Late last Monday night, I heard a pack of coyotes, adults
and pups alike, out in the front yard, yipping and yapping their heads off. I couldn’t find a flashlight to save my life
(somebuddy lost the charger for my really, really bright light, and it
wasn’t me). When I finally found one, it
was not much better than a candle in a strong wind, and the coyotes were long
gone.
There were several unique voices; I wonder how many coyotes
were in that pack? Here’s a picture from
A-Z Animals.
We’ve been looking for the charger for that very bright
flashlight (the one with which I once accidentally signaled a foreign planet,
and it wasn’t even in our own galaxy) for a couple of months now. Last night, Larry suddenly spotted it,
plugged into a power strip under an end table in the living room. My light is now fully charged again, and I
have reinstated my ROPUMF (Restrictions on Other People Using My Flashlight). (I wonder if I’ll have any better luck with that
than I did the first time?)
Strong thunderstorms rolled in Tuesday morning, with thunder
crashing and booming like anything. So there was no looking at the lunar eclipse. Electricity went off momentarily. It rained enough to ease the drought a little
in our area of the world.
I was gathering up some old cards and notes from the
children and grandchildren, and taking pictures of some so that I might clear
out a stack of them without regrets. A
small child’s drawing of people reminded me of a time when Victoria, at about
age 3, was sitting at the table beside me drawing a picture. She made a few lines, then frowned down at
her paper.
“I start to make a girl,” she said, tipping her head
consideringly, “but it always turns out being a straight line with a circle on
top.” hee hee
I headed downstairs to my gift-wrapping room to wrap and bag
more presents. Several of the boys are old enough for pocketknives now,
and I have a whole raft of them from Loren’s house. Some are used and well-used, but there are
plenty of nice ones and even a few new ones to choose from, and plenty to save
for when the younger boys are old enough for knives. I shined them up with a soft cloth, wrapped
them in tissue paper, and tucked them into the giftbags.
This Winchester knife is for Aaron, and comes in its own
soft zippered case.
There are several nice watches and miniature clocks that
look like new, but they need batteries.
Larry helped me open them, and then I ordered the correct size of
batteries from Amazon.
Here’s an example of gifts for one of the children. Let’s choose... Jacob, Jeremy and Lydia’s oldest. Jacob is 13. He gets a blue and beige striped Basic Editions knit shirt, a miniature hand-crafted leather saddle, and a Journey’s Edge Swiss pocketknife that even has a teeny, tiny flashlight on it. It’s in a black canvas case, and has never been used. The little plastic thing that prevents the battery from making contact has never been removed, and the blades are shiny, still with a dab of oil on them from the manufacturer.
There’s also a silver and gold hand-engraved belt buckle from
Mexico, a pressed penny from Bass Pro Shops (I found five of
those, and divided them between several of the boys), and a pair of hand-carved wooden giraffes – a
cow and a calf. Because I like to give ‘sets’,
I hunted for a book about giraffes on Amazon.
The book arrived today, and I was more than pleased to discover it was a
whole lot bigger than I’d expected, coffee-table-size, and, though it’s used,
it looks like new, just as advertised.
Everything but the shirt and the book came from Loren’s
house. Because of things like this that
I saved from Loren’s house, Christmas won’t be nearly as expensive as usual
this year. The children and grandchildren will be pleased with their
gifts – and Loren, if he understood, would be happy to know everything is going
to a good cause.
In fact, when we were visiting him Saturday and I told him I’d
been busy wrapping and bagging gifts for the grandchildren, he immediately
asked, “Can I give you some money, so you can get something for each of them
from me?”
I assured him that he didn’t at all need to do that; no one
expects it of him. He smiled and nodded,
satisfied with my answer. I didn’t
elaborate. He doesn’t need to know about
things that might make him worry, such as his house and vehicles being
sold. The money is paying for his stay
in the nursing home, as long as he stays there.
I finally took Teddy up on his offer of the meat (from
butchering his pigs) that he has stored in our downstairs freezer. He
often tells me to use what I want, but he won’t take any money for it! That
kid. Last time he was here, he brought
up some ground pork and put it in the refrigerator. Well, Tuesday
afternoon I helped myself to a couple of pork chops and a pork roast. I put the chops in the oven with small yellow
baby potatoes, carrots, and a purple onion. The roast went into the
refrigerator to thaw for Thursday’s meal.
And I am keeping track of what meat I use, so
I can make it up to Teddy, one way or a-tuther! 😊
With the oven doing its job and another load of clothes in
the washing machine, I went back to wrapping gifts. I’m trying my very best to give the
grandchildren things of equal value, and also a fairly equal quantity.
Here’s a 1:18-scale powder blue 1967 Volkswagen Beetle on a display
stand, and I even found its original box.
It has an opening hood, trunk, and doors, an accurate model engine, and
a steering wheel that turns the wheels. This,
I decided, would go to Lyle, Teddy and Amy’s third child. He’s 15.
Since I have about enough things for the older boys, I think
I will save the working watches (there are 5 or 6) for their birthdays.
I was surprised, the last time I was at the nursing home,
when I mentioned that it would be time for dinner soon, and Loren pulled back
his cuff, looked at his watch, and said, “Oh, yes, it will – it’s 4:55!
Five more minutes.”
The last couple of months when he was still at home, he
started wearing a watch on each wrist, and he was constantly resetting the time
to any ol’ thing. He’d look at one wristwatch, then the other; and
when the time didn’t match, he’d try to reset one to match the other (and it
was anybody’s guess which one he’d decide was right at the moment). But that day, he had only one watch on, and
it was set right, and he read it right, and knew when dinner would be served.
It’s so odd, how understanding comes and goes with Lewy Body
dementia.
Wednesday, I went on sorting and bagging gifts – and wondering
what gremlins kept making off with name tags immediately after I’d written them.
Lydia had two dental implants screwed
in that day, and was in pain from it.
One implant was put in where she had a tooth pulled in August; the other
was inserted in the back where she’d had a tooth pulled a couple of years ago. She had to have a lot more lidocaine than the
dentist started out with, and then she had a bad reaction to it – and to make
matters worse, the doctor nicked a vein.
Eeek, that’s too scary for comfort.
It was 68° that morning at about 11:00 a.m. Then the wind picked up, and it got a little
cooler in the afternoon; but by the time we left for church that evening, it
was 72°. It stayed in the mid to high
60s all night, and was around 68° at sunup – quite unusual for early November
in Nebraska. But by midmorning Thursday,
a fast-traveling cold front had moved in, and the temperature dropped over 30°
in less than half an hour. By 12:30
p.m., it was 37°.
Victoria sent pictures she had taken of Willie that
morning. She wrote, “Our sweet boy is nine months old! The last few days, he’s been waving (at
himself, of course), clapping (and saying ‘clap clap’), growling ferociously,
saying ‘Mama’, and getting closer to learning to crawl. He’s over 20 pounds now. He loves playing with empty bottles, his
shoes, and looking at books. He still
only has his two bottom teeth!”
He’s such a sweetie. This picture makes me laugh,
because he’s got his little sock all mussed up from playing with his footie in
the first few pictures.
A lady
on my online quilting group told a story about her neighbor lady, who, upon
noticing a stray cat around her house that was obviously too thin, set out food
for the kitty, and put a soft cat bed on her porch.
The
next day she was pleased to find the food gone – and the kitty making use of
the bed, right that moment. She quietly
stepped closer and knelt down to pet the cat – but it wasn’t a cat; it was an
opossum! (The cat was sleeping on the
porch, too – but in a box of wood shavings.
😂)
One day
back in 2012, Larry trotted out the garage door, headed down the steps – and a
skunk came waddling out from under those same steps. Larry does not take slights to his personage
lightly—and he does indeed consider it a slight to his personage when a polecat
has the audacity to be occupying the garage at the same time he wishes
to occupy it.
He
yelled and began backing back up the steps, not wishing to turn his back on the
black-and-white-striped kitty, although one would think it would be preferable
to have one’s back doused with polecat perfume than one’s front.
The
skunk, alarmed over the commotion in general and the nearness of the
commotioner in particular, raised its tail, which in turn caused the
commotioner to generate more commotion than ever.
Yelling
and hollering, he did his bestest to get back up the steps without turning
around – quite a feat, considering that neither risers nor treads on those
steps are at all uniform. (We leave them
like that on purpose to foil burglars.) (And
would-be skunk escapees.) (And wives
with three bags of groceries in each hand.) (The latter partially explains why certain
members of the household thought this saga so funny.)
Once
back at the top of the steps, he had to perform the
get-around-the-opening-screen-door stunt while balancing on one narrow tread,
and with his back to the door the entire time. But he got ’er done. Further, he escaped into the house without
getting perfumed. That was the amazing
part of the whole escapade. Once inside,
he had to make his way through a small throng of irreverent children who were
nearly bent double in hilarity at their father, who had neither ceased his
yelling nor regained his composure.
Meanwhile,
the skunk settled his tail into a less threatening attitude and waddled his way
out the garage door into the night, doubtless thinking he should next time
choose a better hour of the day to enter such a raucous psychiatric ward to
hunt for delectable tidbits of edibles.
Now,
you would think such an episode would cause a person with such a horror of
skunks to be extremely cautious thereafter, when in known skunk territory.
But
noooooooooo.
It wasn’t
a month later that Larry, working in the garage one night, heard a rustling
noise. He spotted our Black Kitty
scrambling about in a bag of garbage.
“Hey,
get out of there!” he said, brushing at her bushy tail.
She
backed out.
Only it
wasn’t Black Kitty.
It was
a polecat.
 |
| for Aaron, 21 |
Instead
of the skunk getting out of there, Larry got out of there. And not very elegantly, either. In fact, I do believe he broke his own record
at Backwards-Step Speed-Climbing. Once
again, the young’ns were on hand to enjoy the spectacle. They do not go too long without retelling the
story. Their own children must learn
these GPH (Great Pieces of History), after all!
By Thursday night, it was 21°, and the windchill was 7°! Brrrrrr.
Another hurricane, this one named Nicole, hit Florida. My cousin Fred, who lives approximately in
the middle of Florida, posted a note on his Facebook page: “I did not realize I had subscribed to the ‘Hurricane
of the Month’ club!”
I like to look up hurricane stats. Here’s one: In October 2005,
a hurricane hunter plane measured a barometric pressure in the eye of the Category 5 Hurricane Wilma of
just 882 millibars – the lowest ever recorded for an Atlantic hurricane. It had wind speeds of 185 mph.
 |
| for Emma, 16 |
I remember when I was little – 5, maybe? – a police car went
by our house late at night, and an officer used his loudspeaker to warn
everyone that there was going to be flooding.
All the houses around us got flooded; only our house was
not, not even in the basement, because our house was on a bit of a hill, a
little higher in elevation than the other homes.
 |
| for Ethan, 18 |
Across the street from us lived an older man and his adult
daughter; the mother had died. When the
waters got high, he put his daughter in a metal water tank and pushed her
around in the water. I stood at our big front window watching, and was highly
concerned when the thing tipped up and spilled the girl, and she shrieked at
the top of her lungs.
I ran for my mother. She, after a quick look out the
window, assured me I needn’t worry. “No
one can scream that loudly if they are drowning,” said she. 😂
 |
| for Nathanael, 16 |
The Boxcar Children down the street (so called because they
truly did live in a boxcar [which at one point had some sort of siding put on
it], set back from the street and near the alley that ran behind our house)
were allowed to play in the street. I asked if I could, too, and my
mother responded with a resounding “NO!” – unusually adamant, for her. I
did not ask again. She pointed out the
swirling water near the culverts at the corners of our street, and told me a
child could go right down those drains. The current in the street was
swift enough, if a child should fall down, he might not be able to get back up,
and it was a good 2-3 feet deep.
for Carolyn, 5 – my jewelry
box from when I was about her age.
 |
I made good use of the box
Larry’s phone came in.
She worried over those Boxcar Children, especially after we
saw one standing on the curb in knee-deep water, staring down into one of the
drains.
Daddy then told her not to worry, because those kids
were made out of cork, and would float.
Mama reprimanded him, quietly and in her ladylike voice:
“George!”
One time when I was on my way to school (probably 5 or 6,
since I was in first grade, I think, heading back after lunch), walking past
that ‘house’, one of the younger children was sitting on the floor, leaning
against the screen door, and it suddenly popped open. He tumbled out,
bouncing down the metal steps all the way to the ground. I paused,
wondering if I should go do something – but in seconds, his mother came
shrieking and shouting down the steps after him. He must’ve been all
right, because he scrambled up and, tasting freedom, made a break for it. He didn’t get far.
 |
| for Elsie, who turned 6 today |
I thought the scene around that place often looked like a
chicken coop, with a loudly clucking hen dashing hither and yon after peeping,
chirping, wayward chicks. Except they were waaay louder than any
chickens ever could’ve been. The ground was nearly bare of grass, almost
all of it nothing but dirt. There was no topsoil on the ground, however;
it was all on the children.
Not many years after that flood, a dike was built along the
Loup River, and that has saved our town from flooding many times since.
Thursday, I baked the pork roast and steamed some broccoli
to go with it. Victoria asked Larry to
stop by after he got off work, as she had made us a big dish of pumpkin-apple
crisps. Mmmmm, it was sooo good – and it
was in such a big dish, there was enough for three more evening desserts thereafter,
even though Larry had convinced her to take out a healthy helping for her own
little family.
 |
| for Keira, 3. Polar bear book is on the way. |
Since I had most all the Christmas gifts wrapped or bagged
that I had on hand, and other gifts were still on the way or still needed to be
ordered, I spent a good part of Friday doing some serious computer
upkeep. My one-terabyte drive was too full for comfort, and I needed to
put a whole lot of data on my external hard drives and remove some of it from
the laptop.
That always makes me nervous, deleting folders full of
pictures from the laptop. I check and recheck the hard drives, making
sure everything is all there, and then... holding my breath... delete the
photos from the laptop.
That afternoon, I got sidetracked watching a little white-breasted
nuthatch on the suet feeder.
Look at this – we recently went through the little town of
Taylor, Nebraska, on our way home from Wyoming, and I looked up The Villagers
and the Taylor Juniper online and read about them... and Friday there was an
interesting article on News Channel Nebraska:
A Taylor-Made Mystery
Here’s
an interesting follow-up article about the mountain lion that traveled over 700
miles to go from western Nebraska to southern Illinois, plus a lot of beautiful
pictures of Nebraska’s wildlife: Mountain
Lion & Other Nebraska Animals
Friday
afternoon, I went and picked up an order at Wal-Mart. Included are some packets of Martha White’s
muffin mix – strawberry, blueberry, banana nut, etc. – because I found four
miniature muffin tins in my stash of Christmas gifts, perfect for four of the
little granddaughters.
I got
everything on my computer backed up on two external hard drives, and then
deleted enough data from the computer to get the used space down to 697 GB,
freeing up 255 GB. (A 1TB drive has a
data capacity of about 952 GB.) So that
gives me quite a lot of breathing room. I won’t have to worry about it again until I’m
all done scanning photos.
While I
had the external hard drives plugged in, I checked the tally on my newest big
(4TB) external hard drive: counting the
printed photos I’ve scanned and photos taken since using digital cameras from
2004 on, I have a total of 281,964 photos, all labeled and sorted carefully
into 4,638 folders.
 |
| for Brooklyn, 1 |
I need to go to Radio Shack and find a couple of adapters
that can plug the 2TB thumb drives into Android phones (they need USB C plugs,
as opposed to lightning plugs for iPhones).
Only two of the kids have Android phones – Hannah and Joseph. The
adapters I ordered from Amazon don’t quite have big enough openings on the USB
side for the thumb drives to fit into. Why
aren’t these things uniform?!
A friend told me she was listening to a new CD she’d gotten
– a choir from Pembroke College in Cambridge, England, singing ‘Christmas songs’. I looked it up on YouTube, found the entire
album, and wrote to my friend, “Now we can listen to the album ‘together’!”
 |
Pewter tie tack for Leroy, who will be 11 in two days.
I clicked ‘Play’.
Hmmm. They have a
loose interpretation of both ‘Christmas’ and ‘song’.
My friend evidently agreed with me, because after a bit, she
wrote, “Some tracks are more beautiful than others.” A few minutes later, “Track 11 is, ahhh...
well... maybe they were warming up?”
 |
| for Joanna, 19 |
I obligingly sent her a short clip of Barney Fife: Voice Lessons
After some time, she wrote again: “OK, I’m on track 21 of 21. There are some parts of some songs that are
very lovely... but overall I would say I now have a better understanding of why
the Pilgrims hopped on a ship and headed West.”
((...pause...)) “Just saying.” 🤣
Meanwhile, I almost made it to song #2 – and then had to skip
forward and play #11 when she mentioned it.
I listened to about 20 seconds of it.
That was enough. In fact, I was done. I went back to listening to the Old Fashioned Revival Hour Quartet.
Infinitely better.
A couple of hours later, my friend, who doesn’t give up
easily, wrote, “I’m listening to the CD again as I do other things...” It wasn’t two minutes before she emailed
again: “I’m about ready to board the
Mayflower.”
“Haha!” I responded.
“Be sure you don’t fall off the edge of the earth.”
Larry went out deer hunting
Saturday morning. He was on State lands,
and right now it’s archery-only there, so he took his compound bow. Blinds are allowed, but cannot be left
overnight; so he rigged up a little wheeled trailer for his blind and ladder
that he can pull behind his bicycle. It was 24°, with an expected
high of 29°.
He drove into the general area where he wanted to hunt,
having checked it out the day before. He
unloaded his bike and trailer from his pickup, hitched up the little trailer, and
pedaled off.
It was harder than it sounds.
The area is hilly, and the ground is uneven, rutted,
overgrown with weeds, and sometimes deep with sand.
But he eventually got to the location he had chosen and set
up his tree stand. He leaned his bow and
arrows against the tree, climbed up to be sure he had the stand exactly where
he wanted it –
You know what’s coming next, don’t you?
Well, don’t you??
He heard a noise.
He went very still, and slowly turned his head.
Yep. It was a big ol’
buck, slowly strolling into range.
And his bow was at the base of the tree in which he was
sitting.
There he sat while the deer moseyed through and went his
merry way.
Larry scrambled down as quietly as possible (or so he says;
but remember, he’s hard of hearing – his ‘quietly as possible’ might very well
sound like a bull in a china shop), gathered up bow, arrows, doe call, and
whatever else he thought he might need.
Then he shinnied back up into his blind, got himself all situated, and
made use of the doe call.
The buck, who had probably watched the entire fiasco and
then vamoosed Stage Left, neither answered nor returned. The only thing Larry heard or saw the rest of
the morning were squirrels.
Since the administrator at the nursing
home had emailed to say that all the residents had tested negative for Covid
the last time they checked, we were able to visit Loren that day.
He was nowhere to be found when we got there at about 5:30
p.m. We made the entire circuit, checked his room, went down the north
wing, and then enlisted the help of the nurses.
They finally found him in someone else’s room. One of the nurses told him he had company, and
he promptly came trotting out, smiling and glad to see us.
 |
| for Willie, 9 months |
He said happily, “Both
of you have come to see me this time!” – which tells me plainly that he
does indeed remember when Larry isn’t able to come with me, and he misses him
when he’s not there.
We headed to Loren’s room, but he got sidetracked by a
couple of ladies who looked like they could be visitors, though a short
conversation with them made it clear that if they were not residents of the
home, they should be.
 |
| for Juliana, 8 |
They asked Loren as we tried hurrying past, “Where’s your
wife?”
He immediately stopped, and with a pondering face, said, “She’s
not home yet! But she’s getting better, and she’ll be home soon.”
That makes me wonder if something has happened to his friend
Roslyn. She was definitely not at all herself (that is, her usual
confused but talkative self) the last two times I’ve been there.
 |
| for Emma, 16 |
People came congregating around, as they often do, and I,
being up ahead of Larry and Loren, couldn’t get back to him to urge him
on.
“Can you get him to come?” I asked Larry over the heads of a
lady in a wheelchair and a stooped little man with a walker. The lady was
asking me something about the man’s walker, but her question didn’t make a lick
of sense, and I couldn’t figure out what she wanted to know. I
smiled at her and said, “You have such a pretty, bright red fleece
blanket. Is it warm?” (It was draped over her lap.)
“No, there’s been a blizzard,” she told me, gesturing with
both hands in the air.
“Good thing you have the blanket, then!” I grinned at
her. She smiled back.
Meanwhile, Larry meandered closer to Loren and stood smiling
at him, on the chance that this might convince him to abort his conversation
and come along.
It did not.
 |
Three tiny pewter figurines for Levi, 12
My back hurt. My feet hurt. My patience hurt. My eyes wanted to squint shut. I
carefully threaded my way between people, smiling at them as I did so (some
even smile back, once in a while), marched purposely toward Loren, and when he
looked to see who was bearing down upon him, I waved the bag of magazines and
newspapers I’d brought and said, “Let’s go to your room! We have some
things for you.”
That brought him right pronto.
I turned and rushed off, with Larry and Loren trying
valiantly to stay up.
The horde gave chase, but, fortunately, nary a one of Loren’s
fellow residents can stay up with him, despite his having broken a hip a few
months ago. I got to his room, pressed in the code, and opened the door.
“She always manages to hit the right buttons somehow,”
laughed Loren, who hasn’t the faintest notion what the code might be.
This visit was different than most, as Loren had a number of
Big Stories that he launched into entirely without provocation. He said, “It’s
lucky that you found me here, because I’ve been away for a couple of days to a
town up north—” He considered, frowning intently, then shook his
head. “I can’t remember the name of the town. It’s to the north.” He gestured in a
northerly direction. (He actually knows
which way is which in that home, despite its maze of corridors.)
I am nothing if not a Helpful Hattie. “Fargo?” I
asked. He knows Fargo, North Dakota, as my mother’s family lived near
there and Mama and my three older siblings lived there when Daddy was in the Navy.
He shook his head. “Moorhead?” (Moorhead is
Fargo’s ‘twin city’ to the east, over the Red River in Minnesota.) “No,”
said Loren, starting to shake his head. I fired off a volley of other
town names in quick succession: “Edmonton? Jasper?
Juneau? Anchorage? Nome? Barrow?”
He started laughing. “I didn’t go that far
north!” he protested. He looked at Larry. “She thinks I went to Alaska!”
How ’bout that. He remembered where some of those
cities are located.
I wonder, did they take the residents on an outing recently,
and that’s why he thinks that? I should check their calendar.
...
...
...
Well, it looks like the only recent outing was their usual
Tuesday morning drive. I don’t know where they went, but they never go
too awfully far afield. Sometimes Loren’s wild notions have a basis on
fact; sometimes they’re ideas seemingly pulled from the Great Blue Sky.
 |
| for Keira, 4 |
I gave him a new calendar we just got from BIEM (Baptist
International Evangelistic Ministries). The pictures show scenes from
Russia... Ukraine... Turkey... various places where BIEM missionaries are
working, and there are little stories about the photos on each page. We
support missionaries in Ukraine, and we used to support one in Russia, too,
until he and his wife both passed away.
One of the calendar pictures shows the Uchisar Castle in
Turkey, with a missionary and a group of student pastors in the
foreground. Here’s the Uchisar Castle:
Loren simply could not comprehend that I had not been there;
I had not taken the picture. Finally I said, “That’s on the other side of
the world. I’ve never been to the other side of the world. The only
other countries besides ours that I have been to are Canada and Mexico.”
 |
En route to Omaha, with the setting sun behind us.
That seemed to sink in – but then he pointed out various
spots in the picture and informed us, “I have been here, right here in the
north area.” He tapped a spot in the
picture.
Mountains are always ‘up north’, no matter where on
earth they’re located, right? ’Cuz, you
know, they’re UP (pointing skyward), and ‘up’ is ‘north’! Right?
After we left, I told Larry, “He had ‘Go North, Young Man!’
on the brain!” (Of course, it’s ‘Go West,
Young Man!’, I realize. But Loren was stuck in ‘North Mode’.)
Some have suggested we take Loren on a ‘field trip’
sometimes. But...
Loren goes on field trips with others from the home. He
told us their bus is a very nice, very comfortable vehicle, and easy to get
into and out of.
I’ve thought of taking him somewhere... but truly, I just
plain have no desire to do that at all. He’s fine... he never asks
to go with me – and I don’t want him to start wanting to go with me,
every time I leave the place. I’ve seen a few others begging to go with
their family as they leave. That’s not
fun for the resident or the family or the staff. I think I’ll just leave
well enough alone.
After leaving the nursing home, we went to Cabela’s to spend
a couple of gift cards from some of the children.
 |
| A geode for Leroy, 11 |
I found a fleecy pink zippered sweater-jacket for Elsie,
whose 6th birthday is today. I got myself some soft, warm
black and white plaid gloves with screen-touch fingertips, too, along with some
thick fleece slipper socks (that I fully intended to wear on the way home from Omaha;
but I wound up driving, as I did on the way there, too, because Larry
was too sleepy to drive). We also got apple butter, Uncle Buck’s bacon
cheddar biscuit mix, and, ummm, some other foodstuffs that I can’t
remember.
((... going to look in the bag ...))
Oh! Monkeybread! That’s what it was.
 |
| for Warren, 8 |
We ate supper at Cracker Barrel. There was just enough
left on an old gift card to pay half of the tip. I had a grilled chicken maple BLT sandwich
and loaded mashed potatoes – which consists of mashed potatoes with generous dollops
of butter and sour cream on top, liberally sprinkled with chives and bacon
bits. Larry had meatloaf and loaded
mashed potatoes.
I like to get different things from the menu, so we
can trade tastes of various foods; but if I ever order first, as I did this
time, Larry promptly drools over my selection, and orders it, too. 😂
There’s a pair of cardinals in the bare
lilac bush outside my window right this minute. Such pretty birds they are. They keep track of each other with little ‘chip-chip’
noises as they move through the branches, feasting on the berries of the Boston
ivy.
 |
| for Emma, 16 |
I took Elsie her birthday present this
afternoon after she got out of school: the
pink sweater from Cabela’s, a little red leather-like purse, and a mama bunny
in a prairie dress and bonnet holding a baby bunny. Janice made it; I found it in a bin at
Loren’s house. The bin was full of
things Janice had intended to give as gifts.
There was also a handful of photos floating
around in that bin, including this one that I put in Elsie’s birthday card
after scanning it. At the far end of the
table is my Uncle Kent and Aunt Pauline (my mother’s youngest sister), my
parents, and Loren and Janice (in the red dress). I wrote the names on the back of the photo,
and pointed out to Elsie her Great-Aunt Janice, who sewed the bunnies we gave
her. In the background, there is Elsie’s
other grandpa, standing and holding one of the twins, Elsie’s uncle.
When I was choosing the menu, I rummaged in the cupboard for
some rice I thought was in there, but some time back, evidently, something
leaked – probably corn syrup – and it has now petrified into something
resembling a lava deposit.
Lydia sent me this picture she took on her way home
from Omaha today. (Yes, that’s snow on
the ground.) “I wish I could send that
picture to the Dodge owner,” she remarked. “They would probably like that.”
I sometimes used to get people’s email addresses, if
I took a picture I thought they’d like. Most
appreciated it – but one lady acted like she should probably keep her finger on
her panic button, just in case I got any weirder. 😂
Nowadays, one can ‘Airdrop’ with iPhones, or do a
‘Nearby Share’ with Android phones, without trading personal info. That scaredy-cat woman would probably think
it was an air raid, though, rather than an airdrop.
“I just got home,” Lydia told me, “and everyone
yelled, ‘MAMA’S HOME I’M HUNGRY!!!!!’”
“Haha!” I answered.
“Dogs and all?”
“Yeah,” replied Lydia, “in their own way! – They
started barking.” 😄
I just found a couple more pictures of Loren on the nursing home’s Facebook
page. In this one, he’s playing Bingo –
which is apparently a very serious business, as you can see.
In the other, he’s mixing up ingredients for pet treats for
the various animals that come visiting.
Who would’ve ever guessed that, after all these years of his
not being about to cook a thing but eggs and toast, he now helps make pet
treats. And he looks downright pleased about
it, too!
Bedtime!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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