind you, I was quite excited to get to that stage, too!), she said, for approximately the gazillionth time, “Don’t you ever get tired of quilting.”  (She invariably ends the sentence with a period rather than a question mark, which always seems to add a dab of aggression to the slight antagonism.  But I could be too easily annoyed, too.)

“No,” I answered.  “I never do the same thing twice, after all!”  Still feeling peevish, I added, “Neither do I get tired of playing the piano... taking and editing photos... hiking... cooking... gardening... journaling... I like to do all sorts of things.”

“That’s good,” she responded.  “All I seem to do is text and color.  It is nice to have a variety of things that you enjoy.”

Ooookay, that disarmed me and made me feel guilty for being irritated in the first place.  She isn’t very well, after all.  I will be nicer.

There were a whole lot of vegetables and cornucopias at the fair.  Here’s a pretty one. 

And just look at this beautiful little wooden train somebody made by hand.

Here are some of the piglets that were in the nursery.  A Landrace-Yorkshire sow named Dolly had 23 piglets!  They were three days old.

A sow named Violet had 19 piglets; they were only a day old.

They’re so tiny and cute; hard to imagine how big they’ll get.  The mothers were huge.

These stalls are so clever; the mother can get up and eat and drink, and lie down to nurse her babies; but the babies have plenty of room to move out of her way and not get crushed.

Baby piglets often get crushed.  Teddy’s sow once had a dozen piglets, and, one after another, every last one got crushed.  That’s sad when that happens.

There’s a gate at the end of those stalls, so the owners – youngsters in 4H – can take their pigs out for exercise and to clean the stalls.  Sometimes people fuss about those stalls if I post pictures; but they don’t understand that all those babies might die, otherwise!  They’re really very well cared for, both mother and babies.

There were over a dozen little ducklings in a big, straw-filled, galvanized tank; and right next was a pool with a slide and a cute little ladder.  The owners sometimes took ducklings from the tank and let them play and swim in the pool.

I finished sewing all the quilt blocks together, making rows; then sewed the rows together, completing the flimsy.  I then cut all the necessary strips for the three borders and sewed the strips together before quitting for the day.

During the night, a thunderstorm rolled through.  The worst of it was to our north, though some very strong wind gusts rattled our house.

Saturday morning, Teddy sent me a video he’d taken of the lightning.  Throughout his video, there was no letup at all in the lightning, which was occurring in multiple locations throughout the tall thunderheads.  I learned from Rural Radio that wind gusts were clocked at 62 mph at a weather station to our north a couple of miles.

By a quarter ’til eight, the borders were on the Dresden Flowers & Flutters quilt.  I sorted stacks of fabrics into coordinating groups for the Dresden Plates – and then quit when I finally realized, You know, the reason I don’t feel like continuing is because I’m just plain sick!

Larry has had a number of colds all year long, starting at Christmastime last year, and I’ve never once caught one, or at least not bad enough to talk about (as Roo said, explaining that he only had a ‘biscuit cough’).  But this week, Larry got another cold – and a few days ago he shared the cold brew in my tumbler.  And whataya know, now I have a cold.

I went to make myself a cup of Theraflu tea – and discovered it was all gone.  (Somebody in this house never thinks of replacing things that get used up, or asking the other one of us to order more; and it’s not me.)

So I made myself some Orca Spice Chai tea, which is supposed to be made with milk.  But the milk was all gone, too; so I added a dollop of French Vanilla Coffeemate creamer.  It wasn’t what I needed; but it wasn’t  bad.  🥴😵‍💫🫤😒😵

Here are a couple of pictures showing the borders.  Things don’t really look like they match – yet.  But I think after I add the fence, the flowers, and the butterflies, it’ll all go together.  That’s what I think, anyway! 😄

I got out the vacuum to clean up spiderwebs I’d noticed earlier on the ceiling light, fan, and pull chain.  But the extension was missing; Larry must’ve used it with his shop vac somewhere.  Lacking the extension, I scooted out a chair to climb onto.  We have 9’ ceilings.

I looked up, the better to position the chair – and discovered that the spiderwebs were plumb gone.  How ’bout that.  The spider had evidently ingested its own web, as orb-weavers do, thereby recycling valuable silk proteins.

I wish bunnies would gobble up the dust-bunnies they leave around the house, too!

At 10:00 Sunday morning, it was 58° on the way up to 62°, and rainy.  The latter was determined by a look out the window; none of my weather apps showed any rain at all.

Larry and I both stayed home from church yesterday on account of our colds.  We were especially sorry to miss last night, as it was daughter-in-law Maria’s youngest brother Royce’s wedding.  The bride, Megan, is a paternal cousin and good friend of Joanna’s.

Joanna and Bobby sang a duet for the wedding.

Royce and Megan moved their wedding up from mid-October to mid-September because Royce’s mother Mary, who has been struggling with cancer, is not doing well at all.  She was at church a week ago, so everyone hoped she’d be able to come to her son’s wedding; but Saturday night she was taken to a hospital in Lincoln, in much pain.  She’s still there; the doctors are doing what they can to make her more comfortable.

Royce and Megan both went with other members of the family to Lincoln Saturday night.  They didn’t know if she would make it through the night.

So everyone was running low on sleep.

The wedding was streamed live, but I don’t know if Mary was well enough to watch it.  I’ve just spent the last hour and a half pulling screenshots from the video and putting them into a pdf file to save with my photos, since I wasn’t able to take any.  I think I’ll give it to Megan and Royce, too.  Here they are saying their vows, and the next picture is when they were walking out to the foyer where the reception line would be, while the congregation sang the last song.

Our granddaughter Eva and her cousin Hunter were one of the flowergirls and ringbearers.

Yesterday evening, I pulled up a chat with a Walmart agent to tell them I didn’t get the second clock that should have been in my order last Wednesday.  This agent, too, had an Arabic name, and though he was much faster than the previous person I talked with (regarding the soup that was missing from a previous order), he didn’t know English much better.  They obviously make use of ChatGPT, though, because, after an awkward, illogical sentence, they quickly spew out an entire paragraph of platitudes:  “You’re patient and lovely, blah blah, and I appreciate you so much, more blah blah.”

I described the clock, gave him the correct price – $11.84 – and then copied and pasted it directly from the order page, too.

Lickety-split (without asking how I wanted it), a refund was issued – in the amount of $32.00.

I said, “No, the correct amount was $11.84.”

“I gave you a refund for both clocks,” he informed me, “so you’ll have enough to reorder and have it sent Express Delivery!”

Express Delivery is only $3.00.

I knew he would never withdraw that money, now that he’d already sent it.  I only want what’s coming to me!  I don’t want to feel like I’m stealing from the company!

Sigghhhh...

But I said, “Okay, thank you, I appreciate it.”

And with that, he was gone, in the blink of an eye.

I wonder if Walmart knows their employees are doing this?  If everyone who needs a refund gets back two or three times the correct amount, either Walmart or the customer will have to pay for it eventually!  Smaller companies would go under.

Rain and lightning woke me up during the night, though I didn’t hear any thunder.  The high this afternoon was 84°, and the weather couldn’t decide if it should give us rain or sunshine, all day long.  Things smelled a bit mildewy, so when the sun came out, I opened some windows and the patio door.  Every single time I did that, it immediately started raining again.

It’s a quarter ’til midnight, and it just started raining once more.

I hope I feel better tomorrow; I want to get started on the Dresden Plate flowers and butterflies for Keira’s quilt.  Larry brought some medicine home for me – and a couple of tacos!  The tacos were the most helpful, by far.

Someone asked this question on a Facebook birding group:  “If an eagle feather drops in my yard, is it legal to keep it?”

A man promptly answered, “No.  You must stick it in your hat and call it macaroni.”

Some just as promptly took offense.  Tsk.  It was funny!

Now for a good COD (Conversation of the Day):

Someone texted me from phone number (236) 888-5479:  “Why can’t I ever seem to reach you by phone?  Did you restrict me?”

I usually ignore stuff like this, but I did look up the number.  I found many similar numbers, but with different prefixes.  All those seemed legitimate, so, curious, I texted back: 

“Who are you?”

It took whoever-it-was about five minutes to respond to each of my texts, which makes me think the person was conducting multiple whatever-these-are with multiple other whoever-they-are.

Eventually, she (if it was a ‘she’) replied, “Hello, Ms Misia. This is Angelina from NY.  This is my other phone number.”

“You evidently have the wrong number,” I answered.  “I do not know you.”

Another five minutes, and then, “I attended your 55^th birthday party in Omaha last week, didn’t you remember?  I also brought you a bottle of Petrus, which you really liked.”

(Never heard of Petrus; had to look it up.)

Then I responded, “I hope it was vintage 1990, which is worth $199,999.99.  Obviously I had too much of it, because I didn’t know I had a birthday, don’t remember going to Omaha, and no longer know my name is Ms. Misia.”

A few more minutes, then she said, “Ah, sorry!  If you're not Misia, then who are you...”

“I’m Harry Houdini,” I informed her, “and I’m outta here.  Byeeeee!”

Six minutes later:  “I’m sorry, Harry.  Do you know Misia Henhold?  She gave me this number.  Would you mind asking her if she and her shareholders have had a chance to discuss the possibility of funding the ALS research initiative we talked about before, and what they decided?”

Hasn’t she ever heard of Houdini??

I believe in this particular case, ‘ALS’ stands for ‘Always Launching Scams’.

I declined to answer further.  I said “I’m outta here,” and I say what I mean and mean what I say! – even though I did want to tell her the name was actually ‘Misri  Henhouse’, ‘Misri’ being the name of a chicken breed from Pakistan.

There have been numerous Monarch butterflies in the yard today.  They like the tall lavender phlox and the Autumn Joy sedum, which has turned pink now.  Here's one on a purple coneflower.

There are also dozens and dozens of Cabbage Whites.  They not only like the Autumn Joy sedum, but also the Autumn Lily hosta blossoms.

Time to take myself and this bizzerble cold to bed!

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