Journal: A Bump... Annnnd... Back in Business

I’ve recently gone down the rabbit hole of looking at videos from 9-11... which morphed into newer videos of New York City, particularly those towers on Billionaires’ Row... then switched to Central Park... and somehow wound up in the Sears Tower (now called the ‘Willis Tower’) in Chicago, which actually has a higher roof than One World Trade Center, if you don’t count the spires on top.  I’ve learned that the Willis Tower Skydeck is the U.S.’s highest observation deck (and the price for tickets is similar to tickets to One World Observatory. 

(But I look at pictures like this of people going airborne in one of those skydecks and think, If that glass breaks when y’all land, well...  it’ll be ‘Goodbye, cruel world.’)

Chicago is a lot closer than New York City.  I wanna go up in the Willis Tower to the Skydeck!  Reckon there’s any chance in the world I could ever coax Larry to go there?  It’s 545 miles, with an estimated drive time of 8 hours and 22 minutes – as opposed to 1,324 miles to the WTC, with 20 hours and 34 minutes of continuous driving under normal traffic conditions.  We were only 110 miles north of the Willis Tower last April when we were in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.  Like Larry, I prefer the wilderness, including mountains and countryside; but I also like to explore All Things New & Different!

Last Tuesday was a pretty day, all bright and sunny, and the high was 72°.  I did some computer work, some housework, and then continued with the quilting of the Dresden Flowers & Flutters quilt.  The day before, I’d made some concentrated cold-brew coffee with the Kenya Peaberry coffee Andrew and Hester gave me, so I fixed myself a tumblerful of it.  Mmmmm, it’s good.

After the ancestral research debacle last Monday evening, I wrote to the kids:

Don’t engrave that list of ancestors in stone!  Shortly after I sent it, I noticed a few errors (George William Swiney was my grandfather, not my 2^nd-great-grandfather, for starters); and the more I checked into individual names, the more skeptical I got.  I’ve verified a few names, and eliminated at least one.  AI can be nifty and helpful – but it can be a big headache, too.  (At least it’s always apologetic when I take issue with it; so there’s that.)  I’ll keep working on this and re-send it when I think it’s more accurate.  (Next century, possibly.)

Victoria commiserated (at least I think she was commiserating), “You definitely still have to put in a lot of effort to fact check it.  It literally will make up whatever it thinks convincingly fills in gaps.”

“Yes,” I agree, “and the more I argued with AI and told it how ridiculous it was, the more sad and down in the dumps it got.  It actually spit out names of a couple of my supposed ‘ancestors’ ----- who never even had any children!”

AI did help me quite a lot with some eyedrops and gels that were making my eyes worse instead of better; but it was drawing its information directly from WebMD and Mayo Clinic and an optometrical site I’ve used before.

One of Larry’s cousins was recently telling about her father bringing home a baby pigeon home in his lunch box.  He’d evidently found it out of its nest, with no parents around. 

“That pigeon got to be quite a nuisance,” said our cousin.  “But he must’ve thought he was quite attractive, the way he’d look in the mirror and talk to himself!”

When the bird learned to fly well, they let him loose.  He stayed around for a while.

“The cook at our school would put bread crumbs out for him,” she said.  “Finally one day he went his way, and we didn’t see him again.”

Here are some pictures I got of Rock Pigeons on East Beach along the Gulf, northeast of Galveston, Texas, in early 2020.

The bigger one wanted to walk past the smaller one on the right, and the smaller one just wasn’t having it, for some reason.  

It was really windy that day along the shore, and the pigeons were using their tails to help prop them up, so the wind couldn’t blow them over.  

It was a cloudy, overcast day.  Imagine how their feathers shine in the sunlight, if they shined like this on an overcast day.  These pigeons were all mixed together with the seagulls, begging for crackers.  Rock Pigeons match their shoes to their eye color.  Isn’t that clever?

It was 61° Wednesday morning at 11:00 a.m., bright and sunny and on the way up to 76°.  Blue Jays were screeching for me to refill the suet feeder; it was finally empty.  Birds don’t frequent the feeders much, this time of year.  When I went out to put new suet cakes in the feeder, the friendly neighbor cat that we call Kitty Chaplin on account of his funny mustache was lying on the railing in the sun (probably poaching songbirds; but we won’t talk about that just now 😼).  He came meowing to greet me, so of course I had to give him a little treat of some shredded cheese.

Granddaughter Joanna wrote to tell me about a book called The Elements of Eloquence.  (Yep, I’ve raised kids, and they have raised kids, who pay attention to this stuff just like I do.)  The book tells of such things as an ‘unspoken adjective order’ which almost nobody can tell you about, but they will notice when you mix it up.  

“Imagine someone telling you about a silver small thimble instead of a small silver thimble!” said Joanna.  “Here’s my favorite funny quote:  ‘The importance of English word order is also the reason that the idea that you can’t end a sentence with a preposition is utter hogwash.  In fact, it would be utter hogwash anyway, and anyone who claims that you can’t end a sentence with ‘up’ should be told to shut.’”

I wrote back, “Here’s a funny:  Google Messages had not yet loaded on my upstairs laptop when your message came through, so although I could read the message, I could not see your name.  And I had completely concluded that the note was from Levi! 😄” 

(Levi is her youngest brother.)

“This is where I claim he is copying all his nerdy wordy inclinations from me,” laughed Joanna.

“Is this book whereof thou speakest online?” I asked, and then added, “Speaking of King James, have you ever bumped into anyone who thinks they can sound ‘Biblical’ by merely tacking the suffix ‘eth’ onto any ol’ word, including nouns and adverbs and suchlike?”

“Oh, that drives me crazy,” she responded.  “Or when they use ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ and ‘thy’ incorrectly to sound Olde Englishy.”  She gave an example:  “I wanteth to asketh thy if thou hat be bloweth off.”  haha

Years ago, my blind friend Penny (our school’s grammar teacher) and I came up with a novel way of spelling ‘Council Bluffs’, using English phonetical oddities:  Kownsill Bloughce.

Here’s a developmental sequence somebody came up with way back in 1855 or even earlier:  If the ‘gh’ sound in ‘enough’ is pronounced ‘f’ and the ‘o’ in ‘women’ makes the short ‘i’ sound and the ‘ti’ in ‘nation’ is pronounced ‘sh’, then the word ‘ghoti’ should be pronounced ‘fish’.

I used to think it was only recently that English spelling and grammar has deteriorated; but I learned otherwise when I read the journals from the Lewis and Clark Expeditions.  Both Meriwether Lewis and William Clark wrote phonetically.  Their journals reflect their native Virginia accents and the way words sounded to them at the time.

But words must’ve sounded differently at different times, because William Clark spelled the word ‘mosquito’ at least 19 different ways!  Some of his variations were ‘musquetors’, ‘mesquestors’, ‘misquitors’, ‘muskeetor’, and ‘misqutr’.

Or maybe he just knew it was a tricky spelling, and figured the more ways he done speelt it, the higher the chance of getting it right at least once.  I personally like ‘misquitors’ – because they just won’t quit (biting, that is).  No matter how he spelled it, though, he invariably ended with ‘r’.  😄

And then there’s the word ‘Sioux’.  Clark famously spelled the name of the Sioux Nation no less than 27 different ways.  Both men frequently left out the letter ‘r’ in their writings (m’skeeters notwithstanding), which gives a hint of their Southern drawl.  Clark wrote ‘foks’ for forks, ‘boad’ for board, and ‘hose’ for horse.  Lewis wrote ‘shap’ for sharp and ‘shotly’ for shortly.

Joseph had a kindergarten teacher who once sent home with him the following handwritten note:  “Plz get a new pare of siccors for Joesph without pointed ends.”

We called scissors ‘siccors’ for years thereafter.

I have the entire Microsoft Suite on my computers set up to fix words (tens of thousands of them) that I mistype, such as hosue and lvoe.  I started the autocorrect dictionary in Word in 1999, and have drug it from old computer to new for lo, these many years, adding to it regularly.

But it can’t fix my penchant for leaving out “n’t” on words like “did” and “does” – so I sometimes tell someone the exact opposite of what I meant to say.  I’ve sent people whole pages of “n’t”s, telling them, “Kindly insert as needed, whenever you feel the impulse.  If and when you run out, let me know, and I’ll send more.”

Joanna then told of a time when she was about a thousand words into an essay for one of her college courses, and Microsoft Word suddenly started underlining every single word with red squiggles.  “It had kindly switched its autocorrect to Italian for me, and was then dismayed to see I was spelling everything wrong!  I had a real time trying to convince it to switch back to English autocorrect.”  😄

“I’ve had that happen, too!” I told her.  “I tried a few things to switch it back, then gave up and copied and pasted the whole works into a new document.  I did later learn how to switch it (although I don’t remember now).”

Filling the suet feeder had not stopped the Blue Jays from screeching that day.  I like the beautiful jays, even though I know they can be lethal to other birds and nests.  They make so many different sounds!  

I remember being amazed, years ago, to discover that the odd ‘toodle-doo, toodle-doo, toodle-oodle-ooo’ I was hearing was coming from a warbling Blue Jay!  Here at All About Birds, the video at the top of this page has the usual “Jay! Jay!” sounds, but scroll down and you’ll find a collection of calls and warbles.  The sixth audio clip, recorded in Florida on March 30, 1962, is very similar to the sound I heard and did not recognize.

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Blue_Jay/sounds

Soon, I should wash a couple of bird feeders, fill and rehang them, as I saw a Common Grackle, a Northern Cardinal, and a couple of Blue Jays trying (with limited success) to share one suet feeder and one black-oil sunflower seed feeder.  After the autumn lull at the feeders, on account of abundant insects and seeds everywhere, the birds usually come flocking back in droves.  I haven’t filled the Nyjer seed feeder for three or four weeks, and it’s only down an inch or so.  That stuff’s kind of pricey; I don’t like to waste it! – so I quit putting out the giant feeder that holds about five pounds of Nyjer (aka thistle) seed, and only hang a little one.

Thursday was a pretty autumn day, with an expected high of 78°.  I did some dusting and vacuuming, started a load of clothes in the washing machine, then blow-dried my hair, ate breakfast, and headed upstairs to the quilting machine.

I sent some pictures to Hester, telling her, “Quilting is progressing.”

She responded, “The 3D effect on that quilt is so pretty!!  Are the heart petals from the same fabric that was in my room as a child?”

“Yes, that’s the same fabric!” I answered.  “I gave it the ‘tear test’ to make sure it was still sturdy, and it was.”

For supper that evening, I popped several small Back Strap Venison Roasts into the Instant Pot.  They wind up sooo tender and good.  I fixed corn on the cob to go with them.

A friend said she was making chicken salad – and that brought back an old memory, one I hadn’t thought of for a long time:

There was a cook at our high school who used to make the most scrumptious chicken salad sandwiches.  When given the choice between a sandwich, soup and salad, or some other, less-healthy option, Rhonda, Larry, and I always ordered the chicken salad sandwiches, partly because the tiny old woman who helped put food on trays would turn toward the deep recesses of the kitchen and quaver at the top of her lungs, “One cchhchickckckenen ssalllaad saanddwhichch!”, sounding exactly like a chicken herself.  Furthermore, upon getting the first order from one or the other of us, she never waited for the other two inevitable orders; so it was always, “One cchhchickckckenen ssalllaad saanddwhichch!”  Never “Two (or three) cchhchickckckenen ssalllaad saanddwhichches!”  Just one.  One at a time.

She was a nice old lady, and we liked her.  We were always polite and friendly; but ... she sounded exactly like a chicken.  A chicken ordering chicken salad sandwiches.  This tickled our irreverent teenaged funnybones.

Larry and I, however, would keep perfectly straight faces.  Rhonda would start to smile – and then she invariably made the error of turning to look at us. 

We’d stare at her blankly – and she’d crack up, e.v.e.r.y...s.i.n.g.l.e...t.i.m.e. 

Mrs. Chicken S. Sandwich, turning back to filling the trays after making sure her orders had been heard, would look at Rhonda, laughing ’til the tears streamed down her face, then look at me questioningly, sometimes worriedly.  She had difficulty discerning between ‘laughing ’til she cried’ and simply ‘crying’; thus the sometimes worried look.

I’d smile, lift my eyebrows a bit, shake my head, and shrug one shoulder, as if to say, I haven’t the faintest idea what ails her; nothing serious, though.

This unfailingly set Rhonda off all over again, just as she’d been about to regain her composure.

Larry once told the lady when she glanced his way, possibly for confirmation that Rhonda was indeed all right, “She’s my sister,” as if that explained it.

I muttered, “No, you’re adopted,” and made them both burst out laughing.  I was quite proud of myself for that.

Yeah, lunchtime was fun.

There was actually a story behind that ‘adopted’ remark:  Larry was the fourth child in the family.  Those before him had arrived of fair complexion and wavy blond hair.  Larry showed up with a darker complexion and straight black hair.  This had evidently not been apparent in the delivery room. 

Norma was wheeled back to her room, while a nurse bathed the baby, dressed him, wrapped him in a little blanket, and then took him back to his Mama.

 Norma took one look at all that black hair, now dry and standing at attention, and exclaimed, “That’s not my baby!”

Her mother, Grandma Ruby, who was in the room, jumped into the fray in inimitable Grandma Ruby fashion:  “For shame, Norma, saying that about a baby who looks exactly like Lyle!  You can’t have them all looking like you!”  (Lyle was Larry’s father.)

Funny thing was, as he got older, Larry’s hair lightened and he wound up looking quite a lot like his mother.  Hard to say, really, which parent he looks more like.

I was happily quilting away that afternoon, when I hit a ruler.  And that was the end of ‘happily quilting’ for that day; the timing was messed up.  The poor machine sounded terrible, and skipped stitches now and then.  I called Nebraska Quilt Company and made plans to take the Avanté to the tech the next day.

I relayed this story to the cousin who can’t for the life of her understand why I’m not good and tired of quilting by now, and she responded with the following helpful commentary:  “Maybe the machine needs a rest.”

I waited a few minutes to let my hackles smooth back down, muttering to myself, “Don’t answer yet, don’t answer yet, don’t answer yet,”  and then wrote back with commendable restraint, “It’ll be fine after the tech re-times it.”

Somebuddy give me a gold star.

Since I could no longer use my quilting machine, I pulled out some cute panels for the middle of Oliver’s quilt and took pictures of three possibilities:  John Deere & Farm Scenes, Patriotic Monster Trucks, and a Giant CAT Off-Highway Mining Truck.

Sending the photos to Hester, I asked, “Which of these panels would Oliver like best for his quilt?” I asked.

She thought he would like the John Deere combine/tractor panel.  “We’ve seen so many in the fields to and from Omaha the last week or two!” she said.  “Oliver thinks the ‘smoke’, dirt, and dust is great. 😄”

hee hee  He’s so funny.

This John Deere print was in my late sister-in-law Janice’s fabrics that she gave me a few months before she passed away.  There’s a chunk cut out of one of the border prints, but I’ll make it work.  Looks like she needed the little tractor that was there in the border for one of her many projects.  😊

“Oliver and Keira both wish we lived on a farm with all the animals,” said Hester.  “They might change their minds after a few farm chores, though.  😂😂” 

I used to wish the same, when I was little.  

I inquired into how Hester was feeling.  She had to increase her blood pressure medication and add some new ones, which produced unwelcome side effects; but she said those unpleasant effects were wearing off a bit, thankfully. 

“Now just to rest and hope they keep working for a couple more months!” she said.  “The doctors are keeping a close eye on baby and me.  Apparently you get HELLP and preeclampsia once, and it makes them a little jumpy! 👀😅  Just joking, really; we are very thankful for the Methodist doctors and nurses.” 

(That’s Methodist Women’s Hospital on the western edge of Omaha [Elkhorn, to be exact], where both Keira and Oliver were born.)

This was the view from my north-facing dormer window that afternoon.

That evening, I looked online for the timing kit I need for my longarm.  Larry, with a wee bit of help from me, has timed both my HQ16 and my Avanté; but after he had the mini stroke in one eye, and my blepharospasm got worse, it was pretty much a guessing game, without the tools.  Well, to be honest, it was pretty much a guessing game even before the eye troubles; but after that, it was a blind guessing game.

I found the kit on several different websites, for a variety of prices – and it was Out of Stock, in every single place.  I left my email address at several sites, including Nebraska Quilt Company, in order that they might let me know if the kits ever became available again.

After putting away all the fabric panels I’d pulled out of the box, except for the John Deere panel, I cut the panel apart.  Each section is about 16” x 17”.  I took pictures of each block, and was then ready to play with designs in EQ8 – mañana.  It was bedtime.

Friday, I did a bit of housework, played the piano, and made myself a tumbler of Caribbean Flare (with flavors of banana and chocolate glaze) cold-brew coffee.  I don’t often like either banana or chocolate flavors in coffee, but knowing that I do like Aroma Ridge’s chocolate flavors, I decided to give Caribbean Flare a try.   I like trying new things! And I’m glad I did; it’s quite yummy.

As I blow-dried my hair, I listened to one political ad after another on the radio (on my tablet), whether I wanted to or not.  I’ve been getting an excessive amount of spam calls and political calls (both ads and polls), too.  I’m glad for Caller ID and spam detection.

Sometimes the ads make me laugh, even when they’re about candidates whose policies I generally agree with, and even when I don’t much care for the people who have made the ads.  Like this one, about Senator Pete Ricketts:  “Senator Pete bought his seat!  But when the poor man needs help, it’s always the same:  crickets from Ricketts.”  That’s not really true, as the entire Ricketts family has donated millions to a large variety of causes; but that little ditty still makes me snicker.

If politicians want us to like (or at least respect) them, they should tell us what they themselves believe and plan to do, rather than badmouthing ‘the other guy’.  Last year when I plowed my way through that massive 3,000-page, three-volume history, “The Civil War: A Narrative”, by Shelby Foote, I learned that smear campaigning and mudslinging is certainly nothing new.

In fact, dirty politics were alive and well during George Washington’s era.  Early American politics were just as fierce and bitter then as they are today.  During the darkest days of the Revolutionary War at Valley Forge, a set of forged letters, the “Valley Forge Forgeries”, was published in pamphlets and newspapers, supposedly written by Washington to his wife Martha and household members, portraying Washington as secretly doubting the American cause, distrusting his own officers, and caring more about personal survival and reputation than independence.  He certainly proved otherwise (plus, the forger made many major factual errors).

Anyway... I’m glad we live in a country where we are allowed freedom of conscience. And I can giggle at political ads, even if I don’t necessarily agree with them.

Larry had hauled my Avanté out to the Mercedes and strapped it in the previous night.  As soon as I ate breakfast, I gathered camera, purse, coffee, and Celsius, and headed to Nebraska Quilt Company in Fremont.  

Look at this pretty aqua-blue 20” Handi Quilter Amara they’re selling!  There are Bernina longarms there, too.

I stopped at Fremont Lakes State Park on the way home.  It was a pretty day, with all the trees changing color, and the sky and water so blue.  The red sumac is so bright.

When I got home, I edited my pictures – all 262 of them – and then pulled up EQ8 to work on the design for Oliver’s ‘Farming with John Deere’ quilt.  I’ll add those printed strips into the border somewhere.  Here’s the design I settled on.  I’ll be using fabric I already have, so it won’t be an exact match to this, although it’ll be close.

Saturday, it was 61° at 9:30 a.m., and the high would be 64° that mostly-cloudy day.  I planned to pull fabrics for Oliver’s quilt and get started piecing it together.  I typed this to my Quilt Talk group, asking, “Reckon I’ll get the top done before I get my Avanté back?”

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I was just putting in that cute little é at the end of Avanté when my phone rang.  Figuring it was either ‘Potential Spam’ or a Robocall from a politician, I allllmost didn’t look.

Wrrrrrong.  It was Nebraska Quilt Company calling to tell me — my machine was done!

“So much for Oliver’s quilt,” I texted Hester.  “I’ll be finishing Keira’s, instead!”

“That was quick!!” she replied.  “Oliver has learned that Potential Spam is Very Annoying.  😂  So many calls lately. 😑”

Meanwhile, some Facebook Helpful Hattie was offering assistance:  “I’m curious. If you unplugged the machine. Wouldn’t it reset the timing?like its computerized isn’t it? Usually when my tech gets booted off, I just have to unplugged everything and it resets without having to go into the settings. It gets back on okay. Wouldnt it do the same thing on your sewing computerized mechanism? Just unplug and wait 10 minutes. Then plug it back in. It shoupd reset if its computerized timing. It generally does it on my computer tech stuff.”

I wanted to tell her that it was really nasty to boot off her tech like that.  Instead, I replied, quite civilly, I thought, “No, sewing machines and longarm machines don’t work that way.  The tech just called; he’s already fixed my machine.  I’ll be going to get it soon.”

Nevertheless, she soon wrote again:  “Have you tried rebooted it.”

I wrote again, “Neither sewing machines nor longarms work that way.  See my answer to your first comment above.”

After that, she deleted her second comment and added, “Be safe” to my original answer.

That was nice... but...  She gives me facial tics, because my brain can’t tell if I’m going to laugh or grind my teeth.

It was quite nice out, around 68° in Fremont.  The clouds were easier on the eyes than bright sunlight.  It was really windy; but good hairspray and a good-driving vehicle took that in stride.  😄

Nebraska Quilt Company is a big store.  There are two large rooms with several sections in each room, and an entire upstairs area where they have longarm machines.  The techs work on machines in the basement.

Amazingly, they had already gotten a timing kit for me in their morning shipment of Stuff and Things!  It was not on sale.  It was for sale.  😬  But I have it now.  😏

I told the lady, “Now I can hit rulers with abandon!”

She laughed.

What, did she think I was kidding?!!

I was home again by a quarter after two. 

Larry came home from where he was working on one of his trucks not too far away and carried the machine into the house and up to my quilting room.  The Avanté weighs about 45 pounds, and is too big and too unwieldy for me to carry.

Together we finagled it back into place on the carriage and frame, and over Keira’s quilt. 

That was ... interesting.

I tightened the quilt back up on the frame, and was ready to get back to quilting.

Thankfully, the Avanté is stitching beautifully again, and sounds better than it did before the mishap.  It had been sounding a bit clanky, even after it was last serviced.  Now it sounds smooth and nice.

I got about a third of a row quilted before suppertime.

For supper, we had slices of venison roast on thick-sliced Nature Craft toast, Oui yogurt, mango juice, and pistachio ice cream.  Hmmm... what happened to the requisite vegetables?

Ah! – corn chips.  Scoops.  With spinach dip.  That’ll do, won’t it?  Well, won’t it??

By the time I was done eating, I was too tired to do any more quilting.  So I sat down in my recliner and watched a video of a young woman walking from the north end to the southern end of Manhattan, New York.  When the video finished, I scrolled down to read the comments.

One of the first read, “Who else is watching this instead of being productive?!”

The first reply:  “I feel attacked 😂😂.”

At 8:00 a.m. Sunday morning, it was 46°.  The high would be 62° that partly-cloudy day.  I was sipping Caribbean Flare cold-brew coffee and blow-drying my hair while listening to the radio on my tablet.  On Saturday and Sunday mornings, I usually listen to the Chicago news station, since the Rural Radio station I listen to through the week doesn’t have much news on the weekends.  I’m always surprised when a good many of the ads on this Chicago station are Nebraska ads.  The wonders of the Audacy app, which knows my location.  I forget about that app, since I open the station through the Chrome browser.

It’s a bit incongruous when immediately after the traffic news – “There’s a crash on the Dan Ryan Expressway” – comes a political ad from Nebraska:  “Dan’s a fake!” hee hee

My nephew Robert, our pastor, and his wife Margaret were at a pastor’s conference this week.  Our son-in-law Bobby gave the message in the morning; his younger brother took the evening service.

A couple of days ago, Hannah discovered that her blood pressure was very high.  Her eyes were behaving oddly, and this is what led to the diagnosis.  It was high enough, it’s a wonder she didn’t have a stroke.  She’s not feeling so well now, on account of the medication she’s on.   

A couple of weeks ago, I promised Carolyn the ribbon I won for the quilt I gave her for her birthday last month.  When I got home, I tucked that pretty red ribbon into my Bible so I wouldn’t forget.  After that, I carried it to church and home again multiple times, still tucked into my Bible.  I’m such a fleabrain.

(But if I remember it now, that proves I don’t have Alzheimer’s.  Right?  Right???)

I finally remembered to give the ribbon to Carolyn last night.  I told her, “Red is for second place.  The reason it got second place is because another one of my quilts won first place.  The ladies at the fair told me they couldn’t decide between the two, and finally just stuck the ribbons on them, one after the other.”

My last Botox treatment was September 24^th.  Starting about three weeks ago, up until one week ago, my eyes were hurting and burning quite badly.  Last Saturday night, I did some research and discovered that the eyedrops I’d been using had a type of sodium in them that, with my symptoms, were making matters worse rather than better.

Fortunately, back on Labor Day when we were in Grand Island at the State Fair, we’d stopped at Walgreens to get me some eyedrops – and when I couldn’t find the kind I usually get, I bought a couple of different kinds.  I do like to try various types to see what’s best.  It turns out, the kind I hadn’t even opened yet, Optase (both the drops called ‘Intense’ and the gel for overnight), was exactly what I needed.  I started using them that night, and the next morning my eyes were quite a lot better.  They’ve improved much during this last week.

Right now, they’re tired and hurting and blurry; but I’ll put some gel in them after a bit and go to bed, and they’ll be better tomorrow.

We got a couple of sandwiches and hot stuffed peppers at Arby’s, then drove to Norfolk to drop off a payment.  There was a light rain all the way there and back.

It’s been a rainy day today, with a high temperature of 50°.  I did a bit of housework (somebody should do a bunch more), played through several more pages of my favorite old hymnbook (I love the lively old hymns from days gone by – the kind that make you want to tap your toes), made myself a Thermal tumblerful of cold-brew coffee, and sipped it while blow-drying my hair.

A quilting friend asked what my favorite old-time hymn is.

I replied, “Oh, my, how can I possibly pick just one?!  My daughters and some friends and I were discussing this, and, after taking into consideration all the hymnbooks we have, big and little, we’ve concluded that we surely must know 4 to 5,000 songs!  (Extremely rough guess.)  But here are my favorite singers and pianist, with Rudy Atwood at the piano – it was from his arrangement books that I learned to play.  This is one of my favorite albums, and the song ‘Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken’ at the 25:19 mark is definitely one of my favorite songs.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAhgWAqQBiA

And now I shall go play with my newly repaired quilting machine!

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