We have a sugar maple in our back yard. The tiny sapling came to our place out here in
the country from our house in town when I dug up some of my irises to bring
along; it was a sprig from my sister’s sugar maple next door. Now, 17 years later, it’s about 60-65 feet
tall, from a wee two-leaf sprig. It’s
just starting to leaf out, and all the tiny leaflets are brilliant burgundy.
A friend has been telling of the troubles and
trials of trying to get her 94-year-old father into a nursing home. He was diagnosed with dementia not too long
ago, and her 87-year-old mother cannot cope with his care.
Because of the coronavirus and the
probability of an imminent lockdown, the nursing home allowed her mother to move
in with him at no extra cost. The place
was indeed locked down the very next day.
Unfortunately, shortly after that her mother asked to go home. She has Trigeminal neuralgia and was in pain,
and wanted to rest at home. The family
took her home... but now no one can visit her father.
Sad and unfortunate happenings.
I’ve told some of my kids, “If I ever need a
nursing home, don’t worry; I’ll be fine with that. Just be sure to find
one with a big enough room for my grand piano, sewing machine, serger, and
quilting machine!” (Reckon any nursing home would approve a 6’ 3” grand
piano? haha!)
My friend told me that there was a grand
piano in the foyer of her father’s nursing home.
Who can play it, I wonder? And what happens
if a resident decides to play it in the middle of the night?
That’s probably what I’ll do someday when I
have dementia: play a piano in the middle of the night. Well,
actually, I do that now, if Larry is gone, or if he isn’t sleeping...
but there’s nobody near enough to be disturbed.
By Tuesday night, the majority of the second-to-the-last
row of hexagons was done.
Wednesday, I headed up to my studio, hoping
to get a whole lot of quilting done.
I quilted a little while... ran out of bobbin
thread... refilled the bobbin... cleaned out the bobbin case and race... and then hunted all over the place for the little
brass lid to the long-necked, telescoping oil bottle. I finally found it – already screwed onto the
spout tip. 🙄
That’s like looking around for your glasses – when
they’re right smack-dab on the front of your face. Or searching for your phone – whilst you’re
a-talkin’ on it.
I’d been quilting for just an hour when I hit
a ruler with the Avanté. The needle got plumb stuck on that ruler, with the motor
whining piteously, still trying to go. I
had to break the needle to get the ruler out quickly, before the motor got
damaged.
The impact threw the timing off. The
machine would have to be timed before I could continue. The timing has been a bit off throughout this
quilt, but I’d hoped I could finish it. Bah, humbug! Just when I
was going strong.
The hopping foot hasn’t worked quite right,
making it slightly hard to push, for over a year. Larry fixed it as well as he can, but it needs
a new part – and that part is $180. One
of these days, I’ll order it.
My neck and shoulders are back to normal, not
hurting as much as they did last week. I’ve
had arthritis since I was about 12 years old – probably earlier, since I
remember the vertebra at the base of my neck hurting and burning like fire when
I was six years old and practicing my piano lesson. But perhaps my neck
hurt because of injuries from bicycle accidents, and not arthritis.
Once, a little girl with whom I was bike riding
decided to use hand signals, flung out a hand to show her intention of turning
– and karate-chopped me right across the throat. Knocked me flat. I hit my head on a curb and was out like a
light. The neighbor kids carried me home with a goose egg on my head and
a sprained ankle.
Another time, a little girl was riding her
mother’s or big sister’s bicycle. It was too big for her to sit on the
seat; she had to stand and pedal or coast. Her foot slipped off a pedal,
making her swerve into me. Same song, second verse. Down I went, and
I was out cold for the second time in just a few short months.
Anyway, I rub on Pain-A-Trate or Soothanol or
IcyHot, and keep a-goin’. Exercising and
keeping my weight down helps.
Instead of quilting, I edited photos and washed
clothes. I have no shortage of things to
do; it’s just that the one thing I wanted to do had to wait!
Larry fixed my Avanté after church that night,
and I was back in business.
A lady on one of my online quilting groups has family in
Italy. She told us that everything is
locked down now, and there are police in the streets. Her family, living in Milan, Pescara, and Naples,
are all staying in their homes.
I always wonder how people manage, when things like this happen.
How do they get supplies? If they can’t work, how do they make the money
they need to survive?
And yikes, what do we do, when there is no
toilet paper?! Or baby wipes?? Who has Sears catalogs these
days??!!!!!
Anyway, we here in Middle Cornland have no
worries; we have cornhusks. 😲
Thinking of various contagious viruses, here’s
a little ditty from years gone by (24 years ago, to be precise):
One time when Lydia was about four years old,
she got some sort of virus or flu bug. She
told my mother sorrowfully, “And nobody else got sick except me!” ((...pause...)) ((...shaking her head sadly...)) “I
must’ve gotten it from my dolly.”
Last week, I saw several robins in our yard, and within
days, there were starlings filling the cedar tree and splashing around in a big
puddle on our front walk. Thursday, I
suddenly took note of the birdsong I was hearing: the redwing blackbirds were back!
That afternoon, I cooked a big roast (from Bobby and
Hannah for Christmas) for supper. We cut
up what was left and froze it; that’ll make several suppers.
After reports of no toilet paper in various
stores (I didn’t know about Columbus stores; hadn’t checked), I decided to
place an order for some.
They were out of stock online at Wal-Mart and
Target, and household brands were out of stock on Amazon; but I ordered a
couple packs of a commercial brand that’ll probably be rather nasty.
Furthermore, it said shipping would be in 2 or 3 days ----- and it wasn’t until
the order was placed that I was informed that shipping would be anywhere from
April 9, 2020, to April 30, 2020.
So... I ordered a couple of large packs of
Puffs tissues from Wal-Mart. And then, after the order was placed, I was
informed that shipping was unavailable, and they credited my account.
However, we could pick them up at the store the next day. 🙄
That order would later be canceled and marked
‘Out of Stock’.
Ah, well... we have enough, for now.
We’re all going to look like Howard Hughes,
using tissues to turn handles and whatnot! 😂 Be sure to save the tissue
boxes after you empty them, too, if you wish to be even more like Howard
Hughes: he wore them on his feet as protection from germs!
Why are people doing that??? Buying up
all the toilet paper, I mean. Good
grief. We’ll have to go to the ER just to use the restroom!
It’s like we’re in wartime Europe, back in
the 30s.
I always wonder why people don’t get
themselves better informed before they go off the deep end. They create
so many problems for everyone else. Pandemaniacs,
they are.
(If you go off the deep end after
you’re informed, well, ... all righty, then.)
My Avanté worked
wonderfully that day as I tried to make up for lost time, and I got the
second-to-the-last row of hexagons, along with the neighboring borders,
complete. Pictures here.
The usual suspects napped in the Thermabed under my
frame or on the rug right where I needed to walk.
Friday morning, Larry and I, along with
Kenny, Larry’s brother, went to Methodist Hospital in Omaha to be with Loren
and Norma, my brother and Larry’s mother – they married a couple of years ago
after both of their mates had died of cancer; you can see their story and the
wedding album I made them here:
Norma was to have a cancerous spot in her
mouth removed. She has been unable to
eat much for months because of the pain, and her dentist didn’t recognize the
sore for what it was. Truthfully, he
didn’t try nearly hard enough to help her. She went to him several times... to her
family doctor a couple of times... and finally to another dentist, who saw the problem
and referred her to a specialist.
My mother-in-law is a sweet and dear lady. We love her so very much. This is hard for my
brother, too, as I know it brings back memories of his wife Janice, whom he
took care of when she had stomach cancer. Loren and Norma are both 81.
On our way to Omaha, we saw many ducks and
geese on the rivers and lakes. A pond
west of North Bend was covered with scaups.
(This is not my picture; it’s from All About Birds
.com.)
When we walked into the hospital (entering
the wrong door, first), we’d come from the parking garage, walking in the cold wind
quite a distance. So wouldn’t you know, I
had a red, runny nose, and my eyes were streaming, too. I had to blow my nose right while standing near
receptionists’ desk. (I did back
up first.) One woman had a mask on. The other, I’m sure, wished she did.
Not to worry, ladies; I’m just thawing out,
is all.
When we got to the Surgery Waiting Lounge, we
learned that Norma’s surgeon was running at least an hour late. Originally, her surgery had been scheduled
for 2:00 p.m. Then the hospital called
to tell her the time had been changed to 11:45 p.m.
As it happened, it didn’t start until about
2:15 p.m.
The five of us sat for a time around a small
round table in the lounge, sliding three extra chairs up to it. I had brought my computer, and I spent the
time editing the photos I’d taken on our trip to Texas. Note this shot, with all the Christmas lights
still hanging around the house:
They
certainly can’t say they couldn’t get them down on account of the weather,
could they?! Just look at the summer
greenery – in February.
After Norma was taken into surgery, I
suggested to Larry, “You could put one of these chairs back where we got it.”
“Yep,” he agreed, and made as though to pull
my chair out from under me. 😅
We went to the hospital cafeteria to eat
while we waited. They have a nice salad
bar, and a lot of other good food. The
salads are paid for by weight. I’ve
never seen it done like that before.
The surgery took longer than expected. Norma didn’t get out of surgery until a
quarter ’til five. The doctor believes he got all of the tumor, though it
was a lot bigger than expected. He
removed what he could see... sent it to the lab... and when it took them over
an hour to check it, he knew it probably wasn’t clear... and it wasn’t.
So he removed more, including a fairly large piece of bone, and now he’s almost
certain he got it all. The tissue showed clear, but it takes a week to
perform a biopsy on bone.
There is a bit of pre-cancerous area on her
lip, but he will just monitor that. It has not spread to lymph nodes.
He packed the area with gauze soaked with
antibiotic, and screwed her denture into the hard palate. (Eek.) The dentist there will remove that denture
and the gauze and make dentures to fit in about five days.
We were
finally able to see Norma a little after 6:00 p.m., after they had moved her to
a private room. She was in quite a bit of pain, but her vitals were all
good, and she looked better than one might expect, after major surgery like
that.
A
little while later, Kenny went with Loren to check into the nearby Hope
Lodge. They would not let Kenny go in with Loren, on account of the
coronavirus.
Here’s
an online description of the Lodge:
The
American Cancer Society Hope Lodge program provides a free home away from home
for cancer patients and their caregivers. More than just a roof over their
heads, it's a nurturing community that helps patients access the care they
need. Each Hope Lodge community offers a supportive, homelike environment where
guests can share a meal, join in the evening's activities, or unwind in their
own private room. Patients staying at a Hope Lodge must be in active
cancer treatment and permanently reside more than 40 miles away from their
cancer treatment center.
Though
the doctor had once said that Norma might need speech therapy after such an
extensive operation, she was speaking quite well already, though it hurt when
she did so. She’ll have to have soft foods for a while. It was
quite an ordeal for her, but she was in good
spirits. The doctors believe she
will recover all right.
They gave her intravenous morphine for the
pain. It wore off before time for the next dose. But one of the
medications they gave her helped the cramps in her leg, and she was glad for
that. The dear lady tried to us money (and Kenny, too), for food
or gas or whatever, and for staying there with her all day.
My mother used to do the same thing, when she
was in the hospital.
“Now you’re acting like Mama did!” I told
her, which made Loren laugh, and pleased Norma, because she always loved and
admired my mother.
We left Omaha a little after 9:00 p.m.
It was raining, with a few snowflakes mixed in.
Kenny took Loren
back to the Hope Lodge. He was worn to a
frizzle-frazzle; we were worried about him. He was so tired from the long day and
the worry about Norma, he kept getting a bit confused about this and
that.
I was starved, so we stopped and ate an
omelet at a Subway on the far west side of Omaha. By the time we
got a little past Fremont, it was snowing hard.
The Jeep got hot a few miles
east of Columbus, and spewed antifreeze all over the engine, while the heater
blew cold air (and it was only 32°). Kenny,
who’d already made it home, came back and rescued us, bringing water for the
radiator.
Just before Kenny arrived, Larry discovered
the radiator cap resting loose atop the radiator. And then he
remembered: he had planned to top it off with antifreeze before we left
home that morning. He’d taken off the cap, gone to get the antifreeze, discovered
he didn’t have any — and forgot to replace the cap.
Well, after
pouring in some water (it wouldn’t take much, for some reason, making
Larry wonder if the pump had failed), we managed
to limp it to Wal-Mart, about five miles away, with one stop to let it cool
again. By then, the alternator wasn’t
working right. Just about the time I
said, “What’s that high-pitched noise?” the battery icon on the dash blinked
on, with a warning bell to go along with it.
We went in Wal-Mart to buy
antifreeze. It
was after midnight. There were few
people there, and all the departments (food and otherwise) that we walked by
(trying to find a restroom without a janitor in it, heh) were fully stocked. I didn’t see the TP aisle; should’ve taken a
look. Larry managed to get the last two
packages at Hy-Vee a couple of days ago.
The restrooms at the back
of the store were padlocked shut, so we had to wait for the janitor to finish
cleaning.
Larry filled the radiator,
and we headed toward home – but had to stop at Super Saver, three miles farther
on, when the Jeep got hot again.
Kenny returned, collected us
in his van, and, leaving the Jeep in the grocery store parking lot, took us
home. The snow was getting deep on the
road, and the ride made my hair stand straight up on end all the way home –
quite a feat, considering the fact that my hair-sprayed hair had snow all over
it, and by rights should have turned into a motorcycle helmet plastered to my
head.
By the time we went to bed
an hour or so later, we had concluded that Kenny had made it home safely. At least, we had not received any “SOS!”
texts, nor had we heard any sirens.
And that was our day, better
than it could have been, and a little worse than we’d hoped.
Saturday revealed that the weatherman had
been right: we had about 4” of snow.
I love snow. I even like to drive in it (providing a large
truck isn’t sliding sideways in the road directly at me and entirely out of
control). I like driving in
it a whole lot better than I like being driven
in it.
I love the beautiful old hymn, ♫ ♪ Whiter than snow,
♪ ♫ yes, whiter than snow! ♫ ♪ Now wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow! ♫
♪
I was discussing hymn keys and keys we like to play
in with a friend. One of the first keys I played in was E Major (four sharps), soon
to be followed by B Major and G Sharp (five and six sharps, respectively), just
because I liked the sound of those keys best.
Still do. Plus, I found it fun to
play in those keys. The key of C has no
landmarks for my fingers.
No
one had realized I knew how to play, because I had this little toy grand piano
that sounded like ‘Tink-tink-tinka-tinka-tink’, but I had learned chords and
runs and played by ear.
Then my parents got me a piano – it was a tall upright,
used to be a player – when I was six. I
came home from school at noon one day and there was a moving van out in front
of our house. I went running in,
starting to ask why that truck was there – and there were strange men in the
living room, just positioning the piano against the far wall!
I was timid.
(Really!) I backed up and tried
to blend in with the woodwork on the other side of the room until they
departed.
Then Daddy said, “Well, what do you think of your piano?”
I’ll bet my eyes were as big as saucers. I walked over, sat down, opened the key cover
– and played Something For Thee. With both hands. Simple little chords, but chords,
nonetheless.
My parents were astonished.
“How did she know how to do that?!” my father asked my
mother.
What they had not noticed was that all those ‘tinka-tinks’
on the toy grand were actually tunes.
That toy piano was a little thing with a tiny bench that worked on
the order of a music box, but with keys and hammers that hit little metal
pipes. I imagine it sounded like spoons
on metal glasses filled with different levels of water, and was probably pretty
ear-clanging, if I was playing with both hands.
But I could hear the separate notes and the chords… and without anyone
realizing it, I was learning to play.
Here’s some Music Terminology for you (and
believe me, I know this feeling, after playing for a congregation):
Alleregretto:
When you’re 16 measures into the piece and suddenly realize you set too
fast (or too slow) a tempo.
Larry collected the Jeep from Super Saver’s
parking that morning and fixed it (or so he
thought). He took a plug out of the
manifold that the antifreeze runs through. If there’s an air pocket in the upper hose and
if the thermostat is closed when the radiator is filled, the water doesn’t
circulate. He poured antifreeze in until
it finally came up to the radiator cap, filled up the overflow bottle, put
radiator cap on and the plug back in, started it — and soon the heater was
blowing hot air. He drove it, and it
didn’t get hot.
So he brought it home and then headed somewhere
off west with pickup and trailer to get some parts he bought for the wrecked
pickup, along with some other items.
I quilted for several hours that day.
I talked to Loren on the
phone that evening. He told me he’d gone
out to the car garage (there are 7 levels, and there are many rows on each
level), and couldn’t find his car.
Thinking someone had stolen it, he called 911. A deputy came, had him get into the cruiser,
and then they drove around the garage until they found the car.
By bedtime, the gold and blue borders of the
Atlantic Beach Path quilt were done. There
are only a few more hexagons to do before I can roll the quilt forward and work
on the final borders. More photos here.
Somebody commented on this photo, “I notice your handy seam ripper! 😳”
I
replied, “Oh! Oops. That wasn’t supposed to be in the picture. You know I never use such a thing, right???” 😂
As
we were turning the corner onto 43rd Avenue Sunday morning, heading
toward the church parking lot, we heard the alternator making that strange
high-pitched noise, like it was working way too hard. When we got out of church, the battery was
deader’n a doornail. It didn’t even make
a ‘click’ when Larry turned the key.
Kurt
and Victoria took us home. I sat in the
middle seat beside Violet, with Carolyn on the other side of Violet. Victoria drove, Larry sat beside her – and
poor Kurt had to clamber in the back and sit in one of the seats back there,
where there’s not really enough room for a 5’ 10” person. But he elected himself as the one most able
to clamber in without removing the little girls’ car seats in order to fold the
middle seats down.
Carolyn
and Violet thought this was crackerjack, and immediately went to giggling. Then Larry peered in his visor mirror at
Carolyn and growled, making her guffaw.
Violet, facing backwards and thus unable to see the mirror, looked at
the rest of us laughing, and abruptly shrieked in delight.
So that
was a more entertaining ride home from church than usual, proving that dead
batteries can indeed be silver-lined clouds.
Well,
we got home, ate, drove the pickup back to the church, and tried to jumpstart
the Jeep – but that battery was dead.
Deader’n a mackerel. The
kind of dead that’s liable to explode, if one stubbornly keeps trying to charge
it.
Larry
removed the battery, and we went to O’Reilly’s for a new one. He’d hoped to get a partial refund on the old
battery, but they said it was 6 years old.
Now, we have had the Jeep for 4 ½ years.
We put that battery in new a year after we got it. Therefore, that battery evidently sat on O’Reilly’s
shelf for 2 ½ years before we bought it.
We
returned to the church, Larry installed the new battery, and it started right
up. But the alternator kept whining.
We
headed to the shop, where we would leave either the Jeep or the pickup before
heading to Omaha to see Loren and Norma.
By the time we got there and opened the hood, after just 1 ½ miles of
driving, it smelled like burning electrical wires. So... we left the Jeep at the shop and drove
the pickup, after unhooking the new battery so the vehicle wouldn’t catch on
fire while we were gone and take the entire Walker Foundation complex down with
it.
After
all that monkey business, we didn’t get to the hospital until about 6:00 p.m.
Loren and Norma didn’t
seem to think they could do anything about it. As Loren said, “You have
to take what you can get.”
We told them to be
sure and tell the nurses she needs SOFT food! It was just a
mistake.
It even said right on
her dry-erase board under Menu, “Clears”.
So when a nurse came
in and asked if she needed anything, she asked for chicken broth. It took a while; I think there was a change
of shift about then. When a different
nurse came in later and asked if Norma needed anything, she asked for cream of
wheat, having decided that might be better than broth.
Before long, they
brought her a bowl of chicken broth, a bowl of beef broth, mashed potatoes and
gravy, and cream of wheat – so she wound up with a bigger supper than expected.
They had taken her
off morphine that afternoon and given her pain pills instead – but that
immediately made her sick to her stomach, which put her in all the more pain.
She got a short nap
before we arrived, and was then feeling a little better.
We had a nice visit,
and ate supper with Loren in the
hospital cafeteria while Norma ate in her room (she shooed Loren off with us – I think she thought he
needed it).
He had checked out of
the Hope Lodge Saturday, and slept in a recliner in Norma’s room that night. He didn’t like being all by himself in a
motel room – while Norma was all by herself in her hospital room. Sunday night the nursing staff brought him a
cot.
On our way home, we
stopped at their house to take in the mail and water the houseplants.
Earlier today, Loren and Norma moved from the
hospital to the Hope Lodge nearby.
Larry and I needed to go to United Auto
Recyclers in Omaha to get the front end for the wrecked pickup so he can get
started rebuilding it.
We
like to say that all Larry needs is a paper clip, a garbage disposal, and a bit
of hair tonic, and with that he’ll build a truck. 😂 It turns out, though, that he needs large
chunks of metal, too.
On our way out of town, we stopped at the
Wal-Mart gas station to get diesel (it’s only $2.25/gallon). I trotted over to the station to use the
restroom – and found the door locked, with a sign on it reading, “For your
protection, our restrooms are temporarily closed to the public.”
That’s for our
protection, huh? Do they think we’ll all
be better off if travelers just use the ditch?
We drove the pickup,
pulling a flatbed trailer. The Jeep is
not yet fixed; it’s still sitting forlornly at Walker’s shop. Larry took a look at it, but didn’t have long
enough to discover the trouble.
I hope he gets it fixed tomorrow; we will be
wanting it Wednesday to go to church (unless church is canceled). Imagine
me embarking and disembarking from a tall pickup in a pencil-skirted
suit. 😲
We barely made it to the salvage yard before they
closed; Larry went skinning into the office mere minutes before 5:00 p.m. Once you get into the office and pay for your
stuff, you’re In Like Flynn, and can head right back into the yard to collect
your belongings. It took a good 45 minutes to get everything loaded and
strapped down.
Next, we stopped at Aldi’s to get Loren and Norma
some food. Aldi is a grocery store where things
are generally priced lower than other grocery stores. The store was running low on a lot of
things. No toilet paper, for instance. But we got a bunch of Campbell’s soups, cream
of corn, peaches, crushed pineapple, pears, oatmeal, almond milk, juice, and
some lemon-lime twist, because Norma had Sprite in the hospital and said it
made her feel better. And the lemon-lime
twist was the only soda they had, except for root beer, I think.
We also got them
heavy-duty paper bowls, plastic cups, plastic silverware, napkins, and paper
towels. At the Hope Lodge where they are
staying, they are not to prepare food in their room, but there’s a kitchen
where they can fix it. People donate
food there for the residents.
We donate for specific
residents, heh.
Aldi’s was all out of
paper bags – except for two. And
there were a few used, wadded plastic bags... so we managed to fit our
groceries in those, and left the place totally bare of any bags at all. People coming into the store were carrying
their own bags. We didn’t even realize
this might be a problem, until we’d already paid for our things.
They didn’t have a
blender there, so we went to Walgreens, where we got a ‘personal’ blender – a
little smaller than the regular-sized blenders.
Also, we got Norma some extra-strength Tylenol. The doctor had prescribed Codeine, but she
had them send the prescription to Bob’s U-Save Pharmacy ... in Columbus. We told her she could have that prescription
re-sent to a pharmacy in Omaha, and any pharmacy would deliver it to her in the
morning.
Now, when one makes
things in a blender, one needs a rubber spatula to scrape it out, right? Wouldn’t you know, Walgreens had no
spatulas. All sort of other
less-necessary kitchen utensils; but no spatula. So... we had to go to Wal-Mart to get a
spatula.
In the meanwhile, someone
brought a food donation to Hope Lodge, Norma and Loren thought it must’ve been
us, and ‘flew upon the spoil’. But Norma
started wondering if it really had been from us, and called Larry to
ask.
We were still at
Walgreens when that happened. 🤣
Larry assured her,
“We’ll call you when we get there!”
When we got to Hope
Lodge, Loren came out to meet us, and Norma held the door for us while we
brought them the stuff, and Loren carried it in.
We then went to the
Olive Garden. Restaurants in Omaha are
only doing take-out or drive-through service.
So we ordered, and took our food out to the pickup to eat.
In fact, just typing that made my chin itch.
We got dessert on the
western outskirts of Omaha – Royal Cheesecake Blizzards from Dairy Queen. You how they always turn them upside down as
they’re handing them to you, to prove they’re nice and thick? Well, guess what Larry does when he hands it
over to me?
Uh-huh. Upside down, right over my lap.
(No, the cup didn’t
empty itself, amazingly enough.)
When we got home, the
cats come running to greet us, as usual.
Whenever we get home from somewhere, never mind whether we were gone half
an hour or half a day, they come rushing to politely (or otherwise)
demand their Fancy Feast canned food. They’re well trained for this, you
see, because I use the soft food to crush Teensy’s thyroid medication into (and
of course I have to prove I love Tiger, too, by giving him a small spoonful,
fat though he is).
This was in the news
today:
A 16-year-old Northeast Nebraska boy who was previously in serious
condition at UNMC after testing positive for COVID-19 has been released after
numerous negative tests.
According to an update by UNMC, the 16-year-old from Crofton was
discharged after three negative tests.
He previously tested positive for COVID-19 and was in serious condition.
Four others who were at UNMC who came from the Diamond Princess cruise
ship have also been released. One passenger still remains at UNMC.
A 36-year-old woman from Omaha who tested positive is still in critical
condition at the medical center.
So... was this
16-year-old boy in serious condition after the false positive test just because
he was half skeert half to death, or what???
When articles don’t tell
me these necessary details, I figure they expect me to ‘finish the story’, which
was one of my favorite exercises in grade school. Thus, I do so, with aplomb.
This is from
LiveScience.com:
Nebraska is currently reporting 18 cases of COVID-19 as of March 15,
according to the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).
Nebraska's governor, Pete Ricketts, declared a state of emergency on Friday,
March. 13, allowing the state to mobilize across agencies to fight the spread
of the virus.
Health officials recently identified several events and locations near
Omaha and in Sarpy County that may have exposed large numbers of people to
COVID-19 infection from March 2 through March 12. This could potentially affect
Nebraskans across the state, the DHHS reported.
Reckon I’ll get WuFlu
from that really yummy Zuppa Toscana soup I got from the Olive Garden tonight?
Now it’s midnight,
and Teensy is unhappy that Larry went to bed already. He’s lying on the floor in the hallway
(Teensy, not Larry), sticking his paws under the bedroom door and batting at
anything he can reach – namely, a roll of wrapping paper behind the door, which
makes a satisfying crinkly whap-whap noise.
“Teensy!” I
admonished, “You’ll wake up Larry!”
He stared at me a
moment, then suddenly sprang to his feet and galloped pell-mell into the living
room. As soon as he thought I wasn’t
looking, there he was again, back in the hallway with his feet under the
bedroom door. I hissed at him and sent
him scampering.
Lancaster Downtown
AQS quilt show has been canceled. I just
got an email asking how I wished to receive my entry fee refund. So that tells me the quilts will not be
judged (or if they have been, they are now unjudged), nor will any
awards be given.
Cancer, coronavirus... It’s a comfort to know that all the trials
and afflictions we go through are in God’s hands, and all things are for our
ultimate benefit, one way or another, whether it seems so or not, isn’t
it? Our troubles should make us rely more heavily on a merciful heavenly
Father, continue to pray for that mercy, and cause us to be kinder, sweeter,
and more compassionate and understanding. I am always in need of more of
those traits!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah
Lynn, always learning to be more patient and less critical 😏
To church or not to church, that is the
question!
A
friend who lives on a farm in New York State, upon seeing pictures I posted of
the starlings that have recently migrated back, told me how they destroy the
apples in her orchard. “So I have mixed
feelings about them,” she said.
By 9:30 p.m., I got to the final border of
the quilt, getting it partially done.
More photos here.
But I had
to quit; I’d been quilting for 8 ½ hours, and my back was protesting.
Just a little bit more, just a little bit more, and this quilt will be done!
